Don’t underestimate the power of the stories you tell yourself

We make sense of the world through stories. Stories that we tell ourselves about ourselves, stories that we tell about ourselves to others, and stories that we tell others about others. Some stories are real, some are fiction or made up to get us through certain situations.

Sometimes the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves (self-stories) are different from the stories we tell about ourselves to others for various reasons. But this for another article.

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In a recent conversation with my client, I was reminded of the power of our self-stories and how they impact our emotions and therefore actions.

My client was in the emotion of impatience due to the absence of a response from her team, to her email, after an hour.

I asked her what self-stories were showing up for her in this scenario. She mentioned the following:

• first, she wondered why they had not replied – it had been an hour

• she felt she was not taken seriously

• this then led to feeling other emotions besides impatience

I won’t go on, but you get the gist of it and this happens to all of us. I have had similar experiences of my own.

And these situations are a good time to pause and check on the many stories, on our playlist, that we typically cue up and play.

Two key factors

There are two key factors to my client’s impatience. One is the stories she tells herself and the second is her clarity in her communications.

Let us look at the clarity of communications first. It is the easier one to solve.

I asked my client if she had clarified, in her email, that she wanted a response within an hour. She said no. I then asked her how she could expect a reply within an hour if she had not stipulated it in her email.

That got my client thinking. I went one step further to check if it was common practice within her team for them to reply to all emails within an hour. She said no.

So, with no clear rules for email etiquette with her team, what my client was doing was forcing her assumptions on her team. Something her team was not even aware of.

This leads to the first factor. The stories my client was telling herself and the subsequent emotions she felt.

The impatience and other emotions she felt were ALL self-caused.

The truth is my client had no way of knowing if her team had received (read) her email. The team is working remotely.

So, with no ‘real’ information to go, her brain did the next best thing – imagined through stories. The brain is a brilliant storytelling machine and creating fiction is a no-brainer (pardon the pun).

And as our emotions are directly linked to the stories we tell ourselves, she felt a multitude of emotions as a result.

We have all been there. I recently experienced this myself and had to quickly check the stories I was MAKING UP regarding my situation. Lucky, I caught myself in time.

Emotions – cause and impact

The key thing in anything we do is taking responsibility for our situation. Any interaction usually involves a minimum of 2 people and the fundamental way to avoid ambiguity is accountability.

Because you are the cause of the emotions you feel. Others can impact, directly or indirectly, how you feel but they cannot cause you to feel an emotion.
You do this all by yourself through your reaction to others’ actions (or inaction) based on the stories you tell yourself.

The way forward

So, before creating more fiction around a situation check all your assumptions. We are easily deceived by our assumptions in any situation.

Take it one step further and create common assumptions and stories. It reduces ambiguity and creates common ground from which you can cultivate stronger connections.

Because trust happens by believing in the same stories!

I am here to help.