Inherited Narratives
dg-publish: false until reviewed. Created 2026-08-26.
Inherited narratives are the stories we carry about success, money, career and what we are capable of -- which we did not choose, were given, and rarely examine.
Kegan tabled this at the 19 August 2026 breakfast alongside decision frameworks, and offered it as one of the first workshop topics.
The claim
Most transition advice operates on the outer layer -- the CV, the pitch, the next role. The argument here is that the inner layer moves first: until the inherited story about what success looks like, and what you are allowed to want, has been surfaced and examined, the outer work tends to reproduce the same shape. This is the "inner work before outer work" position.
Where it bites is in the things that feel like constraints but are actually assumptions: what counts as enough money, what a career is supposed to look like by a given age, whose approval the decision is really being made for.
Questions worth asking
- Whose definition of success am I using, and when did I adopt it?
- Which of my constraints are real, and which are inherited?
- What would I do if the story I carry about my own capability were not true?