Taming Your Inner Gremlins
The Battle Within
“We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the real tragedy of life is when adults are afraid of the light.”
— Plato
Taming Your Inner Gremlins
Chasing Influence: Transformational Coaching to Build Champions for Life
When Brené Brown stepped onto the TEDx Houston stage in June 2010, few people knew her name. As a research professor studying vulnerability and shame, she'd spent years collecting data and developing theories that challenged conventional wisdom. But standing before that audience, a powerful gremlin began to emerge—her inner voice of self-doubt.
Gremlins are those self-defeating thoughts or behaviors that keep us from performing at our best. They aren't random—they're patterned responses that emerge when we step outside our comfort zones. Some of the gremlins we face include:
Self-doubt. Questioning your competence or worthiness.
Fear. Triggering fight-or-flight responses when facing challenges.
Perfectionism. Never being satisfied with your performance.
Self-consciousness. Paralyzing concern about others' judgments.
Distraction. Allowing competing priorities to undermine focus.
Brown’s self-doubt gremlin was relentless. Who are you to speak about this? You've exposed too much. People will dismiss you. Your research career is over.
“I had a full-on vulnerability hangover,” Brown said. "I woke up the morning after that talk and thought, ‘What have I done?’”
Brown acknowledged the gremlins without surrendering to them. She didn't try to silence her doubts completely. Instead, she recognized them as a natural response to vulnerability. She allowed the feelings to exist without letting them dictate her actions.
“I had to remind myself that vulnerability is not weakness—it's our most accurate measure of courage,” she explained.
Brown gave her presentation and it went on to become one of the most viewed TED talks in history, with over 50 million views. Her willingness to face her self-doubt gremlin—to feel its presence without being ruled by it—changed her career and positively influenced millions of lives.
What makes gremlins so powerful is that they often disguise themselves as protective voices. Self-doubt presents itself as prudent humility. Fear dresses up as necessary caution. Perfectionism poses as commitment to quality.
The first step in taming your gremlin is recognition. Like Brown, you must see clearly how this voice influences your decisions and actions. Which gremlin consistently appears when you're pushing your boundaries? Are there familiar patterns of self-sabotage that you can identify?
For Brown, recognizing her self-doubt gremlin meant understanding its origins. As an academic, she'd been trained to value emotional distance and intellectual certainty. Vulnerability felt dangerous. Naming this pattern helped her see it clearly without being consumed by it.
The second step is reframing your relationship with this voice. When Brown redirected her self-doubt as a natural response to vulnerability rather than a warning to retreat, she transformed her relationship with it.
The final step is action. Gremlins thrive in the realm of thought but fade in the face of action. When you feel that familiar voice of fear, perfectionism, or self-doubt surfacing, acknowledge it—then move forward.
As Brown found out, conquering yourself doesn't mean eliminating these voices entirely. It means developing the awareness to recognize them, the wisdom to pull any useful insights they offer, and the courage to follow your values when these voices conflict with your best path forward.
The most successful people aren't those without gremlins—they're those who've learned to work with them rather than against them or under them. Your inner battle may be invisible to others, but learning to win it might be the most valuable victory of all.
Whether it’s facing a TEDx stage like Brené Brown or your own personal challenge, don’t let the gremlins define your potential. They're simply part of our growth experience—and taming them is one of the most important skills you'll ever develop!
“You don't have to control your thoughts. You just have to stop letting them control you.”
— Dan Millman
Connecting this quote to the story. Freedom comes not from silencing our inner critics, but from recognizing their voices while choosing whether to follow their guidance.
Chasing Influence tip: Your inner dialogue shapes your leadership—speak to yourself with the same encouragement and belief you offer your team.
If you enjoyed this story, a series of three Chasing Influence workbooks is available. Stories are accompanied by discussion questions and answers. Each workbook contains 33 lessons to use with any team.
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©Troy Urdahl, 2025