Retaking control of the narrative

Everyone’s heard of Freud and Jung. Anyone who’s seen popular psychotherapy being performed, knows that it’s based on their works. Their approach is primarily that of “cause” and “effect”. Everything that is wrong with you today is because of something that happened to you in the past.

Most of us today also think this way. We believe that if something’s wrong with us, it’s because of something fundamtal in our past. There are two problems with this approach:

1. It leads to thinking of life as deterministic. I have no choice but to lead the life I have, because of my past. I have no control over my personality, or my disposition.
2. It doesn’t really prescribe a solution. If you go to a doctor with a broken tooth, and they say, “Ah, you have fallen down headfirst, and that’s how you broke your tooth,” will it give you the relief you want? Not really.

If an entrepreneur thinks like this - like they do not have control over their own and their startup’s destiny - they are set for failure. It’s a terrible trap to be in.

Let’s rephrase this though. What if you say instead, everything that went wrong was because you intended for it to go wrong - consciously or subconsciously. Did you not meet sales targets for the quota? The “cause” and “Effect” might blame it on capital, on markets, on the tech team. But the “Purpose” take would be, “I set myself up for failure, because I was scared of moving this fast.” Everything above, all the “effects” were in your control. You could have chosen a better market, worked with the tech team to get it done better, worked harder to raise more, or found a way to build without that much capital.

This may sound harsh - why would I blame myself for all the shortcomings? It’s not blame. It’s ownership. Yes, owning failure hurts. But taking ownership is powerful. The failure is yours, but you also have opportunity to take control of the proceedings and change the future. Your life is drifting by on the whims of others. Your startup’s survival doesn’t depend on others (it never did). It depends on you.

This mindset is called teleology. It was first described by the psychologist Adler who studied alonside Freud and Jung. It says Trauma is not real. People can change. The past doesn’t matter. It’s not about what you have but what you do with what you have.

As founders, we must start taking control of our lives. This is a very powerful shift in mindset - from “Cause / Effect” to “Purpose / Ownership”. Are you ready to take it up, and regain control of your narrative?