Your Mystory Table of Contents

To build at least a workingTable of Contents for your MyStory tales, after identifying your recurring, dominant Life Themes, you can make a list, for each of your key themes, of Shaping Events that you associate with that Theme.

I repeat below from the last post a simple, tried and true way to identify and name your dominant Life Themes:

1. Reflect and compose a list of significant events that have “shaped you as the person you have become.” You can include a phrase or sentence about each event to remind you of its significance. Please note: This does not have to be a “complete” list, and the events or situations on your list do not need to have been earth shattering, just significant.
   
2. After you have composed your list of significant “shaping” events or situations, read back through this list several times, and SORT these events into KINDS of events or situations. (For example: Family, Travel, Work, Education, Spirituality, etcetera).
   
3. Reflect on the TYPES of events you have identified, and assign your own personally meaningful NAMES to each of these recurring these Kinds of Events. (E.G.: Disappointments, Relationship Matters; also you can still include standard sorts of names like Family, Relationships, Romance, Work, etcetera).

So now, for each of your Life Themes, you can reflect and identify (list) some key ‘shaping’ events or situations that you associate with that theme. This will likely include several of the events you used to identify the Theme, but you can also include other events or situations that come to mind when you reflect on that Theme in your life. Consider providing meaningful titles for these events that you will be writing about.

images are from pixabay.com

In developing your MyStory Table of Contents with some of the most meaningful events related to your recurring Themes, remember that a Shaping Event is any event or situation “that has influenced the person you have become.” Some shaping events are so monumental as to be Critical Events, events or situations that have been so impactful in your life that you feel you were a different person before and after that event occurred.

A sampling of topics to represent this second step from my own MyStory Themes (but, of course, use your own) would include:

FAMILY

• My Mother, a Hero (two tales)
• Orphaned?

BIG MOVES

• Using Big Moves to Change Up (Finding Myself)
• Crossing the Great Waters

PETS

• Yellow Eyes
• My Mother, the Cat!
• The Running Dog (Losing Elly)
• Sophie’s Diet
• Sophie’s Dogwalking Song Lyrics
• Ariel Pegasus

TURNING POINTS

• B.E. and A.E.: The Bus Ride “Home”
• Acceptance of Change
• Fencing Lessons
• Zuni

Your Turn

Using the steps outlined above, go ahead and begin to develop your own MyStory Table of Contents. This is only a start, a working Table of Contents that you can add to and build on as you begin composing your MyStory tales.  Next, we will start moving through some common Life Themes and you can begin to write out your stories. As you do so, the focus will be on the lessons and most vital memories each of these events or situations have added in value to your unique, mythic MyStory legacy.