Professor Dan Cable's teachings focus on employee engagement, change, organisational culture, leadership mindset, and the link between brands and employee behaviours. Here he writes about chemotherapy and says the stories we tell ourselves can have a huge effect on our behaviours.

Once, I needed to develop a story about chemotherapy...

Every other week for six months, I needed to receive chemo for Hodgkin’s lymphoma. At first, I told myself a “poison story”— because chemo is really toxic. It can’t even touch your skin because it will burn you. And I felt like I was letting a medical team inject poison into my body. It was invasive, and I felt strong negative emotions: anxiety, fear, dread, and disgust. I fought back panic as the chemo slid into my port. It made my chest cold and I tasted metal in my mouth.

You can see why my poison story made me feel that I had to fight the chemo. It was hard to get out of bed on chemo days, and I fought back a flight...