The Stories You Tell Yourself

2 Corinthians 10:5“We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God. And we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.”

A leader once told me, “I handled the crisis on the outside. Vision, plan, calm voice. But inside, the sentence that kept looping was, ‘You always mess it up in the end.’ Nobody in the room said that. I did.”

The meeting ended. People thanked him. The crisis passed. But he went home feeling like a fraud, not a shepherd. The situation was over. The story in his head kept preaching.

Psychologists describe a model called Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT). It says that between what happens outside us and how we feel and act, there is a powerful middle space. Our thoughts. Our interpretations. Our beliefs about God, ourselves, and others. CBT says a situation happens, we notice bodily sensations, then we make meaning with thoughts. Those thoughts shape our moods. Those moods drive our behavior. Change the thought and, over time, you can change how you feel and what you do.

Researchers use a method called Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) to listen closely to people’s “lived experiences.” IPA pays attention to the exact words we use when we talk about what happened to us. If I always describe myself as “the one who fixes other people’s messes” or “the one who always drops the ball,” that language is revealing the script I am living from.

Lead From Wholeness says you cannot lead well while living under lies. You might still preach, plan, and perform. But if the core story in your head is, “I am never enough,” you will lead from hustle, not from identity. You will serve from fear, not from love.

Paul tells us to “take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.” That is not just about rejecting obviously sinful ideas. It is about testing the stories we tell ourselves against the story God is telling in Christ. The cross and resurrection say you are deeply loved, forgiven, called, and kept. The Spirit says you are being transformed, not discarded. Any thought that cannot be brought under that truth does not get to be the narrator of your life.

The leader who always heard “You mess it up in the end” finally wrote that sentence down. Seeing it in ink made it easier to challenge. He asked, “Is this how Jesus talks to me?” He checked Scripture. He checked with people who had walked with him for years. The sentence did not hold. Slowly, he replaced it with something truer. “I am responsible, but I am not the Savior. I make mistakes, but God is still at work in me and through me.” That new story did not erase all pressure overnight, but it gave him a different place to stand when the next crisis came.

You cannot always choose your situations. You can learn, by grace, to challenge the stories that are quietly poisoning you.

Practices for today

1. Think of one stressful moment from the last week. Write down what happened in one sentence. Then write down the first three thoughts that ran through your mind in that moment. Do not clean them up. Just be honest.

2. Look at those three thoughts and ask, “If this thought were a headline over my life, what story would it be telling about God and about me?” Mark the one that feels most familiar.

3. Bring that one thought to Jesus in prayer. Ask, “Does this sound like You?” Then find one short phrase from Scripture that tells a different story, and write it next to the old sentence. Use that new phrase as your repeated prayer today.

Prayer

Lord, You know the stories I tell myself in the dark. You hear every sentence that runs through my mind after the meeting, after the sermon, after the conversation. I confess that many of my thoughts do not agree with who You say I am. They agree more with fear, shame, and old wounds. Teach me to notice my thoughts. Give me courage to challenge the lies. Help me take every thought captive and bring it under Your truth. Let me lead from a renewed mind, not from a recycled story of failure. Amen.

You are not stuck with the first story your pain wrote. In Christ, your mind can learn a different story.