You are listening to the Life Coach School Podcast with Brooke Castillo, episode number 527.
Welcome to The Life Coach School Podcast, where it ís all about real clients, real problems and real coaching. And now your host, Master Coach instructor, Brooke Castillo.
Hey beautiful friends. I'm so excited to talk to you today, we are going to talk about the concept of narratives. And it ís such a powerful life-changing process that I am also teaching, for all the people who are in Self-Coaching Scholars I'm also teaching a supplemental class workshop for this within Scholars.
I want to make sure that you understand there ís two different types of narratives that I teach, one is a business concept that I teach in my entrepreneurial management class, and that ís a completely different thing than a personal narrative, which is what I'm going to teach about here.
So a personal narrative is simply a story that we create about people or things that we think are true. And the most important narrative you're ever going to have is the narrative you have about yourself and the narrative you have about your life. And every single human has a narrative, has a story running in their head that creates their identity and sets them up for who they think they are. So it's kind of like when someone says, who the hell do you think you are? The narrative that you have about yourself is who you think you are.
I've talked many times about the difference between an absolute truth and reality, a pure circumstance, something that exists in the world that's irrefutable, and the interpretation we have of the world. And so many times the pain that we experience in this world, the frustration, the anxiety, comes from not discerning between those two things. We actually think our narratives are the truth.
We think our narratives about other people are actually absolute truths, and we think our narratives about ourselves are absolute truths, and they're not. And in fact, many times those narratives, because they're unconsciously created, seem like we're just making observations when really we're just spinning stories, delusional stories about ourselves.
When I start teaching these concepts to people and I start telling people like you can change the way you think about yourself, you can change the narrative you have about yourself, you can change the way you see your life, a lot of people will say, oh, that's when you're being delusional. That's the opposite. That's when you're actually looking at the facts, looking at your life, and deciding on purpose what is real, what you want to believe, and how you want to live.
And I don't think there's any more important skill for us to learn as humans than how to control our narratives. Because our narratives are just a big collection of thoughts that create all of our feelings, that determine our actions, that will ultimately create our legacy in this world, that will create our impact in this world. And so if you don't know what your narrative is and you haven't looked at it consciously and you haven't paid close attention to what you want it to be, you will end up living your life as a ping pong ball, thinking that the world is just punching you around when really it's your own mind doing it.
So let's start with some really basic history of our own selves, and if you buy into the idea that you have a narrative about your own life and that you're constantly telling a story about who you are, where did the ingredients for that story you're telling come from? Where did the plot come from? Where did the characters come from? Where did the interpretation and the journey come from?
It all came from how you were socialized and what you were taught to believe and what you were told to believe about yourself. This all happens very unconsciously when we're little. We're being told that that's a tree and that's a rock and this is how you are, right? And we don't know how to distinguish between what is actually something that's useful to believe about ourselves and something that isn't.
And God bless everyone who is socializing us. God bless everyone who's teaching us. They are doing it unconsciously as well. So if you don't have very thoughtful, self-aware, psychologically trained, emotionally intelligent parents, which most of us don't and most of us aren't, then you're going to end up with a story that's probably pretty effed up about yourself, about the world, about other people. And you will feel trapped within that story, trapped within a life that you may not even realize is optional.
So if you think about all stories, the way that they're told, all papers, narratives, the way that they're written, there's usually an underlying theme or a thesis. Something that is trying to be proven, something that's trying to be taught, some message that's trying to come across, some moral of the story, right?
So when you look at your own life and you look at the story that you're telling about your own life, you have to take into account the thesis that you are building it around. What is the main belief that you have about yourself? What is the main moral of the story? What is it that you think your life is for, what you are for, who you are? And most of the time, most of us are not conscious of what this thesis is.
But think about it. If everyone's spinning a narrative and one person's thesis is, I'm an extraordinary human being here to do amazing things, and another person's narrative is, I'm worthless and my life doesn't mean much, those two sentences, just one little collection of words for each person will determine a completely different life.
If you take the person that has the thesis that they're worthless and their life doesn't mean anything, and you replace it with the other person's thesis, their entire life will change immediately. Immediately. I know this to be true after 20 years of working with clients. 20 years of helping people change their narratives about themselves, change their thesis about who they are and what they're here to do and what they want their life to mean.
This also applies to every single other person in your life that you have a story about. You have a story about your mother. You have a story about your father. You have a story about your best friend, about your partner, about your boss. All of those narratives are optional. You can decide what the story is you're going to tell about each and every person in your life.
And you don't even realize it. You think you're just looking at someone. You think you're just observing their life. You think you're just taking notes on what is, but really you're spinning a tale about someone based on a thesis that you have about them.
And those narratives, the narratives you have about yourself, the narratives you have about your life, the narratives you have about all the other people in your life, including people you know and don't know, will determine the quality of your life. This is why you can have two people with very similar circumstances, have very different lives, very different experiences of those same experiences because of the way that they're interpreting them and the way that they are concocting their story about the world, about themselves, and about other people.
