Facts vs. stories

Sign up here to receive weekly posts on our health, work, and minds.

Today’s read time: 5 mins

We tend to overtrust what appears into our minds. We think that because it entered our minds, it’s true. However, we really need to be careful not to believe everything we think.

So much of our lives are spent crafting stories - stories about another person’s intentions, another person’s judgments, and, heck, even our own judgments.

Let me introduce you to a simple framing and tool that can help you navigate, broadly, the tricky world of thought and, specifically, one way we tend to run into trouble when communicating with other humans.

Jim Dethmer, a wonderful author, coach, and founder of the Conscious Leadership Group, suggests we differentiate between facts and stories.

A fact is something that could, without question, be proven via a video camera. It would show up on the recording.

A story, on the other hand, is our mind’s interpretation; it can’t be proven true by the recording.

In other words, a fact is something you observe, while a story is something you imagine or make up. The key is to be able to parse the two.

Let’s look at two simple examples and implications.

Imagine your boss sends a message through your internal communication tool saying “let’s talk; are you free after 3 today?”.

A video camera, from your perspective, would capture the message entering your laptop screen and that’s it. That’s true.

Can’t you already imagine, though, the types of stories swirling in your head? I did something wrong. I’m a failure. Oh, it must be because of ABC. All of that mental activity there? Story time! Your mind made it all made up.

Those thoughts enter in stealth mode - so quickly and automatically that you hardly even notice these negative stories. What cascades from them is troublesome. One, as I mentioned earlier, we incorrectly believe them, taking them to be facts. Two, our emotions and mental state actually shift. It becomes a sort of negative flywheel.

A second example is your partner asks if you can do the dishes. The fact here - again observable from the video camera - is that your partner asked you to do the dishes. Maybe you observed an eyebrow raise or perhaps a voice raise, too. A bunch of stories could enter in your head, including:

• She’s upset that they’re not done

• She wishes I’d do more around the house

• I always do them

These thoughts don’t stay long because - well, that’s the nature of thought and because - they rapidly cascade into spiraling thoughts, reactions, and emotions. Take that first story - the one about your partner wishing you’d do more around the house?

This thought cascade stems from an imaginary story that you’ve taken, without question, to be true when it likely isn’t. That’s why it’s so crucial for us to be aware of when we’ve taken these stories to be facts!

Instead, you might recognize it and even say out loud:

I notice you asked if I could do the dishes. I imagine you’re upset because they’re not done or I imagine that maybe you’re thinking I don’t do enough around the house.

Remember, you (and the video camera) notice observable facts, while your mind imagines stories.

This notice vs. imagine framing:

• helps us question whether what we take to be definitely true is actually true

• enables us to loosen the grip of our conclusions

• encourages us to hold multiple possible stories so we’re less apt to believe in any of them too deeply

• guides us to share our streams of consciousness more openly w/ others

• nudges others to take a mirror to their own stream of stories

Give it a try. See if it helps you shift and expand your self-awareness and your relations with others.

Oh, and here’s a two minute video of Jim and his colleague role modeling the framework.

With deep appreciation,
Phil

Bite-sized asks:

1. Dig it? Forward to a friend / colleague ... it only takes 20 seconds.

2. Reply to let me know what resonated most.