Stories and mindsets: Glue for the self
The stories we tell ourselves hold us together — but they can also hold us back
In my last post, I discussed the shaky foundation for what we call our “self.”
This shakiness is largely due to the fact that our conscious experience is ephemeral — one minute here, the next onto something else. And yet, we’re somehow able to take the raw material of our experience and transform it into an enduring sense of self. How do we pull it off?
It all comes back to narrative. How often do we trap and limit ourselves by the stories we tell ourselves? I’m not good at math. She doesn’t like me. I’m not creative enough to do that. Things will not improve.
Philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre famously diagnosed this tendency as our habit of “acting in bad faith.” We’re so prone to getting ensnared in stories of what we should be like or how we would like to be that we diverge further and further from our most authentic, free self — the experiencing self that we return to when we’re not so tightly wound around an idea of ourselves.
It’s not unlike the ancient Buddhist understanding of suffering, which tells us that much of our suffering comes from our assessment of our lives and what we think we’re lacking or what we think we deserve — not from life itself. Without these self-limiting stories crowding our perception, we just might find ourselves free of a coherent, linear sense of self in the first place. That’s the idea, at least.
A huge chunk of psychotherapy and even the self-help industry has repackaged the same message, too: Stop letting the stories you tell about yourself dictate your life. For example, one of the most widespread psychotherapies (cognitive behavioral therapy) asks clients to look closely at their self-told stories. Does one bad argument mean a failing relationship? Does a professional rejection mean the end of a career?
Our ability to catastrophize and spin up narratives about our selves and our situations is impressive — and it stems from a long evolutionary past that prized our self-consciousness. But we don’t have to continue the legacy.
Flexible mindsets
And that leads us to the more modern field of mindset research — which has produced one big and promising conclusion: our stories can be altered.
If we’re not careful, stories can lead to suffering, to dashed ambition, to a life perpetually spent in uneasiness rather than authenticity and satisfaction. But there’s so much more to it than that.
We’re never doomed — our mindsets are malleable. It takes some work and some discipline, but we all have room for change. And that change can have big implications for our day-to-day lives and our futures.
One seemingly small mindset shift, in particular, has been highlighted over and over because of its unique power to liberate and motivate us. It’s the transition from a fixed mindset to a growth mindset. It’s the switch from “I’ll never be able to do this” to “With some time and practice, I can get better at this.”
Psychologist Carol Dweck’s renowned growth mindset is becoming a staple of K-12 education and parenting because of its immediate applications for kids — but kids aren’t the only ones who benefit. A growth mindset forces anyone who adopts it to shift away from a fixed self-narrative and toward an outlook rooted in potential and gradual, disciplined transformation.
Telling a child “you’re smart” attaches smartness to their identity. It gives them a fixed sense of self that, while seemingly positive, often traps children because they feel they can never show evidence of failure now. A truer, more productive story would be: “I can see you’re trying very hard — your effort is impressive.” No qualities to obsess over and cement into our self-concept. Just praise for action, for pressing forward.
On freedom
It’s when we let ourselves flow and proceed without fixed ideas about who and what we are that we finally flourish. It doesn’t matter whether the inspiration comes from French existentialism, ancient Buddhism, therapy, or psychological studies. Each of these lines of thought ladders up to our eventual freedom, a return to the conscious present that’s unfolding right here; go chase it.
Next time, we’ll discuss one of the best ways to channel and document the conscious experience of your life — and to see how the flexible self evolves over time.
As a chronic over-thinker and perfectionist, Carol Dweck's book "Mindset" helped me see a new perspective. Although I still find myself getting caught in negative thought patterns, I at least now have some level of objectivity to reference and help pull me out of it. My therapist helps me with that, too, of course!
"Stop letting the stories you tell about yourself dictate your life." is absolutely bad advice. You ARE that story. The trick is to make the story comply with reality, not to avoid telling it.
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As for the self-fulfilling nature of a positive story, it can also comply with reality so long as it's rational. The predictive story we tell about the future can't be exact or it would just be a plan. But it's easy enough to make it realistic enough to be actionable.
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id - subconscious mind (animal nature, monkey mind)
ego -Self (the story we tell, witch has an internal and an external version, about how we fit into the world and society)
superego -aspirational Self (the Real you)
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No matter what the story you tell, to yourself or others, regardless of your circumstances, always remember this fact: Only the Best You can ever have the best life for You.