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Relationships Exist Inside of Us

One Relationship, Two Inner Worlds

I remember being quite taken aback when I first heard the idea that our relationships exist inside of us, not out in the world. In time, I have come to understand the truth of this statement. We share experiences with other people, but each of us lives those experiences from within ourselves.

We often assume that what we see is the whole truth and nothing but the truth. From there, it is a short leap to wondering why the other person cannot see something we find so obviously true.

Here’s a simple example.

Mary:  It’s not fair that you leave it to me to put the kids to bed every night. I need you to help and I think you should. After all, they are your kids too.

 John:  I do help.

Mary: Yeah. Only when you feel like it, which is not very often. The rest of the time you leave me to do it myself. You consider it optional, not your equal responsibility.

 John: Well, I do other things and you’re better at putting the kids to bed.

Both perceive what is happening through the filter of past experiences and the accumulated beliefs, frustrations, and conclusions each brings to this familiar disagreement.

It is as though two different movies are playing in the theaters of their minds. Two completely different movies are playing based on their separate points of view. How they experience being connected to each other, and how they interact and behave is coming from the inside out of two separate people. In Mary’s movie, she is once again left with a responsibility that belongs to both of them. In John’s movie, the other things he contributes are being overlooked.

Mary is seeking shared responsibility. John is defending his contributions. Unless they recognize this, they can keep talking without ever quite addressing what the other person is concerned about.

Unfortunately, when differences matter to us, we can contract into a right/wrong battle. We seek to prove our point of view without noticing that we are fighting different battles.

And somewhere in that struggle, the person we love can become the person we are trying to defeat.

The Stories We Bring Into the Room

We carry our experiences of people within us. We remember, interpret, anticipate, and react. Sometimes we respond to what someone is doing right now. Sometimes we respond to a whole history that has arrived in the room with them.

Sometimes we become so familiar with our own story that we stop being curious about and open to understanding another person’s experience.

Finding Our Way Forward Together

Next time you have concerns about the quality of your relationship, here are a few things you can do to move towards better understanding and resolution:

  • Shift your focus from what you’re reacting to on the outside to what you are experiencing on the inside. For example, instead of being caught up in defending yourself against the other person’s point of view, see if you can more specifically identify what you are experiencing. Are you hurt, frightened, angry, exhausted, or feeling dismissed? What might you need to do to maintain your well-being in that context? Do you need to ask for a pause in the conversation so you can return with more willingness to listen?
  • Separate what happened from what you have concluded it means. Mary’s statement that she puts the kids to bed every night is something Mary and John can discuss concretely. Her conclusion that John considers it optional expresses how she understands his behavior, but he may see it differently, and it is something they need to explore together. Questioning Mary’s interpretation does not diminish her need for shared responsibility.
  • Take a good look within at your assumptions, beliefs, and the actual nature of your concern. Is Mary’s concern only about bedtime, or does bedtime also bring forward a larger feeling of being unsupported or taken for granted? Perhaps she wants a partner who notices what needs doing and takes responsibility without waiting to be asked. John may want recognition for his contributions while also needing to acknowledge the responsibility Mary is asking him to share.
  • Make room to understand both points of view. Recognizing the need to consider each other’s perspective opens the door to a shared understanding rather than a battle where both are so busy declaring their point of view that neither one hears the other. Look at both movies together, and see if you can listen without immediately judging the other person’s experience through your own. Become interested in how life feels from where the other person stands.
  • Turn shared understanding into a shared solution. For Mary and John, this means agreeing on who will handle bedtime and when, so Mary no longer has to negotiate it each evening. Understanding becomes meaningful when it changes how we participate in the relationship. What is each person willing to take responsibility for, and how will that look in daily life? Reaching towards each other during challenging times can begin with a practical agreement that both are willing to honor.

Making Room for Something New

The deeper invitation is to keep meeting each other in the present moment, even when you have known one another for decades. Can we remain curious about the person before us when we have so much history together?

