The Stories We Tell About Other People

Thirty four years ago, I had to do a written exercise as part of a teacher training day. I can’t remember what the point of the exercise was, but I remember we had to write down three things we thought we knew about ourselves that had come from things that friends or relatives had said about us. I wrote down:

You’re so scatty - Uncle H

You always get your own way - Auntie C

You’re so enthusiastic about everything - Sister

I remember zoning out from the training day as I realised something amazing. Each statement said as much about the person saying it as it did about me. Uncle H was a very tidy and methodical person and so of course he would notice my scattiness, and call it that instead of ‘laid-backness’. If he’d been very laid back himself he may not have even noticed it. Auntie C looked after me a lot, so of course she would have to deal with my demands, if she hadn’t she may have said, “You’re great at making things happen”. My sister valued living life to the full and so she liked my enthusiasm, if she had been more reticent, she may have said, “You’re just too much”.

So, the messages we get are never 100% true. They may have their basis in a real behaviour, but the message/story about what that behaviour ‘means’ about you is totally up for grabs! Different people say it differently! This isn’t about fault and blame, it’s simply about seeing how it all works, seeing where ‘reality’ stops and ‘story’ takes over; catching the gap between the ‘isness’ of things and what we decide they mean.

But this is the really funny bit. Only two years ago I was telling my daughter and a friend of hers about this experience. In the middle of explaining it to them I stopped mid-sentence, was silent for a moment and then started laughing. “What?” they asked. I said, “Oh my goodness, it’s only taken me another 32 years to realise that this is the same for me: whenever I have an opinion about anyone, right in that moment the words I use say as much about me as them! Hey ho! Everything is always so much easier to see in others than in ourselves!" After all what we ‘see’ looks so ‘real’! (We’re back to the man in his small house (See Changing Our lives One Donkey at a Time)

It can always be told differently, and one way is never more true than another because meaning-making-upping is what we humans are designed to do with whatever’s in front of us, which means we could catch our stories about people, and see what new stories we could tell, if we want to.

I’m not offering this as a ‘positive thinking’ strategy that we ‘should’ do. It’s simply about noticing the role that the stories we tell ourselves, and those we hear from others, play in how we experience our world. Once we see that they can never be 100% fact, however much our opinions looks like it, having some new thinking is always an option, and that is mind-blowing.

So who are you thinking of right now and what are you thinking about them?! And flip…!

If you’d like to download a free 12 page pdf that explores further how the stories we tell ourselves determine what we ‘see’ and how to change them, you can find: “The Cinderella Experiment: Story, Life and Magic” HERE