Whilst I am a huge fan of not letting truth get in the way of a good story, sometimes our species unique storytelling capabilities can be a curse rather than a blessing.

Michael McIntyre encapsulated this beautifully when he described the traffic when leaving London for a weekend in the country a ‘nightmare’. Admittedly the traffic can be slower than on other week days, but probably not quite a ‘nightmare’.

Catherine Tate, another fabulous British Comedian, did a brilliant sketch in a similar vein.  Her character comes off a telephone call, suggesting that she has just received some catastrophic news.   She dramatically summons her children down to her fabulous middle class kitchen to explain ‘I’ve just spoken to Daddy.  He’s on his way back from Paris but he didn’t have time to collect the brie’.

Sometimes we need to catch ourselves when we tell ourselves we are in the middle of a nightmare or a brie drought. Sometimes we act as if a client meeting, performance review or presentation will kill us. Occasionally we need to remind ourselves fiction is not fact.