Ask yourself:

Inside of me, do I hold a place where my partner’s humanity is welcome, and a disappointment can be addressed without becoming how I see them?

Am I willing and available to make room for something new to evolve between us?

 

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Honoring Your Differences: Making Room for Both of You

When Two Universes Share a Life

Perhaps you once loved how spontaneous your partner was. Now you wish they would make a plan and stick to it. Perhaps you admired their quiet nature. Now you find yourself wishing they would tell you what they are thinking.

What happens when something we once appreciated becomes something we want to change?

You are two universes unto yourselves. Each of you brings a lifetime of experiences, habits, preferences, and understandings about how life should work. Becoming a couple does not erase those differences. It brings them into a dynamic interaction.

Some differences may delight you. Others may challenge your patience or leave you feeling disappointed, misunderstood, or unimportant. How you respond to those differences is an essential part of the ongoing work of sharing your lives.

  • Can you notice a difference without immediately making someone wrong?
  • Can you explain what matters to you while remaining interested in what matters to your partner?
  • Can you ask for a change without making your partner feel that who they are is unacceptable?

Honoring your differences asks you to hold two things together: “There is room for you to be yourself here,” and “There is room for me, too.”

When Your Preference Becomes the Standard

It is easy to move from “I would do this differently” to “There is something wrong with the way you do this.” We may barely notice that we have turned our own preference into the standard against which we judge our partner.

Consider a couple having a disagreement. One wants to talk it through immediately. The other wants time to think before continuing the conversation.

The partner who wants to talk might think, “If you cared about me, you would stay and work this out.” The partner who needs time might think, “If you respected me, you would give me some room to breathe.”

Each wants something understandable. Yet each is interpreting the other’s response as a lack of care.

They need a way forward that considers both needs. Perhaps they agree to take a break and return to the conversation at a specific time. One gets room to think. The other knows the concern will be addressed.

That agreement begins with a willingness to ask, “How can we make room for both of us here?”

Examine the Meaning You Are Giving to Your Differences

When your partner disappoints you, consider what happened and what you have decided it means.

Your partner did not ask about an appointment that mattered to you. Does that mean you are unimportant to them? You want more time together than your partner does. Does that mean they do not love you enough?

Your hurt deserves attention. So does the interpretation you have placed on their behavior.

Before treating that interpretation as a fact, ask yourself: “What did I expect? Did my partner know that? Have I mistaken my preference for the way things ought to be?”

“I shouldn’t have to ask” can be a particularly painful expectation. Something may seem so obvious to you that you cannot imagine needing to explain it. Yet your partner may have no idea what you are waiting for or why it matters.

Exploring your expectations gives you a clearer understanding of what you need to communicate.

Explain What Matters to You

There is a difference between telling your partner what is wrong with them and helping them understand what is happening within you.

“You never think about anyone but yourself” gives your partner a judgment to defend against.

“When our plans change without a conversation, I feel that my time hasn’t been considered. I would like us to check with each other first” identifies the concern and offers a specific request.

You can also ask, “What is this like from your side?”

The purpose is to understand enough about each other to respond with greater care. You may discover an assumption you never questioned, a need you did not recognize, or an effect of your behavior you had not intended.

Create Agreements That Consider Both of You

Understanding each other is a beginning. You also need to decide how to live together with what you now understand.

What can you comfortably accept? Where can you be flexible? What change do you need to request? What are you willing to do yourself?

One person may want more social activity while the other needs more quiet time. An agreement might include some shared outings and some separate plans. Making room for both people requires honest conversation about what each can willingly offer.

When an agreement does not work, revisit it. When you cause hurt, acknowledge the impact, take responsibility for your behavior, and follow an apology with action. Your intentions matter, and so does your willingness to address what happened.

Honoring differences does not require accepting mistreatment. Honesty, respect, and personal safety deserve more than a reminder that nobody is perfect. Nor does shared care for a relationship mean equal responsibility for every hurt. Each person remains responsible for their own behavior.

