The Story You Tell Yourself
“The story of your life isn’t about your life. It’s about your story.”
Introduction
Most of us spend an enormous amount of time trying to figure out what the “right” way to live is. We chase certainty (about careers, goals, values, etc.) believing that once we have the answers, peace will follow.
But life rarely improves through certainty - it’s often an unrealistic goal to begin with. It improves through intentionality - choosing how to think, what to prioritize, and how to respond even when the answers remain unclear.
We don’t get to choose most of what happens to us, but we do get to choose how we interpret it. And that choice, often made unconsciously, takes the form of a story.
The story we tell ourselves about our career determines whether it feels meaningful or draining. The stories we tell about our setbacks determine whether they feel like evidence of failure or part of the process. The story we tell about our lives becomes our worldview.
This essay explores a simple but powerful idea: that storytelling may be the most important skill we develop - not because it helps us entertain or persuade others, but because it’s the primary way we exercise control over how life feels while it’s happening.
This isn’t about delusion, blind optimism, or toxic positivity. It’s about choosing between multiple plausible interpretations - and being intentional about which ones we let run our lives.
What Stories Do
If storytelling really is the medium through which we interpret our lives, it’s worth asking what stories actually do for us, and who we’re telling them to.
At a basic level, most of the stories we tell serve one of three purposes. They help us entertain, inform, or convince.
Entertain
This is the most obvious use of storytelling. A large portion of everyday conversation is spent recounting the past: funny missteps, small victories, embarrassing moments, and shared memories. These stories aren’t just about what happened, they’re also about how we choose to frame it. We emphasize certain details, downplay others, and search for humor or irony as we recount the past.
Inform
We don’t always think of information-sharing as storytelling, but narrative structure is often the clearest way to communicate what happened and why it matters. Stories help us organize cause and effect, explain interpersonal dynamics, and make complex situations easier to follow. They turn scattered facts into something coherent.
Convince
Whenever we’re trying to resolve a disagreement or bring someone around to our point of view, we rely on narrative. We walk someone through how we arrived at a conclusion, the evidence we used to get there, and why our position makes sense. Even when we think we’re “just stating the facts,” we’re usually walking someone through our own reasoning - a story designed to persuade.
These three functions show up across almost every context in our lives. But the more useful way to think about storytelling isn’t by what the story is doing - it’s by who it’s for.
Who We’re Telling Them To
Broadly speaking, we tell stories to three audiences: friends and family, coworkers, and ourselves.
Friends and Family
In social settings, storytelling is usually oriented toward connection. We entertain each other, share updates, and trade stories that reinforce shared identity and strengthen bonds. Historical accuracy or polished delivery often takes a back seat to shared context and inside jokes.
Coworkers
In professional contexts, stories become more pragmatic. We use them to project credibility, communicate value, and influence outcomes - particularly ones that we think will bestow us with a promotion or a nice raise. Job interviews are an obvious example: we take years of experience, selectively package it, and present it as a coherent narrative of growth and competence. Professional stories often aren’t just about the facts, they’re about what those facts signal about us.
Ourselves
Then there’s the audience that never leaves - the one that hears every version of every story. We are constantly narrating our own experience: connecting events, inferring cause and effect, and deciding what whatever just happened means. This internal story runs automatically and continuously, shaping how we feel about our work, our relationships, and our progress. Over time, it hardens into something bigger: a worldview.
When you put all of this together, a pattern emerges. The same storytelling tools we use socially to entertain, inform, and convince… don’t disappear when the conversation ends. They turn inward. And when the audience is ourselves, the stakes are much higher.
The Audience That Never Leaves
Once stories turn inward, they stop being occasional and become constant. The audience is always present, and the narration never really turns off. We are always absorbing, processing, and interpreting information - consciously and unconsciously. Over time, those interpretations become habits. And habits become defaults.
If your internal story tends to lean negative, life will feel heavier than it needs to. If it leans generous or curious, the same set of circumstances often feels more manageable. Nothing external has changed, only the interpretation.
This is why internal narratives carry so much weight. We don’t just tell them once - we tell them continuously. We repeat them to ourselves, thousands of times, over and over again. Philosophies like Stoicism emphasize a useful distinction here: between what’s within our control and what isn’t.
We can’t control most of what happens to us. But the meaning we assign to what happens - the story we tell ourselves about it - is largely within our control. When we can win the battle between our ears, almost anything life throws at us becomes more manageable. When we can’t, even objectively good circumstances can feel unsatisfying or hard to enjoy.
