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The story that protects you imprisons you. Read that again in your head. The story that protects you imprisons you. Not the story that hurts you. Not the story that embarrasses you. The story that protects you. The one you built for a good reason. The one that kept you safe when you needed safe. That's the one holding the keys to your cell. Welcome to Beyond Blind Blaming. This is the place where we explore how easily hidden truths can hold us back, trapping us in cycles of frustration and blame, often without even realizing what's truly stopping us. Each week, I'm joined by experts and professionals who share their journey of taking back control of their story, overcoming hidden challenges, and stopping blind blame from dictating their outcomes. The insights you're about to gain will help you see beyond your current limitations, find the courage to seek new perspectives, and ultimately live a life that's both purposeful and powerful. So if you're ready to break free from blind blaming and discover what's possible, you'll definitely want to listen to this episode. I want to start today with a sentence that rearranged how I think about pretty much everything. My business partner, Eric Sorensen, says it better than almost anybody, and he gave me his blessing to make it my own. So here it is. The story that protects you imprisons you. Read that again in your head. The story that protects you imprisons you. Not the story that hurts you. Not the story that embarrasses you. The story that protects you. The one you built for a good reason. The one that kept you safe when you needed safe. That's the one holding the keys to your cell. I've been gone a lot lately, a lot of miles. And a few months back, I stood on a TEDx stage at Cambridge and gave a talk that was four years in the making. The number one goal I'd been chasing for a long time. And I want to tell you something about that moment, because it's the whole reason for this episode. The guy standing on that stage at Cambridge is the same guy who a couple years earlier was walking around 40 pounds heavier, calling himself Fat out Loud and telling anybody who'd listen that he liked to drink a lot. Same guy. Nothing about my DNA changed between those two versions of me. What changed was the story. And when you spend that much time on stages talking about how people get in their own way, you start noticing your own stuff harder than you'd like to. So this one's a little more personal. No guest, just me, you, and the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves. Let's get into it. When I say story, I'm not talking about the highlight reel you put on LinkedIn. I'm talking about the quiet stuff, the identity statements, the little throwaway lines you've said so many times you don't even hear them anymore. I'm just not a morning person. I've always been bad with money. I'm big boned. It runs in my family. I like to drink. That's just who I am. I'm not techie. I'm the creative one. I don't do numbers. I don't have the discipline. Every one of those feels like a description. It's not. It's a command. Here's the thing nobody tells you every one of those sentences is doing a job. It's protecting you from something. And most of the time what it's protecting you from is the discomfort of change. Because if I'm just not a morning person, then I never have to sit with the hard truth that I stayed up scrolling until 1am and I could have chosen differently. The story protects me from responsibility. And in that exact moment, it also imprisons me in a life where I'm tired every single day. That's the trap. The story feels like a shield. It's actually a set of bars. And the cruelest part is you can't see the bars. Because from the inside, a good story feels like the truth. It feels like just being honest about who you are. It doesn't feel like a choice. That's how you know it's got you. Let me get a little nerdy for a second because I think you deserve to know why this stuff is so sticky. Your brain runs on prediction. It is constantly trying to guess what happens next so it can keep you alive and save energy. And the fastest way it does that is by deciding who you are and then filtering the whole world through that decision. Psychologists call it consistency. Once you've told yourself I'm the fat guy or I'm bad with money or I'm not a leader, your brain treats that like a settled fact and it goes looking for evidence to prove it. Right? It ignores the days you ate clean. It forgets the time you led the room and nailed it. It remembers every stumble because the stumble confirms the story. And confirmation feels good even when the story is killing you. So you are not lazy and you are not broken. You are running exactly the way the machine was built to run. The problem is, you handed the machine a bad instruction a long time ago and it's been faithfully Executing it ever since. And I want to be careful here because this is the part people get wrong. These stories aren't stupid. They aren't you being weak. Most of them got installed