Why Your Story Doesn’t Matter

You didn't do what you said you'd do — and you offer a reason. The Wi-Fi bombed. The traffic was mad. Your team lost; you complain about the ref’s blunder, and explain what the coach should have done at halftime. A law you dislike gets passed; you opine that the country's going to the dogs. 

It all feels like it matters, like what you say will make a difference. It doesn’t. None of it. Your life continues in circles. You spend your life trapped in the same cycle, wondering why. Here’s here. None of those things — your reasons, your complaints, explanations, opinions — have any bearing on what’s real. They simply don’t matter. Yet you invest so much time and energy in them. 

The promise of this show is to help you deal with what’s real and what matters. In this episode I show you exactly what that means, how your verbal actions like the ones mentioned above take you in the opposite direction, and what you can do to stop that spiral. It’s the most weight-bearing episode of them all.  

Show notes

The mind seeks to make meaning out of things that happen, or don’t happen. When we mistake that meaning-making for reality, we lose our ability to impact that reality. We live with a lot of noise and no forward movement. We can’t go in circles forever, so eventually we spiral downwards. We react with more explaining. With more story. This episode is about exiting the bad neighbourhood of story.

Topics covered include:

• Why story is the opposite of presence, and why people tune out the moment you start one
• The three universal tells that you've left reality behind and entered the realm of story
• What it costs you: the hours poured into narration, and the low hum of grievance that drags a day down
• Why reality doesn't care about your opinion — and where expressing a view actually does matter
• The unglamorous alternative: deal with the fact, change your language, and do this relevance check
• How to guide someone else out of story without becoming insufferable about it
• Why we love story and how we defend our right to tell our story
• How this augments, rather than replaces, CBT, Stoicism and mindfulness

This follows on from Episode 9, on drawing a line when you give your word: your story arises whenever you deviate from the line. In the next episode, we’ll flip it around: not what you say, but what you hear.

A written companion is on Substack under my name. If you want to take it further, there are ways to work with me in the links.

If something here landed, please share it with others who might also benefit. 

Subscribe, rate and review wherever you’re listening. 

Transcript

The stories we reach for

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hi and welcome to episode 10. I'm Neil Piabang. This is what happens. You didn't finish a task or do something you said you would. And what do you do? You offer a story. I didn't, because the Wi-Fi bombed, the power went out, the dog got sick, whatever. If the story is actually true, what a relief. Or your team lost a penalty shootout at the World Cup. I can't believe they played that combination against that opposition. How could they not have trained for penalties? It's the World Cup for crying out loud. Or maybe a new law gets passed in your country when you don't agree with. The country is going to the dogs. Guess what? It's all story. And being lost in story is where you lose all your personal power. In this episode I'll show you how to recognize when you're chasing or buying into a story and what you can do instead. If you ever wanted to increase your levels of personal effectiveness and presence, the next half hour is where it will all happen for you. This is what to believe, where we investigate the bug in the human operating system, the one that makes it hard for us to face the truth about ourselves and has us chasing things out there that are neither real nor true. And the meaning of that statement will never be more precisely revealed than in this episode. So listen well. So in the previous episode, episode nine, I talked about the line that you draw when you give your word, kind of like a line in the sand, a straight line. I will do this thing, I will go to gym three times a week. And then how we tend to deviate from that when we get busy when things happen. And then what we do in that space is we offer a story, the explanation, the reasons why, the justification, the rationalization or the excuse. And some people really believe that this makes a difference and spend a lot of their lives, most of their lives in story believing that the excuse is real, that it's true, that it really does count as an explanation and that it really does matter. Mostly it doesn't. There are times when it's useful to examine why a thing happened and be aware of how we're doing it. A lot of the times we're not using it in that way. We're using it believing that it's the reality when it's not.

The mind is a meaning-making machine

SPEAKER_00 2:17

Let me explain. So the mind is a meaning-making machine. Things happen or don't happen, and the mind makes meaning out of it. Explanations, justifications, rationalizations. I wanted to, but I'm late because here's why I don't agree. In every case, the fact is a small and rather dull matter. The fact is I didn't finish the task, the fact is I was late, the fact is I don't agree. And the story is kind of the palace, in fact, it's more like a sandcastle, but it's the thing we build on top of the fact. So instead of just being present to the fact, I'm late, and then dealing with the fact as a fact, we then automatically go into the story. I'm late because, blah, blah, here comes the story. And then somebody will engage. Well, why? The question why always leads us further into the story. Why did you do it that way? Why couldn't you? Why this, why that? And then we respond with more story. And so we get locked in story. And you can see we spend hours of our day being lost in story is the phrase I would use, simply being lost in story. None of it is making a difference. I'll show you in a moment how we can deal with that differently.

