Origin Stories
Long story shortest. Origin stories tell us important truths about who we are and what motivates us.
I grew up in a very small town in Tennessee. My dad was a family doctor, and every March when I was kid, he spent a week hosting university students from Nashville who wanted to learn about health care in our small town. Mid-week, he gathered the students to share stories. I envied the students for hearing from my dad what I hadn’t yet. I dreamed of being among "the chosen." And at last, when I was thirteen, my dream came true.
Fifteen of us circled in the clinic’s waiting room, on weathered canvas seats, hot pizza beside my mom’s fresh chocolate cookies. I can still see the orange glow of the sunset cast across the dark carpet. I sat, with my feet on the floor like the “adults,” and listened as Dad shared two stories about encounters with patients. And they were not what I expected to hear.
He told how he gave an ultrasound to a pregnant woman who revealed that her stomach scars were from when she was three, and her mother set her on fire. And the other about a woman seeking his help for her Xanax addiction who confessed her landlord was forcing her to pay the rent with sex. I remember my stomach churning, like I’d been kicked. These weren’t the kinds of stories I expected to hear. Then Dad challenged us, “Why tell such stories of suffering?” I honestly didn’t know, so I sat quietly, waiting. And then someone said: “Because how will we know how to act if we don’t know the story?”
“Because how will we know how to act if we don’t know the story?”
I believe my dad wanted me to join that night so I’d learn that the world is filled with painful needs; that doing right by the world means attending to those needs; and to do that, we must encounter the stories. This value stuck with me—attending to the pain and need of the world. It sparked a passion that led me to study history, conflict resolution, and to focus my work on the capacity of storytelling to heal harms and make meaning. Because my dad was right—the world’s pain, and our own, needs our attention and action.
This story is one of my origin stories—a story that traces our roots and therefore tells a truth about who we are and what motivates us. I’ll be sharing several of these as we go along. Marvel and DC Comics are stunningly good at origin stories. Knowing that Bruce Wayne saw his parents murdered makes a significant difference in the audience’s understanding of what motivates Batman.
In my ongoing collaborations with my friend David Hutchens and The Storytelling Leader program, we help leaders find, develop, and tell their most impactful stories. And one of the stories we urge leaders to mine and perfect is what we call the “Leader with Conviction” story. (P.S. Want to know more about this type of story and the 25 other key leadership stories we’ve identified? Have a look at The Leadership Story Deck.) This is, essentially, the leadership origin story. “There’s a reason you’re here,” we tell those gathered for our workshops. “Why? When did you first start to realize this work was part of who you are?”
Investigating our origin stories can be a profound practice, and one I invite you to consider trying. There are many origin trails you could explore—romance, work, faith, passion, past times, and more.
If you’re up for trying one, take five minutes and jot down a response to these questions:
What is something you are passionate about?
Why are you passionate about it?
Why? (to your response in question 2)?
Why? (to your response in question 3)?
Why? (to your response in question 4) ?
Why? (to your response in question 5)?
Great, now look at what you wrote in question 6. In all likelihood, you’ve now arrived at a core value. Spend some time over the next few days thinking of a moment early in your life (as early as you can recall) when that value first took hold in you. Then tell the story of what happened.
