The Power of Story

by Jim Loehr

  So after reading all the words and concepts in my book, and then examining your own reservoir of good intention, will all this mean anything if you don’t do something about it, and now?

  No. It will mean only mission failure. End of story.

  If you do not work to unearth your deepest purpose and write your Ultimate Mission; if you do not actually write your Old Story; if you do not find the courage to seek the truth and write your New Story; if you do not commit to writing your Training Mission and investing the energy to follow the rituals laid out there until they embed themselves into your life…then you will have failed. You’ll be living the same old story. Nothing significant and positive about this interaction will have transpired. This book will have been a waste of your money, time, and what warmed-over energy you gave to it. Sorry to be so harsh.

  But presuming that that is not the outcome you seek, what will it take for you to commit to commit? How do you ensure Mission Success?

  One useful exercise I do with clients is to get them to “touch the white fence,” no matter what.

  What do I mean by the white fence? What white fence? Well, with some groups that come to Orlando to work with us—pro athletes, those from law enforcement and the military—I tell them on the first day that I expect them each to accomplish at least this goal: Follow a modest little obstacle course we have out back, jog this way and that way through the woods surrounding our handsome little nine-acre campus, touch the white fence that perimeters the grounds, then return to the main building. Agreed?

  Everyone shrugs as if it’s nothing—and it is, except for the sometimes unbearable midday Florida heat and humidity, which I talk about briefly, as well as the nastiness of the occasional water moccasin, which I also describe for them. But probably that won’t pose a problem. Are we good?

  Everyone shrugs. Of course we’re good. No problem.

  Then I tell them about the poisonous snakes and alligators that are indigenous to this part of Florida. They’ve been known to grab a leg or two, if you’re not alert.

  There’s a little less nonchalance in their shrugs now—and a lot less after I mention the three, maybe four wild boars who live near the edge of the grounds and who, when they feel threatened, may attack.

  So now almost no one is ready to go touch the fence—no one, that is, except for one group of people, every single one of whom is as ready to touch the white fence after hearing about all the potential intervening dangers as they were when I first described it as a piece-of-cake exercise. In fact, they’re more psyched. Who are they?

  The crimefighters: Special Forces, SWAT guys, elite anti-terrorist FBI units, cops.

  While every other group visibly withdraws when I tell them about the snakes and twelve-foot alligators, the military and law enforcement members can hardly keep their seats. “Cool,” said one Special Forces member, enthusiastically, when the challenge had suddenly become more precarious at my mention of the possibility of wild boars. “Can I bring my piece?”

  “Absolutely not,” I replied.

  Okay. So we send everyone off to touch the white fence. Very few of them are willing to say they’re too scared to go; bad way to start off a workshop. So they go.

  On more than one occasion, we have surreptitiously filmed groups going off into the woods. One was a foursome of NFL linemen—fearsome–looking individuals, each weighing roughly 280 pounds, strong as bulls, been through all kinds of on-field violence, used to brutal conditions and conditioning. In the footage of their journey into the woods, they’re seen running through low brush toward the fence…when one of our staff members, hidden in a blind, makes the sound of a wild boar.

  You’ve never seen four people move faster in your life. They raced back to the main building as if they were doing forty-yard sprints at the NFL scouting combine.

  I was standing just outside the building when they raced toward me. They were winded. Although I hadn’t yet seen the video footage, I knew exactly what had happened. We always get the same response from athletes.

  I greeted them and, innocently, asked them how it felt to complete the mission and touch the white fence.

  We didn’t, they said.

  Why not? I asked.

  Didn’t get that far, they said.

  You guys? I said. Come on. You’re studs.

  Wild boar, they said, still gulping for breaths.

  You saw wild boar? How many were there?

  We don’t know.

  Well, what did the one you saw look like?

  Well…we didn’t actually see it.

  You didn’t see it?

  No, they said. But we heard it.

  Was it near the path?

  No, in the woods.

  You’re sure the wild boar was there? I asked.

  Oh, yes, they said, but only after a moment’s hesitation.

  I told them that there had been no wild boar, that the noise had been produced by a staff member. After apologizing for scaring them, I explained that we did it to make a point, namely: Don’t expect it to be easy to touch the white fence. You’re going to have to work at it. You’re going to have to fight through doubt, fear, inertia, and temptation on the path to getting there. You may have people around you who are unsupportive or indifferent to your noble intentions and struggles. If you don’t have the right story to help you past all this—if, instead, you have no story or a faulty story—then you let even imagined wild boars (and real ones) block your path. You start believing there are valid reasons for giving up or taking shortcuts or making up rules that suit you better—flimsy reasons like Maybe other people need to touch the fence but I don’t or Things were fine before I ever heard there was a fence or—saddest of all—There is no fence. Do that and you pretty much have no shot to ever touch it, and to get to the next level after that.

