“Divorce your story.  Marry your truth.”  Tony Robbins.

I recently came across a video from Tony Robbins where he talks about “The only thing keeping you from getting what you want is the story you keep telling yourself about why you don’t have it…yet!”

I believe this quote relates to every one of us both personally and professionally.  We all have a tendency to tell an inner story which is not truthful.

A client of mine who has been working in a tech company for many years was recently moved into a new role.  This exciting position has been work he has been doing all along and involves more management and day-to-day operations.  Also, with this new role, he now gets to sit at the Leadership table during top executive meetings.

Originally, my client came to me to develop his leadership skills and to have a larger presence at “the table.”

Upon discussing his current role, it became evident, that when placed in this new position, there was no real job description of his new duties or expectations.  Through coaching my client had a great one-to-one with his leader to discuss this matter.  The leader was very open to the conversation and asked my client to create his own job description.

After several weeks, my client was not making progress.  When asked what was going on he mentioned, “I have the ideas in my head but have not put them on paper.”  After further conversation, I was curious as to whether or not he would be asking for a salary increase in this new role?  My client mentioned that peers of his at the same level were making better salaries than he is currently.  However, I noticed that my client was not only reticent to creating the job description but also uneasy to discuss increased compensation.  And then it came out….The Story!

As you can well imagine, there was a story in his head about negative self-worth, self-value and self-esteem.  However, that is what they were…stories.  Not the truth.

The truth of the matter is my client has been with this company for many years and has gone above and beyond to deliver high quality work.  Never once has he received negative feedback about performance or professionalism, even though colleagues of his are not as professional or high performers as he is.

When my client began to “engage” the truth, the light bulb turned on.  He needed to “divorce” the untrue negative story.

He subsequently delivered his job description to his leader that he created along with his revised compensation package, and together they worked on a mutually agreed upon plan which was not only beneficial to the company but also, for my client.  His leader was also impressed that my client took the initiative to discuss these matters and complimented him on his progress.

What’s the true story you need to tell yourself starting NOW?