The starting point of devising a training plan should always be its end. A training plan is a simple exercise in reverse engineering of a performance goal within the context of the athletes training age and current ability. For most serious runners this process begins by first identifying a specific race or a window of time where they want to be at the highest specific fitness level. An important question to be able to answer to start the planning process is ‘how long in advance does the plan need to start before the actual race or racing time window’? For simplicity’s sake working by either a 12 month or 6 month plans works best for the majority of people depending on their lifestyles and opportunities to race. For those who train for the marathon a common pattern is training for a spring race and then again for an autumn race, for runners training for shorter events the planning might be built around a series of short spring/summer events and then around a longer key fall goal race. Lots of different ways to skin it but what every good plan has in common is identifying purpose to the training in order to give it shape and direction.

The key ingredients for a training plan are frequency, duration, intensity and recovery; how these are manipulated depends on an individual’s tolerance and capacity for training. Establishing a weekly routine whereby the currently needed key training sessions are identified and prioritised will give shape to. each step in the plan. Building fitness requires patience and commitment to a process that rewards those who deliberately hold themselves back from progressing too quickly and thereby losing sight of the deliberate pacing needed to achieve the correct fitness at the correct time. Investment in monotony might not sound like a something to dance about but this is the bread and butter of building endurance fitness and what will largely determine the final performance outcome. The application of specific race training onto the layered low intensity endurance base is the most predictable and practiced method of achieving high performance in endurance sport. The skill in planning is designing a progressive and manageable training load that will challenge without breaking the athlete and enable them to recover sufficiently to adapt physiologically to the stress being placed on them. Knowing ones limits is a fascinating experiment on oneself, and becomes more precise only through experience.

Here’s an article I recently wrote for the UK running website http://leftspikefanzine.com/

The history of Turkish participation in the European Cross Country Championships is an outrageous story that when fully examined exposes the tragedy that Turkish Athletics has always been. Between 1994 and 2011 Turkey competed in the men’s race 10 out of the 18 years and their women 9 times. During this time the Turkish men only once achieved a top 30 individual position and their best team finish was 10th, typically Turkey would finish amongst the last 2 teams. The story of their women remained similar to their men through to 2001, with a highest individual finish of 25th and a team finish of 9, then something within Turkish athletics thinking changed dramatically.

The change first came in the form of Ethiopian woman Hewan Abeye* (aka. Elvan Abeylegesse, aka Elvan Can), who was invited to Turkey after competing in the World Junior women’s Cross Country in Belfast in 1999. In 2002 Abeye finished 3rd at the European Cross event representing Turkey, improving to 2nd the following year; at this point in time though success through recruiting foreign talent wasn’t the main performance strategy employed by the Turkish federation, it was to be achieved primarily through doping. Turkey grabbed another women’s individual medal through Binnaz Uslu’s 2nd place finish in 2010; both Abeye and Uslu have since served suspensions due to serious doping offences. Success however still eluded the Turkish men, but this was to dramatically change in 2012 when Turkey deployed the next stage of it’s performance plan which was to subsequently deliver them individual medals in the men’s race every year since 2013.

Kenyan athlete Paul Kipkosgei Kemboi (aka Polat Kemboi Arikan) switched his allegiance to Turkey in early 2012 and immediately contributed to giving Turkey it’s highest individual (7th) and team position (6th) at the 2012 European Cross Country Championships. Buoyed by this success the Turkish emphasis now shifted away from the Turkish women and their doping spotlight, and instead fully onto the men’s competitions. The following year Kemboi was to finish 2nd, earning Turkey it’s first individual men’s medal; Turkey has since won 50% of all available men’s individual medals through Kemboi and Amos Kibitok (aka Aras Kaya) and all individual golds for the last 3 editions. The Turkish transfer of allegiance strategy reached it’s pinnacle in 2014 when their men’s team achieved gold in both individual and team events, quite a contrast to 10 years earlier when their best finisher was 74th and their team ranking was last. Not content now with only dominating the men’s event, Turkey in 2016 expanded once again into the women’s event, achieving gold and silver in the individual race through the performances of Vivian Jemutu (aka Yasemin Can) and Mirriam Jepchirchir Maiyo (aka Meryem Akda) with another gold in the women’s team competition.

