APPENDIX A - Personal Myth Analysis

A better life results from having a better myth. In the Happiness chapter I recommended fixing your myth as a way to improve your life, starting with having a look at the myth you are presently living. Myths are not usually obvious at a casual glance, but careful analysis will yield results. Here is how to figure out your myth well enough to be useful.

Your myth is enormous. You have been adding to it every day of your life; everyone you ever met is a character in it, everything that ever happened in your life is part of the plot. You have more myth than you can ever know. Fortunately you don’t need to know every detail to be able to work with it. The major characters, actions, moral demonstrations and other story elements are all accessible.

What Do You Want to Know?
Before you begin, ask yourself what you want to know. Do you want to know how to change the course of your life, perhaps have more friends, free time, creativity, or be happier, smarter, more successful? Perhaps there is a specific behavior change you would like to make. Maybe you would like to know yourself better and have more appreciation for who you are. Whatever you want, keep that in mind as we dive into your myth.

Focus your analysis on what you want to know about your myth, but remember that everything is connected to everything else and clues can come from anywhere.

Heroes and Villains
We shall start with the outside and work inward. Before we look at you, let’s look at the other people in your life. Who are your heroes? In what ways do they surpass normal people? What ideals do they represent? Who are your villains? What negative qualities do they demonstrate? Both heroes and villains symbolize morals that are important in your myth. What are those morals, those statements about the larger reality?

Who are your alphas? Who are those people, dead or alive, directly or through their expressions such as books and other works, who you idealize and who feed material to your myth and keep it moving forward? What is it about each alpha that moves you? Why are these people your alphas and not others? How much and in what areas are you alpha to your own myth?

What are your favorite stories you have heard or read or seen enacted? What questions did they answer and what morals did they demonstrate? What works of art move you? What music do you like? What morals does it confirm?

What games do you play or enjoy watching? What is the moral package of each?

Groups
Of what groups are you a member? Make a list of them all. You have a country, a race, an ethnicity, a language, a family, and friends. You probably have a job, a church or other religious organization, as well as various social and special interest groups.

What are the stated morals of each group; what does each one say about the world and that group’s place in it? What are the unstated morals? This question is harder. In every group there are ways the members act and other ways they do not. Figure out what the behavior norms of the group are. Then determine what morals are being demonstrated by those behaviors.

Now look at yourself. Which of the group’s stated and unstated morals do you live by? Which of the behavior norms do you follow or enforce on others? Which do you ignore? Which do you violate?

Try to get a sense of the stories each group is enacting. What questions are being answered? What recurring obstacles does each group face? What morals are demonstrated by the group’s actions as a result of each obstacle? When the group’s story line reached a climax, what happened? What moral packages are typical of members of that group? What is your role in the group?

Look at key individuals in your life. Who are they? Family members? Friends? Co-workers? What are their roles and morals? What morals do you usually demonstrate in the presence of each? What could you not do without them?

We all have a cast of characters in our minds who watch and react to everything we do. Who is your mental audience? What are their morals? Are they generally supporting or critical of your efforts?

Now you should have a fairly good picture of the group component of your myth. You can now begin to explore the personal side of your myth. Everything about your life is part of your expression and enactment of your myth, so anything about you and your surroundings can offer clues.

Possessions
Look at your possessions. They are not the same assortment as anyone else’s collection of stuff. Some of the difference is due to chance, but mostly it is due to myth. Everything you ever chose to acquire made sense in your myth when you got it. We find it easiest to throw away those things that no longer do, for without mythic relevance they are reduced to clutter.

Things we use are props for our roles and thus can remind us of the various characters we play. Pay special attention to those things you no longer use but cannot bring yourself to throw away. They remind you of key periods, characters, or moral demonstrations in your myth. Your continued possession of these items reminds you of those important story elements and maintains their relevance, so such possessions can reveal ongoing mythic trends.

Costume
Look at your clothes. They are your costume for your roles. What do they say about your status and your place in the world? What do they say about what kind of person you see yourself to be? Your car also acts as a combination stage set and costume for various public actions you perform. Why do you drive the car you do? When you are in them, both your car and your clothes create moral demonstrations which further reveal your myth.