Story is the opposite of presence

SPEAKER_00 3:32

But one of the things that I'm pointing to here is that story is the opposite of presence. So when I'm going into the why and the button, the because, we're losing presence. If you think of this happening, say in a meeting, you come late to a meeting and then you engage in your story, people tune out. People are not interested. They don't know whether to trust you because it's a story. They can't tell whether it's a fact or not. Usually facts are a little bit unpleasant, so they stand out, and we kind of know, okay, that's a fact, that's undeniable. But when we're in a story, we lose presence.

The three tells: "but," "because," "why"

SPEAKER_00 4:02

So here's how you can tell when you're going to a story. The three biggest tells, and these are kind of universal really, are these three words. I've mentioned them, but, because, and why. So everything after but and because and everything that answers the question why is almost always a story, an excuse, a justification, or rationalization. I didn't because I wanted to, but here comes the story. And somebody says, Why are you late? Well, all you're doing is inviting the story. There's a broader family of these things like complaints and expectations. So when I'm complaining about something, I'm usually going to somebody who's not involved in the situation and I'm telling them everything that's wrong. I'm usually in story when I'm doing that. My expectations, well, you know, when I don't ask for something and I get grumpy and upset because somebody didn't provide it, you know, my partner should ask me out on a Friday night. Well, my boss doesn't give me airtime in a meeting and I shouldn't have to ask. Why? Because they should know. So there's our story. Beyond that, we get frustrated, we get into resignation. Oh, I give up. That's just how he is, she is, the world is. We're all in story. What we're not doing is going out there asking for what we want, making commitments, making agreements. Story just spins and generates heat. It looks like a lot of action, but it doesn't really move anything. There's no levers. It's a wheel that spins on a filcrum. When you start asking questions and making agreements, negotiating, asking for things, then it's like you're taking using a lever, you're you're moving things. So that's a clue of where we would go when we're trying to get out of story. At the moment, let's stay with story, let's understand it a bit

What it costs you

SPEAKER_00 5:46

more. And we can see the cost of this, the cost of being in story. So, you know, one of the things is just how much time. Like if you if you become aware of this, you become aware of when you are in story, giving the explanations and the rationalizations of things and watching other people do it, or watching people complain, they come home and they complain, or they they gossip. Politics and stuff in the news and everything. 90% of conversation that takes place is in story, which is fine. If you're at a dinner party or you, you know, you're chilling with friends and you want to just hang out and be in story, that's fine. However, if you're trying to be effective, and especially if you're trying to get things done and get to the truth of the matter and make a difference, story is not helpful. And so when you become aware of this, you start to see just how many hours get poured into the narration of things instead of dealing with them as a fact. And people can spend years and years and years being in their story, fighting for their story, telling their story. Their whole life can become about it. This happened to me once, and now I'm bitter with the world, and here's my story. Or this person did this to me, and five years later I'm still carrying on with that story. You know, a a company, a brand, a restaurant I once went to, a political party, uh, this, you know, everything we can think of, we still have a story about it. Things that happened in our childhood, we carry them as stories. I had one for years that I carried about my father and my suffering as a child, and I had to learn to deal with that and let go of that as a story. Tremendous amount of time. And then the other thing is energy. So, and in addition to time, the second cost is energy. And this one people often miss because story kind of creates a drag on your life. There's a low hum of grievance running underneath in the background of your life under the day. You know, you'll you'll feel this with people who are in story. You'll feel them drag your energy down. You'll feel yourself struggling to stay present when they're talking. And if you're doing it and you, whenever you get into your story, you'll feel that it it creates this tremendous drag on your life because now you've got to resolve your story. Maybe you need therapy, 20 years of therapy, trying to work through your story.

