Who am I? Who are you? We can answer this question in so many ways. By name. By role (a daughter, a brother, a friend). By collective identity (e.g., race and gender). Or by personality (funny, shy, bold, chatty). All true.

But I want to introduce you to another way to think about your identity—you’re the sum of the memorable stories you tell yourself and others about your life.

Psychologists call this the narrative identity or life story. Our life stories reveal who we are, how we became this way, and who we’re becoming, integrating our past, present, and future.

Humans are wired for stories. We remember stories better than statistics and are often more persuaded by anecdotes than data. We use stories to understand ourselves and others.

Our life stories often contain themes drawn from the key lessons of our most memorable experiences. Some themes in our life stories are uplifting; others drag us down.

If your most memorable stories are about how bad things always happen to you and there’s nothing you can do about them, then perhaps your life story might be named Cork in the Ocean: You’re tossed around by forces absolutely beyond your control.

If this is your life story, you can see how it negatively shapes the way you respond to the world around you. If you encounter an obstacle, you might assume there’s nothing you can do to fix it. You are quick to give up. In short, your life story exerts a powerful influence on your life.

Here are some additional common life story themes I’ve noticed:

Your life story isn’t just irrational thoughts floating in your head. It’s probably grounded in actual events that happened. If you’ve experienced unmitigated hardship in your life, I would be the last person to judge you if your life story is not particularly uplifting.

But there are also subjective elements in your........

© Psychology Today