Loved the blend of self-help and memoir as you learn lessons from Erica's real life. A great read as we all spend more time getting to know ourselves with quarantine!

It can be hard to stand up straight and orient yourself, says Erica Williams Simon in "You Deserve the Truth," when your surroundings are tilted. While she speaks primarily to Millenials buffeted by the unpredictable twists of a fast-changing economy and society, that statement holds true for anybody of any age in almost any circumstance. In the case of the changes going on at my place of work, my surroundings aren't tilted so much as still very much under construction, but the concept that it can be hard for employees to keep themselves oriented to the company's enduring mission while roles and spaces change remains.

Standing up straight and being oriented, though, can be done, Williams Simon argues, by realizing the stories we've used to define ourselves and the world we think exists around us. We are, in fact, surrounded by stories: those that are just in our heads; those we believe as a result of something we've experienced, seen, or been told; those that are produced, or created, by others for a specific purpose (of which there are exponentially more now than ever before); and those that take on the nature of cultural myths. Realizing the stories, though, is just the first step; the second one is the ability to realize which stories still work for you during times of change, which ones need to be let go of, and how to gain new ones, how to redefine yourself, in other words.

Rabid adherence to one narrative to the exclusion of all others guarantees a fundamental miscalculation of reality, she continues. We must cultivate narrative intelligence, which will help us redefine how we look at change. As the company I work for experiences unprecedented growth and the changes that come with it, people might have the tendency to worry that change is bad, that it leads to unpredictability, or that it might even affect the stability of their job, at worst. Or, they might at least worry that they won't know how to adapt to the changes. They might believe this because a previous life change went bad, or because they handled a previous unpredictable work situation poorly, or simply because they worry a lot about providing for their family all very real fears.

What would help them, no matter their worry, is to redefine the stories they're telling themselves. The author provides several examples of stories we all tell ourselves around things like fear, dreams, work, money, time, faith, and love. Regarding fear in particular, she says the cultural myth is that were supposed to be fearless. Really, though, we're all scared in some way or another. Fear is natural. It doesn't mean that were weak. The way to conquer our fears is to recognize that they're imaginary.

The fear of undesired outcomes makes total sense, but what those outcomes will truly mean for your identity and your life may not, she says. Like an anchor, [fear] can keep you safe in a storm but stuck when its time to move. The redefining, in this case, would not be letting go of the fear, or
ignoring the risks and living like a daredevil. It would be saying, "Yep. This restructuring and move is scary. Now, what do we do about it?" Faith isn't the absence of fear. It is trust and hope through the fear.

So much wisdom was offered in this book, from a sympathetic, knowledgeable, and articulate soul, that I have to give it five stars!

When Erica Williams Simon found herself burned out in a job she hated and quit, she realized quickly it wasn’t just about the job. It was an overarching disappointment in the fact that she’d worked so hard to achieve the external markers of success society said she should, yet those collected markers did not translate to promised financial stability or happiness. She found herself at a “life-altering crossroads of ambition, dissatisfaction, and confusion.” And as she looked around to her Gen Y peers, she saw many of them feeling similarly disillusioned and unsatisfied.

Much of that dissatisfaction, she believes, is not just the mismatch between dominant stories in society and people’s lived reality, but the fact that people have the tendency to blame their own personal shortcomings for that mismatch, i.e. equate the person with the problem.

Simon also notes there are so many conflicting stories about what we should think, believe, buy, and desire, we’re all in a state of constant overwhelm.

She believes there’s a few reasons why we’re overwhelmed by these stories now more than ever: first, there number of stories we’re exposed to daily has grown exponentially, and those stories have creeped into every facet of our lives: people are hawking messages inside messages everywhere you look. She offers the examples of photoshopped celebrities hawking diet teas on instagram, and “ ‘everyday people’ being paid to tell us believable yet wholly untrue tales about tooth whiteners and waist trainers in the midst of their stories about going to school and being a working mom.”

The second reason we’re overwhelmed by conflicting stories is that there are many fewer gatekeepers, filters, or guides to the flood of stories, and because neurologically humans are hardwired for story, they are particularly vulnerable to the flood. She writes, “it started to hit me just how little agency I had exercised in determining what I believed to be true about myself, my life, and the world around me.”

Simon’s solution is to interrogate the cultural stories around fear, dreams, work, money, time, faith, and love with a four part process: 1. What is the story, what do I believe, where does it come from? 2. Does this story serve me and my values? 3. What if I believed something else? 4. What can this new story (created by my new belief on this topic) look like for me?

Simon’s process for interrogating the stories that make us feel bad are markedly similar to techniques in Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, Narrative Therapy, Katie Byron’s “The Work”, and The Sedona Method. Additionally, there are dozens of books with “change your story” in the title, including recent bestselling books /Live the Best Story of Your Life: A World Champion's Guide to Lasting Change/ by Bob Litwin, and /The Insight Cure: Change Your Story, Transform Your Life/ By John Sharp, both of which offer variations on this theme.

However, while this book owes a debt to the work of psychologists and coaches that came before it, it contributes a beautiful new link between psychological conditions and social reality. Readers are encouraged to interrogate the areas of life where the American story has turned toxic and painful, to find the right truth for themselves. (I.e. just because the Kardashians nit-pick their men doesn’t mean you have to behave this way to your sweet, committed, but flawed-as-we-all-are bae).

And as readers find that truth, Simon encourages them to turn around and tell it to others to combat toxic narratives and inspire others to move towards their own truth and what is right for them and their values in terms of money, love, work and more.

This book is important in connecting the personal with the social, in helping Millennials particularly to apply this framework of inquiry to the toxic social stories that are often used as a means of reproducing the status quo, and then to challenge them. Recommended reading for people who have read the “change your mind change the world” stuff but have had a hard time drawing a link between the two.