Who is on your mind's board of directors?

An ongoing series on the transcended mind — what it is, what it isn’t, and how to spend more time there.

The Board of Directors in Your Mind

The voice in your head isn't one voice. It's a room full of them.

This isn't a new idea — Richard Schwartz and the whole world of Internal Family Systems have been mapping these "parts" for decades. What I've done in the book is give Max's a face, a room, and a story.

Every board is formed the same way. As kids, something happens we can't handle, and a part of us logs it and writes a rule. By adulthood, that part has a full personality, a seat at the table, and a say in your life — usually without your permission.

One member is universal. Every board has a Judge. Yours does too. He's the one who turns every situation into a verdict — on you, on other people, on the decision you made an hour ago.

Past him, every board is personal. Max has a Knight who shows up for fear, an Accountant who runs the numbers on every risk, a Frat Boy who reaches for a drink when things get overwhelming. I don't have a Frat Boy. I have a Party Girl. Yours has its own cast, built from your own childhood.

Every one of these characters exists for the same reason: to defend us when life feels like more than we can handle. That's the whole job description. The problem is what happens next — they get hired at a moment of overwhelm, and they never get promoted past it. Decades pass, and they're still running the same play they learned the day they joined the board. Some stay quiet for years, so quiet you forget they're even on the roster, until the right moment calls them up and you find yourself acting in a way you didn't know you had in you. In the book, Max blows up at his son in the first chapter. It's only later that we learn who actually had the microphone — a member who'd been waiting in the wings the whole time, still exactly as old, and exactly as scared, as the day he was hired.

Growing Up the Board

So how do you get your board to mature? That's the million-dollar question. There's more than one path in, but awareness is at the center of all of them — you can't grow up a part of yourself you can't see. That work, helping people meet their board and grow it up, is what I do as a coach.