Transcript

Mapping #1224 · From Chad

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Are you eating dog food? There's a story behind that.
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This is your daily message from Chad #12124 to upgrade your
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mental game today by telling yourself a better story.
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Because the most important story you hear is the story you tell
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yourself. This message is dedicated to Dan
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Birchy. Here's the upgrade words,
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influence, perception, and upgraded thinking make sure
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they're helping me really see. Here's the story.
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There's a story often told about Alfred Korsinski, an engineer
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and the founder of the field of general semantics, which is
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about the way words work. During a lecture, the story
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goes, he pulls out a packet of biscuits wrapped in plain white
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paper. He eats 1.
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He offers them around the room. The students take one, then
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another. They're chewing and nodding.
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Good biscuits, don't you think? He asked the students.
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Then he tears off a cover. On the bag.
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Underneath is the original packaging.
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There's a picture of a dog's head and two words.
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Dog cookies. Everyone stops chewing.
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Many immediately spit out what is left in their mouths. 2
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students ran for the bathroom to throw up, Korsinski said.
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Quote, I've just demonstrated that people don't just eat food,
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but also words, and the taste of the former is often outdone by
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the taste of the latter. End Quote.
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Nothing about the biscuit changed.
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Not the flour, not the crunch, not the taste.
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Only the words changed. And the words one, that's you
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and me. We've lived in the label.
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We live in the words attached to our daily lives.
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We navigate with stories we're told and that we tell ourselves.
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Sometimes they're helpful and sometimes they aren't.
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And unfortunately, we aren't even paying attention to them.
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We just react to them. Gorzynski is most famous for the
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phrase the map is not the territory.
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You probably heard that line used before.
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That doesn't mean maps are worthless.
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His fuller statement was quote a map is not the territory it
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represents, but if correct, it has a similar structure to the
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territory which accounts for its usefulness.
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In quote he never said maps are worthless.
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He said they're useful, but they can mislead us when they're
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wrong or when we mistake them for reality itself.
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Maps have to be tested and interpreted against reality.
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When the map app says there should be a McDonald's at the
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corner of such and such streets and it isn't there, of course
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nobody stands in the empty lot insisting the restaurant must be
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there. But what about with the maps
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that matter? The McDonald's map gets verified
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instantly. The I'm bad with Relationships
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map however drawn decades ago, has never once been checked
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along with 1000 other labels and stories.
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Like I'm not a morning person, I'm bad with money.
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That meaning is going to be a disaster.
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They don't like me. Those are maps.
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Some are good, some were drawn years ago by a scared kid and
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never updated though. You navigate by your map either
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way, every day, every decision. So the question isn't whether
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you have a story. You do.
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The question is whether it's any good, and whether you remember
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to check it against the ground. There's a saying for this when
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the map and the terrain disagree.
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Trust the terrain. Believe the terrain.
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The conversation you're dreading might go fine.
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The person you've written off might surprise you.
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The thing you labeled dog cookies might be the best
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biscuit you ever had. The better story to tell
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yourself is I draw my map from the train and then navigate by
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the new map. The story you tell yourself
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about your life is a map of your life.
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It isn't your life, but you're navigating by it either way.
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So the only question is whether the map is any good, whether
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it's doing you good, and whether you remember to check it against
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the ground. Tell me a story of a time the
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label turned out worse than the real thing to from
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chadsmith@gmail.com. Send someone a text and ask them
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what's the story you told yourself that turned out to be
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wrong? You can get a free copy of my
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book, The Most Powerful Story in the World, by going to from
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chad.gumroad.com. The transcript of this message
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and hundreds of others are always available at
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www.fromchad.com.