Don’t Get Trapped in Outdated Stories

Re-Authoring Your Story to Unlock New Possibilities, Open New Doors, and Take Your Next Step

Executive Summary:

·        It is not your life's purpose to re-live your past over and over, to be only one thing, to have only one story. No one story is rich enough to fully describe who you are and what you are capable of.

·        There is not reason to stick doggedly to who you thought you were 10 or 20 or 30 years ago…or when your self-image was first formed. Re-authoring your story (personal story or leadership story) can be transformative.

·        Narrative Therapy shows us that each person is “multi-storied,” and it describes ever so powerfully how people get trapped in old, stale, impoverished (“thin”), superficial stories about themselves.

·        When is the last time you took stock of your strengths and experiences, what motivates and energizes you, who and what you love and value, your hopes and dreams? Each person has many important strengths and values that could take them down many different paths.

·        Re-authoring your “identity story” can be transformative by unlocking other positive aspects of who you are: other strengths, values, capabilities, and potential.

·        Quick tip: Don’t be trapped by who you were forced to be in the crazy 2020. Write down everything you're good at, what you love & value most, and what’s most energizing for you. And then think about which of those wonderful aspects of yourself and your life you would like to be more of and do more of next year?

Selective Perception:

In another blog on selective perception [apologies: the link is unavailable because my website is out for dry cleaning], I described how our daily reality is highly subjective and biased. Even the simplest perception is shaded and enriched by your hopes, dreams, expectations, projects, fears, bad habits…along with various cultural and historical biases, your training, your family and friends, your teachers and preachers, and so on. As Nietzsche said, there is no such thing as “immaculate perception.” In that blog I charted some of the implications for team leadership. In this short article, I am going to introduce the power of transformative storytelling: re-authoring your identity stories. An identity-story is the story you tell about yourself (who you think you are), or a story that an organization or community tells about itself (our self-imposed identity as a group).

What kind of leader are you? What stories do you tell yourself about how you lead—and want to lead?

The stories we tell about ourselves have an enormous impact on who we are and how we see the world; how we treat ourselves and others; the potential we see in ourselves and the opportunities we see (take notice of); the friends we seek out; how hard we try and when we give up.

Nevertheless, it is very easy to get stuck in old stories. Stories become old and outdated; they become stale and lifeless—they become rigid, narrow (“Thin”), and limiting. Getting stuck in an old identity-story stops you from moving forward, making new decisions, trying new things, opening new doors, exploring other possibilities of who you are and what you are capable of.

How Most Business Use Stories:

Check out this great little article on storytelling by Shane Snow—a classic approach to storytelling in business; it shows how stories can be very persuasive, and therefore powerful for marketing, branding, inculcating core values, inspiring employees, etc.:

 https://www.dhirubhai.net/pulse/20130802112108-7374576-this-will-be-the-1-business-skill-of-the-next-5-years/

Nevertheless, traditional storytelling is still top down: part and parcel of old school command and control style leadership. It pushes culture from above through persuasion (“indoctrination”). If the stories are meaningful, they can be positive and inspiring, and motivate people to take positive action. Nevertheless, they end up encouraging people to do what the author of the story did, to do what has already been done, to imitate the leader, to maintain a tradition, and in this way, they dis-empower individuals and organizations from engaging in true transformative communal, collaborative action that opens up new possibilities and learning. Top down stories also create weak team (communal) bonds. Collaborative action, especially when working together to craft your joint future builds far strong mutual trust, respect, and loyalty.

I love a good story, and I use stories to illustrate and explain. But at that level, storytelling is merely tactical. The bigger problem, the deeper challenge is that we get stuck in outdated stories that can limit our potential, trap us in old narratives, see ourselves in only one way, and stop us from moving forward. This applies both to individuals and organization, both of which tell identity stories about themselves.

