How to Intentionally Shape Your Life with Foundational/Formational Stories
- Dr. Tom Wagner
- Nov 9
- 6 min read
What stories are shaping you—quietly guiding your choices, bending your path, even when you don’t notice? Read on to rediscover how your own stories—told and untold—can become sources of strength and grace.
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Remembering Nov 2 ’25 SMC Event: Bringing Light Into the Dark Days
Last Sunday, daylight saving time went away. Our Sunday Morning Café pop-up community arrived at just about the same time that the dark fully descended on this year’s very first night of standard time. My adopted hometown of St. Louis boasts some of the best brick architecture you can find anywhere. Even “The Lou’s” turn-of-the-century warehouses have the power to evoke a mood. As our capacity crowd filed in, I was admiring the way that the fifteen-foot-high brick walls of the transformed warehouse seemed to absorb and reflect the warmth and light of the evening. The contrast of warm light and warm conversation in the midst of the outside darkness was hard to miss. Twenty-two small groups comprised of three generations of adults enjoyed tasty tunes and tasty Thanksgiving treats as they conversed about such things as gratitude practices, and wisdom acquired the hard way, in difficult circumstances. What a hopeful way to usher in the darkest part of the year! For anyone who couldn’t join up with us live, keep an eye out for the podcast that’ll drop within a week or two.
For my St. Louis readers, I’m hoping you’ll consider joining us for our next SMC event scheduled for the day after Valentine’s Day. The theme? Why, relationships, of course! Early bird ticket prices are still available. We will meet in the early evening of February 15, 2026. The place is still to be determined.
SMC events honor that what is deepest within us is most universal between us. Your gift helps create space for reflection, connection, and belonging — donate here. 100% of donations are dedicated to the cost associated with bringing SMC events to more people, more often.
How to Intentionally Shape Your Life with Foundational/Formational Stories
My longtime readers will recognize one of the stories you will hear in the podcast. It’s a chestnut I’ve polished many times in my resilience talks and retreats. I keep returning to it because I find that it allows me to summarize a lot of research with an image that helps my listeners anchor the information. It has to do with how my newlywed wife and I conducted “beauty checks” in the driving wind, hard rain, and white caps of a stormy Minnesota Boundary Waters, many-mile canoe journey. To this day, Lisa and I are convinced that hunting the beauty with our eyes, in the midst of tremendous toil, gave us the energy and fortitude to keep going in time to rendezvous with our ride back to civilization. That image, and the practice it suggests, has seen us through some hard times together.
Foundational, Formational Stories
I’ve come to believe that the scaffolding that forms and holds human personality is made up of stories. Likewise, I’m convinced that the foundational stories that we hold, either consciously or unconsciously, serve as lenses through which we interpret our experience. In turn, the influence of those stories bends the trajectory of our decisions. From the vantage point of thirty years later, I can see how the telling and the retelling of our “Beauty Check” story has shaped how I’ve done my marriage, my family life, and even influenced the personality formation of my children. Allow me to demonstrate with a story that occurred fifteen years after that newlywed camping trip. See if you can detect the echoes of the original story.
A Story That Echoes
It took place during my very first bike ride between Des Moines, Iowa, and St. Louis, MO. Our quaint rural lodge was owned by a gracious grandma who knew how to put together a proper country breakfast. After I ate my fill, I curled up in an afghan with a warm cup of coffee and gazed out at the rain as it soaked that part of Iowa that looks more like Ireland than a cornfield. I was feeling toasty and cozy. “Once the rain lets up,” I told myself, “we’ll get a move on.” That was until my buddy, Paul, the relaxation-slayer, gave me a stink-eyed look. He was the organizer of our trip. For my part, I was surprised to see him all decked out in his riding gear.
In his Chicago accent he indignantly confronted me. “We’re leaving in fifteen minutes! What’re-ya-doin’…lollygaggin’?” “Right!” I laughed. “We’re taking off in fifteen minutes… in this downpour?”
“That’s right! Better get a move on!”
I checked with my mates. He wasn’t kidding. And they were all ready to go. If it weren’t for the unanimous peer pressure, I’m pretty sure I would have tried to stage a mutiny. I wanted nothing more than to stay glued to my cozy and toasty rocking chair. I vaguely remember cursing under my breath and suiting up with a sick feeling of dread in my belly.
What saved me that morning was a decades-long habit of waking up with a cup of coffee and praying over a sacred text—usually a Bible, but often a book of poetry as well. Just before breakfast, I had read the line from Matthew’s Gospel, “Blessed are the eyes that see what you see” (Mt 13:16). I was actually contemplating that quote when Paul showed up with his self-righteous, bad-ass athleticism. As we launched ourselves into the rain, I kept that line with me. Soaked to the skin, splashed in the wake of rural trucks, with water dripping into my eyes, I’d search the landscape to find pockets of beauty. They were everywhere. Like I said, this part of Iowa looks like Ireland, especially in the rain. Each time I saw something worth looking at, I repeated my phrase, “Blessed are the eyes that see what you see.” It began to occur to me to say, “Blessed is the body that can do what your body can do.” I started thinking, “Many would like to be able to do this, but can’t.” By little and by little, a pain-in-the-ass bike ride became a privilege.
Narrative Therapy
An awful lot of what a counselor does is to surface previously unconscious stories to subject them to the light of consciousness, as well as curiosity and self-compassion. A good counselor assists a client in mining their stories for previously unseen evidence of strength, wholeness, and well-being. In the course of this kind of narrative therapy, the protagonist of the story, the client, can begin to see hidden possibilities emerge. Even a small shift can make a big difference.
But counselors aren’t the only ones who listen to stories. Good story listening really requires nothing more than curiosity, attentiveness, and a fundamental decision to care for the one who is sharing their story. The same holds true for listening to our own stories.
Dialogue and Discussion Questions:
Longtime SMC readers know that “the Dialogue” section of this article is set aside for a good conversation over a cup of coffee—with a friend, with a group, or just with yourself! As always, feel free to share your reaction or reflection in the “Comments” section below.
Name one or two of the foundational/formational stories that have shaped your life, or your family’s life. It could be a story told to you by a revered relative that you have internalized. It could be a story where you were one of the main characters in the action of the story. If you are drawing a blank, ask some close friends or family to remind you of the stories you’ve told over the years.
Sometimes foundational/formational stories can have a negative impact. For example, when I was in high school, a confluence of seriously unfortunate events made the daily smoking of exotic vegetables seem like the best idea ever. After years of this way of coping, I came within a whisker of flunking out of high school. As a result, a story took shape within me that I wasn’t very smart. Despite two graduate degrees and academic honors along the way, my kids will catch me speaking as if that old story were true. Do you have any foundational/formational stories that are negative? What are you doing to try and rewrite them?
Can you surface a story of when you discovered some special talent or skill? Tell that story with an eye toward some of the sights, sounds, smells, and people associated with that story.
Get back in touch with the story of when a life-long friendship quickened. Step back into that story with your senses. Tell that story with as much detail as you can remember.
Please share with the SMC community your thoughts and/or reflections in the comments below.