How Your Story Shapes Your Future
Julie Weste, Snr Practitioner Coach EIA, ACC, MAPP, MBA
Founder - Qoligenic I Global Executive Coach I Certified Coach Supervisor I Speaker I Wellbeing Services I Team Development
As human beings, we are continually creating and revising our identity and the ways we perceive ourselves through the narratives that we construct about the self.
Johnson, J. (2021)
What Story Do You Tell About Your Life?
I imagine my mother told herself a deficit story. Though we did not discuss it, her way forward always seemed one of grim forbearance; the expectation that life was full of trials, of ploughing on and bearing up. I know why – or at least some of it. She had to overcome cruel life events and family history; enough to daunt and subdue even the most resilient human.
Yet I suspect Mum’s internal narrative negatively shaped her future and outcomes.
Indeed given the power of narrative, the story we tell about our lives can become how we live because of that story.
The self-talk and language we use to frame our story in a particular way becomes the meaning-making lens through which we interpret our lives.
Narrative identity is the story a person constructs and internalizes to organize and make sense of his or her life as a whole.
McAdams, 2013
A significant body of narrative psychology research has explored how people integrate parts of the past that didn’t go right into their story.
Two main narratives have emerged.
The Contamination Story
These stories focus on bad, emotionally negative events that cascade to more of the same. A good, emotionally positive life is contaminated or ruined by the bad and the negative pollutes or spoils all that follows. The contamination story shines a spotlight on failure and a negative future can be easily predicted.
The Redemption Story
In these stories, negative life events are overcome or transformed into a story of strength, resilience, and growth; of emerging stronger having triumphed over adversity and challenge. This is a story of seeing and imagining a future of hopeful possibilities.
While our life narratives are not purely contamination or redemption, what we tell ourselves and others can become our prevailing narrative.
PAUSE - REFLECT
What elements of contamination or redemption do you recognise in your own story, if any?
What We Know
The brain takes its shape from what the mind rests upon.
Rick Hanson, 2013
Other factors also play a role in the stories we tell. These include our environment, how our brains are wired, and our cognitive processing.
It is only human to sometimes feel drawn towards telling a negative story of our lives. This can depend on our life events, the stories we grow up with or those that have surrounded us. I have been drawn towards shadow in my life narrative at times. Perhaps you have too.
In the external environment, we are continually exposed to other people’s life stories of hardship and trauma, especially in news feeds and social media. These may even influence us to shape our own stories in a similar way.
Neuroscience tells us that neurons that fire together wire together. In other words, just like building a muscle, the more we repeat a particular story, the more we reinforce links between our neurons, the stronger our brain wiring gets. This is called experience-dependent neuroplasticity.
The stories we repeat also create emotionally powerful memory structures that can mean we get stuck in the same narrative. This inhibits our neural circuits from learning, change, and growth that supports new directions (Graham, 2013).
Finally, confirmation bias, our human tendency to search for, preference, and pay attention to information that confirms our pre-existing views, may also mean that if we anticipate a particular future, (perhaps a negative one, skewed to a contamination story), we potentially overlook different, more positive options.
So stories are powerful influences on our brain wiring and what we pay attention to.
The Wellbeing Impacts Of Our Story
Constructing a narrative identity provides a sense of purpose, meaning and unity to the self, all of which positively impacts mental health.
McAdams, 1996, 2001
Decades of research by Dan McAdams and colleagues have found significant wellbeing benefits associated with a redemption narrative, compared to a contamination story.
These include:
> Better psychological wellbeing
> Greater life satisfaction
> Higher self-esteem
> Increased sense of coherence (my life makes sense)
> Lower likelihood of anxiety and depression
Further, the redemption story is generative; associated with wanting to help others and leave a positive legacy for future generations (McAdams, 2013).
What Story Are You Telling?
While we do not necessarily tell a single story and we know audiences influence the stories we tell about ourselves, you may have recognised one of the stories, of contamination or redemption, as familiar.
I also suggest that our professional or career narratives may align, to a greater or lesser extent, with these themes.
TAKE ACTION
Engaging in practical exercises such as life-charting and mindful writing to deepen self-reflection can help you actively shape your narrative towards a more positive and meaningful future.
Luckily, our versatile brain is our ally here, through its capacity to change its pathways and structures, a term called self-directed neuroplasticity.
I leave you with this hopeful quote from researcher Benjamin Rogers talking about his study of how story can increase people’s meaning in life.
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Stories shape our understanding of the world and ourselves, so telling a more meaningful life story should spill over into perceptions that life itself is more meaningful.
Rogers, B. (2023)
TAKE ACTION: TWO OPTIONS
By finding the positive benefits of earlier experiences—including experiences that may have appeared unfortunate at the time—we can affirm the value of our lives and chart a hopeful path forward.
Damon, 2022
OPTION 1: LIFE-CHARTING*
This activity requires you to chart an overview of your major life events.
You may complete this as part 1 of a two-part exercise (with Option 2) or as a stand-alone activity.
As in the example, use a separate point for each event to show their position (e.g. Promoted might be a peak event, yet not as high a peak as becoming a parent or grandparent. A trough event might be losing your job, which may not be as much of a trough as death of a parent).
Reflect on your life chart using the following questions:
* Adapted from Clayton, D. (1991).
OPTION 2: MINDFUL WRITING
Mindful writing is a practice that involves allowing the narrative that emerges to be as it is and to meet it with curiosity and kindness.
Johnson, J. (2021).
CAUTION:
Do not attempt this exercise if it is likely to activate past trauma.
If you start and do not feel ready to write on this topic or find it overwhelming, stop writing.
Set aside uninterrupted, quiet time to complete this exercise.
Take a minute or two to relax and breathe. You may choose eyes open or shut. Notice your breath; how your chest and stomach expand and contract as you breathe. Slow it down and focus only on the breath. If your mind wanders, gently bring it back to your breath.
Take Ten**
Set aside about ten minutes.
The purpose of this task is for you to write about your past experience, identifying aspects of strength, growth, and resilience.
** Adapted from Steger, M. (2022) and Johnson, J. (2021).
ADDITIONAL RESOURCES
1. Change Your Story, Change Your Life | Narrative Psychology
2. Making Meaning Through Stories – Margarita Tarragona
3. Retelling the Stories of Our Lives – David Denborough
4. Man’s Search for Meaning – Viktor Frankl
I am interested in your thoughts!
1. What is one idea that stands out for you in this newsletter?
2. What might you try?
Please share your thoughts in the comments below.
About Me
I specialise in Positive Psychology and work globally as an Executive Coach, Speaker, Facilitator and Trainer.
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Pioneering Leading Authority in Coaching Ethics & Wellbeing | Speaker, Educator, Coach & Consultant | Founder of Coaching Ethics Forum, Journal of Coaching Ethics & Ethical Edge Insights & Champions of Courage Awards.
11moThanks Julie. I love identify work. Would it be possible to add a reference list to your article? I for one would appreciate looking up a couple of them.