for a real reason. Usually a long time ago. Usually to survive something. The kid who got laughed at for a wrong answer grows into the adult who says, I'm just not a details person. Because not trying never hurts as bad as trying and being wrong. The story was mercy once. That's why it's so hard to let go of. You don't defend a belief this hard unless it once did something for you. So the work isn't to beat yourself up for having the story. The work is to notice that the thing that used to protect you is now the thing keeping you stuck. Let me make this real because I lived it for years. I carried extra weight. And if you'd asked me why, I'd have given you a dozen reasons. Busy, traveling, stress, good food, good bourbon, good life. But underneath all of that was something quieter. And it took me a long time to hear it. I had a whole vocabulary I used about myself. And I thought it made me sound like a guy who didn't take himself too seriously. I'd call myself fat right out loud. Self deprecating, get the laugh, beat everybody to the punch. I'd say I like to drink a lot. Like it was a personality, like it was charming. I had a hundred of these little lines and I thought they were harmless. I thought they were funny. They weren't harmless. They were a blueprint. Because here's what I didn't understand at the time. Every time I said I'm fat, I wasn't describing myself. I was instructing myself. I was telling my brain who I am. And I. The brain's whole job is to keep you consistent with who you say you are. So it obliged. It kept me eating like a fat guy, drinking like a guy who likes to drink a lot, and skipping the gym like a guy who isn't really a fitness person. The story protected me as long as that was just who I was. I never had to fail at trying to be something else you can't fall off the wagon you never climbed onto. Real convenient. And it imprisoned me. £40 worth of imprisoned. And here's the sneaky part I really want you to catch. The joke was the disguise. Self deprecation felt like humility, felt like confidence even. Like I was so secure I could laugh at myself. But that joke was a lock. Every laugh I got for calling myself fat was a little reward. A little hit that reinforced the identity. And I was training a room full of people and myself to see me as that guy I was paying to stay in prison and calling it a good time. So what changed? I didn't start with a diet. I want you to hear that. I did not start with macros and step counts and all the stuff I track. Now, those came later. What I started with was the story. I built a to be list, Not a to do list, a to be list. Who am I becoming? And I started talking about myself like that person already. I stopped saying I'm trying to lose weight because trying is a word for people who expect to fail. I stopped calling myself fat, even as a joke, Especially as a joke. I stopped introducing my drinking like it was a fun fact about me. I changed the identity first and the behavior followed the identity, because behavior always follows identity. Always. You don't rise to your goals, you fall to your identity. And I had to go rewrite mine before anything else could move 40 pounds later. I can tell you, the pounds were never the hard part. The sentences were the hard part. Now, I used weight because it's mine and it's obvious. But run this against anything. The entrepreneur who says, I'm just not a sales guy. That story protects him from the terror of hearing no. And it imprisons him in a business that never grows because a business is just sales with extra steps. The person who says, I always attract the wrong people. That story protects them from looking at their own picker. And it imprisons them in the same relationship with a different face, over and over. The leader who says, I have to do everything myself or it won't get done right. That story protects them from the vulnerability of trusting people. And it imprisons them in a company they can never leave. Working 80 hour weeks, calling it dedication. I coach a lot of practice owners, and I hear a version of this constantly. My market's different. My patients won't pay for that. My town's too small. And look, sometimes there's a grain of truth in there. The market really is what it is. But the story takes that grain and builds a whole wall out of it. And the wall's real job isn't to describe the market. It's to protect the owner from having to try something new and risk it not working. Two people, same town, same market. One's growing and one's shrinking. And the only difference is the story they told themselves about what's possible there. I've watched it too many times to think it's a coincidence. You see the pattern in every single case. The story points the finger somewhere at your genetics, at other people, at the market, at how you were raised. And that's the whole con of it. That's blind blaming. Which, if you've been with this show, you know is the thing. I've spent my life trying to help people get past the story hands the blame to something outside you, so you never have to pick up the one thing that