How Separating Internal and External Change Can Transform Your Writing—and Your Life
I learned something recently (from a Memoir Mapping Masterclass by the Hungry Authors duo Ariel Curry and Liz Morrow) that feels simultaneously mind-blowing and also like something I’ve known for ages.
Here it is:
A bittersweet ending results from the combination of a negative external change plus a positive internal change.
Let me explain.
Every story operates on two levels: internal and external. The external is the plot. It’s what happens to the main character and what the main character does or says. Action movies are primarily external: there’s an external goal (defeat the bad guy, save the treasure, etc.) and the conflict that drives the story is external.
Internal conflict occurs within the main character’s heart and mind. It might have to do with the main character learning something, growing or maturing, accepting or releasing something, etc. This internal journey is influenced by the external, but it is not determined by it.
And this is where it gets super interesting: the internal transformation can be positive, even if the external conflict resolves negatively.
For example, maybe the romantic relationship falls apart, but the main character learns how to love herself. Or maybe the competition is lost, but the main character discovers that her value isn’t determined by her performance. While the main character may be disappointed by how things turn out externally, she is encouraged by and happy about her internal change.
This is the key to creating those bittersweet story arcs that Enneagram 4s like me love so much, but the reason I really love this concept is what it means when we apply it to our own lives.
In my Unearthing Beauty class I teach my students to think of themselves as the main characters of their own stories and to search for the internal transformations that have resulted from their experiences—especially from the challenging ones. What happens next can be life changing.
When we learn to separate the external from the internal, we are able to turn any tragedy into a triumph. You see, we can’t control what happens to us, and we can’t control the results of what we do or say. But we can control how we respond internally to those things.
As holocaust survivor Viktor Frankl (author of Man’s Search for Meaning, which is a must-read if you haven’t yet) says,
“Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.”
We can choose to learn and grow from anything and everything that happens to us. And when we do that? We make every event into a story of redemption.
This truth has offered me comfort and inspiration over the last month as I’ve navigated some difficult interpersonal issues. I’ve felt misunderstood and mistreated—bringing up old traumas from adolescence, which is always so fun—and I’ve also been confronted by mistakes I’ve made. I desperately want to make it all better, but while I can take some steps toward reconciliation and clarification, I cannot resolve it all. And I hate that. But what I can do is make sure my internal journey resolves positively.
Instead of focusing on what I can’t change—the feelings and attitudes of others, what has happened in the past, the way people may judge me or discuss me—I can choose to focus on what I can learn from all of this. I can choose to use this challenging time to show me how I can grow more into the likeness of Christ, renewed in humility and exhorted to greater maturity.
I can apologize and then forgive myself for my mistakes (as my girls have learned to say, “Only God is perfect!”) and consider how to better avoid them in the future. I can practice gratitude for the friends I have who do know my heart and love me as I am, and I can accept that misunderstanding and hurt are inevitable parts of our fallen world, releasing my desire for perfect harmony in all my relationships. I can share my struggles with a few trusted confidants and, as has been the case for me this time, find beautiful parallels of experience and growth, allowing the struggle to become a point of connection, the pain transformed into purpose.
This is what it means to re-write our stories, as I discuss in my personal narrative classes. No matter what happens externally, we can work to uncover the beauty that waits within even the hardest circumstances.
Use it in your writing: Create a realistic, non-Hallmark story arc by allowing some or all of the external conflicts not to resolve perfectly but showing clear, positive transformation internally for the main character. Begin by naming the internal and external conflicts in your story.
Use it in your life: Search for what you can learn and how you can grow whenever you’re faced with a difficult circumstance. This doesn’t mean ignoring the pain or struggle, but it does mean moving through and beyond it. Writing the event as a story in which the main character (you) transforms for the better can be a powerful exercise to help you to do this.
If you’d like gentle guidance and targeted exercises to help you do both of the above, consider joining the waitlist for my next cohort of my Unearthing Beauty Personal Narrative class. Click here to learn more.
If you’re going through a difficult time right now, take courage! It can be hard to see it in the midst of things, but good can come out of this. Begin by acknowledging (perhaps writing down) all the negative feelings and thoughts you’re having. Then, when you’re ready, ask yourself what you might learn from this experience. This does NOT mean you necessarily are to blame or even did anything wrong, and it certainly doesn’t mean there is anything wrong with you. But I have found that our strengths and gifts can sometimes play a part in producing negative external situations. So ask yourself, in what ways might I have contributed, perhaps inadvertently, to this circumstance? Then, consider, how might I have handled things differently in retrospect? What insights about myself or about the world can I glean from this? By focusing on your response, you can re-claim a sense of agency and begin to move beyond the pain with renewed purpose.
If you’re able to do this or have done so before, I’d be honored to hear about it. Share it in the comments below or email me at mara@maraeller.com. I’ll be cheering you on.
