The Power of Story

by Jim Loehr

  Hardly your typical Aha! moment he’s describing—and yet the need for change as described here is so oppressive, one’s skin almost crawls with it.

  How, then, does a person this aimless and dissatisfied find the will to reassert control over life, to rediscover purpose, to tell a story that restores energy, fulfillment, and productivity where before there were fatigue, boredom, and despair?

  By taking control over your story. You must be ready, if necessary, to rewrite it and rewrite it and rewrite it. (Norman Mailer once said that virtually all writing is really rewriting.) You may need, at least at first—before you get the hang of it, before you have “ritualized” new habits until you can stop thinking about them—to do it every day, even several times a day, if your story is to engage you every day. Perhaps this sounds curiously like plain old positive thinking; perhaps it sounds like making lemonades from lemons. What it really is, though, is treating your life, this vital and organic thing, as a story, this similarly vital and organic thing. Woody Allen once said that a relationship is like a shark: to stay alive, it has to keep moving forward. (“And I think what we got on our hands,” he says morosely to his soon-to-be-ex in Annie Hall, “is a dead shark.”) Your story has to move. It has to move you, and it has to move, period. In 2006, when Michelle Wie played in the Men’s Sony Open tournament in Hawaii, her goal had been to make the 36-hole cut and become the first woman to do so in a PGA event in 60 years. But after shooting a brutal 79, eight over par, on the opening day, her chance of making the cut was pretty much gone. That evening, she called me, terribly disappointed, to talk about the round. Even Michelle—she of the fine-tuned ultimate mission at the wise age of fourteen—needed reminding that, rather than portray this to herself as a failure, she could use it as a boomerang to something positive indeed. If you’re inclined, after all, a turning point is always just around the bend.

  “More important than what happened today,” I told Michelle, “is the story you tell yourself about the whole tournament after it’s over. You control it. Tomorrow, on the first tee, I want you to imagine you’re the leader. To win the tournament you’ll have to shoot in the sixties.”

  The following day, Michelle dug deep and turned in a 3-under-par 68. Although she missed the cut, her fine second round had her bubbling with excitement. To her, it felt like a success; amazingly, her experience at this tournament from which she’d just been eliminated put her on an upswing.

  We must learn how to turn our life story into a living thing, something we know how to grow, repair, and maintain.

  THE THREE RULES OF STORYTELLING

  Purpose, truth, action.

  When writers really want to emphasize something, they put it in a one-sentence paragraph. If they suspect even that isn’t emphasis enough, then they go to Plan B: break things up into still more melodramatic, one-word paragraphs.

  Purpose.

  Truth.

  Action.

  There are many parts to this life-as-story metaphor—the idea of the private voice versus the public voice; the idea that we’re often bogged down by faulty assumptions; etc. These and other ideas I have yet to elaborate on need to be understood if you’re to make the kind of profound life improvements that drew you to this book in the first place.

  But if you take just one idea away from this book, an idea that transcends and serves as foundation for all the others, it is those three words, as one:

  Purpose—Truth—Action.

  All good storytelling coheres around those three ideas. They are the three criteria, taken together, by which we judge the workability and ultimate success of our story. With those three principles in your pocket, you can summon your deepest intelligence and wisdom to protect yourself from all forms of sinister indoctrination and faulty storytelling, bad influences from without and within; armed with those three principles, you are virtually guaranteed to keep your story vital, moving, productive, fulfilling.

  Let’s review them:

  Purpose: What is my ultimate purpose? What am I living for? What principle, what goal, what end? For my whole life, and every single day? Why do I do what I do? For what? What is the thing that would get me, say, to walk across a narrow plank 175 feet above the concrete, and to be sure and at peace that it’s the right decision, the necessary one, the only one? What is the thing I’m driving toward—or should be—with every action I take? Have I articulated to myself my deepest values and beliefs, which are the bedrock of who I am and which must be inextricably tied to my purpose (and vice versa)? Who do I want to be at the end? What legacy do I want to leave? What epitaph about myself could I “live with”? When all is said and done, how do I want to be remembered? What is non-negotiable in my life? What do I believe must happen for me to have lived a successful life? Is my story taking me where I want to go? Is it “on-purpose”? Consistently? And why am I telling this story? What is my real motive? Is my purpose noble or ignoble?

  Truth: Is the story I’m telling true? Does it conform to known facts? Is it grounded in objective reality as fully as possible; that is, does it coincide with some generally agreed-upon portrayal of the world? Or is it true only if I’m living in a dreamland? Is it a lie I tell myself when I think, “This is the way the world is”—my own, probably biased evaluation of things, one that’s dubiously defensible, and which I repeat to myself because it provides false comfort for the way my life has turned out? Have I cooked my own books? Where has my crap detector failed me? Do I sidestep the parts of my story that are obviously untrue because they’re just too painful to confront? Is my story something I still believe when I really dig down, when I listen to my most candid, private voice, when I do my best to shut out other influences and hear instead what I genuinely think and feel? Which is the truer statement: My story is honest and authentic or My story is made up? Is my story closer to a documentary or a work of fantasy? What myths am I perpetuating that could potentially seal my fate in areas of my life that really matter?

