Helllooo from beautiful Indiana. We are now on the other side of the best month in the state. The Indianapolis 500. Memorial Day. Our community pool is officially open. The weather has been beautiful. I also had my 42nd birthday this past weekend. It’s been a whirlwind.

And that’s not all. Usually, a birthday would’ve been enough to make me reflective, but May had other plans. A LOT happened to me. TL;DR - this is a long one, but I don’t care. This is why I write this damn newsletter. We will get back to biz next weekend. This one is personal. 

This past year has been a struggle to come to terms with age, self-identity, and my head trash (more on that later), and that struggle has only grown over the last three months.  

It started with picking up The Second Mountain by David Brooks. It was a gut punch about identity and purpose. Thanks for nothing, David. 

Fast forward three months, Mark Kosoglow (CRO at Docebo) introduced me to Dr. Michael Brabant of Candor & Coherence. From the outside looking in, some would call Michael a therapist. I'd personally call him a healer, which sounds like hippie-bullshit, but I promise it's not. 

Michael’s work is one part leadership development, one part depth psychology, and one part spirituality (in whatever form you prefer). His whole thing is helping leaders become what he calls “truly trustable.” Not just to our teams, but to ourselves. Hell yes. 

"More success in business feels empty if you don't love your entire life."

Hell yes. I’m in. I started working with him almost immediately.

Fast-forward another two weeks, and I was at OrangeTheory (my home away from home). During the warmup, my heart rate skyrocketed and wouldn’t come back down. It felt like my heart was “fluttering,” bouncing between 110 and 140 bpm, and it lasted for four hours. 

I went to urgent care. Learned about the joys of chest shaving, EKG, and an echocardiogram. Everything came back clear, but I still need to see a cardiologist before I can fully work out again. I’m not exactly sure what triggered it (stress, caffeine, sleep), but it was an additional wake-up call.

So, 42 years old. The common work and life stresses. A heart that decided to rebel for a couple of hours. A David Brooks book is slapping me in the face. New, introspective conversations with Michael. It’s been crazy, but super helpful in hindsights led to som’s led to some fascinating lessons and discoveries about dealing with my head trash.

Before we get too deep into it, let’s define head trash. I've written about it extensively, but I haven’t fully defined it. 

Head Trash: It's the internal noise that drowns out your actual capabilities. It's the constant commentary that has nothing to do with reality and everything to do with fear.

It's the voice that whispers "what if you get this wrong, too?" in the board meeting, after you've already done the work and you know the answer. It doesn't care about your resume. It just keeps talking.

I can hear it today, even while writing this. I came into this morning with a plan. "Here's what we're going to do" turned slowly into "what do you think about maybe..." 

I can hear it while typing these words right now. I’m sizing myself up against other people. “Well, what if someone reads this and thinks I’m weak?” It’s sizing myself up against a room instead of trusting myself.

So, this week we will be discussing the multiple voices I deal with on a daily basis. It’s also about how a new book (and Michael) are helping me listen to multiple versions of “me” constantly giving opinions, pushing narratives, trying to protect, and trying to hold back. 

Let the fun begin because I know many of you know exactly what I’m talking about. 

♥️kyle

On Trying To Understand All the Voices In My Head

The Second Mountain was just the beginning for me. I’m not going to get too deep into the concepts because I highly recommend you pick up the book and read it but here’s the TL;DR: 

It’s about the shift from a first mountain (achievement, stats, building resume) to a second mountain, which is about depth, commitment, and meaning. 

And I’ve been the first mountain guy my entire life. And for the most part, it’s worked, but it’s never enough. 

My first session with Michael introduced me to the book Outshine Trauma by Ralph De La Rosa. And yes, the title made me a little nervous. I mean c’mon on. I’m a CMO. I workout at OrangeTheory. I write a newsletter. I’m not someone dealing with trauma. PSSH. 

I was wrong… ofc. 

But De La Rose isn’t ONLY writing about trauma in the way most people think about it. He’s also writing about why we are the way we are, and more importantly, what to do about it.

He writes through multiple lenses (meditation, Buddhism, etc). He also writes through the lens of Internal Family Systems (IFS) a framework developed by psychologist Richard Schwartz. The core idea is this: you are not one person. You are a collection of parts, each with their own history, their own job, their own fear. And at the center of all of them is a core Self (the real you) that has the capacity to lead, if you can get the parts to trust it.

