A narrative is a spoken or written account of connected events; a story in simpler terms.
I’ve heard the word “narrative” being used on quite a number of occasions over the last few months and it left me quite confused as to what exactly it meant. Somebody would tell a reporter, “that’s your narrative of events.“
I’m fairly sure he meant that’s how you see the situation but he didn’t so I set about trying to identify a simple way to understand the word, narrative.
I’ve used wildlife film makers as an example. The photographers go out into the wild for months at a time and spend all that time gathering material about a specific animal’s life. They then go back into studio and edit the material to make a one hour documentary. The one hour documentary is their narrative of that creatures existence.
Is it how the creatures really live? Who knows, but as a keen Discovery channel fan, they are very enjoyable to watch.
After I’d satisfied my own need for clarity on what a narrative is, I started looking at how it could be used for people in general. I believe a person’s narrative of their life-story is a strong indication of what their future will look like.
People’s narrative of their lives generally fall into 4 categories.
- People who concentrate on the negative aspects of their life will have a negative future.
- People who concentrate on the positive aspects of their life will remain positive.
- People who concentrate on how they overcame the obstacles in their life will be successful in everything they try to accomplish.
- People who concentrate on being grateful for what they receive every day will be happy.
If you were to create a one hour documentary (narrative) of your life what would your life story portray?
Have you focused on your accomplishments and glossed over your failures, or visa versa? Or have you shown how your failures made you a stronger person? Has your narrative been about the little things in your life that you appreciate all the time?
I believe everybody should be able to look upon their life-story with pride. It should be a balanced view where they concentrate on being grateful for their strengths and weaknesses, and how they developed those traits to create opportunities for themselves.
The greatest opportunity anybody can receive is the opportunity to be happy with the live they’ve been given. I’ll leave you with this line.
A positive narrative will always contain moments of weakness.
