YOUR PROPAGANDA IS SHOWING
Expose The Covert Story Running Your Leadership
3-Minute Read
Your gut feeling has a ghostwriter. And it's been on the payroll since you were seven.
I worked with a founder, Marcus, who desperately needed a director of operations. After months of searching, a candidate landed in his lap. Stellar track record. Glowing references. Clear strategic thinker. Within ten minutes, Marcus knew this person could transform his business.
And then something kicked in.
"This feels too easy," he told me. "People like this don't stay. She'll get bored in six months and leave me worse off than before."
He almost passed on the hire. Told me he was "being cautious."
But caution wasn't what was talking.
There is a word for what Marcus was doing, and it's the same word we use when governments do it: propaganda. Most founders are running a version of it on themselves without knowing it. This week, we're exposing the mechanism, how it builds its case, and one move that begins to dismantle it.
Let’s dive in.
exposing your propaganda campaign
"The most erroneous stories are those we think we know best, and therefore never scrutinize or question." — Stephen Jay Gould
I asked Marcus where that story came from. He went quiet. Then he started listing: a business partner who bailed two years in. A key employee who left for a competitor the week before a major launch. His dad who blew in and out of his life after his parents divorced.
He had a whole prosecution file. "Good things don't last for me" was the operating narrative, and his brain had been building the case since he was a teen. Every departure cataloged in high definition. Every person who stayed, every client who renewed: filed under "not yet."
Repeat a message often enough and it will live as truth inside your mind. You won't just believe it; you'll build a case to support it. Your brain will surface confirming memories with surgical precision and quietly ignore the contradictions.
This is not a character flaw. Your subconscious processes roughly 100 million bits of information per second. Your conscious mind handles about 100. What determines which 100? Whatever narrative is already running.
When that narrative is "good things don't last," the brain works like a prosecutor assembling evidence for a foregone conviction. Every setback gets tagged and stored. Every win gets minimized or credited to luck.
The evidence feels real. It feels like memory, like data. You make decisions from it every day. But you're not leading from data. You're leading from a disinformation campaign—your story.
Same Song, Second Verse
This campaign doesn't always sound the same. Maybe yours shows up as:
"Just when I'm on the brink of a breakthrough, something always goes wrong."
"I'm just being careful." (You're not being careful. You're being managed by a story you don't know you're telling.)
"I'm waiting for the other shoe to drop."
"It's too good to be true."
Different lyrics. Same song. And it plays loudest at the moments that matter most: the hire, the partnership, the investment, the leap. Right when something extraordinary is within reach, the campaign fires up to keep you "safe" by keeping you small.
Every founder I've worked with who has stalled at the threshold of their next level has had some version of this underneath. It's not a lack of strategy or talent. It's a propaganda campaign so embedded it doesn't register as a story anymore. It just feels like being realistic.
It's not.
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How It Gets Constructed
There was a time you didn't run this campaign. Somewhere along the way, likely early, something happened that your young mind interpreted as proof: I'm not okay. Good things don't last. The other shoe always drops.
That interpretation became a directive to the subconscious: find more of this. Confirm it. Protect me.
And your brain, brilliant and obedient, has been doing exactly that ever since. Constructing memories to validate the narrative. Filtering out what contradicts it. The campaign got so constant that the story stopped looking like a story. It started looking like "just how life is."
That's propaganda at its finest: not just believing the message, but losing the ability to see anything outside of it.
Deconstruction Starts with One Question
You don't dismantle a propaganda campaign by arguing with it. That triggers the brain to dig in harder. You dismantle it by exposing the construction process.
Identify the one story you repeat most about how life works for you. The quiet, settled one that doesn't feel like a story anymore. "I always mess it up." "I have to do it all myself." "Success costs me everything." Write it down.
Then ask: When did I first start telling myself this? What happened?
Don't analyze it. Just locate the origin. See that there was a moment before this story existed, and a moment after. Something happened, and you made it mean something about how life works.
That meaning became a filter. The filter became a campaign. The campaign became invisible. Seeing the construction is the deconstruction. You're no longer handcuffed by an "inherent truth." You're looking at an interpretation. And interpretations can be interrupted.
Take it one step further. Each day this week, write down one thing that went well, held together, or worked out. Don't interpret it. Just record it. After seven days, read the list. Notice what your brain does: dismissed it, minimized it, credited luck. That response is the propaganda in action.
“It’s so embedded it doesn’t register as a story anymore. It just feels like being realistic.”
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You built a company from nothing. A team, a vision, a body of work that didn't exist before you showed up. You are a builder. And the most consequential thing you will ever build is the narrative you lead from.
Somewhere in you, underneath the campaign, is a version of you that existed before the story took hold. Before the evidence got constructed. Before "being realistic" became code for "being afraid." That version didn't need proof that good things could last. It just lived.
That version is still the foundation. What would be possible for you without the added story getting in the way?
Keep creating.
key takeaways
Your brain builds a prosecution file, not a balanced record. When a disempowered story takes root, the subconscious begins curating evidence to confirm it while ignoring contradictions. The result feels like memory. It operates like propaganda.
The campaign wears disguises founders respect. "I'm just being careful." "I'm being realistic." These aren't wisdom. They're the same story in different outfits, and they activate loudest at the threshold of your next level.
Seeing the construction is the deconstruction. You don't dismantle propaganda by arguing with it. You dismantle it by locating when and where the story was first built. Once you see it as an interpretation rather than an inherent truth, it loses its authority over your decisions.
WORK 1:1 WITH BECKY
As a self-mastery coach, I help mission-driven founders accelerate desired results without sacrificing what matters. If that sounds like good news, REACH OUT to experience how 1:1 coaching can empower you to be the masterful leader your mission requires.
May you prosper in every way!
Becky & TPL Team
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