Comments on: Constructing the self story

By: How the brain “fills in the missing parts” « Sleeping Beauty Slavery

Tue, 28 Dec 2010 21:53:11 +0000

[...] when we don’t know something, we tend to assume that the truth is whatever works to best preserve our worldview. We think the best of our heroes, and the worst of our villains. Many people prefer not to learn [...]

By: Eric Nehrlich, Unrepentant Generalist || Chief Culture Officer, by Grant McCracken || February || 2010

Thu, 11 Feb 2010 05:02:12 +0000

[...] not imposed on people; instead, brands only derive meaning from how people incorporate brands into their self-story. Brands must spark a recognition within the consumer that the brand is a meaningful expression of [...]

By: Eric Nehrlich, Unrepentant Generalist || Coaching and feedback || January || 2010

Sun, 31 Jan 2010 02:34:19 +0000

[...] One key aspect of coaching is that it’s not just objective feedback, but also why things happened. I could learn how to shoot a basketball better by just shooting a lot of baskets, where my objective feedback would be whether I made the basket or not. But when I missed a basket, I wouldn’t know why. And when I made a basket, I wouldn’t know how so I couldn’t repeat it. I would try a number of different things, and only a few of them would work, so I’d be wasting a lot of time in experimentation. However, if I had a coach, they could watch me, tell me what I was doing right, and more importantly, why it worked, so I could start to internalize the correct techniques. My improvement would happen much faster, because I would be able to integrate the “story” of the right way to do things into my self story. [...]

By: Eric Nehrlich, Unrepentant Generalist || Social technologies || June || 2008

Fri, 20 Jun 2008 15:41:45 +0000

[...] about stories as I think they are the key to many aspects of human behavior, from community to identity. In this case, I think that stories serve the function of “latching” in the [...]

By: Eric Nehrlich, Unrepentant Generalist || Telling the story of our lives || May || 2007

Fri, 25 May 2007 12:23:48 +0000

[...] they’re talking about is creating the self story. But no computer can do that. They are operating under the misguided belief that facts alone tell [...]

By: Eric Nehrlich, Unrepentant Generalist || Retconning life || May || 2006

Fri, 25 May 2007 11:37:13 +0000

[...] amusing how easy it was for me to construct a story that fits my previous patterns of behavior. The story of our self is always miraculously consistent, no matter how our motivations shifted and changed along the way. [...]

By: Eric Nehrlich, Unrepentant Generalist || Better living through conversation || April || 2007

Sun, 01 Apr 2007 17:23:32 +0000

[...] When I’m talking to friends, I’m not just reciting the events of my life. I’m struggling to put them into context, figuring out the narrative that ties them together, making sense of the chain of events so that I can understand what happened. In other words, I’m constructing my self-story. By telling it to somebody else, I’m explaining it to myself, but at the same time, the feedback that I get may encourage me to modify my understanding. For instance, if I’m talking about an interaction I had with a coworker, and I explain what they did and why I thought they did it, my friends will offer alternative explanations that may better explain the events. And I modify and retcon my story to incorporate that new interpretation. [...]

By: Eric Nehrlich, Unrepentant Generalist || The Art of the Long View: Planning for the Future in an Uncertain World, by Peter Schwartz || May || 2004

Sat, 03 Mar 2007 13:33:02 +0000

[...] I like the idea that scenario planning is centered around stories. Stories are one of the most powerful and compact ways to affect people’s behaviors. This is the power of myth, as Joseph Campbell would say. Stories tell us what to do, and serve as guides to our daily lives. Scenarios are a way of consciously constructing those stories in a way that is immediately relevant to corporate management. I’m not sure I’d recommend reading this specific book, because it doesn’t really have a lot of information; ipso facto, it’s a quick read, though. [...]

By: Eric Nehrlich, Unrepentant Generalist || The Passion of the Christ || March || 2004

Sat, 03 Mar 2007 13:24:50 +0000

[...] In fact, everybody in the movie seemed dehumanized, lacking in true human motivation. They existed only to move the story forward towards an inevitable denouement. I think it would have been more interesting for everybody involved to be more human with appropriate motivations, rather than pieces being moved around a cosmic chessboard to achieve the result of crucifixion. Stories are interesting not for their details, but for their insight into how we think and what we believe. Stories without human motivations aren’t stories at all; they’re merely recitations of facts. The one human character in the film was Pontius Pilate, who at least got a line explaining that if the province were to descend into bloodshed again, he would suffer the consequences. [...]

By: Eric Nehrlich, Unrepentant Generalist || Patterns, stories and communities || December || 2006

Sat, 30 Dec 2006 20:07:17 +0000

[...] So what makes a story a good general pattern? And how do we even evaluate the “good-ness” of a pattern/story? My evaluation metric is going to be whether a story sticks with people and influences their behavior. As usual on this topic, I’m influenced by Orson Scott Card’s story The Originist, which has the wonderful quote, “the vigor of a community depends on the allegiance of its members, and the allegiance can be created and enhanced by the dissemination of epic stories.” Stories create community. Becoming part of the community involves learning the origin myths and the identity stories and incorporating those into your self story. A great story is one which people take to heart, that changes their behavior, that causes them to self-identify as part of a community. [...]