Close your eyes for a second. Go ahead, really do it. Mette Reebirk asked me to try this live on the show, and within a breath there was a voice in my head going, "this is weird, I hope this doesn't last too long." Then a second voice: "come on, be positive, she has a plan." Then Mette asks the real question: who's the one watching those two voices argue? That's the whole episode in miniature. We have around 60,000 thoughts a day, she says, coming and going like clouds, and you do not have a single feeling, not anxiety, not shame, not anger, that wasn't created by a thought you believed to be true for a moment.
Mette is an author and executive coach who's spent over two decades helping experienced leaders question their thoughts and free themselves from anxiety. Seven years ago, after decades in senior leadership (president of an investment-attraction organization, international director at a university, and director of corporate relations at another), she got fired, not for the first time in her career, and started her own consultancy from scratch, not entirely sure what she had to offer once the company logo was gone. What she found, working with laid-off executives who "on paper had everything" and still felt hollow, became the foundation for the thought-questioning work she teaches today.
We get into why you're not actually meeting the person in front of you, you're meeting your own story about them, how that single insight can defuse a bad boss, a messy teenager's room, or a marriage fight, and why the only thing you ever really lose when you let go of a false belief is the story itself.
Watch this episode on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4TjlwFusmYU
Mette Reebirk is an author and executive coach based in Copenhagen, Denmark, who has spent more than two decades helping experienced leaders question their thoughts and free themselves from anxiety. Before starting her own consultancy, she held senior leadership roles including president of an organization set up to attract investment to Copenhagen, international director at a university, and director of corporate relations at another. She has a new book on questioning the thoughts we believe to be true.
Connect with her on LinkedIn.
"You do not have a feeling or an emotion that has not been created by a thought. So whenever you feel anxious, afraid, angry, shameful, it's created by a thought you, in a very short moment, innocently believed to be true." —Mette Reebirk
"When we meet the other person, we don't really meet the other person. We meet the story, our own story about the other person. That means that actually we meet ourself." —Mette Reebirk
"The only thing that we can lose is a story. The only thing we can lose is the story." —Mette Reebirk
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