Say it Better

What’s Your Story?

Writing of her secret life as a prostitute, a blogger with the pseudonym Belle de Jour had a backstory worthy of a movie script. In fact it was turned into a Showtime TV series. She wanted to have a satisfying next chapter of her life story so she wrote about it. You see she’s “a respected specialist in developmental neurotoxicology and cancer epidemiology.”

 Few of us lead a startling double life yet we may want to play a new part in the next chapter.

To create fresh scenes for your life, view it as a movie story. That’s what Donald Miller did when he wrote A Million Miles in a Thousand Years: What I Learned While Editing My Life.  Screenwriters know that in a movie a Character is What He Does. An Inciting Incident must happen.

If you are restless with your life why not evoke such an incident to turn your next chapter into the kind of adventure story you want for your life? That’s what I’m embarking on, in a halting way. Four friends are on this path with me and it would be great to have you join us. 

"Storytelling reveals meaning without committing the error of defining it," wrote Hannah Arendt yet we do define ourselves by the spin we put on the stories we tell.

Here are some steps.  

1. Recognize the Story of Your Life So Far

How we cobble together the incidents in our lives and create a narrative thread reflects that spin, revealing our hidden personalities and our tendencies suggests psychologist Dan McAdams, author of The Redemptive Self: Stories Americans Live By. To put it starkly, McAdams believes there are two kinds of people.

There are those who view life-altering experiences as “contaminative episodes.” An emotionally positive event suddenly goes bad and that will be the way they replay future incidents.

Others, like Taylor Mali view events as “redemptive episodes” through which they can eventually redeem bad scenes, turning them into good outcomes over time and becoming better people. I feel like I do some of both. How about you?

2. Choose to Put a Positive Spin on Your Stories and Pull Others Closer

“Emotion serves as a central organizing process within the brain,” writes Mindsight author Daniel Siegel. How we feel about our past affects how we think about describing it – creating an endless loop of repeating scenes and expectations.  Seeing the patterns in our past incidents, choosing to learn from them and rejoicing in that growth can be done most naturally by shifting the theme of the stories we tell others about ourselves.  Move from contaminative to redemptive.  

In this shift you create a life-affirming triple win:

1. You begin living from your strengths more often.

2. Others around you are encouraged by this emotional contagion, thus you are helping friends of your friends’ friends to see their life story in a more resilient light.

3. Reflecting resiliency in your storytelling can pull others closer as they are attracted to positivity.

Positively “integrated personal narratives are an important marker of psychological health,” according to Siegel.

Telling your stories from a resilient mindset also helps anchor that attitude in you - and more.

3. Storytelling Creates Connective Tissue Between Us

1. As you tell you often pull out stories from listeners. Stories tend to build upon each other and draw others in. They spark deeper conversations, begin to establish a common ground and build trust through that sharing.

2. Stories, by their nature, are static, action-driven and in sharing them we can move each other to act, to change.

3. Stories help to cultivate empathy, as PJ Manney points out, encouraging others to understand the perceptions and motivations of others including the storyteller.

4. A good storyteller can reduce a complex situation to its essence while cloaking it in emotionally memorable details. In so doing, stories focus our attention.

For example, if you choose to turn the page of your life story to a fresh chapter, a new adventure, you are setting yourself out on a quest. In describing this quest as a story to others, you may pull them into launching their own quest.

Stories are vital to build shared understanding. They help us make sense out of ourselves, each other and the kind of story we want co-create together as we grow our relationship.  Stories are where we create meaning in our days to endure loss and failures to have a redemptive narrative, to savor our life –with others.

See stories as oxygen in your life.

4. Follow Yourself into the Brighter Next Chapter of Your Life Story

 A fun way to recognize how to tell your own interesting story is to get interested in exactly what it is about. Take one or two of Russell Davies’ suggestions to recognize what most  interests you. I’ve modified some of them to appeal to my lazy side and perhaps yours.

1. Take at one photo everyday and post it on Flickr or other place you can see your growing collection.

 2. Start a daily one-sentence journal.

3. Keep a casual scrapbook – pasting in things you collect and captioning them.

4. Read at least part of a magazine, book or newspaper that outside your usual realm of interest.

5.  Interview someone for 20 minutes and observe the direction of your questions.

6. Collect something

7. Each week sit in a café or other public place for 30 minutes or an hour and listen to other people’s conversations. Take notes.

