Last year I realized my memory might not be as reliable as I thought.
For years I’d been telling a story about how my senior year of college golf, I beat the now pro golfer J.J. Spaun in a five hole playoff to win Fresno State’s tournament. I went to find the old press release and to my surprise, it wasn’t J.J. Spaun! (albiet I did play with him in the final round)
Honestly, I looked up like 5 other schools websites thinking maybe there was a typo in my college’s write up. Sure enough, they all said the same thing. I was dumbfounded.
I figure I’m not the only one whose memory has failed them, but to be sure, I went looking for some studies that could provide me with some data about this.
I stumbled across this study by a group known as the “9/11 Memory Consortium”1 , where they asked participants to recall details about where they were and what happened at the time of 9/11. Here’s an excerpt I found both comforting and unsettling.
The resulting set of data contained responses from more than 3,000 people in seven cities… After one year, people's memories were consistent with their initial responses only 63 percent of the time. After that, however, they only lost 4.5 percent of their accuracy per year.
"People began to tell what I would call a canonical story," said William Hirst, who was one of the study researchers. "The error they made at 11 months and the error they made at 35 months was the same."
What if there is an important memory about work, that you only have 63% right?
What if that 37% error changed everything?
The stories we tell ourselves matter
Some research estimates that, internally, we speak around 4,000 words per minute to ourselves.2 While I’m not convinced in that actual number, I believe it’s safe to say that we are all storytellers, and most of all to ourselves. The real question then is, what story are we telling, and for our context, what story are we telling about our work?
Sadly, we far too often settle for a story that clearly isn’t from the Lord, and Genesis 3 shows us that this is something we learned immediately after the Fall.
“The the eyes of both of them were opened, and they realized they were naked; so they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves.
Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the Lord God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and they hid from the lord God among the trees of the garden. But the Lord God called to the man, ‘where are you?’
He answered, ‘I heard you in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid.’
And God said, ‘Who told you that you were naked?’
This question is so powerful and so relevant to our lives today. In the context of work:
Who told you that you won’t have friends if you fail at your current job?
Who told you that you aren’t worthy of love if you don’t succeed?
Who told you that your kids need a successful parent more than a loving parent?
Just like in Genesis 3, God is asking you the same question he asked Adam and Eve.
“Who told you that?”
He knew that it wasn’t Him. Do you realize the same?
What story is God writing in your work?
We all need to hear God’s voice far more than our own.
He has a story for our work that He is inviting us into. A story that, if we join him in, holds joy that surpasses understanding.
So as a new friend of mine likes to say, “Let’s pick the better story!”
Here are two truths that I hope encourage you as you try to do just that this week.
First, God has made it clear that He wants to renew our minds
Romans 12:2 — "Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind"
Ephesians 4:23–24 — "and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and to put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness."
Second, God has made it clear that He will provide the renewal
Here’s the coolest part about these verses. It isn’t something we have to make happen.
Philippians 1:6 — "And I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ."
What a gift to know that no matter how far off our stories may be, God promises to use those stories for our good and His Glory.
He has a beautiful plan for you, and for the work he prepared for you on this earth. As you finish your week, I pray that the voice of the deceiver fades away, and that you are able to hear God’s story and rejoice that God is with you in your work.
As always, please respond to this email if you’d like to chat and discuss anything from this or other posts! And if you have any friends who you think might derive value from exploring Wholehearted Work - I’d love for you to share it with them.
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With Heart,
Alex
1 https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2925254/#S5
2 https://matonecounseling.com/the-power-of-mindful-language/
