We are the stories we tell ourselves.

We are the stories we tell ourselves.

That is our identity.

I am just a set of experiences and the stories I tell myself about them.

Society has a useful way of helping us with that. The work we do. We ask and answer 'What do you do?' and use that as an approximation for who someone is.

It's useful. It helps me to have a rough cut version of someone's identity, but it's always only an approximation. An accountant, a media executive, a CEO, an entrepreneur, a charity worker, a nurse. They tell me something. But not everything.

And it's useful for society, to others, but not always to us. Sometimes it is: when I received an offer to publish my books, the idea that I could now be a 'published author' changed how I saw myself. I imagined telling the (in my mind) wealthy people in the park I was walking in, and how they would react. 'I'm a published author,' I thought. 'And none of you are.'

And sometimes it's not helpful to us. My story was that an author with a publisher was a worthwhile identity, but an author who chose to publish their own books was not. And yet listening to my deeper intuition, I knew that the right place for the 12-Minute Method books was not with that publisher, but with something more creative and entrepreneurial.

When we start to believe too much in the story we tell ourselves about our work, then it holds us back. Remember, it's only ever an approximation. Even the person who is the most archetypal police officer is still more than that archetype. Even the most stereotypical investment banker is more than the stereotype.

We get to tell our own stories, if we want to. We can choose.

Even a year ago, the idea that I was someone who could publish a book called 'How to Create the Conditions For Great Work' would have felt slightly absurd. What do I know? I'm not Michael Bungay Stanier, or Jim Collins, or Jennifer Garvey Berger. I'm just me.

But that's just a story.

Another story is that I'm someone who sat down every week for three years and thought about how we do our best work. How we create things that matter. Who throughout those years spoke to others and tested things on myself. Someone whose greatest strengths include collecting ideas that help us understand the world, and sharing them. Who am I? Well, I'm the person who's here, with the book written, with it published.

Now, once the work is done, I have an easier story. I'm the person who wrote it and published it, and there's no denying that.

But to get there, I had to lean through the Resistance. I had to stare 'Who am I?' in the face. Answer it AND refute the premise of the question. I am not that person yet, but I will be, as soon as I launch the book.

Reflecting with a client this week I caught something. It's possible that their identity WAS their job, or was VERY close to it. A good approximation. And, something was changing. To really retell the story, this client needed to reconnect to what they loved about the job. To what brought them there. They needed to love it, before they could transcend and include it. Because they are more than the job. They always were, of course, but perhaps it didn't matter so much until now.

Because if our story is that we are only and completely the job, then what do we have left if we leave it?

If our story is only that we are the clicks or the likes or the sales, then what do we have if we don't sell one week?

If our story is that we are only the parent, then what happens when our children leave home?

We are the stories we tell ourselves. And we can choose.

Jennifer Garvey Berger's book, Unlocking Leadership Mindtraps, tells us that humans in a complex world get trapped by simple stories. Her offer is: if we sense ourselves being trapped, tell three stories, all equally possible.

I've found this important. The first is the black-and-white initial reflection. Say, 'It's all you.' Always too simple.

The second is often the reverse: just as black-and-white, just as simple. 'It's all me.'

But when we reach a third story we have to get into shades of grey. 'It's partly me, and it's partly you'. And in the shades of grey we almost always find a closer approximation to reality.

Because the world isn't black or white. It is messy, blurry, crumpled grey.

As Ros and Ben Zander wrote in The Art of Possibility: it's all invented.

So we might as well invent some stories that help us, that create possibility, that unleash our potential, that take us through our fear and into action.

We might as well invent some stories that create the conditions for our best work to happen.

We are the stories we tell ourselves.

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This is the latest in a series of articles written using the 12-Minute Method: write for twelve minutes, proof read once with tiny edits and then post online. 

The first two 12-Minute Method books are out now!

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