I'm skeptical of quick transformation stories. I find that they're usually ex-post rationalizations after the end of a long-term change process, or a quick change in environment that influenced the incentives of the subject. People change slowly, or quickly as they adapt to new environments, but this sort of look into your daughter's eyes stuff seems more like fiction than fact. I'd say that story almost always starts with the person really feeling in the moment like they'll never drink again, and then ends with them drinking again.
On the other hand.
The stories we tell ourselves seem important. I think about being "born again" as people replacing a tragedy story with a redemption story. Or looking into a mirror and saying, "I'm good enough, I'm smart enough and gosh darn it people like me". Similarly, I think about a man looking into his daughter's eyes and telling himself the story about how this means he'll never drink again, and then reminding himself of that story whenever he feels the urge to drink. And then it's the story that he tells other people. Even though the story was never true in the sense that the story would never have happened without itself. The man has looked into his daughter's eyes before, he has wanted to stop drinking before. What's different this time besides a new story?
Buying into a story that isn't true until you've bought it is sort of an act of faith - a denial of reality. The story you already live by is the default. It's already true and if you live by it you'll feel you are justified in believing it, but you'll end up in one place. If you take the act of believing the new story before it's true it's a denial of reality, but when it becomes true then you will be justified in believing it and you'll end up in a completely different place.
"I think about being "born again" as people replacing a tragedy story with a redemption story."
That's a nice framing, I like it a lot.
What you're saying sounds right to me. Most of the time the story is just a rationalization, and yes people usually change slowly not in a flash as the story can suggest. Still, it's intriguing to me that the story can create the reality in some of these cases. Like, not the event, but the story about the event.
This flips the usual causal picture
Event (E) --> Life change (C) --> Story about what happened + why it was so important (S)
on its head, looking more like
E --> S --> C
Or sometimes
S --> C --> E
in the case of a self-fulfilling prophecy. "I'm good enough" can make someone who is in fact not good enough confident enough to go out there and to become good enough.
Good post.
I'm skeptical of quick transformation stories. I find that they're usually ex-post rationalizations after the end of a long-term change process, or a quick change in environment that influenced the incentives of the subject. People change slowly, or quickly as they adapt to new environments, but this sort of look into your daughter's eyes stuff seems more like fiction than fact. I'd say that story almost always starts with the person really feeling in the moment like they'll never drink again, and then ends with them drinking again.
On the other hand.
The stories we tell ourselves seem important. I think about being "born again" as people replacing a tragedy story with a redemption story. Or looking into a mirror and saying, "I'm good enough, I'm smart enough and gosh darn it people like me". Similarly, I think about a man looking into his daughter's eyes and telling himself the story about how this means he'll never drink again, and then reminding himself of that story whenever he feels the urge to drink. And then it's the story that he tells other people. Even though the story was never true in the sense that the story would never have happened without itself. The man has looked into his daughter's eyes before, he has wanted to stop drinking before. What's different this time besides a new story?
Buying into a story that isn't true until you've bought it is sort of an act of faith - a denial of reality. The story you already live by is the default. It's already true and if you live by it you'll feel you are justified in believing it, but you'll end up in one place. If you take the act of believing the new story before it's true it's a denial of reality, but when it becomes true then you will be justified in believing it and you'll end up in a completely different place.
Which is an interesting thing to me.
"I think about being "born again" as people replacing a tragedy story with a redemption story."
That's a nice framing, I like it a lot.
What you're saying sounds right to me. Most of the time the story is just a rationalization, and yes people usually change slowly not in a flash as the story can suggest. Still, it's intriguing to me that the story can create the reality in some of these cases. Like, not the event, but the story about the event.
This flips the usual causal picture
Event (E) --> Life change (C) --> Story about what happened + why it was so important (S)
on its head, looking more like
E --> S --> C
Or sometimes
S --> C --> E
in the case of a self-fulfilling prophecy. "I'm good enough" can make someone who is in fact not good enough confident enough to go out there and to become good enough.
In other words fake it till you become it.