Keep Getting to Know Each Other

Sharing a life offers an ongoing invitation to know your partner more deeply and to let yourself be known.

The next time you find yourself thinking, “Why can’t you just do it my way?” pause and ask, “What am I asking you to understand about me, and what have I yet to understand about you?”

From there, you can begin the practical work of deciding what each of you can accept, what needs to change, and how you will care for one another in the process.

You are two distinct people creating a shared life. Can you make that life a place where both of you have room to belong?

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Voting: What Are We Willing to Support?

We make myriad decisions by ourselves and for ourselves every day. “Do I hit the snooze button one more time?” “What will I wear today?” Sometimes our choices are far more consequential. Will I tell the truth when lying would be easier? Will I honor a commitment when breaking it would give me something I want?

Our choices reveal what matters most to us, especially when doing what we believe is right comes at a personal cost.

Voting brings that question into our shared life. Whether we are choosing a movie with friends, deciding how to spend shared resources in a marriage, or electing someone to represent us, we are participating in a decision with consequences that extend beyond ourselves.

That asks something of us. How much weight will we give our own preferences and potential benefits? How much will we consider the well-being of others, including people whose lives and needs are very different from our own?

We do not need to stop caring about ourselves to care about one another. But I believe we have a responsibility to look beyond what we stand to gain personally.

I find myself disheartened by how readily we can excuse conduct that violates our own values when it benefits our side. I believe we diminish the responsibility of voting whenever we treat honesty and fairness as expendable in the pursuit of victory. That means asking ourselves whether we are willing to uphold honesty and fairness even when doing so costs our side an advantage. Ask yourself:

  • Would I accept district boundaries drawn to benefit a political party if they disadvantaged the party I support?
  • Am I willing to excuse deliberate dishonesty by candidates, parties, or news outlets when it serves my preferred outcome?
  • What limits on campaign fundraising would I support even if they reduced my preferred candidate’s advantage?
  • When a candidate breaks a campaign promise, do I examine the reasons, or simply excuse or condemn the failure according to whose side they are on?
  • Do I believe winning justifies abandoning fair play? If so, what am I willing to permit, and why?

For me, voting is a sacred social responsibility. It asks us to consider what kind of shared life we are helping to create and what we are willing to endorse in order to get what we want.

I want us to ask more of those who seek to represent us, and more of ourselves. Are we choosing representatives whose conduct reflects the values we want practiced in public life? Will we hold to those values when doing so might cost us a victory?

Winning becomes a shallow goal when we disregard the price paid by others.

My hope is that our disgust with corruption will become a determination to withdraw our support from it, including when confronting it costs us an advantage. Anger can bring us to that threshold. Conscience must guide what we do next.

Before we cast our vote, perhaps the most consequential question we can ask is this:

What am I willing to excuse in order to get what I want, and can I live with what that makes me responsible for?

 

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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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Reacting vs. Responding: A Subtle Difference That Changes Everything

Know That You Have a Choice

In the space between what happens to us and how we act, there is a quiet but profound power. And most of us don’t know it’s there.

Most of us move through our days operating on a kind of emotional autopilot. Something happens, and almost before we know it, we have already said something, done something, or felt something we didn’t consciously choose. We call this reacting. The alternative is responding and it requires something the modern world rarely encourages us to practice: a pause.

The difference between a reaction and a response may look small from the outside. But lived over time, across the full texture of our relationships and daily choices, it can transform the quality of our lives and the quality of our relationships.

Reacting: the impulse of the moment

A reaction is immediate and often unconscious. It rises from raw emotion before reflection has a chance to enter. When we feel threatened, criticized, or caught off guard, our nervous system is wired to protect us. That protective reflex can take over before our wiser self gets a word in.

Reactions are not always wrong. For example, the surprise of a sudden kindness, or the delight of unexpected, good news. These instinctive expressions are part of what makes us human. However, when negative emotion is the trigger, an unconsidered reaction often escalates rather than resolves. It protects the ego at the expense of the relationship.