This doesn’t make life easy. But it does make it workable.
One of the clearest illustrations of this comes from Hope for Cynics by Jamil Zaki, where he revisits the parable of Sisyphus. If you don’t recall, Sisyphus was the guy condemned to push a boulder up a hill for eternity, only to watch it roll back down every time.
As Zaki puts it:
“The premise is set. The boulder must be pushed. Whether it’s a tragedy, a comedy, or a drama is up to the one doing the pushing.”
The circumstances don’t change, but the story does.
Most of us won’t be sentenced to push boulders forever, but we all have routines or responsibilities we’ve come to dread. The point isn’t to pretend they’re fun or meaningful when they aren’t. It’s to avoid letting our internal narration make them worse than they already are.
Your internal monologue will never stop - you might as well shape it deliberately.
From Stories to a Worldview
Over time, these repeated interpretations compound. They don’t just shape how a day feels - they shape how life feels. The stories we tell ourselves gradually harden into assumptions about what life is for, what matters, and what success looks like. Eventually, they crystallize into a worldview.
My working theory is that most of our internal monologue clusters around two high-level narrative tendencies.
Some people are wired to notice progress, gaps, and inefficiencies. Their attention gravitates toward stories about goals, optimization, and forward motion. Life, through this lens, becomes a problem to solve - a calling to find, an impact to maximize, a trajectory to stay ahead of. The underlying question is often some version of: Am I doing enough?
Others are more attuned to experience itself. They notice novelty, enjoyment, and presence. Their stories emphasize what feels interesting, satisfying, or worth savoring in the moment. Life, through this lens, is something to be appreciated rather than solved. The underlying question tends to be: Am I enjoying myself?
These aren’t opposing truths, and neither worldview is inherently right or wrong. They’re simply different ways of framing the same raw material: our lives.
The problem is that our default storytelling mode is largely automatic. We don’t consciously choose how we frame our internal monologue - our disposition largely does that for us. Left unchecked, we tend to over-index on one narrative and neglect the other.
This tension shows up everywhere: between achievement and enjoyment, seriousness and play, knowing the “point” of life and simply living it. But once we notice this tension, we gain a lever. We have a choice. The goal isn’t to pick the correct story - it’s simply to be intentional about the story we tell ourselves in the first place. To actively shape the lens through which we experience our lives.
This matters more than we like to admit. No matter how objectively good a life may be (if you’re reading this, odds are you’re already in the top 1–5% of global income), if we don’t experience it that way, it doesn’t feel good. We’ve all seen this: the deeply unhappy celebrities, founders, and millionaires who “won” on paper but seem to hate their own lives.
This is where storytelling becomes a practical skill. By becoming more intentional about which narratives we foreground, and which ones we temporarily quiet, we can counterbalance our natural tendencies. When anxiety creeps in, we can elevate gratitude and enjoyment-centered stories. When we feel stagnant or unmotivated, we can lean into progress and ambition-centered ones.
This isn’t about delusion or pretending to be someone we’re not. It’s about actively shaping stories that keep us centered, rather than riding an emotional roller coaster with no say in the matter.
The Story You Shape
So why does any of this matter?
It matters because the story you tell yourself sits upstream of almost everything else. How you frame your own experience quietly determines how you show up - in conversations, at work, in relationships, and in moments when no one else is watching.
There are practical benefits, of course. People who tell clearer stories tend to communicate more effectively. They’re often more persuasive, more engaging, and easier to trust. In a narrow sense, getting better at storytelling might help you sell an idea, land a job, or hold a room at a cocktail party.
But the deeper payoff is the feedback loop it creates. How you show up shapes how others respond, and those responses, in turn, reinforce how you experience the world. If you approach interactions with negativity or defensiveness, people tend to meet you there. When you bring curiosity, authenticity, or gratitude, the tone often shifts in kind.
When you learn to shape your internal narrative - to notice it, question it, and adjust it - you begin to experience your own life differently. You can actively shift it in a more constructive direction, and that change tends to ripple outward. Gratitude becomes easier to access. Interactions improve. Momentum becomes easier to find. Not because your circumstances have suddenly changed, but because you’re navigating them with more intention.
As we said up front: life doesn’t get better through certainty or status. It gets better through intentionality.
Storytelling is how that intentionality shows up in everyday life.
You’re going to tell yourself a story either way. Make it a good one.