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Being and Doing: Part 2 of 2

How Do We Do More Being?

If you read Part 1 and found yourself thinking, “Yes, I understand the distinction between being and doing, but how do I actually become more rooted in being?” you have already bumped into the delicious paradox at the heart of the matter.

We immediately want to know how to do being.

We want a method, a checklist, a sequence of steps. We want to know what to practice, how often to practice it, and how we will know when we are finally getting it right.  In other words, the ego hears about being and promptly turns it into another project. So perhaps the first thing to understand is:

Being is not something you manufacture. It is something you return to.

You are already being. You cannot stop being. What happens is that we become so absorbed in our thoughts, plans, reactions, fears, expectations, responsibilities, and agendas that we lose conscious contact with the experience of simply being here. The practice is not to create some extraordinary state of consciousness. It is to become more available to the life you are already living. And that begins with something very simple.

Come Back to Where You Are

Much of the time, our bodies are in one place while our minds are somewhere else. We are eating breakfast while thinking about the meeting later that morning. We are driving while replaying yesterday’s conversation. We are talking with someone while silently composing our  response. Being begins when we notice that we have left the present moment and gently bring our attention back. You might simply ask yourself questions like:

  • Where am I right now?
  • What is actually happening?
  • What am I noticing inside myself?

Notice your breathing. Feel your feet on the floor. Become aware of the person sitting across from you. Taste the food you are eating. Listen to the sounds in the room. None of this is dramatic. That point is that  being is found in direct experience.

Notice Before You React

One of the most powerful doorways into being is the small space between what happens and what we do next. Something occurs. Someone says something we do not like. A plan falls apart. We receive disappointing news. We feel criticized, ignored, frightened, embarrassed, or angry.

Our habitual reaction may arise almost instantly. But if we can notice what is happening inside us before acting on it, something important changes.

Instead of immediately becoming the reaction, we become aware of the reaction.

  • I notice that I am getting defensive.
  • I notice that I want to prove that I am right.
  • I notice fear.
  • I notice that I want to control what happens next.

That little act of awareness changes our relationship with experience. Instead of being completely inside the machinery of our conditioning, we are observing it. And in that moment, another possibility becomes available. We can choose how we want to respond.

Stop Trying to Improve Every Moment

This may be harder than it sounds. Many of us have developed the habit of constantly evaluating our experience.

  • Is this good or bad?
  • Do I like this or not?
  • Is this going according to plan?Am I doing this correctly?
  • What needs to change?

There is certainly a time for discernment, problem-solving, and action. But when our minds are continually evaluating reality, we rarely experience reality itself directly. Instead, we experience our commentary about it.

Being asks us to allow a moment to exist before deciding what it means or what we need to do about it. Sometimes this can be as simple as saying inwardly: This is what is happening right now.

There is enormous freedom in learning to meet reality rather than trying to rearrange it.

Become Curious About Your Inner Experience

Being also requires turning some of our attention inward. Most of us are highly skilled at noticing what everyone else is doing. We notice their tone of voice, their behavior, their opinions, what we perceive as their mistakes, and whether they are giving us what we want. We are often far less familiar with what is happening inside ourselves:

  • What am I feeling?
  • What am I afraid of?
  • What am I wanting right now?
  • What story am I telling myself?
  • What am I defending?
  • What am I trying to make happen?

These questions are not meant to become another form of self-analysis. They are invitations to awareness. We cannot live from the inside out if we are rarely inside ourselves long enough to know what is going on.

Practice Doing One Thing While Doing One Thing

We live in a culture that celebrates multitasking, although our nervous systems may have another opinion about it. Try occasionally giving yourself completely to one ordinary activity.

  • Drink the cup of tea.
  • Walk to the mailbox.
  • Pet the cat.
  • Listen to the person who is speaking.
  • Fold the laundry.

Do not try to squeeze enlightenment out of the laundry. Just be there for it. This may sound a bit ridiculous, but:

Every time you give your full attention to what you are actually doing, you are strengthening your capacity to inhabit your own life.

Allow Yourself Not to Know

Doing likes certainty. It wants answers, plans, decisions, explanations, and guarantees. Being has a greater tolerance for mystery and simply being in not knowing. The compulsion to  know can push us into premature decisions, false certainty, and unnecessary control. Being allows us to remain present even when the next answer has not yet arrived.

This isn’t about becoming passive. It means recognizing that wisdom sometimes requires waiting long enough to hear something quieter than fear.

