Part 1: The Story in Our Heads Is Shaping the World

How our interpretations fuel despair—or possibility

Not long ago I was outside in the yard with my grandson Logan, who had discovered something that instantly captured his five-year-old imagination. It was nothing particularly dramatic—just a small worm wriggling through the soil after a rainstorm. But to Logan, it might as well have been a dragon. He crouched down, studying it carefully, narrating what he thought the worm might be thinking and where it might be going. Piper, his little sister, soon joined us, equally fascinated.

Watching them, I was reminded of something I think many of us lose as adults. Children don’t just see the world—they relate to it. The worm isn’t an object. It’s a character in the unfolding drama of life. The tree in the yard isn’t scenery; it’s a companion in the landscape of their play. Everything feels alive, meaningful, connected.

This moment with my grandchildren reminded me of something we don’t learn from books… we remember it by being alive.

How our interpretations fuel despair—or possibility

Over the years I’ve developed a little morning ritual. Coffee in hand and a bowl of fruit in front of me for a few quiet minutes before my wife, Ann, wakes up. Often Rascal—my loyal canine companion—is curled up nearby. The early mountain light filtering through the trees here in the mountains of North Carolina. And if I’m honest, sometimes my mind wanders through the headlines of the world we’re living in: climate disruption, political turmoil, economic uncertainty, wildfires, floods, storms. Many of us feel it now—that sense that something larger than a typical “rough patch in history” is unfolding. I often refer to it as the polycrisis—a convergence of ecological, economic, social, and spiritual disruptions all happening at once.

It can be a lot to take in. Some mornings, if I’m not careful, my mind can start telling a story about it all. A story that has become all too familiar. To borrow a phrase from my own childhood: Our world is going to hell in a handbasket. Maybe you’ve heard versions of those stories in your own mind as well.

Recently, two articles I happened to read on the same morning stopped me in my tracks. Something about them felt deeply connected—not just to each other, but to the work many of us are trying to do in this time of planetary transition. And it dawned on me that the climate crisis—and the broader polycrisis—may not just be a technological or political challenge. It may also be a story challenge.

One of the articles explored something psychologists have been saying for a long time: much of our suffering does not come directly from events themselves, but from the interpretations we attach to them. The Stoic philosopher Epictetus put it bluntly centuries ago: “It’s not things that upset us but our judgments about things.” When something happens in our lives, our minds almost instantly begin constructing a story about what it means. A friend doesn’t text back. A project fails. A troubling news headline appears. The event itself may last seconds, but the story we tell ourselves about it can last for years.

Psychologists refer to these internal patterns as schemas—mental frameworks built from past experiences that quietly shape how we see the world and ourselves. Over time those schemas become so familiar that we stop recognizing them as interpretations. They begin to feel like reality itself. Not interpretations, but facts.

When it comes to the climate crisis and ecological disruption, I notice a similar dynamic playing out in the collective psyche. The facts are serious. We are destabilizing the climate. We are losing biodiversity. We are drawing down natural systems faster than they regenerate. These realities deserve our full attention. But the interpretation layer often goes much further. It turns into a narrative of inevitability: We’re doomed. It’s too late. Human beings are the problem.

Those interpretations can quietly shut down the very thing we need most right now—agency. If the story in our head says nothing matters, why would we act? But what if those interpretations are not the only story available to us?

One of the most powerful ideas I’ve encountered over the years comes from Viktor Frankl, the psychiatrist who survived the Nazi concentration camps. He wrote that between stimulus and response there is a space, and in that space lies our power to choose our response. That tiny space may be one of the most important places in the human experience. Because inside that space something extraordinary becomes possible. We can notice the story our mind is telling and decide whether or not we want to keep believing it.

The article I read put it another way: our thoughts are powerful, but they are not us. They are simply things our minds produce. Once we recognize that distinction, something begins to loosen. We don’t have to fight every anxious thought that appears. We can simply notice it. Ah…there’s my mind telling the “nothing will change” story again. Then we come back to the present moment—to our breath, our body, and the living world around us.

When I step back from the daily news cycle and look at the larger arc of human history, another story begins to come into view. Yes, we are facing unprecedented challenges. But we are also witnessing something else: millions of people waking up to their relationship with the Earth. Young people planting forests. Families restoring soil. Communities creating repair cafés and sharing networks. Scientists, farmers, and Indigenous wisdom keepers working together to regenerate ecosystems.

In the language of the One Cause project, we might say that we are slowly rediscovering what I call the Four Great Truths: that life is interconnected, that sufficiency is possible, that reciprocity with nature is essential, and that our role as humans is stewardship rather than domination. These truths do not erase the challenges we face, but they do change the story from doom to responsibility—from despair to participation.

Reading those two articles together sparked an idea that I’d like to explore with you over the next few weeks. Because the second article introduced another fascinating insight: if changing the story in our minds is the first step, the next step is understanding how people actually change their behavior. And it turns out the science of motivation is surprisingly counterintuitive. It’s not about telling people what they should do. In fact, the more we push people, the more they resist. Real change tends to happen when people discover their own reasons for acting.

This is Part 1 of a 3-part exploration. Part 2 goes into what actually motivates real change—and it might surprise you.

That insight will be the focus of Part Two of this series.

Together, these two ideas—changing the story in our heads and discovering our deeper motivations—may help unlock something incredibly important for this moment in history. Not just awareness, but action.

What story about the world have you noticed running in your own mind lately?

Until then, I’d like to invite you into a small experiment. The next time you encounter a troubling news headline or feel anxiety about the state of the world, pause for a moment and ask yourself three simple questions. First: what actually happened? Just the facts. Second: what story is my mind telling about it? And third: is there another interpretation that leaves room for possibility? Not blind optimism—just possibility.

If you try this simple experiment, I’d love to hear what you discover.

Have you ever caught yourself telling a “nothing will change” story? What helped you shift it—if anything?

Because the future we create will depend, in no small part, on the stories we choose to believe—and the actions those stories inspire.

In the next article we’ll explore something fascinating: why people almost never change when they’re told what to do, and the surprisingly simple questions that can ignite real motivation—for ourselves, our families, and perhaps even the wider culture.

Until then, I’d love to hear from you. What story about the future of our world have you noticed running through your own mind lately? And what might a more life-affirming version of that story look like?

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