ONCE UPON A STORY THAT STUCK
How It’s Running Your Life
3-Minute Read
“Reality is always kinder than the stories we tell about it.” —Byron Katie, Author of The Work
Question: does a fish know it’s wet?
In 2005 David Foster Wallace, American novelist, gave the commencement address at Kenyon College entitled “This Is Water.” He opened with this parable: Two young fish were swimming along and crossed paths with an older fish who greeted them, “Morning boys! How’s the water?” The two younger fish nodded and swam on in silence. After several minutes, one of them turned to the other and asked, “What the hell is water?”
Water—so constant for fish that it’s virtually undetectable. You and I, too, swim in something constant and undetectable: stories. Not the stories we KNOW are stories like the ones we read at bedtime as kids. No, there’s a type of story we’re steeped in everyday that doesn’t look like a story; it looks like “just the way life is.” We confuse our story with reality, and it leaves us disempowered and stuck.
You’re swimming in your own stories right now. Can you identify them?
The single biggest influence on your quality of life in any given moment is what you say about it—your story. This capacity is powerful, and how you use it makes all the difference in creating benefit or harm; both for yourself and others. Getting conscious of and intentional with your story will fundamentally transform your life.
Distinguishing reality from the stories we tell about it is a big part of the work we do at The Plenteous Life. We also keep things simple. Today we’re introducing two foundational principles of how the brain works so you can begin to distinguish stories in your own life. In future issues, we’ll equip you to deal effectively with them in various ways. We’ll take you through the full dynamic of story, step by step, keeping it as simple as possible as we go.
Let’s dive in!
principle #1: meaning-making
Human beings are meaning-making creatures. Dogs bark, roosters crow, you and I make stuff up. We add meaning to life events by default automatically. This constant meaning-making is the undetectable water of story in which we swim.
Most people think the brain acts like an impartial video recorder, constantly observing and taking in facts. It’s true, the human brain takes in information, AND it also filters information. It filters information in two ways:
Screening out details (like an air filter) keeping certain information from ever hitting your conscious radar.
Projecting details (like the filter on a camera lens) onto every situation, creating an illusion of certain things happening when they don’t.
I once worked with two business partners who were having a conflict: Martin and Brad. Martin’s complaint was that Brad was always telling him he was wrong. Brad was emphatic that he rarely, if ever, told Martin he was wrong. So, I asked for an example.
Martin: “Just last week, we scheduled a dinner meeting with a client for 7pm. As I was leaving the office at five, I said goodbye to Brad and mentioned, ‘See you at seven.’ Then Brad said, ‘You’re wrong.’”
Brad: “I didn’t tell him he was wrong. I told him the dinner was at 7:30.”
Do you catch what happened there? Brad said, “The dinner is at 7:30.” Martin heard, “You’re wrong.” That’s meaning-making in action. “You’re wrong,” never happened in reality, only in Martin’s STORY about it. No surprise, Martin’s filter of, “Your wrong” was learned and reinforced from an early age, and it was diminishing the quality of his life.
Most people are not having a direct experience with life. Like Martin, they’re having a distorted experience filtered through the story they tell about life.
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principle #2: hard-wired design
You come by story honestly. The brain is hard-wired to be efficient. If it didn’t filter the way it does, you’d be in constant information overload.
It’s estimated that in any given second, there are 11 BILLION bits of information available for the brain to sort through. Out of that, the subconscious brain processes roughly 100 million bits. Out of the 100 million bits that make it to the subconscious, only 100 bits per second are processed by the conscious brain.
In any given second, out of 11 billion bits of potential information, you are consciously aware of 100. What determines which 100 bits of information you’ll pay attention to?
You don’t see reality as it is. Instead, you see what you’ve been primed for. Have you ever decided to buy a certain make of car, and then shazam, you see that same car everywhere? There were no more cars of that make on the road after you decided to buy it than before; you just primed your brain to notice rather than ignore them.
By age seven, the brain is tremendously primed; your framework for learning is largely established. That means, by default, how you think—what you pay attention to, what gets in, what gets filtered out, the meaning you give it all—is already set in place (but thankfully, not in stone).
The experiences you have early on—home, caregivers, education, lessons, accidents, traumas, community, culture, role models, successes, failures—act as directives to the subconscious brain, defining what is and isn’t important. By age 18, roughly 80% of what you think each day is a repeat of the thoughts you had the day before.
These are the mechanics that drive your stories. By default, your stories will run your life, and you won’t have the slightest clue it’s happening. When was the last time you questioned your perception of events? Have you ever been aware of a story you’re telling yourself in real-time?
“You don’t see reality as it is. You see what you’ve been primed for.”
distinguishing your story
To begin the work of recognizing your own stories, do an inventory of the messages you picked up as a kid concerning what is and isn’t possible for you—your worth, love, money, God, success, relationships, mistakes, health, capabilities, etc. These messages would have been both spoken and modeled; they would have come from both elders and those in authority as well as siblings, friends and peers.
Recognizing the messages you absorbed as truth while you were young is the first step to dealing with stories effectively. When you spot one, write it down. Keep a list. You’ll use these stories when we show you how to set yourself free from any inhibiting ones in an upcoming issue.
Becoming aware of the unconscious stories running your life is an uncommon way to move thru world. Many people aren’t willing to be that responsible. And, if you take on this work, it will leave you mastering your mind instead of your mind mastering you.
You’ll experience freedom to be, freedom to live.
You’ll be unstoppable.
Keep creating.
May you prosper in every way!
Becky & TPL Team