Tag: Happiness

The Story of Self: Who are you anyway?

self-as-story

Meet Jane.

Jane: The facts

Jane is 28, lives in a large US city, works for a medium-sized corporation, is recently married and comes from a big family.

Yawn. Not very interesting, is it?

Why? Because these are the facts of Jane, yet they don’t give away much about her. We don’t know Jane from this report of the key aspects of her life. If Jane read this account, she probably wouldn’t see much of who she feels she really is in it. If her friends read it, they’d probably think ‘that could be any one of my friends.’

The problem with the description as a way to really know Jane is that it lacks personality; it lacks a story.

In fact, many psychologists would say that’s exactly what personality is: a story we tell about ourselves, to ourselves, and to others; a story we author and co-author with our culture and those close to us.

“Identity itself takes the form of a story, complete with setting, scenes, character, plot and theme.” – Dan P. McAdams

 

Could this be true? And how might this affect the way we look at our lives? Or our happiness?

Let’s look again at Jane.

Jane: The story

What if I told you Jane grew up on a coffee farm in central America; that she began painting as a child and then moved to North America to study Fine Art at college where she met Joe, who wanted to be a pilot? What if I told you that she’s taken the job at Dull Corp. so that Joe can finally get his pilots licence and they’ll be able to save and start a family, who they’ll eventually move back to Central America to enjoy the same happy childhood years? Then Jane will finally have the time to paint again, the thing she really loves.

Now do you feel you know Jane a little better? This is Jane’s story. This is how Jane knows Jane. This is how friends, and family, and husband Joe, know Jane.

Why is this important?

I think this illustrates that the meaning, purpose and value of our lives are not often found in the facts alone, like what we do, where we live, or who we know. Meaning, purpose and value are found in the stories we choose to tell; the stories whereby we weave these facts into something more than the sum of their parts.

As McAdams writes: “Life stories are based on biographical facts, but they go considerably beyond the facts.” He adds that people “appropriate aspects of their experience and imaginatively construe both past and future to construct stories… that vivify and integrate life.”

Whether or not this theory is ‘true’ (and the debate continues amongst psychologists) I think it’s useful. I think it empowers us, because it gives us permission to be creative with our own lives; to retell unhelpful stories, as we might do in CBT for example. It helps us to think of disruptions to our story as plot twists rather than conclusions. It helps us to keep going in the tough times, flourish in the good and perhaps even to be wild optimists. Because, of course, if our very identities are organised as stories, then certainly our sense of whether we are happy or not is a part of this story, if not a story of it’s very own. I think this is pretty revolutionary, especially for the field of positive psychology.

Try It: Write the Story of Your Self

How might we apply this theory to our own lives? Have a go at the same exercise I did with Jane, but with your self as the subject.

Step 1

Write purely the facts about your life, as I initially did with Jane. This will probably feel dry, and dull and not like you at all, and this is a great way to remember we are not defined by the facts of our lives alone.

Step 2

Tell your story. Write a brief paragraph that sets out the evolving narrative of your life as succinctly as possible, with an eye on your remembered past, a taste of the present and a glimpse of your imagined future. If you need help getting started, use my example of Jane as a template:

I grew up [where?] and I began [what?] as a child.
I moved to [where?] to [study/work] and I met [lover, business partner, best friend] who [tell us something of their story].
I took a job at [where?] so that I could [work my way up the ladder/save for my other big dream].
In the future I will [move/travel/start a family] because that’s the most important thing to me.

If the story feels meaningful and rich with purpose, then you can stop here. If it doesn’t, why not try a further exercise: rewrite the story. Rewrite it and rewrite it again until you hit on a version that feels meaningful, whether your focus is in the past, present or future. Try writing in both the first and third person. Notice any difference in how this feels. Importantly, this may not be something you feel able to do in one sitting, and that’s fine; take a few days or even weeks to work on your rewrites, remembering that our stories are constantly evolving and it’s not necessary to have your story “figured out.”

I believe this exercise is potentially very powerful because, if psychologists such as McAdams are right, who we are is never a fixed and idle thing; personality is a fluid and evolving narrative that, rather than being a storyline we’re stuck with, is a story we get a lifetime to edit and re-tell.

Share?

If you want to share, I’d love to see your story. You can either post it in the comments below, email it to me megan[at]meganchayes[dot]com or share it on Instagram with #happinessisastory and tag me @megan.c.hayes so I definitely won’t miss it.

On Wild Optimism, or the #1 Rule to Getting Everything You Want

how-to-be-optimistic

I’ve suffered my fair share of angst.

When I was thirteen I wrote, “I hate everything” on my bedroom wall, in pencil. Yes, pencil. I was so apathetic, even my acts of delinquency were half-hearted.

There was a time when I truly, genuinely, truthfully thought that nothing good would ever happen to me.

Over time, my mind has changed substantially (the other day I actually said to a friend, in all seriousness, “enthusiasm is my religion.” It’s a wonder I have any friends.)

Over time, I began to expect that good things might actually happen. I began to act like good things might happen. And – lo and behold! – they did.

No, I’m not an advocate of The Secret (sorry, Rhonda.) I was merely cultivating optimism; wild optimism. Unrestrained enthusiasm. Wanton chance-taking. Disproportionate dedication.

I began to commit to possibility.

Of course, these good things weren’t always easy, or obvious, or how I expected them to be, but they were very definitely happening. I was just going for it, and in just going for it, I gave things – great things – the opportunity to occur.

