Can it happen for you? Rags to Riches

Story archetypes:
1. Overcoming the monster (see April 26 post)
2. Rags to Riches (this post)
3. The Quest
4. Voyage and Return
5. Comedy
6. Tragedy
7. Rebirth

Walk out onto the American Idol stage and stand in front of those three judges. You can feel them evaluating you. This is it. This is your opportunity. Your chance to show the world your true worth.

You may have seen Susan Boyle take this same walk a little over a week ago and stand in front of the three judges of the TV show “Britain’s Got Talent.” The camera panned the audience, taking in smirks and raised eyebrows as she declared her dream of becoming a famous singer. She looked more like a mouse than a star performer and spoke like a country hick. But then… she opened her mouth. When she sang the first line of “I dreamed a dream,” from Les Miserables, the audience stopped breathing. Their eyes opened wide in shock. This was no mere country girl, this was Cinderella at the ball, transformed before their very eyes by the sound of her voice. The audience realized they’d misjudged her. As they continued to listen, every person there (and the 30+ million watching the YouTube video later that week) felt their hearts pried open. Something magical had just happened.

What made Susan Boyle famous overnight is the archetypal promise fulfilled in every rags to riches story. Assuming you as the hero/heroine, the story begins with the inner conviction that your current lowly circumstances (the story plot assumes they’re lowly) are not a true measure of your worth. You receive a call to action, an opportunity to prove yourself. The story promises that, if it’s the right opportunity and you do your best, you will shine brightly, and fame and fortune will be yours.

The true prize is knowing your value
Yet fame and fortune (and sometimes a trophy mate) are only external symbols of the true prize. The real prize is to know we have value (Edinger, 1972). That’s why, in non-Hollywood versions of the tale, external accolades are only the first part of the archetypal rags-to-riches transformation. What Susan Boyle needs to do next is every bit as important to her happily-ever-after as what she’s already done. In order for you (or anyone) to experience a happily-ever-after, the world’s recognition of your greatness (and Susan’s) must match your opinion of yourself. If it doesn’t, glory turns to dust in your mouth and, without an inner journey of transformation to get the two to match, self-sabotage is the result.

Listening to the sage
But even if you’re already in the middle of a self-sabotaging scheme, that doesn’t mean it’s too late to experience the happily-ever-after you desire. In fact, your own acts of self-sabotage can be like a wise sage whispering where you need to go next on your journey… that is, if you can listen to the wisdom within. Here’s one way to listen.

Self-sabotage occurs when you experience success and feel a gap between that success and your internal barometer of self-worth. Because you are constantly receiving feedback from both internal and external sources, one of your most important jobs as a human being is to merge these two streams of feedback into an “integrated” picture of the self (Deci & Ryan, 2000). When you find a discrepancy between what the outside world says about your worth and what your internal sources are telling you, you experience a very uncomfortable tension. This tension lingers until you resolve the discrepancy in one of three general ways:

1. You change your behavior to realign external and internal feedback (this might sound like a good option, but it could mean lowering your performance to match a poor self-concept, in other words, self-sabotage).
2. You undermine and/or ignore one of the feedback sources (Hollywood endings often end with this approach, sending the message to ignore your internal barometer and take the money, the glory, and your highly desirable new spouse, and run before anyone else figures out that you didn’t deserve any of the above.)
3. You find a higher synthesis in which both sources have validity (here’s the gold at the end of the self-transformation rainbow, but it means growing up and becoming psychologically mature. See below).

Quite simply, options one and two above do not lead to happy endings that last. The third option, however, has held our attention for about 2000 years of storytelling and still has merit today. In the language of self-regulation psychology, it means:

• Your behavior is directed by an entire hierarchy of goals, and the ones on top control all kinds of underlying processes (Carver & Scheier, 2000).
• One of the highest goals up the human hierarchy tree is the transformation of your ego-self to a mature human being who sees and cares about the bigger picture (Loevinger, 1976).
• This mature human being is defined as someone who can deflect personal desires for the greater good and can delay gratification in the service of higher goals.
• Your own self-sabotaging behavior can be quite valuable to you, if you use it to become aware that there is a discrepancy between how the world treats you and how you feel about yourself.

Becoming aware of a discrepancy like this doesn’t always feel good. Sometimes it feels like someone grabbing hold of your insides and giving them a good twist. But there’s always a sense of relief that accompanies this gut twist. Part of you knew something wasn’t quite right when all that external success was piled at your door. In this case, it’s not a matter of low self-esteem (a common reason offered by many cognitive psychologists), it’s a matter of using feedback discrepancies to guide internal transformation, and this, my friend, is the stuff of kings. For more on using feedback loops to guide personal transformation, keep reading. We'll look in detail at feedback loops after we fleshing out the seven story types.

