2025-09-20
6 分钟Hi, I'm Sam. Welcome to Radio Headspace.
If you've listened to my past episodes,
you know that I love research, especially about the human brain.
And I was recently pouring over some research that attested to the importance of our personal narrative as a measure of our mental health.
Now, our personal narrative reflects how we tell the story of our lives,
the meaningful moments and big transitions that we've struggled with and grown from.
When our personal narrative is cohesive,
reflects that we've thought deeply about our life experiences and have made sense of it all.
When our narrative is incohesive, it reflects our blind spots,
unexplored and unprocessed moments and memories in our lives that may feel too daunting to confront.
The fact that a cohesive narrative reflects mental health makes total sense.
It's a reflection of how much time and energy we've devoted to knowing and understanding ourselves,
making sense of experiences and challenges, and getting clear on how we've grown from them.
In my mindfulness teacher training at UCLA,
we dedicated a good deal of time to a practice called wayward-seeking mind.
It sounds mysterious, but in essence,
it involves giving each person our full attention while they describe their life story,
giving their personal narrative uninterrupted to whatever extent they want to.
After someone shares their story, we can ask questions about what we've heard.
and that helps the person to reflect on their personal narrative.