There is a moment in almost every coaching conversation where someone tells me what is really underneath the thing that is bothering them, and it is older than the situation itself. A pattern that showed up decades ago, dressed up in a new outfit, walking around like it is about today.
Here is what is strange about it. When you trace the story back to where it actually came from, a lot of people cannot tell you. Not because they are avoiding the question. Because it is not 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 are 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 cannot. It is just there, a narrative you have been carrying for years, and it does not matter that you did not write the first draft. You are the one still performing it.
That is the part people miss. You do not need a dramatic origin story to be carrying something that is not serving you anymore. Sometimes it is not one big moment. It is a repeated, quiet realization: this particular thing gets under my skin, every time, and I have never asked why.
Finding the Thread When You Cannot Name It
If you can point to the moment, that is useful. If you cannot, that is 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 is something underneath it too.
There does not have to be a big trauma at the bottom of it. Sometimes it is just a pattern you have never stopped to examine, and once you see it clearly, you cannot unsee it, which is exactly the point.
Rewriting the Movie
Here is the technique to use once you find the thread. It comes from NLP, where it is called working with submodalities. 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 are not erasing what happened. You are 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 are allowed to do this. They think the story is fixed because the event already happened. The event is fixed. The story you are still telling yourself about it is not.
Why This Matters More Than It Sounds Like It Should
This is not an exercise in nostalgia. It is 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 is a hard conversation, a team that does not trust you yet, or a decision you keep avoiding.
You can manage what the pattern does forever, or you can go find where it is 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 meaningful work I do with leaders.
Ready to find out what you are still carrying? Start the Conversation
