When Our Stories Become Our Home

The problem with being an Intelligent Being (so they tell me) is that you can craft astonishing stories.

We humans are outlandishly skilled at that.
We can build entire worlds from assumptions… tales we’ve carefully woven…
then quietly move into them as though they were home.

I’ve caught myself doing just that recently.

You know… a recent 3 O’clock in the morning…
Lying there telling myself,

“Well, you proper messed that up, didn’t you, Scarlett?

Told yourself you’d accomplish that life-defining goal.
And you couldn’t make it happen.
Failed is what you did.

So, here you lie. Exposed.

Later today others will discover your ineptness on social media, of course.
And your glorious, painstakingly carved reputation… will be sawdust.

What’s more… It’s likely that – if you look out the window – you’ll see the sky about to fall.”

But that self-berating is often not where the greatest danger lies… is it?

What’s more worrisome are the truths we weave from wisps of candy floss.

Enticingly sweet and frothy.
But with no substance.

I remember the month I lost all sense of who I was…
and started eating the data, as if it was meaningful information.

Saying to a colleague…

“Look at what we just did with the first launch of our new service!

I mean, 20 new members.
And we didn’t know what we were doing.

Do that 3 times this year… with learned expertise.
And that’ll be, say, a community of 75.

Extrapolate across 3 years.
That’s, probably, 250 members… paying £200 per month.

Isn’t that entirely reasonable?”

Hmmm.

Astonishing.
Stories.

Worse still…
we build businesses atop stories we never have the courage to test.

In my role I’m regaled with such stories.

I recognise what’s happening… because I’ve woven those tales myself.

Narratives are laid before me that are so persuasive, rational, logical…
That the storyteller is enraptured by the plot.
And certain of the chapters to follow.

Financial Planners who are knowledgeable, talented and charismatic.
Fully assured of how much they’re admired.

Yet… have never commissioned an independent survey of what clients really, really think about them (and what they don’t).

Financial Planning Leaders… who are blissfully unaware of what it’s like being on the receiving end of their behaviour.

Yet tell stories of their Vision and Purpose and 3-Year Plan.

Vision born of their imagination… carved by their hand… delivered by their voice.
Then accepted by those who trust them.

Founders who can keep you entertained with a good yarn about the sweat of their brow; the midnight oil; the grindstone and nose.

Yet are blinded by a brilliance which doesn’t allow them to see the future without them.

And after a while…
the business becomes the only story they know how to tell.
…

Perhaps that’s the strangest thing of all.

We humans tend to build entire worlds from assumptions.

Then we live inside them for so long, so completely…
that they begin to feel indistinguishable from reality.

Astonishing.
Stories.