Far more than learning how to “tow the line,” narrative can be used to teach leaders how to re-craft their own leadership and organizational stories to open new possibilities and unleash hidden talent, innovation, and passion in their work. To use an ancient philosophical language: narrative affirms the truth that we are not simply “Being”; we are “Becoming.”

If you want to get noticed, tell a good story. If you want to change the world, collaborate in creating new possibilities (as a team, organization, or community).

Therapeutic Interlude: “You are Not the Problem; The Problem is the Problem”:

In a therapeutic situation, Narrative Therapy works with people who get stuck in “problem saturated” stories, i.e., people who are obsessing over one particular failure or traumatic event from their past. These “problem-stories” have a common trajectory: they trick us into turning inward and internalizing the problem—not just as a problem to be dealt with but as a deep personal failure. Problem-stories trick you into thinking that you are worthless; they make you ashamed of being that failure; they encourage you to withdraw from the world; and they tell you that you are not worthy of love. So exactly when you might need your friends most, you get trapped inside yourself—sucked into a vortex of obsessing over your problem. And the problem makes it totally personal, tricking you into thinking that you are the problem and that the problem is you. Problem-stories tend to be closed loop: the problem is where your story ends; that’s it; that’s what you are—end of story. (You can see how this happens in smaller way to everyone from time to time: once we start obsessing over something that we are stressed about, it is very hard to let it go.)

But as real as the problem is, you are not just that problem. You are not the problem. The problem is the problem.

The brilliance of Narrative Therapy is to provide us with a dozen ingenious tactics to help us externalize the problem (show that it is not the entirety of your identity) and enrich your identity-story, i.e., get out of that endless loop to take a new step; to see that the problem is not your last chapter, the conclusion of the book of your life. The step forward is part of re-authoring your story. The step forward is proof that who you are does not begin and end with the problem.

There is real genius in this practice, and you can see a lot of it in the first, founding book in this field: White & Epston, Narrative Means to Therapeutic Ends (Norton & Co., 1990). A great recent contribution to and survey of the field is: Madigan, Narrative Therapy (American Psychological Association, 2nd edition, 2019). Madigan runs a school for Narrative Therapy in Vancouver, Canada, where Epston and other international experts often participate in the teaching.

The Power of Narrative Practice:

There is another way to do storytelling, one that is not devoted to a fixed, static, past identity. Tradition is important, and so is history (we all carry baggage from the past: some of it helpful and some not), but we are not just our baggage. I am not just who I thought I was 20 years ago. In any case, all identity stories focus on a couple of attributes. But I am more than a couple of attributes. In that way, all identity stories are narrow or thin, like a stereotype. They focus me on one aspect of myself at the expense of all others. That is how stories work—how all narratives work. While a good story brings something important to light, it also limits us by focusing on those one or two things. I am bigger than any one story.

I find it helpful to think of how racial stereotypes work. A racist or bigoted stereotype works by generalizing one trait to a whole group and by reducing that group to that one trait—as if that one trait is the most important thing about them—their defining characteristic. This is obviously absurd and morally corrupt. Bigotry not only influences how we treat “those people” but also limits the options and potential of everyone in that group because the stereotypes get built into the societal systems and structures that we build, and become systemic racism. A problem saturated story is just like that: it reduces an individual (or community) to one thing.

[Apologies for this political comment: It is the racists and bigots who foist an identity on others—an identity that makes them lesser. When an oppressed group bands together to fight for equal rights, they are not inventing identity politics to become superior to others, but quite to the contrary fighting against a dishonest and unfair identity forced on them by the bigots.]

An identity-story that focuses only on what I did, on one event, on one choice, is always going to fall short of who and what I am as a totality—of my entire person and potential.

We react to change, we drive change, we innovate and create new possibilities, and we are therefore capable of re-authoring our identity stories. That doesn’t mean we can make up any random story we want. A good-identity story builds on parts of yourself that are meaningful and potentially fruitful but have maybe been ignored in or excluded from your current story. You are more than any one attribute, quality, possibility, problem, or disappointment.

