Can you change the story of your life?
Reflections on Nicole Ettenhofer's interview
“When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.” – Victor E. Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning
Nicole Ettenhofer’s lifestyle changes in her 40s led her from Chicago to Denver and to losing 50 pounds in the kindest and least-weight-focused way that I’ve ever heard someone speak about weight loss. I have long admired her for that, and for her beyond-the-buzzword approach to self-care. I didn’t know until our interview what sparked the change: A card reader said something about her future that alarmed her, and in response, she applied what her grandmother taught her: “You have the power to change the trajectory of your life.”
I was struck by the contrast between the message Nicole got (a certain future) and her reaction (that her future was within her control). To paraphrase Victor Frankl, she got news about a situation she could not change, and she decided to change herself.
I’ve long been interested in the debate between free will and determinism, including Stanford neuroscientist and biologist Robert Sapolsky’s latest contributions in Determined: A Science of Life Without Free Will. It’s always seemed to me that free will vs. determinism may be a false dichotomy. Regardless of what the science says, our brains operate in the realm of story. So to me, the better question is this: What’s the most useful story about free will and determinism to tell ourselves in a given situation?
For me, thinking deterministically helps when it comes to other people. Reminding myself how much is out of any one person’s control helps me be empathetic and kind. But in how I view the narrative of my life, acting like I have choices helps more than acting like I don’t.
Nicole could have taken the news from the reader and surrendered, for example. A deterministic outlook might have encouraged her to. Instead, she instead turned that news into a gift. Maybe at a cellular level, she was always going to make that choice. But in a self-conception level, she made it herself, and it changed the course of her life.
This makes me think about how, when it comes to creative work, the great many factors outside our control give us so many reasons not to. As a writer, I never know how my work is going to land. I don’t know if the book I’m working on will be liked by even one person, let alone published. The uncertainty can feel crushing. Any of us putting creative work out into the world could have a good and honest friend tell us the odds of big success are slim to none. So why try?
We try because authorship is one of the best stories we have. It is completely, and beautifully, human.