Why Do We Tell Stories?

Have you ever wished that your co-workers would just stop gossiping? If only you could turn off the flow of stories, everything would be fine. Have you ever tried to make people stop telling their stories? Such efforts often drive stories underground and give them renewed vigor. Why? Because we are natural story tellers.

Even if we wanted to, we couldn’t stop telling stories. We tell stories from the moment we wake up and hit the snooze button (“Ahh, that meeting with Frank is going to be a bear,”) and throughout the day until we go to bed—which is when we continue the story telling through our dreams.

Our minds naturally want to make meaning of the things we see and hear around us. To make sense of our lives and our relationships; we organize our experiences into narratives that explain why things happen and why people do what they do. For example, if your boss doesn’t say hello to you one morning, you might tell yourself she just didn’t see you or maybe she had a lot on her mind and didn’t notice you. If your boss neglects to say hello each morning for a week, you might begin to believe another story;  she’s purposefully ignoring you. You begin to wonder if she’s avoiding you because she’s decided not to give you that bonus you’ve got coming to you.

Our social and cultural contexts influence these story lines. For example, employees have stories about managers. Some are useful (Our manager cares about us and helps us focus on the right priorities) , others not so much. (All they care about is power! They just go to meetings all day and leave the real work to us!) If you get promoted from an individual contributor into management, you inherit a new set of stories that managers tell about employees. Again, some of these are useful stories (When the pressure is on, my team steps up and gets the job done together), many of them are not (They are a bunch of slackers. If I don't ride them and get in their faces, nothing will ever get done around here!)

We can’t turn off the stories. But we can be curious about them, and use our natural meaning making ability to shape more productive, useful stories that lead to the results we really care about. More about how to do this in a future blog.

What experiences have you had with stories about others or yourself that have hindered or helped you get the results you want?

Comments

[Sharon Wilson]

Thanks for your post! Know that in hard times, we will have peace by going to our inner guidance. If we focus on the negatives, we won’t find the solution to our problem and our energy will be low which will result in attracting people with the same low energy output. What the bleep do we know really about time and reality?

http://www.spiritualpreneurs.com/what-the-bleep-do-we-know-really-about-time-and-reality/

[quick cash]

Perhaps you are unhappy with your work. Isn't it good that you have a job rather than being unemployed? Many people have the mistaken notion that successful people do not have any problems. It is not true. Success tends to breed its own set of problems.

Everyone has problems. A problem-free life is an illusion - a mirage in the desert. Accept the fact that everyone has problems. This will help you to move on with your life rather than sitting and feeling pity for yourself.

You may not be able to control the problems, but you certainly can control your reaction or response to the problem. You can turn your pain into profanity or into poetry. The choice is up to you. You can control the reaction even if you cannot control the problem. You control the effect of the problem by controlling the reaction. It can make you tough or tender. It can make you better or bitter. It all depends on you.

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