rules of my life essay

10 Rules To Live by for More Success, Happiness, and Freedom [Updated]

THE #1 secret for achieving more success, happiness, and freedom in every area of your life is to develop a core set of “personal rules to live by.”

I know it might sound counterintuitive, but after building five 7-figure businesses in five different industries, I’m convinced that it’s true.

And the reason is simple.

Personal rules give you a foundational structure by which to live your life.

They eradicate indecision, temptation, and distraction and, paradoxically, create more freedom for you to do the things you love.

It’s one of the reasons why I love vegans and vegetarians (even as someone who spent $2,500 on a ridiculous steak dinner with my buddy Bedros Keuilian!)

When you’re a vegan, you live by the personal rule that “Under no circumstances will I ever eat meat.”

It’s not, “Well, I probably  shouldn’t  eat meat…buttt everyone else is having a burger so I’ll indulge just this once.”

No. You do not eat meat. Ever.

It’s just part of who you are.

And this is the same type of structure I want to help you build in your life.

When you take the time to develop your own rules to live by, everything in your life becomes easier. You no longer have to ‘think’ about the decisions and opportunities in your life…instead you have a clear set of operating principles that make everything automatic.

If you have the personal rule that you don’t hit the snooze button (and you truly live by that rule), you never have to sit in bed and negotiate “Just five more minutes” with yourself.

You wake up, turn off your alarm, and get to work. Period.

And in this essay, I’m going to share  my  personal rules to live by and the overarching philosophy that guides my life.

My 10 Personal “Rules to Live By”

These rules are not ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ and they may or may not be appropriate for your life. But they’ve served me well over the past 20 years and have been critical to the successes I’ve enjoyed.

My goal in writing this is not to tell you what you should do. But rather to motivate and encourage you to develop your own operating principles and use them to live a better, more productive, and happier life.

Whether you adopt my rules or not, I challenge you to think about this topic deeply and consider how a few “set in stone” non-negotiable rules could have a profound and lasting impact on the quality of your life.

1. Committment to a Consistent Wake Up Time

For years, I operated by the rule that “I go to bed and wake up at the same time 7 days per week” (8 pm and 4 am respectively).

However, more recently, I realized that this particular rule was unnecessarily restrictive. And, after reading  Why We Sleep , by Matthew Walker, I also realized that it wasn’t healthy.

Today, I’ve modified this rule to fit my new listyle and committed to simply waking up at the same time everyday.

This rule not only helps me stay consistent in my schedule (and allows me to attack my deep work blocks every workday), but gives me more energy and motivation than I’ve ever had before.

I challenge you to try it out for a month.

Whether you join the 5 am club or the 7 am club or even the 9 am club doesn’t matter. Just commit to waking up at the same time every day of the week and see how your life changes.

2. Daily Deep Work (Writing) 

I have, quite literally, made my millions through the power of the written word.

From sales pages to email copy to my best-selling books, all of my business ventures have lived and died on my ability to put words on a page that motivate my audience to take action.

As such, I follow the personal rule that I write for at least 60-minutes first thing  every  morning without fail.

No matter what type of work you do, committing to this type of consistent daily deep work will have a profound impact on your business and result in more money, less stress, and more fulfillment.

3. The “No Email” Rule 

For years, I would wake up, check my email, and immediately get sucked into the vortex that is my inbox.

This caused me to start my days from a negative and reactive state and I knew I needed to make a change.

So I implemented the personal rule that “I do not check email before 11 am and don’t take phone calls before 10 am”.

The result has been more focus and productivity during my “ magic time ” and infinitely less stress and overwhelm.

No matter what your business is, I encourage you to set a strict personal rule around how you handle emails and other forms of communication.

It will protect your time, sanity, and success.

4. Be Polite and Corteous (and Don’t Swear) 

I’ll be honest with you…

Hanging out with my friends like Bedros Keuilian and Jason Capital, makes living by this rule a challenge.

But I still do it.

A few years ago, back in the day when I still swore like a sailor and punctuated every thought or comment with an aggressive f-bomb, I realized that I was misaligned.

I never swore in front of my family or in the content I wrote for Early to Rise…so why would I do it in my daily life?

I committed to my “no swearing” rule (with the help of my trusty swear jar) and within a few months, was able to articulate my ideas without resorting to profanity.

