You Are Your Story

Is the way you tell the story of your life essential to who you are? Can we think of therapists as "story editors?" David Brooks and I discussed this last week, in the latest episode of the Next Big Idea podcast, and I find his take fascinating.

You can listen to our conversation on Apple or Spotify, and read an excerpt from our conversation below.

What do you think about this thesis? Share your thoughts in the comments below.

Rufus: You have a wonderful section about the importance of learning how to tell the story of our lives. Can you tell us more about that??

David: Well, this is another skill they should teach at school. How do you tell your story? You can't know who you are unless you know what your story is, and you can't know what to do unless you know what story you're a part of. And so it's just very important to know how to tell the story of your life.

When stories go wrong, people go to therapy. Therapists are basically story editors. Their stories aren't working anymore. And often it's because they get causation wrong. They think they're to blame for things that are not their fault. And they blame others for the things things that really are their fault.

And so you've got to iron out their story to get the causation right. When I'm listening to people tell their story, the first thing I'm listening for is their tone of voice. Are they sassy? Are they ironic? Are they cruel? Are they loud? And so the tone of voice says a lot about the persona of the person. How confident are they in themselves? Do they think the world is absurd or do they think it's inspiring? You can tell a lot from the tone of voice.

The second thing I'm looking for is the plot. We each pick a plot for our lives. Some people, you'll meet them, and their plot is rags to riches. They started out poor and they've made it, and they want to tell you about it. Some people, their plot is overcoming the monster. They had an abusive parent, or maybe they suffered from alcoholism. And their story is, "I had this challenge, and I overcame the monster." The most common plot I've heard is redemption. I was cruising along in my life, something bad happened to me, and I came back better. And that's sort of the story I guess I would tell in my life.

The final thing I want to know when I'm listening to somebody's stories is, what role are they playing? And so, I was reading, for example, this great memoir by the actress Viola Davis. And she's a fighter. She grew up in extreme poverty. And she writes, in scene after scene, "my sisters and I walk down the street as a troop. We were a unit. You were not going to mess with us." Or, as a little girl, if I won the spelling bee, I'm just going to make sure everybody knew it, because I wanted people to know, people who were denigrating me, I wanted them to know I was smart. So she's the fighter.

Other people are the healer. Some people are the scholar. And even though I'm a journalist, I think my role as teacher. My great pleasure comes from learning smart stuff from other people, and then sharing it with people. There was a phrase I once heard, writers are beggars who tell other beggars where they found bread. And so if I find something that's helpful for me in my life, and I get to share it, and you find it useful, then that's the number one rewarding thing for me. So that would be my role.

Psychologist Jerome Bruner says we think in two different modes. We think in paradigmatic mode, which is like an argument or a PowerPoint deck or a presentation or strategy memo, and then there's narrative mode. And if we want to study science or something, we want to be in paradigmatic mode. If we want to write a newspaper column, we want to be paradigmatic mode.

But if we want to know a person, we want them to tell stories. And so, even as a journalist, I no longer ask people, "what do you think about this?" I ask them, "how did you come to believe this?" And then they start telling me about some experience or some person who gave them their values. And it's just way more interesting.

This reminds me of Michael Lewis's wonderful 9 Rules of Storytelling, in which he says, interesting things happen to people who can tell interesting stories about themselves.

You can listen to our conversation on Apple or Spotify, and read an excerpt from our conversation below.

What do you think about this thesis? Share your thoughts in the comments below.