Amy Swift Crosby

The story is (so often) in the telling.

I love how parallel messages appear in our lives in unforeseen ways. Often, a theme will reveal itself in one channel (work) but repeat itself in another (parenting, friendship), despite the fact that the situations have nothing to do with each other. In my own life, these recurring patterns often support and nurture the best version of myself, but what to do when others show up as acute reminders of what isn’t working?

Therapists, astrologers, doctors — virtually any professional dot-connector — look to patterns to help people make sense of their circumstances. Those of us in the self-reflective camp also gaze into our individual constellations to draw lines — to find continuity — in an effort to get a sense who we are in the eyes of others. Whether we’re aware of it or not, it’s this feedback loop that affects change and helps us live harmoniously in our relationships.

But what are we to do when the messages arrive vis-à-vis dynamics where dialogue is already charged or where old wounds fester even in new conversations? Could be between boss and employee, business partners, parents and children — in marriage. This is where it’s easy to get hung up and stuck in a cycle.

Sample dialogue from my own life:

Me (to myself): “he thinks my standards are too high — that I’m demanding.”
Me, to my key complaint collaborators, expanding on the meaning out loud: “he must not respect me, or maybe it’s all women.”

But, if I step back and look at the conversations that informed these assumptions through a more critical lens, it’s not hard to see that I have assigned meaning to whatever was said and become more attached to it with every re-telling. (Incidentally, my take was wrong.)

As a professional storyteller, I have the opportunity to look at a company’s DNA and make decisions about how the story is told, and there are always a variety of ways to go that could all be equally true. But as people, we are not brands (in our personal lives, at least). Yet our stories deepen and define our experience the more often we (re) tell them. So while a brand benefits from re-telling the same story (in different ways) on a consistent basis, people may not.

I wonder, is there a way to utilize the re-telling as an opportunity to re-pattern?
Could the words we choose to recount challenging experiences be used to create filters that somehow disrupt the same patterns from arising in the future? It would mean reframing the stories we tell ourselves in the present, in service to the promise of a future with fewer convictions – but more room to grow.

Here’s an example (if you’re still reading this bonus-length-blog) that allows me to test this hunch further, without revealing too much about the multiple (so many!)  areas of my own life where it rings true.

Over the past year, my 9-year old daughter has been reporting various situations at school (or in her life in general) that she has dubbed “soANNOYING.” After watching this word emerge a little too frequently over several months (and realizing that she’s clearly an early-adopting-pre-teen), I brought it to her attention. We talked about how it feels to be a person who is constantly “annoyed.” What does “annoyable” look like? Sound like? When framed in this way, she didn’t like the picture I painted, which allowed us to start a little game together.

The challenge? You can’t say “annoyed” or any derivative of “annoyed.”

What has replaced it? She found her way with…

“Unexpected.”
“Surprising.”
“Distracting.”
“Strong.”
“Curious.”
“Interesting.”
 “Unclear.”
“Powerful.”

Lots of vocabulary bonus points here, but more importantly, it allowed us to have a dialogue about options, specifically the choice to reframe events in the retelling of them. What could be catalogued as “bad” gets to be reorganized (with more empathy and less judgment) without sacrificing her experience.

“James used some strong words toward me in class. It bothered me.”
“She keeps tapping her foot on my chair — it’s becoming distracting.”
“Well…that comment was unexpected!”

This game has actually changed how she (and I) view discord, because in recounting the situation (the place most of us commit to our stories), we’ve forced a process that allows for better options; options that could be equally true, but don’t reinforce the worst filter of our worldview.

Of course, I love this for her young mind, but after a few weeks of hard conversations in my own life, I’ve taken to doing the same thing. By examining the first meaning I attribute (always emotional), and the vocabulary I use to retell it (to my own sympathetic audiences), it’s easy to see that almost nothing has to mean what it may first seem to mean. Just because an initial feeling conjures up highly charged feelings, it’s important to be conscious of how they can infiltrate and have power over our personal history.

This is really about how we assign meaning…and being open to reframing that assignment.

This falls partly into the ‘loving kindness for others” category (usually a good thing to give benefit of the doubt), but the most self-serving view of this is how it might shift our personal tectonic plates.