Have you ever noticed that there can be someone in your life that you absolutely adore and there can be someone else who knows that person that doesn't like them at all and it's so puzzling. For me, this has happened recently with a friend of mine who told me that someone had come up to her and told her that she was unkind and said, you know, you're not a kind person. And when she told me this, I was literally laughing hysterically. I was like, what? You're literally one of the kindest people I've ever met in my life and everyone around you knows that. I can't believe that someone would ever say that to you.
Now, who's right? We both have different narratives about this friend of mine, but who's right? Am I right or is the person who is saying she's unkind right? We're defining her as a person. They didn't say that thing that you did was unkind. They said you're unkind as a person.
And so if you have a thesis about someone that they're unkind, you will try and prove that thesis true and you will look for all the areas where they are unkind and you will look for all the examples that can be interpreted as unkind to prove that thesis and you won't even realize that you're doing it. You will constantly be confirming your own bias that someone is unkind or the other way, that someone is kind.
If I believe that someone's kind and they do something that could be perceived as unkind, in my mind it won't go along with the story that I have about them and it'll create too much cognitive dissonance that I will reinterpret the thing as, oh, they're just having a bad day or, oh, they didn't really mean that or, oh, they were just super frustrated. I will justify anything that doesn't go along with my narrative about them and I will do it all unconsciously. It's crazy to think about.
So you can see this really clearly in politics, this all or nothing thinking in politics, like all good, all bad. And it's because of our cognitive bias to want to interpret things in a certain way. So one of the first steps, I think, to kind of understanding storytelling and narratives about ourselves, about other people and about our lives is to understand that any narrative that is black or white, that is all one or all the other is probably not serving you, right? It's probably completely off base and it's not serving you because most people in this world are a perfect combination of both, right?
We're a perfect combination of positive and negative. We do a lot of great things and a lot of things that suck, right? And the most interesting stories, the most interesting people are the ones that embrace their entire humanity, the part of them that is good, the part of them that is amazing and also the part of them that isn't.
And one of the most powerful things I've ever done through my work with clients is to help them embrace that life is 50/50. And that is a new narrative that many of them have decided to adopt and it has changed their life completely because instead of constantly comparing their current life to a life that is supposed to be happy and positive all of the time, which makes them feel terrible, they've been able to look at their life through a lens of, oh, life is supposed to be a balance of both. And when something negative happens, it doesn't mean that something's gone terribly wrong in the world, it's just the way of it. It's part of what it means to be alive.
And that's the same that's true with you as a human. You are a combination of extraordinary things and a combination of very boring, silly, mundane things. You're so smart in so many areas and so dumb in others. You're so kind in some ways and actually kind of mean in others. And I really haven't met an exception to this rule. I've met people that try to be perfect, and in trying to be perfect, they end up being very imperfect. And that's the beauty of it. The beauty is the balance of all of it.
So what do you do with this information, knowing about these stories, these narratives that you're creating, that's creating the whole cinema that is your life and that you have so much more control over it than you ever possibly knew that you did? You're not just a pawn in someone else's game trying to figure out how the world works. You're actually the main character in your own story and you are the one writing it.
This is fantastic news. And so I warn you about the 50/50 thing because a lot of times when people realize this power that they have, in order to create the story of their own life and to create the story of the people that are in their lives, they want to spin some toxic positive story about how great they are and how great everyone else is and how happy everyone is all the time. And it's a sticky, sweet, hard to swallow BS that actually is very boring and uninteresting.
And so when you start approaching kind of uncovering what your narrative is, what most of you may find is that you say a lot of things and create a lot of things in your mind that just aren't useful, that are pretty negative and create a layer of negativity that isn't interesting.
There's enough negativity in the world, enough negativity in our lives, enough balance of positive and negative that we don't need to be creating stories that we're worthless. We don't need to be creating stories that we're not good enough, that we're not talented enough, that we've wasted our lives, that we've made too many mistakes.
It's just not useful. You don't have to try to create that part of it, it will happen naturally by the way of living in this very challenging world that is a challenged world on purpose. That's the point of the human being, we have to know what we don't want. We have to have the contrast in order to know what we do want.
So the first step is really to evaluate the story that you currently have about the other people in your life about yourself. And I recommend that you do this just with a paragraph. We're going to be doing a workshop in Scholars on this, but you just do a paragraph about yourself.
What is the main thesis you have about yourself as a human and what is the summary of yourself? And then what is the main thesis you have about life and your life in particular? And what is the summary of that? And then the main characters in your life, what is your story about them?
And a lot of times when you go through and do this work, you realize why you feel awful all the time. Stories are negative. Stories are hurtful. Stories are not useful to living a life that may be much better if you just told a different narrative about yourself and about the people around you.
And once you've done that, once you've kind of uncovered that, then you want to kind of decide and take some time to think about it. What is the story that you want to tell about yourself? And here are the components of what that story must include. It must be truthful to you. You can't make up a story about yourself that you don't believe because you will not feel that story. And if you won't feel it, you won't act on it, won't make any sense, right? You can't BS your own self.
