What’s your Overstory?

What stories do you tell yourself...about yourself? You know, about everything that goes on in your day? I don't know about you, but if I didn't have some way to process all the extra ice cream I eat, the idiots I wait in line behind at Starbucks who seem to only just now in 2025 have discovered that they can order coffee in public, the woefully random and unfair diarrhea I get—that only and always seems to strike after I eat ice cream—if I didn't have some way to make sense of it all, I'd go nuts.

Which would go great on top of a bowl of ice cream... but that's another story and, unfortunately, another roll of TP. Malcolm Gladwell writes about the concept of an overstory in Revenge of the Tipping Point. Overstories form a framework that helps us process events. In middle and high school, the story I told myself was that I was smart, I was funny, and I was into leadership. It was a way for me to feel good about not fitting in, about being a little different. I wasn’t really all that different, everyone feels a little unbelonging every once in a while, but it helped me feel good about myself nonetheless. Your overstory might be that you’re a survivor. When you got randomly shoved by some weirdo on the street you told yourself “well, that sucked but I’m strong, so I’ll be okay.” That’s a great overstory.

But overstories can also be negative. The other day I saw one of my neighbors on the sidewalk. As he passed the parking garage exit, a car pulled out and nearly bumped into him. I say “bumped into” not to be hyperbolic, I mean literally bumped into. The car couldn’t have been going more than 1 mile per hour. My neighbor leapt back and performed a little scene I’ve seen others (including myself) perform many times, the Act of the Incredulous Walker: he threw up his arms in an emotional admixture of surprise, scorn, and incredulity. There was a scoff. Maybe two. Then he continued on his way, muttering to himself, “Boy, today just isn’t my day.” I don’t know what his overstory is, but it’s probably not “I can handle anything the world throws at me.”

The power of an overstory is that, once you decide what it is, you start to notice things that reinforce it.

The other thing about an overstory is that you can change it. Why not use it to your advantage? Tell yourself anything!