I would never minimize a feeling by replacing a traumatic experience with a veneer of happiness or “silver lining.” That’s not what I am suggesting. But what I do appreciate about this challenge is having the awareness to ask myself, in the aftermath, “could it be seen another way? Could I take some more productive lesson from the outcome? Is there a way to interpret this with less rush to categorize? Is it possible I can’t know everything from where I sit?”

We are always becoming…more …of something.

It’s easy to see this self-improvement process as an evolution that happens in front of us — an aspiration that reaches forward toward the kind of human we’d like to be more of. But I think the way we make sense of past infractions plays a big hand in who we slowly (but certainly) become. By being less right — or less certain about the story we think is at play – we get to write a different one that may re-shape pesky plot patterns we don’t much like.

Imagine being able to rewrite tomorrow before it happens?

The story in the telling – as much as the re-telling.

When it comes to needing answers, should we examine, analyze and push? Or, is there also a time to allow, observe and… take action, without concluding? In other words, might we get a better definition by allowing one to reveal itself?

Pandemics aside, when a business struggles or a disparity is uncovered; when one person in a relationship needs a concrete direction in order to move forward; or in almost any circumstance that begs for an immediate resolution — we all react differently, according to how we’re wired to recognize (and tolerate) the unresolved.

I recently did a 23andMe DNA test, after three years of letting it sit on my desk. I had resisted it for various reasons but finally gave in. It contradicted everything I had been told about my dad’s side of the family and revealed a startling absence in the lineage that had been ‘my story’. The information was so destabilizing and disorienting that my mind could only conceive one conclusion, that my paternal grandmother had misinformation, or worse, created a narrative that wasn’t true. But just days later, a friend shared that even siblings can share the same heritage and still have radically different DNA. Suddenly, my conclusion took a left turn when it was headed right; my grandmother’s account could be legitimate but not appear in saliva analysis. The answer needed time to resolve itself, and I could not have predicted its reassuring resolution.

Here’s another way this shows up.

In one of my businesses, we look at the End Of Day report as a snapshot of that day’s sales, but not as a measure of the business on the whole. We need to know what worked and what didn’t – Key Performance Indicators – but we try not to get attached to outcomes within these brief pictures. Every month we look at numbers to investigate growth, losses… idiosyncratic data points. Still, even one month doesn’t give us enough intel to have a real conversation about the health of the business. A (former) partner, however, had a different outlook on these KPI’s. He took a hyper-focus to certain numbers, which significantly impaired our ability to watch and learn. We became less effective because we felt forced to create premature answers to problems that hadn’t existed long enough to be fully known.

And…the same can be true in relationships. It’s easy to want reassurance and certainty about interpersonal opacities. If it’s gray, we want it black or white (or at least a name for that shade of gray). Do you want what I want…when I want it? Are we going in the same direction? Do you feel good /bad/indifferent about the same things I do? Forcing an answer to questions as complex as these can sometimes have the opposite effect, stifling a process that needs time and space.

Nevertheless, it’s all subjective.

I have imposed my need for answers to questions (at work, in love) because my need to know now was stronger than my ability to wait…see…revisit. I sacrificed the potential of a clearer, more informed answer because I couldn’t see that it was materializing…just more slowly than my mind was willing to accept.

What is the impact, then, when we can’t stand the process enough to let it continue?

Do some shapes form when we put down the protractor and stop trying measure them?

Answers matter. But extracting them prematurely has consequences, too. Like interrupting a flower while it’s in bloom, or reading a poem before its finished, sometimes a thing needs to be in motion… for longer… to establish a rhythm worth articulating.

It’s okay to wait and see. But only if it’s okay with you.

If you don’t do it, you can bet on what will happen.
If you do, what will happen is anyone’s guess.

Big or small, grand or granular, regret is an effective litmus test for action. It’s natural to perseverate over certain decisions, but when put through the framework of regret, the question gets clearer.

So…

If you don’t do it, you won’t have to wonder if it was silly, boring, narcissistic or mediocre, because you won’t have done it, so you won’t have to mentally review it.

If you don’t do that thing you’re wondering if you should do, you can be sure that you didn’t use the wrong word, didn’t offend anyone, didn’t waste an opportunity, didn’t choose the lesser version, didn’t take a left when you should have gone right. You won’t have to second guess yourself.

