Our Memory Lane is Modified by Frequent Trips →

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As your life continues, experience changes how you see your memory lane, and you find a new narrative to remember it. When you retell your life story, you reinvent yourself as you do.

This thought was presented by Professor Elizabeth Phelps, a professor of psychology and neuroscience at NY University. She was quoted in a 2017 Scientific American article, “Why Do Our Memories Change?, by Senior Editor Mark Fischetti”.

Professor Phelps said, “Our memories can change because they become vulnerable each time we revisit them. When we first lay down a memory, it takes the brain a little while to solidly store the information—consolidation. And every time we subsequently recall that memory, it has to go through a new storage process—another slight delay for another consolidation.”

The book Why Life Stories Change: As You Look At Your Own Life Story, You See Yourself Differently states that who we are is the total of the events in our lives, especially those we connect with. We choose the circumstances we connect with each time we tell our life stories. We do just that by putting together the narrative of who we are in our life stories.

As we retell the story, we can pick which events we connect with and what we conclude about them, weaving and reweaving the narrative about them into our story.

As my story changes with the retelling, it changes me. I become different because of how I see the story.

A person’s connections include those who have come into their lives, but even those events we experience through fiction and fantasy can contribute to our conclusions about life. For example, this idea is presented in a quote by George R.R. Martin: “a reader lives a thousand lives before he dies,” and all those lives influence us.  

A poem by an unknown author suggests it focuses on the influence of those people in our lives.

"Some people come into our lives for a reason, some for a season, and some for a lifetime.”

Some believe God sends the people needed into your life, and others may bring challenges and darkness.

Each time we go down Memory Lane, it is different, but we become different with time and look back through the filter of new experiences.

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Both books below show the value of using the past and learning from it to re-invent ourselves.

Why Life Stories Change: As You Look At Your Own Life Story, You See Yourself Differently

This book states that who we are is the total of the events in our lives, especially those we connect with. We choose the events that connect each time we tell our life stories. We do just that, putting together the narrative of who we are in our life stories.

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Embrace Life’s Randomness: Breathe in the Amazing

Our journeys through life follow unexpected paths. Sometimes, looking back offers clarity and understanding, while other times, you find yourself at an unforeseen junction, and it takes your breath away.

Find your Path Forward by Looking Back →

By Brent M. Jones

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Stories of outstanding leaders, who look back at their own lives and tell of how their success came because of the trials and setbacks they had in life, are not uncommon. They didn't see the value of the problems when they occurred but only after years of rethinking the events. The self-acceptance of their challenges followed years later.

Previously I wrote an article titled “As You Look at Your Own Life Story You See Yourself Differently,” which included background research from Julie Beck's Atlantic Magazine’s 2015 article titled “Life’s Stories.” The subtitle of her article states: “How you arrange the plot points of your life into narrative shapes who you are and is a fundamental part of being human.” 

Beck quoted Monisha Pasupathi, a professor of developmental psychology at the University of Utah, saying: “To have relationships, we’ve all had to tell little pieces of our story.” This means we have to know our own story; as our perspective changes, we change, and the story changes.

If the essence of accepting yourself is to know your own life story, then the question is, what is the story? Author Bill George suggests building a timeline of your life that includes the highs and lows, reflecting on it daily. A summary of your life brings you to where you are today, and a timeline points out when things happened of significant influence, representing forks in the road. The more recent events in the story often help you see the prior ones differently.

Our narrative and perspective are choices, and how we look at the events and people in our lives changes as those memories are filtered against other events and all of our memories. A lesson we learn from an event today can help us see what happened before differently. Connecting events and concluding is weaving together our life stories and defining who we are. Who we think we are is related to who we become.

A daily journal captures the events of our lives, and a summary of the journal offers some opportunities for conclusion. Reviewing a written life story yearly will show how we see our past changes because our perspective makes a great deal of difference in what we think our history was. Save your personal story, rewrite it as you see it differently, and save that too.

Think about your story each day and tell your story to your family and others, but listen to how you see things have changed and will change.