I love transformation stories.
I’m a sucker for a good mid-movie montage where the person is in the metamorphosis stage. Whether it’s the quiet underdog training to surprise everyone and win the big race or the frumpy wallflower who is blossoming as she finds confidence in who she is, I am enjoying watching the progression through short clips spanning days, weeks and months of their hard work. And then at the end, ta-da!, change. And it looks good.
Real life doesn’t have real-time montages though.
The reason those movies use that story-telling feature is because we want all of the feel goods of the transformation without having to sit through the slog of the actual work it took to change. A caterpillar’s metamorphosis into a butterfly involves a lot of time, waiting, and goo. We all love the butterfly’s emergence but none of us really want to sit with it for days and weeks on end in the chrysalis.
Did you know caterpillars completely digest themselves inside of the chrysalis and then highly-intelligent super-cells reform the caterpillar protein soup into the beautiful butterfly that emerges?? There’s an additional post on this point entirely but I’ll leave it for another time. I’ve already become distracted from my original thought.
My original thought being that you have to make peace with the chrysalis. And sometimes you have to create your own montage.
When you are staring down the calendar of a long project, training routine, task list, or lofty goal, don’t look at the whole scope of it and let it steal your strength and drive. Focus on the one thing you can do today. Choose to smile. Choose to be OK with the process. Change will come. Everyone else will get to watch the montage of your life. You are the one who gets to direct and star in it.
And even you love a good transformation story.
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