Stories are the brain's programming language

We go about life making judgments based on our values. This event? Good. That thing? Bad.

We update these values and judgments as we go through life.

I believe the core way our brain updates these values is through stories. Stories are the brain's programming language.

So you must control which stories you expose yourself to.

And use it to your advantage.

Why I started reading fiction

I'm chatting with the Director of Curriculum at the ed-tech writing company where I work. She's brilliant, has a master's in language and literacy, speaks several languages, and we're talking about books. I'm obviously unqualified, but she's great and always makes me comfortable in our conversation.

At that point, I'm already an avid reader, but of mostly nonfiction: business, psychology, economics, and self-improvement—lots of self-improvement.

But I didn't get fiction. And I don't think many people do, either.

Back to our conversation: She's telling me about this new book she's reading and how it has excellent lessons behind it and leads you to reflect on things. I mention I don't read much fiction.

She insists (and she's right) that by reading fiction you get learnings intertwined in a story. I'm not sold.

I reply by asking:

"But if it's the learnings you're interested in, why would you want the learnings all mixed up with stories? If you can more efficiently get just the learnings themselves?"

It was an honest question, and she was stumped. We talked a bit about the fun of reading fiction, how it encouraged reading, and then moved to other topics.

It's too bad because I now have the answer to my own question:

Reading facts won't change our values. Stories do. If you want to get to the truth, you should find the facts. But if you want to change your values, you should listen to stories.

And I think the reason for that is that stories are the brain's programming language.

Fiction is used for many purposes: escapism, fun, learning how to write by example from great writers, appearing intellectual, etc.

But I think the most important reason for reading fiction is it's one of the best methods available for deliberately updating our own values.

The power of stories in changing behavior

One of the first self-improvement books I read was T. Harv Eker's Secrets of the Millionaire Mind, decades ago.

I still remember clearly what he calls the Wealth Principle.

WEALTH PRINCIPLE: Thoughts lead to feelings. Feelings lead to actions. Actions lead to results.

Secrets of the Millionaire Mind (p. 18). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.

What he's getting at is that our results are the effect of our actions, and to change these results, we must change how we act. But to change how we act, it's not enough to just decide to act differently; we must change our thoughts.

But how do we change our thoughts?

Here's the author, again, talking about financial "programming."

Your thoughts originate from the “files of information” you have in the storage cabinets of your mind. So where does this information come from? It comes from your past programming. That’s right, your past conditioning determines every thought that bubbles up in your mind. That’s why it’s often referred to as the conditioned mind.

To reflect this understanding, we can now revise our Process of Manifestation in the following manner:

Your programming leads to your thoughts; your thoughts lead to your feelings; your feelings lead to your actions; your actions lead to your results.

Therefore, just as is done with a personal computer, by changing your programming, you take the first essential step to changing your results.

So how are we conditioned? We are conditioned in three primary ways in every arena of life, including money:Verbal programming: What did you hear when you were young?Modeling: What did you see when you were young?Specific incidents: What did you experience when you were young?

Secrets of the Millionaire Mind (pp. 19-20). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.

I'm quite surprised by how this relatively obscure, pseudo-scientific, and hyperbolically titled self-help book describes what I believe to be quite close to the truth:

Your values lead you to judge events in a particular way. These judgments influence how you feel and, therefore, how you act. Change your values, and you will change your actions.

Using stories to change values is nothing new: advertisers, salespeople, politicians, and anybody in the business of influencing, persuading, or even manipulating knows the power of stories.

But for whatever reason, for centuries, we have deliberately crafted and exposed others to stories to change their values, but not our own.

How to change a mind – even yours

In How Minds Change, author David McRaney explores how people change deeply held beliefs with methods like "Deep Canvasing" and "Street Epistemology."

What's fascinating about these persuasion methods is that 1) they're very effective at changing people's values, and 2) they actively avoid using any facts or data to do it.

In Deep Canvasing, a method that a non-profit in LA uses for influencing political opinions in their region, the author reflects on the shocking effectiveness of the technique that has people change their political views after a 30-minute cold visit:

I couldn't shake the idea that I, too, was probably one conversation away from changing my own mind about something, maybe a lot of things. [..]

