Why does your brain love to be right? Once it believes a thought about you, like "I'm not smart" or "nothing is working," it goes looking for evidence that the thought is true and skips right past the evidence that it isn't. Psychologists call this confirmation bias. A thought like that can feel like a fact for decades, even when it was never true.
I know, because I believed one of mine for most of my life.
What happens when your brain decides something about you?
I have spent an extraordinary amount of my life wishing that I was smarter than I am. I've been self-conscious about this for as long as I can remember.
It comes up often, especially when I try to convey facts and data and can't quite say it concisely. When I try to recap a book or podcast episode that I love, my retelling is jumbly and confusing.
Or if I'm sharing something personal or vulnerable and someone interrupts, anxious-excited to share their perspective or change the subject, my brain immediately makes that mean I'm not interesting to talk to, because "I am not that smart."
I've gotten really great at proving to myself that I am, indeed, not smart, because I look for evidence to confirm it everywhere.
The other night, my husband and I were solving the NYT app puzzles together, and I was breezing through the answers. He started teasing me about how smart I am. I asked him if he was serious, and he said, "Yeah, you're super smart. Why are you asking me that?"
I told him that believing I'm "not smart" is the thing that makes me most insecure in the world.
If you could have seen the look on his face. He was very, very confused.
Why do we believe painful thoughts about ourselves?
I get his confusion. I talk to clients every day, and they say things about themselves that are also very confusing.
One client tried to convince me that nothing was working in her business, and yet she had signed two new clients the month before. Another told me she needed more qualifications to be taken seriously as a coach. Trust me when I tell you she had everything she needed. She had just forgotten.
Our brains LOVE to be right. Once they're captivated by a thought like "I am not smart," "Nothing is working" or "I am not qualified," our brains will make it their full-time job to prove it true.
Why is it so hard to see your own thinking?
As a coach, I can see these painful thoughts in my clients, point them out, and invite them to choose a thought that moves them in a better direction. It's an amazing part of the coach-client relationship. I benefit from perspective, because I'm outside of my client's brain!
It's not so easy to have that same perspective with our own brains. Sometimes we forget to challenge our own thinking. I certainly did.
That outside perspective is a big part of why the right coach matters, and it's why I wrote about the three questions to ask before you hire one.
How do you stop believing a thought that isn't true?
I'm so grateful my husband told me he thought I was super smart. It opened a new awareness in my brain that thinking "I am not smart enough" is optional.
I knew it, and I didn't know it at the same time. Can you relate?
With my stickiest thought, I never considered that it might not be true. My brain was busy trying to be right and prove it true, for decades.
The question that helps me most is one I talked about with LeAnn Austin on the More Lovin Podcast: what else is true? Asking it gives your brain permission to look for different evidence.
Then you start gathering it on purpose. I wrote more about that practice in Collecting Evidence of What's Working, and about what shifted when I stopped making myself wrong.
What changes when an old thought loosens its grip?
The old painful thought isn't completely gone yet, but it's on its way out. Its grip on me is dissipating. I can feel the shift.
I'm starting to see evidence of how smart I am, which was probably always there and just unseeable before.
When I'm speaking, sharing data and facts, recapping podcasts, or sharing vulnerable moments, I do it with a little more confidence and certainty, because I FEEL differently. I feel less insecure and more secure, because I'm starting to claim the truth in the thought "I am smart."
How do you know if your brain is proving a painful thought true?
Ask yourself:
Is there a thought about myself I've believed for as long as I can remember?
Do I notice every piece of evidence that it's true and brush off the evidence that it isn't?
When someone compliments me in that area, do I assume they're just being nice?
Would the people who know me best be confused to hear I believe it?
If you said yes to any of these, your brain may be working very hard to be right about something that was never true.
Not sure what you actually want?
Answer six honest questions and I'll send you a personal voice memo with what I see.
And if you're ready for private coaching, apply to work with me here.
With immense appreciation & gratitude. Always.
Katie Pulsifer is a Master Certified Life Coach for high-achieving women over 40 who have built great-looking lives and know it's not enough anymore. She helps women stop prioritizing everyone else, figure out what they actually want, and start creating a life that feels as great as it looks, without blowing up the life they've already built. Katie's coaching is grounded in neuroscience, radical self-responsibility, and the belief that your worth is inherent, not earned.
