Telling a Life
Wonder Cabinet
Wonder Cabinet Productions
4.8 • 1K Ratings
🗓️ 30 July 2017
⏱️ 52 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
How do you tell the story of your life? Do you focus on meaning, accomplishment and hope - or on failure and loss? Psychologists say telling a good life story can make you happier. But do we also create an inauthentic version of ourselves if we turn everything into a narrative? We explore the idea of life stories, and hear why poet Patti Smith chose to "write about nothing" when writing about her own life. How to Edit Your Life Story; The Terminal Bar; "I Am Not a Story"; Elena Ferrante and Elizabeth Hardwick; Patti Smith's Mind Train.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Support for WPR comes from St. Luke's Birthing Center, providing expectant mom's low intervention options, with labor tubs, remote telemetry, and nitrous oxide. More information is at slh Duluth.com slash baby. You know those nights when you wake up at three in the morning, and you start thinking about all the ways you've failed in life. |
| 0:23.6 | All the things you didn't do, the promises you didn't keep, all the ways you screwed up. |
| 0:29.0 | That's like the opposite of a bedtime story. Or maybe a bedtime story written by someone who |
| 0:34.5 | hates you. I'm Anne Strange, and today. Today, onto the best of our knowledge, |
| 0:38.8 | we all have these negative stories we tell ourselves. And the trick is learning how to change them, |
| 0:45.5 | edit them, because telling a better life story can actually change your life. I was a freshman in |
| 0:52.1 | college. I was taking an introductory biology course, and the first big test |
| 0:57.9 | approached, and in fact it was the night before, and I was all set to take out my books and study |
| 1:03.4 | when my roommate said, hey, you know, there's this party. Let's go to it. So I went to the party. |
| 1:10.4 | Next day, took the the test and was really shocked |
| 1:13.6 | to get it back a week or so later to see that I had failed it. I was really upset and just terrified |
| 1:20.1 | that as to, you know, maybe I'm one of those admissions errors you hear about where I didn't |
| 1:25.3 | really belong in this high-powered college. And so, you know, |
| 1:30.0 | story number one, this is, this is about me and my lack of ability. This is Tim Wilson. Today, |
| 1:36.1 | he's a psychologist who studies the impact of the kinds of stories we tell ourselves, like |
| 1:41.6 | how to reframe failure when you're a scared college freshman. |
| 1:46.0 | Story number two is, you know, I have plenty of ability, but, you know, achievement is about |
| 1:52.0 | working hard. And the failure on the biology test wasn't, shouldn't be taken as a sign that I can't do it, |
| 1:59.0 | but a sign that I needed to work harder. |
| 2:01.5 | And fortunately, that's the story I arrived at. |
| 2:05.3 | In other words, he buckled down, studied his brains out, and aced the next test. |
| 2:10.1 | So this is the kind of thing self-help books teach, the power of positive thinking, affirmations, gratitude journals. |
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