“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.” | Michael Lewis
This note made me think about the narrative I’ve crafted about myself. My hunch is that the narrative I share revolves around the three words that I think of as my cultural tenets – integrity or doing what I say I’ll do, learning or attempting to find growth in every situation, and hunger or the constant push to move things forward and contribute positively.
I’ll be mulling this some more, however. Powerful idea.
(H/T: James Clear’s newsletter)
