And What Do They Tell You?
Which narratives do you return to repeatedly — and what do they tell you?
A weekly question to ponder what matters in your WorkLife.
Each question is drawn from the School of WorkLife Question Banks.
This is the question I want you to sit with today.
Which narratives do you return to repeatedly — and what do they tell you?
I return to the story of how this work found me.
Before I knew I was looking for it.
It’s not one story.
It’s three.
A success story.
A failure story.
A passion story.
None of them is the whole story without the others.
My story is featured in The Stories Behind the Stories: Aisling aka Carmel — if you haven’t already, reading that story will help you identify your own success, failure and passion stories and go deeper with this question.
My Origin Story
To demonstrate what I mean, let me take you back to my first experience of this narrative.
Let me return to Ireland.
To my failure story first.
Because it was my first workshop about job search— and because I was anxious — I did what I always do in situations like this.
I over-prepared.
CV writing.
Interview prep.
Job search techniques.
Everything technical.
Everything scripted.
Everything prescriptive.
But in over-preparing, I had also — without knowing it — given myself permission to let go.
And that’s where my success story begins.
Because the room I walked into was full of people who had lost their jobs to the economic downturn.
Their stories were written on their faces before they said a word.
Broken confidence.
Diminished self-worth.
The carefully prepared plan suddenly seemed irrelevant.
So I put it down.
I asked each person to talk about their WorkLife achievements.
Not the polished CV version.
The real ones.
The things they had forgotten.
Dismissed.
Or never recognised as special.
As each person spoke, the room transformed.
Only then could we tackle the practical elements — CVs, interviews, salary negotiations — from a place of clarity about their worth.
On my long journey home, exhausted yet energised — I began to understand my passion story.
I had found my gift.
Though I couldn’t articulate it perfectly then, I knew my purpose was helping others navigate their WorkLife journeys.
The Return
These are the narratives I return to repeatedly — all three stories.
And each time I come back, they tell me something different.
Something clarifies.
Something surfaces.
Something shifts.
Because that’s what returning to narratives does.
It isn’t repetition.
It’s excavation.
Each time — you find something you didn’t find before.
A detail that matters more than it did.
A connection you hadn’t seen.
A reason that goes deeper than the one you had.
A Recent Return
Returning to the narratives in recent months, I found something new.
I saw the value — not just in telling the three stories — but in the questions they generated.
Questions built from everything I had come to understand about each of the stories.
About how failure, success, and passion — held together — reveal something no single story can.
And a way of bringing that understanding to coaches, facilitators, and leaders.
To the people who could carry it further than I could reach alone.
That became the question banks — one for every programme I create.
A resource for the people who work with others.
Today’s Return
And today — returning again — I found something else.
That this doesn’t only belong with coaches, facilitators and leaders.
It belongs with individuals too.
With anyone who wants to sit with their own narratives.
Return to them.
Excavate them.
Find what they didn’t find before.
Each return.
Something new.
So the question isn’t just mine.
It’s yours.
The question I want you to sit with today.
Which narratives do you return to repeatedly — and what do they tell you?
Today’s question is from Creating Three Fundamental Stories That Define Your Identity: Success, Failure and Passion Stories Question Bank from the section When Someone Recognises Storytelling Matters.
Deepen the practice with the WorkLife Compass Guided Programme:
The Art of WorkLife Storytelling: Creating Three Fundamental Stories That Define Your Identity Programme Crafting Success, Failure, and Passion Narratives with Powerful Beginnings, Engaging Middles, and Memorable Endings
Work With Me: Commissioned learning resources, speaking engagements, and organisational partnerships.
Support This Work: Your support makes a difference and helps me to continue creating resources that are accessible to everyone. Thank you. Carmel
Listen to the audio version here:
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