Subject: Lifescope TIPs & QUIPs [34] "Your Personal Myth, part two"

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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  "We live in a wonderful world 
   that is full of beauty, charm and adventure. 
   There is no end to the adventures that we can have 
   if only we seek them with our eyes open." 
   --Jawaharlal Nehru
        
  "It is the dim haze of mystery that adds enchantment to pursuit." 
   --Antoine Rivarol
   
  "Calamity is the perfect glass wherein we truly see ourselves."
   --William Davenant

(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 (part 2) [TOP]
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Dear Reader:

Last issue we began a process to explore the stories you live by,
using the metaphor of a storybook. We asked you to think about
each your Life's Chapters, and come up with chapter titles and
summaries. We also delved into some of the explicit scenes, asking
you about eight particularly memorable Key Events in your life.

[View the previous issue (#9827) at: http://www.lifescope.com/tqs/.]

In this issue we continue, by describing the key characters in
your stories, identifying the main players and the heroes/heroines
(or villains). Then we examine some of the motivations for plot
development: what conflicts or problems do you have and how they
might be resolved.

In Future Scripts, we stimulate your thinking about how you want
your book to conclude. Then we start tying the various and sundry
parts together by exploring your Personal Ideology, and what you
think might be a consistent or unifying Life Theme, running
through the chapters.

To reuse some of my words from last issue's introduction:

  Shakespeare said that all the world's a stage and all the people
  players. Are we...
    "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 wish to become?

                                -- Lee Lukehart

p.s. This second "half" of the Personal Myth topic is longer than
I prefer, but I deemed that better than extending the process with
a third part. To help you out, there are ideas for a refreshing
outdoor break, in the Thrive On! suggested web resource at the end.

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]

    The interview moves from Key Events to SIGNIFICANT PEOPLE:
    | Every person's life story is populated by a few significant
    | people who have a major impact on the narrative. These may
    | include, but not be limited to, parents, children, siblings,
    | spouses, lovers, friends,teachers, coworkers, and mentors.
    | Please describe four of the most important people in your
    | life story. At least one of these should be a person to whom
    | you are not related. Specify the kind of relationship you had
    | or have with each person and the specific way he or she has
    | had an impact on your life story. After describing each of
    | these, tell me about any particular heroes or heroines you
    | have in your life.

    This third section of the interview provides an opportunity to
    describe in greater detail a few people in your life that you
    have probably already mentioned in the Life Chapters and Key
    Events sections. The Significant People described may form the
    basis for the main characters, or imagoes, in your personal
    myth. Parents, friends, lovers, and so on may serve as
    prototypes (ideal models) of central imagoes, such as the
    caregiver, the healer, the warrior, and so on. Heroes and
    heroines are especially well suited for this narrative role. Or
    significant people may function to promote or hinder the
    development of a particular character in your life story. For
    example, a coach in high school may have encouraged you to work
    hard on your figure skating, helping you to develop an imago of
    the athlete. Or an older sister may have hindered the expression
    of your imago, the maker, through her constant criticism of your
    artwork as you were growing up. Again, your description of the
    most significant people in your life represents an
    autobiographical decision, indicative of the way in which you
    have defined who you are. You need to ask yourself why you chose
    the persons you chose, and why you chose to remember them in the
    way you have.
    
    After spending a considerable amount of time on the past, the
    interview now moves to the FUTURE SCRIPT.

    | Now that you have told me a little bit about your past and
    | present, I would like you to consider the future. As your
    | life story extends into the future, what might be the script
    | or plan for what is to happen next in your life? Describe
    | your overall plan, outline, or dream for your own future.
    | Most of us have plans or dreams that concern what we would
    | like to get out of life and what we would like to put into it
    | in the future. These dreams or plans provide our lives with
    | goals, interests, hopes, aspirations, and wishes.
    | Furthermore, our dreams or plans may change over time,
    | reflecting growth and changing experiences. Describe your
    | present dream, plan, or outline for the future. Also, tell me
    | how, if at all, your dream, plan, or outline enables you (1)
    | to be creative in the future and (2) to make a contribution
    | to others.

