A Million Miles in a Thousand Years was authored by Donald Miller. It chronicles his life as he edits it for a movie. But this book is much more than just a story about writing a screenplay. This book shows us how we can make our lives into something special.
I hope that you will find the section of the book that I share to be meaningful. This is not a comprehensive review of the book. Just a few things that I got out of it.
I’ll first say that there is a lot to love about this book. In fact, I have many quotes that I love from this book.
In the first part of the book, Miller says:
“When Steve, Dan, and I first started working together, I didn’t want Don to embrace conflict. I wanted an easy story. But nobody really remembers easy stories. Characters have to face their greatest fears with courage. That’s what makes a story good. If you think about the stories you like most, they probably have lots of conflict. There is probably death at stake, inner death or actual death, you know. These polar charges, these happy and sad things in life, are like colors God uses to draw the world.”
The problem seems than that most of us don’t want color lives. We’re happy with black and white. Sometimes we can deal with shades of gray. But not very often. Miller states:
“Here’s the truth about telling stories with your life. It’s going to sound like a great idea, and you are going to get excited about it, and then when it comes time to do the work, you’re not going to want to do it. It’s like that with writing books, it’s like that with life. People love to have a lived a great story, but few people like to work it takes to make it happen. But joy costs pain.”
I often feel that I’m not willing to pay the cost for joy. It’s difficult to give up my comfort. It’s difficult to leave my comfort zone. Pain is not comfortable. But that’s the price.
And so living your life deliberately – living your life on purpose – requires something extra of yourself. But giving the something extra is addictive. Miller says,
“And that’s the thing you realize when you organize your life into the structure of story. You get a taste for one story and then another, and then another, and the stories will build until your living a kind of epic of risk and reward, and the whole thing will be molding you into the actual character whose roles you’ve been playing. And when you live a good story, you get a taste for kind of meaning in life, and you can’t go back to being normal; you can’t go back to meaningless scenes stitched together by the forgettable thread of wasted time. The more practice stories I lived, the more I wanted an epic to climb inside of and see through to its end.”
And the reward for giving up our comfort zone, is a life of meaning. Miller goes on to say:
“Pain then, if one could have faith in something greater than himself, might be a path To experiencing a meaning beyond the false gratification of personal comfort.”
I highly recommend this book as a way to live your life better. Decide what you want. Look at we have to overcome to get it. And go get it. This is what makes a great life.
Looking to find the best deal on Brian Tracy Audio, then visit www.SuccessCoachesOnline.com to find the best advice on Brian Tracy Audio for you.