Pierre says he looks for an "ice cube melting": a business where "the deterioration has already started" but the numbers haven't caught up. He listens to his wife and her friends, quizzes former executives and buyers, commissions surveys and visits shops. He doesn't mistake an anecdote for proof; he looks for the same story in different places.
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Stories are so central to how we think that psychologists have found we don't just consume them passively — we use them to construct our own sense of self. The 'narrative identity' theory holds that we each build and constantly revise an internalized story of our own life that incorporates the past, present, and imagined future, and that this story is our identity.
Hidden Brain
We understand the world through the lens of narrative. When someone offers us a story, our defenses come down; we are transported into another world, and in that world, we update our beliefs and feelings. Stories don't just reflect reality — they shape it.
Hidden Brain