5. Proper Planning and Preparation 

One of the personal rules to which I attribute most of my success is my committment to proper planning and preparation.

At the end of everyday, I use my Perfect Day Formula Kit to plan my days and update my daily gratitude and achievment journal.

And it’s literally changed my life.

When you wake up knowing exactly what needs to be accomplished and why, everything runs smoother. Your days are more productive, effective, and fulfilling and you eliminate the dead time from your schedule.

6. My “No Confrontation” Rule 

99% of the time, confronatations, either in-person or online are a waste of time and energy.

And I refuse to allow menial arguments to steal my energy or happiness.

If I’ve caused harm to someone, I apologize and fix the situation. If someone on my team or in my life has over stepped a boundary or failed to meet an expectation, I communicate it as cordially and politely as possible.

But I don’t waste time with trolls or haters. And I never will.

7. My Guiding Lights 

There are two phrases that guide my life…

“Nothing Matters” and “It will all be over soon”.

Simply put, I can only work toward my big goals and vision when I silence the noise and remember that other people’s opinions (meaning the opinions of the masses…not my mentors or board of advisors) don’t matter and that, no matter how much I accomplish…my time is limited.

These ideas help me stay centered and calm in the midst of chaos and ensure that I’m always focused on what’s  really  important instead of vanity metrics of ego-driven desires.

8. Full Responsibility 

I believe, and have created a “personal rule to live by” that EVERYTHING in my life–good and bad–is my responsibility.

Even if a situation isn’t necessarily my fault…I am still the person responsible for finding the solution.

If an employee drops the ball on a big project, it was my responsibility to train them or communicate my expectations.

If someone violates a boundary, it’s my responsibility to communicate and reinforce that boundary.

When you take full responsibility for your life, you get out of the passengers seat and into the driver’s seat.

Blame has no place in the life of an Operator .

9. The Person I Don’t Want to Be 

Another personal rule I always try to live by is “That I will not be the person I don’t want to be.”

Pettiness, jealousy, and envy don’t drive me toward the life I desire or help me make progress toward my big goals. Gossip and bad mouthing do nothing to serve me.

As such, I don’t allow them in my life.

10. Keep the Child Alive 

As an entrepreneur and high-performer, it’s easy to fall into the trap of taking yourself and your life too seriously.

To be too rigid in the way you live, to avoid fun and adventure in favor of “hustle and grind”.

But, as Oscar Wilde said, “Life is far too short to be taken so seriously.”

Every day and week, I do  something  to keep the child inside of me alive.

Whether it’s singing karoke to Living on a Prayer in front of 200 people, wrestling with my dog Daisy, or spending the night watching one of my favorite comedians deliver an epic stand up, I’m constantly trying to inject more fun and aliveness into each day.

Because life is short. And it’s important to enjoy the ride while it lasts.

Conclusion: What Are YOUR Personal Rules to Live By? 

Right now, you’re likely having one of two reactions.

You’re either dismissing what I’ve shared today (and me), which is ok.

Or, something just ‘clicked’.

High achievers will understand the value of these philosophies and how each rule I’ve shared can improve and enhance some area of their lives.

But like I said before…

The purpose of this list is to stimulate YOUR thinking about the rules that will transform YOUR life .

So now, I’m curious…

What are your top 3 personal rules for life? Are there any rules on this list you’re going to implement? Any that sound completely crazy?

Let me know in the comments below.

If you want my help… 

…Becoming more disciplined, developing your own set of personal rules, increasing your income, and working a  lot  less…

Then I want to invite you to apply for my “Millionaire Coaching Case Study”.

My goal is to help 1,000 entrepreneurs double their income while working 10 fewer hours a week and to help at least 100 of those entrepreneurs make their first million.

If you control your income and you’re willing to put in the work, be coachable, and take massive action on the strategies and systems I’ll share with you…

…Then send an email to [email protected] with the subject line “I’m interested” and I’ll send you all the details to see if you’re qualified.

Craig Ballantyne

If you want to double your income, work less, and become the ambitious millionaire you've always wanted to be... Craig Ballantyne is the coach who will help you do it. With more than 20-years of experience as an entrepreneur and five 7-figure businesses under his belt, he specializes in helping "struckling" entrepreneurs get out of the mud and build the business of their dreams. To see if you qualify for Craig's "Millionaire Coaching Program" send an email to [email protected] with the subject line "Millionaire".