So you want to create a story that is based on what you believe are facts about you. And one of the ways to do this is, yes, make a list of all the things that are negative, but also make a list of the things that are positive. This will be very difficult for some of you to really take a look at what you have that is of redeeming heroic value in your life. And then you write that thesis about who it is you are and want to be and what you want your legacy to be in your life and what you want your life to be all about.
A good way to think about this is if someone you loved were to write a short article about you in a magazine, a paragraph, what would you want them to include and to say and to notice about you? And even if they were going to write a really balanced article where they wrote about all your greatness and all of your shortcomings, what would be included and what would be the main thesis? What would be the main point of you having both of these? What point did that serve in your life and in the lives of the people around you?
And then you just repeat that process for your life. And then you repeat that process for the other people in your life. And this is a time consuming exercise. It's a workshop basically that you'll do on yourself and on your life and all the people in your life. But it really can change everything.
There's a lot of philosophies out there that talk about how powerful the two words I am are. I am capable. I am a woman. I am amazing. I am here to do good. Whatever comes after I am. And we can consider that I am maybe your thesis statement about your life. What is the overall summary statement that you can say about you?
And if you believe something like I am an extraordinary human being, right, what comes up for you? And extraordinary can mean both positive and negative things, useful things and not useful things. Interesting things, shortcomings, all of it.
So many times when I'm coaching people, you all come to me and you're in so much shame over your humanness. You're in shame that you lost your temper. You're in shame that you lied. You're in shame that you were lazy and that you procrastinated. You're in shame that you went behind someone's back and did something, you know, gossiped about something, did something wrong.
And I'm often really trying to just remind you that that's part of it, right? That's part of human beingness. And there's a lot of stories out there that are being told that we should be good all of the time and that good people are good people all the time and that successful people are successful people all the time. And it's nonsense. It's all just nonsense.
And so I want to dissuade you from trying to write a narrative that feeds into the idea that you have to be a saint or that you even should try to do that, but that you might want to look at your life and say, okay, I'm a human being living in a half and half world. And I'm a half and half positive and negative balanced human. And I have all the good and all the bad that comes from being a human being. And I live in a world that is full of humans that are half good and half bad in some ways.
And so how do we reconcile that to the degree that we can to live a life that we can settle into and be comfortable with? That we're not constantly comparing to some idealized perfection, but we're also not beating ourselves up consciously, and maybe even unconsciously, in a way that doesn't allow us to show up as much as we would want to show up, right? So it's the narrative process.
And you have to really be aware of those one-sided narratives that you have about other people in your life. When you start really writing your own narrative, you'll start appreciating and loving the complexity of humans and of how multidimensional we are. And it'll make you more forgiving, it'll make you more understanding, it'll make you more loving to embrace the fullness of all of humanity instead of always trying to make sure you're on the good side with all the good guys. And I think there's more shame that comes from trying to be a good person, a good guy on the good side all of the time and pretending like you don't have any of the shortcomings that you do.
And I think that we all wish, we all hope, we all want that someone will see something redeeming in us, someone will see something good in us, someone will see something useful and valuable in us. And a lot of us are out there taking a lot of action in the world trying to get people to see that, when we don't even see it. The only thing that needs to happen in order for someone to see something redeeming in us is that we need to see that and we need to write that narrative about ourselves.
I want to give you just a little bit of homework based on this idea. It's a lot. It's a lot for you to uncover the narratives that you already have and then write theses and write paragraphs for everyone around you, but I just want to give you a little bit of homework to start with this process. And a kind of an easy way to ease into it is to practice on someone you love.
Think about someone you love the most in the world. For most of us, that isn't ourselves. Wouldn't it be cool if it was? But you think about someone that you absolutely adore and what is your thesis about them? And what do you believe about them? What is the story that you tell about them and what are the actual circumstances? What is the actual evidence that you have for that person? That's what you're going to do. That's the first part.
And the second part, and this is just to show you how powerful a narrative is, the second part is you're going to take that same person that you love and you're going to change the thesis that you have about them to the exact opposite of what it has been.
So if you believe they're the kindest person in the world, they're the most amazing person in the world, they're the most awesome person you've ever met, they're your favorite person, right? Whatever your thesis is. And you're going to change a thesis to the opposite. So if your thesis is they're the kindest person, you're going to change it to, they are very unkind.
And then I want you to look for evidence that that is true, and you will find it if you're honest with yourself. You will find how they are a human and that they do have parts of themselves that aren't kind. And you'll be able to see that and you'll be able to see their humanity and still be in love with them. See their humanity, see that negative side of them and understand that you're just not focused on it. You're just not writing that narrative on a regular basis.
And once you do that process, once you do that little bit of homework on someone else you love, the rest of the work will be easier because you will understand that it doesn't take away that person's greatness. It doesn't take away that person's value to understand their humanness and to write a narrative that simply allows you to focus on what you want to focus on to have the highest level of life that you can have.
All right, my friends, I hope you have a beautiful month. I hope you explore all your narratives and write your narratives. And if you are in Scholars, we will be doing that in class. So make sure you look at your schedule, make sure you show up to that workshop within Scholars so we can write all these narratives ourselves.
All right, have a beautiful month, everyone. Talk to you soon. Bye bye.
