I noticed it halfway through the interview. Not when they mentioned the degree, not when they casually dropped a thing they built that would absolutely make my life easier. It was later. But my brain quietly shifted gears and went from listening to measuring. Not out loud, internally. They said something impressive. My th first thought wasn't that's useful. It was cool, but are they better than me? And then it got worse. My brain started scanning for flaws, not because they mattered, because I needed them. I wanted something to knock them down a pig, some missing experience, some overconfidence, some reason to remind myself I still belonged at the top of the room. That's when I caught it. That little internal posture shift. The subtle move from curiosity to defense, from leadership to insecurity with a clipboard. I didn't say anything, I didn't act on it, but the thought was there, and that's the part we don't usually talk about. Not the behavior, but the moment before the behavior, when you realize your brain is gearing up to protect you from something that isn't actually attacking. Welcome back to Brainverse Me, I'm Josh. Today I want to talk about something that feels ugly to admit, but incredibly familiar once you see it. That moment when someone impressive walks into your orbit, and instead of feeling inspired, your brain goes straight to threat assessment. Not because you're cruel, not because you hate people, but because your brain is trying badly to keep you safe. This isn't about jealousy. It's about the internal arms race we don't notice until we're already halfway into it. On the surface, nothing was wrong in that situation. I was interviewing someone. They were smart, capable, experienced, exactly the kind of person who objectively would make things run smoother. And that's where the contradiction showed up. Because I want smart people around me. I complain when I don't have them. I build systems specifically so I'm not the bottleneck. So why did my chest tighten the moment I imagine leadership liking them? Why didn't my brain suddenly start narrating worst case scenarios? They'll see how good this person is. They'll wonder why things weren't already like this. They'll compare. That's not logic. That's a courtroom drama. My brain staged without notifying me. The wild part is I didn't consciously decide to go there. The thoughts just appeared. Fully formed, confident, urgent, that's the trap. We think the problem is the thought itself, but the real problem is how convincing it feels in the moment. Let me explain. As the interview went on, I noticed something subtle. Every impressive thing they said triggered a quiet counter response in my head. Not spoken, just felt. Well they they haven't dealt with this environment. Yeah, but that system wouldn't work here. They don't understand the constraints. Some of those thoughts were technically true. That's what made them dangerous. Because insecurity doesn't lie outright, it cherry picks. It takes reasonable facts and arranges them into a defensive narrative. At one point I caught myself doing something I really didn't like. I wasn't evaluating fit anymore. I was evaluating rank. Would they outshine me? Would they change the dynamic? Would my rule feel smaller if they succeeded? And that's when the internal dominance instinct kicked in. Not aggressive, not loud, just posturing. A mental reminder of my authority, my history, my scars, my earned experience my earned competence. And then thankfully I noticed what was happening, not in a dramatic way, more like realizing you've been gripping the steering wheel too hard. I paused. I asked myself a very unflattering but necessary question. Who exactly am I competing with right now? The answer was obvious. No one. The person wasn't trying to replace me. Leadership hadn't said a word suggesting that. Nothing external had changed. The threat existed entirely inside my head, and once I saw that, the paranoia lost some of its oxygen. Here's the thing we don't say often enough. Your brain doesn't care about fairness. Cares about survival. And survival to your nervous system often looks like status. Status means safety. Status means predictability. Status means you're not expendable. So when someone impressive shows up, your brain doesn't go, cool, collaboration opportunity. It goes, shit, possible displacement detected. This isn't evil, it's ancient. Your brain evolved in environments where being outperformed could mean losing food, protection, or belonging. The problem is we still have that wiring, that hardware. But the environment has changed. Now the threat isn't real, but the reaction is. So your mind does what it knows how to do. It compares, it anticipates rejection, it prepares defenses, it imagines judgment, and it does all of this before you consciously weigh in. That's why you're telling yourself to just stop thinking that way. It never works. You can't outwill an automatic response, but you can intercept it. Here's the part where I call myself out. The moment I started looking for ways to knock them down a peg, I wasn't leading, I was guarding. And guarding feels productive. But it isn't. It narrows your vision. It poisons curiosity, it turns potential allies into imagined rivals. Worse, it lies to you. It convinces you that control equals safety, that dominance equals security. It doesn't, they don't. All it does is keep you tense and suspicious and quietly miserable. And if I'm being honest, the fastest way to become the kind of leader you're afraid of losing ground to is to let insecurity drive the room. That's not strength. That's fear with a job title. What actually helps is I didn't stop the thoughts. That's important. They still showed up, they still tried to steer. What changed was my relationship to them. Instead of arguing with the thoughts, I labeled them. This is comparison, this is threat detection, this is insecurity trying to protect me. And once named, they lost authority. They became information, not commands. I refocused on the actual goal, building something that worked better than it did yesterday. And suddenly, the person in front of me wasn't a threat. They were a tool, a collaborator, a force multiplier. Not because I convinced myself to be noble, but because I stopped letting fear write the story. I've talked about similar concepts on other episodes, about interrupting things before your brain gets a hold of them and honestly makes a mess of it. It's not easy. It's not automatic. It takes work, it takes practice and it takes consistency. And you have to you have to want to do it. And it's going to feel awkward, it's going to feel potentially uncomfortable. But if you try, you'll realize that it's actually extraordinarily helpful. It doesn't let situations balloon out of control. You don't get into that self-incrimination phase like I've been discussing. You get to a place of normalcy, of of calm, of understanding. And that is extraordinarily important no matter what it is you're trying to do. No matter what it is you're feeling. And we don't we don't get rid of these thoughts by pretending we're above them. We get rid of their power by seeing them clearly. And security is not a moral failure. It's a signal. A signal that something you care about feels uncertain. You don't win it by silencing it. You win by catching it early, before it hijacks your behavior, before it turns curiosity into competition. Before it turns leadership into defense. The moment you start noticing yourself posturing internally, that's not the failure, that's the opening. And that's where real control actually begins. So I want you to think about something in your life where it should be, it should not be a problem. Where you shouldn't be thinking competitively with whatever the situation is. You know, I used an interview that I did, but it could be anything in your life where you're comparing and you're berating yourself or you're judging yourself. If you listen to this podcast, you probably have experiences like that. And even before you can start to do this, you need to do one thing. You need to be honest with yourself. Honest with how you're feeling. Honest with the reactions that you have from how you're feeling and what that means. What what has that done? Right? But just think about it quickly. Don't dwell on it because dwelling on the past also doesn't help you. It just turns into a cycle of self-judgment. And that is rarely helpful because we and our brains can be quite mean to ourselves. But just be honest with yourself about what you're doing and then try to interrupt your thoughts. Change that narrative before it runs away and makes the situation worse.