Concept
Inner narrative
An inner narrative is the running story a person tells themselves about who they are and what they can do, such as 'I freeze in front of senior people'. It shapes what they attempt and how they sound, and it can be checked against the evidence and rewritten like any other story.
Before anyone tells a story to a room, they have already told one to themselves about whether they belong there. The Storyteller's Secret is about the stories that make ideas catch on, and it is a short step from there to the first audience any storyteller has: the teller. The inner story leaks into the outer one. A speaker convinced she does not belong hedges, apologises and rushes the ending, even with a strong deck. Psychology offers support for the general idea: Martin Seligman's research on explanatory style found that people who explain setbacks as permanent and personal tend to give up sooner. The useful practice is not positive thinking, since a flattering falsehood fails as surely as a harsh one. It is to notice the sentence running before a high-stakes moment, test it against the facts and rewrite it so it is both true and usable.
A real-life example
A senior accountant in Casablanca, asked to present quarterly results for the first time, wrote down the sentence in his head: 'I am not a presenter.' Checking it against the facts, he noted that he had rebuilt the collections process himself. He rewrote it as 'I know these numbers better than anyone in the room', and opened with the numbers instead of an apology.
How to use it
- 1Write down the exact sentence you are telling yourself before an important moment.
- 2Check it against the evidence: what have you actually done that bears on it?
- 3Rewrite it so it is true and usable, and read it once before you begin.