When the trap of obligation is exposed, it sucks for everyone.

“I loved you all these years–and now you mean to tell me that you don’t want to continue this relationship?”

“I helped you promote your stuff–and now you won’t help me promote mine? That’s it–I’m never helping you promote another thing.”

“I made time for you–the least you could do is make time for me. It’s not too much to ask, especially give all the time I’ve given you.”

It creates a cycle where people don’t feel they can give an honest and true “no” to someone’s request. After all, they’re obligated, aren’t they? What if they say “no” and then the help or the love or the goodwill simply stop?

I’ve seen it happen, after all. I bet you have, too.

Six Truths about What Obligation Creates

Truth #1: The trap of obligation erodes trust between two people. If people are playing that game, we never know whether or not someone has done something nice because they believe in the person/the work, or if they’re being nice because they want something in return, later. The trap of obligation makes the establishment of new online relationships a tricky one, for me–is this person offering to support my work because they are genuinely behind it? Or are they hoping that supporting my work today means they get my support on theirs, later? And if I don’t have the time, resources, or desire to offer that support, what then?

Truth #2: The trap of obligation creates mediocre work. It becomes more difficult to offer up honest assessments when one is caught in the obligation of “being nice” because someone else has always been nice to you. Someone says, “Here’s my new thing/product/idea/what I’m doing with my life. What do you think?”

It becomes difficult to state what’s honest, because it’s critical: “You’re my friend and I love you–and my truth is that the writing you’ve shown me is flat in paragraph 4. My suggestion would be….” Then the person whose writing is falling flat is going to email/call all of her girlfriends, to bitch about the person who dared to be honest, no matter how kindly the honest person tried to phrase it.

To avoid that hassle, so often people are dishonest and decide to say things like: “You’re my friend and I love you. Of course your writing is great!”

Or, they say nothing at all. The phone doesn’t ring. The email isn’t answered.

Truth #3: The trap of obligation creates resentment. Sally Sue asks Billy Bob for help with something, and she’s helped Billy Bob before. Billy Bob feels obligated to help, even though his truth is that he doesn’t really want to. He feels resentful at the system of obligation to reciprocate. He’s a good person who wants to share, to help, to reciprocate, but just not in this instance–and he doesn’t like the heel at his neck that is the social expectation that you obligatorily reciprocate. If he says yes to Sally Sue, he feels resentful towards her for asking. If he says no, Sally Sue feels resentful that he said no, and calls him “selfish.”

Truth #4: The trap of obligation creates fear. Fear of being left, fear of not being helped, fear of not being loved. People say yes to obligations because they fear being left more than they fear gritting their teeth and doing it anyway.

Truth #5: The trap of obligations creates a life lived for others, rather than for yourself. The obligations pile up. There are work obligations, family obligations, friendship obligations. People feel overwhelmed. Sometimes they shut down entirely, not starting a new friendship or new endeavor simply to not feel obligated.

Truth #6: The trap of obligations creates isolation. Some of us (raising my hand, here) start doing everything on their own, because they don’t want to ask for anything, for fear of being asked for something in return and not having the desire, energy or resources to accommodate it–and then being left, being labeled as “selfish,” being talked about behind one’s back, being unloved. It becomes easier to “just do it yourself” than be trapped in a cycle of obligations.

The Antidote to Obligation

Here’s the thing: you are not obligated.

You do not “have to.”

–And furthermore, no one owes you.

The antidote to obligation is to act from a place of love, every time.

It’s not love to help people in the hopes that you can stock up your “reciprocation savings account.” That’s manipulation.

It’s not love to get pissed if someone else doesn’t help you promote your shizzle after you helped them to promote theirs–that’s manipulation (why this belief persists online is beyond me; I don’t promote Byron Katie or Eckhart Tolle’s work because I expect them to promote me back, after all. So why do people expect this of each other on the internet?).

It’s not love (for yourself) to ask someone for feedback on a project and then get your panties in a twist when they actually offer it (didn’t you get exactly what you asked for?)–that’s manipulation.

Yes, there are all these pieces in here about helping one another and the necessity of working together. I believe in all of that.

I’m just an advocate for doing it from a place that is honest, and true, and not manipulative.

