Read the full transcript of author John Sautelle’s talk titled “Whose Stories Are We Living?” at TEDxCanberra 2018 conference.
Listen to the audio version here:
TRANSCRIPT:
The Birthday Party Dilemma
Imagine you are four-year-old John at his cousin’s birthday party. Now unfortunately, John’s aunt hasn’t learned the art of geometrical precision when it comes to cake cutting. The stage is set as John is presented with a plate on which there are some small pieces, some bigger pieces, and one magnificent piece of chocolate birthday cake. Now, most of you will know for most four-year-olds, there’s a predictable logic when it comes to chocolate.
Chocolate is good, more chocolate is better. Biggest piece of chocolate cake is bestest. So as you’d expect, young John reaches out and takes the biggest piece. Now I suspect some of you know how this story is going to end.
All hell breaks loose. “You bad boy, why did you take the biggest piece? You should have left it to somebody else. Nobody likes a greedy boy.”
This, accompanied with a sharp slap and an angry voice, cuts deeply. So how does young John make sense of an experience like that? Well, more about that later. But first, here’s a radical idea.
The Power of Our Stories
What if we are just our stories? And what if our stories drive our actions outside of our conscious awareness? Because you see, we’re, as humans, we’re sense-making beings and we make sense of ourselves and other people and the world around us through our stories. Now in case you think this is maybe just a crazy idea that I’ve dreamt up, let’s look at what some of the research is saying.
Aided and abetted by a magician, researchers in Sweden set up an experiment where they asked people to choose which of two faces they preferred from cards. But through sleight of hand, what they did was sometimes switch the cards and they gave the people the face they’d actually rejected. Most people didn’t pick up the switch. Notwithstanding that, when they were asked to explain why they’d chosen the rejected face, they immediately gave detailed reasons for their choice.
So unconsciously, they’d made up unconscious reasons to explain the choice they hadn’t actually made. And if that’s not disturbing enough, hold onto your seats as we head off to Yale University.
The Coffee Cup Experiment
In this experiment, undergraduate students were taken into a room and then shortly after that, the researcher arrived holding a cup of coffee in one hand and a bunch of papers in the other. The students were then given a detailed description of a person and asked to assess their character.
But of course, there was a trick. Half the students were given a warm cup of coffee and the other half were given a cold cup of coffee. And here’s what happened. The ones who’d been given the warm cup judged the character of the person they were assessing to be way more kind and caring than did those who had just held the cold cup.
So unconsciously, both groups made up really different stories about the character of the person based on the warmth of the cup they were holding just before they did that assessment. And put simply, the research is now suggesting that we’re not actually consciously in control of our thoughts and our feelings and therefore the actions that follow from them.
This is a confronting idea. But maybe we shouldn’t be so surprised because we know that there are lots of things we can’t consciously control.
You know, those New Year’s Eve resolutions that keep coming back year after year and we don’t even bother putting them on the list. If we really could consciously control everything, we would keep going to the gym, yes? We’d eat healthier food. We’d be less stressed.
We’d have more life balance. And instead of avoiding those difficult conversations, we’d lean right into them. And I suspect some of these might resonate for you. So if we don’t have conscious control, are we a lost cause?
Well, the good news is no, because one thing we can take control over are the very hidden stories that drive us, which sort of brings me right back to young John and the birthday cake.
The Hidden Stories That Drive Us
You see, I now know that that younger version of me made sense of that experience by making up and internalizing a protective story. I must always give people what they want or they’ll get angry and I’ll be punished. Then there was another story set up very early in life, out of my awareness, which went, I must always be in control to be safe.
And these stories created havoc. Unable to say no to people, I over-committed. And then my need to be in control story stopped me delegating. Together, a perfect recipe for repeat episodes of burnout.
And even though at the time I was an experienced mediator and very comfortable in supporting people with high emotions in conflict, when it came to my own close personal relationships, I’d run a mile from conflict or I’d just give people what they wanted. Now, here’s the thing. We all have our own versions of these hidden stories, working behind the scenes in the background, trying to protect us from our fears.
Hidden Stories in Leadership
Even the most accomplished leaders in the world are not immune from this phenomenon. Because did you know that the research shows that at the top of the list of fears of CEOs of large multinational organizations is the fear of failure? The fear of being found out or not wanting. And I remember coaching a very senior leader who, unlike me, had no difficulty engaging with conflict. Her problem was that she tended to just go in boots and all.
And she was speechless, shortly followed by tears of relief, when her hidden story surfaced. Because it went, unless I’m always large and loud, I’ll be invisible.
And here’s the paradox, right? On the one hand, she really wanted to make a change and achieve her goal of engaging with conflict calmly and constructively.
But on the other hand, she had this deep fear, paradoxical, that if she achieved that goal and was no longer large and loud, she’d be invisible. So if these stories are hidden from us, what can we do about them?
