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Narrative uses self-talk to craft the story of our experience. We develop a small collection of these stories we apply across all scenarios. We maintain these stories about ourselves, each other, and the world. They aren’t necessarily accurate, but they are consistent. Like negative self-talk, our narratives root in our belief system. They explain or rationalize our flavoring of the Big 3 negative core beliefs (unlovable, unworthy, and incompetent/helpless) and our intermediate beliefs (our rules and assumptions about ourselves, others, and the world). Most people only have a few narratives they apply to everything. We don’t deal with the reality of the present experience, but with the consistent story we maintain about ourselves and our experiences.
Because they define interactions with others and the world, recognizing one’s narratives is important because it isn’t the thing that happens that is the problem, but what we tell ourselves about the thing that happens.
At the Association of Applied Sport Psychology’s annual conference in 2019, Michael Gervais, the keynote speaker had the sizeable crowd fired up. He was talking about being the “tip of the spear” and training the “best of the best” and how sports psychology professionals lead the charge. He asked the crowd, which was spilling out of the large hotel ballroom,
“Who wants to come up and be tested, in front of everybody?”
In the packed ballroom, he counted eight people who raised their hands. He asked:
“What the fuck is wrong with you people? I just gave that talk, and you didn’t raise your hand?!”
Over some chuckles and the murmur of the crowd, an implication floated in the air. As high-performance coaches, working with the best of the best, we were too chicken shit to volunteer to be tested in front of our peers.
Defensively, I thought to myself:
I’m not chicken-shit about being tested in front of people, but it seems like a hassle to raise my hand, go up there, have a weird moment with someone else who wanted to go up. etc.
I
n the seconds it took us all to process, Gervais said,
“Not raising your hand isn’t what is important in this exercise, but what you are telling yourself about why you didn’t.”
Mother-effer, it was like a ton of bricks fell from the rafters! I use the same narrative ALL THE TIME, about just about everything!
“It’s a hassle!
Like my “it’s a hassle” narrative, you probably only use a few narratives to explain many of your roadblocks, life knots, and obstacles, too. Awareness of what you tell yourself is key to getting unstuck. As you become aware of your narratives, you are free to decide if they are accurate or need reworking.
Here’s a hint: They need reworking.
Most people aren’t in touch with their narratives and need to put in a little work to identify them.
Some questions ask yourself:
Example: Big Time U
I talked to a mom and her potential college athlete about his future. The mom said, “We know he can’t go to a big university. It would swallow him up.” She was mid-sentence when her son started nodding and parroted, “I would be swallowed up!” This is a narrative based on mom’s beliefs about her son and his beliefs about himself. She meant shewould feel better if her son went to a small school. She was a nervous nelly, and her anxiety about his future would be more manageable if the challenges he faced were smaller. It wasn’t her intention, but the implication was, “He isn’t good enough (athletically, academically, and socially) to go to a big school.” It wasn’t true. He was solid in sports and academics and connected socially. It was a projection of his mom’s fears. It became true because he adopted the narrative, undermining his belief in himself. He knew without a doubt a big school would “swallow him up.” The second he stepped onto the campus at “Big Time U” this would be his driving thought. It would prime him to fail. He would burn outquickly.
The navigation systems in our cars and phones display the geography they represent. While it is accurate, it doesn’t contain trees, topography, people, or asphalt. Reality is distorted and encapsulated in a minimalist way. The brain, through our narratives, operates in the same way. Most problems, challenges, and obstacles exist more in one’s maps than reality. The big three negative core beliefs, and the intermediate beliefs that sit on top of them, are like powerful black holes. The gravitational pull of our beliefs distorts information and spits it out the other side in a way that fits our narrative. Unconsciously, we affirm what we already believe to be true. The pieces of reality that don’t fit our beliefs are smoothed over, ignored, or distorted into something else.
Example
I work with a young man who isn't living up to his potential. His parents’ narrative is the reason that he isn’t a starter is that “It’s all politics” and “He is screwed.” There is no truth to it. He is the third or fourth best at his position. The coaches in question aren’t political people, they want to win. They put the best athletes on the field. His parents are also “those parents” who text, email, threaten, and cross multiple boundaries with the coaches. That certainly doesn’t help. This young man bought into the story the family created. He can’t see that it is his skills that are lacking. This young man’s dad has the same story about his high school football career. He wasn’t successful in sports because of politics, too. Update: Since writing this, this athlete quit sports entirely because “Things are so political.”
An interesting note about both athletes mentioned above. The narratives that led them in the wrong direction were really their parent’s stories. Parents and families of origin unconsciously hand their narratives down to their kids. They hear them over and over and take them on through osmosis.
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