May 20, 2025

A great hindrance I see for performance is a lack of distinction.

And there is one distinction most of us don’t have.

It is the distinction that, when it came up for me, completely transformed my life, and it has impacted all the clients I work with greatly.

From the woman who let go of her job, while having 3 kids, being a single mom, a mortgage on the house, and bills to pay, to create a life she loves to live, creating her own business and a new relationship, to the man who had to confront his marriage and ways of being in managing hundreds of people (these are all real stories of clients I work with) and completely shifted how he shows up everywhere — no anger, but listening; no fighting, but confronting.

Or the client who had to face the reality of her declining business and reinvent herself to get a job she now loves.

What we got was a distinction we aren’t taught and which is not nurtured by how society works.

The distinction between what’s actually happening and our interpretation of what’s happening.

To get what I mean, you might want to do what I did the other day. I was watching a nature documentary with my wife about the savanna and its inhabitants.

You could see a lion chasing another animal. As she was running, the commentator spoke about what was happening.

"She is chasing the zebra, knowing that when she doesn’t get it, it will mean danger for her cubs, and again a failure on her part; she has to get it right this time."

The documentary went on, things were happening, and the commentator created a drama about it.

If you asked the lion or the zebra, they would have nothing to say about it. Yes, they had feelings, yes, they ran, but all of the meaning the commentator placed on the scene was not inherent in the scene.

It came from the commentator.

When I had my insight, which completely turned my life around and got me on the journey of coaching, I, for the first time, realized the commentator as what it was: a commentator. An interpreting automation, which ran on some random events from my past, creating drama wherever I went.

"If this month I don’t perform, I will never make it."

"What’s the meaning of my life, and how can I find it?"

"I will feel horrible if I fail."

"I don’t know if I am good enough to make it."

And on and on it goes.

We have a story-making machine called the brain. And it is beautiful when we don’t confuse it with what’s actually happening.

When we do, though, confuse it, we can’t tell the difference anymore between a life-threatening event and a memory we have where we got embarrassed in front of the class and now are shitting our pants when it comes to speaking publicly.

Or we totally overestimate the risk of launching a business when, in fact, it is straightforward.

Or we respond to our boss the same way we responded to our father, as we are still stuck in that interpretation and can’t even hear what the boss is saying.

We confuse the story for actuality, the drama for what’s happening, and if we don’t see that, it causes all sorts of problems for our performance.

We create excuses that seem real when in fact, we would have the energy to do something.

When I hear, "I don’t have the time to get it done," I ask my clients, "If you were a machine (No, I don’t suggest you become a machine, this is a metaphor) and had 0 emotions, would you be able to do the work?"

More often than not, they say yes, and what opens up is that they see that time was never the issue, but the drama in their head cost them all their beautiful energy.

When they restore the distinction between their meaning-making, story-creating mind and the present reality, they get a quiet and productive life.

What does it take? Get present to the commentator in you. See how it creates drama, worries, and fears all day long, and also notice that most of it never actually happens.

If you want to have a deeper insight into how your mind constructs the drama, I suggest you read the book The Untethered Soul by Michael A. Singer. It shows you what you do all day long that can cost you your happiness in life.

Restoring that distinction served me, my marriage, and all my clients, and I know it will serve you.

With love,

Moritz