IFS identifies three types of parts: 

• Exiles carry the old wounds… shame, rejection, the stuff that got buried because it’s really, really hard to deal with.

• Firefighters are the reactive ones, the parts that sprint in when an exile gets triggered and try to douse the pain fast, usually by making things worse. 

• Protectors are the managers, calculated, strategic, running interference before the pain can even surface. The voice that won't let you rest because resting feels like falling behind

Oh yah, the protector is an important one. This guy has been running my life since I was probably 21 years old.

Frameworks are frameworks. They are only instrumental in change if you allow the framework to give you permission to stop fighting your parts and start getting to know them (which sounds odd because it’s in your head). The goal in IFS isn’t to get rid of the critic or silence the envious voices. It’s to understand what they’re protecting, what they need, and eventually to help them trust that the real you can handle things without them controlling every situation. 

That’s a vastly differently relationship than I haven’t with my own head… ever. The first step (other than reading the book) is to understand how to actually recognize and work with your inner parts.

Introducing the 1-3-2 model

Michael introduced me to something called the 1-3-2 model, which is a way of externalizing your parts so you can actually work with them instead of just being drowned out on an hourly basis. It goes something like this: 

1 is first person. This is the blended state and one we are most familiar with. You and the part are the same thing. “I am scared. I’m not enough. I am falling behind.” It’s the Sunday night dread before a stressful week. You’re not having a thought. You are the thought.

3 is third person. You step back and observe the part like you’re watching someone else. “Huh. It is scared. The protector or firefighter is sounding the alarm again.” The main goal: the feeling isn’t you, it’s a part of you, and you recognize it. You see it. 

Note: I’ve given my different parts (at least the ones I recognize to date) names and titles but we will cover that a little later.

2 is second person. You turn toward the part and actually talk to it. “Hey there. I know you scared. What do you need right now? What are you typing to protect me from?” And I can tell you from experience, this is where things get super interesting. Because when you ask that question with genuine curiosity instead of frustration or ignorance, the answer usually is not what you expected. 

Let me give you an actual example from a couple of weeks ago when I was traveling. 

I’m walking through the Atlanta airport. It’s been three-months of nonstop travel. I have a slight to catch. I haven’t had a chance to send out an important update to the team, and the familiar spiral starts. Here’s the 1-3-2 in real time. 

First Person - Blended: I am behind. I am dropping things. People are noticing. My boss thinks I’m checking out. I should not be on this trip. I should be working right now. What about my family? Shit. I am falling behind and it’s going to catch up with me. 

I’m fully inside the thought. There is no separation of church and state. There’s no Kyle observing the anxiety. There’s just anxiety. 

Third Person - The Observer: Okay. There’s a part of me that’s scared right now. It sees a threat (real or not) and it’s pulling every alarm it can reach. It’s not work that there’s work to do. But it’s catastrophizing. 

You may have noticed, I didn’t try to fix anything. I just observed long enough to see it as a part doing its job instead of an absolute truth of my life. 

Second Person - Relating: Hey! I hear you. What do you actually need right now? What would actually help? 

In this instance, it responded to me and that my friends… is wild. All that it needed was for me to spend 20 minutes finishing the email and sending it out. One small motion to signal that things are falling apart. It just needed a small thing. 

And one of the most important aspects of this exercise is to thank the part. “Hey. I really appreciate you flagging that I needed to get something done. I greatly appreciate it.” 

And guess what happened? The voice quieted. And when it popped up again after a Slack message from someone on my team, I paused. Observed the voice. Asked it what it needed. And it disappeared. The only thing I needed to do was recognize the voice. Sometimes that’s all that matters. 

The 1-3-2 model isn’t a master plan to fix your head trash but it creates a gap between the loud voices in your head and your reaction to them. And because of the gap, you can actually make a choice of how you want to handle that part. 

Because you probably have a few, I do. 

Meeting Some of My Parts

Michael gives me homework after every session and I was asked to log the different parts as they happen. Thanks to Claude and voice notes, I’ve kept track of many random voices and thoughts I had over a week long period. They are raw, unfiltered thoughts and guess what happened? 

Yep. There are repeating patterns. Here are a few of mine. Maybe you can relate? 

