Knowing Your Story Isn't the Same as Noticing When It's Running the Show

“I know my patterns.”

Sometimes we do. We can name our values, describe the role we tend to play, and tell a remarkably accurate story about how we became this person. We may even know exactly what we want to do differently.

Then someone asks a simple question, and the familiar story answers before we do.

Imagine someone who has left a long career and is beginning to explore different work. She knows she wants a new direction. She has spent time considering what matters to her now and has promised herself she’ll stop introducing herself through a job she no longer holds.

At an event, someone asks, “What do you do?”

She gives her old title. Then she adds, almost apologetically, that she’s “looking at a few things.” On the way home, she wonders how that happened. She knew what she wanted to say.

From inside the moment, the old title may have offered something the new direction could not yet promise: credibility. A recognizable place in the conversation. An answer she trusted other people to understand.

Speaking about what she is becoming may have felt like asking a stranger to take seriously something she is still learning to take seriously herself.

The difficulty isn’t necessarily a lack of self-awareness. Knowing a story when we have room to reflect is different from noticing it while it is helping us interpret what’s happening.

There is a difference between saying, “I rely too much on my old title,” and catching the moment when that title feels like the safest or easiest way to be seen.

The next time you recognize a familiar response after the fact, return to the moment just before it made sense.

• What did you believe the situation required?

• What felt at risk?

• What did the familiar response let you keep?
  

That is where a known story becomes a story you can begin to see in motion.

At Learning Journeys, Power of Possibility invites you to experience how stories shape what you notice, feel, and believe is possible. Narrative Coach Practitioner takes that learning into coaching practice, helping coaches recognize and explore these patterns as they unfold with clients.