Unknow yourself, write a new chapter to change your story: Lori Gottlieb

“All of us walk around with stories about our lives. Stories are the way we make sense of our lives.”

Stories help you make sense of your life, but they can also get you stuck in one place, according to psychotherapist Lori Gottlieb. Also an advice columnist, she receives several emails about people’s struggles. She starts her Ted talk with the example of a woman who stumbled on her husband’s affair with a co-worker.  The woman didn’t want to put her children through a divorce, so what could she do?

The author commented, “All of us walk around with stories about our lives. Why choices were made, why things went wrong, why we treated someone a certain way — because obviously, they deserved it — why someone treated us a certain way — even though, obviously, we didn’t. Stories are the way we make sense of our lives.”

However, this comes with some risk, she remarks, “We assume that our circumstances shape our stories. But what I found time and again in my work is that the exact opposite happens. The way we narrate our lives shapes what they become. That’s the danger of our stories, because they can really mess us up, but it’s also their power. Because what it means is that if we can change our stories, then we can change our lives.”

Gottlieb recommends writing a new chapter and venturing into the unknown. “It’s to stare at a blank page. …We talk so much in our culture about getting to know ourselves. But part of getting to know yourself is to unknow yourself. To let go of the one version of the story you’ve been telling yourself so that you can live your life, and not the story that you’ve been telling yourself about your life. And that’s how we walk around those bars.”

Going back to the letter, she offers up the word taped up in her office — ultracrepidarianism —“the habit of giving advice or opinions outside of one’s knowledge or competence”. She remarks, “I use it because it reminds me that as a therapist, I can help people to sort out what they want to do, but I can’t make their life choices for them. Only you can write your story, and all you need are some tools.”

She warns us against becoming “help-rejecting complainers”. “They’re the people who,” she says, “when you try to offer them a suggestion, they reject it with, ‘Yeah, no, that will never work, because …’” Pull out your editing tools, she recommends, “and ask yourself: what do I want my story to be? And then, go write your masterpiece.”

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