The psychologist Dan McAdams has studied the stories people tell about the whole arc of their lives, and in his research has found that people leading meaningful lives tell stories defined by redemption, growth, and love-for example, getting fired was terrible but it helped me discover my true calling as a nurse helping others. Let’s say you receive an email from your boss that says “urgent” in the subject line, and the body of the email reads: “Call me immediately.” How do you interpret that email? What sort of story do you tell yourself about why your boss wants to talk? There’s the grand story of our life-the myth we tell about how we came to be the person we are-and there are also the stories we tell ourselves on a day-to-day basis about the smaller events in our lives.
We all tell stories about who we are, where we came from, where we’re going, and why things happen the way they do. We are all storytellers whether we realize it or not.
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