Meet your monster

Story archetypes:
1. Overcoming the monster (this post)
2. Rags to Riches (April 30th post)
3. The Quest
4. Voyage and Return
5. Comedy
6. Tragedy
7. Rebirth

The monster’s jaws open wide; the throat is a hideous cavern of slime. Claws grip you, squeezing out your life force, shoving you toward the cavernous opening. It seems hopeless. The monster is huge, his strength otherworldly, his defenses impenetrable. He might be part human and part animal, or a cross of animals, or a supernatural being. Sometimes the monster is fully human, but even in those cases, he is deformed in some way, representing a darkened, maimed, warped, or demented version of humanity.
No matter what the monster looks like, his threat remains the same—to snuff the life out of something dear to you. In mythic tales, he was the dragon swooping down to threaten the entire village. Later, he became a supernatural villain (as in Dracula) or, with the advent of science fiction, H.G. Well’s host of Martians or Sigourney Weaver’s Alien. Now this dark force swoops down and threatens something equally previous.

What makes a modern-day monster?
As cosmic as the battle is between the light hero and the dark threat, modern day monsters can assume a surprising range of guises. Political monsters include Hitler, Stalin, Castro, and recently, Sadam Hussein and Osama Bin Laden. These humans are depicted as dark, lacking humanity, and a threat to life as we know it. Another interesting modern monster is a disease (breast cancer) or the aggregation of a destructive human behavior (rampant consumerism). For example, in the same way mythic monsters swept across the globe devouring victims, middle-class consumerism now poses a monstrous threat to the victimized environment. It reminds me of the old Blob movies, in which the seemingly innocuous blob (a single person’s purchase or inappropriate disposal of garbage) grows in size with every victim it consumes, spreading its potential for devastation and becoming more threatening as it grows.

Although these modern monsters may seem far removed from Beowulf’s Grendel, modern-day heros must answer the same call. They must find the monster’s fatal flaw, a weak spot (often the monster’s sense of his own omnipotence and/or importance) and use that insight to wield a fatal blow. Shai Agassi, founder of A Better Place (about to launch the largest electric car infrastructure ever imagined), seems to be a modern-day hero striking such a blow. His monster? The collective behavior of car-driving humans whose gas-guzzling cars are adding to carbon emissions at a rate that threatens life as we know it on the planet. His insight? This collective human monster’s fatal flaw is its need for (should I say loyalty to) convenience and savings. By devising a way to offer drivers all over the world cheaper, more convenient electric cars, Agassi is posed to drive a knife deep into the monstrous side of increasing carbon-emissions. Will he succeed? It remains to be seen, but he’s definitely got a powerful weapon in his arsenal. We can only imagine the monster’s surprise when he fingers his mortal wound, and realizes it was inflicted through Agassi’s ability to turn convenience and savings into a mighty weapon.

What a monster is not
It’s tempting to see personal affronts and blockages as monsters. The boss who ignores your best efforts or who demeans you may seem monstrous. The boyfriend or girlfriend who dumps you may feel likewise dark and devoid of heart. But the key to the “Overcoming the Monster” tale is that the monster threatens more than your personal ego. Only so can the killing of the monster bring with it the secured promise of future life. If killing the monster is purely personal, and the task is undergone for personal ego gratification, the battle will not evoke transformation in the hero. Rather, the hero may becomes a new incarnation of the monster, even more destructive and terrible than the previous incarnation.

In search of a monster
It’s no wonder then that human beings search high and low for a cause, something greater than themselves that they can believe in, fight for and defend. No cause means no monster, and hence, no “salvation.” This salvation is known in psychological terms as the transformation of the ego, the development of a self-centered, pleasure-seeker into a mature individual who lives a moral, virtuous life. Such a transformation demands a cause, a monster to fight. In fact, the real toughie can be finding an appropriate monster, one whose destructive powers are threatening something that truly matters to you. You may have already found your monster. It may be an illness threatening someone you love. It may be an addictive behavior. It may be a selfish human failing. It may be a political tyrant. If you’ve found your monster, count yourself lucky, and head for the armory to prepare yourself for battle. If you haven’t yet found your monster, well, that means you’re beginning one of the darkest quests yet, a journey into the realm of meaninglessness, anarchy, and chaos. And you’re going to need a few magic aids to make your way through… so keep reading.

The seven basic plots

Simplified as it may seem, there are really only seven basic plots unraveling through all the stories in the past 2000 years of recorded history. These plots have been sorted different ways, but I prefer Christopher Booker’s assignations, as put forth in The Seven Basic Plots: Why we tell stories (Continuum, 2004). Here they are in summary. Subsequent blogs will look at each one in greater detail.

