The Stories We Tell Ourselves

 

My granddaughter is two, and her language is exploding.  Recently she moved from part-day to full-day preschool, which required taking a nap at school…..without a pacifier.  That was a big change.  Before she entered full-day preschool she had taken a predictable and tightly scheduled nap in her own bed, in her own dark room, wearing a weighted sleep sack (google it, it’s a thing now), with a pacifier in her mouth. Now she naps on a cot, in a lighted room, surrounded by her classmates, sans sleep sack, sans pacifier.  I watched with fondness and curiosity as she told herself the stories of how to manage this change.

At circle time you have to sit.  Stay on your mat.
That’s a baby.  Babies have pacifiers.  I don’t.  I’m a big girl.
Big girls have ice cream.  What about I eat ice cream?


These are the stories she is telling herself, and us, about the rules that structure her environment.  Note her cheeky way of dropping requests for ice cream into the narrative.  By repeating the stories she is internalizing the expectations of her environment, managing the change within, preparing to succeed without insisting that the environment change for her. 

My granddaughter’s apt and clear stories got me thinking about the stories we tell ourselves and each other as adults.  Stories that help us to internalize our roles and expectations without asking the systems around us to change.  

The focus on storytelling as a systems change tool is spreading around the globe, popping up here, here,  and here.  The American Evaluation Association has organized its 2023 annual conference around the intersection of storytelling and evaluation titling the event theme, “The Power of Story.” 

More and more communities are realizing that the stories they tell can drive the changes they want.  And, as people work to generate new and transformative stories, it must also be the case that there was always a story at work among them. We were never without a story.  Perhaps we called it meritocracy. Perhaps we called it human nature. Perhaps we called it fiscal prudence.  Perhaps we didn't name the story.  Perhaps the story remained hidden.  None the less, the story was present and at work among us.    

We're observing across the globe how stories can shape change.  At the same time stories can also perpetuate the status quo by covertly ascribing meaning, shaping identities, and defining roles.  What stories are we telling ourselves right now?


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