As I close the second season of Words That Change Lives, I’ve been reflecting on a question that has sat at the heart of this entire journey from the deep past to the distant future:
Why do stories matter so much to us?
The stories we live inside and the ones that shape our identity. The stories that help us make sense of loss, change, possibility and purpose, and those that become the invisible architecture of our lives.
Over the past ten episodes of Stories in Our DNA, I’ve explored storytelling from many angles. From our earliest ancestors gathered around firelight to the digital narratives competing for our attention every day.
But this final episode brought me back to something a bit more personal, which is a reminder that stories provide orientation and help us understand who we are when life changes. They help us navigate uncertainty when old maps no longer work.
And sometimes, they can help us become someone new.
There have been moments in my own life when the stories I had relied upon stopped serving me. Like many people, I reached points where old strategies no longer worked. The performing. The pleasing. The belief that if I could just get everything right, things would somehow feel different.
Eventually I realised something uncomfortable but necessary.
No one was coming to rescue me.
The stories I was carrying needed rewriting. They were no longer true enough to carry me forward.
That is the thing about stories. We inherit many of them. Some are given to us by family or by culture or workplaces, communities and institutions.
Some by our own experiences. And many serve us well. But some outlive their usefulness. Growth often begins when we become curious enough to examine the stories we have accepted as true and courageous enough to rewrite the ones that no longer fit.
The Japanese art of kintsugi repairs broken pottery using gold, honouring the cracks rather than hiding them.
I’ve often thought stories work in much the same way. The most meaningful stories are the ones that acknowledge what has been broken and transformed and that carry wisdom because of where they cracked.
Yet while we wrestle with our own personal narratives, we are also living within a much larger ecosystem of stories. Stories now move faster than at any other point in human history. They arrive through screens, headlines, feeds, podcasts, conversations and algorithms.
Some heal, inform and inspire. Others compete aggressively for our attention and we are not powerless in the face of the stories surrounding us.
We can choose what we consume, repeat and amplify. We can choose which stories shape us and which stories we allow to pass by. Perhaps the most radical thing we can do today is tell stories that sound like ourselves.
So I’ll leave you with the same question I leave listeners with in the final episode:
What story is trying to find you right now?
If you’d like to listen to the final episode of Words That Change Lives, you can find it here:
https://podfollow.com/words-that-change-lives
And if you’re exploring how storytelling can support leadership, communication, change or culture within your organisation, feel free to send me a DM. I’d love to continue the conversation.
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