The stories we tell ourselves about ourselves

How much of who we are is actually who we think we are?

We all have a story about who we are.

“I'm not creative. I'm terrible with people. I'm not brave. I'm a failure. I'm the sort of person who always gives up. I'm not very good at making friends. I'm hopeless with money. I'm no good at speaking in front of people. I'm just not that kind of person.”

Most of us carry some version of these stories around with us but whatse don't necessarily think about them very often. In fact, they don't feel like stories, they feel like facts.

That's the interesting bit.

Because where did they come from?

Some of them might be true. At least, they might have been true once. Perhaps you were told something about yourself when you were young, or you failed at something and decided that failure said something permanent about you. Maybe somebody laughed when you tried something new, or you were compared with somebody else often enough that you eventually accepted their description of you as your own.

Or maybe nothing particularly dramatic happened at all. You simply tried something a few times, didn't find it easy and quietly filed it away under "things I can't do".

Then life carried on. And yet the story remained.

That's a problem with old stories

There's something strange about the way we remember things about ourselves. If somebody tells us that a friend has changed, we usually accept the possibility. People change jobs, move house, develop new interests, lose old habits and discover things about themselves they didn't know before. We understand that other people aren't fixed.

The big problem is we aren't always as generous with ourselves.

For example are you someone who:

• was shy at school can still think of themselves as shy twenty years later, even if they've spent the last decade talking to customers, giving presentations and happily arguing with strangers on the internet.

• once struggled academically can continue to think of themselves as "not clever", even after building a successful career.

• was told they weren't creative can spend their entire life believing it, despite writing, painting, making music, solving problems or constantly coming up with ideas.

Or maybe, just maybe, you failed at something and turned "I failed" into "I am a failure".

Those aren't the same thing. One describes something that happened, the other turns it into an identity. That little shift is surprisingly powerful.

We are very good at collecting evidence

Once we have a story about ourselves, we become remarkably good at finding evidence to support it.

If you believe you're bad with people, you remember the awkward conversation. You remember the party where you didn't know what to say, and the email you sent that somebody misunderstood.

What you don’t do is remember the dozens of perfectly ordinary conversations that went well, because they don't fit the story.

The brain is exceptional at finding patterns (yes, that includes you. You’re exceptional too), and once a pattern has been established, it's often difficult to notice anything that doesn't fit.

So, who told you?

Sometimes I think one of the most useful questions we can ask ourselves is very simple.

Who told you?

• Who told you that you weren't creative?

• Who told you that you were difficult?

• Who told you that you weren't brave?

• Who told you that you weren't clever enough?

• Who told you that you were the quiet one, the awkward one, the sensible one, the unreliable one, the funny one, the difficult one, the one who never finishes anything?

And a just as important follow up question, when did you start believing them?

It might have been a parent. A teacher. A friend. A partner. A colleague. It might have been somebody who meant well.

And here’s the real kicker, it might even have been you. Sometimes the person who tells us the story isn't another person at all. We create it ourselves. Something happens and we give it meaning. Then we repeat that meaning until it becomes part of the way we understand ourselves.

I couldn't do that becomes I'm not good at that which becomes that's not really me. That's not really me eventually becomes I don't do things like that. And suddenly a single experience has become a rule.

The stories can be useful, though.

This isn't to say that every story we tell ourselves is wrong. Some are useful.

Knowing what you're good at can save a lot of time. Knowing what you don't enjoy can prevent you from repeatedly volunteering for things that make you miserable.

The problem comes when a description becomes a restriction.

I'm not very good at this becomes I shouldn't try.

I've never done that becomes I can't do that.

That's difficult for me becomes that's impossible for me.

And so, the story, your story, gets smaller.

What if the story is out of date?

Imagine finding an old photograph of yourself. You look at it and remember the person you were then. You remember the clothes, the place, the people around you. Maybe you remember what you were worried about.

But you know things now that the person in that photograph didn't know. You've experienced things they hadn't experienced. You've lost things. Gained things. Changed your mind. Made mistakes. Learned things the hard way. Discovered that some of the things you were frightened of weren't worth worrying about, while some of the things you never considered would matter enormously.

You wouldn't expect that person to know everything you know now. So why should you still be living according to everything they believed about themselves?

