We are all human, and no matter our upbringing, family, education, or life choices, we all encounter struggles, heartache and negative influence, and it’s so very easy to fall into the trap of overlooking the beauty, kindness, gratitude and love that not only exists in this sometimes unrelenting world, but in ourselves.

We, as humans have the tendency to stick our nose in our own book, and we inherently believe that the script of what others portray on the outside is their actual truth, when in reality, “faking it to make it” is the game they play just as well as you.

There were many times in my life that I would assume the perfect life existed in everyone’s else’s story, there were princesses and handsome princes that didn’t have the fire breathing dragon that burned me on more than one occasion. I would hurt so deeply that I couldn’t even imagine that anyone would understand. It’s true, parts of my story were difficult yes, but that is what I was missing, it was only part of my story.

Negativity and believing everyone else had a better chance, better job, better ability, better life kept me from picking my head up out of the book of lies I was telling myself. I believed in the incomplete scripts of the world, and it took a giant sword to pierce my heart to wake me up. A few years ago I witnessed and felt a giant loss, a loss that makes you rethink life itself and forced me to rewrite my ending. That loss taught me that everything is not always as it seems, pain, heartbreak and struggles do not discriminate, and our perception is not always reality. Most importantly my biggest lesson was that life was way too short to have my face shoved in my own book.

So I picked up my head, I started to see things more realistically, I practiced every day to silence the inner narrator so I could truly see the reality of the beauty, kindness, gratitude and love that existed around me and in me. Amazingly, once I opened my eyes to the fact that although everyone’s story is different, we are all trying to write the same happy ending, and my world exploded with new people, new experiences, new moments and a new story, and it was a story I was excited to live. Suddenly it wasn’t hard to see the good anymore, and the more good I saw the more it came into my life.

Life can write us some insanely difficult chapters, it can test our strength, path, purpose and faith, but those hard times, those times when you think you just can’t do it anymore, are the foundation of who we are, but it is not the whole story.

How we overcome and how we choose to live can be the highlights, but we must remind ourselves that the good exists, that the unimaginable is possible, and we can live a script so exciting, so beautiful and so loving that it may feel like a fairytale.

We just need to look up from the pages of who we think we are and see the reality of what we can be.

All of us dream of the storybook fantasy, but reality is, none of us are living it, so be kind, surround yourself with people reading the same book and choose to write your happy ending. @Positive_Love4u (Click to Tweet!)

Lisa Juergens is a mom, an athlete, a kid at heart, a lover of chocolate and cheese popcorn, and knows deep down she was meant to inspire, teach, coach, love and support those who feel lost or alone. Dreamer turned blogger, Lisa has made it her mission to spread as much kindness, positivity and love as humanly possible by using the gifts she was blessed with in her life.

Image courtesy of Sam Manns.