What the World Cup Reminded Me About You

I've been watching the World Cup and the games have been great, but the thing I'm loving most isn't happening on the field. It's all the reactions to the US from visiting fans.

It's like a giant sleepover with cousins we don't get to see enough because our parents aren't that close anymore. There have been so many videos about the beauty of the landscape, the food (RANCH DRESSING!), how big everything is, and how friendly Americans are, just joining in the vibe, even if some of us didn't know this was happening.

The genuine delight in things we accept every day without a second thought.

It's been a reminder that we can't always see ourselves clearly from the inside. We're too close to our own lives — and what's stressing us out — to notice what's actually remarkable about us.

And it got me thinking about something I see constantly in my coaching practice.

We get so deep inside our own history, our doubts, and our carefully crafted narratives that we genuinely can't see what someone on the outside would spot immediately. Ask a good friend to describe you and suddenly you sound like a superhero.

That's the version of you that's been trying to get your attention.

The Story Running in the Background

Here's what I know after working with women navigating this exact feeling: the block usually isn't a strategy problem. It's a story problem.

Not the highlight reel version of your story. The one running quietly in the background — the one shaping what you think you're capable of, what you deserve, what's actually possible for you.

Most of us inherited that story. We built it during a hard season, or absorbed it from someone else's opinion of us, or created it to protect ourselves from a disappointment we didn't want to repeat. And then we forgot we wrote it.

So it just... runs. Quietly. Persistently. Shaping every decision we make about what to try, what to ask for, what to believe we're worth.

The Question Worth Asking

What story are you telling yourself about yourself right now?

Sit with that for a minute. Write it down if you can.

Now ask: how much of that is actually true — and how much is a story you created, probably a long time ago, under circumstances that no longer apply?

Sometimes the most important thing isn't figuring out what to do next. It's realizing that the story you've been telling yourself about why you can't get there might not be real at all.

What Someone on the Outside Would Notice

This is one of my favorite things about coaching. I get to be the visiting fan. I come in without your history, without your doubts, without years of living inside your narrative. And what I see, almost every single time, is someone who is far more capable, far more ready, and far more remarkable than the story they've been telling themselves.

You don't have to keep taking your own word for it. Let's chat.