I’d suggest some of the stories we carry need an update. Not because they were lies, but because they were written at a particular point in our lives.

Are we discovering ourselves?

This is where I find the whole idea of identity fascinating. We often talk about discovering who we really are, as though there's a finished version of us hidden somewhere inside and our job is simply to uncover it.

But it's not that simple. We aren't discovering ourselves so much as continually creating ourselves. Every experience adds something. Every decision closes off some possibilities and opens others. And every time we try something new, we learn something about the person who tried it.

It seems to be a theme of this article, but bear with me. Let’s ponder a few what-if questions. Take your time.

• What if the person you think you are is simply a character you've been playing for a very long time?

• What if "I'm not brave" is really "I haven't yet found the thing I'm willing to be frightened for"?

• What if "I'm not creative" means "Nobody ever showed me that creativity could look like this"?

• What if "I'm terrible with people" actually means "I've spent years trying to communicate in ways that don't suit me"?

We write ourselves into the story

Perhaps this is why identity and storytelling seem so closely connected. We’re constantly making sense of our lives by turning experiences into stories. We decide what matters. We remember certain moments and forget others and give ourselves roles.

The story creates the behaviour, the behaviour reinforces the story, and the story becomes harder to challenge. It's a wonderfully effective little system and of course much of the time it’s nonsense.

What happens when the evidence changes?

The most interesting question isn't whether the story we tell ourselves is true, it's whether it is still true.

For example, you might once have been shy. You might still be quiet in some situations, but that doesn't necessarily mean you're incapable of speaking up. The evidence can change without the story changing with it.

However, sometimes it takes somebody else to point that out. Someone who meets you without knowing the old version of you can be particularly useful. They don't know you're supposed to be the quiet one or that you're no good at something. They don't know you always do this or never do that.

They simply respond to the person standing in front of them and if you pay attention, that can be strangely liberating.

Perhaps we need to become unreliable narrators

I like the idea that we might all be unreliable narrators of our own lives. Not because we're deliberately lying, but because we’re too close to the story.

We know what we meant to do. We know all the reasons why we behaved the way we did. Or at least we think we do.

We can look back at the same event years later and understand it differently. Something that once felt like the end of the world may have been a turning point. Someone we thought was important can gradually disappear from our lives, while someone we barely noticed becomes one of the people who matters most.

The event hasn't changed. It can’t have, it’s been and gone. But our interpretation of it has. And perhaps that's one of the strangest things about being human. We don't simply experience our lives. We continually rewrite what those experiences mean.

Which means, and are you listening to me, that maybe your story isn't finished.

The stories we leave behind

There’s another side to this that interests me too. The stories we tell ourselves don't necessarily disappear when we change. They can leave traces.

A place can hold the evidence of what happened there. Photographs capture a moment without explaining what it meant. Records can tell us what somebody did while telling us nothing about why they did it.

We leave versions of ourselves behind as well. In the things we've made. The decisions we've taken. The people we've affected. The words we've written down. The things we've forgotten but that somebody else remembers.

That idea is at the heart of The Archive of Ashes my novel out in September 2028 through Rowan Prose Publishing.

I'm fascinated by what happens when the evidence of a life remains after the person who lived it is no longer there to explain it. An archive can tell you what was recorded, but it can't necessarily tell you whether the story attached to those records is the right one.

And perhaps that's true of ourselves too. We're constantly leaving evidence behind, while simultaneously creating the story that explains what that evidence means.

Sometimes those two things agree. Sometimes they don't.

So, who are you?

The question "Who am I?" is much harder than it looks. Not necessarily because there’s no answer, but because the answer keeps moving.

You might be someone you haven't met yet.

Change the question from "What sort of person am I?" to "What sort of person am I becoming?" or even better “What sort of person do I want to become?”

That feels different. It leaves the door open and allows for new evidence. It accepts that the story isn't finished. And maybe that's the most important thing to remember about the stories we tell ourselves. They can be powerful, but they aren't necessarily permanent. A story can be rewritten. A character can change. A plot can take an unexpected turn.

Sometimes all it takes is noticing that you've been reading the same version of yourself for years and wondering whether there might be another story.

We aren't just discovering who we are, we’re writing it.