Why You Should Tell (True) Stories about Who You Are

Annette Simmons is the author of Whoever Tells the Best Story Wins: How to Use Your Own Stories to Communicate with Power and Impact. Her book is intended to help you get into “story thinking,” using stories as tools for persuasion in your personal and business life.  One of the most important stories you can tell, she says, is the “Who I am” story. Simmons writes, “Your ability to influence people is directly related to what others know or believe about who you are.”

That’s how some of us get into trouble. We all would like to believe we live meaningful, interesting lives. In fact, we all do, if you listen carefully enough. Most of us have great stories to tell about our early influences (family, faith, experiences) and what’s important to us now. We can be justifiably proud of our achievements, including careers, children, businesses we might have built, community or military service – all things that, when shared, help us connect to others and build trust.

But some of us, no matter how interesting their true story is, feel that they have to go bigger to impress, influence, or attract others. Maybe even to feel good about themselves. Politicians, whose very careers revolve around influencing others, are notorious for embellishing their personal histories.

Recent examples are easy to find. Perhaps the most egregious is NY Congressman George Santos, who ran (successfully)  for the House of Representatives in 2022 on a biography that was almost entirely false. Among other lies, he has admitted to saying, falsely:

• that he worked at two prominent Wall Street banks (Citigroup and Goldman Sachs);
• that he’d obtained degrees in finance and economics from two New York colleges;
• that he was Jewish
• that four employees of his company were killed in the Pulse nightclub shooting in Orlando, Florida, in June 2016
• that his mother was working at her office in the South Tower of the World Trade Center during the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. (Nope, she’d been living in Brazil since 1999.)

Santos says he admits to putting “a little bit of fluff” on his resume. 

His behavior was more than merely unethical; it was criminal. He’s been charged with soliciting funds from donors to support his campaign and then converting them for his own personal use as well as claiming Covid-19 unemployment benefits while he had a full-time job making a six-figure salary. 

Ugh.

Of course, Santos is not the only politician to embellish stories or tell outright lies about their life. I’ve met people in my own personal life who have made claims that were almost too good to be true.  Sometimes, people get caught up in a shared memory that feels like theirs, but is actually remembered from video or television. (Especially true of important or traumatic events like 9/11 and historic sports events.) It may not be an attempt to deceive, experts say; as time goes on, we tend to fill in gaps in our memories of events, blurring time and other details. Many of us base memories on stories we’ve heard repeated from family members during our lifetimes. Over the years, a false or embellished version of the story starts to solidify in our minds, becoming “true” for us.

It’s natural, and may even make for better (almost) true stories. But your stories don’t have to be epic to be great. Authentic, well-told stories that show people who you are and why will help you make stronger connections. Annette Simmons writes, “Your job is to break through so people can see, at a deeper level, who you really are beneath the surface. A good Who-I-Am story is like increasing the bandwidth between you and your listeners, thus increasing the amount of information your listeners are ready to receive.”