Book review

Year: 1997

Authors: Mandy Aftel

Rating: Entertaining 4/5 | Informative 4/5 | Inspiring 5/5

I was brought into the creative orbit of Mandy Aftel when an old friend and I visited the Aftel Archive of Curious Scents: a “scent museum” located down the driveway of an unassuming home in Berkeley, California. The novel experience of sampling antique ambergris, juicy peach isolate, delicious sarsaparilla, and hundreds of other aromatic curiosities from ornate apothecary bottles was unforgettable. My time with this unique collection of smells inspired me to research Aftel’s background, discovering that while she is currently focused on natural perfumery, her prior career as a psychotherapist to writers, artists, and other creatives in the Bay Area during the 1960s is equally interesting. One of the fruits from her time as a psychologist is The Story of Your Life. 

The Story of Your Life is a self-help book in the sense that it is written by a trained therapist with the purpose of inspiring a fresh inner dialogue about the events that have shaped one’s own life. Her writing, however, goes beyond the realm of psychology. Aftel proposes that adopting an artistic view of life—as authors crafting our own stories—enables one to live a richer and more content existence. She encourages readers to view their realities not as a series of events that they are passively accepting, but as a novel that they are thoughtfully composing. 

My favorite takeaway from the book is on events that we may regret or view as mistakes. She writes, “You may think, ‘Oh, that was frivolous behavior, and that was selfish behavior, and that was perhaps damaging behavior – but wasn’t it interesting!’ . . . Regret fades away in the face of interest.” In her professional opinion, “The ability to tolerate risk is necessary to autonomy and freedom,” and by adopting this courageous perspective, risks and even unsavory situations can be viewed with a fearless sense of curiosity rather than negativity and hesitation. We will either succeed, or gain another “interesting” experience that will serve to thicken our story’s plot.

I recommend The Story of Your Life to everyone, especially those who are typically skeptical of self-help books. The empowering lessons laced within this beautifully written and entertaining work provide encouragement and creative means for facing all aspects of life. If “language gives meaning to existence”, how are you telling your story?