On Stories...

Normally, I write an article every week... but the past four weeks, I just did not have the brain capacity to do it. I was running out of energy and I had to catch up on a few other things.

Obviously, the points that I just listed sound like excuses... and excuses are nothing but stories that we tell ourselves or others.

These stories can be helpful, they can also be harmful... in either case, stories carry a lot of power.

They carry the power to motivate or frustrate ourselves, the power to make us full of joy or go into depression, and the power to forgive someone or hold a grudge.

During our recent vacation, I practiced diving with my kids. The oldest can already dive about 25 meters which is a full lap, but the two younger ones struggled to dive even for 10-15 meters.

The way I practiced with them is that I stood in the center of the pool and they had to dive from the edge through my legs. Every time they managed to do that, I would go one step further back.

We started out with about 7-8 meters and both of them did really well. As we approached about 10 meters the youngest one started to struggle. She failed her first attempt... and I could see she was disappointed.

Then I asked her: "Muna... what do you have to tell yourself?"

She looked at me... paused, and then said quietly: "I got this!"

Although I had heard what she said, I asked her: "Can you repeat it a bit louder?"

She looked at me and knew that I had heard her, but she followed my request and said loud and clear with determination: "I GOT THIS!"

She took a big breath, and of course she made it.

After every successful attempt, I took another step back and ultimately was close to the other edge of the pool which was roughly 20 meters.

Muna looked at me, she could not believe that she had managed to dive that far... I realized, she was thinking and speaking to herself. She took a big breath and started to swim... she came closer and closer... she dove through my legs, but did not come up right away... instead she made it to the other edge of the pool.

For the first time, she had just dove about 20 meters... I could see how proud she was about her achievement.

Reflecting on her achievement, I realized how often I tell myself that I can do something that I have never done before.

I frequently speak to myself, write to myself, and envision how things will turn out. These techniques have helped me achieve the things that I have achieved over the course of my life.

Steve Jobs said to his team at Pixar:

“The most powerful person in the world is the storyteller. The storyteller sets the vision, values and agenda of an entire generation that is to come.”

Storytelling plays a huge role in marketing our products, in pitching our services, in recruiting people to join our team, and in encouraging people to embark on a change journey with us.

Stories help us create a shared goal, they can be the source of empathy with others, and they can be the foundation for collaboration.

At the same time, stories can be the source of division, war, and dehumanization.

As a trained medical doctor (scientist) I was trained to search for the truth... for cause and effect... for logic.

In human relationships, and any organization or company is just a bunch of human relationships, there is in many cases no truth, no cause and effect, and no logic. Daniel Kahneman demonstrated that there is no homo oeconomicus.

People make decisions based on stories... stories they have been told, or stories they tell themselves.

As an enlightened human being it is tremendously important to realize that the narritives we tell ourselves fundamentally drive our actions and that we have the power to change these narratives.

It then becomes our job to seek for truths instead of blindly following some story that we are told. It becomes our responsibility to be curious about why we think a certain way and explore how other perspectives (stories) could look like.

It is in our hands or rather in our heads whether we consider ourselves victims of what is happening around us or shapers of our own environment.

As I grow older, I become more and more aware of the stories that I had been telling myself which resulted in assumptions that I held and drove my actions. Being aware gave me the ability to change some of these narratives and replace them with other stories.

I do not do this to feel good about myself... in many instances, I have become more critical with myself, because I started to take responsibility for actions where in the past I would have blamed them on others.

Being aware of the power we have over ourselves is not always easy because it takes away the excuses... excuses for missing out on a workout, excuses for watching our screens too much, excuses for not eating healthy, excuses for not being the best version of ourselves to the people that matter the most.

But... we can also forgive ourselves and do not be too hard on ourselves. This is also a narrative I certainly had to learn... I became kinder to myself, which does not mean that I let myself go, but that I have kinder and more meaningful conversations which result in me succeeding more often with regards to the goals I set for myself.

What stories are you telling yourself? How would your actions change when you change these stories?

#FromNothingComesNothing