The impact that African athletes transferring their allegiance to Turkey has had on European athletics can’t be underestimated; of particular concern is that it is a deliberate strategy at the highest decision making level of the Turkish federation, an unprecedented direction for a European federation. Many other European countries have had individual athletes that were born or transferred from African countries, but they achieved this transfer mainly through their own initiatives and not through a deliberate federation policy. It’s possible Turkish officials reflected on the number of Moroccans competing successfully for France and Spain, or maybe the small number of other former African’s competing for other European countries, and then decided that this was where the future of athletics success was headed for all countries and believed they were just following suit. This comparison isn’t valid though, as the majority of Africans competing for other European countries have strong family or residential ties to their adopted countries unlike the Turkish representatives whose only connection to Turkey is their supplied travel document. I suspect the Turkish plans were devised at government ministry level and then each Turkish sport federation given instructions how to implement.

The most successful European countries at cross country are largely those that have a strong tradition in the sport dating back many decades; Turkey however does not have a strong cross country heritage and therefore doesn’t feel any obligation to respect the history of the sport and only sees the sport as a vehicle to project it’s nationalist agenda through false sporting success. I find it hard to believe how the average Turk can really take any pride in hearing their national anthem being played due to the prowess of hired African athletes. Is it really fair that the majority of European federations, who devote substantial effort and money to develop their athletes and coaches are run out of the medals by a rogue federation that is too inept to build it’s own genuine high performance program? A good question is how does Turkey think this strategy will further their athletes in the long term once the IAAF close the door on sham transfers? The Turkish federation has failed it’s own athletes more than anyone else through it’s enthusiasm for success through drug use and then relieving itself of all athlete development obligations; the athletes of Turkey should be seething with anger at the foul deeds their federation has committed over the past 15 years. What I see more than anything else is a complete lack of understanding of what sport is meant to be about; moving forward I think it is critical that all member federations are on the same page when it comes to the meaning of sport and sporting ethics.

Turkey and other countries have successfully exploited the IAAF’s transfer of allegiance system which when initially designed could not have imagined that a member federation would be so contemptible in it’s disregard for respecting fairness and the sports established practice. Currently the IAAF is figuring out how it can design a system of transfer of allegiance that takes it back to it’s original intent of allowing athletes to change nationality through legitimate reasons like marriage or committed residency. Back in 2008 I transferred my allegiance from Great Britain to Canada, a country where I had lived for 12 years and held citizenship; there will always be a need for a legitimate transfer of allegiance process and hopefully the IAAF this time around will design a process that will prevent it’s deliberate manipulation by countries looking to exploit the sport for their own egotistical reasons.

*Note that I have used the athletes real birth names instead of their assigned Turkish name. I refuse to give legitimacy to the ridiculous.

What is the optimal way to construct a training week? The first step to creating a weekly routine is identifying which days of the week really matter- whether this is by quality or duration; the remainder of the week can then be built around these key day(s). For most people the weekend offers the best opportunity to do the longest training day so the flow of the week could look something like this pattern:

Mon: easy/recovery

Tue: moderate

Wed: hard/ quality

Thu: easy/recovery

Fri: moderate

Sat: easy/recovery

Sun: hard/long

There are two components that are critical to making sure any weekly training structure works in an effective way; the first is to be ready to run hard or long when you plan to, and secondly to be able to plan in easier days after the hard or long days. Note the pattern above where the 2 key days are followed by 2 consecutive easy or moderate days and the day before the hard days is always easy. The thinking behind this sort of weekly plan is two fold- training sustainability and performance predictability. The sustainability aspect is make sure the weekly routine is sufficiently hard enough to provide challenge when needed but not crippling so that you’ll not be able to train consistently week in week out. The predictability is important as this is the essence of training to perform on demand; training day randomness has no place in a training program that is organised to progress to a competition goal.

Another important consideration when creating a weekly training week plan is consideration of all the other life ‘stuff’ that goes on outside of your training; what days will be best for doing the hard or longer workouts? Ideally these are days when you don’t have much going on and aren’t going to be exhausted. Sometimes this might even be the day following a lighter family or work day when you have had the opportunity to fully benefit from an easier day, only you know when the ideal days for harder training will be and these days need to be protected from other family and work responsibilities if at all possible.

Adjusting a plan is inevitable though, and when this happens it’s usually best to give yourself a reset and the opportunity to get back into the routine the following week rather than trying to make up any lost days; a good program though should always have enough ‘flex’ in it that allows a bit of wiggle room when needed. Sustainability and predictability.

