The Power of Story

by Jim Loehr

  I nodded. “And on your tombstone, if it says, ‘She brought sunshine to people everywhere,’ would that be okay?”

  “Yes,” she said, nodding and smiling broadly.

  “Will you be afraid to lose when you’re out there?”

  “Not if I’m sunshine.” She paused. “What do you think?”

  “I think you’re going to win more than your share,” I said. “And now I think we can get to work.”

  Now that she’d identified her Ultimate Mission—her story’s premise—we could begin constructing her story in more detail, with all roads leading to satisfying that purpose, a purpose I found ambitious, noble; a purpose I found, frankly, beautiful. Barbara would win matches and lose them, she would thrive and she would struggle, she would endure long road trips and irritating questions by the press after straight-set wipeouts…but for her to achieve success in life, all she needed was to stay true to her goal of radiating sunshine and gratitude, positive energy and joy, on the tennis court and off. If she did that, then there could be joy even in losing. So long as she respected what she did and gave her best and fullest energy to it, and those around her could sense the sincerity of her effort, then, yes: Even as she was losing a match she would be writing a glorious life story. Now we had to come up with rituals to help her craft a story around her family, around her health, money, friends, and every key aspect of her life, so that they were all consistent with her values and her sunshine-filled purpose.

  Three days later, her coach called me. “What the hell did you do to her?” he asked. “She loves practicing again. She can’t wait to get on the court. She’s excited. She’s no longer obnoxious and angry to be around.”

  Barbara started winning again. Over the next few months, she routinely beat all the players her ranking said she should have beaten. And she finally started beating players ranked above her. In an early round of her next Grand Slam event, her first Slam since rediscovering why she played tennis, she faced one of the top players in the world, a multiple Grand Slam champion. In their five previous meetings, Barbara had yet to take even a set off the champ.

  Barbara won. In straight sets. “I was not fighting myself at all as I used to,” she was quoted as saying after the match. “I had so many matches like this where I was really close to beating the top players and finally I did it today.”

  I’m not suggesting that she would experience unblemished competitive success from there on in—she didn’t, and there was more than a little backsliding on her return to the highest ranks. But she played like sunshine the whole way. And in discovering (or rediscovering) her true purpose, one that transcended being defined by a particular seeding or trophy or yearly winnings, each day she couldn’t help being far more engaged in her life, in the process of training, in the pleasure of playing, and in virtually every important aspect off the court, too.

  I’ve worked with enough athletes to know a false ultimate mission when I hear one. To be number one in the world. To break a world record. To make the cover of Sports Illustrated. To win a national championship. In each of these cases, when I’ve pushed my athlete-clients to examine—really examine—whether that goal will hold up as the ultimate criterion for success in their lives, their explanations, like Barbara’s, quickly melt away. I made the cover of Sports Illustrated, therefore my life was a success… Really, now: How stupid is that? Is it not safe to say that anyone can detect the insubstantiality, the lack of a rallying point, in that equation? It’s as absurd as its negative: I never made the cover of Sports Illustrated, therefore my life was a failure.

  Don’t get me wrong: Goals like these—some of them, anyway—have value. Yet all the aspirations above, and similar ones that athletes repeat to themselves with hypnotic, mantra-like regularity, fail to capture the fundamental purpose that defines value and meaning in the athlete’s life. They, like everyone, need to find a purpose that satisfies their needs, not just their wants. When one lives one’s life in pursuit of a false purpose, it will eventually come apart. Sooner or later—hopefully sooner—the false purpose will come to seem like a fiction in a world that demands nonfiction. A flawed purpose always results in a flawed ending. Another tennis player with whom I worked several years ago had as her goal to break into the world top 10. Her story was that, once she achieved such a ranking, she would finally feel happy and truly successful as a person. In spite of my arguments to the contrary, she persisted in her belief. When we began working together, her world ranking was in the 30s. After considerable hard work and dedication, impressive displays of industry driven primarily by her deep belief that it was numerical ranking that would rescue her from feelings of emptiness and unhappiness, she did it. She broke into the top 10 of women’s tennis.

  Within twelve months of achieving her fantastic single-digit world ranking, shocked and dismayed that it had had no appreciable effect on her feelings of success and self-worth, she quit the sport.

  For executives, their faulty Ultimate Mission may be to become CEO, to own their own business, to become partner, to become financially independent, to retire early. When I press them to scrutinize whether these aspirations can really serve to define ultimate success in their lives, they quickly retreat, just like the athletes, from their initial answers, but often they must come to that painful conclusion very much alone. At the closing session of one workshop, an extremely successful supply-chain manager told the room that the previous night he was able to articulate what his Ultimate Mission had always been. “To devote all my energy and creativity to my business, and do it while still reasonably young, and not worry about my kids unless there’s a real crisis,” he said. Then he said, as an aside, “I knew that my wife, who’s tremendous, would take care of them, and that I would get back to all of them when I was finally financially secure.” He paused. “I’m fifty-two and it’s never going to end. I missed the opportunity to know my kids.” Whenever someone makes such an admission, of course, it’s deeply uncomfortable—but not so much because of what the confessor just said but because so many others in the room, often hard-driving executives, are coming to grips with the fact that they’ve been following similarly faulty purposes. They must acknowledge that they no longer know what they need; that the bigger home they just bought mostly means a continuing escalation to their life; that they, too, will just continue to work harder and longer, no matter what they tell themselves. And that’s the reason they’re alive? Men, in particular, often think they can’t be good parents unless they are great financial providers; then one day they wake up to the reality that the day-to-day needs of their children counted for something, too. And they’re fifty-two. Or sixty-three.