Story in the news and in sport

SPEAKER_00 8:06

And another example of this is let's say something happens in the news. So there's the fact, there was an earthquake, this person was elected, that person died. You know, whatever comes up. That's the fact. So it takes a minute to register the fact. Maybe you can read one story that gives you the context of how it happened and, you know, the the broader picture. But then everything else after that is story. If you have a look at television and the endless coverage of politics, all the talk shows around politics, all the YouTube videos that cover politics, all the podcasts, all the substacks, all the everything, 90% of it is story. My opinion. This is what I think, this is what is happening, this is what should happen, this is what's wrong, here's where I'm right and they're wrong. And then analyzing and analyzing and analysing, explaining, justifying, excusing, arguing, 90% of it, that's my guess, is story. Another place where I see it is in sport. So you have the lead up to the sport, everybody talking about the players and who's going to be playing and what the coach should be doing, and all the debate that happens around sport and all the talk shows in between. And then you get the moments on the field where the game actually happens. There's the fact, there's the reality. That's the game. Then we get the talk talk at half time, and then we go back to the game. And then we get the player interviews, and then we get the analysis afterwards. I quite enjoy watching sport, I enjoy rugby, I enjoy football, cricket, and I'm very clear that most of the talk around the sport is just story. You can be saying what you like. What's going to happen on the field is what's going to happen on the field. And so that doesn't mean that I never engage in the in the conversation, in the chit-chat. I have a relationship with it. There's days when I'm relaxing and I feel like just indulging in the story, nothing wrong. But I'm aware that this is just story. It's got nothing to do with what happens on the field, and it's all just talk talk. And sometimes I'll engage to a limited degree just to kind of understand a little bit more about what's going on, who the play is, what you know, what's happening with the players, and understand maybe somebody's got a really good opinion on it. You do get some very good commentators and pundits who can say things concisely and that are relevant. And then you know you're drifting into story when you start losing presence and they're saying the same thing over and over, and now they're debating their opinions and they're carrying on and on. So one can bring a conscious relationship to this where you are engaging actively and recognizing what is story and what is not story, and choosing how much to engage rather than getting lost in story and spending half your life in a dream that isn't relevant or real, and none of which matters or makes a difference to the world.

Reality doesn't care for your opinion

SPEAKER_00 11:00

That's the other thing about story is we rarely think that story makes a difference to the world. We're arguing our political views at a dinner party, believing that we have to argue because we've got to make our statement because that makes a difference to the world. If you stop and you look around you in the room, you'll notice that not one piece of furniture, not one item in the house, if you go outside, not one star or tree or anything outside has moved for your opinion. Reality doesn't care, it doesn't mind, it just sits there, being what it is. And so while it's useful to hold a view and express that view, we can be more conscious and deliberate about where and when we do that. A lot of the times when we're expressing our view, thinking is real, and that it matters, it's not real and it doesn't matter. And we could just as well be quiet. In fact, very often we're probably just making the situation worse. We could just shut up, be quiet, let it be what it is. We don't know, we don't actually know the answer. Nobody knows the answer. Let's see what happens next. Or let's go and do something, deal with a fact, take action, that would be more appropriate. Like if you're expressing your opinion on a platform that actually gets people to take action, that would matter. But if you're just sharing it randomly to make conversation and show who you are and what side you're on, that doesn't really matter. Feels like it matters, but it doesn't really.

