16. Chapter 4
Narratives: The Stories We Tell Ourselves About Ourselves
*This book was set the be published by the publisher of my first book, but after years of struggle and many other reasons, I decided to release it on Substack instead. Each week, the 52,000 word book which was tentatively titled “Be A Force” will be dropped here online. The sections will start with number 1 and then progress over the 52 weeks of the next year. The Chapter title will be placed in the post description for clarity.
Narrative Therapy
Narrative therapy is a therapeutic practice that invites you to re-author your life story. It enables a separation of identity from your issues and this helps to foste growth and change. Ingredients definitely needed to become a force. Steve Madigan, a narrative therapy practitioner, has shared the three major stages of narrative therapy and they are a good guide for you to self-reflect on from the comfort of your own home:
1) Deconstructing problematic dominant stories
2) Re-authoring problematic dominant stories
3) Remembering conversations
Using the awareness you have of yourself (self-connection), choose a story which has informed your evolution. Can you pull this story apart? How could it be re-told to yourself?
Reduce Your Story Down to the Facts
Here’s an exercise you may find really helpful. Chris emphasises that because as humans we create stories to make meaning, our brain will “fill in gaps” of narratives that we don’t have facts to verify. We saw this earlier with my “You have a pretty face” story. What we fill in is telling data for those of us interested in connecting better to ourselves. Get out your journal and write down your life story. Go into as much detail as you like. Once done, get out a highlighter and highlight only the parts of the story which are fact—just the description only and no inferences or assumptions. It will probably shock you how little of our stories are based on fact and how much we colour them with meaning that is inferred.
Your Story Affects Other People
We often project our stories on other people, whether we are aware of it or not. I was recently on Facebook and I felt a little guilty that I post so much but comment so little with my personal social media boundaries. I decided to lend my support to a friend and fellow speaker. He had posted an announcement that he had made it to LinkedIn’s top content creator list for Singapore. I was very fond of this person, wanting to cheer him on, I commented: “Well done and next, why not the global list?!” He commented back something along the lines of: “Thanks for your belief in me but I have little desire to be on the road with a young toddler at home.” I was utterly confused, you can build a LinkedIn following from anywhere at any time, it’s an online platform and it has nothing to do with your geographical location. I wrote an answer to a similar affect, but I also felt I was under attack.
Many people don’t understand my lifestyle of flying 40% of the year to spread my message around the world, but I absolutely love it. So I felt he was giving me a dig when I had been supportive. I replied on the post: “If you’re alluding to my lifestyle I have no idea what this has to do with my comment? You can build a global following from anywhere and I have many friends that do.” He read this and messaged me on Whatsapp. His story soon unfolded itself. He wrote: “I am just so tired of the chase to do more.” It was terrifying that both of us had come into conflict by projecting our narratives on each other. His self-consciousness that he felt people were judging him that he wasn’t doing more international engagements and mine that I was simply trying to be supportive show and that he had a disdain for my lifestyle on the road. Taking a step back and really reading the facts of what are being said rather than the narrative we are weaving inbetween the lines is vital to mending and tending to your interpersonal relationships. Ask yourself the question when embroiled in a similar situation: Before I respond in this situation, am I engaging in a story or reality?
Try Literally Re-Writing Your Story
Benjamin A. Rogers and his colleagues published a study in the 2023 Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. The study developed a new measure called the Hero’s Journey Scale, which quantified how much someone perceived their life to follow the archetypal “Hero’s Journey” narrative structure. This structure has been used for millenia from ancient texts to popular films like Star Wars and fairy tales like Cinderella.
Here’s the structure:
1. Protagonist (you)
2. Shift
3. Quest
4. Allies
5. Challenge
6. Transformation
7. Legacy
