Telling your story is important for so many reasons. Putting an experience into words is a great exercise in choosing the facts and feelings that are most important to remember. Being witnessed or heard validates the experience as having an effect on you. Telling personal narratives and having an audience is a way for others to relate to your experience; to remind us that we share a lot with others. We also tell ourselves stories that are not necessarily true but are familiar.  We often provide excuses or justifications for not doing something, like not going to a party because you won’t know anyone there. Think of a situation when you were invited to something and created excuses why you couldn’t go but eventually guided yourself past your “story,” past habitual excuses. What got you past the familiar and what might this say about what you’re grateful for?