Create Small Pauses in Your Day

You do not need to retreat to a monastery in order to practice being. You might simply stop for thirty seconds before opening your computer in the morning. Take one conscious breath before answering the telephone. Sit in your parked car for a moment before walking into the house. Look out the window without reaching for your phone. Before responding during a difficult conversation, feel your body and notice what is happening inside you. These small pauses interrupt the momentum of unconscious doing. They remind us that we have a choice about the consciousness we bring to whatever comes next.

Let Your Doing Come From Your Being

The more rooted we become in ourselves, the more fully we can participate in our lives.

We still make appointments, pay bills, create things, repair relationships, make difficult decisions, pursue dreams, protect what matters to us, and take action when action is needed. But something begins to shif. Instead of immediately asking, What should I do? we might first ask:

  • Who am I being right now?
  • From what place inside myself am I about to act?
  • Am I acting from fear or clarity? defensiveness or self-respect?
  • Am I caught in the need to control or am I willingness to cooperate with reality?
  • Am I making decisions out of habit or conscious choice? 
  • Am I seeking to prove myself or am I simply sharing who I am?

These questions bring us back to the central truth we explored in Part 1.

Doing is how we participate in life. Being is how we inhabit it.

We do not have to choose between them. The invitation is to become increasingly conscious of the being from which our doing arises. You notice more and become present more often. You listen inwardly and loosen your grip on what you think should be happening. You allow yourself to experience your life before rushing to manage it. And little by little, your doing begins to arise from a deeper place within you. You become less occupied with constructing a life from the outside in and more capable of actually inhabiting the life that is already here.

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Being and Doing: Part 1 of 2

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.

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Claiming Your Personal Sovereignty

 

The Problem with Living from the Outside-In

One challenge shared by many of my mentoring clients is living in reaction to the outside world rather than navigating the world from a grounded connection within themselves.

Their attention is continually being pulled outward responding to:

  • what other people think or expect
  • what has just happened or might happen next
  • what they believe they must do to feel safe, worthy, successful, or loved

They are often caught up in the story they tell themselves about who they are rather than directly experiencing their lives in the present moment.

Most are so busy managing and defending themselves that they may have very little contact with their deeper self who is actually living their life.

This is not a personal failing. Most of us are trained from childhood to orient ourselves toward the outside world. We learn to notice what receives approval and what brings criticism. We learn which parts of ourselves are welcomed and which parts are inconvenient, embarrassing, or unacceptable. We learn to adapt.

Adaptation is often necessary and helps us belong, function, and survive. The problem arises when adaptation becomes our permanent way of being. We can become so skilled at reading the room that we lose the ability to read ourselves.

We may know what everyone else wants while having no idea what we want. We may recognize disappointment in someone else’s face before we recognize tension in our own body. It is easy to become highly competent at fulfilling expectations while remaining strangely absent from our own lives.

When we live from the outside-in, responsibility often gets confused with obedience. We believe we are being responsible when we comply with expectations, meet prescribed standards, or avoid disappointing other people.

What is Personal Sovereignty?

The truth of the matter is that it is the quality of consciousness from which you engage with your life that determines your path forward.

I think of the shift from an outside-in focus to an inside-out way of living as learning to claim sovereignty over your own life.

Personal sovereignty is the recognition that your inner life belongs to you.

It is not about controlling what happens or becoming fiercely independent. Nor does it mean refusing help, disregarding the needs of others or believing you can do whatever you please.

It means claiming your independent authority and accepting responsibility for how you meet your experience. It is about understanding that life is not about trying to control every event, relationship, or outcome. It is a choice to become increasingly conscious of the meaning you give those experiences and the choices you make in response to them.

You realize that you are the final authority on the meaning you assign to your own experience.

You choose to stop handing authority over your well-being to other people, cultural standards, old conditioning, or the frightened voice inside that believes survival depends upon approval.

In doing so, you become increasingly able to see the ways you participate in your own suffering. It becomes apparent when you are living according to inherited beliefs, outdated identities, fear-based assumptions, or standards you never consciously chose.

You stop waiting for someone else to grant you permission to become yourself.

Sovereignty begins the moment you can tell the difference between your own authentic knowing and a voice you inherited. That distinction alone can change the entire trajectory of a life.

Learning to Ask Different Questions

The quality of questions we ask directs the focus of our inquiry about what is happening.

Instead of asking: 

“How do I get them to approve of me?”

“Why am I not good enough?”

“How can I make this feeling go away?”

“Who is to blame?”

You might ask:

“What do I know to be true for me?”

“What standard am I using, and who taught me to use it?”

“What is this feeling trying to show me?”

“What is mine to understand,     accept, change, or release?”

These questions do not make life painless. They make it more conscious.