Writing a Rule of Life: A Timeless Tool for Decision-Making

• January 13, 2021

I was exhausted from four months of nonstop backpacking in Asia with my three children and husband when I first entertained the idea of getting my priorities down on paper. We were a third of the way into our long-planned family project of circumnavigating the globe for a school year. Both our jobs allowed for location independence and we homeschooled our young children, and we had a hunch this freedom wouldn’t last indefinitely. We wanted to take advantage of our unique situation.

After five years of saving and strategizing, we left Texas for China on a humid September afternoon, long-haul and puddle-jump flights booked through the end of the calendar year. We’d travel through Asia during the fall, land in Australia for the holidays (where we’d lined up a housesitting gig for another family, who were traveling through North America at the time), then evaluate whether we wanted to keep going. December would be its own chapter in a Choose Your Own Adventure novel: we’d either cross back over the Pacific and return home, disappointed that we didn’t follow the full width of the earth but still earning a badge of honor, or we’d continue westbound, onward to Africa. In booking only our first third of our travels the summer before, we gave our future selves the permission to make choices with more wisdom and experience than we could possibly yet have.

By December, I was road-weary and desperate for a breather. My husband, Kyle, and I had long loved travel, having met in Eastern Europe and later lived the early years of raising babies in Turkey. Even so, the unique challenges of living nomadically out of backpacks with three children under age nine didn’t come easily. There were constant difficulties, from finding food palatable to picky eaters, to handwashing clothes in bathroom sinks (hoping they would dry fast enough to pack up for the next day’s travels), to deciding how to best budget our funds; we wanted to take advantage of our probably-never-again proximity to historic and cultural landmarks without blowing money on everything just because it was there. There was jet lag from time-zone hopping, slow internet to battle for work and school, and throngs of crowded metros, city squares, and market lines to fight in the noble pursuit of keeping track of our children—all while maneuvering language barriers.

Never before was I so grateful for the simple invitation to park for a few weeks at a family home with a backyard trampoline in an English-speaking country. At home in this Sydney suburb, we’d shop for tiny trinkets in the neighborhood mall for Christmas, bake cookies, and let the kids sprawl wide in a house with toys, books, and backyard chickens. Kyle and I would get some much-needed time to catch up on work, delight in a washer and dryer, and enjoy not going anywhere but the back deck to revel in a summertime Christmas.

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Asking the Deeper Questions

It took a full week of decompression for me to find the wherewithal to do more than sleep, answer email, and meet my children’s basic needs. Once I stopped feeling like life had run me over, the seed of a thought initially nurtured back in our first few weeks in China began to sprout. What was our primary purpose for our year of travel? What did I hope to gain from backpack vagabonding? And how might this affect who we’ll become once we’ve finished?

Naturally, Kyle and I had already talked about these general ideas countless times over several years before taking the leap. I already knew the benefits of what we were doing: seeing the world, family bonding, fostering a sense of adventure in our children. But as I confronted surprising bouts of sensory overload not two weeks into our year, I realized I’d failed to ask a crucial question: Who was I, anyway?

What sort of person am I, deep down?

What sort of person am I, deep down? How does who I am affect how I interpret my day? How does knowing the real me affect my confidence to say no to the good-but-not-best that life offers me daily? How does saying no to almost everything provide the freedom to say yes to what’s truly best for me? And as a wife and mother, how does all this play in tandem with my clan members who also have their own desires, needs, and dreams?

It took four months of stripping away my default familiar culture and folding up the safety net of a home base with my own towels and plates and a mailing address to realize how crucial these questions were. And it took the invitation to sip Australian wine under a summer sky with my journal and a few weeks with nothing on the agenda to realize how cardinally necessary it is to know the answer to these questions—and not just when we were on an adventure. In fact, it was probably in the ordinary sundry of life that I needed that rooted confidence most of all.

St. Benedict and the Rule of Life

I didn’t know it yet, but asking myself those personal questions was the impetus for what ultimately became a fascination with an ancient practice called a Rule of Life. Our most well-known example comes from St. Benedict, a monastic leader from the fifth century whose communal Rule of Life still serves as a model for us today. In fact, he is known as the father of Western monasticism largely because his concept of a Rule became standard practice for monastic living. Benedict started his religious life as a hermit but eventually felt deeply the difficulties and spiritual dangers of a solitary life. Establishing his like-minded community forever shaped future religious vocational practices. That community ultimately thrived because of a written Rule of Life that Pope Gregory called “remarkable for its discretion and lucid in its language.”

