“As I’ve gotten older—I would say starting in my mid-to-late 20s—I could not help but notice the effect on people of the stories they told about themselves. If you listen to people, if you just sit and listen, you’ll find that there are patterns in the way they talk about themselves.

There’s the kind of person who is always the victim in any story that they tell. Always on the receiving end of some injustice. There’s the person who’s always kind of the hero of every story they tell. There’s the smart person; they delivered the clever put down there.

There are lots of versions of this, and you’ve got to be very careful about how you tell these stories because it starts to become you. You are—in the way you craft your narrative—kind of crafting your character. And so I did at some point decide, “I am going to adopt self-consciously as my narrative, that I’m the happiest person anybody knows.” And it is amazing how happy-inducing it is.”

Author Michael Lewis[1] on the stories we tell ourselves. (from 3-2-1 by James Clear[2])

The stories you tell ourselves could have a big impact on your mental frame and hence to your reaction to any situation.

You could be telling yourself that this is so difficult to do daily chores without any help available, that it’s so boring not being able to meet your friends and party, that it’s unfair and how miserable you are being forced to be homebound.

Or, you could be telling yourself that you enjoy working from home, that it’s such a blessing that you don’t have to endure the traffic jams, that its good to stay close to your family and get meaningful work done too, that you are thankful to have all the basic necessities of life available to you at your doorstep and that life is largely comfortable.

Whatever you chose to believe, your mind will go off and start finding all the evidence to support it and present it to you so that you start believing it.

And the truth is that evidence will always exist for both sides of the argument. But you have to choose which side to believe in. You have to chose which story you want to tell yourself.

You gotta tell yourselves stories anyways. So why not tell yourselves the good ones?

Best,
Kaddy

[1] - Michael Lewis is the best selling author of many books including Moneyball, The Big Short, and The Undoing Project. You would recall watching movies based on his books. He is one of my favourite non-fiction authors from the current times. He also runs an awesome podcast called Against the Rules. My favorite episode from the first season is the one called Ref, You Suck!.

[2] - James Clear is the author of another best selling book called Atomic Habits, it’s a must read on building healthy habits. He runs an awesome weekly newsletter called 3-2-1. In case you are interested, you can signup here.

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