Your EHE narrative begins with an Exceptional Experience (EE). This may be an EE from your earliest childhood memory, one that happened more recently, the only one you can recall in your life, one you feel most comfortable writing about, or the one you consider the most spectacular.

Steps and Questions to Ponder

1. Select your EE to write about. Bring it close to you from memory, letting it get richer, fuller, more vivid in your relaxed mind. You may actually want to try to relive it or simply observe it, whichever is more comfortable for you to start.
2. Then, begin jotting down a few reminder notes about that particular experience. Try to capture it, hold onto it in your mind while you take notes. Relive your senses and feelings of that time as best you can. What happened? Describe your experience. When did the experience happen? How long did it last? Where were you? Why did that particular experience impress you at that time?
3. Next, go backward into time and try to remember the immediate circumstances leading up to that EE. What were you doing just before the experience? What mood were you in? How were you feeling? Who was with you, if anyone? Describe your surroundings, your sense of time, and whatever else you can recall. What do you feel brought about the EE, if anything?
4. Now, follow that one experience a bit further along and go forward in time, just past the actual experience. What happened? Soon after it was over, how did you feel? Were you exhilarated, frightened, awed, confused, or what? Try to express this feeling in words. Did this experience change or move you in any particular way?
5. Also, describe your actions shortly after the experience. What did you do? How did you react? Did you try to hide it as if nothing happened? Did you take it in stride? Did you tell anyone about it? If you shared your experience, when did you do it? Did another person's reaction affect your own initial assessment and feelings about your experience?
6. Now, in hindsight and looking back on that whole situation, was the experience meaningful to you? Or, was the whole experience better off forgotten? Did you learn anything from it overall? Did you gain any new insights or connections? If so, what were they? Did this experience make a positive or negative difference in your life? Does this particular experience factor in any way in your life today? In summary, what did this experience show or mean to you?

Congratulations!

You have just completed outlining your first EHE narrative account. We are very interested in your written account, what happened, what you felt, did, and learned about your experience. We would appreciate including it in our narrative databank to further research and to encourage others to write their own narratives. You may submit your story anonymously, if you would like.

Once you have written your first EHE narrative account, you will probably want to explore other EEs in your life in much the same way. Sooner or later you may discover that these experiences connect together for you in ways that you had not even considered before. This insight, sensing a connection across experiences is, in itself an EHE. It is here that you begin to recognize the larger tapestry of your life and you are well on your way to writing your EHE autobiography.