Hello, and welcome back to Wreaking More Joy.

I’m Janette Dalgliesh, and in this season, Reclaim, we’re digging into the nuts and bolts, the practical solutions, as we continue exploring how women can rekindle the romance with our purpose, our joy, and our personal power — especially in our working lives.

Today, we are talking about the worst boss most of us have ever had: the one who lives rent-free inside our own skulls.

I don’t know if you can relate, but a few years ago, I was doing one of my regular reviews. 

You know the kind of thing: assessing goals, evaluating progress, looking at what worked and what didn’t. 

I was doing my best to view it all as data, since that’s what my business coach advised, and at the surface of my brain, I could do that. 

But writhing and wriggling underneath, there was a chorus of brain weasel voices, building in volume, saying things that ranged from passive-aggressive through to downright mean.

Things like: Didn't follow through on that thing AGAIN. Took too long on the other thing. Should have started that project earlier. Stupid mistakes. Why didn’t you do it THIS way? How could you possibly miss THAT bit? If only you were braver / smarter / more reliable. I can’t trust to you get anything right. 

And finally, a crescendo into the full chorus screaming NOT GOOD ENOUGH.

It read like my old school reports. “Janette could do better if she applied herself more diligently”.

But it sounded like voices with THAT tone. You know the one: mean, mocking, denigrating, dismissive.

And here’s the thing that probably won’t surprise you. I nodded along, mentally, and girded my loins to jump back into the fray.  Yep, fair enough, noted, I’ll be sure to try harder this time.

Ugh.

If you can relate, let me ask you something, and I want you to notice what happens in your body when I ask it.

If you worked for an actual boss who spoke to you the way your own brain speaks to you on a bad day, would you want to keep working for her? Or would you want to tell her to shove her projects where the sun don’t shine?

On that occasion, it took me a full two days and a conversation with a colleague, to come to my senses and realize that holy cow, I needed to talk to my union organiser.

I don’t have an ACTUAL union organiser, because tiny business owners don’t. 

But back in the day, I used to BE a union rep and organiser. For over a decade, I literally sat across the table from employers who spoke to their hardworking, loyal staff, in exactly that tone, and I told them NO. 

I know exactly how damaging it is, and I’ve been the one to intercede and make a stand against that kind of bullying.

But from myself? I'd been accepting that mean CEO in my head without question, for years.

And the really cringey part, the part I don't love admitting, is that the language was specific. 

It had all the hallmarks of every toxic boss I'd ever encountered. The contemptuous tone. The focus on what wasn't done. The baseline assumption that the standard was obvious and reasonable, even though nobody had ever actually told me what the standard was.

Sound familiar?

I’m so sorry if that’s been true for you, but there is good news.

These mean internal voices, the bad boss brain weasels, come from a learned management style. They are not a personality trait that needs fixing, and you are not broken.

This is not you 'being a perfectionist', and it’s not a flaw to fix (and by the way, next week I’ll be exploring the perfectionism trap, and I think you’re gonna like it).

This is a learned adaptation to conditional environments. It is your brain trying to keep you safe by helping you to comply in advance.

“If I can correct Janette now, then she’s less likely to get into actual trouble in the future, so I better keep her in line”.

The language itself is your brain recycling the language to which it has been exposed, again and again and again.

If you’re like most people, it’s been rare to have a boss who operates from true compassion, inclusivity, kindness and a sense of collaboration.

And of course, it goes way back beyond your bosses.

It’s your schoolteachers and the education system itself: everything measured against an increasingly difficult standard, often set by those whose focus is ‘how productive is this human?’ rather than ‘how can I support this human to be more fully rounded, a better critical thinker, more creative and more in tune with her own genius?’

It’s often familial and ancestral: your immediate family reiterating what they learned from their parents, and so on down through the generations.

It’s cultural and institutional, woven into all the systems around us which use criticism and shame as the go-to methods to control and to create so-called ‘improvement’. There are very few human brains which respond positively to the weight of being pushed in this way (they do exist, but they’re rare!)

Your brain witnessed all those systems at play, it saw that environment, it assessed the rules, and it started applying them internally — before anyone else could.

You internalised the mean boss, so you could beat them to the punch. And your brain thought it was doing you a favour, bless its little cotton socks.

And the system loves it when you do that!

