I once asked a friend from the uni athletics squad what he thought about when he was racing. Did he tell himself a story or have a motto to help him run faster?

He replied, “When I’m racing, I try to imagine I’m terribly hungry, and at the end of the race there’s a feast waiting for me, and I’m just trying to reach the feast as fast as possible. If I’m too slow, all the food will be gone!” We both laughed at that. Then I told him what I thought. “When I race, I think of a tiger breathing down my back. A real fast one, and one that needs to feed his family, and if I look back, or slow down, he’s going to eat me.” Then he replied, “Wow. Maybe I’m the tiger chasing you!” And we both laughed again.

Both stories were, obviously, untrue. But despite knowing they were make believe, we adopted them for a purpose. The stories made us feel a certain way, which prompted action in line with our goals: to make us run faster when it was hard.

They were useful, in spite of their fabrication.