The stories we tell
The story we tell others needs to be true but the one we tell ourselves needs to be useful
Sometimes, writing is like opening the doors to a dam. Just when you write and publish a small, thought-provoking piece, a barrage of related ideas come flowing through. For me one such article was ‘Personal courage is over-hyped’. In it, I called out all of us on our tendency to over emphasise our tales of conquering challenges. This is compounded by our tendency to underplay or omit completely the failures that really blew the air out of us. In a nutshell, my point is that the stories we tell others about our journeys need to be as true as our memories will permit.
Writing this piece made me wonder though.
Why do the more successful among us tend to tell such partial truth about their success? Moreover, could telling such a glossed over version of their story set them up for future success?
You may think that storytellers and heroes are trying to fool the world. Perhaps, to some extent that is their intention, but not their primary intention. More than anyone else, our stories are meant to fool ourselves into believing a near-perfect version of who we are. Why? There could be many reasons of which, a simple one is that such a story sets us up for future success.
The stories we tell ourselves is all that there is to reality.
Reiterating our conquests works to program our minds to believe in the best version of ourselves and sets us up for further success. For example, a public speaker who routinely shares her story of this one time when she squashed her stage-fear but omits that she still stutters for the first few seconds on stage, constantly reminds her subconscious mind of her ability to deal with challenges. Unfortunately, this lopsided version can be misleading to budding speakers who wish to emulate her path. Each time they are unable to conquer their own stage-fright, they might feel “not cut out” to be a charismatic speaker like her. Yet, in the future, such a belief allows her to face larger audiences with confidence.
The success story we repeat often is an affirmation to our own minds. Once your mind believes a better-fitter-happier image of yourself, it works towards manifesting that image in reality. It sets off a positive feedback loop creating more and more success for the person painting such a self-image.
So the stories we tell others about our journeys must be true, but the stories we tell ourselves need not be. The stories we tell ourselves should be useful in building a self-image that is the best version of ourselves. This is the first step to start creating that imaginary, larger-than-life version of ourselves in reality.
