A Guide to Sharing Personal Experiences and Improving your Well-being
Expressing oneself can be just as satisfying as it can be challenging, especially for someone who has not done it before. It may be seen as strange or self-centered or even pointless for someone who may not see themselves as important enough to require sharing their stories. But one thing to always keep in mind is that everyone is important enough to have their voices heard and their stories told. For their own well-being and for the impacts it can have on them emotionally and psychologically.
Emotional Benefits of Sharing Personal Experiences
There are a handful of ways in which sharing our personal experiences benefits our social standing and our ability to communicate with others.
Connection and Belonging - Forming deep mutual relationships with others is a key factor in feeling like you belong and feeling like you are surrounded by people who are just like you. Looking for a group of people or even one person who shares a similar hobby to you can help you find extra encouragement to keep going.
Validation - By forming bonds with people and sharing your experiences, you learn how many people may be going through similar issues. You’ll feel less alone and your sympathy for others will grow as well.
Learning and Growth - The act of sharing or even simply writing your stories down helps you to grow and to better understand yourself. Sometimes we do not know the way we feel about something until we get it all out of our system and can look at it through different, more understanding, eyes.
Culture and Community - Communities can easily be built through the stories people have the courage to tell. By getting the right people together and giving them the opportunity to share their experiences, we can create a more empathetic, mobilized and powerful community.
Like any other positive change, sharing one’s personal experiences can have a large positive impact on not only the person sharing, but the people listening and it has the potential to make much more of a difference than one may think they have the power to.
Mental Health Benefits of Sharing Personal Experiences
There are also several ways in which sharing experiences can benefit you on a deeper level, one you may not notice while sharing or listening to others share.
Improves Listening Skills and Imagination - When focusing on others with all of your senses, you become a better and more active listener.
Increases Empathy and Memory Retention - Connecting with people’s stories allows your brain to release oxytocin, which creates feelings of empathy and helps strengthen our relationships. Furthermore, Jennifer Aaker, a marketing professor at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, says that people remember information when it is weaved into stories “up to 22 times more than facts alone”.
Increases Positive Emotions - How we tell our stories can impact how we feel about them and how we feel about ourselves. A study conducted with hospitalized children found that after one storytelling session there was an increase in oxytocin and a decrease in cortisol and pain and overall more positive children.
Helps Us Build From Success and Failure - Looking at your experiences in both positive and negative lights can impact you for the better. Looking at them from a successful standpoint allows people to see how they were able to achieve their goals and looking at them from a negative standpoint can allow you to look at your attempts from another angle, seeing the benefits in making your way through the challenging situation and encourage you to do better next time.
Creativity, Writing and Mental Health
While any creative expression can be helpful in terms of bettering your mental health, writing has been distinctly recognized for its positive impact and its therapeutic benefits. Writing can have valuable healing qualities on those who partake in it, serving as a tool to help people process their thoughts and emotions, develop a deeper insight into their experiences and find a stronger sense of self-identity and empowerment.
It can also help people deal with larger issues they are dealing with. During the COVID-19 pandemic, a study was conducted by David Haosen Xiang and Alisha Moon Yi, using poetry as a healing tool. Through creative writing, individuals found solace, meaning and connection during a time when all of those things were increasingly difficult to come across. Poetry acted as a form or self-expression and built a more sympathetic and resilient community.
How To Start Telling Personal Experiences
Regardless of why you may think your stories do not matter or that no one will want to hear them, a lack of experience with writing, a perceived lack of important insight to give, you should always strive to let your experiences be shared and known to as many like minded people as you can. And if you do not know where to start, all you have to do is think about your goal and your story starters.
Your goal can include various things and your writing does not have to be award worthy to accomplish your goal. Whether you are trying to motivate a team, give people hope for the future, guide behavior and actions in a certain direction, get them to think differently, or to break down the walls and show that you are all one in the same, goal setting is an important aspect to consider when sharing your personal experiences.
Your story starters, assuming you do not have a story idea already, can be helpful hands that will guide you into the experience you want to explore. Some helpful ones include:
What’s the biggest challenge you’ve faced and how did you overcome it?
What’s the best lesson you learned from a teacher, mentor or other influential person?
Who are your personal heroes and why?
What is it about your work or life that gives you the greatest satisfaction?
Was there a moment you knew this was the right job for you?
How do you feel you’re making a difference in the world in ways large or small?
What did you want to be when you were growing up, and how does that square with what you’re doing now?
If you have children, what do they think you do?
You do not have to follow these in order to successfully tell your story but they can be a good place to start if the idea of sharing your personal experiences seems daunting and insurmountable.
Everybody deserves to have their voice be heard and their stories be told. Even if you may think you have nothing of value to say or no impact to make on the world, by simply sitting down and getting your experiences out in front of you, you have the ability to better yourself and better your community.
What personal stories would you be comfortable sharing with others? Let us know, we would love to hear about the adversities you’ve overcome.