The Stories We Tell Ourselves
- Rhonda Douglas Charles
- Feb 16
- 6 min read
Updated: 3 days ago
THE LOGIC TRAP | PART 1 | The Stories We Tell Ourselves
It is 1 a.m. LinkedIn is still open. The screen glows as you update your résumé again, searching for the right words. You tell yourself you will just look a little longer, tweak one more bullet, check your inbox one more time.
You have managed your career longer than most people have even thought about theirs. You have the credentials. The experience. The work history that should be enough.
So why does it feel like your search is stuck?
How many roles have passed by while this story kept running in the background?
The answer is rarely what you think it is.
It is almost never the market. It is not your résumé, at least not in the way you are imagining. And it is not that the right people have not seen you yet.
Most of the time, the obstacle is in the story.
For many first- and second-generation professionals, that story began long before the job search. It was shaped by immigration, sacrifice, and survival.
Work hard.
Collect the degrees.
Get the certificate.
Stay humble.
Do not ask for too much.
Effort was the strategy.
And to be clear, effort matters. But effort is the entry fee. It is not the positioning strategy.
If you did not receive the “right” credential, diploma, or brand-name employer, you may quietly discount the value of your informal training, lived experience, and cross-system navigation. You may assume it does not count because it was not stamped.
That belief shapes your job search more than you realize.
Living inside that story means rewriting your résumé again instead of reaching out strategically. It means scrolling LinkedIn and calling it progress. The story shapes what you do and what you avoid.
This series is called The Logic Trap.
The Logic Trap is about this: job search frustration is almost never about resources. It is about how you think.
The professionals who move forward are not the ones who work harder. They are the ones who notice the trap and step out of it.
Part 1 is where the traps begin.
With the stories we tell ourselves.
Straw Man: The Advice You Are Arguing Against Does Not Actually Exist
Here is something that happens constantly in career conversations.
Someone says: “I am not going to just follow my passion. That is not realistic advice.”
And they are right. That is not realistic advice. The problem is that no serious strategist is giving it.
The real conversation is about positioning. Market alignment. Using what you already do well in a direction that is economically viable and personally meaningful. But the easier, oversimplified version is the one that gets rejected. Once you dismiss that version, it becomes easy to dismiss all career strategy.
This is the Straw Man trap. You argue against a version of advice that no one actually offered. You win the argument. And you walk away unchanged.
Psychologist Daniel Kahneman describes two systems of thinking. One is fast, automatic, protective. The other is slower, deliberate, effortful. In high-stakes moments like a job search, the fast system looks for reasons to protect your current narrative. It accepts what confirms your belief and quickly dismisses what challenges it.
If you were raised to believe that hard work speaks for itself, strategy can feel like manipulation. If you were taught that humility is safety, visibility can feel dangerous. So you reject personal branding as ego. You reject networking as politics. You reject coaching as unnecessary.
You are not rejecting the real offer. You are rejecting a caricature of it.
The version of the advice you are arguing against was never the real offer. It was a decoy. And it cost you.
The reframe: Before you dismiss advice, ask yourself: Am I responding to what was actually said? Or to a version that is easier to reject? Sometimes the discomfort is not proof that the advice is wrong. It is proof that it challenges your conditioning.
Ad Hominem: They Did Not Reject Your Skills. They Could Not See the Translation.
This one hits differently for immigrant professionals.
“You have only worked in nonprofits.”
“Your experience is international.”
“You came up through a nontraditional path.”
On the surface, it sounds like evaluation. Often, it is a failure of imagination.
When background is used as shorthand for capability, we see a version of the Ad Hominem fallacy. The focus shifts from what you can do to where you have been.
LinkedIn data consistently shows that recruiters say they value nontraditional and cross-sector experience. Yet hiring systems still default to familiarity.
For professionals who have built careers across borders, languages, and systems, there is another layer: cultural translation. You may have code-switched for years to survive professionally. Translated degrees and institutions into U.S. equivalents. Learned to downplay your story to avoid being seen as different. Taken survival jobs while holding advanced credentials.
When that translation is not made visible on paper, evaluators assume absence instead of difference. That assumption is not evidence of your limitation. It is evidence that the connection was not drawn.
This is where strategy replaces defensiveness. Translation is not about proving you belong. It is about showing how your experience solves their problem.
Once we named this with one client, something simple happened. She stopped trying to defend her background and started connecting it directly to what the role required. The either-or thinking dissolved. It was no longer nonprofit versus corporate. It was operations strategy in two different environments. That clarity changed everything.
