If you want to make a change in you life, you will inevitably affect your identity. And if you want to make a change it must be congruent with your identity. If it is not, it will not happen. But what is our identity? An essential part of our identity is our stories. Our stories come from memories of our life, about goals we set and the paths we took. It is constructed in a way, so we better understand ourselves. Your story about your life will not only tell who you are but also how you came to be as you are and what is important to you.
In this focus episode, I will give you a little bit of background to life stories, tell you what makes a good life story (and a poor one) and if you stay with to the end of the episode, I will give you three ways you can use your life story to make a change in our life.
If you want to make a change in you life, you will inevitably affect your identity. And if you want to make a change it must be congruent with your identity. If it is not, it will not happen. But what is our identity? An essential part of our identity is our stories. Our stories come from memories of our life, about goals we set and the paths we took. It is constructed in a way, so we better understand ourselves. Your story about your life will not only tell who you are but also how you came to be as you are and what is important to you.
In this focus episode, I will give you a little bit of background to life stories, tell you what makes a good life story (and a poor one) and if you stay with to the end of the episode, I will give you three ways you can use your life story to make a change in our life.
Hello, and welcome to What Monkeys Do. My name is Morten Kamp Andersen and this is a podcast about what it takes to make a change and make it stick. Hello, and welcome to what monkeys do. I was meant to have an interview with Dan McAdams today. Dan is a psychology professor at Northwestern University. And he's well known for his theory, that our identities mainly the stories that we tell about ourselves. But technology failed us, and we couldn't record our interview. But because our life stories are so crucial to our understanding of change, I want to tell you about his research. Because if we want to make a change in our life, we will inevitably affect our identity, our identity is the answer to Who am I? And I know, that's a big question. But even if we want to make a small change in our lives, such as getting up early and exercising every day, it must be congruent with who we are with our identity. And if it's not, it will simply not happen. Also, if we want to change something more fundamental about ourselves, an addiction, a repeat pattern in our relationship, and approach to new adventures or something like that, that also requires that we deal with Who am I. But what is our identity? Well, an essential part of our identity is our stories. And some of them are given to us, but most of them are created by us. And it is these stories that are so important when we want to make a change, I simply believe that it is impossible to do a meaningful change if the change is not congruent with our identity. Indeed, sometimes, we can only change if we also change our stories. So in this episode, I'll first give you a little bit of background to what life stories is, I'll tell you what makes a good life story. And also what makes a poor life story. And if you stay with me to the end of the episode, I'll give you three ways you can use your life story to make a change in your life. So let's start. The stories we tell ourselves is an important part of our identity. If you're asked to describe who you are to somebody you don't know. So let's say you're sitting at a dinner party and the person sitting next to you is turning to you and say Who are you it's probably a question you won't get at a dinner party. But if that person does that, you're likely to use stories. So if I was to describe myself, I might use chronological time to to organize my stories, I might start by saying that I was born in a small town in Denmark, I might say something about who my parents are, what they did, when I grew up the schools I attended, I might talk about the sports I played. And then some key events like a memorable holiday, a traumatic event. And I talk about my first job. And if you have more time to listen, I may tell you exactly how I got my first job, and how they mistook me for a German. And I didn't want to correct them during the interview, but because I thought it would be rude. So on my first day, most people believe that was German and English. Even Two months later, I still had to correct some people about where I was from. So that's our stories. And our stories come from memories of our life, about goals that we set and the path that we took. It's constructed in a way so we better understand ourselves. So your story about your life will not only tell you about who you are, but also how you came to be the person you are and what is important to you. So they are internal stories. And they include a past, present and a future. It's actually a lot like a biography that you read. But they're not written down instead, they are in our heads. But our stories are more than just memories. We use them to create meaning by ordering them and making causal connections. So a memory from your childhood will explain some of the later things which happened in your life. So as an example, I had a teacher in high school that I idolized, and I think he felt a bit stuck in the town we