At some point it happens to every endurance athlete; the feeling of lower motivation together with a stagnation or drop in race or training performances. Everything suddenly feels harder than it should and the higher intensity training become something that is dreaded rather than an exciting and fun challenge. Athletes begin to doubt themselves and lose confidence in their form and completed training; instead of a feeling of self-satisfaction in their training process, they become disillusioned, and wearily go through the motions of their program.

The best way to avoid this scenario is to minimize it’s likely-hood of happening through careful prior planning especially if it has been an issue previously. Building into a training program a regular period of mental and physical recuperation, either as single recovery days within a weekly routine or as a whole recovery week following several weeks of consistent training load. These recovery opportunities serve as an important mental release to consolidate and reflect on training done and give an opportunity to recharge and re-fire motivation for the next training period. Another method to prevent training staleness is to add training variety, whether that is through changing the training emphasis, introducing unfamiliar workouts to the program, changing the training venues, training partners or terrain.

Sometimes though the slump persists despite trying all the psychological tricks and training variations; so what now? In this type of situation remaining objective and detached is crucial to achieving a successful outcome. Someone who is healthy, uninjured and who has been training consistently for many weeks will not lose fitness overnight, but if they continue down the road of low motivation and training weariness, then this potentially could spiral into a further loss of confidence through the consistent feelings of struggling and failing at unrealistic training targets. The risk of injury also increases as athletes typically are less technically sound when they start to over reach themselves.

Above all in this situation preserving the integrity of the training fitness already achieved becomes the main priority. Putting the athlete into a holding pattern until the motivational issues are resolved is often the simplest and most effective solution. For me, both as an athlete and coach, the most effective way to preserve and protect fitness is to switch the training to being exclusively low intensity training and then carefully monitor and record mood and general energy levels until you see an upward shift. This move away from high intensity usually works to correct the training balance and restore motivation to get the athlete back on top of their training, rather than the training being on top of them. Overall training volume doesn’t necessarily need to be reduced, but the overall training load will be reduced by eliminating all high intensity. The old saying that ‘a change is as good as a rest’ certainly can be an effective way to maintain forward training momentum even when things start looking to be going sideways.

I’ve used a wrist stopwatch to record my training runs since I was a young kid, the first watch I had was a Casio ‘Jogging’ watch that had an annoying tempo beep function that was meant to do something, but I have no idea what. My first encounter with anything more sophisticated that ‘start/stop’ was in the early 90’s using an early generation Polar heart-rate monitor through Loughborough University physiology department; I found the chest strap annoying and confused about what practical use the heart-rate values had for me. Being someone keen to maximize the knowledge of self observation and sports science, my curiosity persisted and I soon bought myself a very basic (and then very expensive) Polar monitor and quickly embraced the process of the daily recording of training heart-rate.

Knowing what questions you want your training data to answer is critical. Many people just want to know their basic training numbers- total weekly training hours or mileage; there’s nothing negligent in JUST wanting to know these numbers as they are the absolute measure of training completed which is the most important and reliable predictor of performance. However the process in achieving and managing the total training volume has it’s own level of detail and here is where physiological and mechanical analysis through data recording can play an important role. But again the crucial question is knowing what you need the data for? For me it was the simple process of daily observation and comparison to reinforce my own perceived feedback, basically my own system of diagnostics that would feed back into my decision making.

I found using heart-rate an excellent way to confirm my own bio-feedback and an important tool to affirm the weekly pattern of training was behaving as planned; was I tired when I should be tired, and was I fresh when I should be fresh? I also used heart-rate to quantify fitness and progress through post training analysis; being able to compare high intensity training sessions using heart-rate averages and repetition times, as well as comparing how quickly recovery was happening during intervals. Training accuracy and consistency for me was critical and by using heart-rate with timing I was able to accurately measure training progress.

Recording technology has moved rapidly forward in the last decade and now the opportunity to measure real time speeds through gps recording and real-time mechanical metrics using accelerometers has maybe pushed heart-rate and our own perceived feedback aside. I do believe that all these new training metrics have value but knowing why you need to know should always be your starting point. For a while I curious about ground reaction time in running but not really knowing what practical use it could be applied to; was it just recording data for the sake of it? Was it something that could be used to improve performance in some way? Eventually I decided that one practical use for the information COULD be an easy way to measure fatigue levels in runners who have no other way to objectively observe themselves.