A woman who’s constantly monitoring her own performance and finding herself lacking is easy to exploit and control.

She doesn't ask for the pay rise, she doesn't set the boundary, she takes on more and more in an effort to prove herself.

The system doesn't need to send you regular memos. Every time your brain does this crap, it is being an efficient internal supervisor, following the rules of the system to keep you in check, to keep you ‘well-behaved’.

Those brain weasels are doing a grand job, on behalf of the system, and that’s a shitty realisation.

BUT we know how this works.

You are not the victim here. When we can name the monster, we can tame it.

When you remember that it’s all learned, you can question the voices.

Are these so-called ‘standards’ useful? Is this self-judgement serving me, really? Is the meanness helping me be more creative, better at problem solving, more agile in my thinking? 

I know the brain weasels might have good intentions, but are they even remotely helpful?

I’m gonna be honest: the answer is almost always ‘hell no!’

And the good news is, you don’t have to let the brain weasels and their sneaky, bitey teeth keep doing this BS.

They’ve been there a long time, so they’re unlikely to go silent tomorrow.

But when the chorus starts up, you have a choice.

You can watch them running around screeching. Then you can invite them to take a seat at the back of the bus, and remind them that YOU are in the driver’s seat.

Here’s a fun exercise that can make this process easier.

(I say ‘fun’, but the first part MIGHT be a bit uncomfortable, so you should probably bring a delicious beverage and maybe a snack)

Step 1: Write a performance review of yourself and your work over the past (say) month, using the ‘voice’ of the nastiest, stupidest, most incompetent and arrogant boss or schoolteacher you’ve ever had. Keep it brief, no more than one paragraph. Focus on all the things you didn’t get to, the things that ‘went wrong’, the missteps, the mistakes, the shortcomings.. It may bring tears to your eyes; but also, it will most likely start sounding utterly ridiculous as you haul it into the sunshine. And don’t fret, we’re not staying here - the aim is simply to do a snapshot of this meanness and drag it out into light of day so we can see just how absurd it is. 

Step 2: You guessed it. Same period, same you, same shortcomings; but this time, write it as the most compassionate, fair-minded boss or teacher you can imagine. Maybe it’s someone you actually worked with once, someone whose kindness always seemed kind of absurd (she’s way too lenient!). Maybe it’s someone you heard of from a friend, the boss you envied for years because they were so patient. Imagine the boss who absolutely KNOWS that you were doing your best, and that the so-called ‘shortcomings’ were evidence that you’re a human juggling multiple moving parts, trying new things, still learning stuff. Imagine the boss who embraces your messy, flawed humanity because she knows that’s how you get better at doing your stuff, and because she rejects the toxicity of the systems around you both.

Step 3: Reread both versions and notice how you feel. Notice the gap between them. That gap is the distance between how the system trained you to see yourself, and how you could actually choose to be. It’s the distance between misery and the potential for joy. Not because that second ‘boss’ doesn’t care about your excellence, but because she knows that being mean is going to stifle your excellence. She knows that compassion for you is actually the best motivator. And she wants your excellence and your joy.

Step 4: Take a deep breath and imagine that your inner boss is open to embracing change. Imagine that your inner CEO is open to possibly becoming more like a boss who feels supportive, a boss who believes in you, a boss who has your back. 

I’d love to know how this exercise landed for you: share in the comments (and if you need help, ask - we can brainstorm together)

I want to leave you with one thought.

The fact that you have a harsh internal boss does not mean you are harsh. It does not mean you lack self-awareness or self-compassion or the ability to change.

It means you were smart enough to survive the environments you were in. You adapted, brilliantly, because you have a genius human brain and they are incredibly skilled at this kind of work.

It just means that now, you're in a different environment, an environment where you get to choose the management style.

If the two-version review lands for you, go do it. Come back and tell me what you notice in the comments.

And if this is connecting to something bigger, if you're sitting here going yes, but I've been carrying this for a while, and I think I need more than a journal prompt, then that's exactly what a Strategic StarMap Session with me is for.

It's a 90-minute one-to-one, where we look at your star chart, your actual inborn gifts, and the specific ways the system has been getting in your way; and we build a practical, strategic plan for what comes next.

Thanks for being here. I'll see you next week.

Meanwhile, go wreak some joy!

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