Responding: the power of pause

A response, by contrast, takes a breath. It creates space between the trigger and the action. This space allows for awareness, values, and genuine choice to operate. To respond is not to suppress emotion. Rather, it brings wisdom to it.

Viktor Frankl, writing from his experience in Nazi concentration camps, observed that between stimulus and response there is a space, and in that space lies our freedom. He found that even in the most extreme conditions imaginable, that space could not be taken from him.

Most of us will never face what Frankl faced. But we encounter our version of that space every day: in the traffic that frustrates us, in the feedback that stings, in the moment before we say something we cannot take back.

Two examples, side by side

Reacting

A colleague offers critical feedback. Before they finish speaking, you begin defending yourself, your tone already sharp. Later, you replay the conversation and wish you had listened differently.

Someone cuts you off in traffic. You slam the horn, shout, and carry the anger with you for the next twenty minutes.

 

 Responding

A colleague offers critical feedback. You feel the sting — and you let it be there for a moment. Then: “That’s helpful. Can you give me an example so I can understand better?”

Someone cuts you off in traffic. You notice the surge of irritation, take a breath, and refocus on driving safely. The irritation passes. The drive continues.

 

What the idiom “hold your tongue” really teaches us

The old phrase holds more wisdom than it might first seem. To hold your tongue is not to silence yourself. It is to create a moment of deliberate restraint so that what you do say actually reflects what you mean, and how you wish to be known.

This matters most when a conversation is turning into an argument or you feel tempted to offer unsolicited advice. It is also a wise choice when you are inclined to interrupt someone mid-thought or when strong emotion is already shaping what you are about to say.

What the pause makes possible

Pausing is not passivity. It is an active choice to reclaim your agency. In the space the pause creates, something becomes available that reaction forecloses:

  • Choosing kindness over defensiveness
  • Organizing your thoughts before speaking
  • Clarifying what is actually being asked
  • Communicating your own needs clearly
  • Showing others that their feelings matter
  • Reducing the likelihood of misunderstanding
  • Setting a tone that others can follow
  • Demonstrating better problem solving

Some people worry that pausing before speaking discourages open communication or blunts honest expression. My experience, both in my own life and in working with others, is exactly the opposite. Thoughtfulness does not muffle truth; it gives truth a better chance of being heard.

Reactions come from habit. Responses come from awareness.

One keeps us tangled in old patterns; the other invites us to grow. When you pause, you reclaim your power. You stop being a puppet of circumstance and begin living as the author of your own story.

Nowhere is this more important than in relationships where hostility is present. In those moments, the quality of your response can determine whether the exchange hardens into conflict or opens into something more honest and human.

That split-second space between what happens and what you do is not a gap to be filled as quickly as possible. It is an invitation. And learning to accept that invitation, again and again, is one of the quietest, yet most powerful and transformative practices available to us.

A question to sit with

In your daily life, where do you notice yourself reacting most often? What might you choose to shift in a conversation, a relationship, or yourself if you paused long enough to respond instead?

If this piece resonates with someone in your life, I would be grateful if you passed it along.

From judithjohnson.com   Elevating consciousness to transform lives

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Not Good Enough? Compared to What?

Looking At “Good Enough” From a Different Angle

We are all doing the best we can… and this is what it looks like.

It looks like misunderstandings, missed opportunities, and moments we wish we could take back. It looks like people acting from fear when they long for love, closing off when they most need connection, holding on when life is asking them to let go. It looks messy, inconsistent, and at times deeply painful.

And yet, beneath all of it, each of us is responding from the level of awareness, conditioning, and emotional capacity we have in that moment. This is the starting point for raising consciousness and developing deeper self-awareness.

When we begin to see this clearly, something shifts. Judgment softens. Compassion becomes possible. And from that place, a more conscious way of living can begin to emerge.

