What Are the Stories that You Are Telling Yourself?

Life is a story, and your life is a story that you are telling yourself. This fact has huge implications for you, not just in your personal life but also for your job, your career, and your business, which is our area of interest here. This is because, although you often cannot choose your circumstances, you actually do have a choice about the stories that you tell yourself about those circumstances. In short, if the stories you are telling yourself at not serving you, you can craft new, more empowering ones.

So, what are the stories that you are telling yourself, about your people, your products and services, the business environment that you operate in, and the wider economy? Are your stories even true? Just because they are in your head, does not mean that they are. Are your stories useful? Are they helping you and your business to develop and grow in ways that are beneficial to you, your shareholders, customers, employees, and society at large? Do you like your stories? Are they inspiring and empowering to you or are they undermining and demoralising you? And if you don’t like your stories or they are not serving you well, how can you come up with some new and better stories to tell yourself?

Now, I am not talking out denying reality or engaging in boosterism by telling yourself that things are wonderful, when in reality, there may be serious challenges and problems to be addressed. Rather, I am talking about looking at the same reality from a slightly different perspective that might be more useful, resourceful, and empowering, thus providing you with the leverage to move in the direction you want to go in.

Take the question of time for instance. What story are you telling yourself about time? How often do we hear people say things like “We don’t have enough time to research new export markets”, “I never have any time to invest in my professional development”, “If only I had more time I would network more” and such like? These are all stories that people tell themselves because, time, of all things in the world, is what everybody in business has the same quota of. The use of the time that a person has is therefore a question of priorities and not a question of resources. Framing the use of time in terms of priorities rather than in terms of resource is a much more empowering story to tell yourself.

This same principle applies to any other aspect of your job, career, or business. You can look at the reality of any situation and shift your own stance in relation to it with a new story. It won’t change the objective reality but it will change how you feel about it and how you act in response.

As the Stoic philosopher and Emperor of Rome, Marcus Aurelius, put it “If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself, but to your estimate of it; and this you have the power to revoke at any moment.”

This is old wisdom and yet a lesson we need to learn anew, over, and over again, because the truth is there is any number of stories you could tell yourself about any given set of circumstances, so you may as well tell yourself one that serves you well.

Stack the deck in your favour!

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