1. Overcoming the Monster: Anticipation builds as news of an ominous threat pervades the realm. As the action develops, the evil and destructive power of a life-threatening monster is seen. As Harker against the supernatural Count Dracula, the hero/heroine seems pitted against an impossible foe. This foe can only be overcome when the hero/heroine discerns the monster’s blind spot.

2. Rags to Riches: A young, untried hero/heroine is thrust out into the world. Things may be dire until the hero/heroine discovers an opportunity to prove her worth. Initial external success is enjoyed (think Cinderella enjoying her dance with the prince at the ball), but the story is not complete until the hero/heroine proves her inner worth and that allows her to enjoy both external and internal wealth (the prince recognizes Cinderella's worth even in her rags).

3. The Quest: As Odyesseus in Homer's Odyssey, the hero/heroine is called to complete a specific quest. He sets out on the journey with companions. Together, they encounter hostile terrain and a series of life-threatening ordeals. The hero/heroine survives these threats by relying on help from magical items or helpful spirits. The goal comes in sight. At this point, external help retreats and the hero/heroine must succeed through the final ordeal by relying on his own wits, strength, courage, and other abilities. This final ordeal is often half of the entire story.

4. Voyage and Return: Like Alice falling down the rabbit hole, a hero/heroine begins an unexpected voyage when she enters a realm of strange behaviors and/or beings. The voyage begins with a certain fascination with this strange world, yet fascination turns to fear as the hero/heroine realizes that her life is threatened in this place (as when Alice hears the queen yell, "Off with her head"). Just when the threat becomes too much to bear, the hero/heroine is whisked away from certain destruction to apparent safety. Whether this safety is real or not depends upon whether the hero/heroine has undergone a transformation while away.

5. Comedy: Here we encounter the complete happy ending. In the beginning of a comedy, the characters are knotted together in a confused tangle of misunderstandings. Because of the misunderstandings, people are separated from one another in ways that cause them grief. The pressure increases as the tangle tightens. Finally, things come to light that transform the identity and understanding of all the players. As in Shakespeare's rightly named Comedy of Errors, or the recent movie depiction, "Shakespeare in Love," the difficulties are overcome in a final sweep at the end when the characters are brought together in a joyful state of union. This union typically entails a male and female uniting, along with the bestowal of a kingdom.

6. Tragedy: A tragedy moves through five predictable stages. First, the hero/heroine sets out on a course while in a reckless mood in which he inevitably overlooks something important. Second, all seems well for awhile as the hero/heroine successfully obtains the object of his desire. Third, the hero/heroine becomes ensnared in an obsession that slowly takes over his life. He experiences frustrations in obtaining his desires. Fourth, the frustrations accumulate into a nightmare of doom, in which the hero/heroine crosses the line in commiting an act that takes him beyond the help of innocence and reflects back on when a happy ending was still possible. Fifth, the helpless, trapped hero/heroine is utterly destroyed. (You can follow these five stages just as easily through Nicholas Cage's character Ben in "Leaving Los Vegas" as in Shakepeare's MacBeth).

7. Rebirth: A young hero/heroine falls under the shadow of a dark power. Although the dark power may seem to recede or diminish for awhile, it returns full force in time, imprisoning the hero/heroine in a type of frozen living death (remember little Kay in the grip of the icy Snow Queen?). All seems lost, until the hero/heroine experiences an insight that thaws the icy grip of the dark power and allows him to regain access to his own warm-hearted goodness. The dark power is overthrown, and we view the ordeal as a means of giving birth to a more complete, autonomous being.

How are these seven basic plots all related to a single transformational process? And how does this process serve our biological, psychological and evolutionary needs? Keep reading this blog to find out.

Why we tell stories

Wake up and within two minutes you’re forming a story in your imagination. It might be a story about how you did or didn’t sleep well last night. It might be a story about an encounter—either desired or feared—that you’ll have during the day. It might be a story about why your child is not yet awake, even though the alarm for school should have gone off by now. Point is, we all navigate through the day telling ourselves and others stories because we have a unique human ability—we can conjure up into consciousness images of people and things that are not there. You may not think of your thoughts as imaginary, yet neuroscientists have proven (more on these guys later) that, when we’re in the middle of telling the good tale, we make up whatever “facts” we need to keep the story going. The brain’s left hemisphere works non-stop concocting hypotheses about why things are they way they are, and what might happen as a result. This story-telling ability allows us to anticipate events that may either prolong or cut-short our survival, and was very handy as we evolved. Stories make us human, and this blog explores the biological, psychological, and evolutionary nature of our narrative minds. It also provides tools for unpacking your own stories and for forming a life narrative that allows for a happy life, as well as a happy ending.
“We stand around in a ring and suppose; But the secret sits in the middle—and knows.” Robert Frost