INTRODUCING: THE NONLINEAR LIFE. A Newsletter About Navigating Life's Twists and Turns

We're All Going Through Transitions. Let's Master Them Together.

The Italians have a wonderful expression that perfectly captures the moment we’re all in today: Lupus in fabula.

The wolf in the fairy tale.

Just when life is going swimmingly, along comes a demon, a dragon, a diagnosis, a downsizing. Just when our fairy tale seems poised to come true, a wolf shows up and threatens to destroy it.

The common undercurrent in the conversations we’re all having these days – and the one we’re most reluctant to say out loud – is that we all feel completely overwhelmed.

We’re facing an epidemic of wolves.

As we emerge from our collective upheaval we’re wondering: Should I resume my prior life or refresh it somehow? Should I restart old relationships or go start new ones? Should I pick up my job or simply pick up and leave?

We’re unsettled, unnerved, unsure.

We don’t know how to tell our stories anymore.

We’re in between dreams.

We’re stuck.

Today I’m launching a new newsletter and online community in an effort to helps us all get unstuck.

It’s called The Nonlinear Life.

As we’ve all been reminded of late, the idea that life proceeds in a series of predictable, linear stages is hopelessly outdated. The once routine expectation that we’ll have one job, one relationship, one source of happiness from adolescence to assisted living is deader than it’s ever been.

Instead, our nonlinear lives take all different shapes and include many more twists and turns. We’re perpetually in a state of betwixt and between. We’re always within eyeshot of a wolf.

And yet: No one is giving us the tools to navigate those changes. To bridge those in-betweens. To slay those wolves.

This newsletter is designed to fill that gap. It’s a place for all of us to learn the tools, master the skills, and confront the fears, doubts, and uncertainties that come from finding yourself in the middle of a story you don’t know how to tell.

I think I can help.

Me, in front of the pyramids, in 2006 while filming the television version of my book 'Walking the Bible' for PBS

I’ve been immersed in storytelling my entire life. A son of the American South, I’ve devoted three decades to exploring the stories that give our lives meaning, from the campfires of the ancient world to the dinner tables of today. I spent a year as a circus clown; another traveling with Garth Brooks; a decade retracing the greatest stories ever told from the Nile to the Ganges; another writing a column in the New York Times about family, health, and happiness. I’ve visited over 90 countries, written more than fifteen books, and produced 20 hours of primetime television.

I’ve also been crushed by a gauntlet of personal misfortunes that I hope you never have to experience: from learning I had an aggressive cancer when my identical twin daughters were three; to facing financial ruin; to having my dad, battling Parkinson’s, try to take his own life.

Me, in MSKCC Hospital in New York City, in 2008 with my daughters Tybee and Eden, following a 17-hour surgery to remove my left femur, replace it with titanium, relocate my fibula to my thigh, and remove half of left quadricep

More recently, inspired by this onslaught of highs and lows, I’ve crisscrossed the country collecting 400 life stories of Americans in all 50 states. People who’ve lost homes, lost limbs; changed careers, changed genders; gotten sober, gotten out of bad marriages. In total, I’ve done more than 1500 hours of interviews. With a team of 20, I’ve combed through these stories looking for patterns and takeaways that can help all of us survive and thrive in times of change.

I call this The Life Story Project.

The findings form the heart of my last book, Life Is in the Transitions. They’re the backbone of a new book I’m writing about work, meaning, and the changing nature of success. And they’ll be the pulse of every post, every live event, and every experience I’ll be curating in this community.

I’ve done all of this not because I was a person who lived with meaning, purpose, and joy.

But because I wanted to become that person.

Me, in DUMBO Brooklyn, 2019

If that describes you, I hope you’ll join me. I hope you’ll subscribe, share, comment, like. I even hope you’ll complain and tell me how to get better.

I especially hope you’ll invite someone who’s on a similar journey to join us. Someone who may be in a moment of worry or dread. Someone who expected that life was going to be linear and was surprised to discover that it’s not.

Because I know this for sure: When we get stuck in the woods, we can’t get unstuck alone.

So that’s our purpose here: To reclaim our life stories.

To not give up on the happy ending.

A few ground rules as we get started:

1. There are no wrong questions here

2. There’s not only one right answer

3. Everyone gets to find their own path

And some practicals:

This initiative works only if you subscribe.

For now, I’ll come into your email box two days a week – Monday and Thursday at 1 pm ET – with a short post. A dose of motivation, a dollop of wisdom, a fascinating person to learn from; an idea to make you rethink; a game to play; a trick to try; a question to answer; a challenge to take; or just a personal reflection that I hope will inspire you to keep moving forward.

This newsletter is free for now. As we proceed, I’ll be adding perks for those who become premium members.

I’ve already gone on longer than I intended, so I’ll end with this:

In the prologue of Stephen Sondheim’s Into the Woods, the cast of fairy tale luminaries captures what it’s like to head into the unknown:

Into the woods, who knows what may

Be lurking on the journey

Into the woods to get the thing

That makes it worth the journeying

If there’s a benefit from spending time in the woods is that it’s a break from the normal. It’s a pause. It’s a chance to revisit, revise, and retell our life stories, adding a new chapter about what we learned from the journeying and all the new paths we hope to explore.

That’s the opportunity we have today.

We can’t banish the wolves from our lives. And that’s OK. Because if you banish the wolf, you banish the hero. And if there’s one thing I’ve learned: We all need to be the hero of our own story. That’s why we have fairy tales, after all. And why we tell them night after night, bedtime after bedtime.

They turn our nightmares into dreams.

☀

Thanks for reading The Nonlinear Life. Please help us grow the community by subscribing, sharing, and commenting below. Also, you can learn more about me or read subsequent posts.

You might also enjoy reading my books: Life Is in the Transitions, The Secrets of Happy Families, Council of Dads.

Or contact me directly.