  Several years ago, I listened as Lance, who worked for a headhunter firm and took home a decent salary, described to me his own faulty Ultimate Mission. He was convinced his life would be so much better and happier if he didn’t have to struggle to make ends meet financially. He was sure that his financial condition was inseparably connected to his happiness. He longed for a time when he would be free from the stress of day-to-day bills.

  Then he won one of the largest single lotteries in his state’s history: over $200 million. (That’s two hundred million.)

  You can guess what happened next, which is what happens with so many lottery winners. He very quickly had to jettison his belief that money brought happiness. Soon, he was overwhelmed by the day-today stress of managing his money and trying to establish a meaningful life purpose. When I next talked to him, he admitted that his feeling about himself and his overall happiness were considerably better before his financial windfall. If he had known then what he knew now, he said, he would never have purchased the ticket. His story’s premise—that money corresponds to happiness—was completely faulty.

  So long as we rely on false purposes to navigate through life, we can be certain that our life story will never bring true fulfillment. We may well catch what we’ve been chasing, but what we’ve been chasing will turn out to be a prize not really worth having
, at least not at these prices (given the volume of time and energy expended on the chase). If you’re unconnected to your true purpose, if you’re chasing after the wrong thing, you miss the most exciting part of living.

  To find that simple and true purpose can be, as I have said, deceptively hard. It often takes half our life or more to come back to it. It’s rare that someone can identify a purpose for himself or herself at a very young age and have it stand up to scrutiny. Michelle Wie, the golf phenom, is one of the rarities, as I found out the first time we met and I asked her—you guessed it—why she played.

  “I’m not playing for myself,” said Michelle, fourteen at the time. “I’m playing to make a statement, to do some good in the world. I want to be a statement to women that most of the barriers we face are self-imposed. I want girls to think, ‘If she can hit the ball 308 yards, on average, what can I do?’”

  I’m sure my jaw was hanging. Fourteen years old and she comes up with that? Most forty-five-year-olds aren’t that wise. Here was someone who got her story straight from the beginning, someone with balance. Not surprisingly, Michelle’s first public gesture after turning professional was to write a half-million-dollar check to victims of Hurricane Katrina. When I heard about it, I thought that, regardless of what happened with her golfing career, she had positioned herself beautifully to live a fulfilling life; it was clear that she understood, at a remarkably young age, the necessity of a good and noble premise. After that, when she and I would talk, the focus was always on playing and succeeding at golf, the vehicle for completing her Ultimate Mission; she never once talked about money or fame or anything remotely connected to them. It became clear to me why this teenaged girl found it surprisingly easy to eschew afternoons at the mall with her friends and instead go out, day after day after day, to the course or the driving range, playing hole after hole after hole: She needed to get better because it was only by getting better that she could achieve her purpose: I’m playing to make a statement.

  Lately, Michelle has had her share of tough days on the tour, both women’s and men’s. But her full consciousness about why she’s doing what she’s doing, and what she represents to others—the air-tightness of her ultimate mission—not only propels her to train hard but also gives her the tremendous confidence she needs to fulfill her destiny, one that promises to exemplify deep engagement.

  PURPOSE IS NEVER FORGETTABLE

  As its very name suggests, a movie’s primary intention is to move the audience emotionally. Story is the vehicle through which the movement occurs. Story is what stirs us, terrifies us, breaks our heart. A boring story fails because it doesn’t move us, doesn’t tap our capacity for empathy. Think of the very best stories you’ve ever seen or read or heard, and you remember the depth of your feeling for one or more of the characters.

  That’s what happens when our clients craft their new stories. These stories, finally, move their authors—and others, too—the way great movies do. We feel the potential for heroism in what the author/ main character aspires to. If you’re seriously going to write a story powerful enough to get you to do things like quit smoking for good, or be more positive in your outlook, or spend at least a half hour each night communicating meaningfully with your spouse, or henceforth turn off your cell phone on weekends, then you’ve got to create a purpose and a story so compelling that you are moved to make those corrections in your life, and make them for good. Remember that tremendous feeling you got, when younger, after seeing a movie that spoke to you so profoundly you were all hyped to make major changes to your life—travel the globe, join the air force, tell someone you were in love with him or her? That’s the kind of action your own story must move you to take.

