Becoming Your Truest Self — A Short Introduction to Personal Myths

Here’s something I’ve come to believe:

Our personal myths can reveal our truest self to us.

In yesterday’s post, I mentioned Don Quixote. What I didn’t share is that, in exploring my own personal mythology, he—and his companion Sancho—came to represent one of my recurring myths and inner conflicts.

I’ll come back to that in future posts.

For today, I want to make this idea of personal myths a bit more accessible… and give you a simple way to begin noticing your own.

At a basic level, personal mythology lives at the intersection of three things:

Your lived, embodied experience…

Your imagination…

And the culture you’ve been shaped by.

It shows up as story. As narrative. As the way you make sense of your life.

But here’s where it gets interesting.

Long before we had language—before we could describe ourselves, explain ourselves, or tell our story—something was already forming.

We were having experiences. We were sensing, feeling, reacting.

In other words, the foundation of “who we are” begins before we have the words to define it.

And even now, not all of that experience shows up in language.

A lot of it shows up as images.

If you pay attention—especially in quiet moments, or during something like meditation or even daydreaming—you’ll notice that your mind is constantly generating images, scenes, fragments.

They just… appear.

Unprompted. Unfiltered. Often without any clear meaning at first.

This image-making capacity lives somewhere between conscious and unconscious awareness. It’s not fully deliberate, but it’s not completely hidden either.

And the images themselves?

They’re both personal and cultural.

We tend to think of them as “ours”—as if we’re creating them from scratch—but they’re also shaped by everything we’ve absorbed over time: stories, symbols, environments, experiences.

And whether we realize it or not, they influence us.

They can pull us in certain directions… sometimes without our full consent.

But let’s not get too far ahead of ourselves.

Instead, let’s try something simple.

A Short Exercise

Think of a question that matters to you right now.

Something real and on your mind.

For example, I asked:

What should my blog post be about tomorrow?

Now, close your eyes for a moment. Relax. And just notice what comes up.

Don’t force it. Don’t analyze it right away. And most importantly, do not reject it.

Just observe.

Then ask yourself:

What does this have to do with my question?

Sit with it.

Then repeat the process once or twice more.

Here’s what came up for me:

An image of a Major League Baseball logo—blue and white, a player at bat.

Then a ballpark I had been to recently.

The view from the outfield, looking back toward home plate.

Bright sunlight. Green grass. Open space.

And then a phrase came to mind:

Wide open spaces.

Interesting.

So maybe tomorrow’s post has something to do with that.

I don’t fully know what yet—and that’s the point.

I’ll let it sit. Let it develop.

And we’ll see where it goes…

This exercise is a small way of beginning to access your own inner imagery… your own personal myth-making process.

Not by forcing meaning.

But by noticing what’s already there.

A couple things to think about:

What images showed up for you when you get quiet?

And what might they be trying to point you toward?