Stop Playing Small: Rewrite the Story That’s Holding You Back

Have you ever told yourself a story that felt so true… you didn’t even question it?

“I’m not ready.”

“I’m not good enough.”

“People like me don’t do things like that.”

Friend, I’ve been there—and in this episode, we’re breaking that pattern wide open.

Because what if the thing holding you back isn’t your strategy, resources, or experience… but the story you’ve been telling yourself?

I’m sitting down with Megan Hyatt Miller to unpack how your brain creates meaning—and how those stories are designed to keep you safe (not successful). We walk through a simple 3-step process to help you identify, challenge, and rewrite the beliefs that are keeping you stuck.

If you’ve been playing small, waiting for confidence, or questioning if this will work for you… this conversation will change the way you see everything.

What if your story isn’t true?

And what if you get to choose a new one?

Let’s dive in.

Click play to hear all of this and:

[00:00] Why the story you tell yourself shapes your entire life

[00:02] The hidden “narrator” in your brain (and how it controls your decisions)

[00:04] How to identify the exact story keeping you stuck

[00:07] The difference between facts vs. the meaning you assign to them

[00:09] Why skipping the “interrogation” step keeps you stuck

[00:12] How to rewrite your story so it actually sticks

[00:15] Real examples from entrepreneurs at every level (from $0 to millions)

🎧 Listen to the full episode with Megan Hyatt Miller, Mindset Changes You Can Make Today that Will Change Your Tomorrow, >>HERE<<

Listen to Related Episodes:

• 3 Steps to Rewiring Belief and Building Unshakable Confidence
• Rewrite Your Identity: From Self-Sabotage to Self-Worth
• The 4 Things My Brain Did to Keep Me Stuck - and How I Overcame Them

Connect With Megan Hyatt Miller:

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/meganhyattmiller

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/meganhyattmiller

Website: https://mh.fullfocus.co/author/meganmiller/

📧 Join my Newsletter for a weekly cocktail of insider business strategy, personal reflections, and the journey of being a thought leader: https://jasminestar.com/newsletter 📧

For full show notes, visit jasminestar.com/podcast/episode638

Transcript

Rosy Shephard 00:00:00  Welcome to the Jasmine Star Show. If you've ever felt stuck or overwhelmed by the limiting beliefs that keep you from stepping into your greatness, this episode is for you. In this conversation, Megan shares how she learned to change the stories she'd been telling herself, and it transformed everything. We also break down how to stop playing small and start shifting your mindset to access the life you truly want. If you've been struggling with limiting beliefs or wondering how to move past those mental blocks, Megan offers practical guidance on how to address them and take meaningful action that will lead to results. It's time to stop waiting for the perfect moment, and instead focus on building a mindset that will create the results you want. Let's dive in.

Megan Miller 00:00:40  It's all about changing your story.

Jasmine Star 00:00:42  so there's a couple things that came up for me. And so if you're listening audio. This is perfect if you have any. Watching the video you'll see me looking down a lot. I told Megan like I didn't want it to be appear rude, but as a podcast host, I actually take notes, taking notes, how I learn.

Jasmine Star 00:00:56  And so Megan's talking and people are like, Jess is being so rude. No, no, no, I got my notebook. And one of the things that I really loved is like, I didn't want to live a small story anymore. And I think that's such a powerful form of ownership because we say, oh, that's not me or this is me, or could you not just say, that's a small story and I choose to embrace it or not? And so I kind of just want to start there and talk about how on the outside, people see, here's a CEO and now you're a CEO of this amazing, big, thriving company that would never know that you were choosing a small story. And how many of us are choosing a small story? You know, that's when I wrote a new story. And so I want to get practical. I want to lay out the getting started with mindset. And so for me, I have been on a big journey here on the podcast, we talk about mindset, and I think it's kind of like this nebulous idea, and I'm working through it and I'm studying it and I'm absolutely geeking out.

Jasmine Star 00:01:48  Now. There are people who are just getting started in business, and we're going to talk about different types of business owners on this journey. But if you're advanced, if you're making tens of millions or you're just getting started with your first 10,000. Like, there's people who are starting a business and they haven't yet made sales and they're unsure, like, am I good enough? Is this going to work? I see this a lot. Regardless of the size of the business. So if a person were to come to you and say, Megan, what's my first step? Like, how do I start focusing on mindset? It seems like this big thing. What do you say? Where do we start?

Megan Miller 00:02:16  I love that you pointed that out, Jasmine, because I think you're right. It does feel like this big squishy thing that's like some people just maybe magically get. And maybe you feel like one of the people that don't get it. The good news is that's actually not true, despite how it might feel.

