What’s Your Story? How Will it End?
We’re constantly creating stories.
It’s what we humans do and we’re really good at it, probably because we’re practicing all day long, even in our sleep – those stories are called dreams and we all produce them, our own inner movies, whether we remember them or not.
Sports psychologists train athletes to use their imaginations to visualize success, to create “success stories.” It works or they wouldn’t keep doing it. In fact, as millions of researchers have proven over decades of study, our unconscious minds – which make about 95% of our decisions) don’t know the difference between something we are imagining and something that is actually happening.
You’re making up a story right now, as you read. It’s amazing, once we realize this simple fact, how empowered we can become, simply by choosing the story we want to make up about whatever’s happening.
Professional story-tellers have an advantage because they often work backwards from a climactic ending that they create first. Well, we can employ exactly the same principle. What result do you want? In a conversation, in a work project, on a date, during a job interview, watching a movie? It’s not about starting to make up stories about everything, it’s realizing we that we already are and beginning to consciously choose the kind of stories we want in our lives.
We like to conclude these posts with a Thriving tip drawn from our new book, Thriving, in Business and Life:
“Informed storytelling can improve our ability to enjoy life and become more successful. We can become more focused and less vulnerable to unwanted influences from others.”
Will Wilkinson and Christopher Harding