  And yet, with the right story supporting you, a story that gives meaning and purpose to all the chaos you will experience and the risks you will need to take, it’s doable. Absolutely. Because it’s then and only then that your courage and inner strength will surface.

  I recount this episode not to elevate law enforcers and the military above everyone else (nor to suggest that pro football players or pro athletes in general are wimpier than others). I do it to point out that when the crimestoppers have a task to complete, they do it, unbendingly. Every time. Mission Success to them means accomplishing the goal; anything else is Mission Failure. Every time. Now some people may have issues with the mind-set that’s required to achieve that kind of non-negotiable attitude, but you can’t deny them this uncommon virtue: They achieve what they set out to achieve. Without fail. They are accountable to themselves.

  Why?

  In most cases, I believe it’s because they are fully indoctrinated by a story which says that, in effect, they do what they do for a purpose higher than just themselves. (With athletes and executives—two obviously goal-oriented bunches—their professional purpose, though often well-defined, is rarely that lofty.) The crimestoppers and law-enforcers do it to protect their families, their communities, their country. They are fighting terrorists or murderers or bad guys and if they don’t do their job even once, then their loved ones could be in greater jeopardy.

  In short, they’ve got purpose locked down. It’s there, with them, all the time. Remember the first rule of storytelling? Purpose.

  And because of this “higher” purpose, they know they simply must be clear-eyed about what’s before them, see danger for what it is, see the enemy for who they are. There’s your second rule of storytelling: Truth.

  Having satisfied the first two rules of storytelling, purpose and truth, nothing at this point can interfere with the third and final rule—hope-filled action. Get the job done. Just do it. Make it happen. Touch the white fence.

  ACCOUNTABILITY (ABOUT WORK)

  No matter how many of the real or perceived problems in your current story are caused by work, I doubt you’ll tender your resignation the next morning you show up there
, or completely renounce your career choice (nor is that what I’ve been recommending here, necessarily). But if you’re serious about writing a new, better story—about completing the mission—then you undoubtedly need to make sure your relationship to your work, particularly if you work within any kind of bureaucratic structure, is, to put it plainly, workable. Mutually productive; not in contradiction.

  The checklist below enunciates key areas where your needs and your employer’s must be aligned, or are heading toward alignment, in some reasonable timeframe.

  ACCOUNTABILITY (ABOUT EVERYTHING ELSE)

  So let’s be clear: Just writing your New Story isn’t enough for making meaningful, lasting change to your life. Same goes for “heightened self-awareness.” As they say in New York City: That and a token will get you on the subway. If the ideas in this book are to have any real usefulness, then it isn’t enough merely to consider them, or even to reflect on them, or even to articulate where it is you’ve always wanted to get. Granted: If you’ve gotten all the way to this point in the book and decide to ditch it here, and not go through the whole story process, chances are very good that you can never completely go back to your old ways again, because you must realize how many unacceptable stories you’re telling yourself right now. But if you’re serious about defining your own destiny, then you must do more than just agree that you need a new story.

  Confrontation and accountability and brutal honesty are frightening. We abdicate responsibility for our own lives, according to psychologist Joost Merloo, because we fear life’s built-in contradictions. Because we’re forced to live with doubt and inconsistency, and yet we desire certainty and absolutes, we often start to embrace convictions we don’t really believe. Because we can’t bear ambiguity, many of us simply conform and even join rigid-thinking organizations.

  You must figure out what you’re required to do to reach that new place, then make the necessary changes for that to happen. To follow through:

  Write your Ultimate Mission. You may want to share it with someone.

  Write your Old Story. Compare it to your Ultimate Mission to see where they diverge. Again, you may find it helpful to read it to someone and possibly to solicit his or her opinion of it.

  Write your New Story, and read it once a day, same as above.

  Write your Training Mission, same as above.

  Write your Rituals that support the Training Mission and start implementing them. To follow them with regularity, you may need to write out a schedule.

  Continue reading your New Story each day until you know it by heart.

  We encourage those who come to our workshops to attend our “Webinars” on exercise, nutrition, and storytelling. We also send them e-mail checkups at thirty, sixty and ninety days out from their visit. After thirty days, we also mail them a note that they wrote in the workshop, to themselves, which lists their Training Mission rituals; it asks if they are well on the way to integrating these changes into their life. You can’t overestimate the power of being reminded of something, in your own handwriting, from an earlier version of yourself.