would actually change your life, which is the pen. Because it's your story. You're holding the pen you always were. Alright, I don't want to just wave at this and send you off feeling inspired for 11 minutes and then unchanged by dinner. Let's make it usable. Three steps and I want you to actually do these. Step one, name the story out loud. You can't rewrite a sentence, you can't see. So the first move is to drag the story into the light and say it plainly. What's the line you keep repeating about yourself? I'm bad with money. I'm not a leader. I'm the fat guy. Write it down, word for word, not a fuzzy feeling. The actual sentence. Because the actual sentence is what your brain's been running. Then ask the question that changes everything. What has this story been protecting me from? Not judging yourself, just genuinely asking. Sit with it a second. Because the first answer is usually a cover story for the real one. Nine times out of ten, underneath it all, it's protecting you from the risk of trying and failing. Name the protection. Once you see the shield for what it is, it stops working as a shield. You can't be quietly run by a thing. You're looking straight at step two. Divorce the fact from the story. Here's where people slip. There's usually a fact under there and the fact might even be true. I did way more than I should have. That was real. But I'm fat isn't a fact, it's an identity. I currently weigh this much and I'm changing that. That's a fact. See the difference? The fact is a photograph. The story is a life sentence. A photograph is a moment in time. It can change tomorrow. A life sentence tells you who you are forever. So take your line and separate them. Strip out the permanent identity language. The I'm just the I always. The that's who I am. And leave only what's actually true right now. Watch for those words specifically. Always. Never. Just that's who I am. Because those are the words that turn a temporary situation into a permanent cage. Facts you can work with. Facts are a starting point. Identities you have to serve. So never turn a temporary fact into a permanent identity because your brain will spend the rest of its life making that identity come true. Step 3. Build the to be list and speak from it. This is the one that moved the needle for me. Write down who you're becoming, present tense. And then start talking like that person today before it's true. Not I'm trying to get healthy. Try. I'm someone who trains. Not. I'm working on my confidence. Try. I'm a person who speaks up in the room. Not I'm bad with money. Try. I'm someone who tells their money where to go present tense on purpose. Because your brain doesn't chase. I'm trying. It becomes I am. It's going to feel like lying at first. Good. That discomfort is the gap between the old identity and the new one. And every time you speak from the new one, you shrink that gap a little. Say it enough and one day you'll notice it stopped feeling like a lie and started feeling like a fact. And somewhere in there, your behavior quietly changed to match. Because it always does. And then this matters. Catch yourself. When the old story sneaks back in, it will. Mine tried to come back as a joke every time. Self deprecation is a sneaky little smuggler. When you hear it, correct it in real time, out loud if you have to. That's not being uptight. That's you refusing to keep signing a contract you already tore up. Name it, divorce the fact from it, rewrite it, and speak from the new one. That's the whole process. It's simple. It is not easy, but simple is enough. If you actually run it, and you run it more than once. This isn't a one time exorcism. It's a practice. The old story doesn't leave because you saw through it. It leaves because you stopped feeding it day after day until it starves. So let me bring it home. Remember that guy I told you about at the top, 40 pounds heavier, calling himself fat, making it a punchline? There was no version of that guy who ends up on a TEDx stage at Cambridge. That door was closed not because of his ability, but because of his identity. The story he told about himself didn't have that ending in it. I had to rewrite the story before I could walk through the door. And that's the part I need you to really sit with. Because the exact same thing is true. For whatever door you think is closed to you right now. You are right now, walking around inside a story about who you are. Some of it's serving you, and some of it is a beautifully built prison that you've been mistaking for shelter this whole time. The story that protects you imprisons you. Thank you, Eric. That line's going to outlive both of us. Here's my challenge before you go. Pick one. Just. Just one. The single sentence you say about yourself that you know in your gut is holding you in place. Name it. Today. Not Next Monday, not January 1st. Today. Because Monday is just a story, too. It's the story we tell ourselves so we don't have to start now. You're holding the pen. You always were. So make a decision and go write the next line. I'll see you on the next one. Sa.