The Stories We Tell Ourselves

For a while I’ve wanted to get better at storytelling, especially with images.

Isn’t good communication, the most effective communication, mostly about storytelling? As we watch tv or listen to a friend, we want to be wrapped up in a tale, of challenge and change and surprise and delight. We want our friends and family and customers to be engrossed in our stories too, in our enthusiasm, in our passion for what’s possible, of what we can achieve together, of the adventures we can have together.

And it’s easy to feel deficient, that it’s an art, that some people are gifted storytellers and others aren’t, or at least that it will take a lifetime to learn.

Except that we tell ourselves stories all the time.

“I’m not good enough because this happened and that happened and so I won’t be able to do it, or they won’t accept or respect me.”

“If I had this thing and that job, I’d feel a lot better about life and be like those other people.”

As Seth Godin often mentions, we frequently tell ourselves ‘people like us do things like this’.

We’re pretty good at convincing ourselves, telling stories so effectively that we believe them, true or not.

So I think we have the skills, especially if we care enough to use them. And I think it’s often fear that makes a difference and makes our stories less effective. We’re too concerned about how others might respond, so we try to keep the story too short or too safe or too predictable. We follow what’s been told before rather than build on it. And so we lose a little of the authentic truth, a little of the edge, a little of our own flavor, a little of the surprise. And nobody really wants to listen to a predictable story.