The Stories We Repeat Become the Culture We Create

Oh Canada, It's Time to Start Telling a Better Story

Imagine seeing Canada through fresh eyes a few decades ago. The stories people told about this country were remarkably consistent. Canada was where people believed opportunity existed. Great healthcare. Great education. Strong banking. A high standard of living. Canada was seen worldwide as one of the best countries in the world to live in.

Today, those stories seem harder to find. The news headlines over the past several years have grown increasingly bleak. Many things aren't working, and there are real problems that deserve honesty. But is continually pointing fingers and amplifying what's broken actually moving us forward?

Every Nation Tells Itself a Story

Fundamentally, that's how human beings connect with one another. We share stories. Every family, business, or organization tells stories, and those stories shape its culture. Every person carries stories about who they are and who they are becoming. And over time, as those stories get repeated, they become identities.

Individual stories shape our personal identity.

Family stories shape our family identity.

Collective stories shape our collective identity as a nation.

“The stories we repeat become the culture we create.”

Where Do Culture-Changing Stories Come From?

Everything starts with having a vision and then sharing it through the stories you repeat. But here’s the thing: when the stories we repeat become stories of failure and decline, they rarely inspire people to build something better. No one was ever motivated to change anything from a position of despair. This doesn’t mean that we put on rose-coloured glasses and ignore our problems, because problems deserve honesty. We should look at our problems through the lens of hope. Hope helps people to see vision and build better futures. Hope doesn't ignore problems; it simply refuses to believe they're the end of the story.

Without hope it’s difficult to have good vision, and as the Bible says, "Without vision, people perish." (Proverbs 29:18).

Consider the stories that started being told after Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream". In that speech he could have listed every problem. He could have pointed fingers. He could have railed against the system. Instead, he shared a vision that people could believe in.

“Without Vision, the people perish.”

(Proverbs 29:18)

Vision Changes the Stories People Tell

Think about it this way:

Vision comes to life through stories

Stories repeated become beliefs

Beliefs become identity

Identity becomes behaviour

Behaviour becomes culture

Culture changes the future.

Remember the Evidence

If we want to see a better future for Canada, we need to start telling a better story. But where do you start when everything presented to you looks bleak? One way to cut through a pervasively negative narrative is to remember past successes, wins and breakthroughs. For Canada, it’s about bringing to our remembrance some of the stories of what this nation has already proven possible. For example, did you know …

University of Toronto Professor, Frederick Banting changed medicine forever through the discovery of insulin, transforming diabetes from a fatal disease into a manageable one.

Former Prime Minister Lester B. Pearson helped prevent war and earned the Nobel Peace Prize for his role in resolving the Suez Crisis.

Entrepreneurs built companies in Canada like Shopify, M.A.C. Cosmetics and Four Seasons Hotels & Resorts, brands recognized around the globe.

Artists like Oscar Peterson, Cirque du Soleil, James Cameron and Denis Villeneuve have shaped music, entertainment and film for audiences everywhere.

University professors Geoffrey Hinton (Toronto), Yoshua Bengio (Montreal) and Richard Sutton (Alberta) laid much of the foundation for the artificial intelligence revolution reshaping our world today.

And these are just a handful of the stories that remind us what Canadians have contributed to the world.

Inspirational? Yes, but we can’t leave it there.

Let’s Write the Next Chapter

While remembering stories from past achievements is an important starting point to stop the negative narrative, it’s not, in and of itself, enough to create change. To do that, we need to start telling the story of a new vision of what our children will be saying about Canada 30 years from now and then building it. As citizens of this great nation, each of us has a role to play. Each one of us can be a catalyst in our own circles of influence, by simply changing the stories we’re listening to, circulating, and speaking. You never know who’s listening to your story and how it may inspire them to do something remarkable.

This Canada Day, let’s celebrate by remembering what we as Canadian’s have already achieved and contributed to the world. And then let’s use that to inspire a new vision and tell a better story about what’s next.

***

Amanda Stassen writes about leadership, work and the human side of building what lasts. Follow @buildwithbizu.