  Action: A good story is premised on action…is mine? With my purpose firmly in mind, along with a confidence about what is really true, what actions will I now take to make things better, so that my ultimate purpose and my day-to-day life are better aligned? What habits do I need to eliminate? What new ones do I need to breed? Is more of my life spent participating or observing? Are my actions filled with hope—hope that I will succeed, hope that the change I seek is realistically within my grasp? Or is my “action-taking” really more accurately portrayed as “going through the motions”? Do I believe to my core that, in the end, my willingness to follow through with action will determine the success of my life? Do I believe that if I act with commitment and consistency I will end up where I want to be, where I have always felt I am capable of being? Does the story I tell myself move me to action? Does it inspire hope and determination in me? Am I confident that I can make any necessary course correction, no matter what stage of life I’m in, no matter how many times I may have failed at it in the past? Do I proceed in the belief that I will never surrender in this effort because my success as a human being is what’s at stake?

  Purpose and truth, which have been dissected in previous chapters, are the first two planks of your storytelling. Action—which gets its own chapter in Part II—is necessarily the third and final plank.

  The central point we try to convey is that one must hold one’s story up as if against a three-part checklist: Your story must have purpose (can you name it?), your story must be true (is it?), your story must lead to hope-filled action (does it? what is it?). If you can’t answer those three questions affirmatively, clearly, certainly, then your story will fail.

  When a client achieves a breakthrough, it is always—always—because he or she has come to a fundamental understanding of the interlocked nature of all three rules of storytelling. It’s not good enough to satisfy one or even two of the three rules and content yourself that your story has now improved; it won’t leave you 33% better off or 67% better off. More likely, you may
have fulfilled one or even two of the three rules but because all three rules are not followed, your story remains dysfunctional.

  While one needs to understand deeply each of the three rules of storytelling, not all rules are created equally. Truth and action probably give people more trouble than purpose. For example, what about those people who have purpose nailed…but not action? This is probably the most common of the permutations, and in some ways the most tragic. In this group you find the novelists who have yet to set pen to paper, lovers who are single and celibate, entrepreneurs who don’t know the first thing about how to procure a small-business loan.

  What about those for whom truth is the toughest part? Some live in another universe altogether, of course—people whose biases are as prominent as their minds are narrow—and it’s hard to imagine getting through to them.

  What if you think you’ve got all three rules covered? Congratulations…but do you really? Francesca believed she was fully engaged with her fifteen-year-old daughter, Maggie. Apart from her responsibilities as COO, Francesca was consumed by her devotion to Maggie. Francesca was certain that her Ultimate Mission (purpose) on earth was to be an extraordinary mother to Maggie; unlike Francesca’s relationship with her alcoholic father—who alternated between being emotionally abusive and unavailable, then died early of alcoholism, thereby submarining any chance for Francesca or her siblings to make peace with him—she and her child would have frequent meals and vacations together, she vowed to herself, and she would always speak and act lovingly toward her daughter. Francesca believed that she had assessed her past and her present pretty much the way they were (truth). And in her mind, she was now doing all she could to align her behavior with her purpose (action). Yet soon after coming to us Francesca revealed, on evaluation forms, that the time she spent with her daughter was rushed and distracted, because she felt so much pressure at work. She acknowledged, too, that her overweight and poor eating and sleeping habits made her jittery and disengaged. She was increasingly away on business, leaving her daughter alone. (Francesca and her husband had divorced when Maggie was five, and he was barely involved in the girl’s life.) Francesca admitted that she didn’t get much pleasure from her work, though she derived some satisfaction from the sense of accomplishment she felt, and from the power, and from having people under her; her father’s career, such as it was, had been so riddled by inconsistency, instability, and failure that she was driven to be his exact opposite. Francesca grew emotional realizing that, as well-intentioned as she was, her relationship with her daughter might not, in truth, be the ideal she had aimed for it to be. The night following the first day of the workshop, she called her daughter to ask her some frank questions about how she, Maggie, felt about Francesca and their life together. Without hesitating, Maggie said she wished her mother were around more. When Francesca pointed out that she needed to travel for her job, and that a high-paying job such as hers paid the tuition for Maggie’s private school, Maggie responded that if the trade-off for having her mother around more was for Maggie to go to public school, she’d do it in a second. (Francesca didn’t bother to point out that being at the private school would probably give Maggie a better chance to get into an Ivy League school; she realized that this desire, too, was hers, not Maggie’s.) Maggie also said she was constantly concerned for her mom’s health—a fear Maggie said she expressed frequently to her mother but which Francesca either ignored, dismissed, or explained away—and Maggie said she had frequent bad dreams that her mother would suddenly have a heart attack and die, leaving Maggie alone.