Megan Miller 00:02:27  So what's happening for all of us is that our brain takes the facts of our lives. You know, maybe the fact that you haven't made a sale yet or the fact that you've done 10,000, or the fact that you've done 10 million, whatever that number is for you. And then it tells us a story about what that means, because our brain likes to make meaning, it likes to give us interpretations that ultimately are going to keep us safe and protected. And so that's where really the self-doubt comes from, because our brain doesn't want us to try new things. It doesn't like it when we're out of our comfort zone and all of that. So really, the first step in starting to think about mindset is to realize that you have this character that we call the narrator in your head, really just your brain, but we personify it. Who is interpreting the events of your life all the time and telling you what they mean? And it does that in the form of a story like I always, I could never this is how this works.

Megan Miller 00:03:21  This usually comes out as statements about how the world works, how you are, or how other people are. So those are kind of the three categories that generally these statements, these stories present themselves in. And so the first step is really just identifying the story that you're telling around something where you feel stuck or where you want to go to the next level, but maybe that feels out of reach for you. And if you can just begin to be aware of the story, then you're really set up for the next step, which is to interrogate the story. And at this point, we want to kind of shake loose what happens in our lives or what the facts are from the story that our narrator is telling us about those facts. Because once you start to loosen those things up and you realize there are actually two different things, there's facts, and then there's the fiction or the story we put on top of it. Then you're set out for step number three, which is to imagine a better story.

Megan Miller 00:04:12  What I see people do with mindset sometimes is they try to leapfrog from identifying a story that they're telling that they know is really contributing to them playing small, and they try to leapfrog to a bigger, better story without interrogating it. And it just doesn't stick because it's kind of like your brain says, yeah, right. You know, because it feels so true, that story and the facts together, you know, and so you've really got to go through the interrogation process. So you set the stage for the new story taking root.

Jasmine Star 00:04:42  Okay. So can we pause there for a second?

Megan Miller 00:04:44  Yes.

Jasmine Star 00:04:45  Okay. So I'm CEO of social curator and I work with small business owners. And I decided at the start of 2023 to go through a four week mindset program. Now, this is not a promotion because it's closed. So I'm in the middle. And this morning I taught session number two of four. And what has been really fascinating is that it's interactive. I'm teaching it live. It's a cohort and people are reading in the chat.

Jasmine Star 00:05:08  And to me this is like the most phenomenal R&D to understand the journey of a small business owner and then distilling it and being like, what can I create to get people past this point? Now the thing that I have noticed, and I'm going to present this because in case people in the podcast are listening, you had said, identify the story, interrogate the story, apply a new story. That sounds amazing, but people get stuck on applying, like on assessing the story. You could go back immediately. Oh, anxiety ridden as a result of public speaking, you knew the story so you can interrogate it. People have a hard time identifying what happened to make me feel or second guess or pause or stay stuck today. How do they find that story?

Megan Miller 00:05:43  Yeah, well, first of all, try to think about what are the sentences kind of just in my head because stories really present themselves like statements. So what am I saying? And then start to ask yourself the question. This is part of the interrogation.

Megan Miller 00:05:57  Would somebody else with a different set of experiences, would they interpret that set of facts? The girl in the bathroom crying after having anxiety from the event at the school? Would they have come to the same conclusion that speaking was dangerous, that speaking would lead to humiliation? Or might they have come to another conclusion like she needs some more practice? Or maybe she's really introverted or who knows? I mean, you could come up with like a whole list of things. I, by the way, am quite introverted myself. So that's not to say that you can't speak if you're introverted, but you know you want to try to just. It's almost like you're trying to peel your fingers back from the grip on that story. That makes it feel so true by asking, would somebody else see it that way? What else could be true? Can we really verify that story as being a fact, or is that a subjective interpretation of those facts? And I did this actually with a group the other day, and they were struggling with a new system that was being rolled out in their business, and they really weren't excited about it.

Megan Miller 00:06:59  They didn't think the team that was going to be doing it was the ideal team. They wanted to be able to do it themselves. They thought they had more expertise. And the interesting thing is that when you have a story that feels like facts, but it's not, it directs the actions that you take which ultimately deliver the results that you're getting in your life. And so, for example, if you think a team who is working on something in your company is incompetent or they're not as good as you would be at doing it, how you show up to try to implement what they're going to suggest is going to be very different than if you think they're great at what they're doing, or they're really smart, and that's ultimately going to affect the success of that project. And that's true in so many areas of our life, which is why this is so powerful.