The Achiever is probably my loudest part. He's the one who woke me up at 5am on a Saturday wondering why I wasn't already learning more about AI. He's the one who took a one-line message from a peer about a campaign and turned it into a full crisis about my competence. He's been running for a long time, and honestly, he's gotten me pretty far. The problem is he doesn't know when to stop. He treats rest like a threat and stillness like a symptom. Working with Michael, I've started asking him: is feeling behind a tool, or is it just a tax you're paying on something that happened a long time ago?

The Approval Seeker is sneakier. He's the one who wanted to ask a stranger about his car at my son's flag football practice and then spent ten minutes convincing me not to. Just a guy. Just a car. Completely innocent. But The Approval Seeker ran a crazy analysis… what if he's weird, what if it's awkward, what if he judges me… and quietly talked me out of a two-minute conversation. He does this constantly. Conference rooms, dinner invitations, text messages. He's scanning every interaction for the possibility of rejection and pulling the emergency brake before it can happen.

The Worrier is the one who turned a mudroom renovation budget into an existential crisis about whether I should be working more. He doesn't have bad intentions. He just needs information to feel okay, and when the information isn't there, he fills the gap with worst-case scenarios. He's also the one doing the expenses spiral, the Monday morning stress, the airport anxiety. He's not irrational. He's just running on incomplete data and trying to solve problems that aren't fully his to solve.

The Impatient Father shows up when I'm with my kids in public, or trying to get out the door, or running five minutes late to something that truly doesn't matter. A few weeks ago I lost my patience with my eight-year-old because he was distracted by a toy we'd printed on a 3D printer and wouldn't come downstairs. We were already late for flag football practice. I got frustrated. Twice. Once leaving the house and once when he asked me to drive him closer to the field.

C’mon on, it's flag football. We were already late. Driving him ten extra feet costs me nothing. But The Impatient Father wasn't reacting to the situation. He was reacting to something underneath it. A fear of looking like a dad who doesn't have it together. A standard I've never actually examined but apparently hold myself to constantly.

The Mind Reader writes other people's emotional states for them before they've said a single word. I invited my best friend and his family to a last-minute dinner and immediately imagined him and his wife sitting there discussing how they didn't want to come. No evidence. No context. Just a story I wrote for them in my own head.

The story wasn’t confirmed and it was most certainly wrong. I mean, it’s one of my best friends. But The Mind Reader doesn't need confirmation. He just needs silence, and he'll fill it with whatever hurts most. What IFS helped me understand is that he's not cruel, he's just trying to prepare me. If he can predict the rejection before it happens, maybe it won't hurt as much when it does. I mean I get it, but it’s just not very useful.

What IFS helped me see is that none of these parts are villains. The Achiever is protecting me from irrelevance. The Approval Seeker is protecting me from rejection. The Worrier is trying to keep things from falling apart. The Impatient Father is protecting an image he's never been asked to defend. The Mind Reader is trying to get ahead of pain before it arrives.

They all have a job. They all have a reason. The work isn't to fire them. It's to let them know that the core of me (the Self that can actually handle hard things) is also here and it’s okay, they can relax a little.

That's easier said than done. But I'm getting better at catching the moment when a part takes over. 

Okay, so why am I sharing this? 

This isn't the kind of thing I wrestled with writing. I share this stuff all the time. Sobriety. Imposter syndrome. Parenting through self-doubt.

Because understanding yourself is a career skill. It might be the most underrated one. The parts running your head are also running your leadership. The Achiever is in your one-on-ones. The Approval Seeker is in your board presentations. The Mind Reader is writing your team's reactions before the meeting even starts. You can optimize your funnel, sharpen your messaging, and build a world-class team, and still have a part quietly undermining all of it from the inside.

The future belongs to people who can do the inner work alongside the outer work. Not instead of it. Alongside it. That's why I write Revenue Diaries. Not to give you a framework to execute but to stay honest about what it actually takes to show up well.

You've got parts. They've been on the job for a long, lond time. It's worth getting to know them.

If any of this resonates, pick up Outshine Trauma. It's not what you think it is. And if you're not already working with someone like Michael, it might be worth finding your version of that too.

The voice that shows up when you're walking to your next thing is trying to tell you something. Listen, recognize and respond. Start there.