If I had a dollar for every time someone told me my life should be made into a movie, I would be really rich right now. It is the classic story line: poor girl from a broken home proves she has potential both in athletics and academic life; she gets a scholarship that completely changes her life; amazing work and travel experiences follow, but nothing seems to fill this void that she feels until she finally goes on a very personal journey to find her father and extended family. Sounds like a perfect recipe for a G-rated Disney movie, and yet real life is so far from picture perfect.
In our minds, we all tend to have a movie we are working on, but the reality is that the other characters in our real life may not be reading from the same script. If you find yourself routinely disappointed by others, you need to separate out that movie version of things from what life is really like– the only one you can control in life is yourself, not those around you. People don’t have mind-reading abilities and may not know what it is that we want from them, so unless we clearly communicate our needs and expectations to those with the actual ability to help us fulfill these desires, we are bound to be disappointed by those around us. To have healthy and satisfying relationships in life, we need to be realistic and leave the movie-making task to those in Hollywood.
