Episode 7 - You Can Be the Coach

Toye Oyelese

Hey, welcome back to Navvy Tales! It's Dr. Toye, coming to you from a nice quiet corner of Kelowna. So far, we've learned your mind is a whole team of characters — the Residents — like Get-It-Done and Let's-Go. But that leads to a big question: if you're a team... who's the coach? Who decides which character is in charge? Most of us secretly hope there's one calm, steady boss inside, always making good calls. But the truth is messier. Inside you, the "in charge" spot is like a revolving door. Characters keep swapping in and out. And when you're not paying attention, guess who grabs the lead? Whoever is LOUDEST. Or whoever just got poked by something. Here's how that looks. You watch a really cool video, and your Let's-Go part rushes to the front going, "That's it — we're starting our own channel tomorrow!" You're pumped. But two hours later, you get a mean comment, or you get in trouble for something... and suddenly your careful Trust part shoves Let's-Go out of the way and says, "Nope. Cancel everything. Let's just hide." And now you feel all mixed-up and wobbly. You made a big exciting plan with one character in charge — and a totally different character showed up the next morning and cancelled it. From the outside, it looks like you keep sabotaging yourself. But you're not! It's just your characters trading the mic back and forth, and nobody's steering on purpose. Part Two — Be the Coach So here's the good news. You can't fire your characters — they all live in you, and they're all trying to help. But you CAN become the coach. The one who decides who's up and when. I call this skill Picking Your Player. Instead of waiting to see which character grabs the mic, you hand it to the right one on purpose. It's three simple steps. Step one: Look at what you actually need right now. Is this a "buckle down and work hard" moment? Or a "say no and protect my space" moment? Step two: Pick the right character for the job. Hard work? That's a job for Get-It-Done. Need to set a tough boundary? Call in Stand-Up-For-Myself. Step three: Give them the job, out loud in your head. Something like: "Okay, Get-It-Done — you're in charge for the next thirty minutes. Everybody else, take a seat." When you do this, something awesome happens. You stop being a passenger, just going wherever the loudest character drives. You grab the wheel. Your choices start to line up — because you picked who's leading, instead of whoever was yelling the most. Part Three — The Relay Race Now here's where it gets really cool. Finishing something big is like a relay race, where different characters run different parts. Let's say you want to finish a huge project — a science fair board, a comic book, a fort in the backyard. Watch who you need, and when: You need Let's-Go at the start, to get the idea going and get excited. You need Get-It-Done for the messy middle — the boring, hard part where you actually do the work. You need Stand-Up-For-Myself to protect your time — to say "not right now" to the stuff that distracts you, so you can focus. And at the very end, you need Open-Up — that's Trust — to help you finally share it and show it to people. (That part can feel a little scary, and that's okay.) But here's the catch: you have to manage the hand-offs. If your careful Trust part panics and jumps in too early — before the thing is even finished — you might get so scared about showing it that you quit before you're done. And the whole project falls apart. So your biggest, most powerful choice is simple: deciding who gets the mic, and when. You don't have to make the noise stop. You just make sure the right character is leading at the right time. That's how you finish big things. That's how you go from feeling all over the place... to actually moving where you want to go. Before I let you go, remember this one line: you get to pick the right character for the job. That's your superpower. We'll keep building on this together. Thanks for listening — see you next time on Navvy Tales!