Stop Workplace Drama: Train Your Team to have No Complaints, No Excuses, and No Regrets

Chapter 3. Tell Yourself the Truth

	Get your facts first, then you can distort them as you please.
	--Mark Twain

Whenever there is drama, there is usually a story operating somewhere. It doesn't matter if the drama is just in your own head, or if an employee is tattling on someone who looked at her the wrong way. Whatever the case may be—there is a story attached to it. But don't blame yourself or your team; as it turns out, we human beings are inherently built to tell stories.

Norman Farb, a scientist at the University of Toronto—and six of his colleagues—discovered in 2007 that human beings have distinct ways of experiencing their lives. The primary method is called narrative circuitry. The second way is direct experience (Rock 2009). Direct experience is what we might define as being present "in the now." This is something that can take a lot of effort, as evidenced by the number of books now written on the importance of experiencing "what is" as a way to release the mind chatter.

In contrast, the first way—narrative circuitry—takes in the information moment by moment, then filters it through your interpretations. In other words, we are all "meaning-making machines." Most of the time, we humans live life from the narrative circuitry point of view; and for the purpose of this book I refer to this way of experiencing our existence as "the story."

I define the story as the meaning we create from our life experiences. While it can be one version of the truth, it's also often comprised ...