I’m just an advocate for help and support that I can fully trust because I know that it comes from the wellspring of beautiful generosity that someone feels authentically inspired to offer.

I’m an advocate for the kind of love that allows people to say no, change their minds, and really show up as who they are, even if that means that it’s inconvenient for me, because then I know that I’m really getting that person–not a shell of that person who is afraid to say “no” for fear that I will leave.

I’m also an advocate for the kind of love that might have you choosing to create your closest and most reliable relationships from those people who share similar values, who want to share and reciprocate in the same ways that you do, and who are willing to communicate that.

When there’s a shared vision about what reciprocity looks like, no one is getting hurt.

And when there are obligations? Well, revisit #1-6, there.

Declare sovereignty from obligation. It’s a dangerous game, like playing with fire–and eventually, as the cliche goes, obligation will burn.

It happens quickly, like this–one moment, you’re on top of things and the workflow systems that you’ve designed meet the needs of what is being asked. You’re good with batching tasks; you know where you can cut corners and where impeccability cannot be negotiated; you know the importance of setting deadlines and padding time; you are able and willing to burn the midnight oil if it means getting something important done; you know that you’re here to live this life with passion, so you enthusiastically say “yes!” to that which calls to you.

Parents, entrepreneurs, and people who have a tendency to take on fifteen different creative projects at once understand how to do all of this.

Then, almost imperceptibly, the willingness to say “yes” becomes something else entirely. We cross a threshold, saying “yes” to something different. What is it? What happened? Why did that passion for a new project, or something as simple as “making a nice family dinner” suddenly turn into the monster that overwhelmed you and had others resenting how you were treating them?

What We’re Really Saying “Yes” To

When that threshold is crossed we’re not saying “yes” to life, anymore.

We’re saying yes to something else. Pains me to name it.

We’re saying yes to Ego. Ugh. Like many of you, I want to be all, um, past the point of having an Ego that runs the show. (This desire is, of course, just more Ego).

We’re saying yes to our Story that (repeatedly) sacrificing our health, our stress levels, whatever–is “worth it.”

We’re saying yes to the Story that what we DO is more important than who we ARE. We’re validating the Story that there is something we can DO that will make ourselves or our lives important.

Of course, we’ll all have those nights where we really need to push through in order to finish something that is important to us. Sometimes a passionately lived life means moving at a whirlwind’s pace and being in the joyous, ecstatic flow of all of it. New parents have months of those nights. Important work projects come along that have deadlines.

The point is that those nights end at some point, and one returns to their regularly scheduled program. By contrast, I’m talking about the kind of relentless “saying yes” and taking on ever-more projects, adding in just one more thing, making what could be simple into a grand event,  that many entrepreneurs and workaholics engage in.

For instance, I recently realized that I had not been cooking for myself on a regular basis since 2009, when I shifted my part-time “hobby business” into a full-time up-scaled mission. It’s been about that long since I last picked up a camera and shot pictures just for the hell of it. Nights spent working to “get ahead” on a project have become a norm. Working right up until bedtime keeps my head going and then I’m in bed thinking about what I was working on or where I’ll pick up, tomorrow–a recipe for insomnia.

It’s ridiculous. It’s unhealthy. And what’s it for? Ego. Ego says, “Gotta have the website updated,” and then reminds me (over and over). Ego makes a small project into a mammoth event. Ego doesn’t want to wait until a few months later to start something new–the time is now!

What happened?

In those moments when Ego is running the show, when the work is not about a sense of internal pride but about a nose to the grindstone and white-knuckling to get things done, what happens is this:

I’m filling a hole. You’re filling a hole. We’re all filling holes, somewhere, until we find out what behaviors are driving us.

For workaholics like me? We take on more, and more, and more, to fill and fill and fill. It certainly starts from a good place–I genuinely enjoy creation and being of service. In Tipping Point-speak, I’m a maven, who loves to learn stuff and then share it.  Or the art studio overflowing with unfinished projects came out of a real love of life and living, and being inspired by the world around us–or the family dinner that turned into this entire “event” originally started from a desire to connect the family.

