Epic Challenges, Epic Life
Screen-writing sage Robert McKee is considered one of the masters of storytelling. In his “Story Seminar,” McKee offers this overarching observation regarding creating a compelling narrative: No conflict. No story.
That is certainly true when it comes to movies. Epic movies demand epic conflict. That’s what makes them epic. Consider some of my all-time favorites: Braveheart, Gladiator, Saving Private Ryan, and Lord of the Rings.
In every one of them the protagonists – William Wallace, Maximus, John Miller, and Frodo Baggins – endured great struggle and experienced great pain. Yet this is ultimately what forged their character and facilitated their success.
Here’s the thing: What’s true of great films is true of great lives. Great conflict cultivates great character. Of course, it’s easier to watch on the screen than it is to play the part in real life. Yet, if you want to live an epic life, you have to endure epic challenges.
If you want to live an epic life, you have to endure epic challenges.
In every storyline, there are defining moments. The technical term for this is “inciting incident.” Inciting incidents come in two basic varieties: things that happen to you that you cannot control and things you make happen that you can control.
Response-able
In either case, even if something occurs out of your control, you can still control your reaction. Mark Batterson insightfully observes, “You might not be responsible, but you are response-able. And it’s the ability to choose your response that will likely determine your destiny.”
“You might not be responsible, but you are response-able. And it’s the ability to choose your response that will likely determine your destiny.” – Mark Batterson
I’m currently reading a powerful book entitled Leadership in Turbulent Times. It’s authored by Pulitzer Prize-winning author Doris Kearns Goodwin. In the book, the author seeks to answer a series of provocative questions:
Are leaders born or made?
What role does adversity play in the development of a leader?
Does the leader make the times or do the times make the leader?
Goodwin draws upon the four U.S. presidents she has studied most closely – Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin Roosevelt, and Lyndon Johnson – and shows how all of them met with dramatic reversals that disrupted their lives and threatened to shatter their ambitions. Nonetheless, these leaders in their “response-ability” emerged from these “inciting incidents” better fitted to lead through turbulent times.
How about you? What inciting incidents have marked your storyline? Where have you faced some epic challenges, some devastating disappointments, or some heartbreaking losses?
Could it be that you need to rethink those events? Such things are not necessarily what we conclude they are.
As one writer put it, “What we initially perceive as positive sometimes ends up costing us dearly and what we initially perceive as negative sometimes turns out to be the best thing that happened to us.”
What we initially perceive as positive sometimes ends up costing us dearly and what we initially perceive as negative sometimes turns out to be the best thing that happened to us.
I encourage you to keep this in mind in light of the fact that you will be facing some epic challenges in the months ahead. And remember, “You might not be responsible, but you are response-able. And it’s the ability to choose your response that will likely determine your destiny.”
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