    Under future script, you are given an opportunity to extend the
    story into the future chapters that you envision today. This
    part of the interview provides many different kinds of identity
    information. Like key events, it is especially sensitive to the
    revelation of motivational themes in the life story, as you are
    likely to fashion goals for the future that reflect your basic
    wants and needs in life. Future script may also provide a
    glimpse of the sense of an ending. Where is the story going? How
    will it get there from here? A good story integrates beginning,
    middle, and ending in terms of a plausible plot. Thus, temporal
    continuity is a major challenge in personal mythmaking. It is at
    this point in the interview that you are likely to see how your
    vision of yourself for the future may or may not follow in a
    meaningful way from how you see yourself in the present and how
    you now see yourself in the past. Analyzed in conjunction with
    life chapters and key events future script therefore provides
    insights into your particular approach to personal
    historiography. Do you proceed according to a dynastic
    ontological strategy, with a good past giving birth to a good
    present and future? Do you adopt a compensatory strategy, where
    bad leads to good? Does the strategy work well? Does it make for
    a believable and vitalizing myth?
    
    A third kind of information you may acquire from this part of
    the interview concerns your characteristic approach to
    generativity. The section asks you to consider how your plans
    for the future will enable you to be creative and to make
    contributions to others. As we saw in Chapter 9, to be
    generative is to generate (create or produce) a gift of the self
    and offer it (make a contribution) to the next generation. The
    best stories from our thirties and beyond incorporate
    generativity in explicit ways. Mature adults have specific plans
    about how they are going to make a creative contribution to the
    next generation. This is the place in the interview where these
    plans are typically revealed. Their failure to appear may
    indicate that this part of the life story requires some
    concerted work, that this is an area wherein the personal myth
    may need to be "Improved" so as to enhance one's own life and
    the lives of others.
    
    The fifth section pertains to stresses and problems:

    | All life stories include significant conflicts, unresolved
    | issues, problems to be solved, and periods of great stress. I
    | would like you to consider some of these now. Please describe
    | two areas in your life where at present you are experiencing
    | at least one of the following: significant stress, a major
    | conflict, or a difficult problem or challenge that must be
    | addressed. For each of the two, describe the nature of the
    | stress, problem, or conflict in some detail, outlining the
    | source of the concern, a brief history of its development,
    | and your plan, if you have one, for dealing with it.
    
    By the time you have reached this point in the interview, you
    have probably touched on one or two significant problems in your
    life. This section gives you an opportunity to consider two
    problems, stresses, or challenges in some detail and to outline
    strategies for addressing them. Information gleaned from this
    section sometimes involves internal battles between discordant
    characters in the life story. For example, the imago of the
    carefree escapist, whose origins reside in happy days of
    childhood, may find it difficult to flourish in the same story
    with the imago of the responsible caregiver. Therefore, this
    section may help to signal points of potential resolution in
    narrative for the future issues and conflicts that need to be
    resolved in successive revisions of your personal myth. Be
    careful, however, not to overinterpret problems in terms of
    identity, or to inflate trivial problems into mythic
    proportions. Many life problems have little to do with identity
    per se but involve such everyday concerns as getting the car
    fixed, losing weight, or squabbling with one's boss. These
    problems may have a major impact on the quality of your everyday
    life-they may impact on happiness and satisfaction. But they may
    have little to do with your personal myth per se that is, the
    meaning of your life. I will consider the distinction between
    happiness and meaning later in this chapter.
    
    Moving now toward the interview's conclusion, it is time to
    consider PERSONAL IDEOLOGY.

    | Now I will ask you a few questions about your fundamental
    | beliefs and values. Please give some thought to each of these
    | questions, and answer each with as much detail as you can.
    | 
    | (1) Do you believe in the existence of some kind of God,
    | deity, or force that reigns over or in some way influences or
    | organizes the universe? Explain.
    | 
    | (2) Please describe in a nutshell your religious beliefs.
    | 
    | (3) In what ways, if any, are your beliefs different from
    | those held by most of the people you know?
    | 
    | (4) Please describe how your religious beliefs have changed
    | over time. Have you experienced any periods of rapid change
    | in your religious beliefs? Explain.
    | 
    | (5) Do you have a particular political orientation? Explain.
    | 
    | (6) What is the most important value in human living? Explain.
    | 
    | (7) What else can you tell me that would help me understand
    | your most fundamental beliefs and values about life and the
    | world?

    People vary widely in their responses to this section. For some
    especially philosophical people, this is their favorite part of
    the interview, and their responses may be quite lengthy. For
    people differently inclined, these questions may seem especially
    difficult. Their responses may be shorter and more tentative. I
    have found that once people realize that we are not simply
    talking about conventional religion and politics and that they
    may substitute such expressions as "spirituality, ultimate
    meanings, the good society," and so on, they tend to become more
    comfortable, and open up more. As the storyteller in this
    section, you should remember that the ideological setting for
    your personal myth specifies how your beliefs and values are
    both similar to and different from those held dear by others.

