What Stories Are You Living?

“The human species thinks in metaphors and learns through stories.” —Mary Catherine Bateson The intent of this chapter

Secondly, you can grasp narrative intelligence by recognizing that stories are the human mind’s most natural way of understanding ourselves and our world and making meaning in our lives.

You can learn to identify the archetypal narratives—the universal human dramas expressed through time and culture—that you are living by paying attention to how you think, how you react to life’s challenges, and most of all, what you then do.

In literature and film, characters do not initially know what story they are living until it is revealed by what they do in response to the challenges they face.