Your Personal Mythology

The following exercise provides a useful insight into our own mythologies, what we are and how we represent ourselves to ourselves and the world around us. You may also wish to do the following exercise:

• Take a clean piece of paper and draw a horizontal line on the page. The start of the line is your birth, the end of the line is your death
• (b)|---------X------------------------|(d)
• Mark with an ‘X’ on the line where you are now
• Write down 10 (or more if you like) experiences have characterised your life up until the ‘X’
• Write down 10 (or more if you like) incidents that you wish to characterise your life between ‘X’ and the end
• Can you change the way you speak and think of these experiences? Notice what happens and how you feel about yourself when you start to change the experiences that have and will characterise your life.
• The last point is probably the most interesting one. Many people will start to argue that they cannot determine the things that will happen to them. If you are one of these people, ask yourself what circumstances in your life have led you to think this way?