The Story We Tell Ourselves
Our "narrative reality"
Hey everybody,
This week, I want to share another cool chat I had with a close friend of mine. We talked about the idea of a “narrative reality.” A narrrative reality is a type of story we tell ourselves that is not really our own story, but the society’s version of a story.
For example, I’ve been watching Suits for the past few weeks, and I have assumed that law is really cool, fun, and fast; that Harvey Specters do exist IRL; and that the lawyer’s life is really that exciting. Now that, right there, is my narrative reality, a story about the law life that I have told myself, which is bound to be different than the reality.
We then went on to talk about how we don’t even want to know the reality. And something that that has still stuck with me is the axiom that ‘people pay to attend the magic show; they don’t pay to see how the magic trick is done.’
So, even though I do know that Suits is not what real law is, a part of me still wants to believe in my narrative reality, not the objective reality.
I did some of my own thinking as well and realized that as humans, we are wired for storytelling. We tell stories all the time. Each time you watch a video about productivity instead of actually being productive, you’re telling yourself a story. Each time you aspire for love, fame, money, or power, you’re telling yourself a story. And each time you reason why you did what you did, you’re telling yourself a story.
The question, then, is which story do you tell yourself — the narrative one, or the real one.
On The Channel
On The Pod
Listen to the pod this week as I catch up with Ali after ~3 weeks and we talk about the power of consistency.
Catch the episode here, Spotify, Google, and Apple.