Then there’s an insatiable need to take on one more thing that keeps us up late at night, or taking on yet another art project that requires buying more supplies, or the dinner that takes hours of time and effort to cook for only 45 minutes of sitting down together, plus now there’s an entire kitchen of dirty dishes to scour and clean. Is it really worth it? Ego will certainly say so. The truth is, however, that it’s a happier life when people get sleep, aren’t living with clutter and unfinished projects, and can eat a meal without having to scour dishes for hours afterwards.

Worthiness, baby. It’s all worthiness.

In my daily life, I generally feel worthy, loved and appreciated. And yet, I also find myself taking on too much, agreeing to too much, and generally doing too much.

There’s some line that is crossed, like the alcoholic who just wants to have fun and relax but then takes one drink too many. I take one drink/one project too many. Other people do the same thing, just not necessarily with work.

Then the precarious position–do I go back on my commitment to the person I agreed to collaborate with? Or do I go back on my commitments to myself to not eat canned lentil soup every day for dinner and actually make more time to meditate?

Guess which one a workaholic will choose? I bet you’ll get it right on the first try.

How Does One Course-Correct?

I’m not new to any of this; we all have our challenges and this has been mine for a few years. I work with it. I like to course correct by taking a break–a break where I quit everything. Stopping everything is like Workaholic Rehab.

Everything?

Yes. Everything. I call it, “Work hard, play hard.” I work really, really hard, and then I take a trip or leave the computer turned off. The cell phone is on silent. I turn an auto-responder on for email.

And then what happens?

Generally, there’s an initial silence that feels uncomfortable. It’s hard to be with, at first. Usually, my Ego pops up to tell me what a stupid idea it was to quit everything, and how I didn’t really need to do it. (P.S. This is what the Ego will say to just about anything new or scary).

Then, sometime around day four, I relax into the new rhythm. The quiet is staggering in its beauty. I’m reading more Pema Chodron. I start to drift.

“Well, I can’t do that.”

Of course you can. I don’t know how, I only know that somehow, some way, there’s a way.

I’ve done it on a teacher’s salary of less than $30,000 a year (which is really saying something if you live in the Bay Area, where my monthly rent has always been close to $1,000). When I’ve done it on my teacher’s salary, I’ve saved up money for an entire year with the express purpose of knowing that I wanted to give myself a long break with no agenda. I’ve couch-surfed; I’ve written hotel reviews at four-star hotels in Italy in exchange for a free night’s lodging; I’ve put $50 a month away until that added up to cover the salary I would miss while I was gone.

I know mothers who have done it–taken two weeks away from their kids and stayed at zen centers or in ashrams where they could get food and lodging in exchange for working in the gardens or cleaning a temple.

I know extraordinarily busy people–people who have even more responsibilities than me–who have taken off to travel. They simply make the choice: let go.

Silence is Golden

The reason why I advocate taking a break is this: you learn something more about what was pushing you to get so busy in the first place. You learn more about the addiction of over-work, and about the wounded places that are still in need of healing, and why those wounds tell you that if you just take on one more project, they’ll be okay. I learn more about the fallacy of that thinking.

In the silence of a break, suddenly we can hear the voice within, and hear it clearly.

It has so much wisdom. We don’t even really need anything else to happen, but to listen to what’s happening within.

There will always be a hundred reasons not to take a break, and none of them will ever add up to more than the one very important reason why over-committers like myself need to do it: because we reconnect with ourselves in stillness.

Even if it’s just one day–one day of not having an agenda–it’s worth it, to feel our shoulders unbuckle. To reconnect. To remember what is true.

Christine Mason Miller lives, quite simply, with a really high degree of integrity. She’s someone who is thoughtful with care. She does what she says she’s going to do. She doesn’t walk the world with a lot of drama.

This makes her really beautiful to be around.

When she asked if I would take part in Desire to Inspire, I was an enthusiastic and immediate–YES! This is a courageous book, one that gets to the heart of why people want to make some kind of difference in the world.

Our interview is only about 15 minutes long, but it packs in a lot–there’s a bit about Desire to Inspire, and then it quickly turns into a discussion about how it is that we learn to trust ourselves, committing to a long-term project and seeing it through, and risking making mistakes.

Are you in the Los Angeles area? Then I hope you’ll join us for the book launch party on December 15th. I’m going to fly down to Los Angeles to join Christine and several of my Desire to Inspire sisters– click here to get the directions and details!