And maybe the biggest vote for not doing it is that no one can judge, criticize, analyze, ignore or overlook what you did. No one can not like it, so you don’t have to wonder what was wrong with it; or if it was likable. You can also skip the part where you wince in the aftermath of doing it, wondering if that person whose approval matters so much saw it, liked it…or cared.

In fact, forget anyone liking it. They won’t. Because it won’t be there.

But know this.

If you don’t do it, you won’t have conversations with people about that thing you did, because they won’t have seen it, and you won’t have inspired them to think about it. They won’t get to consider or turn over an idea, and then talk with you about it. You’ll have (maybe) withheld the opportunity to bring them closer to their own purpose.

You won’t get to see, touch or feel that thing either, because it’s still somewhere inside you.

And you also won’t get to see what you can do when you do something. Because you didn’t.

Not doing it is a guarantee that none of these things will happen.

But if you do it, the possibilities are limitless.

You might get an email from a stranger telling you how much what you did changed her life.
You might uncover, reveal or surprise yourself with your own potential.
You might be recognized by someone you admire, whose work inspired you to do it.
You might finally wake up in the morning in peace, because you did it, and now you’ve done it.
You might stop wondering if you missed your chance, the boat, the trend, the time. Because you won’t have.
You might produce something you had no idea was inside you, and that thing will change everything that comes next.
With one road you know.
With the other, you don’t.

One is certain.
The other uncertain.

So. Should you do it?

“New Year, New You.” Cliched and virtually invisible in its ubiquity, this over-used — arguably useless — marketing message is still (to my amazement) in rotation.

Not to be a bummer, but…

A new year is not necessarily an opportunity for a new you.
A new year is the passing of time that, in this case, happens to be positioned as a hard reset from our unpredictable lives, that sells a manufactured opportunity to assess one’s circumstances.

And that’s why clichés exist — because we’re too lazy to think up an equally punchy way to say something more specific, meaningful and resonant.

What it hopes to say is, it’s a new year, so you can reinvent yourself, and leave behind all those habits, people and situations that have dragged you down — that make you lesser than you want to be in some way. It’s a new year, so the aspects of yourself that you can’t stand anymore, the projects that haven’t been completed, the relationship that hasn’t been found, the body that disappoints you, can now (almost instantaneously) become a thing of the past. And because it’s a new year, ridding yourself of everything that traps you in an eddy of discontent is, now, even more urgent than it was just days ago.

I don’t think this shortcut New Year’s message is going anywhere (unfortunately). And I’m not dissing New Year’s goals – which can yield extraordinary long-term results. But put it this way – it’s a false promise.

Even for those of us who set New Year’s goals and resolutions, the real reason “New Year, New you” falls flat is because we know we won’t be all that much different than we were last year — no matter what gym we join, diet we start or program we enroll in. A new “you” takes a while if it’s going to be genuinely different than today’s “you.”

It’s easy to understand why a message like this once struck a chord; a new version of ourselves is a viable idea to sell. After all, the intention of reinvention isn’t bad. When the message was first deployed, it was catchy — it makes a memorable pitch in an alliterative package.

But the reason it doesn’t work in version 100,000 is that apart from its overuse (deletable), we also intuitively know better. We know that our rate of change (or stagnation), is rarely instantaneous. Whether we want to admit it or not, we know that transformation happens in our minds first, and then everywhere else. We know that a steady drip, more than a cascade, is a more viable path to progress.

I’d argue that we (customers, followers, audience profiles) would like to be given a little more credit when it comes to messaging, and that “New Year, New You” is tone def even for those of us who actually are the “you’s” making incremental healthy changes all the time.

The reality is, New Year, Same You. Lots of potential in every second you’re on this planet is a better message. But it’s a terrible copy.

Better language would reflect this knowing — and probably earn our attention (and maybe even our dollars), if it had this consciousness behind it. If the marketing team started there, I have higher hopes that a meaningful idea could be generated. This would also deliver conversions and customers, because even at our most fatigued (which is these days), a message that speaks to our true potential, that sees us in our real human experience, will always have a better chance than a prepackaged one.

New Year.
Same you.
What are you going to do about it?

