As a writer of psychological murder mysteries ...
I ponder this question often. In order to write a believable story, I need create believable characters. Psychology is the study of human behavior and crucial to my writing.
Starting from the day we were born, there are many, many limitations placed on individuals.
Besides cultural expectations that often fly in the face of our natural inclinations or the multiple limitations embedded in our DNA, our brains are pretty damn good at sabotaging us as well.
Fairly early in life, we latch on to a story that soon becomes our story for a lifetime. This story in part defines our world view as well as our self image. Our brains replay the story over and over again on demand.
I can often pinpoint another person's story after several in-depth conversations.
It took me longer to recognize my own story. I'm sure my husband could've identified my story much sooner. How likely would that have proven to be a helpful effort on his part? Not very likely at all. Unfortunately, our big brains also tend to block any information that contradicts our beliefs.
So why do our brains create these stories?
The human brain is designed for efficiency. The stories it assigns merely provides a quick and easy access to solutions. Because of this, however, our brains are flawed. When those original stories replay on demand, we lose opportunities for creative problem solving. We become STUCK in our stories and can't effectively change course. Change feels like an impossibility. We keep using the same strategies hoping for different outcomes. We often can't even see that at the root of many of our problems is US. We become our biggest problem.
Our lives would be improved dramatically if we could recreate the story our brain keeps playing.
Usually that old story is no longer useful to us if it ever was in the first place. Self actualization is about examining the stories we've carried around with us for decades and then recreating a better story that helps us reach our full potential. It's not 100% effective at rewiring our brains to serve us better, however, but it does provide us with a new skill. We can learn to step outside of ourselves and recognize whenever the recording is playing. We can acknowledge the recording and by taking a few seconds to do so divert the customary response to it by recognizing other options. Sometimes, we can talk ourselves out of even turning the recording on at all.
Self actualization, however, is not the modus operandi for the majority of humans struggling to interpret life through a skewed viewfinder. Many if not most live out their lives at the mercy of their personal story as well as the DNA and cultural expectations they inherited. This often leads me to ask the next question. Do humans actually have that much free will? Yeah. Big question and one best left for another blog post.
As a writer, I create a back story for all of my characters. In essence I provide them with a big brain and then fill it with their very own looping story — a story that often causes a character to do some very strange things. Their back stories inform my developing story, allowing me to predict what they might do next. Because whether we want to believe it or not, human behavior is pretty predictable.
— big brains big problems
Click the above link to my So You Want to be A Writer series, a video collection about the good, bad, and the ugly of being an indie writer.