The alternative: deal with the fact

SPEAKER_00 12:28

So the alternative I've pointed to is almost stupidly simple, which is why nobody does it. It feels like we're being rude, we're being too abrupt. But the the alternative is really just to deal with a fact. The end. So if you're late, state the fact. I'm late. I apologize. That's good. You're dealing with a fact. Forgive me for being late. Then say what you will do next. In future, I'll be on time, and you can hold me to that. And maybe you can add a step. Is there anything I can do to make up for that? To make up for being late. Like maybe we still need to finish the meeting at the same time, or maybe somebody else, you know, needs to deal with something urgently, and my being late has affected that. Is there anything like that? Now we're dealing with the reality of things. The other thing is if you didn't do something, I didn't finish the report, I didn't write my book when I said I would. And then we come with our story. The Wi-Fi was a problem, or I had to do X or Y or Z. Now, how do you deal with that? That really does seem real. Well, the first piece is to recognize when we're drawing comfort from the story. So I'm I'm relieved that it was true because I really didn't feel like it. And then I discovered that the Wi-Fi was down, so I made that into an excuse. We really do that with ourselves. So we insert uh a fact, a convenient fact. You know, I was gonna be late anyway, but then I noticed some traffic, and I'm like, thank goodness there was traffic because now I don't feel so bad telling my story. So, first step was to be honest with ourselves about that. If we're doing that, then we are just fooling ourselves and fooling everybody and disempowering ourselves. That's just not pretty. It's not a great way to be. It's not gonna help you because you're just gonna keep perpetuating that. You're just gonna keep doing that again and again and again and never really become effective, achieve your goals, and just be a straightforward, honest, clear, effective person that people can trust. So rather be straight with yourself. If it's a story that you find yourself inserting because it's convenient, drop it. Be honest with yourself. I didn't feel like it, and then the Wi-Fi was down, so I was relieved. And notice I use the word and and not but there, because but keeps us in story. If I say to you, if I say, I didn't feel like it, but the Wi-Fi was down, so therefore, and then we we're joining with the story again. No, no. I didn't feel like it, and the Wi-Fi went down, and I was relieved, and I need to be more honest with myself and deal with the fact that I gave into my feelings and I didn't do what I said I would do. You can see I'm using and instead of but all the way through there. So that's holding both truths at the same time. When I say but, I try to negate the one and move to the other, but I want to hold them both as true. I did this and I did that. The second thing to do would be to examine is this a pattern? So am I always consistently doing this? In which case, that would be something to address. If I'm always not doing it when I feel like it, we'll go back to episode nine, we dealt with that, in terms of being in integrity with your word, doing what you say you will do, whether you feel like it or not, not giving in to those feelings. And if that's a pattern, then you need to address that. That would be a fact. So now you're looking at it constructively, you're looking at it actually, not as an excuse or a story. You're saying, okay, I see this as a pattern. Now let me not have a story that justifies the pattern. Oh, but I work so hard during the day, therefore I'm you know justified and feeling tired and coming home and having a rest. Well, are you gonna write the book or are you not? Are you gonna do the thing or are you not? So if you are, then recognize you're making excuses and remake that commitment and get onto it. Otherwise, stop giving yourself a story and just say, I'm not gonna do it. Be clear, one way or the other. The story isn't helpful. Using the story to justify, explain, and rationalize is what we're pointing out here. That's not useful. If you're looking at it to truly understand the pattern and where you're going wrong, deliberately and consciously, well, that's being effective. If we didn't meet our sales targets, and I come with a story. Oh, it's the economy, oh, nobody would take my call, oh, the targets are unrealistic. All of that is story. If we look at it and we say the economy is bad, and then we look at where is the economy bad, and then we can say, what are people doing? And then we can say, well, this is what we should do. Well, that's an effective analysis that's different from being in story about the problem. So we're looking deliberately, consciously to do something to take action, to understand and take action. Important distinction there, subtle but important. Subtle and important, there we go. It happens all the time. We do it constantly. The butts.

Taking someone else out of story

SPEAKER_00 17:08

You can do this with yourself. You can also do it with others. So you can recognize when others are in story, somebody comes and they start giving their story why they relate or why they haven't done something, or they're giving their story about why they're so sad or why they're suffering in life, or why, why, what, you know, and you can tell when they're in story because the energy has been drained and things are taking a little bit longer. If anybody's in conversation for more than two minutes, you're probably in story. Like me right now. I'm checking myself. Am I in story? I hope not. So when somebody is in story, you can recognize that and you can take them out of story by doing this. So you say their name, John. Everybody responds to their name. Or if it's somebody you're intimate with, you can touch them on the hand or an arm. That kind of brings them back into the present, because in the story we're not present. So the name or a touch brings them into the present, and then you say, What could you do about this? You basically want to point them into an acknowledgement of the fact and pointing them in the direction of action. Because a story always involves some kind of a complaint. It's a problem statement. So what do you want to do? You want to get them into a solution statement and into action and commitment. So you would say, I get that this is difficult and I understand, and you know, the world is tough, and and so on. So you have a bit of compassion, empathy there, and then you challenge them into what can we do about this? What steps could you take? That's would be a coaching style approach. And some people won't like it because why? We like being in our story,

