BOOK EXCERPT: The Heart of the Matter (Chapter 2)

Editor's note: Each week, the Henrico Citizen will present a new chapter of The Heart of the Matter, a forthcoming book by Gayle Turner and Shelli Jost Brady, longtime Central Virginia leadership consultants, storytellers, and community builders. Through stories and reflection, the authors explore how the values people hold and the stories they tell shape the decisions they make — at work, at home, and in communities. Follow along each week as the book unfolds, one chapter at a time.

Chapter 2 — We live in to the stories we tell ourselves

Long before we learn how to manage money, power, conflict, or leadership, we learn how to tell ourselves what is happening.

Not accurately.
Not objectively.
But meaningfully.

We learn who we are.
We learn what the world is like.
We learn what works and what gets punished.

And once those stories take root, we stop seeing them as stories.

We call them “reality.”

The most powerful story you'll ever tell

The most influential stories in our lives are not the ones we tell others.

It’s the ones you tell ourselves about:

• Why things happen
• What we deserve
• What we can expect from people
• What we must do to survive

Those private narratives become our operating systems.

And like any operating system, they run in the background—quiet, unquestioned, and always active.

The moment the lights came on for me

As I shared in Chapter 1, Mon Oncle d’Amérique was the moment I realized something unsettling:

Human behavior is not nearly as free as we like to imagine.

Henri Laborit showed that much of what we call “choice” is conditioned response—shaped by:

• Reward
• Pain
• Control
• Avoidance
• Survival

But what struck me even more deeply was this:

Once we act from instinct, we immediately wrap a story around it.
We explain it.
We justify it.
We morally upgrade it.

And then—here’s the dangerous part—we totally believe that story.

From that moment on, we no longer experience our actions as reactions.

We experience them as identity.

How stories become identity

Stories don’t just describe us. They become us.

I’m the responsible one.
I’m the rebel.
I’m the peacemaker.
I’m the one who can’t trust anyone.
I’m the one who has to win.
I’m the one who keeps everyone safe.

At first, these are survival strategies.

Later, they become our personality.

Eventually, they become destiny—unless they’re examined.

Why smart people stay trapped

One of the greatest mistakes we make in leadership is assuming that intelligence frees people from bad stories.

It doesn’t. In fact, intelligence often makes the stories more elegant, more rational, and more defended.

Smart people don’t escape flawed narratives. They build better explanations for them.

This is why:

• Leaders repeat destructive patterns across companies.
• Families reenact the same conflicts across generations.
• Cultures replicate the same dysfunction under new slogans.

They aren’t repeating behaviors. They are protecting stories.

The inherited scripts we rarely question

Most people never asked for the story they’re living.

It came from:

• A father’s silence
• A mother’s anxiety
• A coach’s approval
• A teacher’s dismissal
• A first boss’s standards
• A community’s fear

By the time we’re adults, these stories feel like facts. But they are not facts.

They are interpretations that once helped us survive.

Why unexamined stories run organizations

Now take this into a workplace. We don’t just bring our résumé to work.

We bring:

• Our conflict story
• Our authority story
• Our trust story
• Our worth story
• Our fear story

Everyone does this.

When these unexamined stories collide inside organizations, they influence how people interpret events, evaluate choices, and decide what matters most.

These decisions accumulate into patterns of behavior.

These patterns become the way we do things around here.

These stories that have never been examined, challenged, or intentionally aligned with the values our organizations claim operate beneath the surface. 

They become our organizations’ cultures. 

The first act of leadership is story awareness

Before leaders can clarify values…
Before we can command integrity…
Before we can illuminate through story…

We must do something far more difficult:

We must become aware of the stories we ourselves are living into. Because we cannot lead people beyond stories we have never questioned.

We will only reproduce them.

Closing reflection

We do not merely tell stories. We live into them.

And until we learn to examine the narratives shaping our instincts, our reactions will continue to masquerade as choices.

Leadership does not begin with authority. It begins with humility. Living as close to the truth as possible.

Humility begins with story awareness - recognizing and understanding the stories we live into.

Discover what matters most to you by taking "The Culture Compass" free to discover and prioritize the values that guide your decisions; visit storytellerschannel.com/culturecompass.