Jasmine Star 00:07:42  So can we get a little bit more granular.

Megan Miller 00:07:45  Yeah.

Jasmine Star 00:07:45  Okay. So top two limiting beliefs or the stories that people are repeating as fact that I've seen is I don't know how like, I don't know the first step, I don't know how, and I don't have time.

Jasmine Star 00:07:59  So we all have different stories that led us to this belief. But could you give us an example of how I don't have time? Like what story could have predicted that for us to have that as our narrative, as an example?

Megan Miller 00:08:11  Well, I mean, you know, for example, like, I'm a mom of five kids, I have five children, ages 21 to 3, and I have a business. And I had to make a really big decision when my little boys were adopted from Uganda. When they came home, they had a lot of traumatic experiences and needed a lot of hands on, you know, parenting to help them heal. And as I was kind of ascending in my career, I made the decision that I was going to be done every day at 3:00 because I needed to be present for them. And so instead of thinking to myself, I don't have time to do everything I need to make this business succeed. Which, by the way, is the first thought I have.

Megan Miller 00:08:48  Your brain is always going to give you kind of these self-protective, negative thoughts. So don't worry about that. You're not doing anything wrong. If that happens, you're just congratulations, you're normal. I said to myself, wait a second, is that really true? Is it really true that I can't get everything done, that I need to get done to make this business grow? No, I mean, I couldn't there's not like, a list of here's all the things you have to do. Exactly. Other than the list I'm making for myself. In fact, what if I have exactly enough time to get the most important things done? And I can ultimately build a team to do the things that I don't have time to do? Well, that all of a sudden radically changes how I approach that situation. And I was doing that, by the way, at a time when our team was very small. My kids were much older now, when I had a lot fewer resources than I had today.

Megan Miller 00:09:35  But I chose to embrace the constraints. And so, for example, you might say, I don't have enough time to do everything, but I do have enough time to do the most important things. And so that's what we call a paradoxical framing of a story where you don't totally discount your original story, because there probably is a grain of truth in it, and I think it's not helpful to kind of completely dismiss it in some cases, but you can twist it. You know, my time is limited, but I have all the time I need to do the most important things, and I think that changes how you're thinking about the actions you're going to take, because now you're going to become like I did. Way to hear about the decisions that you're making, what you choose to invest your time in. You're not going to be jumping on Facebook or Instagram unless it's for professional purposes. You know, you're going to be like really focused and very choosy about what you invest in, and that's going to change your results.

Jasmine Star 00:10:29  Oh so good. Thank you for diving deep there and adding so much clarity. So a person who is here and they hear, well, CEO five kids having time for the most important assembling teams. And that was on the origins of mindset. And then there's always the skeptic, which I appreciate and I applaud. I am naturally a Naturally skeptic. And many people are like, well, I don't see how this mind stuff, like stuff it kind of like works for me. Like whenever I have a problem, I just go and solve it. I take action, I figure it out. I don't really need to focus because adding mindset just makes it more like another layer. Okay, so would you say that mindset work is for everybody, or do you think there's more people who are like more akin to it? Where do you go with this?

Megan Miller 00:11:05  There are probably people who are more naturally open to it, but there's not any research that would suggest that some people are going to get better results with mindset or, you know, they're just like naturally hardwired to really benefit from mindset work while others won't.

Megan Miller 00:11:19  Here's what I would say to that person, because I totally relate to you and my husband, who is our Chief Product Officer and was very instrumental in the research of this book, would naturally be in that camp and has really made a lot of progress over time as he's delved into the research on this. Because here's the thing your brain is if you're action bias, which I mean, I can tell jasmyne, you are, I am. It's like, let's go get it done. Right. But when you have an action bias, the actions that you're taking are limited by the story that you're telling. So a story that says, I could never or this is not possible. There's no way I could go from $10,000 that I made last year to $100,000 this year. There's just no way that could happen. Well, your brain is going to do that thing where it starts sorting for solutions that are congruent with your story. It's kind of like if you bought a Tesla, all of a sudden you would think everybody in your town bought a Tesla.

Megan Miller 00:12:14  In fact, you just started noticing them because you're you got one yourself. Same thing with our actions in the solutions that we have access to. So if you want to have access to the kind of actions that are going to get you the results you want, then you have to go further upstream and you have to tell a story that's going to kind of point your brain in the direction of the solutions that are going to be helpful, instead of giving you more of what you're already getting. So that's why this matters. You just can't think the thoughts you need to think to get where you want to go. Unless your brain is predisposed to look for the solutions you need.

