Our Success Depends on the Stories We Tell
True Stories?
The stories we tell ourselves have incredible power.
Up until the age of 34 I told myself I was hilarious and people loved my wicked sense of humour. Then I upset a friend (one in a very long line) and finally realised I wasn’t so funny.
I became a lot more boring, but perhaps a better person.
By the time I was 38 most of my life experience had convinced me that I could achieve pretty much anything and that I was usually right. Many people didn’t like that, but that was just further proof that they were wrong.
At 38 I lost faith in myself as a teacher, and the whole idea of institutionalised education. I decided to retrain as a carpenter, got accepted on a two year apprenticeship and quit my teaching job.
Life had other ideas, and by 44, as head of English, I realised everything I knew was up for grabs. Every scientific theory works that way. ‘This is what we know now, but tomorrow a new theory will emerge which will explain the world differently, and make more accurate predictions of what will happen next.’
When I realised that, my story changed. ‘I’ was no longer at the centre of it, I was just interpreting the world in my own image.
This knowledge didn’t make me any less opinionated - but it did make me much more open minded. I believe the evidence shows my opinions are right, but I also look for evidence that will prove me wrong.
I’d rather find out I’m wrong than find out I am right. That’s the story I tell myself at the minute, anyway, and I hope it is true.
Untrue Stories
But untrue stories are just as useful.
One of my favourites is about the most difficult class. I tell myself that they are special. That they are full of untapped potential, which only I can reach. That their behaviours are not their fault, but of the parenting and social pressures which combine inside them like reactive chemicals. Yet I have the skills to defuse them, inspire them, reignite them to a greater purpose.
I know this is unlikely. I know that, seen objectively, their progress will be slow. Their names will stay with me much longer than the average students who worked hard and caused me no pain. I know I won’t look back at my time with them and see that I changed their lives.
But that doesn’t matter. I will have changed mine.
And, when I do that, I will teach them better. They will do better even if, with different behaviours and beliefs, they could have achieved so much more.
A Video to Explain This
There’s a famous experiment to show the power of story telling. It reveals that we simply cannot stop ourselves from reframing everything into a narrative.
In other words, the story that your difficult class is a set of intractable problems you are powerless to overcome will take hold and fill you with despair.
Likewise the difficult colleague, the wayward head of department, the thoughtless line manager, the egomaniacal leader …
The video was shown to people in an experiment by Heider and Simmel (1944). It is just a series of shapes, moving across a screen, for 1 minute and 45 seconds of animation. You can watch it here.
It is impossible for you to watch it without constructing a narrative. I defy you not to dislike the large triangle. You might develop some sympathy for it when you see how it ‘behaves’ at the end.
You will have very definite views. But, this is ‘just a story’.
You should rewrite all your stories so that they help you.
Go back to my own.
Maybe I still always want to be right. But if I tell myself I am always looking for proof that I am wrong, I have to go out and do it. It makes me a better teacher and a better leader.
(This video came to came to me from a blog by a school leader whose school is ranked 24th out of 51 by FFT Schools Like Yours, and citing another head teacher who leads a school ranked 40th out of their 51 similar schools.
The old me would have dismissed them out of hand. But now I subscribe.)