Five For Your Hive: The Stories Of Your Life

Getting Rid Of The Damn Thing, Dan Jansen, Boiler Room, The Shadow, Bye, I Have To Go Now

The Stories Of Your Lives

Many years ago, Pixar co-founder Ed Catmull attended an art exhibit at his daughter's elementary school. As he walked along the hallway lined with paintings and drawings, he immediately noticed that the work of the first- and second-graders appeared sharper and more vibrant than those of the fifth-graders. Somewhere along the way, he thought, the older kids must have developed a layer of self-consciousness and tentativeness when they realised their drawings were not realistic. The outcome, evidently, was a sea of stiff and unadventurous works of art. As young children, we are the most impressionable—we embrace new ideas and experiences because we've never encountered them before. But as we get older, the tendency to resist fresh concepts and tenets also grows in us, and we're unlikely to explore new frontiers. We think we lose this intricate curiosity to age, to parenthood, to our jobs, to the harsh realities and demands of a stressful life, but in truth, the voice in our head was the menacing force that drowned out the whispers of our hearts. This presents a stark warning: the stories we tell ourselves become the stories of our lives. As the composer Philip Glass once said, "The real issue is not how do you find your voice but…getting rid of the damn thing." Being careful of what you tell yourself, lest it becomes the reality of your life—that's the idea for today.

The Voice No One Hears

At the 1988 and 1992 Olympics, American speed skater Dan Jansen bombed out of the 500- and 1,000-meter events. Having won multiple world championships and broken many records, he was the favorite to win the gold. And yet, clinching the Olympic medal seemed so far away. Dan's agent reached out to performance psychologist Dr. Jim Loehr for help. Loehr was big on recording and keeping track of every critical variable—diet, nutrition, exercise, recovery, emotional, spiritual issues—that would influence the performance of an athlete. After observing a series of training sessions, Loehr sat Dan down. "Now," Loehr told him, "I'm going to ask you to do something else, because I know you're going to resist this one. I want you to write on the top of your training log 'I love the 1,000.'" Jansen did not love the 1000. In 1988, he began the 1000-meter event with record speed but fell at the 800-meter mark. Then, at the 1992 Olympics 1000-meter event in Albertville, Jansen slipped and came in 26th. The story he told himself was that he was a fast-twitch muscle kind of athlete, not an endurance racer. "I want you to begin to change your mindset," Loehr told him, "the story you have around the 1,000, and I believe it can change your life." "I don't love the 1,000," Dan replied. "I know you don't," Loehr said, "but we're going to recondition the way you think about it and the way you feel about it. And at one point, you're going to come back and tell me that you actually love the 1,000." So after every training session, Dan would write the words, I love the 1,000. I love the 1,000. I love the 1,000. Just before the 1994 Olympics in Lillehammer, Dan went up to Loehr. "You know," Dan told him, "I'm actually starting to like the 1,000. I think I like the 1,000 better than the 500." At the 500-meter event, Dan slipped, costing him a medal. This meant he had one last shot at the 1,000. With the mindset and story he told himself—I love the 1,000. I love the 1,000. I love the 1,000—Dan "went into that race simply showing the whole world what a gift speed skating had been for him…to show the joy on his face, how much love he had for the sport, and how grateful he was for the opportunity." With that, not only did he win his first gold medal, he broke the 1000-meter Olympic record.

"And I began to realise," Dr. Loehr says, "that what really matters, in a really significant way, is the tone and the content of the voice in your head." The stories you tell yourself shape the truth in your life. "The power broker…is the voice that no one hears. How well you revisit the tone and content of that voice in your head is what determines the quality of your life. It is the master storyteller, and the stories we tell ourselves are our reality."

Don’t Spend Too Much Time in The Boiler Room

John Mayer, as talented, resourceful, and successful as he has always been, would experience bouts of stress, anxiety, writer's block, and dull moods every once in a while. He attributes this to "spending too much time in the boiler room," which he refers to as the situation when unhealthy stories and mindsets linger for extended periods in his head, forming concrete slabs of truths and realities that would be hard to demolish afterward. "The inside of your head," Mayer says, "is a very subjective, highly interpretive world." And so, he is very careful not to trap himself in it, offering a solution of escape: "Visit it the way you would visit the spooky basement every once in a while just to grab something out of the second fridge. Go in there, grab what you need to grab, and fix what you need to fix. Then get out of there and back into the more objective work—do things, create something, make stuff happen out in the real world."

The Shadow

In the Netflix documentary, Stutz, actor Jonah Hill was asked by his therapist, Dr. Phil Stutz, to talk about The Shadow—the flawed and shameful part of yourself that you're afraid of showing to the world. "Now," Stutz said, "visualize a time in your life when you felt inferior, embarrassed, rejected, despondent, that you're ashamed of. It's the part of you that you wish you were not. But you are, and not only that, you can't get rid of it." "To me," Hill replied, "it's a 14-year-old boy who's very overweight, and has acne, and feels very undesirable to the world." According to Stutz, those who have experienced a traumatic event in the past will possess a heightened sensitivity to the flaws and nature of which The Shadow had taken root. When we feel the need to hide it, we become hyper-reactive to whether it is visible to the world. "It becomes an obsession," Stutz explained. "How do they see me, what do they think of me, do they like me, love me?" But here lies a paradox: the more we do this—the more we feed into the stories and hurts and trauma of our former selves—the more ashamed we feel. "But the beauty is," Stutz said, "once you stop hiding it, you can relax and then you get flow. If you stop hiding your Shadow, if you stop hiding the human part of yourself, you get flow. And that's what everybody wants."

Bye, I Have To Go Now

When Steve Jobs turned thirty, he was interviewed by David Sheff of Playboy. The long and intimate conversation touched on many subjects, but his most emotional musings were about growing up and looking into the future. "Your thoughts construct patterns like scaffolding in your mind," Jobs said. "You are really etching chemical patterns. In most cases, people get stuck in those patterns, just like grooves in a record, and they never get out of them." It seemed as if he was living in the premonition that his life would soon be changing (he was, in fact, ousted from Apple in that same year, and went on to found NeXT before returning to Apple in 1997). Yet he believed that one of life's greatest callings was to resist the urge of living in the same story. "If you want to live your life in a creative way…you have to not look back too much," he said. "You have to be willing to take whatever you've done and whoever you were and throw them away." If you love something, say it out loud. If you despise something, consider the consequences of those words. Don't dwell on negativity too long. Don't look back too much. Don't spend too much time in the boiler room of your thoughts, because the more you do, the more difficult it is to break free. "The more the outside world tries to reinforce an image of you," Jobs said, "the harder it is to continue to be an artist, which is why a lot of times, artists have to say, 'Bye, I have to go. I'm going crazy and I'm getting out of here.' And they go and hibernate somewhere. Maybe later they re-emerge a little differently."