Are You Telling Yourself a Lemon or a Mango?

Newsletter #32

Authors note: this newsletter contains a fair few videos. To save yourself jumping in and out of Youtube, best click the title above and read it in your browser.

Wahhhooooooo! Welcome!

Shoutout out to Leo, Godwin and Cam for joining this fortnight!

After reading Tim Urban’s new book I’m setting myself a challenge for the next few essays. Anyone who has read Tim Urban’s work will know he’s renowned for taking complex topics and making them easily digestible through the use of metaphors and images. Look no further than his Ted Talk on procrastination. Despite not watching the video in five years and forgetting the exact content he shares, I still speak about procrastination in terms of a monkey and monster.

Reflecting on my own writing, my approach has been to use personal stories to share lessons that I’ve learnt. However, upon finishing the essay, anywhere between 1 minute and 1 week later that story and lesson drifts into the abyss of our minds.

The challenge I’m now setting myself is to take my current fascinations and begin doing my best impression of Tim Urban. Where I not only share a story and lesson, but a playful mental model to help the learning stick.

This started with my last essay on Ash Barty and her ego with the introduction of ‘Never-Enough Neville’ and continues with this weeks essay on ‘Are You Telling Yourself a Lemon or a Mango?’.

Without further ado:

Essay: Are You Telling Yourself a Lemon or a Mango?

Want to see the power of our mind to affect our reality?

Take a moment to imagine you’re in the kitchen. You walk up to the fridge and grab onto the handle, noticing how smooth and firm it feels. You give it a little tug to open the door.

Upon opening it you see a lemon sitting on the shelf at eye level. You grab it, immediately becoming aware of how cool it is to touch. You take it over to the chopping board you have sitting on the bench. You take out a knife and slice it into thick, juicy wedges.

You pick up a wedge, noticing the juice slightly dripping. You bring it to your mouth and take a big bite into it.

Even though you only did this in your mind, do you find your mouth contorting and reacting as if you actually bit into it?

The experience feels like a quirky gimmick, but it has potentially devastating implications. Our mind is our body’s puppet-master.

What our mind imagines is communicated to our body causing it to respond as if the situation were real.

Defining Your Story

Where this becomes potentially devastating is in the stories we tell ourselves. They become self-fulfilling prophecies. 

I believe there’s two types of stories:

Lemons & Mangos.

Lemons are limiting beliefs. They instil fear, cripple us from being our best selves and like a lemon, leave a sour taste in our mouth.

Mangos are motivational mantras. They empower us to show up to any situation as the best versions of ourselves. They’re mangos because I’ve never met anyone who doesn’t like mangos and ‘motivational mango mantras’ is groovy alliteration.

Unfortunately over the past few years I learnt the hard way the impact of the stories we tell ourselves.

In 2020 something crazy happened. I went from somebody who did this:

To someone who shared a 20 minute keynote on vulnerability at a conference.

Progressively, my stunts were replaced by writing, my partying replaced by online courses and binge drinking replaced by breathwork.

All normal signs of maturity. However, as this transition occurred I told myself an absolute Lemon. 

Lemon

I began describing the experience as a quarter-life crisis, believing instead of it happening at 35, it happened at 23. I began telling myself that none of my friends would understand. I told myself they wouldn’t like this new person. I told myself showing up as this ‘new’ person online would be social suicide.

With these narratives running through my head how do you think my body responded when I saw my friends?

It seized up with anxiety. 

No where was worse than parties.

Pre-crisis Nic at parties was probably a bit too smug in how “likeable” he was. He had unwavering confidence in his ability to charm with his quick wit, self-deprecating humour and tolerance for small talk. If someone didn’t like him, he believed it was on them.

However, Post-crisis Nic went in with the opposite mindset. He told himself no one would like him and found himself frazzled, nervous and guarded in interactions. He began scouring every interaction for evidence to confirm his belief. Innocuous incidents like people not asking a follow-up question became cold hard proof. Every social event became a self-inflicted trial with nobody to defend the other side.

To counteract this belief that no one would like my new self, I began trying to be my old self. However, this proved to be a terrible idea. I simply became a bad imitation of who I used to be and a shallow version of who I was now.

In the end, the narrative that my friends wouldn’t like this new person proved true. However, it’s not because they genuinely didn’t like him, it’s because my anxiety stopped me from revealing my new self and giving them the chance.

The story I told myself caused my belief to be a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Mango

It wasn’t until the end of last year when I was recounting this experience to someone I met while traveling that the narrative began to change.

She said “it doesn’t sound like you had a crisis, but an awakening”. 

In this moment I realised for every memory you have in your life you have a choice. The choice to decide the story you tell yourself about that memory. You’re the author. 

By changing the narrative from a crisis to awakening, rather than see the experience as a destructive one that limited me from living my old life, it became something to be proud of. I began telling myself that I have nothing to be ashamed of. That I’m proud of the person I am now. That by sharing my experience I may help others.

With these Mangos in mind I felt empowered to own the person I now am and began showing up socially again. To hold myself accountable I challenged myself to one thing a week that absolutely terrified me and share it on social media.

From my morning dance to magic shows at the pub to silent disco’ing at Bondi. 

Before each of these events, to say I was nervous is an understatement. I was riddled with fear. But rather than listen to the Lemons, the story I told myself was a Mango. That my weirdness was my superpower. 

When I did this the strangest thing happened. Not only did my fears about committing social suicide prove wrong, but I began to birth a new and much richer social life. People I hadn’t spoken to in years began reaching out. They loved what I was doing, they wanted to catch-up to learn more and even join me for the next silent disco at Bondi. They were completely accepting of the person I’d become.

I now realise that from 2020 to 2022 the Lemon I told myself out of fear of being socially isolated caused me to be exactly that, isolated.

All it took for me to change my reality to one I desired was to change the story I told myself. To toss out my lemon and get myself a mango.

What story are you currently telling yourself? Is it a lemon or a mango?

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Fail of the week:

I did an oopsies.

Taking advantage of Sydney’s beautiful summer my brother, father and I went out on the boat to wakeboard.

After 10 minutes of me thoroughly enjoying shredding the wake and doing some simple jumps my brother yells out “do a backflip".

Every time I’d attempted one in the past I never got close. But after our time in the snow and doing them onto an inflatable bag I felt inspired.

Also, my ego didn’t want to appear to be a coward and potentially lose the status of the alpha male in the family.

Upon reflection, I wish I didn’t succumb to the peer pressure. You’ll see why at the three second mark:

Unfortunately my head whiplashed into the water and upon emerging all the concussion symptoms I battled last year came flooding back.

Headache ✅

Brain Fog ✅

Lethargy ✅

Fair to say Nic hasn’t been a happy chappy. However, never one to want to end on a sad note, here’s my brothers attempt at backflip shortly after mine:

I may have sustained a concussion but at least my position as the more athletic brother remains.

Until next week,

Cheers,

Nic Hurrell

https://rudder.life/