We all have a story to share. The good news for us sharing those stories is that we can get some perspective on our lives through our stories. When we share a story with a trusted friend we break our closed system and add in the input of others. When an athlete works with a sport psychologist, the sport psychologist helps the athlete to edit stories of the past, present and future. The arc of our stories can change with the help of a sport psychologist because in our sharing we can see where we might have gone wrong in our experiences. We can see where we might have jumped to conclusions, seen things only in black and white, dismissed genuine information and saw troubles where there may not have been any. We can learn to see things differently just like Ebenezer Scrooge in A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens
Dickens, Scrooge and Changing Our Lives
He went to church, and walked about the streets, and watched the people hurrying to and fro, and patted the children on the head, and questioned the beggars, and looked down into the kitchens of houses, and up to the windows, and found that everything could yield him pleasure. He had never dreamed that any walk—that anything—could give him so much happiness. [Ebenezer discovers] “I am not the man I was. I will not be the man I must have been but for this intercourse. . . . I will live in the Past, Present, and the Future. The Spirits of all Three shall strive within me. I will not shut out the lessons that they teach.” (1966, p. 211)
Cozolino, Louis. The Neuroscience of Human Relationships: Attachment and the Developing Social Brain (Second Edition) (Norton Series on Interpersonal Neurobiology): 0 (p. 411). W. W. Norton & Company. Kindle Edition.