    Many people are hesitant to talk about the "different from"
    part. They are too quick to suggest that what they believe is
    essentially the same as what they think everybody else believes.
    When pushed a bit, however, they often reveal understandings and
    perspectives in personal ideology that are quite distinctive,
    even unique. You should strive to articulate the distinctive
    characteristics of your ideological setting without losing sight
    of the fact that your identity is grounded in a social world
    wherein certain people share certain values.
    
    The interview's last section asks you to take stock of what you
    have said by entertaining an overall LIFE THEME.

    | Looking back over your entire life story as a book with
    | chapters, episodes, and characters, can you discern a central
    | theme, message, or idea that runs throughout the text?
    | What is the major theme of your life? Explain.

    In the research interviews we have done, respondents are often
    quite insightful at this point in the session. After focusing
    unwavering attention on their life narrative for two hours or
    more, they are often able to capture part of the essence or
    central meaning of the myth in a pithy phrase or expression. In
    the context of our research, this is the only explicit
    opportunity that the respondent has to "analyze" the meaning of
    his or her words. The quick self-analysis at the end of the
    interview may serve as a springboard for the deeper
    psychological analyses that my associates and I will perform
    after we listen to the interview tape or read the transcript.
    For your purposes, however, the life-theme section provides an
    opportunity for an initial look back while prompting you to
    carry on your self-examination in future dialogues with the
    listener.
    
    Identifying your personal myth should be seen as a life process.
    It cannot be fully achieved in a single interview. The questions
    I have posed should get you going. But don't stop with my
    questions. Plan to meet with your listener again. Follow up on
    interesting leads of the first interview. Make time to get to
    know yourself and to share yourself with the listener. The
    process is enjoyable in itself. And it promises to pay personal
    dividends in enhancing your understanding of the story you live by.

 LIVING THE MYTH
    
    The interview should help make conscious and explicit that which
    already exists implicitly, generally outside of your everyday
    awareness. I believe that coming to a conscious understanding of
    the details of your self-defining personal myth can markedly
    enrich your life and promote your development as a person. It is
    also a necessary first step in the process of changing your myth
    for the better. But you do not need to identify your
    self-defining personal myth -- to bring it into full conscious
    awareness -- in order to live according to it. Indeed, whether
    or not you choose to examine your myth explicitly, you have
    already been more or less successful in constructing a myth for
    yourself over the years, and shaping parts of your life around
    the myth you have constructed. You have already created, and
    continue to create, a story to live by. And you have been living
    by it all along.
    
    Let us, then, consider the process of living the story from both
    a psychological and a social perspective. What does living the
    myth do for you? What does it do for society? From the
    standpoint of the individual's psychology, to live the myth is
    to provide your life with meaning -- more so than with
    happiness. This is not to say that a personal myth exists to
    make you unhappy. Rather, it suggests that a personal myth
    functions first and foremost to provide life with meaning,
    unity, purpose. Happiness may follow, but in some cases it may
    not. From the standpoint of society, to live the myth is to
    connect to the grand narratives of your social world. Myths are
    created and lived in a social context. As a social participant,
    you are responsible for creating and living a personal myth in
    such a way as to commit your life to the generative agenda of
    humankind. Without this commitment, identity loses any trace of
    social responsibility and degenerates into trivia or narcissism.
    
    It is common practice in popular psychology to suggest that all
    good things come together, in an undifferentiated gold mine of
    riches. From this popular point of view, to find meaning in life
    is to be happy, satisfied, fully functional, self-actualized,
    fulfilled, well-adjusted, mature, free of anxiety, liberated,
    enlightened, individuated, and saved. It is true that the
    definitions and connotations of these different terms overlap
    considerably. But we should also be aware of important
    distinctions. Indeed, empirical research reveals significant
    nuances in people's understandings of these terms and shows that
    for all the overlap, people tend to evaluate their lives on many
    different dimensions. No single concept covers it all when you
    are considering the overall quality of a human life. Each
    concept is limited and qualified, and no psychological process
    or product can "do it all."


*** 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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GREAT OUTDOORS GUIDE <http://www.thriveonline.com/outdoors/go-guide/> 
If you managed to get through the exercises from this issue,
YOU NEED A BREAK! This site houses a wonderful collection of
reviews of some of the best trails, campsites, parks, rivers, 
andclimbing areas in all 50 states of the U.S.


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validity or accuracy. Lifescope therefore assumes no responsibility for injury
and specifically disclaims any warranty, express or implied, of fitness or 
merchantability for a particular purpose. Besides, actual mileage may vary.

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