We all tell stories. Creating meaning of the endless flow of information that we take in and the experiences we have. Using stories to navigate our way through life, making ourselves a map of the world that we can use and share and turn unknown territory into known.

That’s the human lot.

Watch what happens, when someone says “I’ll tell you a story” or “I’ll tell you what happened” – ears prick up, conversations wane, attention turns to the story teller. And sometimes in the glare of attention, the storyteller puffs up, embellishes, dramatises; and sometimes the teller shrinks, and minimises, excuses and shifts that attention away.

If we are all doing it, all the time, with mates and family, and in work and with kids, why does it matter?

Why does the story we tell matter?

The story we tell governs what happens next in terms of how we perceive ourselves and how we are perceived. It shapes whether we are the hero or the villain, the innocent bystander or the agitator. We create the character we are playing, sometimes knowingly, and sometimes subconsciously, and usually some of both.

And our stories have consequences. For others, and for us. Just think of the warning story we use with children – the Boy Who Cried Wolf – precisely to manage the consequences of telling misleading stories.

However, I’m not focused so much on whether our stories are true, as whether they help us or hinder us.

I’m not so focused on the audience, and the healing or harming impact on them, though our experience of story in politics and news might give us some pause for thought about the scale on which story can heal or harm.

I’m focused on the stories we tell ourselves.

How do you as narrator of your life harm or heal yourself?

This makes a good moment to tell you a story about me.

I’m a 49 year old woman, born in London to a French woman and an Irish man. She had been a fiery political student in late 60s Paris, and he was a merchant sailor back in London to care for family and riding the wave of Beatlemania, LSD, and free love.

I’m a younger child and a middle child, youngest of my mother, middle child of my father.

I’m both childless and a surrogate parent to my younger sister.

I was sent to a school associated with an ashram and that experience taught me to meditate at age 9, and grew in me a thirst for spirituality that is the core of my being.

It was also considered a cult and became an intense experience of a coercive controlling relationship, the effects of which, all these many years later, I still find need unpicking from time to time.

Under that control, I bonded with my school friends, and still my closest friends come from that place.

Already my biography is a rich seed bed for stories to grow, and this of course, is just a snapshot of the first part of my life.

I worked in medical ethics first, and then for the last 18 years in the art and science of human potential.

It’s through this quest for what helps people lead a happy life, filled with meaning and satisfaction, that I came to be so interested in our stories.’

How can we make sense of the experiences of our lives?

In coaching, we talk about the importance of how we FRAME our experience. We use this term FRAME to describe putting a boundary around something.

Framing an experience allows us to capture and contain whatever may have happened, whether good or bad. We have a good example of this with the Olympics every four years. An athlete wins, or does a personal best, or just misses the podium, or underperforms, or gets disqualified. And the first thing they do is put a frame around it.

The culmination of years of work; the team effort; the comeback; the disappointment. Sometimes we see an initial response, and later the adjustment, sometimes the brave face.

It’s a critical skill for making experience manageable, and how we do it can set us up for greater or lesser self worth, performance, life satisfaction, happiness within relationships.

I’d love to share with you two practical skills to help you get better at framing your life in a way that sets you up for greater happiness and success.

These two skills are the secret to crafting a narrative that holds truth (and thus is relatable, in integrity and empowering), and does so in such a way that whatever may have happened, over time you can recover and grow from it. Sometimes this happens quickly and with relative ease. And some things in life take longer.

The first skill is the skill of learned optimism

Some of you may do this naturally, and some, like me, may have to learn the skill of optimism. It’s worth it – research over time, e.g. following children from very early through well into their working life – has shown that while pessimists make better planners, optimists have better life scores across the board.

That is, from better health outcomes, to improved performance and resilience at work, to better life satisfaction scores.

Let’s start with Martin Seligman’s method for learning optimism.

We don’t have to believe everything we think. In fact, our minds are quite brilliant at telling all sorts of untrue things or telling us one thing one moment and the complete opposite the next moment. That friend we thought hated us, was just late because they missed the bus, or couldn’t phone because their battery had died. Suddenly we think they’re great again, and we are too.

