Become Emotionally Unstoppable With a Simple Writing Approach
It’s finals week, and I have three important tests tomorrow. I make all the right choices: I eat good food, make sure to study, and go to bed early at 9 P.M.
But as soon as I lie in bed, the smoke alarm goes off, ripping my ears off. There’s no battery left, so it shrieks to let me know that I need to replace it.
I call the custodian of my dorm and he looks at the alarm, replaces the battery, and leaves. It’s 11 P.M., but whatever.
I fall asleep when I’m jolted awake by the same smoke alarm, telling me that there’s no battery. It’s past midnight. I call the custodian again. He “fixes” it.
The alarm went off one last time at 3 in the morning. I hurled my phone across the room, and now the front-facing camera doesn’t work. I called the custodian one last time and we both decided to just rip the alarm out of its socket.
I had no sleep that night. Let’s not talk about how the tests went the next morning.
Life hits you with the most stupid, absurd events sometimes. They often all come at the worst times. But what if you could be unstoppable when unfortunate times come? How could persevere with misfortunes worse than not sleeping one night?
It’s writing. As humans, you are engineered to love and understand stories best. All stories have hardships, absurd problems, and challenges. Whenever something negative happens in a novel, the plot expands, and the reader is more hooked because it allows the character to transform, improve, and thus develop into someone better.
The existentialist philosopher Nietzsche would agree with his concept of Amor Fati, the love of fate. You begin to like what fate has brought to you because you become a better person through the trials and tribulations.
When you begin to write the problems in your life and spin them into stories, narratives that you use to make yourself better, you voluntarily accept the challenge as a friend. Hardship is an opportunity for your own character to improve. Write an epic novel with your struggles and become emotionally unstoppable by writing stories about your suffering—small or big—and what you’ve learned from them.
