How changing your story can change your life | Lori Gottlieb | TED

Introduction and Setting the Stage

The speaker introduces herself as a therapist who receives personal letters from strangers worldwide. She shares an email she received about a troubled marriage and infidelity.

An Unusual Inbox

• The speaker, a therapist, receives personal letters from strangers worldwide.

• These letters cover various topics such as heartbreak, loss, and family conflicts.

• The speaker keeps these letters in a folder named "The Problems of Living."

A Troubled Marriage

• The speaker shares an email from someone whose husband has lost interest in sex and is having secret late-night phone calls with a coworker.

• The person is devastated due to her father's past affair and fears the impact on her children if she divorces.

Examining Perspectives

The speaker invites the audience to consider their own thoughts on how to respond to the letter. She emphasizes the importance of recognizing different perspectives.

Empathy and Judgment

• Infidelity is painful, especially considering the person's past experiences with her father's affair.

• The audience may feel empathy for the woman while harboring negative feelings towards her husband.

• As a therapist, the speaker must be cautious when responding to these letters due to multiple perspectives.

Unreliable Narrators

• People are unreliable narrators of their own lives, including the speaker herself and everyone else.

• Each person tells their story based on their current point of view, emphasizing certain aspects while minimizing others.

• Jerome Bruner stated that telling a story inherently involves taking a moral stance.

Stories Shape Our Lives

The power of storytelling is explored. Our stories can both hinder us and empower us to change our lives.

Misleading or Incomplete Stories

• When our stories are misleading or incomplete, they keep us stuck rather than providing clarity.

• We often assume that our circumstances shape our stories, but the opposite is true.

• The way we narrate our lives actually shapes what they become.

The Power of Stories

• Our stories have the potential to both mess us up and empower us to change.

• Changing our stories can lead to changing our lives.

Editing Our Lives

The speaker discusses her role as an editor and how she helps readers edit their own lives through her advice column.

Therapist as Editor

• While being a therapist, the speaker often introduces herself as an editor to avoid awkward responses.

• As Dear Therapist, she teaches readers how to edit their own lives using one letter each week as an example.

Elements of Editing

• The speaker considers extraneous material, character development, plot points, and themes when editing letters.

• These elements also apply when editing one's own life story.

Conclusion

The transcript ends before a clear conclusion is reached. However, the speaker highlights the importance of recognizing the power of storytelling and how it can shape our lives. She emphasizes that by changing our stories, we can change our lives.

The Illusion of Freedom

The speaker discusses how we often feel trapped and imprisoned in various aspects of our lives, despite having a great deal of freedom. We create narratives that make us feel stuck and limited, such as feeling trapped by our families, jobs, relationships, or past experiences.

Feeling Trapped in Our Stories

• Many of our stories revolve around feeling trapped.

• We even imprison ourselves with self-flagellation narratives like "everyone's life is better than mine" or "I'm an impostor."

• Social media contributes to the narrative that others have better lives than us.

• The speaker shares a humorous story about Siri not responding as a personal rejection.

The Dilemma of Change

• A woman who wrote to the speaker also feels trapped in her situation.

• She faces a difficult decision between staying with her untrustworthy husband or leaving and causing suffering for her children.

• A cartoon illustrates the illusion of being trapped when there are no actual barriers.

Fear of Responsibility and Change

• We often avoid walking towards freedom because it comes with responsibility.

• Taking responsibility for our role in the story means we might have to change.

• People often express a desire for change but actually want others to change instead.

• Therapists describe this dilemma as "If the queen had balls, she'd be the king."

Loss and Comfort in Familiarity

• Change involves loss, even if the familiar is unpleasant or miserable.

• There is comfort in knowing how the story will unfold every time, even if it includes recurring arguments or dissatisfaction.

• Writing a new chapter means venturing into the unknown, which can be terrifying.

Editing Our Stories

• Editing our stories makes writing the next chapter easier.

• Getting to know ourselves also requires letting go of old versions of our stories.

Ultracrepidarianism and Writing Our Own Stories

The speaker introduces the concept of ultracrepidarianism, which means giving advice or opinions beyond one's knowledge or competence. She emphasizes that as a therapist, she can help people sort out their desires but cannot make life choices for them. Each individual has the power to write their own story.

Wise Compassion and Supporting Characters

• To be good editors of our stories, we need to offer wise compassion.

• Supporting characters in our stories may uphold the wrong version by providing "idiot compassion."

• Idiot compassion involves going along with someone's story without challenging it, even when we know there are underlying issues.

Editing Together

• The speaker suggests editing a woman's letter together as an example of how we can revise our stories.

• She encourages the audience to think about a story they are telling themselves that may not serve them well.

• Consider the supporting characters who enable this narrative.

Only You Can Write Your Story

• Only individuals have the power to write their own stories.

• Tools are needed for this process, but ultimately it is up to each person to take control of their narrative.

The transcript provided does not include timestamps beyond 8 minutes and 52 seconds.

The Importance of Compassionate Truth Bombs

This section discusses how compassionate truth bombs can help us see what we've left out of the story and understand different perspectives.

Understanding Different Perspectives

• Compassionate truth bombs help us see what we've left out of the story.

• We don't know all the details and reasons behind someone's actions or behaviors.

• Point of view plays a crucial role in storytelling.

Writing from Another Perspective

• Writing a story from another character's perspective can make them more sympathetic and open up new possibilities in the plot.

• It is important to consider what we might not be willing to see in our own stories.

Longing for Connection: Two Narrators, One Theme

This section explores two different narrators' perspectives on their relationships and highlights their shared longing for connection.

Two Versions of the Same Story

• The same story is presented from two different narrators' points of view.

• Despite their differences, both stories revolve around a desire for connection.

Expanding Perspectives through Editing

• Writing a story from another person's point of view can provide new insights and possibilities.

• Depression and other negative emotions narrow our perspectives, distorting our stories.

The Power of Editing Our Stories

This section emphasizes the importance of editing our stories to gain new perspectives and overcome stuckness.

Courageous Editing for Nuanced Stories

• By editing her letter, the woman can create a more nuanced version that opens up possibilities for the plot.

• Help-rejecting complainers reject edits to their stories of misery and stuckness.

Embracing Mortality as a Catalyst for Change

• Challenging stuckness by acknowledging our mortality can shift our perspective.

Conclusion

The speaker reveals that she wrote the husband's version of the letter and emphasizes the importance of writing alternative narratives.

Writing Alternative Narratives

• The speaker wrote the husband's version based on alternative narratives she has encountered.

• Encouraging individuals to write alternative versions of their stories can lead to new insights and possibilities.

The Power of Shaping Our Own Stories

In this section, the speaker discusses the importance of shaping our own stories and how it can impact our lives.

Shaping Our Stories

• We have the ability to shape the stories written about us, even before we pass away.

• By being conscious authors of our own narratives, we can choose to be heroes rather than victims in our stories.

• The stories we tell ourselves about our lives greatly influence their quality.

Choosing Which Stories to Listen To

• Life is about deciding which stories to listen to and which ones need editing.

• It is worth putting effort into revising our narratives because nothing is more important than the stories we tell ourselves about our lives.

Striving for Personal Excellence

• Instead of falling into the role of a help-rejecting complainer when feeling anxious or vulnerable, aim for personal excellence.

• Remember that everyone will eventually die, so use this realization as motivation to edit your story and ask yourself what you want it to be.

• Take out your editing tools and write your masterpiece.

The transcript is already in English.