In the training, after the videos, Laura handed things over to Steve, and I got my first clue. He opened by telling the crowd that facts don't work. A serene man with a gentle and patient spirit, Steve put away his persistent smile and raised his voice to address the audience on this point.

"There is no superior argument, no piece of information that we can offer, that is going to change their mind,' he said, taking a long pause before continuing. "The only way they are going to change their mind is by changing their own mind – by talking themselves through their own thinking, by processing things they've never thought about before, things from their own life that are going to help them see things differently."

David McRaney, How Minds Change, p.29

To re-emphasize: "No piece of information will change their minds."

But if not facts, then what would change one's mind? Their story.

"It's in his experiences, not ours," Steve said. "The path is helping him talk through them whether they seem relevant. Then saying, 'OK, huh, what conclusions have you drawn based on those experiences?"

In this method, the person trying to influence the other's opinions asks questions and has them narrate the anecdotes that come to mind — their stories. These stories are often stories with deep significance and strong feelings for the person relating them.

Because facts can't directly change your mind. You need stories to update your values.

And because stories don't have to be true to change your mind, you can change it with this one easy tool: Fiction.

Fiction and universal truths

In Beyond Wealth, Alexander Green tells the story of when a friend was arguing about fiction with Nicolas Taleb, the famous author of Black Swan and Antifragility:

Two years ago, for instance, a friend and I bumped into Nassim Nicholas Taleb, author of The Black Swan, at a bookstore in Vancouver. (This was no great coincidence. All three of us were speaking at an investment conference at the Fairmont down the street.)

Taleb indicated that he was planning to write a book on religion, whereupon my friend and he got into a brief dispute about whether a particular theological point “was true.”

Like many conversations of this nature, more heat was shed than light. Frustrated at one point, Taleb waved an arm toward the fiction section. “How about all those books over there. Are they true?”

“Of course not,” my friend said. “They’re novels.”

“But they are full of universal truths,” I added.

Taleb turned and jabbed a finger in my direction. “Exactly!”

Green, Alexander. Beyond Wealth (pp. 168-169). Wiley. Kindle Edition.

While the author uses this story to illustrate perennial philosophy, I'd like to use it to meta-illustrate how stories and fiction are used to teach us the truth.

Others are fighting for your attention and using stories to influence you, changing your values and behaviors.

But through fiction, you have a powerful tool to make your own choices about which stories you're exposing yourself to, and which values you're programming in yourself.

If fiction is full of universal truths, or not, you have no choice but to absorb it when you expose your brain to it over and over, just like you do when exposed to advertising, political propaganda, or social media.

You might as well choose your fiction carefully and to your advantage.

Selecting fiction, selecting values

In this exercise, we'll consider a simple story meant to persuade us and then relate it to fiction to find what they have in common.

Think about a blog post or LinkedIn article you recently read, a social media post, or (god forbid) TV advertising you saw. These typically tell a story.

• What was the headline?
• What did that story say?
• What did it want you to believe?
• Did it try to persuade you with facts?
• Did it try to persuade you with a narrative?

Now, think back about the last piece of fiction you read or saw. It might be a book or a TV show.

Now try to do a similar exercise to the one you did about the social media post, but for your fiction:

• If this story tried to convince you of something or many things, what would those things be?
• If this story wanted you to believe in something, what would it have you believe?
• Did it try to persuade you with facts?
• Did it try to persuade you with a narrative?

Fiction beliefs can be more challenging to unpack because there's usually a lot in them, but after a while, you get good at identifying the values portrayed:

• "The world is a dangerous place. Or the world is full of opportunity. Or the world is unfair."
• "If you're really strong (or really smart), you can thrive and get to the top"
• "Everyone deserves finding love, even if they're inadequate. They just need to be discovered"
• "Some 'kinds' of people just don't think the 'right' way about the world. People are cruel. People are kind. People are selfish"
• "This one country is good. This one country is bad"
• "You will be happy if you do hard things. Or you will be happy if you don't have many responsibilities"
• "What you're going through right now is OK. What you're going through right now is NOT OK"

All these values, or whichever ones you find in your reflection, can be true in the right context. None are patently false. They're just true enough.

What's interesting is that your brain, and mine, will absorb them as they are and use them to recalibrate how we think about the world around us.

Given that, we may as well be really careful and deliberate about which stories we use to program our own brains.