Alasdair MacIntyre, an endurantist par excellence, argues that ‘the unity of a human life is the unity of a narrative quest,’ but not all narratives are unified, and many of them are none the worse for that. Listeners wonder, ‘Why should I believe you can excel in a new arena when you don’t have a track record to point to? Seldom is a good story so needed, though, as when a major change of professional direction is under way — when we are leaving A without yet having left it and moving toward B without yet having gotten there. Sam, the former HR executive, was able to cite a number of unusual projects he had worked on, which indicated, though in a big-company context, his ability to think and act entrepreneurially.

Each time she wrote a cover letter, interviewed, or updated friends and family on her progress, she better defined what was exciting to her; and in each public declaration of her intent to change careers, she committed herself further. Unfortunately, the authors explain in this article, most of us fail to use the power of storytelling in pursuit of our professional goals, or we do it badly.She belonged to another set of parents, who had been raising Sophie’s biological daughter in a town several miles away.

As Wittgenstein observes, what gives strength to the rope that tethers a ship to the dock isn’t a single fibre running through it. If you create the sense that your life hangs (and will hang) together, you’ll be free to incorporate the dramatic elements of change and turmoil and uncertainty into your story that will make it compelling. Charlotte Linde, a linguist who has studied the importance of coherence in life stories, makes clear in her work that coherence emerges in large part from continuity and causality.

Yet feeling your way into someone else’s mind won’t necessarily transform your view of them, or modify an external judgment of what they do.