Storyteller

It was New Year's eve and I was on the phone, talking to my friend when she mentioned that she wanted to do something special for her parents that day. Something personal, not just picking something up from a store, which would make them feel good. When I asked her if she had anything specific on her mind, she said wanted to bake a cake, her first one ever! I was a bit taken aback by that idea and recovered by mildly reprimanding her.

"Baking a cake is not child's play! Did she know how tough it was? She would in all probability mess it up since it was her first time. Did she wanna mess up stuff for her parents on New Year's eve?", I asked her.

It was too big a risk I felt. But as usual, she just laughed it off & said it wasn't that big a deal, she felt pretty confident about it and she would do it anyway. I just rolled my eyes, but as soon as I hung up, I had this uncontrollable urge to bake one myself! I dug up a book with the recipe, went out & bought the ingredients and two hours later, voila! The cake was ready! So much for taking a stand against baking it earlier.

This got me thinking about what it was that made me do this. What made me to do it? Why did I have so much fun while doing it? The answer I came up with was that I did it because it made for a great story! When I had hung up the phone, my mind had thought, "What a fun story it would be, if I could tell my friends I baked a cake, all by myself, just like that, for no reason at all!" And that had got me going.

I've always believed that people tend to think of themselves as stories. When you interact with someone, you're playing a role in her story. And whatever you do, or whatever she does, or whatever you want her to do, needs to fit into that story in some satisfying way. 

When you want something from someone, ask yourself what story that person is trying to tell about himself, and then make sure that your role and actions are enhancing that story and in the right way ;)

So when I think about it, I realize I have a story about myself too. I want to think about myself as a guy who does stuff thats not expected of him at all. And I love to tell others about it!

The 'not expected of me' shows up in many different ways. For example if I'm paid to do 9 jobs, and the 10th job is not expected of me, I'd rather do the 10th one rather than the first 9. Needless to say, this gets me into a lot of trouble regularly. But doing the 10th job makes me feel that I overdelivered (inspite of the fact that I underdelivered coz I didnt do the 9 I was expected to do), that I exceeded expectations, that I'm different, and that fits into my story.

And I feel this is true not just for me, but for a lot of other people too. But if you think about it, it's quite contradictory to the way our system works. You would normally think that the more you pay someone to do their jobs, the more motivated they would be, but on the other hand it seems like we would rather do something for no money at all & be more motivated about it, if only it fit into our story and enhanced it. Amazing isn't it?

It's all about which story you want to tell!