What is “The Narrative” and What’s So Wrong With It?
My motto is “fuck the narrative”. But what exactly does that mean?
There is a narrative we’ve been told about what to do in order to do life the right way. Maybe it isn’t said that explicitly, but we all hear it, internalize it, and go through life operating by a narrative. There are different narratives depending on where you grew up, where you live now, who you surround yourself with, etc…but it’s there. A way of doing, of being, of living, that lets you know whether you’re doing it right or not.
Narratives come from everywhere; our families of origin telling us that we need to get good grades and go to certain colleges in order to have a successful career; our corporate jobs telling us we need to meet certain OKRs in order to advance; our friends and family telling us that we need to get married in order to be happy or have security; the whole freaking world telling women that if we don’t have kids we will regret it one day. Oh and I love the narrative about how there’s one sure fire way to invest our money (real estate or bust, basically….hello, does no one remember 2008??). Narratives are everywhere.
For us humans, with our messy human brains, a narrative isn’t inherently a bad thing. In fact, a narrative can be helpful for us in many ways:
It provides structure to our lives
It puts order into chaos
It limits our choices to keep us from overwhelm
It gives us some sort of path to follow, to get us moving in a direction
What it boils down to is safety. Our brain’s #1 job is to keep us alive - and to do that, our brains work off of the evidence it has from the past. Our brains think, “What we’ve done before has kept us alive, so we should do it again”. So it makes sense that our brains like patterns, routines, and structure - all things that a narrative about how to live provides us. These things are familiar, and that familiarity is safe. The unknown? That may hurt us. So our brains think “Don’t do that. Stay the course. It’s safer.”
So what’s so wrong with the narrative then?
The problem of course is that a narrative, while keeping us safe, also keeps us boxed in. It keeps us doing the same things over and over. It keeps new paths, new ideas, new opportunities at bay. And in doing it, the narrative is butting up against our very nature. Evolution - change - is part of the human experience. Biologically, change is the only constant. It’s why you have dreams outside of you; it’s why you hope and want for things that don’t yet exist in your life. The narrative keeps us away from that natural part of our experience - to grow, evolve, change. When we actually do say “fuck the narrative” and push for change where there wasn’t any before - that’s when amazing things happen
To put this in more practical terms - think about all of the things that didn’t happen until someone decided that the current narrative just wasn’t working - and that we could do better:
The narrative said space travel is impossible
The narrative said women can’t vote
The narrative said a Black man can’t be President of the United States
The narrative said music is played on the radio, not in headphones in your ears, on a phone.
The narrative said it wasn’t possible for a human to run a mile in under 4 minutes, or a marathon in under 2 hours
The narrative said marriage is only for a man and a woman
….There’s been a lot of narratives that we’ve fucked along the way, and we’re the better for it!
And of course, there’s a lot more left to do…..a lot of narratives that need to be revised, rewritten, or thrown out altogether.
Taking it from the collective to the individual, here are a few examples of ways my clients, and myself, have all heard the narrative, realized it wasn’t working for us, and said “fuck it”:
The narrative that says your corporate job is the safe bet.
Fuck it: Quit the corporate job and realize that safety is an inside job, and you can be just as safe working for yourself.
The narrative that says you’re too old to start your own biz.
Fuck it: Start your own biz at 40 and watch it succeed.
The narrative that says you can’t raise kids in the city.
Fuck it: Move the kids into an apartment in the city, and watch them have good and bad experiences just like kids in the suburbs.
The narrative that says you don’t know enough to help.
Fuck it: Launch that non-profit to help the people you want to help, and see the measurable impact you can have.
The narrative that says you're too old for a new career as a coach.
Fuck it: Get certified, become a coach, and earn a living doing so.
The narrative that says it’s too late to start saving for retirement, you’re too far behind.
Fuck it: Save what you can now and choose not to worry, no one has any idea what’s ahead anyways (and the irony being when you stop worrying and just start saving what you can, you end up saving more….).
The narrative that says that you will always be broke or in debt because you always have been.
Fuck it: Decide that your past is not your future and rewrite your money story, today.
The narrative that says debt is bad.
Fuck it, you want something bad enough and maybe debt is the right to get it right now - so you take on debt and go get it because you know for you, it’s worth it.
The narrative that says you’re too old to be a runner.
Fuck it: You buy some shoes and hit the pavement and become a first time marathoner in a year.
The narrative that says you’ll never have a happy home life because you didn’t grow up in one:
Fuck it. Build yourself that happy home life and leave the story about your past in the past.
You get it….the list goes on and on. I’ve seen examples of people saying “fuck the narrative” in all areas of life - I’ve done it, my clients have done it, and you can too. Decide if the narrative in your head is serving you or not. If so - great, keep it. If not - ask yourself why you’re hanging on to it?
And then fuck it.
Life is short. Go get what you want out of it. Let THAT be your narrative.