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May 28, 2007

"Investigating an untrue thought will always lead you back to who you are. It hurts to believe you are other than who you are, to live any story other than happiness. If you put your hand into the fire, does anyone have to tell you to move it? Do you have to decide? No: when your hand starts to burn, it moves. You don’t have to direct it; the hand moves itself. In the same way, once you understand, through inquiry, that an untrue thought causes suffering, you move away from it." --Byron Katie

Your Life (And How You Tell It)

Researchers have long been trying to work out the raw ingredients that account for personality, but they have largely ignored the first-person explanation — the life story that people themselves tell about who they are, and why. Yet in the past decade a handful of psychologists have argued that the quicksilver elements of personal narrative belong in any three-dimensional picture of personality. And a burst of new findings are now helping them make the case. Civic -minded adults from diverse backgrounds tell life stories with very similar features, studies find; so likewise do people who have overcome mental distress through psychotherapy. The ways in which we visualize each scene of our lives shapes how we think of ourselves and how we behave. This compelling New York Times article shares how we may be able to change these narratives in positive ways.