Change Your Story and Lead a Life That Reflects Who You Really Are
- Brainz Magazine
- Aug 7
- 5 min read
Written by Kerdu Lenear, Athlete Transition Coach
Kerdu Lenear is a former pro basketball player, Athlete Transition Coach, keynote speaker, and Certified Neuroencoding Specialist. Through her Mindset Fitness™ methodology, she helps elite athletes train the part of themselves no one ever coached, so they can step into their identity, confidence, and purpose, on and beyond the game.
Behind every championship ring or final whistle, there’s a quieter voice narrating what it all means. As a former pro athlete, I know this firsthand. I trained for years to perform at the highest level, physically, technically, and tactically, but I was never taught how to train the voice inside my own head.
I didn’t realize at the time how much that voice was shaping my confidence, my decisions, and my performance. I didn’t know how powerful my internal story really was. Now, I’ve learned. And that’s why I’m so passionate about helping other pro athletes. Because I’ve walked through the identity crisis, the fear, and the confusion. And I know the way out. This one’s personal. Because I know what it’s like to achieve what you trained your whole life for, only to be left with a question you didn’t expect: What now? What if it’s not just the event that shapes us, but the story we tell about it? What if your next level isn’t about trying harder, but changing the inner script that drives everything?
Every athlete learns to prepare physically. But few are ever taught how to train the part of themselves that speaks when no one else is around. That internal voice, whether it's calm or critical, narrates your experiences, fuels your confidence (or self-doubt), and becomes the filter through which you interpret pressure, purpose, and success. Most athletes don’t even realize these narratives are optional. They feel like facts. But in truth, they’re just stories; stories we’ve repeated so often that our brain believes them. And here’s the thing: your brain can’t tell the difference between what’s vividly imagined and what’s actually happened, especially when emotion is involved.
The lemon test: How your brain responds to a story
Let me show you how this works. Imagine walking into your kitchen. You take out a big, yellow lemon from the fridge. You slice it open, bring one half to your nose, and smell the citrus. Then you bite into it. You chew it slowly. Even though nothing physically happened, your mouth probably watered. Your face may have scrunched up. Your body responded to an imagined event as if it were real. This isn’t just a mental trick. It’s proof that what you imagine with emotional intensity, your internal storytelling, can create a real physiological response. And the same thing happens when the stories are about you.
The stories we tell ourselves
You might not consider yourself a storyteller, but you are. We all are. Every day, in small moments, we repeat narratives about who we are, how the world works, and what’s possible for us. Most of these stories aren’t new. They’re not spontaneous. They’re recycled. We tell ourselves stories like "I always choke under pressure," or "I don’t know who I am without the game," or "I’m not a leader, I’ve never been one." Maybe those stories started from one moment. One failure. One comment someone made years ago. But because we’ve repeated them so often, they’ve become part of the operating system of our identity, running quietly in the background, influencing how we think, act, and perform. Trauma often happens once, but we relive it through the stories we keep telling. The moment fades, but the message stays. And we start to build our identity around it.
The science behind mental rehearsal
That’s why visualization and inner narrative training are at the core of my work at Mindset Fitness. A well-known study from the University of Chicago helps explain why. Researchers split participants into three groups to measure progress in free-throw performance. Group one practiced daily on the court. Group two didn’t touch a basketball but visualized making successful shots with clarity and focus. Group three did nothing. After 30 days, Group 1 improved by 24 percent. Group 2, who only visualized, improved by 23 percent. Group 3 saw no improvement. The takeaway? The brain treats vivid, emotional imagination as real experience. It builds the same neural pathways. It encodes the story as memory. And memory becomes identity.
State follows story
This is the foundation of high-performance mindset work. We all operate in a state, a combination of thought, emotion, and physiology. That state determines how we show up. And that state is triggered by the story we tell ourselves in the moment. If your internal narrative is, "I’m not good enough," or "This always happens to me," your state will follow, shrinking your confidence, tightening your breath, shifting your body. But when you change the story, even in real time, you change your state. You shift how you feel, how you move, how you respond. That’s what we train for in The Inner Game.
Rewriting the narrative through neuroencoding
Athletes often carry deeply embedded stories that no one ever coached them on. But those stories are not permanent. They can be rewritten through tools, repetition, and emotional practice. We use neuroencoding to install those new stories until they become second nature. Neuroencoding is the science-based process of teaching your brain and nervous system to create new patterns of thought, emotion, and behavior, so that confidence, clarity, and high performance become your default state, not just your goal. Instead of spending years analyzing every past belief, we install new ones that override the old story through repetition, focus, and emotional intensity. Because identity is not fixed, it’s trained. And with neuroencoding, you train it on purpose.
Short stories vs. long stories
One important distinction I teach my clients is the difference between short stories and long stories. Most people live from short stories—reactive moments, quick thoughts that remind them of what they used to believe about themselves. But long stories are different. Long stories are intentionally chosen. They pull you forward. They give you a compelling future, a story so meaningful and aligned that it energizes you to wake up early, stay up late, and keep going when it’s hard. It’s not about faking positivity. It’s about building an internal identity that serves the life you want to live, not just the life you’ve already lived.
You are the author
You’ve done the physical work. You’ve paid the price in effort, sacrifice, and discipline. Now it’s time to train the part of you no one ever coached. Because you’re not just a player. You’re the author of what comes next. And the pen has always been in your hands.
Read more from Kerdu Lenear
Kerdu Lenear, Athlete Transition Coach
Kerdu Lenear is a former pro basketball player turned Athlete Transition Coach, keynote speaker, and Certified Neuroencoding Specialist. As the founder of the Mindset Fitness™ methodology, she helps elite athletes train the part of themselves no one ever coached—their identity, confidence, and purpose. After navigating her own identity shift post-retirement, Kerdu is now building her Inner Game™ coaching experience and leading the emerging Athletepreneurs™ movement. Her mission: Empower pro athletes to thrive on and beyond the game.