————-

Christine Mason Miller is a Santa Monica-based artist, writer, and explorer. Her next book – Desire to Inspire: Using Creative Passion to Transform the World – is now available at bookstores everywhere and Amazon.com. Follow her adventures at www.christinemasonmiller.com.

But people become disillusioned with it. It starts to feel like another rabbit hole to disappear into.

Here are the symptoms of what I’ll call “personal growth fatigue”:

• You hear about yet another e-course or workshop or book that’s “so amazing!” and you think to yourself, “You know, I don’t think my inner child needs any more healing this year.”
• You don’t even notice, much less click on, all of the e-course ads lining the right side of a popular blogger’s website.
• A new book by what used to be your favorite author fails to entice you.
• The phrases “follow your dreams,” “on this journey,” “be your authentic self,” and “step out of your comfort zone” make you flinch.
• You’re buying books or signing up for e-courses, but you’re not finishing them.

Ebb & Flow

To be fair, there is a natural ebb and flow to all of life, and there’s an ebb and flow to “working on yourself” as well.

This is good (so you can stop berating yourself).

It’s good to dive into something painful and step away from your comfort zone (forgive me!) and test the waters, and then step a bit towards what is familiar, as you inch towards self-realization.

Two steps forward, one step back. Or, more realistically, for most humans? One millimeter forward, one millimeter back.

True dat.

What’s Really Happening

But there’s a reason why “personal growth fatigue” actually sets in–there’s an actual cause.

The cause is this: most personal growth experiences stop at acknowledgement, exploration, and owning of pain.

They don’t combine the acknowledgment, exploration, and owning of pain with radical responsibility and integrity.

If all you’re doing is perpetually looking out for where you were wounded, and how your wound is showing up in your life, and why you’re triggered around your wound, and owning that you feel the pain around that wound, and recognizing where the wound originally came from, and thinking about how to avoid the circumstances that cause that wound to be triggered…

...well, it’s all good work to do. It’s an important first step. But shit–who wants to live there, all of the time? Certainly not me.

I will be with my pain, when it arises. I am willing to feel it all the way through. I am willing to breathe with it. I am willing to not make it wrong, to understand it, and to embrace it as an experience that I have, sometimes.

I’m not willing to roll over and play dead: “I’m wounded. My story is done.”

Radical Responsibility & Integrity

Some people will immediately recognize themselves in what I just described. Others will not.

Others are getting annoyed with me and clicking away, assuming that I don’t understand what they’re going through, or the depths of their pain.

Let me assure you; I do. We all experience deep emotional pain. How we differ is in what we choose to do with it.

What we choose to do with our pain says everything about the quality of life that we’re living.

So what can you do with pain, in addition to all the ways that you can choose to have acceptance around it/BE with it, as described above?

In addition to not making it wrong or bad, and breathing with it, and BEing with it, we can choose to take radical responsibility for our lives–by keeping the focus on ourselves, practicing radical responsibility and…seeing how we (usually unconsciously) choose our pain.

For example:

• Next time I’m upset with the condition of one of my relationships, instead of making the other person wrong, I can acknowledge the choices that I made in that relationship that contributed to the discord.
• Next time I notice myself getting angry because someone else isn’t accountable, I can notice where I’m choosing to make the emptiness of “having control” my priority in life.
• I can stop recycling pain–rehashing old conversations in my head, remembering how badly I messed up or recounting how badly they messed up, and not running my mouth with an inventory of someone else’s failings when I talk to all of my friends.
• I can stop visualizing future pain–imagining what I’m going to say to that person next time they do XYZ, cringing when I anticipate how awful ABC situation is going to be, or getting spun out with anxiety over destruction of the planet or foreign policy.
• I can choose to set up boundaries that provide room for me to grow and expand, rather than boundaries that constrict or create rigid conditions.

There’s far more that can be done with pain than simply feeling it.

Cop To It

If you’re experiencing some “personal growth fatigue,” just admit it. Take a break from “transformational experiences” for awhile.

When you’re ready to wake up to working on your life again, be more discriminating about what you invest in. Gravitate a bit more towards the work that looks like it’s going to scare you a bit, perhaps even irritate you just a bit.

