Your Life as a Character Development Workout

How Antagonists Help Us Strengthen Emotional and Mental Muscles

Does the same type of character keep showing up in your life and pushing your buttons? These people may look nothing alike, but they keep presenting you with more or less the same frustrations and issues. Or perhaps there’s a negative situation you keep finding yourself struggling with: picking up the slack and getting no credit, dating high-maintenance women or neglectful men. Why do the same things keep appearing in your storyline?

In my new book, “Step Out of Your Story: Writing Exercises to Reframe and Transform Your Life,” out now, I recommend looking at life as a narrative and exploring it through writing. And every good story needs conflict to move it along, right? While we may not like or appreciate antagonists, they play an instrumental role in shaping our plotlines and our character. Think of them as personal trainers who push us beyond our perceived limitations to develop our flabby, underutilized emotional muscles.

http://www.metro.us/kim-schneiderman/turn-your-life-into-a-hero-s-journey/zsJofa—hvj0i3tmvfXOQ/

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Reframe Your Narrative About Challenging Relationships

A 10-week Online Course with DailyOM

Tired of people pushing your buttons? For as little as $19, you can liberate yourself from self-defeating patterns around people who trigger you. Register here to receive 10 weekly insights, writing exercises, and guided meditations you can access whenever you want.

Lesson 1: Soul Narrative vs. Self-Defeating Story
Lesson 2:  Exploring the Power of Choice and Voice
Lesson 3:  Your Adversary as Your Personal Trainer
Lesson 4:  Embracing Your Strengths and Superpowers
Lesson 5:  Getting to Know Your Inner Antagonist(s)
Lesson 6:  Dialoguing with the Parts that Get Triggered
Lesson 7: The Yoga of Character Development
Lesson 8: Supporting Characters, Tools and Resources
Lesson 9: Giving Ourselves the Blessing We Seek
Lesson 10: The Golden Happy Ending

A FULL HOUSE AT THE NYC BOOK SIGNING!

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Psychotherapist and freelance journalist Kim Schneiderman utilizes research-based methods to help people who are stuck – in a dead-end job, relationship, of life stage – imagine themselves as the star of their own stories with the power to reclaim their personal narratives. Drawing on the elements of a story that many of us learned in high school (premise, scene, plot, conflict, climax, resolution), readers will assign titles to different chapters of their lives, observe recurring themes, identify supporting characters, and explore how conflict creates opportunities for personal growth that can lead to a meaningful resolution. They will also be asked to examine how the decisions we make, both big and small, affect our storyline – the relationships we choose, how we spend our day, and how we nourish ourselves, physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually.

Unlike most self-help writing workbooks, most of the exercises in Step Out of Your Story are framed in the third-person voice, freeing readers to see beyond their usual point of view. Psychological research suggests that people are more likely to view their lives favorably when they see themselves as characters in a story. In a 2005 Columbia University study reported in the Journal of Psychological Science, test subjects who spoke about difficult chapters in their lives in the third person narrative displayed more confidence and optimism than those who recalled bad memories in the first person. By retracing their steps from the perch of the third-person narrative, people were more likely to regard their problems as something outside themselves – challenges they had conquered or adversaries they had defeated - instead of character flaws. Additionally, the perception that they had overcome obstacles left them feeling more confident to face the future.