It’s Stories All the Way Down

I’m starting to believe that success is all about getting the story right.

How you talk about your product to your customers, or your company to investors, or your skills to employers. These are stories. If you have them right, stuff is easy. When you don’t quite have them right (which is most of the time), stuff is hard.

What’s funny is it’s easier to get other people’s stories right than your own. I love hearing people pitch. I always get excited because I see a way in which they could tweak their story for far more impact. But they don’t see it. They are too close to it.

And I’m too close to mine. The most important story is the one you tell yourself about your own life. All the other stories flow out of that. And that’s the hardest to get right. Even when you do, you find it changes on you and you can’t just tack on a new chapter. Each change requires a reworking of the whole arc from the beginning.

When you just feel off, like you’re running into a wall over and over, it means somewhere your story went wrong. The one you tell yourself about yourself. Get that right and the rest tends to follow.