Anything can be fulfilling or everything can be meaningless. As the author says in The World is Made of Stories, human beings are story-making creatures. We make stories out of everything. Without our stories and our interpretations, things just are. And there’s nothing like first-hand experience for such a concept really sink in.

All summer I worked hard to generate business for Upohar, the catering business I started a few months ago. But my plans weren’t working as I had expected they would. I was not having fun anymore. And if it wasn’t fun and it wasn’t fulfilling, why do it?

As I read the book, I realized that I could make whatever work I’m engaged in fun and fulfilling just by the way I interpreted everything about it. Or I could make the most meaningful work pointless by stripping all the stories and changing my interpretations about it.

Paying attention to what still excited me in the day to day work even when things weren’t working according to my plans and what specifically bothered me on particularly difficult days, was a starting point. Noticing the stories or explanations I gave myself and others for each of these good and bad events was the next step. Finally, applying a different story or interpretation to the same event was most illumninating.

I’m enjoying the painstaking process of building the business again.  It all depends on how I interpret what’s happening.