A little more about the science of what I called in my last post ” creating a positive launching pad”. According to psychologists we all have an internalised narrative about how we became the person we are to-day, and where we are heading tomorrow, much like a movie we run in our head.This is known as our Narrative Identity.

Narrative psychologists such as Prof Dan Mc Adams study the stories we tell ourselves about our lives and the effects of stories with different themes.

We are always constructing meaning out of the events that happen to us: “Selves create stories which in turn create selves”.The meaning that we take affects how we feel and our subsequent behaviour.

Research into the relation between life stories and adaptation shows that narrators who find redemptive meanings in suffering and adversity, and who construct life stories that feature themes of personal agency and exploration, tend to enjoy higher levels of mental health, well-being, and maturity.

So what will be the theme of your life in 2017? “Goals are part of the tapestry of the life story” and form our intention of who we want to become.

So, if you are setting goals, ask yourself how do they fit in with your overall life journey, what resources do you have already, and what others do you need to acquire to move the plot forward?

For the full article see Mc Adams, Dan, Mc Clean, Kate C Article (PDF Available) in Current Directions in Psychological Science 22(3):233-238 · June 2013