Personal Example

For much of my life, I lived in a persistent drama about my body weight. I live in a culture that projects an image of the ideal woman as thin and youthful with a flat-stomach and able to fit into low, single-digit clothing sizes.

That was never my body.

I was accepting that external standard as a legitimate measurement of my worth. As a result, I experienced a great deal of shame. I judged myself for failing to become what I thought I was supposed to be.

My weight moved up and down for many years, and I piled judgment on along with the pounds.

The shame did not motivate me toward greater health. It separated me from myself.

I was so busy evaluating my body that I was not listening to it. I saw it as a problem to conquer rather than a living part of me that might be struggling and in need of care. I believed the issue was that my body had failed to conform.

Eventually, I realized that I live in this particular body. It is not an object I carry around while waiting to qualify for a better one. It is the body through which I experience my entire life.

My distress was not caused only by my inability to meet an outside standard. Much of it was caused by my judgment and rejection of myself in relation to that standard.

I had very little compassion for myself because I was turning a cultural preference into a personal indictment.

When I finally consulted an endocrinologist, I received an explanation and learned what my options were. The medical information mattered, but something else mattered more. I was liberated in that moment from my shame when I realized it wasn’t my fault. I was just trying to be something I was not.

My body was not defective. It was not betraying me or evidence that I lacked discipline, worth, or character. It was a body with its own history, biology, needs, and imbalances.

I saw how much suffering had been created by trying to become something I was not.

That recognition did not mean abandoning responsibility for my health. In fact, it made genuine responsibility possible.

Instead of questioning what was “wrong” with me, I shifted my focus to “Given what is true, how do I want to care for myself now?”

The Beautiful Freedom of Personal Sovereignty

Many people imagine freedom as the moment when the world finally cooperates with them, another person changes, their body changes, the past is resolved, they receive recognition, or when life finally becomes fair.

Freedom does not begin when everything outside you falls into place. It comes present when you stop making your inner state dependent upon what is outside you.

You may not be able to silence every judgment, but you stop treating every judgment as truth.

Sovereignty grows each time you become aware of where you have placed your authority.

  • Have you placed it in another person’s approval?
  • In your appearance?
  • In your professional identity?
  • In being needed?
  • In being right?
  • In being seen as kind, spiritual, successful, intelligent, or strong?

Anything upon which your worth depends eventually gains power over you.

A Practice for Claiming Your Own Sovereignty

Here is a process you can try that is the best way I know to move out of distress

First, become curious about the consciousness from which you are meeting your experience.

Notice where you are focusing your attention.

  • Are you focused on what someone else did, said, failed to do, or might do next?
  • Are you repeatedly reviewing the past or rehearsing the future?
  • Are you trying to manage another person’s perception of you?

Now, notice the questions you are asking yourself.

Questions such as “What is wrong with me?” “Why does this always happen?” and “How do I make them understand?” often keep us trapped inside the very consciousness that created our distress.

Try asking questions that return you to yourself like these:

  • “What am I feeling beneath my immediate reaction?”
  • “What am I afraid this situation means about me?”
  • “What outside standard am I using to judge myself?”
  • “What is actually true in this moment and what is my interpretation of that?”
  • “What belongs to me, and what belongs to someone else?”
  • “What do I need in order to remain in respectful relationship with myself?”
  • “What choice would reflect self-respect rather than fear?”

Finally, notice whom you are judging and why. Judgment often creates the illusion of clarity while protecting us from a more vulnerable truth. It can be easier to judge another person as selfish than to acknowledge that we are hurt or to judge ourselves as weak rather than to admit that we are frightened. Judgment closes the inquiry. Curiosity opens it.

Claiming sovereignty over your life does not happen in one dramatic act. It happens through small, repeated moments of inner alignment.

It happens when you recognize an old story without allowing it to make the next decision.

It happens when you care for your body rather than punishing it.

It happens in such moments as when:

  • you allow another person to be disappointed without concluding that you have done something wrong.
  • you listen inwardly before reaching outwardly for reassurance.
  • you take responsibility without turning responsibility into self-attack.

Each of these moments strengthens your relationship with your own inner authority.

The goal is not to become unaffected by the world. We are relational beings. We influence one another, need one another, and belong to one another.

The goal is to participate in the world without disappearing into it. You can belong without betraying what you know to be true.

Personal sovereignty is the ability to remain present within yourself while being fully engaged with life.

The question is not whether the outside world will continue to make demands, offer opinions, impose standards, and trigger old fears. It will.

The deeper question is this:

From what place within yourself will you meet your life?

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