Thinking in Narratives

These past few weeks, I spent a lot of time thinking about storytelling and studying it.

I always knew how important it was as a skill but didn’t realize its significance.

There’s a Steve Jobs’ quote:

“The most powerful person in the world is the storyteller.”

It’s cliche, but it’s so true.

We, as humans, we don’t live in reality.

We don’t think with facts.

We think in narratives, which makes us very different from nature.

Nature does not think and act in narratives.

There’s no story nature needs to hear to grow trees.

It just does it.

Humans, on the other hand, have and need a story for everything.

We tell ourselves stories all the time:

• About our past

• About our future

• About our friends and family

Are these stories true or not?

It actually doesn’t matter.

It’s what you believe and how you act that matters.

But the story you tell yourself can impact how much you believe in yourself and act boldly.

We all know the type of person who’s full of confidence without having done much.

I know at least three people in my life with these qualities.

While I don’t like that trait specifically (being confident without having done shit), what I’ve noticed is that these people feel better about themselves and are ahead in certain areas of their lives because of it.

I started to wonder, “If they can be confident without having done shit, I can be confident about myself.”

I’ve done a lot:

• Built a 6-figure content agency

• Generated 200k impressions on social

• Launched and scaled a newsletter from 0 to 1 without paid ads

Yet, my default has been to focus on the negative (what I haven’t done) and then constantly bash myself.

As a result, no matter what happens, I constantly doubt myself.

I listen to a lot of podcasts on business and have noticed that a lot of successful people have been motivated by this negative voice in their heads.

You know that voice.

The voice that says “You suck, you’re stupid, you’re not good enough.”

The problem with that voice is that it gets you to take action.

It makes you move.

It helps you achieve.

But the cost outweighs the reward.

Over time, the voice wears you down and lowers your confidence.

At least, it did for me.

So, for the past few weeks, I focused on building a new story for myself.

I make sure I’m kinder to myself and also focus on what I’ve achieved so far and what I’ve done, and I feel a lot better.

I still take a ton of action toward my goals, but now I don’t feel like shit if I all time because I’ve silenced my negative self-talk.

Going forward, I’ll be focusing more on storytelling…

Creating and building effective narratives for myself and the businesses I work with and build.

The beautiful thing is that with social media and the Internet, you can take control of your own story and build your narrative.

I mean, look at the different celebrities:

• Trump

• Logan Paul

• MrBeast

All of them have built huge narratives for themselves that help them captivate an audience and capture their attention.

A few good books on this topic if you want to dive deeper:

• Fooled by Randomness by Nassim Taleb

• Storyworthy by Matthew Dicks

• Stories Sell by Matthew Dicks

If you like this post, let me know.

I respond to every reader,

Tanyo