How Endings Shape the Stories We Live With

We don’t just live our lives, we narrate them.

I was listening to Chris Williamson’s podcast the other day with Chris Bumstead, one of the greatest bodybuilders of all time. Bumstead had just won his sixth consecutive Olympia title and announced his retirement soon after. It was the perfect ending, a champion walking away on top, leaving behind a legacy few could touch.

Then Chris asked him a question that changed the tone completely.“Would you have retired if you’d lost?”

Bumstead paused. You could see he hadn’t really thought about it. Although he liked to believe he’d have stuck to his decision to retire, the honest answer was that he wasn’t sure.

This got me to reflect on how important a stories ending is.

It revealed something we all wrestle with, whether we’re athletes or not. How much the way things end shapes the story we carry in our minds. To the world, Bumstead would still be an all-time great. But in his own mind, a loss might have tainted the whole story, not because it changed what happened, but because it changed the meaning.

And that’s what got me thinking. How often do we let the way something ends rewrite everything that came before it?

When one moment rewrites the whole story

The ending changes everything.

You can spend years building something beautiful, but one moment at the end can shift the whole meaning of it. A breakup after a decade together can make you question if any of it was real. A friend’s betrayal can colour every memory that came before it. An athlete’s final loss can make a whole career feel incomplete.

It’s not that those moments erase what happened. The love, the effort, the joy — all of it was real. But the mind has a way of rewriting the past through the lens of the ending. It creates a story, and that story becomes the version we live with.

Sometimes that story brings peace. Other times it keeps us stuck.

I’ve seen this in myself. When something ends well, I can close the chapter and move forward. But when it ends abruptly, or without resolution, I keep replaying it. My mind tries to find a version that feels okay, a meaning that lets me rest.

The truth is, it’s rarely the ending that hurts most. It’s the story we keep telling after it’s over.

How it feels to leave a chapter unfinished

I still remember the feeling of being at my peak as a runner.

Running was everything to me for over a decade. I was training hard, running my best times, and had no plans to stop. Then I moved to Thailand to chase the poker dream, and everything started to fade without me realising it.

At first, I kept up my training. But over time, four sessions a week turned into two. Two soon turned into none. The 30 degree heat made running very uncomfortable. And with no races to peak for, I no longer had something specific to train for. Before I knew it, running was something I used to do.

I didn’t quit. I just drifted away.

My focus shifted to the gym, mostly because that’s what everyone around me was doing. It was fun, it felt social, and I told myself I’d get back to running later. Yet I never did.

Years went by, and I didn’t think much about it — until the dreams started.

I'd have vivid dreams of seeing myself meeting my old running coach again, stepping back onto the track, running fast, feeling that old sense of freedom. Sometimes my dad was there too, watching from the stands, proud I was back competing. Then I’d wake up, and realise it was all in my head. But it left a seed of doubt that I might have walked away too early.

The story hadn’t ended for me. Or maybe, I hadn’t given it an ending.

I didn’t get to close that chapter consciously. I just let it fade. And because of that, a part of me kept it open, replaying what could have been.

Looking back, I can see that what I really wanted wasn’t to start running again — it was to make peace with how it ended.

When you finally know a story is complete

Closing the poker playing chapter of my life was very different.

I’d climbed all the way up from the lowest stakes to battling the best in the world. I’d faced the pressure, the uncertainty, the grind. For years, I lived and breathed the game. Ten-hour days. Six days a week. Always searching for that next edge.

And somehow, I found it.

There was a stretch where I was one of the top ten players in my format. I’d achieved what I set out to do. The wins, the money, the recognition — they all came, but more importantly, so did a quiet satisfaction.

When I finally stepped away, there was no internal drama. No part of me wondering if I’d left too soon. I’d done what I set out to do.

Sure, I could have stayed longer. Made more money. Built a bigger name. But none of that felt necessary anymore. The story already felt complete.

That’s what made it easy to let go.

Since then, I’ve never had the same recurring dreams about poker that I did with running. I don’t imagine comebacks or replay old hands in my mind. That chapter feels closed — not because it ended perfectly, but because the story I was able to tell myself about it felt complete.

And I think that’s the difference.

If we are able to walk away from something at a good point, when we have given what we could to it, the ending feels satisfying. Yet if something ends more abruptly, or fades away like with my running career, we are left with an unsatisfied feeling of what could have been.

It's as if the final chapter were never written, and that can be hard to live with.

The same event, a different story

Every ending leaves a story behind.

Sometimes it’s a story of pride and completion. Other times, it’s one of regret or loss. But either way, it’s the story, not the event itself, that stays with us.

The mind can’t stand unfinished stories. It wants resolution. It wants to know how things turned out, even if it has to invent meaning to get there. That’s why we replay moments long after they’ve passed, trying to rewrite them into something we can live with.

But the same event can create very different stories depending on how we see it. A breakup can become a painful story of loss, or a time filled with good memories as you move onto the next chapter of your life. Losing a job can be the story of failure, or the story of being redirected toward something better.

It’s not the facts that change, it’s the frame.

And that frame is something we have more power over than we think.

The more I’ve learned to watch my mind, the more I’ve realised that I’m always narrating life to myself. I’m not just living it, I’m interpreting it. Giving it shape. Trying to make sense of what it means.

When I can see that clearly, I have a choice. I can keep recycling old stories that leave me stuck, or I can write new ones that bring peace.

Because endings aren’t just what happen to us. They’re stories we get to write.

Consciously creating better endings

If every ending leaves a story, then the real work is to write one you can live with.

That doesn’t mean forcing a silver lining or pretending something painful was “meant to be.” It means looking honestly at what happened and choosing a perspective that frees you, rather than traps you.

Whenever something ends, I try to ask myself a few questions.

• What story am I telling myself about this?

• Is it helping me move forward, or keeping me stuck in the past?

• What else could this ending mean?

Sometimes, it takes time to find the right story. The mind wants to rush in and label things quickly, but peace comes when you allow the meaning to unfold more slowly.

You can even create small rituals to close a chapter consciously. Write a letter you never send. Revisit a place one last time. Say what was left unsaid, even if only to yourself. Each act helps your mind understand that something has finished, and that it’s safe to let go.

Because letting go isn’t forgetting. It’s choosing to remember differently.

When you consciously complete an ending, you make space for something new to begin. And that’s the part most of us miss — closure isn’t the end of the story, it’s what allows the next one to start.

How you end the story shapes how you live the next one

Every life is a collection of stories.

Some begin with excitement, others with fear. Some end beautifully, others end too soon. What stays with us isn’t what happened, it’s how we remember it.

The mind will always try to protect you by rewriting the past. It looks for reasons, it assigns blame, it tries to make sense of what felt senseless. But beneath all that noise is a quieter truth: you still get to decide what story you take forward.

Running taught me what happens when you drift away without closure. Poker taught me the peace that comes from finishing well. Both showed me that what matters most isn’t whether the story ends perfectly, but whether you find your own way to close it.

Because in the end, what happened matters less than the story you choose to carry. That story decides whether you stay stuck in the past or walk freely into what’s next.

And maybe freedom isn’t about changing the past at all, but finally making peace with how it ended.

Adam