At a young age, I told myself a story that changed the course of my life:

I decided I wasn’t very smart.

My older sister was the smart one—she worked hard and got the best grades, did all the right extracurriculars, got accepted to all the schools, and generally performed at an exceptional level in any intellectual endeavor she took on.

Following in those footsteps presented a unique challenge: I would arrive on the first day of class, hear the excited “Oh, you’re Sonali’s brother?!” from the teacher, and then inevitably leave them disappointed by the second week.

I began telling myself that I was the athletic one—I was just different than my high-achieving sister, without the same innate intellectual horsepower or gifts. I took the same honors courses, but the consistent stream of B-level grades further cemented my view.

My parents, for their part, did their best to convince me otherwise. I’m sure they saw the same intellectual gifts in me but knew that I lacked the confidence in that domain that I had on the baseball field.

Unfortunately, their persistent efforts fell on my deaf ears. It would take me years (really until I was almost 30) to eliminate my insecurities, appreciate my own intellectual capabilities, and come into my own.

There is one piece of wisdom I would share with that younger version of me:

Pay close attention to the stories you tell yourself, because stories create your reality.

In today’s piece, I want to talk about the stories you tell yourself, how to avoid their traps, and how to harness them to create massive positive change in your life…

The Storytelling Species

"It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so." – Mark Twain

Humans are storytelling creatures.

Throughout our history, we have leveraged stories to share and retain information, pass down important knowledge to new generations, connect communities, and entertain.

But sometimes, this storytelling nature can go awry:

The Narrative Fallacy is the tendency to craft a story around data, events, and inputs. Basically, our brains like to "make sense" of the random chaos around us, so the stories provide that structure—they provide a sense of calm.

Your brain is literally programmed to try to make sense of all new data by fitting it neatly within the context of what you "know" to be true.

Therefore, the original story is often the one that gets preserved and deeply entrenched:

New information is massaged to fit that story, or rejected if it doesn't.

Your thoughts, behaviors, and actions all slowly start to fall in line with that story—to create confirmatory data to support it and avoid the conflicting information that might feel jarring.

To illustrate this, consider the story I told myself as a child: I'm not that smart.

Every average grade further confirmed that original story. When an opportunity to study hard for a test would arise, I would shy away from it, not wanting to put myself in a position to be disappointed. When an opportunity to take a harder class would arise, I'd turn it down. At each moment, I told myself this was "just the way I am" and moved on.

One original (and completely baseless) story with powerful ripples...

What are the original stories you've been telling yourself?

Place them under pressure:

• Why do you believe those stories to be true?
• Is there real evidence to support them?
• Are the stories self-limiting or self-empowering?
• What counter-evidence have you ignored?
• What if the story is incorrect? How might you change your actions?

You have an internal storytelling engine that runs 24/7. The quality of those internal stories has a real, tangible impact on your interaction with the external world:

• If you tell yourself that you aren't capable of something, you won't try.
• If you tell yourself that you aren't worthy of something, you won't reach for it.
• If you tell yourself that you are a static entity, you won't attempt to grow.

Become aware of your original stories—shine a light on them—as their ripples extend to every corner of your life.

There Is No In Between

It's not the sheer difficulty of achieving something that stops you—it's the ease of continuing to tell yourself the story that you can't.

The stories you tell yourself can either hold you back or push you forward. There is no in between.

Remember: Pay close attention to your stories—they will create your entire reality.