Narrating your life's story.

I've struggled with negative self-talk for my entire life. I tend to curse myself under my breath and, on a daily basis, tell myself oodles of BS about my own incompetence and lack of value. It's an ugly habit that I've been trying to unwind from for years, particularly when I first started working through Mind Over Mood in 2009. But the negative self-talk persists—when I'm out for a walk, when I try to make sense of my past, when I realize I should have said something else, when I realize I should have been more thoughtful, when I can't figure out why I'm feeling what I'm feeling.

Some might say I need to make a new story for myself, a new narrative. And within the last few months, a couple of my go-to content creators have made a couple lovely bits to reflect just such an idea.

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The School of Life's How To Narrate Your Life's Story

I've written about The School/Book of Life before, but this week's video hit home, not only because of the references to Macbeth, but for its practical advice for new narrative-building.

Yes, yes, yes. This hits home. https://t.co/p8ci4ockfn

— Jeffrey Nordstrom (@jeffnords) June 23, 2017

My favorite part of this episode is:

Not all the disasters were wasted anyway. Maybe we spent a decade not quite knowing what we wanted to do with ourselves professionally. Maybe we went through a succession of failed relationships that left us confused and hurt a lot of people. But these experiences weren’t meaningless because they were necessary to later development and maturity. We needed the career crisis to understand our working identities; we had to fail at love to fathom our hearts. No one gets anywhere important in one go. We can forgive ourselves the horrors of our first drafts.

The good storyteller recognises – contrary to certain impressions – that the central character of the story isn’t always responsible for every calamity or triumph. We are never the sole authors of anything that happens to us. Sometimes, it really will be the economy, our parents, the government, our enemies or simply the tragic dimensions of human existence. Good narrators don’t over-personalise.

Every day, we are induced to narrate a bit our life story to ourselves: we explain why there was pain, why we forgot to seize a chance and why we’re in an unhappy situation.

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The Art of Charm's AoC Toolbox: Narrative building

This "Art of Charm Toolbox" episode focuses on "Narrative Building" as a means to build charisma and a positive self-image.

My favorite part of this episode is summarized here:

Think of your narrative — your hero’s journey, as illustrated by mythologist Joseph Campbell — as a riff on the narratives that brought you where you are today and not a carbon copy of those existing narratives. To know yourself, you need to tell your own story.

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So what story to tell though? To be honest, I don't know.

Here are the basics though:

1. I don't feel like I fully know what I'm doing with my life.
2. I don't feel comfortable in my own skin
3. I still battle with setting boundaries and being up-front with people
4. I barely play music
5. I haven't written a full song in a few years
6. I'm barely reading at all
7. I barely ever see anybody after work
8. I don't feel like anybody wants to see me or hear from me
9. My libido is absolutely shot
10. I don't know if I'm making the right choices for my family
11. I feel awkward, old, unattractive and uncharismatic
12. I don't think I have "direction" or vision for my life.

This last one is one of the hardest ones to manage these days. I read about people who say a person really needs to be following their heart, following their vision, but I can't think of a vision to follow. I was just trying to be a good dad for so long that I didn't pursue anything bigger than that. And now that singular, day-to-day goal has faded a little and I feel pretty stuck. 

No one wants to read a boring life story, including myself. I don't want to write a self-narrative that bores me to tears.

So what story do I need to narrate?