Just as a newspaper always has a series of headline stories designed to grab your attention, so do the rest of us in our personal lives. Our personal headlines are the stories that we highlight in our minds and share with others. They are the stories and personality traits we tend to emphasize and focus on, the ones we give the most attention to. Sometimes our headlines are reoccurring; other times they are somewhat isolated.
The reason it’s so important to examine our headlines is that often we don’t even realize what they are. Our headlines become so automatic that we don’t even see them. Yet even though we don’t see them, they affect our lives in significant ways. Many times we define ourselves as a certain type of person without even knowing it. That’s important to realize because maybe we don’t want to define ourselves that way.
I’ll give you a personal example. Years ago I got into the habit of being too busy. I would schedule too many things and then complain that I never had any time. I would remind myself over and over again how extremely busy I was. When people would ask me how I was, I’d usually slip into the conversation that I was “really busy.” Without knowing it, my “busyness” had become my personal headline, my own little harmless drama. People would think of me as “busy” and would try to accommodate me by not taking too much of my time.
At some point, as an experiment, I decided to examine my headlines and discovered that busyness was my lead story. All of a sudden, I realized how silly it was—I was defining myself as busy. It seemed to me that my life was bigger than that, and I didn’t want to limit myself by that narrow definition.
The simple act of recognizing what I had done enabled me to back off. I learned to dismiss my thoughts of being too busy; I cut back my schedule a little bit and tried hard not to overemphasize my busyness to others. As a result, I felt calmer and less pressured. It seemed as if I had more time. I wasn’t in such a constant hurry. The people in my life noticed the change right away. They would say things like, “You seem more peaceful,” and ask: “What’s different?” It was easy to make a slight change. It all started by examining my headlines.
I’ve talked to teens who have found this exercise to be eye-opening and helpful. Some recognized that being “overly dramatic” had become their predominant headline. Others realized that, when talking to others, they were virtually always “bothered” by something. Still others said that they were “Usually mad at someone.” One young woman said that she had learned to define herself as a “troublemaker.” In these examples and so many others, you can see that being aware of your own tendencies and of the ways you define yourself can be very useful if, in fact, you want to make a change.
While it’s important to examine your headlines, it’s also important to know that headlines aren’t necessarily bad. Often they are wonderful. The idea isn’t to be self-critical, but self-observant. Check in with yourself and you might decide to make a change—or you might not. It’s up to you, but at least you’ll have the information at your fingertips. I’ve found that knowing what you’re working with is usually an advantage.