Can You Rewrite Your Life for the Better?

Our lives are our personal story. There will never be two personal stories that are the same. New research has shown that we have the power to change our personal story by rewriting it and achieving a happier more positive outcome.

Recent studies have shown that writing can have positive health benefits including;

• Reduction in visits to the doctor;

• Improved mood;

• Better memory;

• Reduction in symptoms for cancer patients; and

• Improved post-heart attack health.

So can you rewrite your life for the better?

Research currently being undertaken at Duke University certainly seems to show that this is possible. Researchers are studying whether writing your personal story and then rewriting it more positively leads to changes in behavior and as a result in mood.

To understand how this could work it is important to realise that your life story, your personal narrative has an impact on how you see yourself and the world. This viewpoint is not always correct and will be colored by everything you have experienced, seen and heard up to that particular point in time.

The researchers at Duke believe that by writing and editing your own narrative you will be able to change your self-perception. This will allow you to identify obstacles, learn to understand them and thereby how to overcome them. This will create positive change for the future.

One of the studies undertaken at Duke was with a group of freshman students who were suffering from anxiety about grades and their suitability for student life.

One group of students were shown videos of previous freshmen who recounted their own stories of doubt and fear and of how they ultimately overcame these and succeeded. By seeing these successful narrative changes in other students the group were able to recognise their negative thought patterns and to realise that they would pass in time. That they too could improve their grades over time and become successful students.

This group of students did ultimately show significant improvement in both their grades and retention rate. A control group of students who did not have access to the video stories showed a higher dropout rate and lower grades.

Timothy D. Wilson, lead author of the Duke University study and Professor of Psychology at the University of Virginia said,

"These writing interventions can really nudge people from a self-defeating way of thinking into a more optimistic cycle that reinforces itself."

Writing increases your sense of self-identity (where and who you are now) and of what you want to become and where you want to be in the future.

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