“I’ll be here all week busting up stories”, said my colleague at a week-long event where she would lead a group of 10 professionals on a self-discovery journey. And she did. Anytime she heard someone talking about things they wanted to change but couldn’t, she’d interrupt with “busted!” and help them to see if there was another way to look at the situation. Maybe there was something they could change after all, or something about the way things were that was positive. Anytime she heard someone going down a self-esteem spiral of not being good enough, out would come the “busted!”, followed by a series of questions to help the person see a different perspective that cast a light on being good enough in the end. She did it with such grace and humor, and impeccable timing, you almost couldn’t wait to hear “busted” during the week to see what kind of self-reflected reframing of a story she’d draw out.
That was one of the first times I really understood what it means when they say the stories we tell ourselves are the way we know who we are in the world. My colleague knew that to interrupt a story and ask for a different version is to ask the person to try on a different version of themselves. In a way a test to see if perhaps there is a different perspective, interpretation of the “facts”, or forgotten plot twist. It was a gift she gave us, pulling us out of the stories we had been repeating and fine tuning in some cases for decades about the way things are, always were, and gosh darn it always will be. I imagine she would have been a very good editor for those choose-your-own-adventure books I loved as a child! I also know she would have loved Donald Davis's TED Talk, How the Story Transforms the Teller.
Fast forward to today, I try to catch myself in the stories I tell to the internal audience of one (she’s a tough critic sometimes!) in the shower, on long drives and when I should be falling asleep. Partially because I want to see if any of the stories are worth sharing externally (surely something interesting has happened to me!). And partially because I believe that when I’m at my best in life, I can see there’s more than one possible story happening within any given event and set of characters. It’s helpful for being enrolled in a personal storytelling class, and sometimes challenging when I feel frozen by the choices to consider, but at the very least it’s practical for enjoying my commutes more. Because the next time I catch myself telling a story about how the driver that cut me off must be doing it to annoy me, I might hear “busted!” and reach for a new story about why they have a need, a need for speed, that actually is about doing something good.
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