What is your story?

Stories help you make sense of your life -- but when these narratives are incomplete or misleading, they can keep you stuck instead of providing clarity. How do you break free from the stories you've been telling yourself by becoming your own editor and rewriting your narrative from a different point of view?

Research shows that when we fail to make sense of our past, we find ourselves reliving and recreating it, essentially having old hurts re-emerge over and over again. When we carry around deep wounds, behaviours and beliefs about ourselves from our earliest attachments these unconsciously direct our lives.

So, in approaching retirement you might want to do some self-examination. One approach to self-examination is the “life story” approach. This helps you look backward to learn how the sum total of your past shaped you. If each life event is a star, our life story is the constellation. And if we spent all of our time looking at individual stars through a telescope lens, we couldn’t appreciate the magnitude and beauty of the constellations that dot the sky. To that end, the process of becoming, biographers of our lives is a profoundly powerful approach to better understand who we are, who we are becoming, and who we could be.

Think about your life as if it were a book. Divide that book into chapters that represent the key phases of your life. Within those phases, think of 5–10 specific scenes in your story — high points, low points, turning points, early mem­ories, important childhood events, important adulthood events or any other event you find self-defining. For each, provide an account that is at least one paragraph long:

·       What happened and when? Who was involved?

·       What were you and others thinking and feeling, and why was this event especially important for you?

·       What does this event say about who you are, how you have developed over time or who you might be­come?

·       When you are finished writing your account, take a step back and look at your life story as a whole:

·       What major themes, feelings, or lessons do you see in your story?

·       What does the story of your life say about the kind of person you are and might become?

·       What does your story say about your values, passions, aspirations, fit, patterns, reactions and impact on others?

When you look at the last point, you may find that there is an overarching theme (s) running through them. Identifying such themes can help make sense of seemingly contradictory aspects of ourselves.

Research shows that self-aware people tend to knit more complex narratives of their key life events: they are more likely to describe each event from different perspectives, include multiple explanations, and explore complex and even con­tradictory emotions. In many ways, this complexity is the opposite of the need for absolute truth; instead of searching for simple, generalizable facts, self-aware people appreciate the complicated nature of their life stories. Perhaps, for this reason, complex life stories are associated with continued personal growth and maturity years into the future.

When we’re able to find consistent themes across multiple important events of our lives, we can glean surprising self-insights. Common themes include achievement (i.e., personal success), relationships (i.e., forming and keeping connections with others), and growth (i.e., see­ing life as an opportunity to develop and improve). As a life long learner, I find the theme of redemption interesting. Whereas some people see a pattern of good things turning to bad ones, other people believe that bad things can turn to good.

So, when the time is right for you to write your life story, don’t look at it as a neat, clean Hollywood narrative. Embracing the complexity, the nuances and the contradictions will help you appreciate your inner reality in all its beautiful messiness.