(It's affecting everything. And most of it isn't true.)
I want you to try something with me. Think about the last time something went wrong at work. A difficult conversation, a project that fell short, a presentation that didn't land the way you'd hoped, or perhaps a meeting where someone said something that sent a tiny jolt of something unpleasant through your chest.
Now. What was the story you told yourself about it?
Not what happened, the facts. The story. The interpretation. The meaning your brain constructed in the milliseconds after. Because I promise you there was one. There always is. And it went something like: 'I'm not good enough at this.' Or 'They don't respect me.' Or 'I always do this.' Or 'That's it, they've seen through me now.' (This last one is called Imposter Syndrome, by the way, and I have never met a high-achieving person who doesn't have it to some degree. If you don't have it, you may not be trying hard enough.)
Here's the thing about that story: your brain presents it to you as a fact. Delivered with complete confidence, in your own voice, with the authority of someone who clearly knows exactly what's happening. And yet, and here's the part that's going to change things for you, it is almost certainly not true.
THE RESEARCH SAYS: Neuroscience research on self-referential thinking shows that the brain's default mode network, the part that activates when we're 'resting', is largely engaged in constructing narratives about ourselves and our social world. These narratives are not neutral: they are strongly biased toward threat detection and self-protection. Which means your brain's default story about yourself skews negative. Not because you're pessimistic. Because you're human.
, Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience, 2025
The Stories That Run the Show
Most of the stories we tell ourselves were written a long time ago. Some of them were written before we were old enough to question them, by well-meaning parents, early school experiences, an unkind comment from someone who was having a terrible day and took it out on a seven-year-old version of you who absolutely did not deserve it.
And then we updated them, added evidence over the years (our brains are brilliant at finding evidence for the things we already believe, and remarkably bad at noticing evidence that contradicts them), and now we carry them around as if they are simply the truth about who we are.
'I'm not a natural leader.' 'I'm not creative.' 'I'm too emotional.' 'I'm not detail-oriented enough.' 'I'm not good with people.' 'I work best under pressure.' (That last one, I'll gently note, is often a story we tell ourselves to justify not dealing with the procrastination. I say this with enormous love and personal experience.)
In the workplace, these stories become self-fulfilling. You believe you're not a good communicator, so you avoid the conversation, so the relationship deteriorates, so you have evidence that you're not a good communicator. Round and round it goes, and the story gets more solid with every loop.
Questioning the Story (Nicely)
I am not going to suggest you simply think positive thoughts. (If that worked, we'd all be fine. We are not all fine.) What I am going to suggest is that you learn to question the story, gently, curiously, without self-criticism, using what I think of as the three most powerful questions you can ask yourself:
- Is this story actually true? (Not 'probably' true. Not 'feels like' it's true. Actually, verifiably, objectively true? In most cases: no.)
- What would I tell a friend who came to me with this exact story about themselves? (The gap between how you speak to yourself and how you'd speak to someone you love is usually enormous. That gap is where the work is.)
- What's a more useful story, not a more positive one, a more useful one? One that opens doors rather than closes them?
THE RESEARCH SAYS: A 2025 clinical study demonstrated that mindful self-compassion training, which includes learning to recognize and question self-critical stories, produced measurable reductions in self-judgment in fMRI brain scans, alongside increased activation in caregiving and reward circuits. In practical terms: when you're kinder to yourself, your brain works better.
, ScienceDirect / Neural Correlates of Reduction in Self-Judgment, 2025
The research on self-compassion is now overwhelming: treating yourself with warmth when you struggle does not make you complacent. It does not lower your standards. It does not make you less driven. It makes you more resilient, more creative, more accountable, and significantly less exhausting to live with, both for yourself and everyone else.
What to Do With a Story That Won't Quit
Some stories are sticky. Some of them have been there so long they feel load-bearing. Here is what I've found actually works:
- Name it. Literally say to yourself: 'That's the not-good-enough story.' Naming something reduces its grip on your nervous system almost immediately. You're not the story. You're the person noticing the story.
- Trace it. Where did this one come from? How old were you when you first told it? Does it belong to you, or did someone else hand it to you and you've been carrying it ever since?
- Choose a better one. Not a perfect one. Not an unrealistic one. Just a slightly more kind and useful one. 'I'm learning this.' 'I'm doing my best with what I have.' 'This is hard and I'm still here.' Those are all true. Start there.
- Be patient with yourself. You have been telling some of these stories for decades. They will not dissolve in a Tuesday afternoon. But they will loosen. Slowly, gently, story by story, they will loosen.
"You are not your story.
You are the person who gets to choose a different one.", Amanda Gore
The most important thing I know about joy, about performance, about the kind of leadership that actually changes organizations and the kind of life that actually feels worth living, is this: it all starts with the story running in your head.
Change the story. Choose love over judgment, starting with yourself. Watch what becomes possible.
Not because you've suddenly become perfect. But because you've stopped insisting that you need to be.