Learning to challenge what we think is one of the most useful skills we can have for our mental health. It works like this:

It’s pretty clear that this cycle of thinking can either be a positive upward spiral, or a negative downward spiral. We want to get good at interrupting the downward spiral and create more upward spirals. Here’s how:

• Notice when you’re feeling bad about something (a situation, a person, yourself)
• Ask “what am I thinking about this / them / myself?”
• Ask “is this definitely true?” and rewrite your list of things your thinking about the situation and yourself sticking as closely to knowably true statements.
• How are these statements making you feel? (sometimes this step takes a bit of time because we feel all sorts of things, or sometimes we’re not sure what we feel – in which case, notice how your body feels – do you feel tense or relaxed? Light hearted or heavy?)
• What is that making me do? (are you avoiding something/someone? Are you picking fights? Are you deliberately doing things you know will annoy people? Are you hiding yourself away?)
• Could I tweak this thought to make it more positive? Remember, we choose new thoughts that are believable. So you could go from “I can’t do…” to “I’m not sure how to do… but I’m going to ask someone who does”. That’s a lot more believable than going from “I can’t” straight to “I can”

I invite you now to take an obstacle, or a situation, about which you’ve been feeling low or thinking negatively, and work through this with me. How can we craft a more healing story?

Martin Seligman particularly noted that pessimists drew permanent, pervasive and personal conclusions in their downward spirals, whereas optimists were better able to draw temporary, situation specific and non-personal conclusions.

For example, perhaps you fail your driving test – rather than concluding that you are a complete failure, in all areas of your life, you can conclude that on this try, you hadn’t mastered x and y skill, and that you can retake the exam having spent some more time learning those particular skills.

This dovetails neatly with Carole Dweck’s worth on growth mindset, for how we best can learn, improve and feel more satisfied with our lives.

The second skill is the RAIN technique for dealing with difficult emotions

Because life is not always easy to RE-FRAME and we need to be able to sit with our difficult emotions with loving kindness and acceptance. Cue the RAIN technique, which I’ve written about before.

Uncomfortable feelings like anger, despair, fear, shame, or hopelessness can make us feel alone, desperate and helpless. In fact the whole point of learned optimism was to combat learned helplessness stemming from experiencing stressful experiences over and over.

Sometimes, we just need to feel, but in my work with clients I’ve found it’s common for people to feel like they’ll drown if they really let themselves feel. And so they distract themselves, suppress and avoid, and sometimes they project their feelings on to others.

Feelings are here for a purpose. They are a feedback system. As Carl Jung wrote:

“One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious.”

How can we experience these feelings safely?

This is where I have found the RAIN technique from mindfulness particularly useful. It has a structure that leads you into the heart of your emotion AND that leads you safe out.

RAIN stands for:

1. Recognise
2. Allow
3. Investigate
4. Nurture

Recognise what is happening.

Notice the sensations you are feeling. What story is playing in your mind? Bring awareness to it. What’s the real feeling here? Often it’s not the first one that comes to mind.

Allow the experience to be there.

Know that nothing needs to change. Allow this situation to be just as it is. Let yourself feel the difficult emotions. You are safe. Be gentle with yourself.

Investigate with interest and care.

How did this feeling arrive? What was the trigger at this moment? Be kind.

Nurture with self-compassion.

What does the hurt part of you need? Go with your intuition – maybe the child inside wants to play in the sun, may be you just need to put your hand on your heart and breathe. Maybe you need to tell someone your insight, or that you love them, or that you’re sorry.

Trust that your inner wisdom will guide you. By taking action to love the hurt part of you, you accelerate your healing.

Final Word

Start to notice the stories you tell yourself. Last year, during a coaching session I had a breakthrough that has not just changed my own life but that of my whole family.

A black sheep story CAN turn into a magical unicorn story.

What could your magical unicorn story be?

This is your invitation to reframe your story, in a way that benefits you – find out more about life coaching with Joanne Sumner to discover how.