Today I was going to write about where confidence comes from, but I’ve spent most of the day feeling incredibly sad. The cause of my melancholy was a TV drama I watched this morning while on my bike trainer. It seems silly to have such a reaction because I know the show was all pretend. It hit me harder than I expected. It was about a young couple who knew they were meant to be together, but circumstances kept conspiring to keep them apart; I guess I’m a hopeless romantic. Netflix ended the series after two seasons – the final episode left several things unresolved – and I really LOVED that show!
The story of lovers struggling to unite is as old as time. The plot also featured witches, werewolves, and secret societies, but that was all just backdrop. (There are no new stories.) The backdrops may change according to our preferred genre, but the stories resonate because we’re all (mostly) human. I can’t work out if I’m sad from the way the story unfolded, sad that the show ended, sad because Tove Lo’s melancholy lament, “Habits,” was used so effectively in one of the final episodes (and now I can’t stop humming that ear worm!), or all of the above.
Thousands of years ago Homer told stories about the gods and heroes of ancient Greece. Last Sunday I told a story about shoveling snow to my mum when I spoke to her on Zoom. My work colleague did NOT tell me a story when I joined his project team meeting, at least not until we were halfway through the meeting and I asked what was going, and THEN he told me the story.
We think of stories when it comes to books, films, and our friends down the pub. We hear stories in song, and in some commercials. Anyone watching Super Bowl LV will have experienced car companies sharing a story in an effort to portray themselves as having your values (if your country is important to you, if you like the great outdoors, if you believe things can be better), so they can sell you stuff. If we’re having a tough time processing a life event we share our story with a close friend, and that can lead to us finding comfort. Stories are everywhere, and sometimes we don’t even realize it. We don’t always think of them at work, and we should. The power of stories was demonstrated in an experiment over ten years ago.
In 2009 two men bought 100 items from thrift stores at an average price of $1.29. They sold this junk totalling $128.74 on eBay for $3,612.51. How did they secure such a profit margin? Before selling them on eBay they attached a unique and totally fictional story to each item. Rob Walker, the journalist who conducted the experiment, tells the story (there we are again!) on his website. Rob’s own story has been shared countless times. Sometimes the data changes in the telling – the year it took place, the cost or sale price of the object – but the essence of the story and its importance hold true regardless of the details.
I could go into why stories work and talk about the release of hormones like dopamine or oxytocin, even suggesting the order in which you might want to elicit them, but if that interests you I can recommend this TED talk by David JP Phillips, which has been viewed nearly 2.8 million times. For now I just want us all to tell more stories, and to use them more widely. Let’s get better at sharing them. And let’s write to Netflix and tell them to stop selling the props from “The Order,” because they are going to need them for season three when the amazing cast is reunited, and our key protagonists finally get together after delivering world peace to live happily ever after. (Damn I love that show!)
