You have spent a career being introduced by your title. I am more interested in the story it left out.

I did not set out to study story. I set out to listen.

The camp in northern Uganda did not care about my credentials. A young man named Mawa sat across from me with a version of his life he had never been asked to tell, and when he finally told it, the room changed temperature. I have chased that change ever since. It does not come from a better question. It comes from earning the right to ask one.

The résumé exists, and it is real: a doctorate in clinical psychology, nearly two decades at Vanderbilt's Owen School, thousands of interviews, bylines at Forbes and Entrepreneur, a cover in Los Angeles Magazine, a book with Wiley. Hold all of it lightly. It is the confirmation, not the point. What the credentials confirm is a single conviction I keep testing and keep finding true: the stories you tell about who you are, and what you deserve, are the most consequential choices you will ever make.

Here is the part most people would rather skip. A polished story is not the same as a true one, and the higher you rise, the easier it becomes to hide inside the polished version. You start reporting your life instead of authoring it. The question I bring into every room is quieter and harder than it sounds. When did you last tell the truth about your own story, out loud, to someone who mattered?