Subject: Lifescope TIPs & QUIPs [33] "Exploring Your Personal Myth"

TIPs & QUIPs, the free occasional email of helpful hints and quotes (and
sometimes challenging suggestions) for getting the most from life.

In this issue:
     *** WiseWords
     *** This Issue's Theme
     *** Suggested Resources
     *** Thrive On! Recommended Site


*** WiseWords ***                                     [TOP]
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    "When I see a bird that walks like a duck and swims like a duck 
     and quacks like a duck, I call that bird a duck." 
      --Richard Cardinal Cushing
      
    "It is respectable to have no illusions, 
     and safe, and profitable and dull."
      --Joseph Conrad
      
    "Strange as it may seem, my life is based on a true story."
      --Ashleigh Brilliant

(For a collection of some of our favorite WiseWords, see our web page at
<http://www.lifescope.com/pages/WiseWords.html>.)

*** This issue's theme: Exploring Your Personal Myth           [TOP]
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Dear Reader:

Shakespeare said that all the world's a stage and all the people
players. Are we (i.e. YOU), as he said through Macbeth: 

  "a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage
   And then is heard no more: it is a tale
   Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
   Signifying nothing."  ?

Or do we actually get to create our own juicy parts, improvising
and vamping as we go? Are we alive because we write our stories,
and do we stretch our own limits of greatness through the very
act of creating characters we identify with -- and then emulate?
The great Joseph Campbell has told of the power of archetypal
myths in each of us. From several superb books on the market,
I have more deeply realized the power of PERSONAL myths -- the
fashioning of our own stories that empower us to live out our
dreams and highest ideals.

Do you know YOUR own story, YOUR personal myth? You may not be
aware of your particular storyline, but you can identify your
life's characters, plots, and motivations which change from
scene to scene. It's up to each of us to decide whether the
storybook of our life is a drama or a tragedy, a comedy or a
romance. Following, is the beginning of a process which I believe
you'll find useful in becoming the author of your own life.

                                -- Lee Lukehart

The following text is excerpted from the book
The Stories We Live By, by Dan P. McAdams, Ph.D.
[Excerpt authorized as Fair Use under Copyright Act of 1976, Section 107]

   In contemporary modern life, the two most common tools employed
   to promote the identification of one's personal myth are
   psychotherapy and autobiography. In certain forms of
   psychotherapy, the therapist and the client may work together to
   explore conscious and unconscious domains in the client's life,
   with the explicit goal of enhancing self-understanding and
   facilitating personality change.
   
   There are many forms of psychotherapy, but those most closely
   identified as "talking therapies" or "depth"
   approaches-typically psychoanalytic, psychodynamic, or
   cognitive--affective in orientation-are probably best suited for
   the kind of personal exploration required to help identify one's
   personal myth. In autobiography (and in such personal memoirs as
   diaries and journals), a person may self-consciously seek a
   narrative frame for life. The process of focusing on the life
   and translating it into words helps the author to identify or
   construct a coherent view of self.
   
   Beyond these two valuable approaches, there are simpler and less
   expensive methods you may employ to enhance self-understanding
   and promote the identification of personal myth. Some of these
   involve private explorations of your inner life through such
   methods as keeping track of your dreams, cultivating your
   fantasy life, thinking through central problems and conflicts,
   engaging in inner dialogues with your many "selves," paying
   close attention to your body's rhythms, and so on. While these
   methods may be extremely useful, my own research underscores the
   importance of interpersonal DIALOGUE in exploring the self. Like
   certain forms of psychotherapy, the telling of one's story to a
   sympathetic listener can be extremely illuminating. Unlike a
   psychotherapist, however, the listener need not be a trained
   professional. Nor should the listener adopt an advisory or
   judgmental role. Instead, the listener should follow the role of
   an interviewer in one of my life-story interviews. He or she
   should serve as an empathic and encouraging guide and an
   affirming sounding board. (If you prefer not to share your story
   with another person, you may serve as your own listener. My
   general experience with this approach is that it does not lead
   to the kind of intimate and concerted self-disclosure that
   typically comes out in interpersonal dialogue. But it still may
   be the right approach for some people those who find it
   extremely difficult to talk about themselves with others, or
   those for whom no suitable listener seems available in their
   lives. If you think that you fit into one of these two
   categories, I would still encourage you to make every effort
   possible to do the exploration through interpersonal dialogue.)
   
   The interview begins with a general question about life
   chapters:
   
    | I would like you to begin by thinking about your life as if it
    | were a book. Each part of your life composes a chapter in the
    | book. Certainly, the book is unfinished at this point; still, it
    | probably already contains a few interesting and well-defined
    | chapters. Please divide your life into its major chapters and
    | briefly describe each chapter. You may have as many or as few
    | chapters as you like, but I would suggest dividing it into at
    | least two or three chapters and at most about seven or eight.
    | Think of this as a general table of contents for your book. Give
    | each chapter a name and describe the overall contents of each
    | chapter. Discuss briefly what makes for a transition from one
    | chapter to the next. This first part of the interview can expand
    | forever, but I would urge you to keep it relatively brief, say,
    | within thirty to forty-five minutes. Therefore, you don't want
    | to tell me "the whole story" here. just give me a sense of the
    | story's outline the major chapters in your life.
   
