The Stories We Tell About Ourselves
Originally written in 2021 and updated for 2025. My understanding of identity and storytelling continues to evolve, and this piece reflects that growth.
“How you arrange the plot points of your life into a narrative shapes who you are and is a fundamental part of being human.”
— The Atlantic, 2015
That line captures something essential.
We live our lives day by day, but we understand them through the stories we tell—quietly, privately, and in conversation with others.
A psychologist in that same article said, “To have relationships, we’ve all had to tell little pieces of our story.” And she’s right. Every question—Where are you from? What do you do?—is really an invitation: Share a moment of your life with me.
A few years ago, I watched a simple exchange at a mall. A salesperson greeted a woman walking by. One smile led to another. They talked for a moment about where they were from. A shared memory surfaced. In seconds, two strangers became connected.
All because they exchanged small pieces of their story.
We do this all the time. We build relationships by offering small chapters of who we are.
But the deeper truth is this: We also tell stories privately, inside our own minds. And the way we arrange those stories, what we emphasize, what we forget, what we rewrite—shapes how we see ourselves.
For more than twenty years, I’ve told my own story to groups of men at my church. Every time I shared it, it changed. Not the facts, but the meaning. What felt important at thirty wasn’t the same at forty or fifty. My story kept shifting, because I kept shifting.
I’ve watched the same thing happen as others told theirs. The details didn’t always change.
The interpretation did.
Life stories are like books. They have chapters, themes, turning points, and characters who stay or drift away. But unlike novels, we are both the authors and the main character. We choose how to connect the events. We decide what matters.
And our identity grows out of the choices we make in that telling.
Art, music, relationships, losses, quiet moments, heritage, work, faith, these all shape the narrative. Some people touch only a page or two. Others stay for entire chapters. And sometimes the meaning of their presence doesn’t become clear until much later.
There’s a line from an old poem I’ve always carried with me:
“Some people come into our lives for a reason, a season, or a lifetime.”
No matter what you believe about why they show up, we decide what they mean.
We choose what we keep. We choose how we make sense of it.
The alternative is to believe identity is fixed—that we are permanently defined by genetics, upbringing, or circumstance. But that doesn’t hold up. People grow. People interpret. People change.
If you doubt that, try this: Tell your life story today. Write it down. Then come back to it in a year. You’ll tell it differently.
And in that difference is proof: Identity is not a script we inherit. It’s a living, evolving narrative, authored by us, shaped by time, and rewritten as we grow.
See these articles, if you liked this one
Why Good Literature Still Matters: How Stories Shape Our Understanding
Good literature expands us. It asks us to think more deeply, feel more fully, and step into the emotional worlds of others. A well-crafted sentence can shift our perspective; a single story can transport us to another time, another place, another way of seeing.
The best writing stays with us long after we close the book. It lingers in our thoughts, reshapes our assumptions, and reminds us of the enduring truths humans have wrestled with for generations.
Great stories—whether written today or centuries ago—still resonate because they speak to something universal. They teach us, move us, and gently remind us what it means to be human.
C.S. Lewis captured this beautifully when he suggested that the gift of literature is its ability to make us more than ourselves: to see through others’ eyes, imagine with other imaginations,
and feel with other hearts as well as our own.
The Stories We Tell Ourselves & The Ones We Outgrow
Reflective Non-Fiction
We don’t just live our lives, we narrate them. Silently. Constantly. Often, without realizing how much those quiet internal stories shape who we become.
Some stories lift us. Some limit us. And some were never ours to begin with.
Reflective nonfiction invites us to notice these narratives with honesty and patience. Instead of forcing change through rigid advice or prescriptive steps, it asks a gentler question:
“Is this story still true for me?”
When we revisit our own thinking with curiosity, something shifts. A belief loosens. A memory softens. A long-held assumption begins to crumble at the edges, not dramatically, but quietly, like ice melting in the sun.
This kind of reflection isn’t about fixing ourselves. It’s about seeing ourselves.
It’s about recognizing that growth often begins the moment we stop pushing and simply pay attention.
If self-help tells us what to do, reflective nonfiction shows us who we are becoming.
And sometimes that’s the real work
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