Field Notes #12
We all have an underlying series of scripts that dominate our lives. The biography you've written about what it means to be you- a whole library of it- runs on its own. We plug in the destination like it's a self-driving car, and then we take credit for the drive, even though we've done almost nothing to earn it.
That script comes in many forms; in this Field Note, we examine three of them.
Productive Scripts are the good ones — the ones that make life meaningful and fire automatically to get you where you're going. The blind spot isn't that they're bad. It's that you think you're steering when you're not. You credit luck, skill, the grind. You should credit the script and then put your hands on the wheel.
Traumatized Scripts are rare, and they are not my lane. A traumatized script doesn't just color today — it can come alive and drag a past moment into the present, so you're living two ‘Nows’ at once. That's PTSD. It needs a credentialed trauma professional. Not a coach, not a pastor, not me. I'm a first responder: I can recognize the bleed and get you to the surgeon. If a script like that wakes up, get real help — and choose carefully, because not all trauma therapists are equal.
Distorted Scripts are the ones this note is actually about, and they're the irritating ones. They don't bring a second now into the room. They just lean on this one. A part of you gets loud. Thorny, prickly, hard to hold. A distorted script takes one moment from the past and makes it always and forever — a single experience universalized into a whole reality. You know people like this. One idea, no new ideas allowed, the world already fully formed. Trapped in amber. They're not complicated. They're irritatingly simple.
I won't work on Agency with anyone I haven't worked with for at least a year; they will have successfully completed and absorbed My Success and My Instincts, because from a distance we can't always tell a distorted script from a traumatized one. Up close, with time, you can.
THIS IS NOT TRAINING. IT'S CALIBRATION.
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– Robert (Sherpa) Millar | Just Now