Magical Thinking is Expensive Comfort

Issue 07

By Debbie Lawrence

Read Time: 7 minutes

I have a library wall that stops people in their tracks.

Floor to ceiling. The kind of room where you walk in and just stand there for a moment before anything else registers.

Earlier this week I was walking upstairs past our book collection and my eye landed on Joan Didion’s The Year of Magical Thinking. I’ve had that book for years. It came into my hands long before I could have known how much it would shape the way I teach and coach.

Didion wrote it after the sudden death of her husband. She called the year that followed a year of magical thinking, a year where she wrapped herself in stories that couldn’t be true because the truth was too much to hold. She kept his shoes. She just couldn’t get rid of them because some part of her believed, against all evidence, that he might need them.

She wasn’t irrational. She was a human doing what we all do when reality asks more of us than we’re ready to give.

So we tell ourselves stories instead.

Didion also wrote something in a 1979 essay that I have never stopped thinking about. The very first line: “We tell ourselves stories in order to live.”

She’s right. We do.

The problem is that some of those stories aren’t helping us live. They’re helping us avoid discomfort instead.

When the story is the strategy

A few years ago, I was asked to sit on an Education Advisory Committee in my community. Someone reached out and said the committee needed a representative from the business community and I was glad to serve.

The first meeting was lukewarm at best. There was a loose agenda and no clear protocols. People who had known each other for years chatted and made no space for someone new. I sat in that room and felt almost invisible.

I had coffee with a friend later that week and told her about my experience. She asked if I was going to remain on the committee.

“Well,” I said, “it was just the first meeting. I’m going to give it six months (they meet monthly) and then decide. I’m trying to stay open.”

She nodded. I could tell she had thoughts she wasn’t ready to share yet. And we know one another well enough that we both knew we’d eventually have that conversation.

Months passed. It did not get better. If anything things got worse.

By month four, my very patient friend leaned across the table and said it plainly: “Debbie, I’m going to remind you of your own teachings. I think you’re engaging in magical thinking about this committee. I don’t think it’s going to get any better.”

She was right. It helped to hear someone else say aloud what I had known since month two.

I so wanted this experience to be different that what I was doing was making up a story, one that felt more comfortable than the decision I already knew I needed to make. Every time I left a meeting frustrated, I’d construct another reason. They just need to get to know me better. Maybe it’s the pressure to make some of these decision. Maybe next month will be different.

Round and round. The stories I told myself kept me from stepping down while stepping down had been the right answer since approximately the second meeting.

I stopped operating on hope before the meeting in month five. I held myself accountable. Either I was going to stay and stop complaining, or I was going to step away.

I stepped away. It took a three-sentence phone call. I thanked them for the opportunity, wished them well, and simply said it wasn’t the right fit. Until this moment, I hadn’t given it another thought.

The pattern I see everywhere

That committee story is relatively small and harmless in the long run. The version I see in business has a more significant price tag.

You had a conversation with someone on your team. They promised to do better and now you’re hoping.

Hoping they’ll follow through. Hoping they remember. Hoping this time will be different.

The hope feels productive. You addressed it by having the conversation and now you wait.

But here’s what you’re not doing. You’re not setting a checkpoint to verify that anything changed. You’re also not establishing what happens if it doesn’t change nor are you creating consequence for not following through.

You’re hoping they’ll change while doing nothing to ensure they change. And when they don’t change, you tell yourself another story: Maybe they need more time. Maybe I wasn’t clear enough. Maybe…

Round and round. I call these circle conversations that create temporary promises without any real change.

That’s not leadership. That’s the hope strategy. And the hope strategy isn’t a strategy.

Stories vs. facts

Here’s what I’ve learned about magical thinking after years of watching it operate in my own life and in the lives of the women I coach.

The story always feels more real than it is. It feels like evidence. It feels like reasonable caution. If I give them direct feedback, they’ll quit. If I hold the line, they’ll think I’m cold. If I step away from this committee, I’ll look like I don’t follow through on my commitments.

But ask yourself this: what actual evidence do you have that the story is true? Not the feeling of it — the evidence. Has anyone ever quit because you gave them clear, honest feedback? Has anyone lost respect for you because you held a boundary? Did stepping away from that committee, or that client, or that partnership destroy your reputation? Or is the story protecting you from a discomfort that exists only in your imagination?

Because here’s what the story is costing you in the meantime.

It’s not about some hypothetical discomfort you’re trying to avoid. The real, ongoing, compounding cost of staying in the story is the cost of your time, your energy, your standards, and the people on your team who are watching you accept what you shouldn’t accept.

The story is protecting you from a possible pain while guaranteeing you an ongoing one.

Now ask yourself the harder question: what would you do if you already knew the story wasn’t true?

That answer, the one that just came for you, that is your next step.

The permission

I have done enough work to know I didn’t need to swoop in and save that committee. I had a responsibility to myself, my family, and my business to recognize that it was not the best investment of my time, effort, and energy. No matter how patient I was, it was what it was. The sooner I accepted that, the sooner I could get on with getting on.

You don’t need more evidence. You don’t need more time. You don’t need to wait for the story to become true before you’re allowed to make the decision you’ve already made in your gut.

You’re allowed to operate from facts.

You’re allowed to stop hoping and start deciding.

Comment below: what’s the story you’ve been holding onto the longest hoping that some day it would come true? And what is that costing you day in day out?

I read every response.

You can also listen to this issue on The Compassionate Leader School podcast episode, which drops the same day on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and all major platforms. Click here to explore all the episodes.