It is difficult to admit such mysticism that everything that happens to you, those around you, all the absurdities, stupidities, joys and pieces of happiness in your life are the result of an interesting combination of the choices of a small child, the influence of his immediate environment and a certain amount of chance. However, it is. Your life script is already written by you, and, like in any story, it has a beginning, a middle and an end. It features heroes, heroines, villains, and supporting characters, as well as a main theme and separate storylines. The script of life can be comical or tragic, delightful or boring, inspiring or shameful. Perhaps, until now, you did not realize that you yourself created it. Without realizing this fact, you will simply be living your script written many years ago.
And like any script, your script can be rewritten. Welcome to the ranks of the Creators of your life!
However, in psychology, and more precisely in the psychotherapeutic tradition, life scenarios are written with a different intonation, namely, with caution and anxiety. They write there first of all about problematic — dramatic and tragic — life scenarios, and they write something like this:
A script in psychology is a person’s life plan, created by him in childhood, under the significant influence of parents or close people. The psychological script is the plan of action of the life drama of the individual, which prescribes where the individual will end up in the end of his life and which way he will go to it.
The concept was introduced into psychological circulation by psychologist and psychiatrist Eric Berne. The script, according to Berne, is a constantly unfolding life plan, formed in early childhood under the influence of parents. The family script contains established traditions and expectations for each family member that are successfully passed down from generation to generation. Having received the instructions of the parents, the child assumes psychological positions and establishes the roles necessary for the implementation of his life drama. Once the roles are defined, the person receiving the script selects and manipulates people to add them to the list of actors. A distinctive feature of such a life is its dramatic, and sometimes tragic. The marker of the scenario is its repeatability, which is manifested in the reproducibility of life, relationships both at the level of a person’s personal history and at the level of the history of other members of the genus.
Thus, scenarios operate throughout a person’s life. They are based on decisions made in childhood and parental programming.
Eric Berne, the author of life scenario theory, is one of my favorite authors, but note that almost all of the life scenarios he describes come from the horror-horror-horror series. Quote:
“Exactly the same apparatus for structuring time is found in myths and fairy tales. Outcome, or curse: «Disappear!» (Hans and Gretel) «May you die!» (Snow Queen and Sleeping Beauty). The injunction, or «stopper»: «Don’t be too sensible!» (Adam and Eve and Pandora). Provocation, or push: “Prick your finger with a needle, ha ha!” (Sleeping Beauty). Anti-script slogan: «Work hard until you meet the prince!» (Kari is a wooden u.e.shka) or “Fulfill what you promised, and you will find happiness!” (Princess Frog). Model, or program: «Love animals, and they will pay you good!» (Ivan Tsarevich). Impulse, or «demon»: «I’ll just look with one eye!» (Blue Beard). Anti-script, or a broken spell: “You will cease to be a Frog when a handsome young man kisses you!” (The Frog Princess) or «You will be released after working for twelve years!» (Hercules).»
It’s true? Is everything so dramatic?
Yes, everything is so, under two conditions: if the child grew up in a problematic family and if an already grown-up person lives a life of little awareness, without setting a goal. If the child lived in a happy family with wise parents, his life scenarios will be bright, successful, good. In the terminology of Eric Bern — scenarios of the winner. Similarly, if a person lives a conscious life, he will not live in a problematic scenario. Yes, Carl Jung wrote that when the internal situation is not realized, it manifests itself from the outside as fate. True, but why live unconsciously? And the point is not to be aware of your current life scenario, but to begin to consciously set your goals, consciously choose your life roles and consciously build your life.
This is worth saying again.
Most people live rather thoughtlessly, without consciously chosen patterns of behavior and action plans for the life goals they have chosen and thought out. In this situation, naturally, in their behavior in different situations, different random ones begin to work — either scenarios of parental behavior, or scenarios that interested them in childhood. Once you recognize an inappropriate scenario, you can discard it. Realizing each time more and more unnecessary scenarios, you can adjust your life for a long time, which all the time strives to leave somewhere to the side — exactly because you didn’t have, and still don’t have, consciously set goals, thought-out strategies and chosen styles of action . Instead of patching up your life like this, there is a stronger option: still start living consciously, think over your life goals and values, set intermediate goals, think over strategies and plans, then choose the most optimal strategies, master successful patterns of behavior.
This is what it means to start living consciously, as a developed personality.
If you don’t like your life script, you can always rewrite it.
What is needed for this? — Start living consciously.
Where to begin? From setting goals: for the day, for the week, for the month, for the year — and for life.