That time you were laid off, for example, is it further proof that your career’s going nowhere? Or is it the best thing that ever happened, liberating you to find work that suits you better? You’ll know you’ve honed your story when it feels both comfortable and true to you. But you cannot get there until you put yourself in front of others — ultimately, in front of strangers — and watch their faces and body language as you speak. For one woman we know, June Prescott, it was not simply that practice made for polished presentation — although her early efforts to explain herself were provisional, even clumsy. (She was attempting a big career change, from academe to Wall Street.) Each time she wrote a cover letter, interviewed, or updated friends and family on her progress, she better defined what was exciting to her; and in each public declaration of her intent to change careers, she committed herself further. There is a question I ask clients to discover how they are making sense or meaning of their experiences. This means that you must craft different stories for different possible selves (and the various audiences that relate to those selves). Sam chose to focus on start-ups as the result of a process that began with examining his own experience. He realized that he had felt most alive during times he described as ‘big change fast’ — a bankruptcy, a turnaround, and a rapid reorganization. So he developed three stories to support his goal of building a work life around ‘big change fast’: one about the HR contributions he could make on a team at a consulting company that specialized in taking clients through rapid change; one about working for a firm that bought troubled companies and rapidly turned them around; and one about working for a start-up, probably a venture between its first and second, or second and third, rounds of financing. He tested these stories on friends and at networking events and eventually wrangled referrals and job interviews for each kind of job.

When you’re in the midst of a major career change, telling stories about your professional self can inspire others’ belief in your character and in your capacity to take a leap and land on your feet. It also can help you believe in yourself. A narrative thread will give meaning to your career history; it will assure you that, in moving on to something new, you are not discarding everything you’ve worked so hard to accomplish. Begin by establishing a specific timeframe to represent the past, present and future. (For example, the last 12 months and the coming 12 months). Draw this timeline on a sheet of paper.You can examine different timelines from your life in subsequent exercises to further enrich this process. Brooks also refers to myths as ideology, but makes the classic liberal mistake of overlooking his own. Along with most Americans, he probably believes in Nato, the free market and private education, but it’s unlikely he would call this an ideology. Like halitosis, ideology is what the other guy has. Perhaps ideology is a more ‘extremist’ creed than one usually encounters, which is the way the state viewed the suffragettes and slave-owners the advocates of emancipation. Or maybe ideology is a more systematic form of discourse than one overhears on the bus, although geometry could also be described as a system of ideas and nobody thinks it’s ideological. For highlights from the latest issue, our archive and the blog, as well as news, events and exclusive promotions.

What was the challenge, or series of challenges, that came along to threaten your strength and peace? Make a plan and start with just one small thing to bring about, and take it from there. Then consider the action you (and your team) will undertake as a result in three areas:

It was only when Sophie’s husband accused her of giving birth to another man’s baby that she went for paternity tests and discovered that her husband was right (sort of). The baby, then aged 10, wasn’t his, but she wasn’t Sophie’s either. She belonged to another set of parents, who had been raising Sophie’s biological daughter in a town several miles away. All good stories have a characteristic so basic and necessary it’s often assumed. That quality is coherence, and it’s crucial to life stories of transition. That’s not a necessary compromise. A transition story has inherent dramatic appeal. The protagonist is you, of course, and what’s at stake is your career. Perhaps you’ve come to an event or insight that represents a point of no return. It’s this kind of break with the past that will force you to discover and reveal who you really are. Discontinuity and tension are part of the experience. If these elements are missing from your career story, the tale will fall flat. Additionally, stories of transition present a challenge because telling them well involves baring some emotion. You have to let the listener know that something is at stake for you personally. When you’re in a job interview or when you are speaking to relative strangers, that is difficult to do.The baby spent her first days in an incubator under artificial light and was returned to her mother four days later. Unbeknownst to Sophie, it wasn’t her baby. It was another 4-day-old with jaundice. The nurse had switched the babies by accident. These emotions are fed by our story. They do not care if the story we are telling is true, helpful, or even based on what is currently happening.