Beauty
What seems beautiful to you? If I ask you to think of something beautiful, what do you think of? What about it made it first choice in your thoughts? Beauty represents ideals. Which ideals of yours come to mind?

Emotions
Your emotions are driven by the relation of your myth to your experience, so your emotions give clues about how your myth compares to life. What is your usual emotional state? Would you say you are basically happy, angry, guilty, anxious, sad, loving, fearful, or what? If you don’t know what to make of a situation, what do you feel?

What emotional state do you usually go into when things go wrong? Do you cry in grief? Do you get angry? Do you laugh at your own misfortune? Do you welcome the challenge of the larger obstacle? What is your reaction? What were your major emotions from childhood and adolescence?

What are your anxieties? Do any reach the level of obsessions? What are those questions you find it hard to put to rest, questions that nag at you even when you are trying to do something else? Your anxieties are in contact with vital unresolved issues in your myth; otherwise they would not bother you.

What are your fears? Compare each fear to the actual level of risk. Be careful in your assessment of risk; we commonly exaggerate our estimate of risk to justify our fears. You will find that some things you fear too much while others you fear too little. Irrational levels of fear, whether too large or too small, connect to deeper morals and questions that you may not be aware of. Sometimes a fear of a low-risk action is so strong the fear cannot be overcome to allow you to act. That fear is probably symbolic, a stand-in for a bigger fear, too scary to acknowledge. Find it and find out why.

Image
Who do you see yourself to be? How would you describe yourself as a dramatic character? How would others describe you? How would you describe the character you would like to be? How would you like others to describe you? Your self-image is your idea of the character you are playing in your myth. Your image to others is their idea of the character you play in their myth. How do these two compare and how do these compare with your ideal images for yourself?

What parts of who you are does no one else understand? What aspects of your identity do you keep hidden, that no one has ever seen? What about you do you value that no one else cares about? What have you lived or created that is completely new, that is unlike anything from before?

What aspects of yourself are you proud of? How much do you make these known? What embarrasses you about yourself and how do you hide that part? What larger qualities do your prides and embarrassments symbolize? What morals do they demonstrate?

What are your fantasies? What do you dream about? Are there any recurring patterns in either?

Triumphs and Failures
What are the triumphs in your life, the events where you prevailed where you might not have, where your myth progressed against the odds? Why did you make the effort there where others might not? What advantage toward further mythic progress did you gain? What moral demonstrations were at stake? How did your moral package change?

What have you done in your life that you might not have done that nevertheless made a big difference, that you have always been glad you did? Why did you do it and why might you not have done it?

Now look at your failures. Was failure a foregone conclusion in a hopeless situation, or could right action have prevailed? What did you learn from your failures and how did they change your moral package?

What have you done that you wish you hadn’t, that if you could you would take back? Why did it seem like the right thing to do at the time? How would your life have been different if you had not done it? How would your life be different today?

Related to the topic of triumphs and failures are three further questions. What do you brag about, when, and to whom? What do you complain about, when, and to whom? What are you embarrassed about, when, and with whom?

Forgiving
Now and then we all suffer slights and injustices. Do you get more or less than your share? Some we forgive; others become the basis for grudges and resentments. What separates what you have forgiven from what you have not? Is there a pattern to the moral demonstrations you forgive or not? Do you find some moral demonstrations unforgivable? Your myth is strongly committed to morals opposite the unforgivable ones.

Obstacles
What kinds of obstacles fill your myth? There are patterns to the problems you face, to those things that stand between you and your goals. Other people have different obstacles because their myths and thus their lives are different. Your obstacles are not inevitable. Why do you have the ones you do? Do you usually overcome them or are you often thwarted? What questions are answered and what morals are demonstrated by your typical obstacles?

Do you often have dark moments, where the obstacles gang up on you and leave you no apparent way out? Such situations in stories often precede the climax. The tension is high because the main question is on the line. All could be won or lost. Do your dark moments precede a climax? Do you find such times an exciting challenge? Do you structure your life to create dark moments from which you can heroically battle your way out?

Do you create climaxes in your life or do you keep things on a more even level? Do you come alive in a crisis? When your myth reaches a climax, do you usually come out on top or do you tend to get defeated? What kind of climax do you do best in? What kind defeats you?