When you multiply all of these small misses across billions of lives, they do not stay small. They ripple outward into families, communities, and systems, shaping a world that reflects our collective consciousness as much as our shared longing for something better.

The World We See Reflects Our Level of Consciousness

It is easy to look out at the world and feel disheartened by human behavior. We see selfishness, division, carelessness, and harm. We see people acting in ways that feel irresponsible or difficult to understand.

Somewhere inside, a quiet voice says, This should not be happening.

But what if what we are seeing is not an exception?

What if it is the natural outcome of millions of individuals doing the best they can from their current level of awareness?

This perspective does not excuse harmful behavior. But it helps explain it.  Understanding human behavior is an essential step in raising consciousness, both individually and collectively.

Every reaction, decision, and emotional response arises from an internal landscape shaped by epast experiences, beliefs, and emotional patterns. When we forget this, we judge. When we remember it, we begin to understand.

The Hidden Filters That Shape Human Behavior

Each of us lives through an internal filter formed by conditioning, beliefs, fears, expectations, and past experiences. This filter shapes how we interpret reality and respond to life.

This is a core concept in conscious living and personal growth.

Two people can experience the same situation and interpret it in completely different ways. One feels rejected while another feels relieved. One feels threatened while another feels inspired. The difference lies in the filter, not in the event itself.

Most of us assume we are seeing reality clearly. In truth, we are seeing reality through layers of unconscious conditioning.

As a result, we often react automatically. We defend, withdraw, attack, cling, or avoid. We do this not because we are broken, but because, in that moment, it is the best response available within our current level of awareness.

When Our Best Still Creates Suffering

There is often resistance to the idea that we are all doing the best we can. It can sound like an excuse or a lowering of standards.

A more accurate understanding is this: doing the best we can does not mean we are doing well. It means we are operating at the edge of our current awareness and emotional capacity.

For many of us, that edge is still shaped by fear, unconscious emotional patterns, and unexamined beliefs.

This is why:

  • Our best intentions can still cause harm
  • Our efforts can miss the mark
  • Our actions can create unintended consequences

The gap between intention and impact is where much of human suffering lives.

The Collective Impact of Limited Awareness

Individually, these moments may seem small. A reactive comment, a defensive response, a failure to listen, or a decision driven by fear can feel insignificant.

Collectively, they shape our world.

They influence relationships, family dynamics, workplace culture, and larger social systems. This is how collective consciousness is formed.

Systems are not separate from us. They are created and sustained by human behavior. When unconscious patterns are widespread, they become normalized. When disconnection becomes common, it becomes culture.

This is how the everyday unconscious behavior scales into larger challenges in the world we share.

Raising Consciousness Begins with Awareness

If we are all doing the best we can from where we are,  the essential question becomes whether our level of awareness expand.

The answer is yes. And it begins with self-awareness.

Raising consciousness does not happen through force, shame, or self-criticism. It  begins with noticing. The moment we become aware of our emotional patterns, something shifts.

We create space between what happens and how we respond. In that space, new choices become possible. This is the foundation of conscious living.

From Judgment to Compassion

As awareness grows, judgment begins to soften.

When we see only behavior, it is easy to label people as difficult, selfish, or wrong. When we understand the deeper layers shaping that behavior, compassion naturally emerges.

 This does not mean tolerating harm or abandoning boundaries. It means engaging from a place of greater clarity and emotional intelligence, where our shared humanity is recognized, surface behavior is understood in  context, and accountability is balanced with compassion.

A Path Toward Conscious Living

If our world reflects the cumulative result of individual awareness, then raising consciousness becomes a deeply personal responsibility.

We do not begin by trying to fix others. We begin with ourselves.

We notice our reactions and patterns. We become aware of how our internal filtering process shapes our responses.

We become curious and ask ourselves questions like:

  • What is driving my response right now?
  • What emotional pattern is being activated?
  • Is there a more conscious way to respond?

Thesemome nts of awareness are where real transformation begins.