were living in and he felt that he should have moved to a bigger city. So one day he took me aside and look me in the eyes and said, if you want to experience the world, you have to get a good education and leave this town as fast as you can, and he was so right, I thought, So when I graduated, I remember his advice, and I moved on to a bigger city, we also choose some key events as important, and others not as important. And we can call them key events. So they are specific events, which you remember. And you consider them key to understanding who you are. They may contain specific themes, capture a self image, be centered around some important goals, or have some strong emotions. Maybe you were particularly proud of something you did, or maybe it was a failure, which you believe says a lot about you. Maybe you audition to X Factor, you got a guard up on stage, you delivered your performance, you did your best, and the judges thought you were awful. But you remember it vividly as a key story for you. But also, when you meet new people, you will tell them this story, because it exactly showed that you are not afraid of getting up on that stage and giving it a shot, even if other people do not like what you have to offer. So that's part of your identity. And that's an example of a key event, which encapsulates or says something about you. And you elevate that to a specific part of your life story. And reality, we don't all have a complete narrative story of our life ready to be told in the exact same way. Every time we asked, we rarely or never sit down and make a full narrative account of our life. Often, we only use and refined bits of our story for the situation that we need. So for instance, if I'm at a job interview, where analytical skills are required, I may recollect and tell a story of a particular inspiring math teacher that I had in college and how she spurred me on to pursue an interest in analytics. So I don't give an account of my entire life story. But I take bits of it out and use that, in that particular situation. An interesting element of our story is that it has a tone, and narrative tone or an emotional tone. And what I mean by that is that the way you tell your story says a lot about your identity. So it's not just the episodes, and the content, but also the tone in which you tell it, it's actually pretty close to a genre in a books. So all the positive events that happened in your life, down to dumb luck, whereas the negative events of you being stupid in that situation, or are you a person that always finds a silver lining, when things are tough. I mean, it's your glass normally half full or half empty. That's a narrative tone and underlying tone in your life story. And the tone of your story will help you create meaning to events. So your memories, and the events that you experience have no meaning in themselves, but you create meaning. For instance, let's say that you got fired from your first job a year in, you could either take that, as they saw me as the imposter I am, I am a nobody. Or you could take it as well, there wasn't a good fit between me and the company. So I'll just need to find another company where I can express my talents. So those are two different meanings to the same event. That was a long introduction to life stories. I know that, but I hope you understand how important they are. We make ourselves whole through stories, we construct, we internalize, and we evolved narratives to create our identity. Now the thing is, there are good life stories. And there are bad life stories. There are no stories as such that are better than others, there's no identity, which is better than another, but there are some important elements in a good life story, and therefore also in poor ones. So let me give you some example. So for instance, there needs to be a timely connection between the past the present and the future. So you need to be able to explain your life story from you know what happened in the past how that leads to where you are right now. And then people can predict where you are likely to be heading. Right. So there is a connection. Also, the story should give a good reason for what happened later. So for instance, this is an example. So I grew up in a family where we did not have a lot of money. This is a made up story. By the way. We went to bed hungry on some evenings. And I promised myself that my children should never experience the same thing. And that is why I'm working two jobs at the moment. So the made up stories basically has a reason from the past, why I'm currently working two jobs. So you'll receive your life story must have these reasons from the past must come reasons for why you did as you did or why you're doing right now as you're doing or why you want to do something, particularly in the future. If you don't have that, then people will be left wondering why or why all of a sudden you did what you did. And your identity is not complete. Another element in a good life story is that it needs to be believable, trustworthy. So if you're 25 years old, and you say that your massive fortune is coming from hard work, but you fail to mention that you actually inherited the money from your father, well, then people will not find it believable. I mean, how could you through hard work save all of that money, so it needs to be believable, good life stories, finally, can also be divided into distinct chapters. So chapter one of my particular life story could be labeled, growing up in a town in Denmark with