Keep an eye on the impulse to go bootcamp-style (the opposite end of the “touchy feely nothing was ever your fault” spectrum), and really ask: Who are the people who are going to ask me to play to my personal edge? Who are going to ask the questions I kind of wish they wouldn’t ask? Who are writing the blog posts that really make me think or writing the books that have me saying to myself, ‘There is no hiding out, with this person’ ?”

I offer myself as a resource, without hesitation, but I also fully trust that these fine people offer a powerful experience, as well:

Next Step Workshops through Challenge Day (I know the website looks like it’s geared towards teens, but the Next Step workshops are adult workshops–and good god they’re amazing). They’re usually based in the SF Bay Area, but people travel from all over the world to attend them.

Byron Katie

Pema Chodron

Cheri Huber

Iyanla VanZant

credit: In Her Image

–to re-reading Pema Chodron and connecting with my own center, through her words.

–to meditation. Real meditation, not just taking time to breathe, but the kind of meditation that burns, burns, burns away the excess.

–to new books in a pile, waiting to be thumbed through at random.

–to two new kitties, who need love and cuddling as they adjust in their new home.

–to one long-time boyfriend, who also needs love and cuddling and to not hear the words, “Just give me five more minutes” in response to requests.

–to wine country weekends, undiscovered back roads, the sunlight filtering through the trees at just the right golden angle, and microclimates that change with every incline and pitch of a hill.

–to running miles, training for a half-marathon, and wondering if I can do it, every time, all the time, without exception, and to the way that running brings me to my edge and shows me where I want to quit, every time, and to the way that I want to extend the tenderest of embraces to that woman within who, when she’s exhausted from running and feels she can’t take another step, will take another step and another, and it makes her feel more alive.

–to massages.

– to soaking in the hot tub on crisp fall nights, and that delicious moment of rising out of the tub and the steam that radiates off of the skin.

–to studying Italian, again, reading it aloud even when I don’t know exactly what is being said, and listening to podcasts or streaming telecasts and turning on DVDs and falling asleep on the couch, just listening.

–to Bikram yoga, sweat pouring, sultry sexy stinky, across a room full of half-naked people doing yoga in a hell box.

–to home decorating magazines and fashion magazines requiring no deep thought or concentration. to the plans for the new couch, the new bed, and letting go of the hasty IKEA purchases from years ago, that were borne out of scarcity.

–to surfing Pinterest with reckless abandon. Need I say more?

–to realigning with integrity, in the deepest of ways. to trimming the fat. to creating the right kind of contraction, not constriction, which ultimately creates…expansion.

–to basking in the love that’s around me. to deep appreciation of having cultivated, as I said to Andy the other night, “finally–good people in my life, who want me to win as much as I want them to win.”

–to Byron Katie. Inquiry. Asking about everything in life, “Is it true? Is it really, really true?”

–to a sister who is now a mother and a little niece that I’ve only ever seen in pictures, and to my excitement at being the one to capture her through a lens. The propagation of DNA from one generation to the next? Now I get what all the fuss is about.

–to real listening, without interruptions, for myself and for others, and being willing to act upon the wisdom that is offered, and that starts with taking time, making space for the listening, and space for what comes after.

Now I want to say this: the most transformative coaching, counseling, or therapy sessions are those that are co-created, with both parties taking responsibility for the experience and bringing something to the table.

No more therapist/counselor as “expert,” which is the old model grounded in the medical profession–nor with “client as expert” which is what the coaching profession often uses.

Rather–if I’m going into an experience with a client and I fully believe that they have their own wisdom and that they’re fully capable, while also believing that support sometimes requires someone else setting a container for an experience, then we both need to bring something to the table.


Transformation requires co-creation.

If it didn’t, then the “therapist/counselor as expert” model would mean that the therapist or counselor calls the shots. Or, in a coaching setting with “client as expert” as the center of the work, the client might get pissed when they’re prodded and–well, off to another coach, another transformational workshop, or to the bookstore for a new self-help book they will go.

Instead, we need to look at the model of support as being one that is co-created. We need to ask one other question besides “Is this coach being a good coach?”

We need to ask a question that probably makes people a bit uncomfortable:

“Are these clients being good clients?”