That could work.

What happens to our belief in the fantastical… once we know better?

This year, I found myself at a high-stakes pivot with my kids, smack dab in the crosshairs of a zero-gray area dilemma. Do I reveal or do I conceal? As a parent, you get used to the daily toggle between what you disclose (about life and death, headlines, anxieties,) and what you spin. These re-messaging strategies are a fundamental dimension of parenting, on most days.

But there is this one particular chapter of childhood that feels especially weighty. It’s that precarious transition from a world where fairies trade teeth for dollars and Santa Claus shimmies down 6-inch chimney pipes, to one where a steady stream of Amazon Prime deliveries trigger a Pavlovian response. Which is to say that for many, the first big secret of adulthood is: it was your mom and dad all along. 

This is that year for us.

After four failed mornings of Elf on the Shelf (which is to say the Elf failed to move from his previous location…#problematic), I had to come clean about who was actually moving him. Not totally unexpected, as the Santa and Easter Bunny conversations had also transpired this year, I thought it would be a slightly heartbreaking conversation. But it turned out to be a fairly practical one. They kind of already knew.

Still, it gave me pause, and not just because I tend to be our household’s chief magic maker, nor because of the mixed emotions stirred by a crossed threshold. What arose in me was a deep need to explain to my kids that while this theatrical version of magic was changing for them, the magic of another sort was just beginning.

Just yesterday it seems they were racing around the house searching high and low for Freddy the Elf, consumed by which crevice he’d chosen that day. Now, while only 8 and 10, our parental dramas around Freddy and “Santa” were met with eye rolls and finger quotation marks.

While I hope a pre-teen attitude isn’t settling in early, what I really hope is that they don’t lose touch with their belief in the good things they can’t see or touch — with magic as a spontaneous possibility. 

It got me thinking — what is it that makes magic possible? What are the conditions under which magic can make an unscheduled appearance? What is it that exists in kids naturally, that we lose, or give up, in exchange for adulthood?

The answer is naïveté; Unseen dimensions. Belief in things we can’t explain; Manifestations that have seemingly nothing to do with what we’ve achieved, but are simply the result of who we are.

But how often do we see smart, successful adults cultivating the qualities of gullibility and guilelessness?

A lot of us unknowingly (and preemptively) forfeit the ties to our dreams and hopes as a way to avoid disappointment. The desire to be all-knowing, un-flappable — the kind of person who won’t get fooled, manipulated or tricked — becomes paramount to our security. We adopt an unspoken attitude of defensiveness as a shield to life’s right hooks, a way to curtail lingering grief about our un-realized destinies, or what may just not be possible for us. But in striking this pose, I suspect we sacrifice something along the way, which is neither intellectual, nor analytical, nor even spiritual, actually – it’s belief.

Magic can’t find a seat at a table filled with doubt. By definition, one has to live as though she doesn’t know everything, can’t explain it all, and doesn’t want to be privy to what’s around every corner. For as much beef as we have with uncertainty and all its sharp elbows, when it comes to wishing for more magic, there’s no alternative. It has to come out of left field to even qualify as magic.

Not to be confused with the magical, which might be a sunset on the drive home, a song that moves emotion — a bite of something sublime – these sensory high notes are legitimately magical and should be labeled as such — as any conscious person with an ounce of gratitude for life can appreciate.

But magic as a concept seems like something you can’t plan or force…a gift that by definition has to be unbeknownst to you to be certified as magic. Which might call for us to adopt a mindset that encourages surrendering to the unknown in order to experience it. Maybe we could go against all our mature instincts and assume a position much like sleeping with our mouths open, vulnerable to anyone watching, so that by removing our layers, a surprising, maybe even forgotten dream – finds its way in.

This year’s Elf fail marked the end of certain childhood myths, which comes with some melancholy for me. On one hand, I feel relieved to stop setting alarms before bed to move the beanbag man, throwing up roadblocks to delay entrance into a room with dead giveaways. On the other, I’m inspired to discover new magical threads in the fabric of life and make magic a priority, to be noticed — and not exclusive to a season.

