To change your life, start talking about it differently

2024 Author: Malcolm Clapton | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 03:44

Your well-being depends on how you describe yourself and events that are important to you.

Imagine that at the age of 12 you and your family moved to another city. You went to a new school and was teased there for the first time. How would you describe this period of your life now? As one of the many times things went wrong? Or how difficult times that ended well? It turns out that a lot depends on this.

In the 1950s, This Is Your Life was very popular on British and American television. In it, the presenter told the guest his biography, looking into the red book, where the dates, key events and memories, previously collected by the creators of the program, were recorded. Each of us has such a red book of our own life in our minds. And often we fill it out without even noticing it.

Personal narratives (stories about ourselves) exist regardless of whether we pay attention to them or not. They give meaning to our existence and form the basis of self-awareness.

Your story is you.

As psychologist Kate McLean writes, "The stories we tell about ourselves reveal, create, and sustain us throughout our lives." In her writings, she explores the fascinating idea that these personal narratives, although we constantly change and supplement them, contain stable elements that reveal our inner essence - the fundamental aspects of our personality.

One of McLean's colleagues, personality psychology pioneer Dan McAdams, wrote about this nearly 20 years ago. According to him, people differ from each other not only in character traits, but also in how they build their narratives.

These personal stories have key aspects, the differences in which define each of us: agency, community, valence, positive and negative meaning formation, and more. To identify the most important of these, McLean and colleagues conducted several studies involving about 1,000 participants.

They covered a certain episode from their life or told a whole story that summarizes their life. After careful analysis, scientists have come to the conclusion that there are three main aspects that characterize the personal narrative of each person.

Motivational and emotional themes. This aspect reflects the storyteller's independence and connection to others, as well as how positive or negative the stories are overall.
Autobiographical reasoning. They show how much we think about events from our narrative, whether we find meaning in what happened and whether we notice connections between key events and how we have changed.
Structure. It is the coherence of history in terms of dates, facts and context that remains stable over time.

But personal narrative is not just what we tell other people. It affects our mental health and overall well-being. People who more often tell positive stories (“I lost my job, but moved to another field, and what I do now, I like much more”, “I was teased at the new school, but there I met my best friend”), are generally happier with their lives in general and suffer less from mental health problems.

The same is true for people who feel like an active protagonist in their story, as well as those who show a greater sense of community with those around them. For example, he often includes episodes with family and friends or shared hobbies in his stories.

Naturally, the question arises: can you change yourself and your life by changing your personal narrative? This is what narrative therapy is built on, helping people to rethink their personal history in a more positive way. Remember that the same red book in your head is a draft, not a final version.

You can change your story.

The researchers came to this conclusion after conducting an experiment with redeeming narratives. They asked participants to describe a situation where failure changed them for the better. Compared to the control group, which was not given such a task, the subjects considered themselves more purposeful and answered the test questions that they always finish what they started. Moreover, this persisted even several weeks later.

“These results not only prove that personal narrative can be changed, but also suggest that changes in the way people think and talk about important events in their lives will affect their lives in the future,” the study authors conclude.

It is not for nothing that philosophers have always said that we create ourselves and our reality. Typically, psychotherapists use this principle to help a person get rid of a particular fear. But this approach can be applied to life in general, to become the author of the story you want to write.