Our stories define us
Posted on May 29, 2015 by Sandhya Reddy, One of Thousands of Life Coaches on Noomii.
Our stories affect everything in our lives: the way we create meaning, think, make decisions, justify actions, view past & future and persuade others.
We all have stories.
Stories of how we got a scar, came into our line of work, got married, and chose our home and so on.
We tell these stories to parents, friends, supervisors and lovers.
We also tell them to ourselves.
When we meet someone new, we introduce ourselves with a story.
Our stories define us. They help us find and restore our place in the world.
So what really is a story? A story is a lens on the world.
Where do stories come from? They are the product of the mind.
Our minds weave our experiences into narratives that explain our lives back to us, and hence create meaning for future reference.
It happens at all ages.
A child sees his father quitting his job and sitting at home while his mother castigates the father for being a loser.
One part of the child’s brain forms a story for future reference: taking a break from work is a sign of weakness.
A supervisor finds that his team member clams up each time they have a disagreement.
One part of his brain forms a story for future reference: my team member cannot communicate with someone he disagrees with.
This constant mental sense-making is unconscious. It is a fundamental building block of our minds. Like the work of our senses.
Just like the brain takes in sensory data and processes it to help us keep our physical balance, the mind takes in life data and processes it into a story to help us keep our psychological balance.
But here’s the question: Are our stories true?
Are they enabling our work, our relationships and our life in general?
Or are they disabling us?
Enabling stories help us lead lives of freedom, love and growth.
Disabling stories force us into lives of psychological impotence, fear and stasis.
This happens because no matter whether the story is true or not, we believe the story to be true and it is that belief that gives the story so much power over us.
So the first building block of our story is belief.
The supervisor whose team member clams up every time they have a disagreement believes that his team member is incapable of communicating with someone he disagrees with.
But wait a minute. Has the team member not, in the past, emailed him after a conflict about how he felt and what he wanted changed?
Is email also a form of communication? Yes.
So is the team member incapable of communicating with someone he disagrees with? No.
He just can’t find the right words when face to face.
So is it possible for the belief at the heart of the story to be wrong?
Is it possible that another belief can exist?
If the supervisor answered ‘yes’ to that last question, his belief about his team member can change.
Once he believes it can change and for very rational reasons, he is on the path to writing ‘chapter two’ in the history of communication between him and his team member, to opening the door to a new story in that department.
Moreover, something called the Pygmalion Effect also comes into play. Because he now believes that his team member is well-intentioned and wishes to communicate, the supervisor’s attitude towards the team member matures, and this in turn, motivates the team member to show more trust and to be more communicative.
In other words, if you treat someone like a duchess, they will behave like a duchess. If you treat them like a tramp, they will behave like a tramp.
See how far a simple examination of beliefs at the heart of stories can take you?
This story is a simple example of the power of stories over us.
And because they have such psychological power over us, our stories affect everything in our lives: the way we create meaning, think, make decisions, justify actions, view past and future, persuade others, create our identity, and forge our place in the world.
Note: This is part 1 of a 4 part blog that appeared in the Chapter Two blog.
About the author:
Sandhya Reddy is a leadership & transformation coach based in Bangalore, India. She is the Founder and Principal Coach at Chapter Two Coaching, a coaching consultancy that enables everyone from CEOs to work-from-home parents to achieve their goals by replacing self-imposed limitations with enabling stories. Sandhya’s services include Executive Coaching and Life Coaching.