three sisters and a happy home. Chapter Two could be called education, doing well in school, but struggling to find good friends, and so on. So it's actually a good exercise to divide your life into seven eight chapters and write some key words for each of them. In other words, there are good life stories and poor life stories. And many times the mess that we have in our life, is because that our life story, and therefore our identity, is not as good as it could be. And finally, if you want to make a change, change your life stories. And here are three ways. So the idea of the life story we make, and we internalize stories that makes up an important part of our identity. Now we've come to the part I promised in the beginning, how to use life stories as a lever for change. And it actually does matter how your life story is. So for example, surveys show that people who identify negative episodes or whole chapters in the life as key a central to the understanding of who they are, well, they're more likely to experience more emotional problems than other. So that also gives a clue to how you can use life stories to make a positive change. How can specifically life stories help you? Well, here are three examples. Number one, add a new key episode, and attach meaning relevant to your change. We don't actually have that many key episodes, but they matter a lot to our identity. So if you're starting to make a change, let's say that you want to become an author, and you want to write a book, right? There might be a lot of things that hold you back, you may believe about yourself, that you cannot write well, or you do not have the discipline that it takes, or that you have no unique ideas, right. So those may be beliefs about yourself, that is holding you back. What you can do is you can find an episode from your life a time in your life, when you have actually mastered one of those things that is holding your back. Maybe you have a memory of an essay that you wrote in college, which was selected to the school magazine. And then what you can do is you can elevate that memory to become a key episode. By attaching meaning, emotion and goals to the memory and detail it to yourself as much as possible, make sure that you internalize it well, by recalling it many times. So take a new memory and elevated to a key episode. By that way, it will become an important part of your identity, it will become easier for you to overcome that particular barrier. The second thing you can do is to change your narrative tone. This one is actually a really hard one. I know it sounds easy. It's not. But if you want to do a make a meaningful change, which you may have struggled to do for a while, it's probably not possible if you do not also change your narrative tone at the same time, in many academic circles, people claiming that you cannot make a real change if you do not change your narrative tone. And how do you do that? Well, first of all, you need to discover what your narrative tone is. Sometimes that is done in a dialogue with friends. There are also narrative narrative therapist but I actually think you can find out just by writing down some of your key themes in your life and discover what kind of narrative tone Do you have at the moment? And then try to think is this helping me or is this hindering me? Or how did that tone become so strong in my life story, and how can I modify it? How can I find examples in my life where that was not the case? And then work with that in order to change the narrative to The third example, write your life story as you're doing the change. Write your life story. How do you do that? Well, you can start by dividing your life into, for example, eight chapters. And then for each of those chapters, find five or eight key episodes. And for each of those episodes, write that episode out, and what meaning you attached to it, it's a bit of a work, I've actually done it, so it can take some time to do, but it is so interesting. And it will support you in a change that you're working on. And what you will find is that there are some of the key events that makes up your life story that is actually pretty random. I mean, why was this memory? Why did that become a key episode? And this one was not? And then the next question is what will happen if I changed some of my key episodes, or if I attach a new meaning to them, or if I change the emotion attached to them, it's so fascinating, and it actually supports a change. All of this was what I wanted to talk with Dan McAdams about, I will strongly encourage you to look up his research, he's written more than 200 academic articles. So take it easy, I will encourage you to read his in my view, best book, which is called identity, and story, creating self in a narrative. I believe strongly that our identity is to a large degree made up of the stories that we tell. And I think that we can make a meaningful change using stories as a lever for change. Until next time, take care. Before you go, can I ask you one favor if you enjoyed this content, and I hope I've given you some value today, I hope you enjoyed this. And I hope it has been worth your time. If you think it has, please do go out there and find just one or two other people and tell them about the show. Find one or two other people that you think we'll enjoy this episode. Could be a friend, it could be somebody at work, take that time, just mentioned the show today. I would really appreciate that. It helps us grow our audience. Until next time, take care