The stories we tell ourselves

This is a little bit more of a personal letter. I was watching a video of someone with Tourette’s this week, and they talked about how important the diagnosis was - until they understood what was going on, they self-labelled as a bad person, someone who was out of control, did bad things “for no reason”, and was “broken”. Now, they still have the condition, but they understand it, are open about it, and have worked it into their life very successfully. All that has really changed is the story they are telling themselves.

I had a similar but less extreme experience with ADHD. I wasn’t diagnosed until my 50’s. Until then, the story I told myself was that I was just weak minded, scattered, unfocused, emotional. But understanding ADHD means I know where all of that comes from. Sometimes it let’s me understand that a sudden emotion isn’t really valid, and let’s me step aside from it. But more importantly, it’s let me really understand, and own, the fact that my wonderful ADHD brain gives me all kinds of superpowers that other people don’t have: creativity, an incredible facility with visual thinking and abstraction, speed and insight, and so on. I don’t feel the shame I used to feel - the story I tell myself has changed.

Those are extreme examples but we all tell ourselves stories about what we can and can’t do. “I’m not good at math/art/music/people”, “I’m impatient”, “I’m lazy” etc. There are two things to think about here. The first is that, as always on this blog, you should try to look for root causes and systemic effects, rather than just symptoms. If there really is a behavior that’s fundamentally different, try to understand it in a neutral way if you can. Dig into what the causes might be.

The other is a bit more zen, like the parable of the farmer’s son. If you think something about yourself is bad just because it’s different, “how do you know?”. Can you tell a different story? (“I’m not good at infrastructure” can become “I’m a great frontend coder”, for example). Is there a place where your natural skills and tendencies are valuable instead of a liability? Much of life is noticing this about ourselves and adjusting to find environments where that is more true.

Stories are most of what makes us human. We tell them to each other all the time, and we tell them to ourselves most of all. Richard Feynman said, (something like) “the trick is to not fool anyone, and you are the easiest person for you to fool”, and that’s true of the stories we tell too. Try to watch yourself today, see what stories your telling without thinking about it, and once you’ve spotted them, think about how they might be reframed to be more helpful.

OK - next week, back to code, products and AI!