Inner Propaganda with Owen Fitzpatrick

5 steps to becoming the hero of your life

Over 30 years as a therapist and executive coach, I noticed that almost every person I worked with explained their problems using one of two stories. Some saw themselves

Why we need to learn to disagree

When was the last time you sat down with someone who sees the world very differently and listened to understand them? I believe the biggest problem in the world today is

Why doing good as an organization pays with Jess Pettitt

What if your competitors are wrestling with the same dilemma you are, and nobody is brave enough to ask? My friend Jess Pettitt, a Hall of Fame speaker and crisis advisor

How to talk back to the voice that hates you

Whenever I feel anxious or down, a voice in my head speaks with complete authority. It tells me I'm a fraud, that I'm broken, that nothing I do matters. I call it the inn

How to feel good enough

If you have ever felt like you are not a good enough parent, partner, friend, or professional, you have met the inner dictator. It is a voice of absolute certainty that t

What makes you persuasive online (ft. LinkedIn's #1 branding creator)

Most people chasing followers are playing the wrong game entirely. In this episode, Howie Chan, founder of the Behavioring Company and LinkedIn's number one branding crea

The reality behind my book launch

A few weeks ago, I posted photos of myself signing books at Barnes & Noble on Fifth Avenue and at my local bookstore. It looked like a win. What I didn't share was how so

How to heal polarization

Ian Paisley and Martin McGuinness spent decades as sworn enemies in one of the bloodiest conflicts in modern history. Then they became genuine friends, so close the press

How influence works

In the early 1980s, Steve Jobs asked an engineer to save 10 seconds off the Macintosh boot-up time. The engineer found 28. His skills never changed. The story he was work

How to make better decisions

I almost said "pick up the phone" was the wrong call for Stanislav Petrov to make. His training said launch. The screen said launch. He said wait, and that pause is the r

How to manage your mental health

In 2006, I sat on a hillside above Quito and drank ayahuasca with a shaman. For a few hours, my entire reality came apart: dragons, monsters, grudges dissolving into noth

How Inner Propaganda works

For years, a voice in my head told me I was worthless, and it never once sounded like an opinion. It sounded like the truth. It took thirty years and trips to some of the

Maybe no one went crazy. It's your brain.

Picture the most wrong person you know. Now consider that somewhere out there, someone is just as certain about you. In this episode, I explain why we all feel like the l

How storytelling secretly rewires your beliefs

During the Second World War, up to forty percent of the German army tuned in nightly to a radio host they trusted completely. He never existed. He was invented by a Briti

How logic betrays the people who trust it

Arthur Conan Doyle, the creator of Sherlock Holmes and one of the sharpest minds of his era, spent years publicly defending photographs of fairies made from paper cutouts

The neuroscience of giving and donating with Cherian Koshy

When people give, they're not just transferring money. They're rehearsing a version of themselves. That insight, shared by my guest Cherian Koshy, cuts to the heart of wh

Why most culture change fails (And what works)

When Louis Gerstner took over a dying IBM in 1993, he told his leadership team the company's last problem was a missing vision. Every expert in the room thought he was wr

You don't find meaning from life. You build it

In 1938, a London stockbroker named Nicholas Winton canceled a ski vacation and went to Czechoslovakia instead. Over the following months, he organized the rescue of 669

Your labels are your limits (with Nir Eyal)

Why do so many people read the book, understand the advice, and still not change? Nir Eyal started asking that question when readers began calling him to say his books ha

You're a hypocrite. That's the best news you'll hear today

A coach with decades of experience once told me she knew exactly what she needed to do to stop smoking, but just couldn't do it, because she was a smoker and that was all