Where Truth Bites Back
The distance between thinking and knowing
We think about everything except the one thing that makes all other thinking possible:
thinking itself.
Most of us live inside our minds like fish in water.
We feel the current when it pulls, we notice when the temperature changes, but we rarely look at the water itself.
We mistake thoughts for truth.
We forget that we’re the ones doing the thinking.
We move through life negotiating with three forces: truth, trust, and the will to act.
Yet…
Truth and trust cannot be intellectualized; they can only be experienced.
I used to believe every thought I had.
If I thought I was failing, I was.
If I thought someone hated me, they did.
If I thought I couldn’t, that was simply who I was.
It took years to see that thoughts aren’t facts. They’re clouds.
They move. They change.
Sometimes we can shape them.
Other times, we just wait for them to clear.
The poet Mary Oliver asked: “Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?”
Maybe the question before that is simpler, and harder:
What are you doing with your one wild and precious mind?
What We Think Happened
Half the time, we’re not responding to reality.
We’re responding to our thoughts about it.
We fight invisible battles.
We solve problems that never existed.
We miss what’s right in front of us because we’re too busy consulting the internal GPS.
I once coached an executive who believed her boss didn’t respect her.
Every missed email became proof.
Every bit of feedback, a confirmation.
Every compliment to someone else, a wound.
Her thoughts had turned into architecture, rigid walls she kept rebuilding each day.
Meanwhile, the real story was fluid, shifting, far less personal than she imagined.
Thinking About Thinking
There are ways to step outside the loops.
Not to become someone new, but to finally see yourself clearly.
Let’s start with one of my favorites.
The Work by Byron Katie offers four questions that can crack open almost any stuck thought:
Is it true?
Can you absolutely know it’s true?
How do you react when you believe that thought?
Who would you be without it?
They look simple. They’re not.
If you let them work on you instead of rushing through, those four questions can quietly dismantle beliefs you’ve carried for decades.
Once you start to loosen your grip on a thought, it helps to see the patterns underneath it.
That’s where Cognitive Distortions come in.
These are the mind’s repeat offenders:
All-or-nothing thinking.
Overgeneralizing.
Jumping to conclusions.
Labeling.
Personalizing.
Once you know to look for them, you see them everywhere—on your morning walk, in team meetings, in your own reflection.
Everyone’s walking around running slightly faulty mental software, convinced it’s the truth.
And finally, there’s something deeper.
Something that sits just behind all that thinking.
It’s called the observer, the part of you watching yourself think.
It’s the quiet voice that says, “I’m having the thought that I’m a failure,” instead of “I am a failure.”
That tiny shift changes everything.
The observer doesn’t judge. It notices.
It says, “Isn’t that interesting,” instead of, “What’s wrong with me?”
That noticing is the doorway out of identification and into awareness.
And awareness, as it turns out, is where freedom begins.
The Day the Thought Lost Its Power
A year ago, I worked with an executive named Catherine (not her real name).
She was convinced her boss was pushing her out.
“Three days,” she said. “He didn’t respond to my email for three days.”
“What thought runs through your mind when that happens?” I asked.
“That he doesn’t respect me. That I’m not valued.”
“And can you absolutely know that’s true?”
She hesitated. “No. But it feels true.”
“How do you act when you believe it?”
“I shrink. I avoid him. I’ve stopped sharing ideas. I’m waiting for the end.”
“Who would you be without that thought?”
She looked away for a long time.
Then said quietly, “I’d probably just do my job. Maybe even talk to him.”
We peeled back the story until only observable facts remained.
He didn’t reply for three days.
He reassigned a project.
He skipped her name in a meeting.
“Could any of that have explanations that aren’t about you?”
Her face softened.
“He was traveling. The project wasn’t in my wheelhouse. The meeting was unrelated.”
Silence. Then: “So I’ve been miserable over something I made up.”
Two months later, as we worked toward a discussion, she talked with him.
He was shocked.
He thought she was excelling.
He’d been distracted by a family crisis.
They cleared the air, and she went on to lead the company’s biggest initiative.
Her pain had been real.
Her story about the pain was not.
The Practice
Thinking about thinking isn’t a one-time epiphany.
It’s a lifelong practice.
Some days you’ll catch the distortion mid-flight.
Other days you’ll chase it all the way down the cliff.
That’s part of it.
The goal isn’t perfect thoughts.
It’s noticing the imperfect ones before they steer your life.
Your mind is the instrument through which everything passes, love, fear, beauty, meaning.
Learning to tune it might be the most important work you ever do.
Because once you see the mind for what it is, a storyteller, not a truth-teller, you stop taking every line of the story as gospel.
You learn to hold your thoughts lightly.
To question them.
To let them move through, like weather.
And that, quietly and completely, changes everything.
Stay human
- Bryan
PS: If this hit something true for you, reply and tell me. Let’s get you seeing yourself more clearly.
You are reading BEing Human, a weekly newsletter about an honest exploration of trust, leadership, and mindfulness from the bestselling author of Human-to-Human and Shareology, CEO, and TEDTalker. Written by Bryan Kramer, an executive coach and advisor to Fortune executives. I help executives make faster decisions and move past conflict.
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Thank you, Bryan! Great article!
Bryan, good one!
This one hit me right between the eyes. You said what I’ve been circling for years — that subtle shift from being the thought to seeing the thought. It’s amazing how much peace lives in that space.
I’ve spent a lifetime learning that not every storm in my head deserves a weather report. I’ve become like a lighthouse guiding ships at sea, a trusted source, standing high on the tower as an observer over the waters. Yet I’ve noticed that the water I live in can grow murky, and sometimes the fog rolls in, obscuring the view. So I keep checking the water and the weather, making sure my lens isn’t clouded. The water always clears when I stop trying to fix the current and simply notice it.
In another comparison, I wear hearing aids. At first, my right ear stopped working, and I thought it might be defective. But when I took it apart, I found a thin film of wax over the dome. I cleaned it off and bam, my hearing was restored. Observing saved me a three-hour trip to the audiologist.
Stay aware, and be willing to interact with what you observe. Alignment is what I ask for — and what I return to asking: What am I aligned to?
Your words reminded me that awareness really is where freedom begins — not escape, not control, just awareness.
Beautifully written, my friend.
Stay steady. Stay curious.
And most of all… stay constant.
G~