Why we love our story

SPEAKER_00 18:37

and that's my my next point is why do we do this? Well, it feels nice. The hard truth doesn't feel so good, but the story is comforting. It's your ego wrapped around you like a warm blanket. This is how I know myself to be. Me and all my suffering. I went through this for years as a as a young adult. You know, I had the story, no one will ever know was my was the theme, the catchphrase for it. No one will ever know how I was treated, what I went through in my early childhood. And so it becomes this warm blanket that wraps around you. And when people challenge it, often we don't like it. And then we get into being right about your story. But you weren't there, you don't know, you don't understand. We see a lot of this in the world. People have a story about the way the world is, and a story about the suffering that people have experienced in the world, which is true, which is real. But we don't really address it effectively because when somebody points that and says, Well, can I challenge your interpretation of that suffering? We add a layer of being right. But you weren't there, you don't have a right to speak, you can't say that's all story. We're not addressing it effectively. We're being right about our story. So we love our story. And if the story is true, well, then it's even harder to see that we're in story about it, because it feels really, really justified. It's very hard to separate ourselves from a true story and being in story about that story, especially when it's a suffering story. And then sometimes the story is not true, but we tell ourselves it's true. Like I said, we add in a convenient fact or we align with a fact that's there and say, oh, it's because of that. You know, I gave the example earlier, we're late and then it's because of the traffic. So we conveniently align with the fact that we find adjacent to our story. And

Being right about your story (Newton's apple)

SPEAKER_00 20:22

the bottom line is as long as you're in a story, nothing has to change. Sit with that. And if someone tries to point it out, we add the second layer of being right about our story. Oh no, it really is this way. I'm telling you. So being right about your story is how we get trapped in our identity. In fact, we're being trapped by our identity, it's doing it to us. Remember, as with drinking drugs, driving a car, if you can't stop it, you're not in charge of it. You're the passenger. If you can't stop your story or your being in story, then you're being used by your story. That's phrasing you'll hear me use. I'll explain it some more when we look at the autonomous nature of ego. The story is where ego identity lives and it makes you believe that it's you, it's not you. Who you are is a lot less interesting than that. Life is a lot less interesting than that. I'm sorry. The drama is how we know ourselves to be and our lives to be, and the story creates drama, it feels good to live in that drama. Some people's identity is built on all the drama that they share and how well they share it, and the attention that it gets them. They're in the kitchen at the party, everyone's around them listening to them tell their story. It feels real, it feels alive, it feels like we're making things matter, puts us at the center of attention. The problem is it's all in your head, it's words, and it doesn't move things. So you can have your story, but then you can't have a different reality. You can't sit and stand at the same time. You can't remain pregnant and have the baby. You can't hold on to your cake and eat it. I always prefer to use it like that. People say you can't have your cake and eat it. What does that mean? What they mean is you want to keep the piece of cake and you want to eat it. Both, you can't do that. And we can see this in the current social climate and how we argue now. Everyone is certain. Everyone is gathering evidence for the side they found themselves on, and nobody has moved because the other person is doing exactly what they're doing with their content, fighting for their story, to be right about their story, their interpretation of things. If Newton had announced gravity today and prefaced it with the fact that this apple fell on his head, we'd argue about whether the apple really fell, and then people who decided it didn't would throw out the whole idea of gravity itself. We get stuck on the apple, the story of the apple, and we forget about the gravity, about what's underneath. So give up being right about the apple, and there you see the gravity, the maths that you could do together. And that's what opens up on the far side of needing to be right and holding on to our story is dealing with what's real and what matters. So when you catch yourself in story, there's no need to analyze why am I doing this? It's an automatic mechanistic ego reaction. So there's no need to excavate and have story about the story. Just take the first exit. You recognize you're on the wrong highway, take the first exit. You're in that bad neighborhood, get out. And don't let your identity make that exit mean anything that means I'm wrong or I'm weak or they will win or you know, the state of the world, etc. Just exit. Deal with a fact and see what emerges in that space. You'll gain a lot of clarity, a lot of time, a lot of power, and gain a lot of choice over what situations you really do want to engage in and what you don't want to or need to. So