Questions and Answers
What questions drive your myth forward? What questions lead to answers you need in order to develop and demonstrate your moral package?

We all have ongoing questions that we live to answer. Can you be as big a success as your father? Will anyone ever understand you? Can you be loved for who you are rather than what you symbolize? How can you get the respect you deserve? These are examples. What are your questions?

The questions of childhood will differ from those of adolescence and those of adulthood, yet some questions we acquire as young children and keep answering our entire lives. What questions have been important in your life? Which have been long-term? What answers has your myth given you? Have these answers changed over time? Are you satisfied with the answers? What morals were demonstrated by the answers you got? Did they change or confirm your moral package?

Repetition
Everyone’s life includes a lot of repetition. Much of it is due to the basic routine of life. Look at the rest. Do you find yourself over and over facing similar obstacles with similar characters, forcing you to take similar actions? Do you feel like you are not getting ahead, that your myth is bogged down or stuck in an endless loop? What story question are you addressing in these situations and what answer do you keep getting? Are you living to reconfront the question until you get the answer you want instead of accepting the painful truth? What morals do you so much want to see demonstrated that you keep trying over and over?

Turning Points
What have been the turning points in your life? Your myth changes direction, getting answers to some of your story questions and replacing them with new ones. Some subplots end and others begin. Sometimes turning points coincide with standard life transitions such as a graduation or a wedding, but many happen over small events you might not have noticed at the time. What were they and why did they have such effect? What morals were involved?

Action
Are you mostly active or passive? Do you take initiative or do you react to events fate sends your way? Does your life happen to you, or do you make it happen? Having control over your myth, your life, rests on your ability and willingness to take effective action. This does not mean you have to do everything yourself. Influencing others to act on your behalf is often a better strategy.

You probably have a stock series of actions you use in nearly all cases. These make up your personal style. Whether or not they are of optimum effectiveness is less important to you than how well they work to confirm your moral package. What kinds of actions are typical of your behavior?

Morals
Throughout this guide to analysis, your morals have received much attention. They are the key to your myth. Stories are ultimately about morals. The questions and answers that determine the plot are a setup for the moral demonstrations.

Morals are at the core of what stories are about yet we are often only dimly aware of their existence. The parts of stories we feel are most real are the characters, obstacles, and actions because we experience them directly. The story’s questions and answers occupy a middle ground in our awareness.

We live with the characters, obstacles, and actions. We live for the answers to the questions. We live by the morals demonstrated.

By now you should have determined most of your major morals. Their priority will shift in your moral package as your character plays different roles. You have probably found a few morals that contradict each other. Sometimes one will be dominant, sometimes another. Very few of us are morally consistent.

Write a list of the major morals influencing your behavior. Try to put them in the order of priority in your life. If the priorities change in different circumstances, make a moral priority list for each.

Compare your moral package with that of each of the main characters in your myth. Note which morals are similar and which are not. How do these compare with areas of compatibility and conflict between you?

Your Story
You now have a lot of information about your myth. Write this up into a story, the story you are living. Make it a well-told story, both truthful and engaging. Decide what material will go into the story and what will not. Do not edit your material based on making yourself look good or bad, but on what makes a coherent story true to the myth you live.

What is the main story question that organizes your life? What other questions must you answer? What obstacles stand between you and your answers? What questions do the obstacles raise and how do the answers you get from your actions to overcome those obstacles support the answering of the primary questions? Include in your story those obstacles most germane to the progress toward the primary answers as well as the obstacles necessary to make a logical progression of events.

Use similar judgment in choosing which characters from your life to include in your story. Include the characters without which the story as it needs to be told could not be told. As with the obstacles, the cast of characters is dependent on your judgment about what makes the best story.

Read the story. Is this the myth you want to live? If not, fix your myth. See the Happiness chapter for advice on how to do that.

Analyzing your myth will help you understand who you are and what your life is about, but if your goal is to change yourself, your life, and your surroundings, analysis by itself is not enough. You must take action. You must do, you must act, differently than you do now. More of the same will tend to get you more of the same. It’s up to you.