There is likely a voice in your head.

If you’ve achieved a degree of material success, that voice is probably loud. Sometimes it fills you with ambition, infuses you with willpower, and pushes you forward beyond your limitations. Sometimes it replays mistakes on a loop, fuels the feeling of being an imposter, and second-guesses your decisions.

It tells you that you’re not moving fast enough, not doing enough, not being enough. It could be the source of your success, while also being the source of your decision fatigue and self-doubt that plague even the most successful executives.

Sometimes, when that voice gets noisy, we try to argue with it, silence it with positive thinking, or drown it out with more work. But this is an exhausting and unwinnable war, because we are trying to use the mind to control the mind.

The problem is not the voice itself. The problem is our relationship to it.

The work of an Awakened Leader involves a shift in perception. What if you are not the voice in your head; what if you are the one who hears it?

How would you be different if the mind is not who you are, but is a tool that you have?

For most of us, that tool has taken over the corner office. We have made our mind the King, letting its anxieties, judgments, and past conditioning dictate our every move. The real work is to gently, respectfully, move the mind from the throne to the Advisor’s chair.

As an advisor, it has a vital role. It offers perspectives. It analyzes data, points out risks, and suggests strategies. It has an important voice that deserves to be heard.

But the King – the calm, centered, and discerning awareness that is your true self – listens to all the advice and then makes the final, aligned decision. This journey, from you being ruled by the advisor to embodying the King, is the work we do in my 1-1 coaching practice.

When you make this shift, the impact is immediate and practical.

Decision fatigue dissolves. You can hear the mind’s anxious analysis without being controlled by it.

Imposter syndrome loses its power. You can see the thought “I’m not good enough” as a data point from a worried advisor, not as a verdict on your worth.

Your presence deepens. You are no longer lost in thought; you are present with your thoughts, and with the reality of the situation in front of you.

The ultimate freedom for The Awakened Leader is not just a quieter mind, but the realization that they are the quiet space in which the mind does its thinking.