At the personal level, narrative practice supports re-authoring our stories in a way that breathes fresh life into our values and strengths, and opens up new possibilities in our lives—including the creation of new values, strengths, and learning.

Likewise, at the team, organizational, or community level, rather than simply retelling our favorite old stories, or being trapped by them, we can build a stronger, more functional community by co-creating new stories and possibilities, enabling transformative action.

Narrative Practice:

Let me describe as briefly as possible two narrative tactics. In business we would call them change tactics but narrative practice opens up something deeper and more transformational than change management because it has to do with how we tell the story of who we are, and how that affects the way we see ourselves and our place in the world.

1. Externalize the Problem: “Naming”:

Problem saturated stories trick you into thinking that you are the problem; the problem is elemental to who you are. The problem tricks you into internalizing the problem so that it is entrenched deeply into your very identity. A key challenge, therefore, is how to externalize the problem (or the stale story); how to break away from its destructive and limiting hold on you.

Inspired by the incredible Chené Swart, I externalize like this: First, I imagine the problem is a little ball or sphere; I pretend to hold the sphere in front of my chest, a good two feet from eyes, and I give it a good look. Second, as I twist and turn the (imaginary) sphere in every direction, inspecting it from every angle, I think carefully about the nature of the problem: “How does it work? How do I live it (how do I perform it)? What role do I play in that story? What makes the problem tick; what gives it is strength and power? Who else plays along; what are their roles? What else support and enables that view of myself?” You and I might have the same problem, but we assuredly experience it in different ways; and the enablers of your problem could be completely different from mine. It is crucial that your describe how the problem works in your world.

Finally, I name the problem, i.e., I give the problem a name. The name can be funny, serious, or obvious. It doesn’t have to be fancy or clever. But the problem has to have a name—just like every novel or movie has a name.

That might sound trivial, but the act of naming the problem “objectivizes” the problem, turns it into an object of my analysis. That act of objectifying the problem makes it less intensely personal (less part of my identity, my “subjectivity”) and creates a little space between me and my problem. This both gives me a chance to analyse it a little more objectively and also forces me to realize in a deep way that I am not the problem—the problem is the problem—and that it is only one possibility of my being (or becoming).

2. Is That All I am?

After naming the problem, take a good look at the sphere and ask: “Is that it; is that all I am?” Implied in this question is: What else am I? How does this problem fit into the bigger picture of who I am, what I want, and what I’m capable of?”

Before you try to answer that gigantic question, take out a piece of paper and write down your biggest successes in life, what you are best at, when you have made a positive difference (at any age), when you were happiest, who you love and what you value most in the world, a few of your hopes and dreams, times people have thanked you or that you have helped someone else… The list doesn’t have to be organized or comprehensive but it has to be real: a whole bunch your favorite incidents and stories about yourself. You don’t need to write the stories—just list them. (You can do all this as an individual, a professional (a leader), or as a team / organization / community.)

Imagine each idea on the page is a star in your universe.

Now have a good look at your list and: 1. Enjoy it for a while. 2. Internalize some of those stories: acknowledge that they are all also part of who you are. And 3. Identify a few items that are most missing from your life right now: what you want more of. Or more profoundly, which of these important stories are missing from your problem saturated story or your current identity story (the story you are stuck on)? This last question objectivizes, externalizes, and minimizes the problem even further—in the sense of realizing (however painful your situation is right now) that the problem is really a small part of who you are. Again, that might sound a trivial, but in the context of how problem narratives work (they reduce you to one thing), this series of questions can be incredibly transformational.

Narrative helps people remember that they are not the problem (the problem is the problem), and that they are more than the problem. Reconnecting with that “more” is transformation because it helps you connect with other possibilities of your being, other strengths that you have, other parts of yourself that extend beyond that limiting story, and therefore that can help you take a step forward from (and out of) that problem saturated story, or an old, stale, limiting identity-story.

