Looking From Outside

I think that when we talk about things like "creativity", "knowledge" and "motivation" in education, we are really forming narratives which drive our sense of identity and motion in the world, not actual literal "components" of the brain that we can point to or experience directly. I think that this issue relates to the problem of introspection: what I experience to be motivation, creativity, inner-directedness, and so on, doesn't really relate to a particular component in one's physiology. It relates more to the story one tells about one's personal identity and sense of becoming over time.
   Many times, I have fallen into a mental trap of wondering, what is it that someone has that I lack? I especially notice that I am slower than others when it comes to formulating new ideas or topics. Normally, when asking this kind of question, I am trying to establish an empirically verified, objectively measurable "thing" which I can say is contributing to my inability to do what someone else does. I have swallowed whole the notion that my mind is a kind of supercomputer that needs certain ingredients and enhancements to its system in order to function properly. But on the face of it, this narrative doesn't actually benefit me at all. Simply telling myself that the problem lies in this area of the brain only gives me a mental marker which might allow me to focus on improving something, either through will power or intellect or reading various books by psychologists. In other words, the theory affects the way I narrate  my life, but in actuality, it has no direct effect on a physical part of the brain. This is because I can't directly experience the physical brain. It only exists as a kind of narrative metaphor which allows me to pinpoint areas where I need improvement, like a literal mental map. However, it does not provide any real explanation as to what practices can improve or enhance certain mental abilities or characteristics.
    While there are limits to psychological discourse or "biological" models of the self, I suggest that there must be larger social functions to such discourses if they have remained so popular in modern culture. In the past, biological arguments were used to justify certain kinds of social orders, such as through egregious arguments about the natural "intelligence" of certain kinds of races or peoples. Recently, I think that the discourse of psychology is doing something quite different. In arguing that people can control their behavior by pinpointing "defective" areas of their minds that could be enhanced through self-help or will power, other factors that might pertain to a person's ability to learn are excluded, such as interpersonal components, social identity and other constructed selves. They also take away from an ability to really be with one's difficulties in a more direct way, by imagining that the self can be observed from "outside". I doubt that this can truly be done.