We Are All Doing the Best We Can… And We Can Grow

“We are all doing the best we can” is not a conclusion. It is an invitation to deepen self-awareness and to understand human behavior with greater compassion.

When we raise our level of consciousness, we begin to participate more intentionally in our own lives.

And when enough of us do this, the world we share begins to change and the best we can gets better and better.

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Why Do We Keep Having the Same Fight?

Photo by Jakob Owens on Unsplash

The argument isn’t really about what you think it’s about.

If you’ve been in a long-term relationship, you know the feeling. A familiar tension rises, words are exchanged, and somewhere in the middle of it, a quiet, exhausted part of you thinks we’ve been here before.

Most couples find themselves not in a similar argument, but the exact same one, cycling back with the same charge it always carries. Maybe it’s about who initiates closeness and who pulls away. Maybe it’s about how decisions get made, or whose feelings take up more space in the room. Whatever the subject, the choreography is identical and no matter how it ends, nothing seems to change.

So why does this keep happening? And more importantly: what are we actually fighting about?

Two people, two entirely different worlds

A client once described this exchange with her husband, who had grown up in a different culture:

She: How come whenever you initiate sex, you expect me to be responsive, but if I initiate, you never are?

He: You have to understand. It is like a light switch. If I turn the light switch on, we have sex. If I don’t, we don’t.

She: You have to understand; I can turn the light switch on as well.

What’s striking about this exchange isn’t the disagreement itself. It’s how completely reasonable each person sounds from inside their own experience. He isn’t being dismissive; he’s describing his world as he genuinely lives it. She isn’t being demanding; she’s pointing to an assumption he didn’t even know he was making. Neither is wrong, exactly. They’re simply speaking from different inner landscapes.

And we don’t need to come from different countries for this to happen. We each live in our own unique inner environment, one that quietly shapes how we perceive, interpret, and respond to everything around us. A simple gesture can land entirely differently depending on the world inside the person receiving it.

The filter you don’t know you’re using

To understand why we keep having the same fight, we have to look beneath the surface of the argument, at what’s happening inside each person before a single word is spoken.

This filter is made up of everything we have accumulated over a lifetime: our conditioning, beliefs, assumptions, expectations, prejudices, preferences, memories, judgments, fears, hopes, and dreams. These are the source material of the stories we have been telling so long we stopped noticing they were stories. It is the inner atmosphere through which each new experience must pass before it reaches our awareness, and it is what shapes our thoughts, feelings, behaviors, and over time, our very way of being in the world.

By the time our responses reach each other, they have already been interpreted, filtered, and assigned meaning in our respective inner worlds. The meaning we have each found is not neutral. It is colored by everything we have ever experienced, felt, or come to believe about ourselves, about love, and about how the world works.

Why we reject what we don’t recognize

We are conditioned to sort our experiences into categories: desirable or undesirable, safe or threatening, right or wrong. In the context of relationships, this sorting happens automatically, and it is almost always biased toward our own perspective. Both partners are doing this simultaneously, each convinced they are seeing clearly, while the other is not.

So, when your partner sees something differently than you do, your first instinct is rarely curiosity. It’s more likely a quiet sense that they are simply mistaken. Their point of view feels foreign because it passes through your filter and doesn’t match what you know to be true. And the reverse is equally true for them.

This is why the same fight keeps happening. It isn’t really about the dishes, or the tone of voice, or who reached for whom. It’s about two people, each looking at the world through their own accumulated inner landscape, each certain, often without realizing it, that their view is the accurate one.

What becomes possible when we see this

The moment we recognize that every disagreement is, at some level, a collision between two inner worlds, something shifts. The other person stops being an obstacle or an adversary and becomes, instead, someone moving through their own experience, just as we are moving through ours.

This doesn’t mean all perspectives are equally valid in every situation, or that accountability disappears. It means that understanding becomes more available to us. And understanding, real understanding rather than just nodding along, is the beginning of change.