Chené Swart introduced me to this tactic in a one-day workshop in Vancouver. Having done leadership development for 15 years by then, having earned a PhD with Distinction in philosophy, and having been a professional athlete, I had come to assume that there wasn’t much I could learn about myself anymore. But going through that experience (in a “workshop” no less) opened up a massive insight about myself: an assumption I was making about my career was holding me back from moving forward. (I might write about that on another occasion.) I was immediately hooked on narrative practice. In addition to the fact that this experience rocked my world, I immediately saw its applicability to my life, being a husband and father, as a professional and leader, and to organization culture. It also reawakened my love of philosophy—narrative practice just happens to be based on the philosophy I studied. (Coincidence or conspiracy? Haha.)

Note: I am not a therapist. My interest in narrative is personal, professional, philosophical, and political.

3. Curiosity and Question:

There isn’t room here to talk about other ingenious narrative techniques, but let me note that the chapter on letter writing in White and Epston’s Narrative Means to Therapeutic Ends (chapter 3) is genius in its inventiveness. You will also see there how intensely ethical and generous narrative is. Narratives does not reframe problems through manipulation: it does not tell people what to do and how to think, or tell people to interpret their own experiences through your favourite theoretical frameworks. Narrative, conversely, works through curiosity and questions. If you think curiosity and questions are important—and a true art—in coaching and leadership development, you will be blown away by how it is done in narrative.

Technical & Philosophical Principles of Narrative Practice:

The following section is for those who want to understand some of the rationale behind narrative practice, what makes it work, and how it differs from other approaches to leadership, learning, and change.

The philosophy upon which narrative practice is based is incredibly complex. Nevertheless, the application in narrative practice is not dogmatic or theoretical in any way. It is relatively light, seamless, intuitive, and non-invasive. If you read anything on narrative you will definitely see some theory—so be prepared.

1.     No story can ever encompass the full richness of our lived experience—all stories are selective, focusing on a tiny portion of one's experience, skills, values, potential, person and potential. We are all multi-storied and we often get trapped in one story.

2.     Many people have constructed stories about themselves that date back to their childhood or early career experiences—most of our “identity stories” are woefully out of date and simply don’t work for us anymore.

3.     Over time, even the most positive and fruitful stories become stale and lifeless, rigid and limiting, and we start perform them by rote. Instead of the story illuminating us, we force ourselves to fit into the story. We become a cliché or caricature in our own story. E.g., a fifty-year old goes home for thanksgiving dinner, is relegated to the role they played in the family 35 years ago (treated like they are 15 again)—and accepts that role; steps in to play their childhood role in the family.

4.     The language practices we inherit from the sciences—that we use in our daily lives—encourage a kind of objectification and commodification that dis-empowers people, cuts them off from their potential, and radically narrows perception and thinking by promoting a superficial, rigid, life-diminishing dogmatism. All concepts work a little like stereotypes: they are incredibly compact and useful but incredibly narrow and selective (“thin”). The use of concepts in science makes medicine work and keep planes in the sky. But they are far too narrow and limiting to describe the richness of human experience and human potential.

5.     The deconstruction of the subject (a huge issue in French philosophy circa 1960-1980, and based on earlier work by Nietzsche, Freud, and Heidegger) explodes our superficial and na?ve understanding of individuality and individualism. Our individuality always occurs in a human, social, and societal context. Even when we are alone in our deepest moment of personal reflection, our experience is shot through with others: history, culture, family, teachers, preachers, friends…and language, which is itself shared and communal. I argue that we are as much communal as individual (whether it’s 50-50 or 60-40 is irrelevant). That is why a politics based on individualism will never work; will always be damaging to people and to society. That’s another story. Narrative practice, consequently, looks at all the support systems of the problem, the communities in which you live, how others feed or enable your old story, and even consider politics when it is useful. One narrative case affirms that anorexia for a teenage girl is not a personal choice or a personal moral failing. Telling an anorexic to “eat more” is totally useless and often fuels the desperation and anorexia. Anorexia has societal roots and is also a political problem. In this case, the narrative therapist guided the anorexic teen to join a group that studies and criticizes societal practices that fuel anorexia. Ingenious. Several narrative techniques benefit from this deconstruction of the subject, e.g. getting family and friends (who knew you prior to therapy), to bear witness to important strengths and attributes that are not part of the problem saturated story (in person or with letters)—attributes that are crucial to who you are and what you are capable of.

