
Aging Shapes Narrative Identity - dnetesn
http://nautil.us/blog/how-aging-shapes-narrative-identity
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topkai22
I'm not even positive is the same concept as the author is referring to, but
long ago someone told me "(almost) no one views themselves as a villain in the
story of their life"

Remembering one concept has been incredibly helpful with difficult situations
over the years. When someone is behaving in a way I find problematic, is
opposing what I find is right, or generally acting "crazy", it is incredibly
useful to remind myself that, in their telling of the story, they will somehow
be the hero. Spending time figuring out how that can be has given me valuable
insight and let me find win-win solutions that were seeming intractable

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pessimizer
> they will somehow be the hero.

Or the victim. A lot of actual villains think of themselves as having been
_made_ a villain. The story is often that they realized through their own
victimization that non-villains were just prey, or that the reason they are
bad now is because someone or something destroyed all of the good within them.

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topkai22
True, and important because it can cause awful outcomes, but in my experience
people are generally just operating from a different set of priors,
perspectives, and incentives.

As they say about paranoia, sometimes they really are out to get you. But you
probably shouldn’t live life assuming that all the time.

~~~
LocalH
That's the problem with behavioral discussions - at least amongst the general
public at large, there is almost an epidemic inability to analyze a situation
from any other perspective other than one's own. Unfortunately, many of those
people are also politicians and lawmakers.

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DoreenMichele
They give the idea of _positivity bias_ a fairly negative framing, like it's a
form of denial rather than a genuine change of perception about things.

I've generally tended towards an optimistic bias and that is in part because I
don't see things in black and white terms. I've long said things like "A stove
can burn you and a knife can cut you, but you also need both to put a meal on
the table."

That's not some Pollyanna view with rose colored glasses. That's an honest
assessment that anything that contains power to accomplish something contains
power to do good or harm.

As you get better at extracting the positives, the occasional burn looms less
large in your mind. You rejigger those calculations and spend more time
appreciating the many hot meals you ate and less time complaining about the
occasional blister that was involved.

Young people sometimes take good things for granted because a lot of the
positives in their lives were given to them by their parents. If you stop
seeing it as a given, you are more grateful that anything ever goes right and
your mental accounting shifts.

It's not denial or white washing. It's just a change in perspective.

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paulhodge
Nice article. Nautilus is terrific. The research here isn’t all new though, it
goes back to Erikson's stages of psychosocial development. I love checking in
on the stages every once in a while, it helps me figure out what goals would
make me happy. Also helps to better understand people who are at a different
age range.

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yakubin
I'm not sure if it's my English, but I cannot parse this title into anything
meaningful. Could just as well be "Turtles Run Bicycle Lambda".