I didn’t necessarily feel the need for a written down play-by-play on how I should structure my bedtime routine or why my kids should embrace their chores, but I knew I needed to know, deep in my bones, my why for doing what I did.

By writing down the details of what it meant to live in community, St. Benedict established both inwardly reflective and outwardly practical guidelines for daily life. His ancient text included the gamut of ideas, from why one should pray and what should be one’s motive for serving others, to when and how to serve in kitchen duty and the establishment of a shift rotation for someone to check in guests at the front door. In other words, it was both intrinsically spiritual and extrinsically pragmatic.

I didn’t necessarily feel the need for a written down play-by-play on how I should structure my bedtime routine or why my kids should embrace their chores, but I knew I needed to know, deep in my bones, my why for doing what I did. Why did I educate my children with a particular method? And in this particular instance, why would we next visit Africa? I knew that writing it down would give me something to reread when my motivation tanked.

Ninety Days at a Time

It would take several more years after those weeks in Australia for me to officially adopt the practice of writing a Rule of Life, but the seed of wanting to know my core motivation sprouted into a rhythmic routine of regular reflection. Specifically, I started asking myself questions about my past ninety days, my present-day self, and my future upcoming ninety days. I’d take a few hours once a quarter to evaluate how things were going, who I sensed I was becoming, and where I wanted to grow moving forward.

Why ninety days? Time divided quarterly is frequent enough to focus only on a short amount of time, backwards and forwards. Yet it isn’t so frequent that a session of journaling is impossible to schedule. For my inaugural session in Australia, this was enough time for me to evaluate our travels, both the previous few months of exploring and what was potentially ahead on our agenda.

I also tend to live in my head, mistaking the effort of planning for the endeavor of action. Quarterly evaluations would keep me from obsessively appraising our days and could become a permission slip to relax and enjoy our experience. I knew I’d reevaluate again soon enough.

My quarterly reflections eventually streamlined into a collection of only a few sparse questions, each one proving its mettle.

About the Previous Ninety Days

• What was the best thing about the past ninety days?

This could be an event, such participating in the lantern festival in Thailand or hitting a milestone at work, or an inward discovery, such as realizing a preferred method of socializing or reading a truly great book. It’s often difficult to choose only one thing, but this limitation provides freedom from the seduction of feeling like our life should be more than ordinary. Ordinary is divine, but we need regular reminders.

• What was the biggest challenge?

Sometimes this involves an interpersonal trial, such as parenting a particular child during a tumultuous life stage, or it’s more personal, like the revelation for guardrails to protect from a certain temptation. By choosing only one, however, we give ourselves merciful relief from overwhelming over-evaluation.

• How was life in the realms of work, relationships, money, health, community, and home?

These six areas make up almost the entirety of life, and it’s in reflecting on this question where we can unpack more details from the previous quarter.

About the Present

• What’s something, big or small, that brings pleasure in my life right now?

The answer to this is almost always something small, which provides a much-needed reminder that the common stuff of life composes the bulk of our delight: a good cup of coffee, a longstanding date night with our spouse, the unconditional love of a pet.

• What’s most valuable in my life right now?

This separates the wheat from the chaff so that we recognize what’s ultimately necessary to keep our life ticking. My answers have varied over the years, from my Bible to my laptop to an early bedtime.

• Is there anything that feels missing in my life right now?

This question is the linchpin of this entire evaluation, and finding its answer lays the stepping stone for assessing the next ninety days. It’s not an easy question to answer, but honest reflection provides what’s needed to make this routine ultimately helpful.

About the Upcoming Ninety Days

• How would I like things to be ninety days from now in the realms of work, relationships, money, health, community, and home?

Now it comes full circle, taking our answer from our past ninety-day evaluation and honestly considering how we might like things to change.

• How could I create one or two goals from these desires?

If we over-plan here, we hijack our good intentions with a performance-oriented posture about life—an exhausting way to live for anyone. But one or two goals, and goals for only the next ninety days, provide traction and motivation to make helpful changes, one doable step at a time. This brings us closer to who we want to be.