Good and Bad

I don’t literally mean “good,” as if there’s some standard for goodness, nor am I tapping into a right/wrong dynamic. I’m thinking more along the lines of “what’s helpful, or not” or “what’s really effective, or what’s ineffective.”

What’s Effective

Effective Coaching involves listening and presence; holding space; not pathologizing the client’s experience; acknowledging the difficulty of an experience while simultaneously not colluding with a Story that this experience will forever limit the client’s life; supporting the client’s goals; the ability to take the long view; reframing of Stories and limiting patterns and beliefs; holding up an honest mirror for the client to see themselves fully; honoring integrity; being full of love, compassion, and care of the highest order. I’m sure there’s more, but that’s a start.

But what about being an effective client? This is far less discussed.

Effective “Clienting” involves openness to new perspectives; owning of one’s feelings; asking for what is needed from a coach, rather than running a transference pattern (http://www.yourcourageouslife.com/2011/04/04/the-spaciousness-of-i-dont-know/ ) and setting the coach up as a parent who is to intuit the client’s needs; taking on challenges whole-heartedly; acknowledging their own wisdom; taking responsibility for their own choices, including the choices that are made to hold certain perspectives around the coaching process or the coach; being full of love, compassion, and care of the highest order; honoring integrity; being willing to reframe Stories or patterns; understand that the process will not be entirely comfortable. I’m sure there’s more, but that’s a start.

Where We Get Afraid

“But what about clients who put that kind of trust in a bad coach?” I can hear someone exclaiming.

This is a valid consideration–but I don’t think we can rest here, as coaches or as clients.

Yes–There are those situations; however, if you look at what I define as “Effective Clienting,” you’ll see that the client is continually taking responsibility for speaking into their needs.

The coach remains responsible for saying, “Here’s why I’m offering what I’m offering, in service to you.”

If the responsibility rests solely on either party, it doesn’t work. Sometimes, the most powerful experience a client might have is recognizing that a relationship isn’t working, and that it’s okay to let it go. The same can be said for a coach who is working with a client.

What This Can Look Like

But here’s why co-creation is so important: Sometimes, when clients are afraid, they’ll tell the coach that the best thing the coach can do is some form of backing down from really helping them shift.

• To avoid powerfully making their own decisions, they’ll tell the coach that they want “answers” or advice.
• To avoid feeling the fear, they’ll insist that the coach is asking questions that are “too hard.”
• To avoid taking action, they’ll insist that the coach needs to suggest something different.

Clients need to make those requests–it is important that they do. Coaches need to take in that feedback–and–be aware of the delicate dance that can take place when requests are made in the name of fear.

That’s what it looks like when both people are bringing something to the table.

Sometimes it’s this space where coach and client discover that they are not a match. The client might say, “I’m really clear that I need the coach to be different in order for me to get to where I want to go.” The coach might say, “I’m really clear that I’ve heard this client say they want to see XYZ shifts in their life, and these are the tools I have to help with that–that’s as far as I can go.”

Outing the Story

It’s often in this space that huge, massive transformations can happen, because this type of conversation ends up “outing” any places where the client wants to hide behind their Story.

As a client, if I have someone bringing up my stuff in order to help me transform it, and then I start giving them directions not to bring up my stuff, I’m working against myself.

An excellent counselor, coach, or therapist is going see that and say to me, with love and care, “I’m not going to back down from supporting you in transforming what you have said you want to transform.”

In that moment, as a client, I have to decide whether or not I’m sticking around.

Deep deep down, 99% of the time, I know that if I say, “See you later,” I’m missing the big opportunity that I’ve just been invited to take–and I’ll be kicking myself for it.

Impeccable coaching is about offering up the challenge. Impeccable clienting is about getting curious about what is on the other side of the challenge.

Worth Noting

It is worth noting that I have had this experience with coaches, counselors, in workshops, and with my partner–I have, from a fearful place, insisted that I needed something that was (in hindsight) something that would have worked against what I wanted to shift.

Each time someone said to me in that context, “I love you–and–that’s only your experience if you say it is,” or “I love you–and–I won’t meet you where you’re asking me to meet you,” I have been nakedly shown how I have acted as the agent of my own suffering, and how I am trying to get that practitioner or workshop leader to collude with my Story so that I can avoid feeling the fear.

