Being and Doing – Understanding the Difference
One of the fundamental themes that often comes up in my work with clients is understanding the difference between doing and being. It seems to me like most people are engaging in their lives backwards. They focus outward on what they are doing and think that determines the quality of their inner well-being. But it’s the other way around – it’s not “DoBeDoBeDo.” It’s “BeDoBeDoBe.” It is the quality of our inner being that determines what we do in the outer world.
The simplest distinction is this:
Doing is about what you are engaged in.
Being is about the quality of consciousness from which you are engaged.
Doing belongs primarily to the world of action. We plan, solve problems, make decisions, cook dinner, write books, answer emails, care for people, earn money, organize our lives, and get things accomplished. Doing is essential. We could not function without it. Being is more fundamental. It is the state of presence from which all that activity arises.
Being has to do with how you are inhabiting yourself and your life while you are doing whatever you are doing.
Are you present or distracted? Grounded or reactive? Open or defensive? Acting from fear, habit, and the need for approval, or from a deeper connection with yourself?
This means that being and doing are not opposites. You do not have to stop doing in order to be. You can be fully present while washing dishes, conducting a meeting, having a difficult conversation, or writing a chapter. The difference is that you are not lost inside the activity.
There is also an important distinction between “being” and “doing nothing.” Sitting quietly can still be a form of frantic doing if your mind is rehearsing arguments, planning tomorrow, judging yourself, or trying desperately to achieve a peaceful state. Conversely, you can be extraordinarily active while deeply rooted in being. Another way of understanding it is:
Doing asks: What do I need to accomplish, change, fix, control, or make happen?
Being asks: How am I present to what is happening right now, and who am I being in relationship to it?
This becomes especially important because much of modern life trains us to derive our identity and worth from doing. We learn to think, consciously or unconsciously:
- I am what I accomplish.
- I am what other people think of me.
- I am how useful, successful, attractive, productive, or good I can manage to be.
Being begins somewhere else. It recognizes that before you accomplish anything, prove anything, improve anything, or receive anyone else’s approval, you already exist as a living consciousness having this particular human experience. Your life is not merely a project to be successfully managed. It is an experience to be inhabited.
Doing operates largely through intention and agency: “I am making something happen.”
Being opens us to receptivity: “I am here, available to what is.”
At its deepest, being involves loosening the ego’s insistence that it must continually direct, interpret, judge, and control experience. We become capable not only of acting upon life, but of allowing life to reveal itself to us.
Perhaps the most useful formulation is:
Doing is how we participate in life. Being is how we inhabit it.
The mature integration is not being instead of doing. It is doing that flows from being. When that happens, our actions become less compulsive and reactive and more conscious. We still make choices, set boundaries, pursue goals, solve problems, and get things done, but our doing becomes an expression of who we are rather than an attempt to establish who we are.
Coming next:
Understanding the difference between being and doing is one thing. But how do we actually become more rooted in being? In Part 2, we will explore some very practical ways to do exactly that, paradox and all.