Being able to practically use this information requires a commitment to the process of daily recording and observation of patterns, and then aligning this information with our own perceived feedback. I believe being able to rely on our own internal instrumentation is essential to make quick and accurate judgements and adjustments, however using recording gadgets can refine and give greater confidence to our decision making ability.

The marathon taper is a tricky final piece in the marathon puzzle that often trips many runners up even though the rest of the training preparation might have gone quite smooth. It seems many consistent working principles are suddenly forgotten in the final week, and combined with travel, excitement, nerves and the general chaos of race-race, will ruin what should have been the easiest part of the whole enterprise- the race itself.

To execute a marathon taper successfully it’s important to understand what the purpose of the taper is meant to facilitate, which is to enhance your physical and mental condition through a reduced stress load- physical and mental. By reducing your training stress load you allow additional physical recovery to take place thereby creating better conditions for any muscle inflammation to settle and fully replenish themselves with glycogen, as well as better general hydration and for some improved sleep. For this to work smoothly though it’s important not to introduce significant change to your established habits and weekly routine.

Often where many people go wrong is using the extra time and energy they gain from reduced training volume to catch up with household and family obligations in their daily lives that they have neglected in the previous weeks due to their commitment to their marathon training. By doing this you are essentially eliminating many of the benefits of a taper week by adding clutter to your life at a time when de-cluttering should be the priority. This principle applies to all levels of runners, the final week should be geared around reducing training volume but maintaining all other aspects of your life at their normal and familiar levels. How training load is reduced in a taper is simply by running less, but once again the principle to hold to is familiarity of process. By just reducing the volume of running but maintaining your running frequency and training pattern, you allow additional recovery to take place without confusing your body with unnecessary change.

Another aspect of the final taper that I’ve seen ruin months of marathon training is the travel to the race. Often this gets very low priority in the marathon planning and usually lies outside of the coach’s mandate, but this is something critical to get right, especially if it involves significant travel distance and time zone changes. I like to make a plan for the taper week of a marathon as this gives it purpose and organization by addressing the small logistical details that can be energy sapping in the final days pre-race. At the race itself it’s important to keep everything as close to your normal routine and preferences as you possibly can; this routine is what has served you well for the previous months so it’s critical to stick to what is familiar in the final days. A well planned taper should see you relaxed and happy before the race with good mental clarity and confident you have done the best job in every aspect of your marathon preparation.

Recently I was asked ‘how do I know if I’m improving or not?’. This should be a simple enough question to answer, but only if you know what it is that is trying to be improved and also have an accurate method to objectively measure this over a period of time. The ability or action that is trying to be improved must also be beneficial and directly relevant to the overall performance goal; questioning the value and purpose of every aspect of the training process is essential to find increased training efficiency and clarity. Identifying the barriers that are holding performance back is often an exercise in brutal honesty, but without this it is difficult to find what needs to change in order to effect the biggest improvement. Typically, improvement for endurance sport means looking at the final stage of the overall process- bettering a time for a set distance, or an improved finishing position against a comparable field of competition. Both of these measures are the end product of various training processes that each contribute to the overall performance result, but only by improving these processes individually can the ‘shop window’ improvement at races happen.

Identifying what specifically needs to be improved and how to do it is one of the biggest challenges for coaches and athletes in any sport. For endurance athletes just being able to do more volume of training seems to be the biggest facilitator to improvement, this is usually achieved by working towards training smarter in order to reduce the frequency of injury, illness and overreaching. Measuring this type of improvement of process takes the form typically of measuring total training kilometers or hours/ counting the number of missed training days due to illness, injury or low motivation/ number of long training sessions completed/ number of quality training sessions completed. None of these measures will actually guarantee performance improvement but they will collectively create the conditions to enhance the probability of overall improvement through the linear progression of training. Additionally, improvement could also be measured by other health metrics like sleep quality and improved nutrition which aid recovery and directly impact the ability to train more effectively.

