“What do you live for? What do you try for? What do you wish for? What do you fight for?”

I have been taking a certification program on Narrative Intelligence, and during one of the sessions, those lyrics from Epic: The Musical kept coming back to me. It was one of those moments where a thought gets lodged in your brain and refuses to leave. At first, I assumed the questions were simply about purpose. What motivates us? What keeps us moving forward? But the more I sat with them, the more I realized they were asking something much deeper than that.

They were asking about the story of a life.

That thought stayed with me long after the session ended. The more I reflected on it, the more I began wondering whether we are all, in some way, made of stories. Not just the stories we tell other people, but the stories we tell ourselves. The stories our parents told about us when we were children. The stories our teachers, friends, supervisors, and coworkers have reinforced over the years. The stories we inherited from our culture about success, failure, intelligence, happiness, and what it means to matter. Even our understanding of the world is built from stories we have accepted as true.

The remarkable thing is that many of those stories were never consciously chosen. They accumulated quietly over years of experiences until they became part of our identity. At some point we stopped thinking of them as stories at all. They simply became who we believed we were.

As I thought about this through the lens of narrative intelligence, I realized that this is also what our brains naturally do. We don’t experience life as a collection of disconnected events. Our brains are constantly trying to make sense of what happens to us. They connect experiences together, search for patterns, and build explanations that help us understand the world and predict what might happen next. In many ways, stories are the brain’s preferred language for making meaning.

Most of the time, that is incredibly useful. We couldn’t function if every experience had to be interpreted from scratch. The stories we build help us navigate an enormously complex world. The challenge is that our brains don’t always distinguish between a story that is helpful and a story that is simply familiar.

Imagine two people receiving exactly the same feedback at work. One hears an opportunity to improve. The other hears confirmation that they are not good enough. The feedback hasn’t changed. The story has.

Or think about someone who has experienced repeated disappointment. Over time, those experiences may become woven together into a larger narrative: People always let you down. Once that story takes hold, the brain begins looking for evidence that supports it. Acts of kindness become exceptions. Moments of disappointment become proof that the story was right all along. The narrative doesn’t just explain the past anymore. It begins shaping what we expect from the future.

That is why I think the stories we carry matter so much. They influence what we notice, how we interpret other people’s actions, and even what possibilities we believe are available to us. They shape our confidence, our relationships, our careers, and the choices we make without us ever realizing they are doing so.

As I continued thinking about this, another realization surfaced. Not all stories come from the same place.

Some stories are inherited. They were handed to us long before we were old enough to question them.

Some stories are written by other people. Sometimes all it takes is one comment from a teacher, one difficult supervisor, or one painful experience for a story to take root that lasts for years.

And then there are the stories we write ourselves.

I think that may be where growth begins. The moment we recognize that a belief is a story rather than an objective fact, we create space to become curious. Where did this story come from? Is it actually true? Has it always been true? Is this still the story I want to carry with me?

To me, that feels like the real promise of narrative intelligence. It isn’t simply about becoming a better storyteller. It is about becoming aware of the stories that have quietly shaped our lives and recognizing that some of them can be revised.

That brings me back to those questions from Epic.

“What do you live for? What do you try for? What do you wish for? What do you fight for?”

The more I think about those lyrics, the less I hear them as questions about purpose. I hear them as questions about identity.

Our answers are not found only in what we say. They are found in the story our lives reveal every day.

It is easy to say that we value kindness, learning, family, creativity, or service. But our calendars tell stories. Our habits tell stories. The way we spend our attention tells stories. The things we consistently choose—and the things we consistently avoid—become part of the narrative of who we are.

Perhaps that is why stories matter so much. They are not simply how we remember our lives. They are how we understand ourselves. They shape the person we believe we are today and, in many ways, the person we become tomorrow.

The beautiful thing is that our story is never finished.

Some chapters were written before we ever arrived.

Some chapters were written by people who only knew one small part of us.

But today—and every day after—we have the opportunity to write the next chapter ourselves.

Maybe that is what those lyrics have been trying to tell me all along.

The stories we believe shape the lives we live.

And the lives we live become the stories we leave behind.

I’d love to hear your thoughts. What stories have shaped your life? More importantly, are they stories you inherited, stories you accepted, or stories you have chosen to write for yourself?