Write Your Story for Personal Growth & Empowerment

Welcome to this online course!

This video explains where this course comes from, who your instructors are, and what you can expect to learn.

In this lecture, you'll learn about Baby Elephant Syndrome. You'll also learn about Invisible Chains and how you can use story writing to break them.

During this lecture, you will be asked to pause the video and answer questions. Please find the prompts in the attached document on this lecture. Answer the questions honestly. 

You can break your invisible chains. To be able to do this, you first need to know what these chains are and how they got there. To learn about yourself, you must engage in self-reflection. Self-reflection is deep thought about yourself, your past and your experiences. Different people self-reflect in different ways, but among the most effective methods of self-reflection is personal story development. When you look at your own life experiences and tell them as a story, you are processing your memories in an efficient and beneficial way. Humanity has used storytelling as a way to express experiences since the beginning of mankind, and stories are still how we most effectively share information with each other. Through the course of this guided reflection journal, you will not just be writing a story, but will also dig into your own experiences to be able to express something deep about yourself and your life. After writing your story, you will be equipped with the tools to break your invisible chains.

The concept of character in a story is both simple and complex. Simple characters are merely people in a story that do something. Interesting characters, however, are those that we can relate to and want to see succeed in their mission. We need to understand who they are, what they care about, what their values are. These elements show an audience who the character really is.

If we don’t properly process our past conflicts, they can end up shackling us to negative mindsets. Conflict not properly analyzed in your story can become that small rope tied to the elephant’s foot, keeping you tied down when you really have the strength to be your free and true self. Conflicts are the things that you’ve overcome, the things that you were strong enough to get through. When you see your conflicts for what they are, you realize that what may have been perceived as a weakness is actually an asset. You are stronger than your conflicts.

Defining a goal and striving for it helps us find meaning in our lives. Viktor Frankl, author of Man’s Search For Meaning, created a form of psychological analysis called Logotherapy. One of the core concepts in Logotherapy is the belief that the primary motivation of human beings is to find meaning in our own lives. One way we do this is by achieving goals. Clearly defined goals help us to see a purpose for the work we do.

Goals can be lofty or modest. If you haven’t made a goal for yourself in a while, start with something small. As the famous theologian C.S. Lewis said, “You are never too old to set another goal or to dream a new dream.” Think of something you’ve wanted to do for a while, like “learn how to bake a pineapple upside-down cake.” Write it on a sticky note, and then do it! Come up with another goal, a bigger goal, and then do it! Once you’ve got momentum, you’ll find that goal setting becomes easier and your goals will likely get larger.

We’ve discussed the idea of character, conflict, and goal as the building blocks of your story, and you’ve written a lot about each one from your personal experiences. Where do we go from here?

Well... We put it all together!

We can be hard on ourselves when we write our stories. We look at our past sometimes as someone who was just more naive or didn’t make decisions that you would have. If that past version of yourself hadn’t experienced what they did, you wouldn’t be who you are today. You wouldn’t have the strength that you now have.

This chapter discusses how to give yourself self-empathy to combat these mindsets.

By sharing your story, you heal yourself as well. By sharing your story, you internalize your experiences and reveal to yourself the strength you have. By recounting difficult times, it helps you realize that you can overcome anything because you already have.

When you come to the end of a book or a movie and you see those two words “The End,” you know that the story is over. The difference between fiction and reality is that your story never ends. That’s the beauty of personal storytelling. You can keep coming back and looking at your story again and again from different perspectives at different points in your life. In two, ten, or even twenty years, your life may look completely different. Your story may be completely different. You have the privilege to go back and self-reflect and identify your story again and again. You will learn more about yourself, gaining deeper insight on your identity, every time you write out your story. Brandon, in Chapter 7, described how this happened for him. He realized that his own conception of his past was an invisible chain and he broke it by rewriting his story in his own mind. Once you see where your invisible chains are, break them. You’ve written your story. You can see that you are not ruled by someone else’s version of your story. Live your story on your terms.