• Ninety days from now, how will I recognize or celebrate my life as it stands?

This final question reminds us to not orient our entire life around checklists and productivity, and that we’re worthy of rest and commemoration regardless of our performance.

This practice of intentional quarterly reflection—what I eventually coined as Think Days—became the foundation for eventually helping me create my first Rule of Life several years later. It’s in this Rule of Life where I now broaden my scope to include my hope for life three years from where I stand, where I recognize the needed ingredients in my soil to best help me flourish, and how to cultivate a garden of life so that each member of my family flourishes, too. My Rule of Life honors my current reality and my longing to contemplate a hope-filled future. And it’s divided into those six realms of life— work, relationships, money, health, community, and home—where I can flesh out what it means to thrive in each of those areas.

It’s been five years since I journaled on that back deck in the Sydney suburbs, and my children are considerably older. My daily life comprises teaching English, recording podcasts, sipping coffee with neighbors, and nightly story time with my kids (they’ll never be too old for that). Years after hanging up our backpacks in a new-to-us fixer-upper home in a new town, I still return to these questions every ninety days. I evaluate my Rule of Life annually, on my birthday.

I may not live in a monastic community like St. Benedict, but I live among others in my own sort of domestic monastery, and I am fully invested in these members’ flourishing. My Rule of Life helps me channel my greater good to our collective cultivation. And though I hadn’t yet fully written a Rule of Life, answering those questions several years ago in that Australian backyard about who I really was helped me unearth my true purpose for our year of travel. It gave me permission to rest deeply during our break Down Under—and it gave me the confidence to say yes to the rest of our adventure.

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My Life My Rules

Filed Under: Essays

My Life, My Rules One day I woke up and my parents were just gone. I do not know where they went or why they did not say goodbye. Now I am all alone and have to live by my own rules. Making my own rules is very necessary because I need to set boundaries for myself in order to survive. Here are the five most important ones I have created for myself.

Rule one, must be in the house by 11. This is an important rule because if I stay out longer than that I could get lost or someone could hurt me during the night. This rule is related to my personal values because having a set time to be home helps to be organized and I think being organized makes life a lot easier. This rule will affect my life in a positive way because it will prevent bad things from happening.

Rule two, budget monthly expenses. This rule is an important rule because I need to know how much money I have and what I need and not want I want. This rule is related to my personal values because I like to be organized. This rule will affect my life in a positive way because it will help me save money and only buy what really needs to be bought.

Rule three, cut all unnecessary expenses. This rule is important because it will help save money and then I will be able to survive financially longer. This rule is related to my personal values because I always spend my money on things I do not need, but I want or impulse buys. This rule will affect my life in a positive way because I will be able to have more money to spend on things that really matter like food and supplies.

The Essay on Is Money the Most Important Thing?

Nowadays, we are living in a world where everything turns around money and luxury. People do not realize that we can find more things which are more important for our lives and happiness. Some years ago, other important things were to spend quality time with the family, talk to each other about important thing in order to be always together and be informed about what is happening to the most ...

Rule four, be polite and use manners. This rule sounds stupid but if you are living in a world without parents, being rude to people is not going to get you anywhere. This rule relates to my personal values because when I hold a door for someone and they do not say thank you, I just say you are welcome loud enough so they hear so they realize I am not their slave and should acknowledge I am there and did something kind for them. This rule will affect my life in a positive way because people will realize I care when they do something nice for me.

Rule five, if you are all by yourself do not try and do something that you are unsure if you are able to do. For example do not try and lift something really heavy that would take 4 people to lift by yourself. This rule is related to my personal life because if you do not know if you can do it you should not try it without help. I have tried to do things by myself and it never ends well. This rule will affect my life in a positive way because it will prevent me from getting hurt and possibly dying.

Living by rules is important because you never know what can happen when you are by yourself. If you set yourself rules before a situation happens you will know how to react, causing less bad things to happen. Also rules help you survive longer by yourself because you will not be spending your money things you do not need. It is all about being prepared.

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Telling the Story of Yourself: 6 Steps to Writing Personal Narratives

Jennifer Xue

Table of Contents

Why do we write personal narratives, 6 guidelines for writing personal narrative essays, inspiring personal narratives, examples of personal narrative essays, tell your story.