8. Each week write 50 words about something that stuck in your mind – a movie, building, sculpture, song, etc. 

9. Make something and put it where you can see it or give it to the right person.

 

Keeping Cool While Under Fire

 If someone argues with you in front of others, you have at least two options, as Bill Clinton and Noam Chomsky demonstrated:

•  Maintain a low-key, relaxed style, as Chomsky does in this interview, to stand in sharp contrast to that hostile style. Refusing to be a combatant will impress others in the situation

•  Rise to the level of the other person’s “loudness” with a strong, direct yet tone and language and with an underlying calm as Clinton did when responding to a heckler in the audience, feeling the audience back him up.  See how he takes the mike, moves closer to the heckler yet remains under control.

The biggest reason people get reprimanded at work is for displays of anger yet the top problem individuals have at work is that they do not feel heard or respected. Yet in most situations we can help others feel heard and cool off - even when they are acting difficult -- and still stand up for ourselves.

Staying civil when others are not is vital in this ever more connected, speeded-up world where things can escalate faster and come back to bite you.  Here are five separate lessons:

1. Lighten Up

When others begin to act "hot," we instinctively either:

a.  Escalate (become like them and get loud, more hostile, or other reactions where we act more like the behavior we do not like),

 or

b.  Withdraw (adopt a poker face, say little or nothing, move away).

Both approaches causes all parties to get even more out of balance so things get worse. These behaviors are akin to saying "I don't like your behavior -- therefore I am going to give you more power."

Instead try the LSL rule - “Lower, Slower and Less

• Slow everything down: your voice level and rate and the amount and frequency of your body motions and do not gesture with sharp, raised motions.

• Be aware that you are feeling a hot reaction to the other person. Instead

of dwelling on your growing feelings, move to a de-escalating action.

Leave room for that person to save face and to self-correct. Who knows? You might actually be wrong and need to apologize.

 2. Take the "Three A's" Approach

• Acknowledge that you heard

- Pause

- Nod

- Verbally acknowledge yet do not take sides:

   a.  "I understand you have a concern" rather than "You shouldn't have…

   b. (Avoid blaming or labeling): "Let's discuss what would work best for us both now" rather than "That was a dumb.”

   c. Ask for more information so you can find some common ground based on his underlying concerns or needs.

 • Affirm their better side

Try to "warm up" to the part of the person you can respect -- focus on it mentally and refer to it verbally: "You are so dedicated" or "knowledgeable" or whatever their self-image is that leads them toward rationalizing their behavior.

 • Add your own view

Say, perhaps, "May I tell you my perspective?" This enables the other person to have the power to give you permission to state your view – yet to make it difficult for him to say no.  This approach supports both of you in showing your better sides to each other.

3. Presume Innocence

Nobody wants to be told they are wrong, especially when they feel they are in a weaker position  - or wrong. Whenever you believe someone may be lying or simply not making sense, you will not build rapport by pointing it out to them.

Allow them to save face and keep asking questions. Say, for example, "How does that relate to the . . ." (then state the apparently conflicting information). You might find you were wrong, and thus you "save face." Or, by continued non-threatening questions, you can "corner" the other person into self-correcting, which protects your future relationship.

4. Look to Their Positive Intent, Especially When They Appear to Have None

Our instincts are to look for the ways we are right and others are less right. In arguing, as the momentum builds, we mentally focus on the smart, thoughtful, and "right" things we are doing, while obsessing about the dumb, thoughtless, and otherwise wrong things the other person is doing.

This tendency leads us to take a superior or righteous position, get more rigid, and listen less as the argument heats up. Difficult as you might find it, try staying mindful of your worst side and her best side as you find yourself falling into an escalating argument.

You will probably be more generous and patient with that person, and increase the chances that she will see areas where you might be right after all.

5. Dump Their Stuff Back in Their Lap

If someone is verbally dumping on you, do not interrupt, counter, or counter-attack in midstream. You will prolong and intensify these comments.  When he is finished, ask "Is there anything else you want to add?" Then say, "What would make this situation better for us both?" or "How can we improve this situation in a way you believe we can both accept?"

Ask that person to propose a solution to the issue they have raised. If he continues to complain or attack, acknowledge you heard them each time and, like a broken record, repeat yourself in increasingly brief language - with variations of "What will make it better?"

Do not attempt to solve problems others raise, even if someone asks for advice.  She will instinctively go out of their way to make you wrong. We will spend more time proving our way works best than a method suggested by someone else, even someone we love or like. It's only human.

Five Tips for Reaching Better Agreements

1. If you embarrass someone while attempting to reach an agreement, you may never have that person’s full attention again.

2. Even and especially when you have the upper hand, do not make a victim of the underdog.

3. Offering something free and valued up-front, unasked, often implants a desire to reciprocate, even beyond the value of your offer.

4. Problems seldom exist at the level at which they are discussed. Until you understand the underlying conflict, you will not be able to resolve it.

5. If you want more from someone in a situation, ask for it after they have invested more time, energy, money, reputation, or other resource in that situation.