Hi, I'm Sam. Welcome to Radio Headspace and to Thursday.

If you've listened to my past episodes, you know that I love research, especially

about the human brain. And I was recently pouring over some research

that attested to the importance of our personal narrative as a measure of our

mental health. Now, our personal narrative reflects how we tell the story of

our lives, the meaningful moments and big transitions that we've struggled with

and grown from. When our personal narrative is cohesive,

reflects that we've thought deeply about our life experiences and have made

sense of it all. When our narrative is in cohesive, it reflects our blind spot

unexplored and unprocessed moments and memories in our lives that may feel too

daunting to confront. The fact that a cohesive narrative reflects mental

health makes total sense. It's a reflection of how much time and energy we've

devoted to knowing and understanding ourselves, making sense of experiences and

challenges and getting clear on how we've grown from them. In my mindfulness

teacher training at UCLA, we dedicated a good deal of time to a practice called

Wayward Seeking Mind. It sounds mysterious, but in essence, it involves giving

each person our full attention while they describe their life story, giving their

personal narrative uninterrupted to whatever extent they want to. After someone

shares their story, we can ask questions about what we've heard and that helps

the person to reflect on their personal narrative. Sharing our story and being

witnessed with such deep attention helps us to understand ourselves better. I

often say that we need each other's curiosity to get to know ourselves fully.

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