One of the first things that some reading on psychology gives you is the realisation that the “real self” is an illusion. You’re a bundle of competing drives and narratives. Even you don’t know why you do stuff most of the time, and you make up justifications after the fact. So if one way of looking at things makes you stay home and cry, while another leads to going out and making the world a better place, maybe training yourself to pick the latter interpretation is a good thing.
Interestingly, Internal Family Systems therapy, which applies techniques from family systems therapy to the internal world, treats this as a "both-and." You do have a core Self, but one of the primary things it does is lead and direct and serve as the primary attachment figure for all the other parts of you, which are conceptualized as individual, separate characters with their own history, needs, desires, wounds, and fears.
I've found this to be an immensely helpful way to work through my own struggles and maladaptive behaviors. Trying to get myself to do something challenging is more like leading a group, some of whom are gung ho and others who are terrified because something about it reminds them of something that went very badly for them back when we were younger.
When it feels like some negative attitude is overriding the whole system, it's said that a part has "blended" with the Self, and the way forward is to help it unblend, to step back or aside so you, as the Self, can be in relationship with it, can listen to it and understand it (which goes a long way in its own right), but then also help meet the need or protect from the scary thing. The part never has access to all the resources you do as the Self, and the part is often a young child trying to take on something that should be overwhelming for a child.
I have no idea whatsoever if this is the case, but it wouldn't surprise me to find that what's actually happening inside the brain in these cases is an energy shift away from, for example, this over-excited anxious part of the brain to one with more control and executive function. It might be a way of training the mind to direct the activation of the brain, not unlike training for any other sort of skill.