   The life-chapters question enables you, the storyteller, to
   provide your life with an organizing narrative framework. Most
   people organize their life chapters in a quasi-chronological
   manner, with earliest chapters linked to childhood. For others,
   a thematic organization seems to work better. They may have a
   chapter on relationships, another on school and work, and so on.
   You may wish to experiment with different organizational formats
   before settling on one that seems right for you. How you divide
   things up may be especially revealing of what you consider to be
   the major benchmarks and developmental trends in your life. In
   addition, the opening lifechapters question provides an
   opportunity for the expression of many different elements of the
   self-defining personal myth. Especially noticeable are narrative
   tone and imagery. The extent to which a person adopts an
   optimistic or pessimistic tone in reconstructing the past-the
   extent to which he or she follows comic, tragic, romantic,
   and/or ironic forms-begins to become manifest in the
   organization of life chapters. Both the listener and the
   storyteller should furthermore pay careful attention to the kind
   of language employed in this opening section, as a clue to
   personally meaningful images, symbols, and metaphors.
   
   The second section of the interview moves from the general to
   the specific by asking the storyteller to describe in great
   detail eight key events in his or her story:
   
    | I am going to ask you about eight key events. A key event should
    | be a specific happening, a critical incident, a significant
    | episode in your past set in a particular time and place. It is
    | helpful to think of such an event as constituting a specific
    | moment in your life that stands out for some reason. Thus, a
    | particular conversation you had with your mother when you were
    | twelve years old or a particular decision you made one afternoon
    | last summer might qualify as a key event in your life story.
    | These are particular moments in a particular time and place,
    | complete with particular characters, actions, thoughts, and
    | feelings. An entire summer vacation--be it very happy or very
    | sad or very important in some way--or a very difficult year in
    | high school, on the other hand, would NOT qualify as key events,
    | because these take place over an extended period of time. (They
    | are more like life chapters.) For each event, describe in detail
    | what happened, where you were, who was involved, what you did,
    | and what you were thinking and feeling in the event. Also, try
    | to convey the impact this key event has had in your life story
    | and what this event says about WHO YOU ARE or were as a person.
    | Did this event change you in any way? If so, in what way? Please
    | be VERY SPECIFIC here.
   
   The eight key events are
   
   1. Peak experience: A high point in the life story; the most
   wonderful moment in your life.
   
   2. Nadir experience: A low point in the life story; the worst
   moment in your life.
   
   3. Turning point: An episode wherein you underwent a significant
   change in your understanding of yourself It is not necessary
   that you comprehended the turning point as a turning point when
   it in fact happened. What is important is that now, in
   retrospect, you see the event as a turning point, or at minimum,
   as symbolizing a significant change in your life.
   
   4. Earliest memory: One of the earliest memories you have of an
   event that is complete with setting, scene, characters,
   feelings, and thoughts. This does not have to seem like an
   especially important memory. Its one virtue Is that it is early.
   
   5. An important childhood memory: Any memory from your
   childhood, positive or negative, that stands out today.
   
   6. An important adolescent memory: Any memory from your teenage
   years that stands out today. Again, it can be either positive or
   negative.
   
   7. An important adult memory: A memory, positive or negative,
   that stands out from age twenty-one onward.
   
   8. Other important memory: One other particular event from your
   past that stands out. It may be from long ago or recent times.
   It may be positive or negative.
   
   I use the term "nuclear episodes" to refer to key events in a
   person's life story. These rich descriptive accounts provide
   invaluable information about dominant themes in your personal
   myth, as well as imagery and tone. Indeed, if I had but one
   question to ask a person in order to get a quick sense of who he
   or she is, I would probably ask the person to recall a peak
   experience from the past. I find that people are most articulate
   and insightful when talking about particular, concrete episodes
   in their lives. By contrast, discussions of general trends and
   abstract formulations are rarely as vivid or revealing of
   personality or identity. Therefore, you should focus
   considerable time and energy on each event recalled. Provide as
   much detail as possible.. Work hard to comprehend the
   significance of the particular moment in the encompassing
   pattern of your overall life narrative. Be ready to entertain
   different and conflicting meanings of the same episode. The most
   significant nuclear episodes are implicitly endowed with the
   richest meaning networks.
   
   [Next issue: Characters in Your Life, Your Life Theme, and
   Writing Your Future Script.]


*** Suggested Resources ***                                       [TOP]
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THE STORIES WE LIVE BY by Dan P. McAdams, Ph.D.
"Who am I?" "How do I fit into the world around me?" From early
childhood on, we are all faced with key questions of human
identity. This revealing and innovative book, based on more than
10 years of research and hundreds of first-hand interviews,
demonstrates that each of us discovers what is true and
meaningful, in our lives and in ourselves, through the creation
of personal myths. Challenging the traditional view that our
personalities are formed by fixed, unchanging characteristics,
or by predictable stages through which every individual travels,
"The Stories We Live By" persuasively argues that we ARE the
stories we tell. Dan P. McAdams Iinks scientific investigation
to the struggles and joys of real people as he describes an
ongoing process that allows us, over time, to develop and revise
our stories and open up new possibilities for our lives.
Dan P. McAdams, Ph.D., is Professor of Human Development and
Psychology at Northwestern University.

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*** Thrive On! Recommended Site ***                              [TOP]
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the description from their homepage says it best:
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to the Community."


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