The Sentence That Won
Whatever came after your “because” has been running more of your life than you know.
Some weeks ago, in one of my coaching circles, I gave eleven women a half-finished sentence and sixty seconds of silence.
“I haven’t done it, because ______.”
Eleven women. One half-finished sentence. Sixty seconds of silence.
I asked each of them to think of the one thing they had been wanting for years. The business not started. The role not asked for. The conversation not had. And then to finish the sentence honestly, in their own heads, where nobody could hear it.
One of them, a woman who runs a forty person team, came to me after the session. She said, “Lovina, I wrote ‘because I am not ready.’ And then I realised I have been not ready for nine years.”
Nine years. And none of those years made her ready, because the sentence was never about readiness.
Your turn, before you read further
Do this with me. Think of your thing. The one you have carried for years. Finish the sentence honestly: “I haven’t done it, because ______.”
Whatever came after “because”, look at it closely. That small sentence has been quietly outvoting you for years. Something you wanted met a sentence in your head, and the sentence won.
This is all a limiting belief is. A story you have told yourself for so long that it has started wearing the clothes of a fact.
The album your mind keeps
The mind photographs every moment that fits the story. It never photographs the days the story was wrong.
And here is the part I find both heartbreaking and fascinating. The mind keeps an album for every story it believes. The first photo goes in early. An aunt looks at your school report and says, “she is not the studious one.” Click. A teacher laughs on the day you mispronounce an English word. Click. The promotion goes to someone louder. Click. Year after year, your mind quietly photographs every moment that fits the story and pastes it in. By the time you are forty, the album is thick, and you call it proof.
But notice what is missing. There is no album for the days the story was wrong. The exam you topped. The room you held together. The person who still quotes something you said three years ago. The mind never photographs those. So the album was never your whole life. It is a selection.
Fact, story, feeling, action
In my work we pull this apart with four small words: fact, story, feeling, action. Watch them work.
Two women sit in the same appraisal cycle, and the same fact lands on both: no promotion this year. The first tells herself, “I am not leadership material.” That story makes a feeling, smallness. And smallness has only one action in it. She stops raising her hand. A year later there is a fresh photo in her album, and the story looks truer than ever.
The second woman feels the same sting. But the story she reaches for is different: “Something is missing in my skills, and I am going to find out what.” That story makes determination, and determination asks questions, signs up, raises its hand again. A year later, her life has moved.
Same fact. Two stories. Two lives. The fact never changed even once.
The fact never changed. The story did.
The beautiful sentences
Now, the sentences I worry about most, after twenty years of building people, are the beautiful ones. “I have to be strong.” “I don’t ask for help.” “I take care of everyone.” We never question these, because the world applauds us for them. They win us praise in the daylight and decide our limits in the dark.
And they travel. Our teams learn them from watching us. Our daughters and sons learn them at the dinner table, without a single word being spoken. Somebody in the chain has to be the one who stops and asks, wait, is this even true?
The costliest beliefs are the ones we have been praised for.
Three questions for your “because”
Let it be you, this week. Take your “because” sentence and ask it three questions.
- Is it a fact, or is it a story?
- Who first put this photo in my album?
- If the sentence were not true, what would I do this month that I am not doing now?
Write your third answer somewhere you will see it. Today, please, while the moment is warm.
And I will keep my end of the deal. My own “because” sentence is in the comments under the LinkedIn edition, first. What came after yours? One line is enough.
This piece first appeared in The Transformation Playbook, my weekly newsletter on LinkedIn: one idea a week, for women rising at work, at home, and in their own lives. If this one found you, send it to one person who is still obeying a sentence they never chose.