6.     Stories need to be authentic. Authentic does not mean being true to yourself in the sense of a slavish devotion to a fixed, static, selective past identity (some dogmatic over-simplistic version of yourself). Authentic means rooted in our experiences, values, passions, and strengths (all of which are themselves are dynamic, changing, becoming). We have to both discover and create who we are as our life unfolds. (The primary truth of authenticity is that there is no pure authenticity—no one fixed, true self.) You cannot make up any silly story you want about who you want to be. If your story is not true to who you are in some way, it will have no power, it will be nothing more than empty wishful thinking.

7.     The performance of your story is crucial: how you tell the story and how you play your role in it are both performative. If you are performing something that is pre-written (like a script) then you are a mere actor—this is fine for community theater but not so good for your life. Foucault showed us how we internalize “Big Brother” and become instruments of our own subjugation through self-surveillance—we track our own behavior to keep ourselves in line with cultural norms, some of which are life sucking and destructive—an anesthetic to life, as Nietzsche would say. Reflecting on our performance, how you play your role in the story, helps you map out how you are feeding the problem with your own behavior, and helps you map the various life support systems of the problems in your “world,”, i.e., the social, cultural, historical, systemic enablers of the problem in your unique situation and experience.  This exploration of how the problem works for you, in your life and your context, is called “local knowledge,” i.e., not some grand theory about humanity in general, but knowledge about how it works for you in your life, based on first had descriptions and first-hand accounts (testimony) from those who know you best. We can then use those very same contextual factors to drive, reinforce, and sustain the changes we wish to make, to open the door to a new possibility of being (or becoming). Even if you choose a new possibility freely, it is very difficult to move forward without addressing the enablers of your old story.

Unlike superficial positive thinking movements (empty affirmations), narrative practice helps people anchor their leadership style and their new stories in:

1.     a deeper, more authentic understanding of yourself and your potential;

2.     a more rigorous appreciation of how your life is woven into various contexts: personal, professional, your various communities…and even your footprint on the planet;

3.     a greater affirmation of difference, diversity, and alterity—even within ourselves (no one is on thing; each personal attribute is itself dynamic; we are all exploding with possibilities); and

4.     an affirmation of the dynamic aspect of existence, i.e., your being in the world is a kind of becoming—being in this case is a verb, not a noun.

Narrative practice gives us a way to explore and affirm the dynamic richness of human existence in its intertwining with local knowledges, alterity, and possibility, and to do this relatively non-evasively, with a minimum of theoretical baggage pre-determining what we see and do, and with a generous and ethical approach to engaging others. Stephen Madigan said somewhere that he brings his curiosity to client meetings: metaphorically speaking, instead of bringing all his favorite books to the meeting (i.e., all his knowledge, all the things he already knows), he brings the books he hasn’t read yet, i.e., all the things he is curious about. We might say: deconstructing our theoretical maps enables us to explore and develop “local knowledge”—an understanding of what makes an individual tick and how their identity stories limit or enable them to move forward.

In addition to the books by White, Epston, and Madigan, you might enjoy a complimentary book that takes you a couple of steps in the direction of narrative practice, but does it in a more traditional business language, and is therefore more immediately applicable and practical for leaders: Community: The Structure of Belonging by Peter Block. This work has wonderful descriptions of leading edge ideas on facilitation, collaborative practice, and team / organizational / community transformation.