The Paradox of ‘Self’ Improvement: How Self-Discovery Unlocks Your Leadership Potential
The secret to becoming a more effective leader is to stop trying to improve yourself.
I know, that sounds counterintuitive...
Because how else would you become a more effective leader?
Well self-improvement tends to begin with the idea that there’s something wrong with you and focus on how to fix it.
Moreover, in most self-improvement efforts the mind goes through what people call the 'self-ing' process, where the mind builds up and strengthens an image of itself that it holds and tries to improve.
This reinforces the idea that who you are is the image your mind has of you.
But you begin to unlock a deeper truth when you see that the image your mind has of you is itself just a thought.
From that space, you can adopt new behaviors and see what’s in the way of actually serving your people and company best instead of simply trying to preserve or aggrandize your currently held self-image.
And here's what I've learned after 15 years of coaching some of the world's most successful founders: the more energy you spend preserving that identity, the less present, available, and adaptive you become…
So here’s how to step outside your self-image and discover what’s left:
How the Mind Builds "You"
Here's what's happening beneath the surface:
Moment to moment, your mind is processing experience through a predictable loop:
Contact → Feeling → Craving → Becoming → Clinging → Death
- You’re in a board meeting. A partner challenges your product roadmap. (Contact.)
- You feel a wave of tightness in your chest—anxiety. (Feeling.)
- A thought arises: “They’re questioning my competence.” (Craving: to be seen as smart / capable.)
- You jump in to explain and justify your decisions at length. (Becoming: assuming the “confident, decisive CEO” identity.)
- After the meeting, your mind replays every comment. You reread your follow-up email three times before hitting send. (Clinging: to the image you want to preserve.)
- The next day, the partner sends a curt response. You feel a pit in your stomach. (Death: threat to the self-image you were defending.
Here’s the key insight:
You don’t start with a fixed self and then defend it.
The act of defending creates the self.
Every moment of grasping, resisting, or managing perception—
literally fabricates the identity you think you are.
That’s selfing.
It’s not something you are—it’s something your mind does, automatically, continuously throughout the day.
When Self Protection Hijacks Leadership
This shows up all the time in the founders I coach.
They’re not responding to what’s actually happening in the room.
They’re reacting to how it might reflect on them.
Not listening to understand, but to protect.
Not speaking from clarity, but from performance.
And when they’re stuck there...
below the line, in the self-ing process, defending against anything that might disrupt their carefully constructed identity...
they lose access to the presence, creativity, and courage that great leadership demands.
The Mirror of Judgment
There's another way the self-ing process limits you: it distorts how you see others.
The unconscious judgments of good vs bad that create and are applied to your “self” —"I'm not technical enough," "I have to prove I belong here"—become the lens through which you see and value your team.
I had a client who was constantly frustrated with his team's "lack of initiative." He was so worried about appearing behind the curve himself that he couldn't see his team's actual proactivity.
When you're caught in self preservation, you're not seeing people as they are. You're seeing them as reflections of your own unconscious stories.
Because how you measure others is how you measure yourself.
Except to take it further, it is actually the measurement that creates the separate selves to be measured in the first place.
The Fear of Letting Go
Here's the thing about stepping outside that self-image: it can feel like a form of death.
Because on some level, it is death—the death of a mental construct you've spent years building and defending.
One of my clients, a founder who'd just raised $30M, came to me in complete overwhelm. "I can't stop trying to control how I’m coming across," he said.
When we started exploring what would happen if he stopped trying to be "the confident, visionary CEO," he literally started shaking. His nervous system was interpreting the dissolution of that identity as a survival threat.
But here's what I've learned: that fear doesn't mean it's wrong. It just means it's unfamiliar.
As I often tell clients: "The conditions we learned to survive in become the conditions upon which our continued survival depends."
You learned to survive by constructing this identity. Of course your system resists letting it go.
The practice is to stay with that fear—not run from it.
Welcome it. Feel it. Let it move.
And from that place of presence, you can begin to choose something different.
A Practice for Selflessness
Here’s something you can try immediately—drawn directly from the work I do with founders every day:
The next time you feel tension in a meeting or conversation—that familiar clench in your chest or knot in your gut—pause.
Take a breath.
Notice the sensations.
Ask yourself:
“What part of me is feeling threatened right now?”
Then—just for a moment—see if you can welcome what’s there, without trying to fix it or push it away.
Feel the fear, the pressure, the need to prove.
And from that place of presence, gently ask:
“What wants to be served here?” “What would best serve my team right now?”
That shift—from protecting your identity to serving what’s needed—can change everything.
Freedom From Yourself
Here’s the deepest insight I’ve discovered about self preservation:
You don’t have to eliminate it. You just have to stop identifying with it.
Your mind will keep creating stories about who you are. That’s what minds do.
But you can learn to observe those stories without getting caught in them.
You’re not the image your mind is trying to protect.
You are the awareness in which all of that arises and passes.
And from that place of recognition, leadership becomes natural. Effortless.
You’re not trying to be a great leader—you’re simply responding to what this moment requires.
That’s the paradox:
The less you focus on appearing as a great leader, the more your natural leadership emerges.
Because when you stop defending a prison you never needed…
You discover a freedom you’ve always had.
With love,