How this augments CBT, Stoicism and mindfulness

SPEAKER_00 23:39

at this point, I always like to compare what we're doing here with the effective inquiry, which is based on linguistic ontology, out of which ontological coaching was born, and compare that to some of the other modalities. So we can see how this augments those, doesn't replace them, it augments them. So CBT, cognitive behavior therapy, maps the thought-feeling behavior link, and one can catch the thoughts, and that changes the chain. And what they would look at is what we call cognitive distortion. So that would be a technical term linked to story, and we might then delve into which cognitive distortion and how is this playing out. But what this lens does is you don't have to excavate to the deep root or understand what kind of cognitive distortion. You just have to see you being in story. You're not dealing with the fact, the end. It's very effective. Just drop it and step out of that. Start dealing with the fact, and where do you need to go? What needs to happen next? The but and the because is the instant signal. You can just put it down right there. And then we have stoicism with its dichotomy of control, sorting out what's up to you from what isn't. And that's kind of deal with the fact in a toga, really. It works, it's effective. And we can even get into a story about our choices in that. So recognizing story still adds a layer around that where we can do it without story, make our choice and then take action in a direction without the story around it. Mindfulness as well lets you watch the story arise and pass. This one adds the grammar so we can spot it more quickly and instantly. Oh, there's the story. And the presence that we're driving to with mindfulness, well, when you're in story, you're not present. When you spot it and you get out of story, you're present.

The one question that does the work

SPEAKER_00 25:31

Here's an exercise you can do. The time going forward, and I'm sure you'll hardly be able to avoid doing this, it's going to jump out at you, is you can hunt down the buts and the because and the whys or explanations, rationalizations, and justifications that you see in the world and when people are in story because of them. So it'll be easy to see it in others, of course, you'll catch it there. And it'll be easy to catch it in yourself because you're going to hear yourself doing the but and the because. And when you lose presence and you spend too long giving excuses, you're going to catch yourself being in story. It's just going to happen automatically. I'm sorry, you came to the show, you're doomed. You're never going to be in story again. And the important thing there is to once again not develop uh kind of an ego around it. And well, I'm the one who's not in story and I understand. And exercise it with compassion for yourself and others. You'll still go into story, you'll still find that you're in story at one level or another, or you know, in a more intense situation. You might manage this at the at the easy, at the small levels around being late, but then something comes up in you know, a family drama or something like that, you'll be in story again. So it's really around catching ourselves and becoming aware and learning how to work with that. And in future episodes, stay with me on the journey. This will come up again and again. We'll give more examples and learn how to work with that really effectively. You've got the basic tool, which is address the fact and have a look at what you can do differently. But you don't want to become that insufferable person at the dinner table who's now all self-righteous because you understand the distinction between story and reality. You can see it's not easy to explain to people, so I wouldn't advise trying to explain it. Just live it, just practice it. It can help you decide when to tune out and drop the tension and not have to engage something. You can engage politely, knowing that this is just a story and it doesn't make a difference. That's the real power, is in the awareness it gives you, that extra distinction, that layer of awareness where you can understand what's real and what matters, and you don't have to impose it on the world. We'll work on that. We'll find a way together to get the world to realize that that's what part of this podcast is about, is you get enough people to watch this, that's how you get them to it. So we'll try different ways. But for now, you just practice it by yourself and you share it where you can and demonstrate it where you can. And so every time you catch yourself with a story, ask the question that does all the work for you. Is this a fact or are you in story? And if it's a story, then see if you can simply not get engaged in it and deal with a fact instead. So the move here is quite small and unglamorous. And notice how much lighter a day gets, how much more clarity you have when you stop carrying the story, how much time and energy you save. And once again, you can see this isn't a thing to believe, it's a technology that you can use and test, and then will inevitably impact what you believe. By using it, you'll get better at dealing with what's real and what matters. Next time we'll flip this around and point it in the other direction, not at what you say, but how you hear. Because you don't actually hear what people say to you, you hear what it means for you. There's a whole machinery of listening that runs under every conversation. And once you can see it, you can change your entire texture, the context of how you receive what's going on in a room and the impact that you have in a room. This is what to believe. If you're finding value in this, please subscribe, rate, and review wherever you're listening. If something landed, not just made sense, but actually landed, share it with someone you think could benefit. That's how this work spreads. You'll find a written companion on Substack under my name, and if you want to take it further, there are ways to work with me in the show notes. I'm Neil Björbaum, thank you for listening. See you next time.