Uncovering and Rewriting Our Stories
Well, the first step is we need to bring them into our conscious awareness. And there are lots of resources to help us do this, including the process I detail in my book, “Choose Your Stories, Change Your Life.”
And there’s one thing you can do straight away. If you think you’ve got some of these hidden stories that are stopping you from making a change that’s really important to you, then you can do this. First, ask yourself what seems like a really crazy question. And that is, what’s my greatest fear if I actually achieve this change?
Then, when you surface the story that’s trying to protect you from that fear, you can rewrite it. What did I have to do with my overprotective stories? I had to create new ones. And the stories went, I can say no to people.
And even if they get upset or angry, I can cope with that. And I don’t always have to be in control to be safe. And it wasn’t until I wrote those new stories that I was able to shift the burnout pattern. Now I want to shift us to a bigger picture.
Breaking Down Organizational Silos
I was working recently with a senior executive team of an organization that were committed to breaking down the silos in their organization. In fact, they’d been committed to that for a very long time. And I can hear some knowing laughs about that for those who work in silos in organizations. And you see, each year they’d put hand on heart and they’d repeat their commitment and nothing changed.
The silos continued. And it wasn’t until we were exploring some of their individual and collective fears about what would happen if the silos actually broke down that we had a breakthrough. Fears that individually they would lose their power and authority. And fears that if they made sacrifices in their business unit for the sake of the whole organization, they would lose the trust and respect of their own people.
The Impact of Collective Stories on Humanity
And I now want to expand our perspective even further. Because if our stories are so powerful in our relationships and in small groups, what’s the impact of our collective stories on our humanity? And I want to start by taking a step back in history.
In the 1950s, I grew up near a small country town. And the population of that town was mostly people of white Anglo-Saxon origin. And without being aware of it, as I grew up, I inherited a number of really unhelpful stereotype stories. Stories about gender and sexuality, about race and disabilities. And amongst the most impactful of those stories were the stories about Indigenous Australians.
Aboriginals are lazy and dishonest. They can’t be trusted. Whatever you do, don’t go near them. So, of course, I didn’t trust them.
And I didn’t go near them. Now, here’s the tricky bit. When a story about ourselves is too painful to own, we unconsciously project it onto others to carry it around for us. It becomes our shadow.
And that’s really problematic. And that’s what happened to me with my inherited stories. Too painful to own, they became part of my shadow. And it wasn’t until I became aware of them and could bring them into the light that I was able to change them.
Facing Our Darkness
And here, I think, lies the challenge and maybe the hope for us as human beings. Because as John Curran says, “When we face our darkness, other people don’t have to carry it around for us.” And so how can we face our darkness?
Well, in Australia, I believe we have to face the painful truth, the whole truth of what happened to the first Australian nations after European settlement.
And more generally, we’ve got to start asking different questions. Questions like, what stories are we telling about them? How might they be our shadow? And what stories can we create that connect our stories with theirs and their stories with ours?
And if we don’t, we’re going to continue to see and describe each other through simplistic, one-dimensional label stories. Labels like black, white, Muslim, Christian, gay, straight, disabled. Labels that do linguistic violence to the rich complexity of who we are as human beings. Labels which are going to perpetuate violence and wars.
A Call for New Life-Giving Stories
And you see, this talk isn’t about me. This talk is for my children and my grandchildren and their grandchildren because I hold deep concerns about the direction we’re heading in. And I think we’re at a critical point in human history where we have to make a choice. We can choose to march collectively towards a dystopian future driven by our old stories.
Or we can create new life-giving stories, which is what a friend of mine, Frances Petro, did on the morning of September 11, 2001. Frances was a relief teacher at Canterbury Girls High School when the planes flew into the Twin Towers. Her class had a lot of cultural diversity, including a number of girls of Muslim origin. When she came into class that morning, there was enormous tension in the air.
And then the girls started calling out and yelling at each other. “Your people did this.” “No, it was your people.” “It was you.”
“No, it was you.” And Frances intervened and she said, “Stop. These are not your stories.” She then told them her story.
She said, “I was born into a Greek family and my family stories were about how bad and hateful the Turkish people were. And in fact, I was told that my grandfather’s sister had had her breasts cut off by Turkish people.” She said, “But then when I was at university, my closest friend was a Turkish girl. And it was then I realized that my stories didn’t have to be my family stories.”
Then she paused and she said to the girls, “Turn and point to the girl that you really actually hate.” And there was silence, broken by tears and hugs. Now, I believe that if every teacher and parent and leader had been able to do what Frances did on that morning, we’d have a different world today.
If we want a better world for future generations, then in our moments of fear and anger and pain, we’ve got to stop and ask ourselves, whose stories will we choose to live?