The same fight will keep cycling through your relationship until something changes inside one or both of you. Not who wins the argument, and not who makes the bigger concession, but something deeper: a willingness to become curious about the inner world your partner is living in, and perhaps a bit more honest about the one you’re living in yourself.

That willingness is where the real work begins. The argument dissolves when you are willing to recognize your respective filters, question the stories you’ve inherited, and meet each other across the gap of two very different inner worlds.

If you would like to know more abut my couples mentoring program,  click here.

If you are ready to go deeper, I’d love to hear from you. Feel free to schedule a free 30-minute conversation here to see if we might be a good fit to work together.

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If I Were Queen: The Power of Vulnerability and Letting Go of Control

What if the way we protect ourselves is also what keeps us from feeling fully alive?

For many years, I found myself saying, “If I were queen…” whenever I felt frustrated with the way people behave and the way the world works. This was long before “No Kings” became a thing.

I objected to so many things. Selfishness. Greed. Deception. Violence. Irresponsibility. Betrayal. Ignorance. Corruption. Incompetence. Apathy. Denial. Lying. Cheating. Stealing. I could go on and on. Whenever I observed or experienced these things, they stirred something deep within me. A sadness that felt ancient. A rage that simmered just beneath the surface.

Over time, that sadness and rage built to the point where I felt the need to protect myself from further hurt. It took me a long time to realize that I was living my life as if I had both arms extended out in front of me like stop signs. Somehow, I had come to believe that I needed to keep everyone and everything at arm’s length so no one could hurt me.

But that way of living came at a cost.

Have you ever noticed yourself doing something like this?

Learning Vulnerability

Then I began to understand the power of vulnerability not as a concept, but as a lived experience. I discovered that vulnerability is not weakness. It is the doorway to truth, connection, and freedom.

I came to see that in protecting myself from being hurt, I was also preventing myself from being known. In hiding, I cut myself off from love, belonging, and inner peace. I may have appeared strong on the outside, but something essential within me remained untouched.

Little by little, I practiced vulnerability and dissolved that barrier. Vulnerability asked something different of me. I needed the willingness to be seen as I am, without trying to manage how others might perceive me. I needed to tell the truth of my experience, even when that truth was imperfect, uncertain, or tender.

This became an entirely new way of being for me. It was as though I was rewiring my energy flow. Instead of having my discontent automatically flow into sadness, rage, and self-protection, I was consciously choosing to let down my guard and let life in.

A Different Way of Being

I found myself standing in reality rather than in my ideas about how life should be.

Something fundamental began to shift. The tectonic plates of my life were moving. My goal was no longer to sanitize my life of pain or discomfort. Of course, I still preferred ease over suffering, but not at the expense of closing myself off from what life had to teach me.

As I listened more deeply within, I found a different kind of truth and stability. It was not based on control, but was rooted in presence. I began to move out of fear and resistance and into a quiet sense of aliveness and wholeness as I learned to participate in my life.

I discovered how to harvest the wisdom hidden within some of my most difficult experiences. And I noticed that the more I was willing to lift my view above my preferences and judgments, the less I found myself resisting reality. In place of my objections came acceptance, cooperation, and understanding.

This is the hero’s journey of my life.

It is about learning to fully inhabit being me. And meeting life as it is, while doing the best I can to care for my own well-being no matter what unfolds. I no longer need to run away from my life or try to change it. I need to live it. I need to be at home right inside myself.

And when I still catch myself slipping into “If I were queen,” I smile and breathe into whatever it is that is scaring me. I remind myself that I am not here to rule the world. I am here to meet it, and to help others do the same.

There is nothing wrong with wanting the world to be better. The question is what it costs us when we resist the one we are actually living in.

Understanding my own life’s journey has deepened what I have to offer through my mentoring and writings. I call this approach the Consciousness Ecology Method™️. It is designed to help us navigate the beautiful, sacred messiness of being human.

If something in this speaks to you, you are warmly invited to explore this work more deeply here.

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