Are we ready for this, Reader?

Confession time…

True to brand, the J in my INFJ can be pretty judgy. (This is one of those IYKYK things.)

My therapist might actually gently reframe it as finely tuned discernment, but he gets paid to do that.

Let's be real—I'm the coach who sends his clients a welcome coffee mug with the phrase "Judging you IS my self-care" on it. (Well, at least I mean to.)

Lately, I've noticed one personal pet peeve lately that's been tweaking my "J" pretty hard.

Huzzah... We've arrived at #4 Shift Happens. Cue up that productivity guru telling us "You're just one mindset shift away from breakthrough!" (Did someone forward this to you and you're keen for more? Subscribe here.)

Here goes…

Imagine you're in a thoughtful group conversation, talking about affairs of the world. There's always that one self-satisfied guy who confidently announces, "History repeats itself." Having trained, way back when, as a historian, this is the kind of statement that gets any nominally dignified historian tossed right out of "The Guild."

Please… don't be that guy.

Please… don't believe that guy.

History does not repeat itself.

But our human instincts do.

Once more for the back row…

History doesn't repeat, but your instincts do.

The brain likes to find patterns and assign meaning, which makes it tantalizing for some to interpret commonly recurring human instincts as historical repetition.

Fear, shame, pride, resentment, greed, love, connection, security. These are basic, fundamental (read: Greatest Hits) traits that trigger very basic, fundamental beliefs and instinctual responses.

Avoidance, approval-seeking, aggression, self-protection—you name it.

Each of us is basically engaged in our own individual pursuit of some ideal we call happiness. In that pursuit, our egos inevitably collide and get tangled up with everybody else's egos.

That's why you find yourself flipping the bird to some yokel who pulled into your lane without signaling… three cars in front of you.

"Oh hey, middle finger, how'd you get there?"

Let's explore how these unconscious reactions actually work.

The Committee of Hungry Ghosts

How our beliefs and instincts are shaped is fascinating.

We've talked about the Default Mode Network in "Something About A Circus... and Some Monkeys?", but I didn't really dive into its how, what, and why.

Simply put, the DMN is multiple regions in the brain that communicate with each other by:

• Asking "What does this mean for ME?"
• Connecting what's happening now to specific past experiences
• Creating an overarching belief from the pattern
• Providing stored "evidence" to support the belief

Visualize these regions as a "Committee"--a board of directors--that tells you how to think about and respond to incoming information… in a constantly running, behind-the-scenes Slack channel of semi-snarky rascals.

The DMN converts data into your history, which it then stores for future use in the form of beliefs and instinctive patterns like conflict avoidance, people-pleasing, external validation, self-criticism, and judgment of others.

If this sounds like a bit of "spirit in the machine," it is. Buddhist philosophy sees these instincts as hungry ghosts with small mouths, distended bellies, and insatiable hunger driven by a sensation of "never enough."

Let's imagine you're an incredibly capable person—which you are—who also has a habit of saying, "I'm just a quiet kid in the corner." Some foundational experiences occurred to wire in that message. When it comes time for you to step into your moment, that hungry ghost causes drag, hesitation, and doubt.

The longer you tell yourself a story like that, Reader, the more thoroughly you believe it. And the more you believe that you don't have a place at the table, or that you haven't accomplished enough, or that you don't have the things that give you credibility.

If we see ourselves without credibility, we're going to treat ourselves as not having credibility.

The thing with hungry ghosts is that they're always hungry, they're always cunning.

Stories We Don't Even Hear Ourselves Telling

There is ample research to indicate none of us is nearly as self-aware as we like to believe. I've got plenty of examples in my own life—from sobriety, leadership, and relationships—believing I was doing one thing while some deeper Committee instincts I couldn't see were actually going full steam ahead.

I have my own version of the "quiet kid" story.

I wrestled as a freshman in high school and got pinned in every single match. For decades, that translated into "I'm always the guy who's going to lose." Not consciously—I couldn't hear myself telling that story. But it was running in the background, influencing how I approached challenges, negotiations, conflicts.

Maybe I wasn't wired for wrestling. Maybe I needed more time to learn the sport. Maybe the chaos in my home life at that time was all I had the capability to wrestle with. A number of things could have been true. But the underlying story that took hold was about losing, not about learning.

The other story my DMN constructed--the one that stayed long activated into my career--was the underlying belief that I had to constantly wrestle and grapple things into existence. The truth is that muscles--even mental ones--can't stay actively tensed indefinitely.

Most tremendously capable people I work with are running stories about themselves that they can't even hear. Stories that started as reasonable interpretations of early experiences but have hardened into self-beliefs that limit their access to their own capabilities.

That's how the Committee works—it takes one experience and turns it into a permanent operating belief. Here's how I saw this play out with another client...

A talented executive cyclist I worked with had hit a plateau and was frustrated with getting dropped on fast group rides. When we explored their inner dialogue during those intense moments, they realized that a toxic boss from a past job had taken up residence in their Committee. During periods of stress, the boss would invade their thoughts and become a proper bully.

Once we worked through that, they added measurable watts to their sustainable power—pretty much like adding extra gears to their bike. Interestingly, that self-understanding helped them rewire how they dealt with overwhelm in their current executive role too.

Shift the Story

So what's a solution?

Stop replaying old stories in self-sabotaging ways. We have to train ourselves to embed those stories in different, more freeing ways.

No matter how much you say "Hey, it's only a story," the tape continues to play on… until we strategically reset the narrative by recording and playing a different one.

Or, even more effective is to do as Marc Lesser says in his book Finding Clarity, and train yourself to drop the story entirely.

Before we can shift or drop our stories, Reader, we have to know what they are.

Exercise: Find the Story

There's a saying: "You've gotta feel it to heal it."

To find our own hungry ghosts, we have to begin to hear them. This takes building our self-understanding and shifting our awareness. It requires that we begin to hear ourselves differently… to start to find the signal in our own static.

Let's spend a week tracking things that made you feel resentful, judgmental, empathetic, compassionate, or happy.

Draw four columns on a piece of paper:

1. What happened?
2. How did it make me feel?
3. What does this make me believe about the person or situation?
4. What is this making me believe about me?

That fourth column is where you'll start hearing the stories you didn't know you were telling. If you're feeling like taking this a step further, Reader, look at each of those beliefs and ask:

Why do I believe this? Is this actually true?

TL:DR

If there's a TL:DR for this article—which there's not—it's that we should all be saying to ourselves:

1. I do not know myself as deeply as I think.
2. Learn to notice The Committee.
3. Don't feed the ghosts.
4. Drop the story.

Shift happens,

Bryan

PS - I was recently a (contrarian) guest on Alan Bennett's TrustBuilt Podcast. We talked about business, life, leadership, and why I argue that "Grit" is a dangerously overused concept. Watch here.