First off, you might be wondering: what is a personal narrative? In short, personal narratives are stories we tell about ourselves that focus on our growth, lessons learned, and reflections on our experiences.

From stories about inspirational figures we heard as children to any essay, article, or exercise where we're asked to express opinions on a situation, thing, or individual—personal narratives are everywhere.

According to Psychology Today, personal narratives allow authors to feel and release pains, while savouring moments of strength and resilience. Such emotions provide an avenue for both authors and readers to connect while supporting healing in the process.

That all sounds great. But when it comes to putting the words down on paper, we often end up with a list of experiences and no real structure to tie them together.

In this article, we'll discuss what a personal narrative essay is further, learn the 6 steps to writing one, and look at some examples of great personal narratives.

As readers, we're fascinated by memoirs, autobiographies, and long-form personal narrative articles, as they provide a glimpse into the authors' thought processes, ideas, and feelings. But you don't have to be writing your whole life story to create a personal narrative.

You might be a student writing an admissions essay , or be trying to tell your professional story in a cover letter. Regardless of your purpose, your narrative will focus on personal growth, reflections, and lessons.

Personal narratives help us connect with other people's stories due to their easy-to-digest format and because humans are empathising creatures.

We can better understand how others feel and think when we were told stories that allow us to see the world from their perspectives. The author's "I think" and "I feel" instantaneously become ours, as the brain doesn't know whether what we read is real or imaginary.

In her best-selling book Wired for Story, Lisa Cron explains that the human brain craves tales as it's hard-wired through evolution to learn what happens next. Since the brain doesn't know whether what you are reading is actual or not, we can register the moral of the story cognitively and affectively.

In academia, a narrative essay tells a story which is experiential, anecdotal, or personal. It allows the author to creatively express their thoughts, feelings, ideas, and opinions. Its length can be anywhere from a few paragraphs to hundreds of pages.

Outside of academia, personal narratives are known as a form of journalism or non-fiction works called "narrative journalism." Even highly prestigious publications like the New York Times and Time magazine have sections dedicated to personal narratives. The New Yorke is a magazine dedicated solely to this genre.

The New York Times holds personal narrative essay contests. The winners are selected because they:

had a clear narrative arc with a conflict and a main character who changed in some way. They artfully balanced the action of the story with reflection on what it meant to the writer. They took risks, like including dialogue or playing with punctuation, sentence structure and word choice to develop a strong voice. And, perhaps most important, they focused on a specific moment or theme – a conversation, a trip to the mall, a speech tournament, a hospital visit – instead of trying to sum up the writer’s life in 600 words.

In a nutshell, a personal narrative can cover any reflective and contemplative subject with a strong voice and a unique perspective, including uncommon private values. It's written in first person and the story encompasses a specific moment in time worthy of a discussion.

Writing a personal narrative essay involves both objectivity and subjectivity. You'll need to be objective enough to recognise the importance of an event or a situation to explore and write about. On the other hand, you must be subjective enough to inject private thoughts and feelings to make your point.

With personal narratives, you are both the muse and the creator – you have control over how your story is told. However, like any other type of writing, it comes with guidelines.

1. Write Your Personal Narrative as a Story

As a story, it must include an introduction, characters, plot, setting, climax, anti-climax (if any), and conclusion. Another way to approach it is by structuring it with an introduction, body, and conclusion. The introduction should set the tone, while the body should focus on the key point(s) you want to get across. The conclusion can tell the reader what lessons you have learned from the story you've just told.

2. Give Your Personal Narrative a Clear Purpose

Your narrative essay should reflect your unique perspective on life. This is a lot harder than it sounds. You need to establish your perspective, the key things you want your reader to take away, and your tone of voice. It's a good idea to have a set purpose in mind for the narrative before you start writing.

Let's say you want to write about how you manage depression without taking any medicine. This could go in any number of ways, but isolating a purpose will help you focus your writing and choose which stories to tell. Are you advocating for a holistic approach, or do you want to describe your emotional experience for people thinking of trying it?

Having this focus will allow you to put your own unique take on what you did (and didn't do, if applicable), what changed you, and the lessons learned along the way.

