Whilst in my externally-imposed quarantine I happened to go over an article titled “Attending to the Present: Mindfulness Meditation Reveals Distinct Neural Modes of Self-reference” by Norman Farb et al. In it the authors distinguish between narrative mode, which is the mode most of us are in most of the time, and experiential mode, which is a mode focused on the present moment and the senses, and which is usually achieved only after mindfulness training. I won’t go into the article very much, it just sparked a line of thought in me. If we walk around all our lives living in stories told to us by others, whether our parents, the government, mass media, advertising etc., what would it mean if we were to, first, free ourselves from those narratives by entering experiential mode more often, and then develop a strong narrative of our own design? This is, I think, the basis for the success of founders, especially when it comes to recruiting top talent to join a new and untested venture. People like Steve Jobs or Elon Musk definitely developed strong, compelling narratives of their own design.