So What’s Your Story?

November 5, 2007 on 9:04 pm | In The Power of Story book | 1 Comment

I’m often asked: What is the first step in getting your story straight? I tell people to first identify their “old story”. That’s because we often need to clear out our collection of reasons why the world is holding us back. Everybody has a story- you, your boss, your spouse, everyone. Most of us, at one time or another, have a story that stops working. Situations, jobs, or people in our lives seem alright but then something changes. This can be sudden or happen over time. Either way, now is the time to craft a new story that works for you.

Ask yourself “what is the story I can tell that will take me where I want to go?” Examine why your old story doesn’t work, and contract the differences between your old and new versions. So often when our stories don’t work, we tend to shift our focus outside of ourselves. Psychologists call this an external ‘locus of control’. If your story blames outside people and situations such as the office setting, the boss, lack of empowerment, a lack of time, or the nature of the business you have an external locus of control. At the Human Performance Institute, we have studied several thousand of individuals’ answers to what they identified as their biggest obstacle in having more energy and being fully engaged. We expected to find that people would tell us that they needed more sleep, better habits, or additional training. Interestingly, the top ten obstacles that people named share the same problem- an external locus of control.

This external focus is an obstacle that will get in the way of getting your story straight. As long as you let external forces play a main part in your personal story, it will prevent you from using more useful self-messages. So what is your story? In order to answer that question and develop a new story, you must shift your locus of control in your story from external to internal. Then progress can be made to deepen your levels of engagement in your business and personal life.