Beware the stories we tell ourselves

My mother-in-law sits at a big bay window and tells us what everyone is doing.

‘There’s Daniel, he’ll be off to his mum’s, likely she’s got a hospital appointment.’

‘Sophie doesn’t work on a Tuesday. She’ll be out to get her shopping.’

‘Paul left early this morning; he’ll be on a business trip.’

Thus, it goes on. And the only thing we can say with absolute certainty about every one of these stories, is that we have no way of knowing if they bear any resemblance to the facts.

You see, our brains don’t like mystery. When something happens that we don’t understand, we make up a story to take away the discomfort of not knowing.

This plays out daily in the workplace. Something happens that we don’t understand, so we tell ourselves a story about why it is happening. Why they did that thing? And in our own stories, we are rarely the villain. Assigning ourselves a role though, does allow us to take it personally and in doing so, to evaluate the actions of others.  Once we are in that maelstrom, we have an emotional response, and it is on those emotions that we act!

We act on the emotions that are a direct result of the story we have told ourselves and, like my mother-in-law and her neighbours, we have no way of knowing if it bears any resemblance at all to what is actually happening.

A good friend once spent months in a play in London’s West End thinking that its very famous star didn’t like her after she was observed imitating her. At the closing party she discovered that the actor was very fond of her and had simply been demonstrating a mannerism she’d noticed they both shared.

Relationships at work are complex enough without the addition of things that are simply not there! Be curious, remain open and if in doubt, ask yourself, ‘What is the story I am telling myself about this?’