Story editing leads to behavior change

Not only do we need to view a problem through other people’s eyes, we can also change the way they view it with relatively simple interventions. Even if self-views are often embedded in years of family dynamics, personal relationships, and cultural forces.  Kurt Lewin

Though it was more than 20 years ago, I still recall when Claude Jutra, a well-known Quebec film director, drowned himself after being diagnosed with early onset Alzheimer’s. This weekend I finally read Still Alice a powerful novel about a woman diagnosed with early onset Alzheimer’s.

My grandmother suffered from Alzheimer’s. Fortunately for future generations it wasn’t early onset, which I learned from the novel children have a 50% chance of inheriting. If it had been early onset, would I have wanted to be tested? Initially, I would have said no. But then in Redirect: The Surprising New Science of Psychological Change I came across this reference: “People who were 100% sure that they would get [Huntington’s] disease and die prematurely were happier and less depressed than people who were 50% sure that they were healthy & disease free.”

Why? And what does this have to do with story editing and behaviour change?

People create meaning to overcome uncertainty

A possible answer is found in recent research on happiness. Daniel Gilbert in Stumbling on Happiness suggests that regardless of whether something really good or really bad happens, we quickly adjust to our earlier level of happiness. He shares stories of people who, within a year of winning a lottery or suffering a spinal injury leading to paralysis, are just as happy as they were beforehand. People are remarkably adaptable.

The certainty of knowing you have the gene, that you will get Huntington’s or Alzheimer’s, allows you to adapt by making sense or meaning out of the diagnosis.

The uncertain person doesn’t know what to make sense of, whereas the certain one can begin the process of meaning-making and understanding and explanation for even the bleakest of outcomes. And by so doing, that person adapts and recovers – because once we reach an understanding of what something means and why it occurred, we dwell on it less and its impact wanes. Timothy Wilson

Although adaptation happens naturally, recent research on story editing suggests you can speed up the process, redirect a negative personal narrative, and change your behavior in order to increase your happiness.

People edit the scenes that make up their personal narrative

When we think back to our past or when daydream about our future we mold our memories or shape our dreams into an archplot to give them vivid shape.  Robert McKee

The job of a film editor is an art of storytelling. “A film editor must creatively work with the layers of images, story, dialogue, music, pacing, as well as the actors’ performances to effectively “re-imagine” and even rewrite the film to craft a cohesive whole.” From a huge pool of raw footage, they weave together scenes into a compelling story that connects emotionally. Powerful editing can make or break a movie.

Dede Allen, pioneering film editor, “cut from the gut”

Like film editors, we edit together snippets of experience (real, borrowed, and imagined) to form the scenes that make up our life stories. Most often, we do this unconsciously, not realizing we have editorial control over the remembered stories that help us make sense of who we are. And yet these stories are tremendously important as they influence our happiness and guide our current and future behavior.

Our experience of the world is shaped by our interpretations of it, the stories we tell ourselves, and these stories can often become so distorted and destructive that they completely hinder our ability to live balanced, purposeful, happy lives, so the key to personal transformation is story transformation. Timothy Wilson

Think you don’t edit your memories? That all of them conform directly to actual events? When you tell the story of where you were when you first heard about 9/11, the story you tell today may not match the story you told right after it occurred. What percent of people’s stories have been edited? Jonah Lehrer shares the results of an ongoing study of 9/11 memories in Wired.

Stories we tell ourselves can be positive or negative

Mindset graphic by Nigel Holmes

Laid off? Didn’t get an expected promotion? Failed a test? Just heard about the latest and greatest corporate initiative? Met your daughter’s new boyfriend, decorated with a scorpion tattoo and a ring through his eyebrow? On encountering something new, our brain automatically weaves a story, fitting the experience into our worldview. The shape and tone of these stories (and resulting behavior they spark) is influenced our mindset.

Carol Dweck, author of the book Mindset,  distinguishes between people with growth versus fixed mindsets.

If you have a growth mindset, the stories you weave put you in the driver’s seat.  “I determine my world.  I am responsible for me. I can choose.” The focus is on your awareness and ability to choose. ” For example, let’s say you just failed a test. Maybe the story you tell yourself is something along the lines of “I failed the test. I didn’t do much studying. I just need to focus and apply myself, there’s no reason I shouldn’t be doing well in this subject.”

Only the other hand, if you have a fixed mindset, the stories you weave portray you as a helpless victim. “The world happens to me. They are responsible for…  They prevent me from…” They statements assume power is in them. The focus is outside yourself and they increase your dependence. People with a fixed mindset might tell themselves a story such as “I failed the test. I’m a girl. Girls are no good at math. There’s no point in applying myself any harder because no matter what I do, I’ll fail.”

Story editing is a set of techniques for redirecting people’s narratives about themselves, others, and the social world in a positive way that leads to lasting behavioral change.

In my next post, I’ll briefly describe three different story editing techniques and discuss possible applications to organizational change.

Related posts:

1. Bridging silos through story
2. To succeed with change, tap into the power of the mind
3. Applying the Switch framework to two change efforts
4. Redirecting personal and organizational narratives