Jasmine Star 00:12:48  So how might somebody do that? Can you give us like a super granular example, like when you have to go upstream? Like I get this, but there might be somebody who's listening to be like, well, what does that actually mean?

Megan Miller 00:12:58  Okay. So for example, I have been a person who's really prioritized my health for a long period of time.

Megan Miller 00:13:03  I had a rare heart attack. There's nothing to do with lifestyle. It has some kind of freaky heart attack that almost nobody ever has. Young, active women in their 40s. That's who gets this heart attack. It's called a Scad heart attack. So I had this about a year and a half ago. And my doctor said, you also have some genetic risk for other heart disease. I think that you should really try to focus, you know, at an even higher level on reducing your risk by losing weight. And I was like, oh, okay. You know, I'm not really excited about that. But I had some early success with some lifestyle stuff. And then I hit a wall and I just wasn't making progress. And so, you know, my natural instinct would be I need to be more consistent. Maybe I need to add 15 more minutes of walking every day. Maybe, you know, whatever, just those little tweaks in reality that wasn't going to get me where I needed to go.

Megan Miller 00:13:48  And so because I said, I don't know how to get a breakthrough here, but I'm certain there is a solution. I just have to find it. Okay, so that's my story. I don't know how to get a breakthrough here, but I'm sure there's a solution if I can just find it. Well, I ended up finding an amazing regenerative medicine doctor out in California who does a lot of work with peptides. And there's been a lot in the news about some new peptides that have come out that have been helpful. And I've lost £50 in the last about eight months and dramatically lowered my heart disease risk in the future. And the reason I was able to get different results is because I took different actions. But the only way I had access to different actions is because I had a story that set my brain up to go find that solution, because our brain is going to go answer the question that we give it, and if we give it, you know, unproductive or unhelpful questions, it'll find those answers, but they're not going to help you.

Megan Miller 00:14:43  And in my case, this was a big breakthrough.

Jasmine Star 00:14:46  Okay, girl, it's like you just take the high level stuff and I'm like, I get it, I get it. And then you add a practical, real life example and I'm like, poof! Okay, so, part of the reason why I was really excited for this conversation and, I mean, it's an interview because I truly think that I'm just we're connecting and you speak my love language. That is mindset. But then you speak my second love language, which is productivity. And like, I think there's this, like beautiful, distinct intersection between the two. And I think we can think of one or we think of the other. But when did you first start to realize that the two of them could and are actually are intersected?

Megan Miller 00:15:21  I think it was really when I faced this crossroads of my careers taking off. I want to be able to do big things in my business, but the needs of my family are increasing, and so am I going to compromise my career so that I can really be present for my family? Or am I going to compromise the needs of my kids so that I can go chase this professional dream.

Megan Miller 00:15:44  And I got this place of saying like, that stinks. I don't like either one of those choices, you know, what I want is both. And so when I started thinking about not just how do I get it all done? Because we all know, like, there literally is not enough time to get it all done. Like there are always going to be more things to do than we could ever have time for. I don't care how much time you have and we all have the same amount of time, really. Instead I said, okay, I don't have time for everything, but I do have time to get the right things done. And so how can I go further upstream when I think about my productivity to thinking about what's my highest leverage contribution? What are the things that only I can do in my business? And if I focus on those things that are that I'm most passionate about and that deliver the biggest results in my business, we have a whole model for this we call the Freedom Compass, and that little sweet spot of passion and proficiency, as we call it, is the desire zone.

Megan Miller 00:16:38  If I focus on my desire zone, then that's going to mean that I'm way more efficient. I can spend proportionately fewer hours to get way bigger results. And that's the magic. I mean, the only way we can, you know, have what we want in terms of personal margin is we have to achieve more but do less. And the only way to do that is to get clearer and clear on your own contribution. And that's really a mindset thing more than anything else. I mean, it's not tactical, you know.

Jasmine Star 00:17:05  Oh, this is so interesting.

Rosy Shephard 00:17:07  That was a powerful conversation with Megan on how to change your mindset and take action, even when the story you've been telling yourself feels incredibly true. Whether it's overcoming fears, addressing limiting beliefs, or aligning your mindset with your own goals, Megan's wisdom is a game changer. Thank you for listening to this episode of The Jasmine Star Show. Be sure to follow along, subscribe, and share with anyone you think could benefit from these mindset shifts.

Rosy Shephard 00:17:32  Until next time. Remember, mindset is everything. When you change your story, you can change your life.