HBR.org I was 34 when I heard my doctor say “stage-four Hodgkin’s lymphoma.” The news hit me like a punch to the face. I was stunned. Then every two weeks for six months, I had to go the Lineberger Cancer Center to receive chemo. I had a hard time getting out of bed on those days. I loathed the nurses injecting poison into me. Once I was there, and the chemo slid into the port, making my chest cold and my mouth taste like metal, I fought back panic.
At the time, I was working on my first book, Change to Strange, and writing a book was a real bucket-list event for me. I could have devoted time to it, but I wasn’t able to — especially in that emotional state. I felt too much anxiety, fear, dread, and disgust about the venom in my veins to do much useful.
My doctor — and hero — Lee Berkowitz set me straight: Sure, chemo was technically poison but it is also a groundbreaking medicine and I should feel lucky to have it. If I had been diagnosed before 1980, when doctors discovered how to treat Hodgkin’s lymphoma, I would have had to watch the life drain out of me. To put it bluntly, I would have died.
This shift in focus from poison to medicine had a big impact on me. Instead of focusing on the negative, I started thinking about how chemo was going to allow me to see my daughters grow up.
Chemo sessions still weren’t fun, of course, but the purpose of the sessions seemed different. My reactions to the chemo slid from resistance to commitment as my resilience and energy improved. I used the sessions to work on my book, which I was passionate about.
My chemo experience taught me something I’m trying not to forget: The stories that we generate and tell ourselves can have huge effects on our behaviors and the results that we create. If we can craft a better story about the meaning of our circumstances, then we can change the way we relate to those circumstances. The result? Better emotions and better outcomes. Why It Works
When we believe in the why of our actions, we have greater resilience and stamina when the going gets tough. As Friedrich Nietzsche said, “He who has a why to live can bear with almost any how.” It’s all about the meaning that we assign to our actions.
Psychologists have a term for how we subjectively perceive the world around us, and it’s called construal. What’s important to understand is that there are different levels of construal, ranging from low to high, and whatever level we’re operating on has effects on our attitudes and actions. Low-level construal is when we think very concretely about the physical details of the present situation (chemo is poison and is being injected into my veins). High-level construal is when we don’t focus so much on the concrete details and think of the bigger picture (chemo will help me see my daughters grow up). This higher level is optimal because it makes us think of long-term objectives and gives us a greater sense of purpose.
Cancer changed my life by encouraging me to reexamine the stories I’d been telling myself, and to re-craft them with higher levels of construal.
My advice is don’t wait until you get cancer to improve your story of why you’re doing what you’re doing.
It doesn’t take much to craft a more meaningful story, and once you’ve developed one, you can leverage it to improve all aspects of your life and work — not just the big things. Here are a few ways to get started. Identify the Stories You’ve Been Telling Yourself
We have stories running around in our brains about all our actions. Sometimes we start to believe in the things that people around us say, especially when extrinsic rewards like job offers and status are on the line.
Here is an exercise that can help you identify your existing stories (because they can be slippery and subconscious) and help you find a story that is truer and more inspirational to you.
The exercise is based on construal level theory by Antonia Freitas and her colleagues, and consists of considering each task or behavior of your job and then asking “Why?” four times. This exercise nudges us to (1) recognize what story we are telling ourselves about the why of our behavior, and (2) develop a higher-level and more meaningful way to interpret our activities.
First, figure out how you’re spending your time. Use your calendar to make this realistic. Take a week or two that is representative of your everyday life and write down your activities. There may be four to five “big” activities that devour 70%–80% of your time, and then lots of smaller activities that are less frequent and less consuming.
For each activity, ask four times why you do it. For example, one of your activities might be holding performance review discussions with employees. So, ask, “Why do I do this?” and then really listen to the answer that you hear running around in your head. You might hear back: “Because I have to…twice a year.” Or you might hear: “I want to let my people know where they stand.” Adapted from
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Whatever the answer is, write it down and then ask “Why?” a second time: “Why do I have to?” or “Why do I want to let my people know where they stand?” The answers you hear might not be inspiring, such as “because it’s part of my job,” or “because HR withholds my raises unless I turn them in signed.” Or, the answers might start to sound inspiring to you: “so that people can know how they can reach their career goals.” And then a third time: “Why do you care if HR withholds your raises?” or “Why do you care if people know how to reach their career goals?” And so on, for one last iteration. Remember, this is for you only: You are not doing this to impress anybody. So really try to answer honestly based on the story you have in your mind.
What you are trying to do at this stage is figure out what story you have imported from your environment across time. It doesn’t mean that the story is “true” or that you can’t change it. But the sad thing is that many of us are not even aware of how we are construing our behavior. And we might not be very impressed by our stories when we reveal them. Choose a Better Story
Next, choose a story that is most personal and useful for you. The same behaviors and activities take on very different meaning to us depending on the stories we tell ourselves about what we are doing. If we choose more-meaningful stories about our work based on personal values, perspectives, and experience, we can interpret our impact in better ways and light ourselves up.
The story that inspires you only has to be true to you. You do not need to “sell it” to anyone else for it to ignite your positive emotions and resilience.
Take Candice Billups, for example. She has worked for over 30 years as a janitor at the Comprehensive Cancer Center at the University of Michigan (you can watch Candice describe her work here). On the one hand, Billups could focus on the low level of construal — mopping floors and refilling soap dispensers. However, Billups interprets her work in a different way. She says: “I am basically there for the patients…. My relationship with the families is really important to me…. I see myself as a positive force at the Cancer Center.”
Billups focuses on the why of the work in a way that is meaningful to her (helping patients through a difficult time) rather than repetitive physical tasks. Of course, both are true — but we have latitude to focus on one story or the other. Which story energizes us more?
For me, instead of viewing teaching as secondary to research (as academics are incentivized to do), I decided after my cancer scare to use the platform of my teaching to show leaders how they could help employees get more living out of life. I experimented with this new story about teaching, and I found that it was not only more inspirational to me but also truer to my past and more consistent with what I had learned: Life is short, and we should get the most meaning that we can from it. Since we work most of our waking hours, leaders can have a big influence on the meaning that employees feel about their work. Match Your Behaviors to Your Story
The final step is, after revealing and “re-purposing” what you do, is to change your behavior. Hopefully, you can seek out more activities and responsibilities that align with your passions.
For me, this step was simply a matter of talking with my classes more about the power of purpose, and sharing evidence-based ways of putting more living into life. This felt more true to me than teaching students “best HR practices” like planning SMART goals and annual incentives. I even wrote a new book about it, which I appropriately titled Alive at Work.
The research shows that when employees can find personalized ways to enhance their jobs, it ignites them. It builds their enthusiasm, engagement, and sense of purpose. As individuals change the boundaries of their jobs around their strengths and interests, it affects the way they define themselves as workers and as people.
What might be less obvious to us is that we can craft our jobs without waiting to be asked. It is so common to assume work is something that we must do because we need the money. Many of us forget about the possibility that we can do more without being asked or paid; we can do more for no other reason than it boosts our enthusiasm.
When thinking about what to bring to work, let your new story serves as your compass.
Your story about why you do what you do is not objective — you can’t see it or touch it — but it is very real in one sense: It affects how you act and how others respond to you. You will find that it is possible to change the story you tell about your work activities, and the evidence suggests that you will feel more inspired, energized, and resilient. Change your behaviors to match the best story you can believe in, and you are more likely to inspire others and make your work more meaningful.
Dan Cable is professor of organizational behavior at London Business School. His new book is Alive at Work: The Neuroscience of Helping Your People Love What They Do.