Tell Your Story

How you describe the events in your day helps create who you are. Talking about your experiences with positivity and gratitude makes you feel better in the moment--and going forward.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
Welcome to the Gratitude Diaries, a production of My Heart Radio. Hi.
I'm Janice Kaplan. Thanks for joining me for more practical
ideas on how to be happier. Today's tip, As you
go through your day, think about how you can tell
the story of your daily events with a positive and

(00:24):
grateful perspective. Most nights, when my husband and I have
dinner together, we talk for at least a little bit
about what happened in our day. Was it good? Was
it bad? What were the big events? Now we've been
apart for many hours, so a lot of different things happened,
But which ones we choose to talk about and how

(00:45):
we interpret them makes a big difference in how we'll
feel about the day and what will remember from it.
If something bad happened, do we tell it as a
disaster or as a tale of resilience where we can
learn something and use the positive lessons in the days ahead.
Are we feeling grateful for at least one thing that
went on? Psychologists say that we all carry a narrative

(01:09):
around in our heads of our own lives. How we
tell our stories helps determine how we live and function
going forward. Kate McClean professor of psychology at Western Washington University,
has studied the effect our personal narratives have on our
own well being. In one recent paper in the Journal

(01:29):
of Personality and Social Psychology, she and her colleagues wrote
that the stories we tell about ourselves not only reveal
who we are, they make us who we are and
sustain us through time. So for example, even if you
had a good childhood, you probably had some difficult experiences.

(01:50):
Maybe someone was mean to you, you were bullied, are
you broke a leg on the playground, But how you
tell that story reveals a lot about how happy you're
going to be. Do you see it as an event
that scarred you forever or is it one that you
learned from and that made you stronger and more resilient.
One study by several academics, including psychology professor Jonathan Adler

(02:14):
at Olin College of Engineering, found that people who tell
more positive stories and with more elements of redemption have
better life satisfaction and better mental health. In other words,
if you can see the positives that came out of
a negative experience and talk about those, you're going to
do better and feel better moving forward. He found that

(02:37):
people also do better when the stories they tell show
them having some element of control and some connection with others.
When I talk about telling your story, I'm not talking
about creating fictions. Any life event has many elements to it,
and what matters here is what you focus on. Once
you tell a story about an event, it becomes fixed

(02:59):
in your mind. If you tell it with humor and positivity,
that's what it becomes forever. As one psychologist put it,
the stories we tell become our identities. I talked to
one woman recently who said that her husband had lost
his job during the early days of the pandemic. It
was really hard on him and on the family, but

(03:20):
they had a little financial cushion and she was determined
to keep an upbeat view. She said she was happy
that they got to spend time together that they never
would have had otherwise. By appreciating each other and expressing
their mutual support, they got themselves and their family through
the difficult time. Her husband now has another job, but

(03:41):
she said she will always remember those previous months, not
as a time of despair, but as a special time
she had to bond with her husband. You can imagine
how somebody else might tell that story of being out
of work very differently, but that is now her story,
the narrative of her life. She has a positive and

(04:02):
grateful view of the experience. If a difficult time strikes again,
she has that story of resilience and redemption and positivity
to get her through. Her narrative says that bad times
can be overcome and good ones appear. In a very
different example, one young woman I know was taking a
walk in the woods this past fall with a friend

(04:24):
when the two of them saw a bear walking very
close in their direction. Now, this could be a terrifying
tale of why the woods have become dangerous and why
she certainly won't go for walks there again. But as
she told the story, it was hysterically funny. She and
her friend began singing loudly to try to scare the
bear from coming any closer. For some reason, the first

(04:48):
song they thought of was from the Disney movie Frozen,
and so they shouted out the chorus of let It
Go over and over again, and indeed, the bear let
them go. How you tell your story of a day
or an event at the time sets it in your
mind for the future. Do you see yourself as the
hero or protagonist? Of your own story or the victim

(05:11):
of outside circumstances. How you tell the story changes who
you are, how you see yourself, and of course how
others see you. Tell the story with positivity and gratitude,
and that will help mold you into a positive and
grateful person. Thanks for joining me. I'd love to hear

(05:31):
how you tell your stories. You can reach me at
the contact link at www dot Jamie Kaplan dot com.
Thanks and have a great day. The Gratitude Diaries is
a production of I Heart Radio. The more podcasts from
I heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you get your favorite shows.