Your cross-border experience. Your navigation of systems. Your ability to read rooms and adapt across cultures. That is not a gap. That is brand equity. But it must be articulated.
The dismissal was not about what you could not do. It was about what they could not see. Make it visible.
The reframe: Do not leave the translation to the evaluator. Draw the line clearly between what you have done and what the role demands. Make your advantage visible.
No True Scotsman: The Goalposts Will Keep Moving Until You Stop Letting Them
This trap is quieter.
It sounds like this: “No real executive needs interview prep.” “Serious professionals do not need a coach.” “If you were truly ready, they would have chosen you.”
When evidence challenges the rule, the definition quietly shifts. You were promoted? “Well, that role was not that competitive.” You landed interviews? “Well, final rounds do not count.”
If you were among the first in your family or community to navigate higher education or corporate spaces, you may recognize this pattern. There is often a cousin, a close friend, someone in the circle who made it too. The collective success can become a comparison engine. The standard keeps moving.
Imposter syndrome is not just insecurity. It is a logic trap. The criteria for real success shift every time you approach them. Add immigrant conditioning to this and it becomes stronger. Stay grateful. Do not outshine. Do not appear arrogant. So even when you leave survival jobs behind, part of you hesitates to fully claim your professional identity.
Gatekeeping in professional spaces reinforces this. When someone from outside the traditional path succeeds, the category shifts. They are framed as the exception, not the proof.
If the definition of success keeps changing every time you get close, the problem is not your performance. It is the standard.
The reframe: Write down the actual standard. Fix it. Measure yourself against that fixed point. When the goalposts move, internally or externally, name it. Clarity removes the fog.
The Pattern Underneath
These fallacies look different, but they serve the same purpose. They protect comfort.
The Straw Man protects long-held beliefs. The Ad Hominem protects familiar categories. The No True Scotsman protects fragile hierarchies.
For highly educated professionals, especially those who built their lives across borders, these traps are seductive. They are wrapped in the language of standards, realism, and humility. But cynicism is not clarity. Working harder inside the wrong story will not change the result.
The professionals who gain traction are not the loudest. They are the clearest. They examine the thinking underneath their strategy.
This Is the Work
One of my clients, an experienced operations leader, believed her nonprofit background would block her from corporate roles. She spent months rewriting her résumé. Nothing changed.
Once we named the trap, she stopped defending her past and started positioning it. She showed how her cross-sector leadership directly addressed operational complexity in the roles she was targeting. Within six weeks, interviews multiplied. An offer followed.
The turning point was not a new credential. It was clearer thinking.
That is the work.
If parts of this felt uncomfortably accurate, that is not an indictment. It is information.
When you are ready to examine the story underneath your job search, that is the conversation we have.
Book a consultation with Rhonda
References
Straw Man — Motivated Reasoning and Confirmation Bias
Kanfer, R., Wanberg, C. R., & Kantrowitz, T. M. (2001). Job search and employment: A personality-motivational analysis and meta-analytic review. Journal of Applied Psychology, 86(5), 837–855. https://carlsonschool.umn.edu/sites/carlsonschool.umn.edu/files/2018-10/kanfer_wanberg_kantrowitz_2001.pdf
Recrucial. (n.d.). Understanding cognitive biases in recruitment: Insights from Daniel Kahneman’s Thinking Fast and Slow. https://www.recrucial.nl/post/understanding-cognitive-biases-in-recruitment-insights-from-daniel-kahneman-s-thinking-fast-and-s
Ad Hominem — Hiring Bias and Nontraditional Candidates
LinkedIn Talent Solutions. (2023, October). Global talent trends. LinkedIn Business. https://business.linkedin.com/hire/global-talent-trends/archival/global-talent-trends-october-2023
Recrew. (n.d.). Non-traditional candidates. Recrew Glossary. https://www.recrew.ai/glossary/non-traditional-candidates
No True Scotsman — Imposter Syndrome and Gatekeeping
Link Humans. (n.d.). Employer brand vs. employee experience: Bridging the gap. https://linkhumans.com/employer-brand-employee-experience/
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Eshelman School of Pharmacy. (n.d.). Shining a spotlight on imposter syndrome. https://www.med.unc.edu/pharm/graduate-program/mental-health-wellness/shining-a-spotlight-on-imposter-syndrome/
The Logic Trap Series
Part 1 — The Stories We Tell Ourselves ← you are here
Part 4 — The Ones That Kill Qualified Candidates
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