How you tell your story matters… Part 1
Ever seen Mary Poppins? The original brings all the Disney color, joy, feel good music and happiest of endings. Now watch this recut trailer for the film.
Serious go watch it. It’s a minute long. I’ll wait.
Ok, your back? Bet you never saw it that way before! Recut Trailers are a fun YouTube rabbit hole to go down. They are funny and highlight how important music and editing can change the feel of a flick, or in other words…how you tell your story matters. Let’s dive in…
Common Pitfalls in telling your story
A shallow story - “There are no uninteresting things, only uninterested people.” - G.K. Chesterton.
The shallowest of views would not to believe that your life is a story at all. A step down from that is to view yours or someone else’s life experience as unimportant or uninteresting. We must look deeper into our own life or the life of someone else if we feel like there’s “not much” to them or us. It’s a common response I get in my office when I ask someone to tell me more about their life - “born here, good family, got a job, got married..etc…now i’m here”. Just the facts. Simple. Clean. And..only just the beginning! The truth is there are so many interesting, hard, and unique reasons that we are who we are and where we are in life.
(not actually my older bro)
If you ever had the fortune of having a really good history or literature teaching growing up, you might know what I’m talking about - they could take dry facts and ancient texts and make them come alive
They could move from dates and facts for you to memorize; to help you SEE the reasons WHY things were happening. Draw you in to care about the people, situations, and stakes. (My older brother is a history teacher and is amazing at this). If you don’t think there’s much to your life/story…I invite you to look more closely.
Why do we tend to undersell our stories?
It’s easier - it takes time and some effort to explore some of the details and meanings of my past.
How does staying shallow impact me?
It keeps me “small” - if I don’t see myself and my story as important, I’ll probably not see others story as important. Also, I’ll probably conclude that what I do and how I show up in life now as equally unimportant.
It makes life and others BORING - and who wants that!?
Too “Sweet” of a Story
Another way we can avoid telling our story is to “over sweeten it”. We “silver line it”, focus only on the good, avoid engaging or telling the hard and dark parts. I hear this in faith circles often- “I grew up in a good Christian home” or “everything was great growing up”. While I would hope for you to have many good memories, moments of connection, love, hope, and goodness in your life, one quick glimpse at reality reveals our lives are made up of more complexity than just “good” or “bad”. Life is full of good, hard, light, dark, winters and summers. We see it around us and if we look with honest eyes - in our own stories and souls. And doing so can save our life.
Imagine for a moment if you were a factory worker with two job offers on table in from of you. One company swears that “everything is great here!” and “nothing bad ever really happens” as they laugh and smile a little too widely. They swear that everyone is really happy to work there and they don’t really remember any problems. Come to think of it, they were a little fuzzy on health benefits or worker’s comp…
The other company lets you know they have mistakes at times, and while unwanted- they do have work injuries…but they also go on to tell you how they take care of those issues to the best of their ability. They let you know what they are working on to grow and change and are able to talk honestly about successes and failures in the factory.
Which company would you want to work for?
I hope you’d run for the hills away from the “everything is great” job.
We can see the toxic danger in a job or organization that only focuses on the positives. We deeply value companies that have integrity to name issues areas for growth along with their wins, but often we can want to avoid seeing anything other than “the good parts” in our story
Why do we do this?
naming pain and hard things about my life involves having to experience and engage that pain-that’s hard!
it may not have been welcomed or shown to us that it was ok to be honest about good and bad in our world growing up.
What’s the impact of an “over sweet” story?
it’s incomplete and dismissive - it can leave me with both confusion around why I might be struggling in life now.
it can teach me to over look the suffering of others. How I engage my pain is directly connected to how I others pain.
When I begin to tell the whole story, I begin to honor my experience and hard wounds that get named can actually get healed.
Tune in for part 2 soon on How Telling Your Story Matters!