The stories we tell ourselves from a few scant pieces of evidence are often flat-out wrong, especially when we’re in the Pit. Nine times out of ten, the other person is not out to get you. Your coworkers don’t think you’re an idiot. And, yes, you deserve this job.

When a negative story takes hold of you, step back and question whether your interpretation is correct. Are there alternative views you’re not considering? What can you do to seek out the truth?

We hedge all the time. We note that we think something will work, that a solution could be effective, or that an alternate approach might work better. We suggest that something seems like a good course of action or that, in our opinion, something else is worth trying.

But without our realizing it, hedging can undermine our impact, because while we’re sharing our thoughts or recommendations, by hedging, we’re simultaneously undercutting them. We’re suggesting that we’re not sure those thoughts and recommendations are worth pursuing.

That doesn’t mean we should never hedge, but it certainly means that we should use hedges more deliberately.

Sometimes we hedge on purpose. We want to signal uncertainty, that we’re not sure, or that

an outcome is unclear. And if that’s the goal, hedging can be great. But often we hedge without even realizing it. We’re so used to qualifying statements that we toss in a hedge just because. And that’s a mistake.

The key idea here— whether public or private, whether in line with what other people think you should do or not— is the combination of two words: “choosing” and “responsibilities.” My enduring great friend Tom Tierney puts it this way, “What are you doing that meets the ‘but for’ test? What are you getting done that would not otherwise happen ‘but for you’ even if almost no one ever knows about it?”

One of the most common mistakes people make is bargaining with how the world should work instead of accepting how it does work. Anytime you find yourself or your colleague complaining “that’s not right,” or “that’s not fair,” or “it shouldn’t be that way,” you are bargaining, not accepting. You want the world to work in a way that it doesn’t.

Failing to accept how the world really works puts your time and energy toward proving how right you are. When the desired results don’t materialize, it’s easy to blame circumstances or others. I call this the wrong side of right. You’re focused on your ego not the outcome.

Solutions appear when you stop bargaining and start accepting the reality of the situation. That’s because focusing on the next move, rather than how you got here in the first place, opens you up to a lot of possibilities. When you put outcome over ego, you get better results.