Writing life stories is an inside job.

It's a conversation with yourself, not like a phonecall with your best girlfriend for 2 hours. It's talking with yourself and discovering where that can lead you. It gives you the opportunity to get acquainted with your own true best self, the self that solves the problems, the self that takes the hard look at the real issue, the self that transcends the past and moves into the future.

Writing your life story means that you go inside yourself and explore what's there. You take a nice long look and not just glance backwards as you rocket to the next event. Mostly, we don't consider this about ourselves. Mostly we just keep on going with the lists of things to do.

But if we take a moment to look back and see where we've come from, then we might be amazed at what we find. For example, 5 years ago, did you imagine what your life would be like today? What happened in the last 5 years? Are you amazed? Are you glad, or sad? What changes occurred?

Take a moment and write about this.

And when you are looking, look for the insights.

Take 5 minutes and write about 3 insights you had during the last 5 years.

Then sit back and expand on that. What have you learned? Does it influence what you are doing today? Why?

You could just start out with the words, 'I realized... "

Writing life stories is an inside job.