Escape the script: how to stop living someone else's life

I followed the script perfectly.

Did well enough in high school. Got accepted to a well-known university. Got solid grades, met the right people. Landed an internship, showed up, learned, did what I was supposed to do. Got a full-time offer.

Fast forward 4 years later - things are good. I live on my own, my job pays for my lifestyle, and I'm genuinely grateful for the path I've taken.

But I've realized that path was chosen FOR me. Not BY me.

During those 16 years of education, I never once seriously asked myself: What do I want out of life?

I'd become a professional consumer of other people's dreams, other people's definitions of success. And I'm not alone in this.

We spend more time and energy avoiding what we don't want rather than pursuing what we actually do want. Most people can list 20 things they hate about their current situation, but struggle to name even 5 things they're genuinely excited to build.

The question is—why do we end up accepting instead of choosing?

To understand how this happens to so many of us, we need to look at how borrowed lives are created in the first place.

We've become consumers of other people’s dreams instead of creators of our own.

From the moment we're born, we enter a kind of collective agreement about how life "should" be lived. We're taught what success looks like, what goals matter, and what fears we should have.

Think about it.

You learned your language not by choice, but by necessity. You absorbed beliefs about money, relationships, and career success before you could even question them. Layer by layer, these agreements stack up until they become the operating system of your mind.

The result?

Most of us are living someone else's definition of a good life.

We follow scripts we never wrote:

These aren't necessarily bad choices, but they become harmful when we follow them unconsciously—when we never pause to ask if they're actually what we want.

A borrowed life isn't just about copying others. It's about inheriting a worldview that was programmed into you before you had the awareness to choose differently.

Breaking free requires recognizing that most of what you think you "should" do was decided by someone else long before you were capable of making your own decisions.

The cost of living a borrowed life isn't what you don't achieve - it's who you don't become.

When you follow someone else's blueprint, you're not just choosing their path - you're choosing their version of you. You're becoming who they think you should be instead of who you actually are.

Psychologists call it 'identity foreclosure' - it's when you commit to an identity based on external expectations rather than internal exploration.

You close off the development of your authentic self before you've discovered what that might actually look like.

It's like accepting the first job offer you get without ever exploring what you actually want to do. Except it's your entire identity.

You become a stranger to yourself. You wake up one day and realize you have no idea what you actually like, what energizes you, or what you're genuinely good at.

The longer you live a borrowed life, the more damage it compounds.

You don't just lose touch with who you are - you lose the ability to see who you could become.

Your vision narrows. Opportunities that should excite you don't even register because they fall outside the script you've been following.

You genuinely don't know what you want because you've never practiced wanting.

This is why you're stuck, why you're unsatisfied, why you're still looking for your purpose in this world.

This is the invisible prison of the borrowed life.

The key to unlocking the prison of a borrowed life isn't balance or moderation.

It's obsession.

You're already obsessed. You just don't realize it.

You're obsessed with checking your phone. You're obsessed with what other people think. You're obsessed with staying comfortable and avoiding risks.

The question isn't whether you'll be obsessed - it's what you'll choose to obsess over.

The difference between destructive obsession and life-changing obsession is simple— choice. When you consciously choose what deserves your obsessive energy, obsession becomes your superpower.

Choosing your obsession requires brutal honesty with yourself. You need to cut through years of borrowed dreams and social conditioning to find what lights you up.

I'm going to walk you through a simple 3-step process to break free from your borrowed life and find what deserves your obsessive energy.

(If you want to go deeper, I've also created an AI prompt that acts as a Life Reset Coach - it'll walk you through a complete life audit)

Step 1: Audit Your Current Life Script

Before you can choose your obsession, you need to see how much of your current life isn't actually yours.

Take out a piece of paper and draw a line down the middle. On the left side, write down everything you're currently doing because you 'should' - your job, your living situation, your goals, your daily habits, even your hobbies. Be honest.

On the right side, write down everything you're doing because you genuinely 'want to' - things that energize you, things you'd do even if no one was watching.

Most people are shocked by how much ends up on the left side vs. the right. That's okay, this isn't about judgment - it's about awareness.

Step 2: Define Your Anti-Vision

Most people try to figure out what they want in life by "dreaming big." But positive thinking alone lacks the urgency you need to actually change.

The fastest way to clarity is through what you absolutely don't want in life.

Write down exactly what you don't want your life to look like in 10 years. Be specific.

What would make you feel like you completely wasted your potential?

This is about creating urgency. Your anti-vision becomes the clear thing you're running from, and that energy is incredibly powerful when channeled the right way.

Step 3: Create Your Obsession

Many people think they need to find their 'passion' or wait for inspiration to strike.

But obsession isn't discovered - it's created through intentional choice.

Answer these 3 questions:

Look at your answers. Now you have specific things you'd do, regrets you'd avoid, and activities that energize you.

Look for the patterns. What themes keep showing up? What type of work or creation appears across your answers?

You might discover you're drawn to building things. Or helping people. Or creating experiences. Or solving complex problems. The specifics matter less than the direction.

Once you can see the pattern, you have something real to direct your obsessive energy toward.

The invisible prison only exists if you stay inside it.

I hope this was eye-opening and helpful.

Until next time,

Johnathan