Kids are always telling themselves stories. Try to remember yourself as a child lying in bed, anticipating an exciting day tomorrow, and you’ll probably remember telling yourself a story about how cool it’s going to be, who’s going to be there, and how much fun you’ll have. Self storytelling might be more pronounced in kids – they like to say it out loud – but it never goes away and only subsides to the background in adults. Self storytelling is so essential for people that one of the most effective techniques for treating depression and anxiety boils down to “tell yourself better stories.”

Life is also a form of self storytelling. We’re continually retelling ourselves our life story, but very few people think of themselves as authors of their story, not mere subjects. People with extraordinary high-agency realize this early in life and start maximizing the interestingness of their life story.

Having a fascinating life story is not just an exercise in vanity – it has a real impact on your success in life. You’ll have an easier time attracting friends as well as life and business partners. It’ll also make it much easier to sell yourself or your products. It has a kind of compounding halo effect.

Startups also have to be good stories. A good business idea or market is not enough to endure the pain and have the motivation to get a startup off the ground. Without an interesting story about the founding of the company and the vision, you’ll have a hard time attracting talent and money. Notice how the most successful startups in the world all have remarkable genesis stories.

So next time you’re faced with a tough decision, consider the path that makes a more interesting story. If it turned out to be the wrong decision to have made, you’d at least be fun at dinner parties.

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Appreciation to Amjad for granting permission for this repost. This is an unedited repost of his short essay, Do What Makes The Best Story. Amjad’s essay is a good primer for navigating unfamiliar experiences.