What is Your Story?

Friends!

First, thank you to so many for sending me comments and reflections on time. I will try to figure out how best to return to this important topic in the weeks ahead. It’s obviously very complicated, and I want to get better at articulating the value of delaying gratification. Not easy. But in our current instaculture, I think it’s worth considering ways we can counterbalance and be more aware of the immediacy of everything. If you have ideas, PLEASE let me know.

Speaking of awareness, that is what I want to reflect on this week. Particularly self-awareness. I was “sent there” by David Brooks last week after reading an article that stayed with me. In it, he basically questioned whether or not we are able to be self-aware at all.

Fundamentally, I have always believed that self-awareness is an incredibly important ingredient of a life well-lived. Being aware of what you are good at and what you are less good at helps you pick the right job, have more fruitful relationships, and helps you, broadly speaking, stay out of trouble. I have also generally subscribed to the idea that we are better off spending time on the things that we are good at rather than trying to improve the areas we are not. And if you agree with that, it makes it even more important to know which is which!

I think most of us prefer to believe that we are rational creatures that accumulate knowledge and act on what we believe is the right thing to do – in each moment! But the more we study history and bear witness to our own experiences, particularly challenging moments like witnessing the ideological and civil discord sowed by the pandemic, it makes you wonder.

Yuval Noah Harari, the well-known historian and author of Sapiens, has studied thousands of years of human evolution and is very clear in his view that humans are basically storytellers. In fact, he asserts that our capacity for storytelling is what has enabled human evolution and progress. Consider this quote from his book, Sapiens.

There is so much to ponder in all of his work. A more humorous take on the same idea is this quote from Sapiens as well:

"You could never convince a monkey to give you a banana by promising him limitless bananas after death in monkey heaven."

I have written about belief many times before. Most recently here. But the power of narratives is the ultimate manifestation of what role beliefs play in our lives. Consider money. We know that a 20 dollar bill isn’t really worth 20 dollars. But as long as we all believe that it is, it works. The same is true behind the wheel of a car. We all drive on the right side of the road. We share the belief that this makes sense, and most people behave accordingly. It's not a physical law. Just a story we are telling ourselves. And when we visit England, Japan, Australia, or some other country where they drive on the other side of the road, we adjust (albeit with a little difficulty) and “understand” their story, and we quickly become actors within that narrative.

Politics and religion are, of course, the two most obvious examples of areas that are entirely defined by our ability to tell stories and then get people to believe in them. For better or worse.

Storytelling is, like many topics I bring up, worthy of follow-ups as there are so many aspects of stories that are interesting and worth reflecting on. But for today, I want to mainly drill down on 2 things.

First, on a macro level, what story did you used to believe in for the world that made you hopeful and filled with both energy and enthusiasm for the future?

Is it possible that one of the reasons why so many feel disoriented and anxious about our current moment is that we have lost our belief in that story? I certainly think so. But rather than agreeing on what story we do not believe in any longer, perhaps it is paramount that we all help each other find a new and relevant story. There are obviously some contenders right now, particularly those where our relationship with our planet, with space, with animals, and with technology are introduced as new leading actors in our current story. More to come on that.

Second, and where I am really trying to reflect deeper upon, is this notion of WHO in your life is helping you EDIT your own story? Are you allowing people and perspectives to penetrate the boundaries of your own narrative? Self-awareness might be a mirage (as the David Brooks article suggests), but by welcoming ideas outside of your current story inside of it, we might grow and evolve in ways that previously weren’t accessible to us. In fact, I would argue, that the only way to grow is to actually edit your own story!

This is, of course, the original reason for why I am writing these newsletters. To help me, and hopefully, some of you, to “elevate” our current perspectives, or if you will, the story we tell ourselves. My hope would be that these Sunday musings can act as a nudge, a micro-edit, or a spark to explore something in our current story that is causing an itch, discomfort, or is in need of some special attention. We all have them. And we all eventually suffer from them if we don’t identify them early and find ways to address them.

Lastly, and perhaps not an entirely obvious connection for all people (certainly not me for many years), this is also where art has its secure place in our human evolution. We can step into "other" stories via theatre, music, architecture, galleries, museums, and movies. We can visit and "prototype" what it feels like to be someone in a different story. It's a fantastic gift to humanity that needs constant celebration and appreciation.

Here are some links about stories and narratives that have inspired me both recently and in the past.

• The David Brooks NYT article about why self-awareness might be a mirage (which triggered some of these thoughts.)

• This is one of my favorite TED interviews. Chris Anderson interviews Yuval Noah Harari in 2016 after Trump won the election and Britain voted for Brexit. The beginning is so worth your time (the whole interview of course is). Here are the first few minutes where Yuval "nails" why it's all about the story! It's quite convincing!

• I really liked George Monbiot's TED talk from a few years ago about the same idea that basically we need a new story.

• My partner Tony Tjan is a big proponent of self-awareness and has written books and articles about people and this particular HBR article on self-awareness.

I think I will stop there. Too much territory to cover, and I will save some goodies for future posts! Think of it as a cliffhanger.

I am grateful to all of you for being editors of my own story and how I perceive this world. Without you I would never learn, never grow, and never find the true joy in discovering all the things that my often limiting self-view hinders me from seeing or experiencing. For that, I am beyond grateful!

Happy Ryder Cup!