The Longest Relationship of Your Life

You’re writing a story that you may not know how to fully tell. It’s a very personal story with its own history and language. It’s highly visible to others but often not to you. As Loren Eiseley observed in The Unexpected Universe, “Reality has a way of hiding from even its most gifted observers.”

It’s a story that you talk about every day, think about several times a day. It is remarkably simple yet intricately complex. This story has an internal and external dialogue, a secret language, and encrypted messages.

It’s complicated because some important aspects are emotional, unspoken, and even unconscious.

This story is about the longest relationship you’ll have in your life. Your parents discussed it before you arrived; people will deliberate it after you die. Maybe you’ll get ten years out of a car, perhaps fifty with a spouse, but this story you can never stop writing or living. You can’t break up with it, run away from it, or coax into loving you more.

Even though it’s unexamined and elusive, you orient life decisions around it.

When I spoke with a well-known self-help guru, his response was, “You know, Dave, I don’t know how to tell this story to myself in order to know what to change.” You alone determine the genre: fiction or nonfiction, tragedy or triumph. The story tells most about the teller.

This story ghostwrites every aspect of your life story. From what you eat and drink, to what you plan and play. Health, recreation, stresses—even the water you drink—are all impacted. At times you’ve used this story to regulate your moods, increase self-esteem, influence others, or to soothe emotional pains.

The villain or hero is the most popular legal substance to all people of the world.

It speaks to you. You speak with it.

It’s your money story.

David Krueger, MD , is a Trainer/Mentor Coach and Dean of Curriculum at Coach Training Alliance. His latest book, The Secret Language of Money (McGraw Hill) is a Business Bestseller translated into 10 languages