Remember: you’re in charge
“But how could you live and have no story to tell?”
— Fyodor Dostoevsky
We love to listen to other people’s stories. To be happier, we also need to learn how to love our own stories.
Since the 1980s, psychologist Dan McAdams has been leading a unique research program at Northwestern. He asks study participants to write out their life story, like it was a novel or a movie.
McAdams argues that we are all natural storytellers. We instinctively take the raw ingredients of our lives and turn them into this personal narrative, a process that involves selecting events, interpreting them, and drawing connections between them. Your life story has a theme, a plot, a setting, other characters — and of course, you, the protagonist!
What McAdams and his collaborators have discovered is that the way you tell your life story influences your happiness. While there are multiple contributing factors, there’s one in particular I want to draw your attention to today: the way you describe yourself in your life story.
Happier people describe themselves as having agency. They make things happen. Their actions influence the world around them. They choose what is in alignment with their goals and hopes. They still experience setbacks and challenges, but they interpret and respond to them differently. It sounds like:
∙ “I didn’t get into my first-choice college, but I realized that my back-up school was going to be a better fit. I joined student government and had a wonderful experience. I’m so glad I ended up there.”
∙ “When my partner broke up with me, I was devastated. I started to look for something to do with my time. I began to volunteer at the local senior center after work. It ended up changing my life.”
∙ “I knew that I didn’t want to stay in my hometown. I found a way to move to my dream city through a lot of cold-calling and networking.”
On the other hand, less happy people are much more likely to describe themselves as passive, swept along by the forces of the world.
Try This
If you want to feel more agency, you can start right here and now, by making just one different choice.
You can stop doing something.
You can start doing something.
You can say ‘no.’ Or ‘yes.’ Or ‘maybe!’
You can be spontaneous.
You can make yourself an elaborate meal, just because you want to!
You can sign up for an art class or rent a movie you’ve always wanted to see or dance around your house with your kids.
You’re in charge.
The beauty is that, as you make these choices, you’re not just giving yourself a temporary feeling of agency; you're transforming your life, too. These are the moments that often do end up leading to meaningful changes, the choices that show up in your life story as the demarcations of ‘before’ and ‘after.’
One choice at a time, you can write a story for your life that brings you joy.
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