  Be accountable to yourself, starting now. Right now. After all, you’ve been telling yourself this current story, the most important story you will ever tell and the one that’s not really working, for…how many years now? How much more time do you need before making the change? You can’t put it off for one more day; every day you don’t do it, you prolong and deepen its hold on you. Every second of life is another opportunity to get your story right. Your story—be it the one you have now or the one you’d like it to become—is not something you lease or rent. You own it. Your story is your destiny.

  Identify your purpose for being here.

  Be truthful with yourself about what you’re doing or not doing to honor that purpose.

  Take the necessary actions to align what you need and want with how you actually live, and do it energetically and confidently.

  Now there’s a story you can live with. The rest is just words.

  Twelve

  STORYBOARDING THE TRANSFORMATION PROCESS IN EIGHT STEPS

  Now that you’re familiar with the major concepts from our workshop program—how our stories are our destinies; how everything we do, with or without our conscious knowledge, helps to shape our stories; how stories either take us where we want to go or they don’t; and the three fundamental criteria of all good storytelling—you may want it in short form. Story in a Box, as it were.

  Here it is, in eight steps.

  The most important story you will ever tell is your own life story.

  The center of your life story is purpose.

  Step 1: Identify Purpose (Ultimate Mission)

  Questions to help in the process:

  How do you want to be remembered?

  What is the legacy you most want to leave for others?

  How would you most like to hear people eulogize you at your funeral?

  What is worth dying for?

  What makes your life really worth living?

  In what areas of your life must you truly be extraordinary to fulfill your destiny?

  Step 2: Facing the Truth

  Here you must identify and confront your dysfunctional current stories. Some questions to get you going:

  In which of the following area(s) of your life is your story not working? If your behavior is not aligned with your core purpose, then this story cannot take you where you want to go.

  want to be more engaged to fulfill your Ultimate Mission?

  Work / Job / Boss

  Family

  Health

  Happiness

  Friendship

  Money

  Self-indulgence

  Fame/Power

  Death (constructive awareness of)

  Sex / Intimacy

  Trust / Integrity

  Parents

  Religion

  Spirituality

  Love

  Food / Diet

  Exercise

  Children

  Spouse / Partner

  Other

  Step 3: Select a Story to Work on First

  Because almost all the core stories in our lives need at least some editing, here are some questions to help you with the selection process:

  Which of the stories above causes you the most concern and grief?

  Which of these stories causes the most disruption in your life?

  Which of these stories creates the greatest misalignment with your ultimate mission in life?

  Which of these stories would you most like to work on right now?

  My Choice of Story to Edit:

  The story you’ve chosen to edit is your Training Mission. If you’re to enjoy genuine transformation, then you must commit to work on this story for the next ninety days.

  Step 4: Write the story you’ve been telling yourself that has allowed the misalignment to occur; this means including the faulty thinking and strange logic that helped to form the story you now wish to edit. Write in as much detail and with as much specificity as you can. Your task is to unearth completely your current dysfunctional story.

  Some writing suggestions:

  Don’t worry about grammar, spelling, or how it sounds. Just start writing.

  Capture both the content of your dysfunctional story as well as the tone of the private voice you use when telling this story to yourself (such as frustrated, cynical, unrealistic).

  Also capture the public voice you use to tell this story.

  Exaggerate the emotion in your story, to help get it going.

  Bring as much color and texture to your story as you can.

  Identify any faulty assumptions in your story. To help you articulate the faulty story you’ve created, ask yourself the following questions:

  In what way(s) does the story you tell yourself allow you to ignore that it’s not taking you where you ultimately want to go in life—is not on purpose?

  What logic do you use in the story to justify that your story does
not reflect the truth?

  In what way(s) does the story not inspire you to take action to make this part of your life better?

  Before you finish your Old Story, take a few dives into your subconscious world. Ask yourself these questions:

  What hidden influences might be behind some of your faulty thinking and beliefs that helped to create your current story?

  Do you get very defensive about your faulty story? If you do, then what are you protecting? Specifically, in what parts of this story are you most fragile and vulnerable? What are you most afraid of here? If you follow the fear, where does it take you?

  The story you currently tell yourself that you wish to edit clearly hasn’t inspired you to make a change. What’s the logic and rationale you’ve used to keep this faulty story alive in your life for so long?

  Is this really your story you’re telling or someone else’s? Whose voice is it?

  Okay: You’re ready to prepare the final draft of your current story that isn’t working. From here on, we’ll refer to this current story as your “old” story. This may be your second draft of the story or your tenth. When you’re ready, write your final draft in the space below.