Scripting
I was listening to Brené Brown talk about St. Jude Children's Research Hospital. No matter who she met on her tour, they all said the same thing when asked what they do: "I cure cancer." Not "I work in oncology" or "I work in the cafeteria." I cure cancer. Present tense. Identity, not task.
That stuck with me because of something I've been doing for the past two years.
Every morning, before I open my laptop, before the meetings start stacking, I sit with my coffee and I write. Not a to-do list. Not a journal entry about yesterday. I write today as if it's already happening the way I want it to.
Present tense. First person. Claiming the thing before it exists.
I'm energized. I bring warmth and positivity into the rooms I enter. The conversation I've been dreading goes better than I expect. I laugh hard. I leave work feeling like I contributed something that matters. Tonight I'm present with Isabel and Mike. I feel grateful and alive.
It's not a wish. It's not a goal. It's a script.
I started doing this to set a tone of peace. There were too many meetings and too little of myself left over by Friday. I didn't have a strategy. I just started writing what I wanted to feel, in the present tense, as if it were already true.
And then, more often than not, it became true. The words I was writing felt more and more aligned with my life.
It’s not magic or manifestation. Just this: what I bring with me is often mirrored back. The energy I set in the morning shapes what I notice, what I say yes to, and what I let go of. I'd rather be the one writing the story than waiting to see what the day hands me.
You can call it visualization. Affirmations. Intention-setting. I call it scripting. And it's the most important five minutes of my day.