  The only way a story can achieve that level of transformative power is when it supports an unassailable purpose. An example: From time to time, we have the opportunity to work with men and women from law enforcement—police, FBI, SWAT teams, elite anti-terrorist units, Navy SEALs. I’m always so impressed with—so moved by—their willingness to risk their very lives to do what they do. And why do they do it? How can they possibly do it? Well, if they’re telling the truth, and I believe they are (at least by the end of the workshop), then they never do it for money (it’s not exactly hedge-fund management anyway) or even power. Certainly they do it, in part, for the excitement and adventure. But primarily they do it to protect their families, their communities, their countries. This purpose is large enough, sustaining enough, that they can get up every morning, knowing it may be their last, knowing they may meet a violent death, knowing they may be crippled for life. The knowledge that they do it for their loved ones moves them to assume this extraordinary risk and responsibility.

  If I asked you what your purpose was, how would you know if you had got it right? First and last, Does it move you? Really, really move you? Some purposes are so obviously faulty (I train hard so I can have nice cars) that the individual can smoke it out by himself or herself (perhaps with a little prodding). But other purposes sound very, very good, so neat, so on-message—and yet they’re not quite the purpose. That’s why finding one’s true purpose is an exercise that requires real thoughtfulness and the courage to be honest with oneself. Lance Armstrong, seven-time Tour de France champion and cancer survivor, once said that if he had to choose between winning the tour and getting cancer, he would choose getting cancer. Why? Because cancer gave him true purpose. But hold on: Didn’t wanting to be the best cyclist in the world also give him purpose, a purpose so powerful that it spurred him to train harder than anyone else every day for years and years? Yes—but not in the way cancer gave him purpose. The fruits of his cycling purpose (victory, glory, even deep fulfillment) can’t stack up against the ones his cancer purpose gave him (survival; a commitment always to give every last bit of himself—physically, emotionally, mentally, spiritually; to inspire other cancer patients, especially children). In the hierarchy of purpose, it’s no contest. Armstrong understood that; he knew that it was getting and overcoming cancer that made him the greatest cyclist ever, not being the greatest cyclist ever that helped him to overcome cancer. Not only was he the Tour’s winningest champion but he was legendary for his awareness of the big picture of that grueling race—understanding precisely when to make his charge; knowing if and when to go for a stage win if it would further his ultimate goal of winning the Tour or sometimes refraining from going for a stage win if holding back on Tuesday furthered his ultimate goal of winning on that final Sunday. In short, he, as much as any athlete I have ever witnessed, understood that a story around competition will only have the right ending—victory—if the purpose is the ultimate one. If it could also work on one’s tombstone. He was a survivor. He gave every last bit of himself. Those are words worth writing in stone, aren’t they?

  An ultimate purpose is never small. It is never minor. It can’t be, by definition. It is grand, heroic, epic. You don’t successfully walk a tightrope between buildings knowing that if you fall, this was the dumbest thing you have ever done. You should never put your life on the line for something not fully aligned with your Ultimate Mission.

  Same goes for a company’s purpose. To thrive in all the ways a company ideally should—profitability, sustainability, employee morale, superior standing in the eyes of the various communities it serves (end-users, vendors, investors)—requires a purpose that goes deep and wide, not simply a mandate to move as much product as possible and to keep costs down. In the same way that personal stories must move us if they are to work, so, too, a company’s story must move people—management, employees, customers, investors. Its purpose might be, say, We strive for everyone who walks through our doors to have the best possible Mexican food experience they’ve ever had, or Ours is truly the user-friendliest database management software around. JetBlue and Ben & Jerry’s, I have long thought, are especially obvious examples of companies (there are many others, of course) whose success is in no small part attributable to the way their storied purpose permeates the cultu
re—their own and the ones they serve. By motivating its employees to reach for something higher, these companies appear to be doing something that transcends, respectively, mere air travel and mere ice cream. (And by “purpose” and “culture” I mean more than company slogan or mission statement. Many companies have nice slogans. That in no way guarantees that they also have an ultimate purpose, or that their workforce cares.)

  Recently, I saw one of the most moving TV commercials I’ve ever seen, for Dow Chemical. I was so inspired by the arresting, beautiful images, music, and message that I immediately went to the company’s website to learn more. What I found was a brilliant reformulation of organizational purpose. Their stated intent was to change the face of chemistry by adding the Human Element (“HU,” as it’s dubbed in the campaign) to the periodic table of elements. By doing so, the power of chemistry would be put to work to solve many of humanity’s most pressing problems. Dow’s new Ultimate Mission was to use the power of chemistry to make the world safer and cleaner, to put food on every table, to provide safe drinking water for every human being on the planet.

  Now I realize what you may be thinking: Chemical company…isn’t that synonymous with “polluter”? I realize that there’s “spin” behind almost everything (more on that in Chapter 4) and that our visceral response to powerful images and evocative music can make us suspend our critical faculties. But in spite of my skepticism, I couldn’t help thinking: Now that’s a story with a great purpose (the first pillar of good storytelling), a purpose noble and aspirational enough that Dow’s employees can’t help finding renewed meaning and engagement in this corporate realignment.

  For the story ultimately to succeed, though, it has to be true (the second pillar of good storytelling) and lead to real action (the third and final pillar), anchored in real accountability and verifiable commitments. The more I learned, the more impressed I became. Of course, their stated, noble purpose must come with measurable outcomes and objectives—like, say, the availability of safe drinking water for every man, woman, and child by 2010.