Measuring actual training performance through the various combinations of speed, time- distance, heart-rate and power can reveal over time patterns of improvement such as a quicker times for a measured distance or course, higher speed or power for a specific duration or a reduction of heart-rate or power necessary to maintain a specific speed. In order to make effective use of these types of measurements, designing repeatable or comparable training sessions is the most common method used, and these should always be attempted in a similar state of readiness (ideally quite rested) to be most effective for comparison purposes. However, weather conditions, nutritional state, life stress and motivation levels all add additional variables to make the final assessment of improvement still not 100% precise but accurate enough to provide a performance range which can then be used to guide the true measure of performance improvement which is competition.

The story begins with high ideals, excellent methods of practice driven by motivated and happy people pursuing something they love doing either individually or as part of a group. But over time their relationship with themselves, others and their processes slowly changes and now what once was positive and healthy has become toxic and dysfunctional, robbing those same individuals of the happiness and benefits they once took from their chosen pursuit, transforming it instead into something that is almost unrecognizable to what the relationship once was. This transformation usually happens very slowly by consistently making small compromises to our values and the justification of poor choices, resulting in an acceptance and compliance to a changed reality. This is the normalization of dysfunction.

At the individual level the narrowing or loss of perspective is a constant challenge especially if your only oversight is yourself. Honest self assessment is a minefield to navigate as some people will be overly self critical creating an impossible path for themselves, while others will be living in self denial painting a far rosier picture than honesty would naturally permit. Without external challenge to your self assessment the path to normalizing dysfunction will be clear of obstacles so that any obsessive behaviour or poor decision can be justified and used to cement the ever changing dysfunctional reality. A good example of this is the relationship many athletes have with their own health, physical and mental.

How often is it we see athletes training through injury, illness or extreme fatigue knowing full well their actions will not benefit them towards achieving any long term goals? Accepting this as normal. Or starving themselves into ill- health due to the delusion that being lighter will make them significantly faster? Accepting this as normal. Or adding more training unnecessarily to their program? Accepting this as normal. Somewhere in their past the normalization of their unhealthy choices were self justified and then taken on board as acceptable behaviours. Worse yet is the athlete who purposely seek out others to support these behaviours and deliberately shuts out those who challenge their normalization of dysfunction which then furthers their narrowing of perspective and down the spiral of isolationist thinking.

Although common among individuals, the normalization of dysfunction can also be found in groups and organizations where poor leadership or lack of organizational clarity creates a vacuum for dysfunctional behaviours to flourish. Organizations thrive when common values are respected and dialogue is encouraged to promote better performance methods. But when these values are undermined and no action to correct them is taken then again the dysfunction is assimilated into the group culture, often creating fractures within the group which will further widen with each compromise. A healthy, respectful and inclusive group culture is important to get right and to keep right right, but this can only happen with good leadership and clarity of purpose. Training groups can lose sight of the fact that their purpose is to benefit everyone in the group and not be dominated by a few individuals who want to set their own agenda. Establishing sound group operating principles should be taken seriously and committed to, but even more important is identifying and rooting out the acceptance of poor behaviours which run contrary to the groups perceived culture. Everyone within a group should be guardian to it’s values and take ownership of maintaing it’s core purpose to prevent habitual group dysfunction and it’s normalization.

Defence against dysfunction is through awareness and objective oversight. Without a process in place to ‘catch’ and identify damaging patterns of behaviour we allow regular small compromises and faulty thinking to dominate us and become a pattern of consistent dysfunction leading to it’s normalization. It’s through the process of objective oversight that we can stay true to our original ideals and remain clear on the importance of a healthy process and not just of an outcome.

The person who usually matters most to the athlete can often go unseen and unknown. They don’t seek any credit for their role as their calling goes way beyond the dimension of ‘team’ player. These are the people who are given access to the depths of the athletes true self and have seen parts of the person very few will want to know about. They have seen the best of their person and the very worst of their person but their commitment to their person is unwavering and TOTAL. These people are the athlete’s supportive rock who will be there for the athlete when all others have gone. When all others have lost interest. When all others have lost faith in the athlete. When the athlete has lost faith even in themselves. The supportive rock will always be there for the person.

The status of the supportive rock is not formally recognized and they are not usually assigned a specific role in the athlete ‘team’. They are expected to always be around and to support their person without question and in any role required. A parent or partner often plays the supportive rock role; it can sometimes be the coach but this can be problematic as following logical processes and objective assessment to support the athlete’s performance fails to adequately support the emotional needs of the person beneath the athlete. The supportive rock cannot give objective support based on their experience or expertise, their support must be unconditional, honest, unequivocal and provide what the athlete feels they need to follow their dreams and passion, sometimes even if this means supporting what they believe to be bad choices by their person.

