What Kind of Stories Will You Tell Today?

In the Information Age, what you choose to broadcast matters

Here’s a story you can probably relate to. You are walking down a street when a friend coming the other way stops, looks you in the eye and asks “Whassup?” It’s a question you’ve heard a thousand times before — the default, open-ended salutation.

Your choices are many.

You can answer any way you want, from the predictable “Fine, whassup with you?” to an elaborate monologue on any number of topics: the weather, your primary relationship, upcoming vacation plans, the economy, the latest terrorist attack, your aching back, or the high price of cappuccino. In that moment, there is no correct answer. You get to decide what story to tell.

What you don’t get to decide is the impact your story will have. That’s up to the listener. But know this: your story will have impact. Everything we say and everything we do has impact, even a seemingly casual moment of passing someone on the street.

If you watch TV, you can see this phenomenon playing out daily. With an almost infinite number of topics to report on, the news that TV stations choose to communicate is mostly bad news: war, violence, political unrest, terrorism, famine, corruption, plane crashes, murder, scandal, disease, gossip, and unemployment, with…