How The Stories We Tell Ourselves Shape Our Lives

This is an except from Mind Macros 05.

“Ethics is all about intentionality, and the way to be more intentional (and in the right sort of way) is to make sure that you’re checking in on the stories that you’re telling about yourself, your actions, and your life as a whole. When you told your friend that you arrived late because of traffic, was that true? Why do you plan to make a donation in public rather than anonymously? Is it because you’re really more interested in the reputational boost than you are about the charitable work being done?” — From The Good Life Method by Meghan Sullivan and Paul Blaschko (view my three takeaways).

We lie to ourselves all the time.

We judge ourselves based on our intentions, yet we judge others based on their actions.

This judgment creates an internal narrative that we see as reality.

There is a different version of us in the head of each person we know. Every friend has a distinct caricature of us living in their minds.

Our relationship with this person will affect how the character is crafted. Close friends may know our intentions and use this information to sculpt their version of us. The people we rarely interact with will use our actions to build this character.

Imagine it as the difference between a book and a movie.

We see the characters’ actions in movies but rarely hear their thoughts. In books, we hear the characters’ intentions and how they pertain to their actions. When a character does a bad thing, it could have been done with good intentions, and knowing this alters our perception of them.

Real life is no different.

Each of us hears through the cloud of our inner narration; we cannot communicate directly, making misinterpretation a perennial problem. An example of this can be seen in the eyewitnesses to a scene of an accident; they cannot agree on a single account. Why? Because they didn’t see the accident, only their interpretation of it.

By taking the time to examine the stories we tell ourselves about our intentions, we can clear the cloud of inner narration and see things as they are.