The supportive rock will listen quietly, take on unwanted burdens and always watch their person’s back NO MATTER WHAT. They will give to the athlete what no one else will and take nothing in return except the satisfaction their person is safer because of their devoted care. Athletic success for the athlete gives them the fuel to motivate themselves further and reach for higher goals; the supportive rock will be happy only to see their person happy. This is their purpose. Being someone’s supportive rock is a privilege and never feels like a sacrifice. They know their care and support is valued even if never verbally acknowledged; their devotion to their person is absolute. This is their purpose. The athlete needs their supportive rock even if they don’t realize it, the rock is invisible but is always present and ready to pick up their person when needed and give them whatever support they need. This is their purpose.

I recently failed in my commitment to be a supportive rock. I failed to understand, or was unable to provide, the level of unconditional support needed by someone close to me. I failed to see the support my person needed wasn’t my knowledge or wisdom but instead my ability to unconditionally support and value their dreams the same way they did, to value their ambition the same way they did. To be a supportive rock is to willingly be part of your person’s journey whatever the path they choose and whatever choices they make. My attempt to protect the athlete from themselves was my failure, I cared too much about my person to see them struggle in pain.

The emotional investment most athletes put into pursuing their dreams cannot be underestimated; for many it literary is their ALL. They live their dreams in vivid colour and often those dreams are rocky, traumatic and require huge personal sacrifice. They feel compelled to pursue these dreams often against the advice of all around them in order to realize who they feel they truly are meant to be. To be a supportive rock is to help carry the dreams of someone you place ahead of yourself, someone who has dreams worth believing in and someone who is worth giving your ALL to.

Everyone has their own internal story, but is the story accurate or just a biased mechanism we create in our minds as a coping strategy to make sense of a world we have very little control of? Each of us sees the world in our own unique way and then we unconsciously reorganizes this information to fit orderly into our individual framework of beliefs that has been evolving since our early childhood. Who we believe we are and how we fit into a bigger story will determine the limitations we put on ourselves and drive our behaviour in all aspects of our lives. The fictional narrative we create for ourselves acts as a protective bubble, gives us justification for the choices we make and selects the people we want to share our lives with.

Self belief is an essential ingredient for success especially in sport, but our self belief doesn’t need to be based on experience or knowledge to be effective. Just believing you are good, or will be good, at something often ensures some success; the story we tell ourselves is what really matters. We can choose to tell ourselves we are good at something or we can choose to tell ourselves we are useless. Our self-narrative has created a fictional character who believes they are making choices based on sound reasoning and evidence but in reality it is based on our own comfort and a way to protect ourselves against loss of status and self image. The self-narrative of confidence, or the illusion of confidence, is a very powerful belief and enables people to put themselves in situations where they accept being uncomfortable because they believe they will overcome whatever is thrown at them and achieve a positive outcome. If an athlete can convince themselves they can reliably deliver a good performance under pressure then most likely they will.

Our self-narrative is a comfort blanket that we use to make sense of current and past decisions and behaviours. Our poor choices can be explained away by creating a story based on a single perspective and without the inconvenience of objectivity and unbiased evidence. Past situations and events can be re-written in our mind to fit into the self-narrative we favor and act to give support to our semi-fictional story. This recreating of reality to fit our own beliefs and thinking can serve to give simplification to complex issues or to bury uncomfortable truths about ourselves and thereby hindering personal growth. By avoiding the hard realities about ourselves and honest reflection we can become further entrenched in rigid thinking and create a ever thicker comfort blanket and resistance to honest self examination.

The self-narrative’s purpose is to make us feel better about ourselves and to internally reconcile how we think and act to that of who we want to believe we are. Feeling good about ourselves is important for our happiness so a favourable self-narrative is important to fade out the undesirable aspects of ourselves and promote the positive self image we want to believe is our true self. Questioning your self-narrative is to better understand yourself; knowing why you need to mould your self image in a particular way can give insight into aspects of your personality that might enable a better understanding of your decision making process and behaviours. Rejecting the self-narrative isn’t an option as everyone needs to construct a mental framework to simplify the complex world around them, but an awareness and more questioning approach to the self narrative would bring more balance and flexibility to our self image to bring a better understanding of ourselves and others.