The Story You've Been Replaying Isn't Even Yours

There's a moment in almost every coaching conversation where someone tells me what's really underneath the thing that's bothering them, and it's older than the situation itself. A pattern that showed up decades ago, dressed up in a new outfit, walking around like it's about today.

Here's what's strange about it. When you trace the story back to where it actually came from, a lot of people can't tell you. Not because they're avoiding the question. Because it isn't always theirs to begin with.

You Inherited More Than You Think

Somewhere along the way, you picked up a story about who you are under pressure, what you're capable of, what happens when you disappoint someone, what it means when things fall apart. Sometimes you can trace it to a specific moment. Often you can't. It's just there, a narrative you've been narrating and carrying and dragging along for years, and it doesn't matter that you didn't write the first draft. You're the one still performing it.

That's the part people miss. You don't need a dramatic origin story to be carrying something that isn't serving you anymore. Sometimes it's not one big moment. It's a repeated, quiet realization: this particular thing gets under my skin, every time, and I've never asked why.

Finding the Thread When You Can't Name It

If you can point to the moment, that's useful. If you can't, that's normal too. The way in is usually a series of questions, not a single memory. What happened. When else have I felt exactly like this. Where else does this show up. You keep asking until something clicks, and then you look at that answer and ask if there's something underneath it too.

There doesn't have to be a big trauma at the bottom of it. Sometimes it's just a pattern you've never stopped to examine, and once you see it clearly, you can't unsee it, which is exactly the point.

Rewriting the Movie

Here's the technique to use once you find the thread. Picture the moment like a scene from a movie. Are you in it, seeing it in first person, or are you watching yourself from outside? Is it in color? Is there sound?

Once you know the shape of it, you can change it. Pull yourself out of first person and watch it instead. Drain the color out. Turn the volume down. You're not erasing what happened. You're changing how much power the memory still has over you right now, in this moment, doing this job, leading this team.

Most people have never realized they're allowed to do this. They think the story is fixed because the event already happened. The event is fixed. The story you're still telling yourself about it is not.

Why This Matters More Than It Sounds Like It Should

This isn't an exercise in nostalgia. It's the reason certain moments in your leadership keep tripping you up in the exact same way. The narrative sets the pattern, and the pattern shows up every time pressure hits, whether that's a hard conversation, a team that doesn't trust you yet, or a decision you keep avoiding.

You can manage the pattern's symptoms forever, or you can go find where it's actually coming from and change your relationship to it. One of those is a lifetime of firefighting. The other is the work that actually moves you.

Tracing a story back to where it actually started, and rewriting your relationship to it on purpose, is some of the most transformative work I do with leaders.

Schedule a discovery session and let's find out what you're still carrying.