These are the moments when courage is called for: feeling the fear, diving in anyway, and transforming.

These are the moments when I have stepped forth most powerfully–because when my back is up against a wall, and I’m the one who has put it there, and I’m being offered love and support if I’ll only trust enough to take a step forward…

…well, I’m taking that step forward, practicing courage every shaky step of the way.

How about you?

“The people who irritate us inevitably blow our cover.” –Pema Chodron

I have this fantasy where Pema Chodron and I go hangout for an afternoon at Peet’s. She is wearing her brown and gold and saffron Tibetan Buddhist robes, and perhaps she’s having jasmine tea while I’m sipping my small single-shot soy latte with no foam, and we’re just chatting about life. Then she says something that just gets straight to the core of everything, such as “The people who irritate us inevitably blow our cover,” and I reach up to high-five her across the table and say, “Pema! Good god! Yes. YES! That is so. right. on!”

This is not unlike how I respond when a friend says something that excites me in real life (it has been observed that I have some, um, exuberant tendencies), but of course, the weirdness is in imagining high-fives with a famous Tibetan Buddhist priest….at Peet’s.

I don’t want salves. I don’t want pithy mantras. I don’t want the thing that makes it okay in the moment.

I want truth. I crave truth. I’m hungry for truth. I don’t even care how ugly it looks–there is something inherently beautiful about looking straight at the ugliness of an unwanted thought. Transparency is terrifying, and at the same time staggeringly beautiful; a relief.

Yes. Someone just told the truth. Yes. Thank you.

The Truth About the People Who Irritate Us

The truth is that I’m a Life Coach, and I support others in radical transformation. I hold space for my clients like a fucking rockstar; I’m high on life after each session. I’m not afraid of bearing witness to pain; I’m also an enthusiastic supporter of full-on lived-out-loud joy. That’s all true.

That said, there’s another parallel track of truth running alongside that train: people who irritate me blow my cover. I can go into “don’t wanna” mode: I don’t wanna hold space for them. I don’t wanna have compassion for them. I don’t wanna support them.

I imagine that some version of that is true for you as well.

It’s even more nuanced than that, though–on a deeper level, we actually want to hold space and be compassionate and be supportive people, but when we’re feeling irritated or frustrated, we’re in pain. It’s hard to want to do something for someone who is playing a part in our experience of pain.

So, that becomes the difficulty. The people who don’t irritate me get the full on panoply of my support and enthusiasm. The people who do irritate me see me acting closed off, guard-up, judgmental. I can only imagine what some family members and former friends think when they see this website, talking about love and compassion and integrity and courage when their experience of me has been anything but. I share that in the interests of transparency.

The people who irritate us blow our cover. This is good.

The Choice

Good? Yes. You’re a smart duck, so I bet you already see what I’m leading up to: When I say “the people who irritate me see me acting closed off, guard-up, judgmental,” that’s a choice. We choose our responses to life, to people. Sometimes, when we’re experiencing pain, we choose to shut off and shut down.

In those moments when we shut down and close off around those people, we are operating from a Story of fear (“I can’t let my guard down around this person”) or another form of fear, retaliation (“Why should I be nice to her if she’s not nice to me?”).

The Story doesn’t matter so much. What matters is noticing that we’re operating on default, and that this response to irritation does not actually do anything–it does not even make us feel good.

So basically, anytime someone irritates us, this is an opportunity–the jig is up. All of our hideouts are exposed. We are confronted with pain, and now we gotta deal with it. If you are like me, at first you sigh and think, “Shit.” If you are like me, you also want something bigger and bolder than a life lived on default fear responses.

They’re Doing It, Too

That person irritating you? They’re thinking the same things about you. They’re irritated by you, too. Really, we’re not so very different than that which we’re disliking. When we run a Story, we identify our Ego with that Ego. Then it becomes a double-Ego sandwich that only results in pain.

Who’s going to stop the cycle? Why not you? What’s the Ego vs. Ego thing getting you?

Masochism

It’s not masochism to be non-resistant to the irritations of life so that you can do the work of sitting with them and accepting them.

It is masochism to keep replaying the old tapes of how that person is and why they irritate us and how we’re so right while they’re so clueless and wrong.