Little by little, I began to think that wild optimism was the best chance I had at a life I enjoyed, that was purposeful, & that had meaning; wild optimism was the only way of cajoling myself into going for what I wanted, and of promising myself I’d be okay when things didn’t work out.

What is wild optimism?

Wild optimism is letting yourself believe in all those things you secretly want; and the things you don’t dare want because they’re simply too whimsical to admit to. It’s throwing your hat in the ring. Taking a punt. Placing your bets (and all those other clichés.)

It means you have to participate.

Martin Luther King did not become a trailblazer in the African-American Civil Rights Movement because he thought, what’s the point? Marie Curie didn’t become the first woman to win a Nobel prize because she said to herself, don’t get too big for your boots now, Marie. Mahatma Gandhi didn’t lead India to independence by thinking, meh. No. They took positive action; they were wild optimists. And optimism is empowerment. They came, they conquered.

Reality Check?

Wild optimism is not expecting that nothing bad will ever happen (contrary to a popularly held belief, ‘optimist’ is not a synonym of ‘stupid.’) It is not about devaluing the negative. We all know Marie Curie could have done with a healthy dose of caution. Yet, wild optimism is realising that, by the law of averages alone, eventually you’ll catch a break, and that expecting the best is just as valid as expecting the worst, neither is a more accurate version of “reality.”

We think of a “reality check” as a dose of cynicism; sometimes it can be a dose of wild optimism. [Tweet it!]

Of course, wild optimism is not a magic wand; the difficult stuff still happens. It continues to for me, and I imagine it will do for you, too. Yet, short of pencilling hate memos on our walls, it might be the best chance any of us have got.

You don’t get anything if you don’t participate, but there’s a chance – even if it’s a teeny tiny one – that you’ll get everything if you do.

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Negativity & Why it Matters

negativity-why-it-matters

In my last post I talked about why positivity matters. I’ll be writing about positivity a lot on this blog – because I find it a rich & enchanting topic.

Yet today I want to clarify something: just because I think positivity matters, it doesn’t mean I think negativity doesn’t matter.

For a long time it has been obvious to me that, whilst accentuating the positive is an important and fulfilling dimension of my life – it is not the only dimension of my life. For me, it has been obvious that sorrow and tough times are a given, and something to be experienced fully – not quashed.

Yet, when the validity of negativity isn’t obvious, positivity can become something tormenting and tyrannical.

[Just read Barbara Ehrenreich if you don’t believe me!]

For this reason, in the field of positive psychology, there is currently a ‘second wave’ occurring; one which stresses that “positive” does not necessarily = “good,” just as “negative” does not = “bad.” Because, sometimes, this comes across as the underlying assumption of the field.

In my case at least, this could not be further from the truth. So I really wanted to address this here on the blog, as a kind of caveat to the rest of my wild optimism.

Here is a handy list of some of the ways I conceive of negativity, that I hope will be helpful. Maybe most of it is obvious to you, and I’m really glad if so – but, just in case…

1) Don’t go into battle with yourself: you’ll lose.

If you start to think of ANY of your emotions as good/bad, worthy/not worthy you’re going into a battle you can never win and, in my mind at least, your positivity will only ever be a superficial cover up. Which brings me to…

2) Don’t fake it.

Though I value happiness highly, I wouldn’t dream of suppressing my equally genuine feelings of sadness and grief and even desperation when they are necessary responses, because I’m not in the market for faking anything.

It is more important to me to practice integrity and explore all the corners of my reality, than to pretend positivity. You’ve probably heard the maxim, ‘fake it til you make it.’ Confidence, sure, I think faking it helps us play-act our way into it. Happiness? There is no play-acting with happiness, and to do so will probably make you feel worse.

3) All experience is valid.

Negativity matters because all of our experience is equally valid – not just the sunny parts. The parts we want to show off on Instagram or Facebook. The parts we parade around because we’re proud of them.

If we value positivity to the point that we devalue our negativity, we make ourselves more miserable by denying a very ordinary part of the human experience. We enter a place of berating ourselves over ever feeling bad; and ultimately make ourselves feel worse (what madness!) Stop that cycle by remembering: it all matters.

4) You can’t go around it; you have to go through it.

Did you ever read We’re Going on a Bear Hunt as a child? “We can’t go over it, we can’t go under it, we’ll have to go through it!” Well, negativity is just like that.

Or, think of it as a documentary film you’re watching: you’re never going to understand it if you don’t sit through the whole thing. If you switch it off and go and do something else, it’s still there: undiscovered, awaiting you, and will be forever.

We don’t ease sadness by ignoring it; we ease it by addressing it.
[Tweet it!]

Finding its root cause. Going through it, and coming out the other side.

5) All emotion is part of you; none of it defines you.

If you, like me, value happiness and positivity, then there is only one thing you need to remember when diving into the darker shades of yourself: don’t let it define you, i.e. you are not a “negative person,” nor are you a “positive person.” You are simply a person, who experiences emotions, and you choose how you value those emotions.

So, please, if you were looking for permission…

Feel sad. Feel angry. Feel hurt. Feel heartbroken. Feel vulnerable. Feel anxious. Feel scared. Feel sorry for yourself. Feel slighted. Feel jealous. Feel the injustice.

Feel it all. Viscerally. Listen to it. Inquire into it. Honour it. Let it test you. Use it as fuel for change. Only then do we witness our whole potential; only then do we explore the full little solar system of the self; because the sun, the moon, the dark, the light, the sorrow, the joy…

…it all matters.