  In the end, then, what did Francesca have? Let’s see.

  For starters, her story wasn’t true. She had believed its truth but a little examination showed that she was wrong. She thought she was giving her daughter what she wanted and what she, Francesca, never had; she was wrong about that. She thought she could justify eating and sleeping badly because her work demanded it; she now saw she was wrong about that, too, and that these habits served not only to make her unhealthy but, in doing so, made her daughter anxious, even giving her nightmares. In distancing herself from the person her father was, Francesca aimed to make sure she was a more available parent—and she was wrong about that as well. Her travel made her unavailable for long stretches; when she was with her daughter she was not really engaged; and her lousy health significantly increased the possibility that she would die prematurely—a command performance of what her father had been to her, albeit in somewhat gentler form. While it was true that Francesca didn’t touch alcohol, it was untrue that her fate—at least her life span—was destined to depart radically from her father’s.

  What about purpose—did Francesca at least have that? Well, yes—her daughter was undeniably the most important element in her life. But her larger purpose—finally to be part of a parent-child relationship that was deep and engaging, and to make family life happily predictable, and therefore a source of security and comfort—was not close to being achieved. One might say Francesca had purpose, but what did it matter if this purpose was so obviously misaligned with the way her life actually proceeded?

  What about action—was Francesca taking that? Well, sure—she was certainly busy all the time working, succeeding, and providing. But not only was she frequently disengaged with her activities both at work and at home, she wasn’t close to getting joy from them; furthermore, she was spending her time being busy with many things while she should have been doing other things—and mostly those things—that supported her ultimate purpose.

  Purpose, truth, action. That triad is at the core of everything in this book, everything in stories, everything, frankly, that makes for a successful life.

  Let’s see how the three rules might be applied to a company’s story.

  When a small Midwest insurance company sent its entire sales force to us, it was for the same reason most companies send their employees: because they believed we’d make their people more engaged, less likely to change jobs, and more productive, and thus make the company more productive and profitable. But even though we enjoyed a successful workshop, with an amazingly committed-to-change group, what we and they did went only so far in changing the company’s culture for the better because the people at the very top didn’t support it. (It happens more than you might think: Mid-level manager has budget for our program, the top people think it’s just another offsite/trust-building/rope-course boondoggle…and when their employees return charged up about taking more responsibility for their physical well-being and start wondering why there can’t be healthier options in the cafeteria, etc…. well, there’s an impasse.) Unlike many of the companies we work with, who have changed their culture to an impressive degree—Procter & Gamble, Citigroup, GlaxoSmithKline, Texas-based grocery store chain HEB, to name a few—this insurance company continues, to this day, to tell a bad story, one that does not fulfill any of the three rules of good storytelling.

  For example, ostensibly the culture says it’s important for their employees to lead balanced lives, that it’s fine to leave early to attend their child’s basketball game, say—yet everyone knows it’s still frowned upon, and that such an early weekday departure would be seen as a lack of commitment. So that part of their story isn’t true.

  What’s more, the company claims that it is now all about people, and that its success is determined only by the quality of its people. Yet the long-standing gulf between upper management and the rest of the company, as well as the impersonal and penny-pinching way they handled a recent round of layoffs, shows not only that the story isn’t true, but that they really are devoid of a transcendent purpose.

  Clearly, the company is not aligned with its stated values. There has long been talk there of adding features like a childcare center, a gym, water and snack stations, all of which would not only make their employees happier but also more engaged, more alert, more likely to perform better and likelier to stay with the company longer. But that’s all it has remained, talk. No real action. The company’s
tentacles extend their reach all the way into the employee’s home—no one on the sales team feels they can turn off their cell phone at home, engendering resentment toward the company—yet, on the flip side, the company doesn’t want their workers’ home or family life to extend into the office, engendering still more resentment. The company tells its people it wants results…yet doesn’t do anything to create the more balanced environment that is needed precisely to help one to produce those amazing results. So there’s little hope-filled action, either.

  That’s one faulty company story. And several of their sales team have since left for two competitor companies who tell better stories, stories that are full of purpose and truth and characterized by action, not talk.

  Years of experience with storytelling at HPI have helped us to formulate these three rules. We’ve also discovered that successful stories happen only when you take charge. So whether you believe in your company or not, it’s up to you, no one else, to be vigilant about telling only stories that fulfill the three rules of storytelling.

  WRITE YOUR NEW STORY

  NEXT STEP: Write your New Story, making sure that it fulfills the criteria for good storytelling.

  Crafting a new story is liberating. Also challenging, scary, and painful. It should be painful. After all, it will be more clear-eyed than your Old Story was in defining what you really want from life; it hacks away at the excuses and rationalizations that appeared in your Old Story; and it demands real change, something your Old Story was probably not that interested in. In short, it is more purposeful, truer, and more action-oriented than your Old Story.