I explained to my girls that although they now knew the truth about some imaginary characters they thought were real, I also reassured them that there were plenty of wonderful surprises that would still mystify them throughout their lives. In fact, I said that the really mind blowing magic is all the good things that will seem to come out of nowhere — yet seem totally right, as familiar as their own fingerprint.

With surprise and awe, I said, you’ll marvel at these surprises, and wonder what you had to do with having them. You’ll discover answers to some, but find no explanation for others. Just being who you are set a butterfly effect into motion — which resulted in a much-needed presence… whatever “it” is.

The trick is not to doubt the goodness — not to become too smart to believe in what isn’t obvious or reasonable. Just because it’s no longer manufactured, does not mean it can be explained.

Trading pragmatism for fairy dust wasn’t the parenting moment I thought I’d have, but turns out – it’s what I want to teach them most.

Do the weight of certain words change according to the times? In 2018, might we need to reset our relationship to ideas that at one time, might have seemed empowering?

I recently came across a lecture series, created and hosted by a major fashion retailer in New York City, designed to get the attention of someone exactly like me.

The series was called “Fearless Women.”

F E A R L E S S.

Is this what times like these call for? Having no fear?

This past week, as Dr. Christine Blasey Ford began her congressional testimony, the word she used to describe her reluctant recounting of traumatic personal events was “terrified.” She’s not the first to use that word. But what marketers choose pluck from #metoo and movements giving voice to previously silenced audiences, though earnest, feels tone def. The impulse to package fearlessness doesn’t actually make fear go away.

Even before last week’s stunning news cycle, I found myself questioning the thinking behind a message like “Fearless Women.” The word is featured prominently next to entrepreneurs on the cover of People, in GOOP and throughout likeable memes on Instagram. I’m wondering if the teams who voted for “fearless” have ever started something from scratch, pressed send on a piece of art, spoke up when it was easier to be quiet, or stepped into the ring when the sitting on the bleachers was more comfortable? If they had, they might not have imposed the idea of fearlessness on anyone.

Unspoken traumas aside, the intended audience is presumed to be creative, entrepreneurial, autonomous, powerful, self-made women who, as risk-takers, already have a close and consistent relationship with fear. Is this (seemingly blatant) truth lost on those who’d like to get credit for supporting a movement? Here’s where what sounds good in copy is in danger of overshadowing the real meaning of the call to action.

It’s no secret that messaging and campaigns organized around a cultural zeitgeist are tactic #1 for raising visibility for brands. It’s a strategy that creates a halo effect around companies that want to be viewed as relevant and empathetic — more human. Women, and our ancillary interests and concerns, are predictable breadcrumbs for a fashion retailer. So at first glance, women and fearlessness may seem like a match made in marketing heaven. But is “no fear” really what the speakers at this event — visionary, pioneering, bold women — have in common? Do they identify with fearlessness, or are they being asked to organize their stories around a narrative of fearlessness because the retailer has decided that fearless is this season’s must-have accessory?

On many an occasion, when interviewing people who have achieved some degree of fame or public recognition, I have noted a consistent sentiment. It was rarely, if ever, fearlessness, but rather resilience, in spite of fear, that pushed them to put one foot in front of the other. To layer fearlessness over an already unrealistic blueprint of what it takes to be great feels like a misunderstanding at the highest levels of an organization.

When decision makers forget their humanity, they miss the most obvious truths. We actually don’t want to buy fearlessness, even when we’re terrified.

But here’s what we do want.

We want to know she almost didn’t do it.
We want to know she doubted and cringed and stopped and started — had awful, uncomfortable conversations, and got up again the next day to do it again.
More than stoicism or fearlessness, we want to know how she faltered and won, then lost and then tried again.
This is the version that speaks to us.
But it’s a less tidy marketing package.

Since this retailer is known for its exceptional shoe collection, might I suggest a series called, “A walk in my shoes: Blisters, Bunions and Finish Lines.” It would accomplish the same thing — but is a promise that can be kept. It gives everyone the space in which to tell her story — as she really sees it — which hopefully was the company’s original intent.

We don’t slay our dragons as much as learn to tame them. Let’s not hold up “fearless” as a necessary prerequisite to success, or an ingredient for achievement or worth. Few of us steps outside her comfort zone fearlessly. Propagating a narrative that says she should is yet another box we’ll ultimately have to crawl out of.