Last weekend, we visited my daughter at college. She’s a first-year student, and is running on her school’s cross-country team. On Sunday, parents and siblings were invited to join the team for their long run (typically 10-15+ miles).
Clearly this is an invitation one should decline! Which might explain why exactly three parents (myself included), plus two younger sisters (including my youngest daughter) showed up in the pitch black at a woodsy parking lot at 7:25am on a Sunday morning.
None of our group of five had illusions of keeping up with the XC team. But it appeared that I was the only one in our small group who had not been running regularly.
One of the parents, a regular marathoner, popped out of her car and announced, “We agreed we’re running 8 miles at an 8:30 pace.” I knew I was way out of my depth. The four of them (including the 13 and 14 year old) did, in fact, run 8 miles at an 8:20 pace. I, working very hard, managed half that distance at a slower pace.
As I finished the run, it was tough not to compare myself with everyone who ran further and faster than I did, and tougher still not to tell myself a story about my fitness.
“I’m just not in the kind of shape I used to be in.”
A few days later, I came across a video of a running coach giving a scientific explanation of the value of Zone 2 (comfortable pace) running.
The gist of it is: your heart, your circulatory system, and the energy transfer system that gets oxygen to the mitochondria in your cells all improve dramatically when you run at 60% pace. Specifically, the mitochondria, which convert oxygen to energy, get more efficient at that process; they even move closer to the surface of the cell (!!) if you’re running consistently.
Something about that explanation clicked for me. I’ve not been running, so I’ve not being doing the exact activity he said helps with oxygen transfer, so I don’t do that efficiently. That led to a much more specific, useful story:
“Having not run regularly over the last 10 months, my body is less used to converting oxygen to energy, and my mitochondria aren’t hovering around the surface of my cells to create maximum efficiency.”
That feels a lot less damning, and a lot less existential, than “I’m just not in the kind of shape I used to be in.”
The difference is important, because the “what kind of shape am I in?” story is personal, it’s big, and it might have some staying power in terms of how I see myself, the choices I make about health and fitness, etc.
Whereas the more specific analysis leads to very different conclusions about what is or isn’t going on with my mitochondria and the specific actions I could take to change that. This narrow story doesn’t ladder up to a mess of inaccurate meaning. It doesn’t entice me with a woeful tale of the long, declining path I’m on.
I just haven’t been running, and if I were to run more, I’d get better at running.
What I’m doing here is thin-slicing my story. Visualize it like this, with the highlighted part describing the story I’m telling myself.
I could just say “I’m just not in the kind of shape I used to be in.” That kind of story looks like this.
And this is a story at the level of identity, one that’s much bigger and much more personal than what actually happened.
Whereas a story that starts with “Having not run regularly over the last 10 months, my body is less used to converting oxygen to energy…” looks a lot more like this.
This story, focused on specific skills and aptitudes, stays at that level. I can decide that developing those skills is (or is not) something I want to invest in. But that whole conversation is very contained, and it runs little / no risk of taking on a life of its own.
You can apply this thinking in a million situations, as in:
I just got rejected on this sales call, again.
- I’m a terrible salesperson OR
- I’m not calling the right people / not identifying a need correctly / not asking the right questions
A teammate didn’t help me when I asked for help.
- They don’t like me or care about my success OR
- What’s going on in their day? / Did I make it super clear what needed to happen by when? / Did I express both the what and the why behind my request?
My boss is mad that there was a mistake in the materials we presented to the client.
- I’m a total screw up, I’ll never succeed in this job OR
- I need to create a system where I give myself a 24-hour break before doing a last review of client-ready materials
Thick-sliced stories about our identity keep us stuck. They are the antithesis of a growth mindset, because “I” (our ego) is always at the center of these stories.
Thin-sliced stories, fed by thin-sliced skills, are both more accurate and more useful. They highlight what’s really going on and where we can focus our energy. With a thin-sliced story, a shortfall, a misstep, or a slow run is just what it is, nothing more, nothing less…and certainly not a verdict about you as a person.