3. Show, Don't Tell

It's a narration, so the narrative should show readers what happened, instead of telling them. As well as being a storyteller, the author should take part as one of the characters. Keep this in mind when writing, as the way you shape your perspective can have a big impact on how your reader sees your overarching plot. Don't slip into just explaining everything that happened because it happened to you. Show your reader with action.

You can check for instances of telling rather than showing with ProWritingAid. For example, instead of:

"You never let me do anything!" I cried disdainfully.

"You never let me do anything!" To this day, my mother swears that the glare I levelled at her as I spat those words out could have soured milk.

Using ProWritingAid will help you find these instances in your manuscript and edit them without spending hours trawling through your work yourself.

4. Use "I," But Don't Overuse It

You, the author, take ownership of the story, so the first person pronoun "I" is used throughout. However, you shouldn't overuse it, as it'd make it sound too self-centred and redundant.

ProWritingAid can also help you here – the Style Report will tell you if you've started too many sentences with "I", and show you how to introduce more variation in your writing.

5. Pay Attention to Tenses

Tense is key to understanding. Personal narratives mostly tell the story of events that happened in the past, so many authors choose to use the past tense. This helps separate out your current, narrating voice and your past self who you are narrating. If you're writing in the present tense, make sure that you keep it consistent throughout.

6. Make Your Conclusion Satisfying

Satisfy your readers by giving them an unforgettable closing scene. The body of the narration should build up the plot to climax. This doesn't have to be something incredible or shocking, just something that helps give an interesting take on your story.

The takeaways or the lessons learned should be written without lecturing. Whenever possible, continue to show rather than tell. Don't say what you learned, narrate what you do differently now. This will help the moral of your story shine through without being too preachy.

GoodReads is a great starting point for selecting read-worthy personal narrative books. Here are five of my favourites.

Owl Moon by Jane Yolen

Jane Yolen, the author of 386 books, wrote this poetic story about a daughter and her father who went owling. Instead of learning about owls, Yolen invites readers to contemplate the meaning of gentleness and hope.

Night by Elie Wiesel

Elie Wiesel was a teenager when he and his family were sent to Auschwitz concentration camp in 1944. This Holocaust memoir has a strong message that such horrific events should never be repeated.

The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank

This classic is a must-read by young and old alike. It's a remarkable diary by a 13-year-old Jewish girl who hid inside a secret annexe of an old building during the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands in 1942.

The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion

This is a personal narrative written by a brave author renowned for her clarity, passion, and honesty. Didion shares how in December 2003, she lost her husband of 40 years to a massive heart attack and dealt with the acute illness of her only daughter. She speaks about grief, memories, illness, and hope.

Educated by Tara Westover

Author Tara Westover was raised by survivalist parents. She didn't go to school until 17 years of age, which later took her to Harvard and Cambridge. It's a story about the struggle for quest for knowledge and self-reinvention.

Narrative and personal narrative journalism are gaining more popularity these days. You can find distinguished personal narratives all over the web.

Curating the best of the best of personal narratives and narrative essays from all over the web. Some are award-winning articles.

Narratively

Long-form writing to celebrate humanity through storytelling. It publishes personal narrative essays written to provoke, inspire, and reflect, touching lesser-known and overlooked subjects.

Narrative Magazine

It publishes non,fiction narratives, poetry, and fiction. Among its contributors is Frank Conroy, the author of Stop-Time , a memoir that has never been out of print since 1967.

Thought Catalog

Aimed at Generation Z, it publishes personal narrative essays on self-improvement, family, friendship, romance, and others.

Personal narratives will continue to be popular as our brains are wired for stories. We love reading about others and telling stories of ourselves, as they bring satisfaction and a better understanding of the world around us.

Personal narratives make us better humans. Enjoy telling yours!

Write like a bestselling author

Love writing? ProWritingAid will help you improve the style, strength, and clarity of your stories.

Jennifer Xue is an award-winning e-book author with 2,500+ articles and 100+ e-books/reports published under her belt. She also taught 50+ college-level essay and paper writing classes. Her byline has appeared in Forbes, Fortune, Cosmopolitan, Esquire, Business.com, Business2Community, Addicted2Success, Good Men Project, and others. Her blog is JenniferXue.com. Follow her on Twitter @jenxuewrites].

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The Most Imortant Rules of Living

• Categories: Happiness

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Published: Jul 30, 2019

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