The Difference Between Truth & Abuse

I said that I’m hungry for truth, and that I don’t care how ugly it is.

I’m not hungry for abuse.

Sometimes there are people who will say, “I’m just telling the truth!” after they deliver a searing indictment of your character.

I’m not suggesting that you start taking that in and thinking, “Why, yes, they’re just telling the truth and I’m this way and that way…”

In those cases, they’re not telling “the truth.” They’re telling you about themselves. They’re blowing the cover on their own Story about their experience of their own pain.

This is an interesting thing to listen for. When we separate the content enough so that it’s not personal, there’s an interesting gateway for compassion. When we see where someone else is stuck, it’s easier to be willing to work together.

You can usually tell whether or not someone is delivering truth or abuse by how you feel, energetically, in response to the statement.

When my partner, Andy, locks eyes with me in the midst of an argument and says, “I think you’re playing small, right now,” a feeling goes through my body, and that feeling, largely indescribable, “just knows” that he has delivered some truth. In that moment, I know that I am playing small. He is not telling me that to make me feel like an asshole. He’s asking me to play a bigger game.

It’s uncomfortable to sit with. I don’t like it. I want to be perfect and always play the bigger game of perfect partnership.

He’s blowing my cover. But it’s the truth.

If someone shares something with you and you primarily feel insulted, there’s a very good chance that what they’ve shared, while it might have an element of truth to be parsed out, is rooted in their pain. You have no business taking on their pain as your own.

Noticing

At first, it might be hard to tell the difference. That’s why noticing becomes the first step. Taking something in, breathing with it, asking yourself about everything from the thoughts that play in your head to the sensations moving through your physical body.

There’s this radical thing that we can do to parse it out–take a moment. Breathe. Stop the conversation until we’ve had some time to think, to question, to ask ourselves what exactly it is that we’re feeling.

We were given these amazing bodies, capable of feeling so many sensations. How about using them?

Take in truth. When you read, see, hear, feel truth, you’ll feel as if someone has just extended you a helping hand to pull you out of a sticky situation. When you’re sitting with abuse, you’ll feel as if someone has just edged you closer to a cliff and is refusing to let you get onto firmer ground unless you agree with their point of view.

Choosing

Either way, we get to choose. I re-dedicate myself all of the time to the tools of courage, reframing and redefining fear, examining my Stories, forgiveness, and perhaps most importantly, practicing gentleness with myself when–sigh–I went into an interaction with every intention of showing up with love, and then I fell back on defaults.

Every time we decide to choose and choose again, we’re doing our work.

What are you choosing, right now?

I missed how funny my mother is–hilarious, really. How she can come up with a perfectly timed comment that, reflected on years later, can still make me laugh.

By focusing only on the bad memories, I hid the good memories–of Valentine’s Day scavenger hunts, rainy day picnics in the back of a station wagon, summer Shakespeare in the park, the time she forced us to watch the PBS version of I, Claudius and how we got really into it, making up dance routines to Beatles songs, and watching Bob Ross paint “happy little trees” with “little bits of color.”

I forgot how cool she is; how she let me get my ears pierced, dye my hair, and how she understood my desire to have at least one back to school item that was not purely practical. How she let me watch the Rocky Horror Picture Show, and how she danced the Time Warp in the kitchen, and how she taught me to jump to the left and step to the right.

In all that effort expended to make her into the bad guy, I conveniently forgot all of the times she stood up for me, whether to that boss who made sexist comments or to teachers in school who were inappropriate or demoralizing.

Most of all, I denied acknowledgment of how ruthlessly she raised her daughter to stand up for herself in a world where women are not taught to have a voice by default. No, wait–she did not simply teach me to have a voice. She taught me that I had a powerful voice, a voice with things worth saying and worth hearing, and a god-damned right to speak my truth, regardless of what anyone said.

What greater gift can you give to a daughter in this world?

The gifts of forgiveness are not solely in the realization of one’s own power and choice.

They’re also in the realization that when we forgive, when we powerfully choose who we are, we free ourselves up to see all of who someone else is.

Then we’re fully free to receive all of the gifts they’ve got to offer, even the gifts that are twenty years in the past, and when that happens, there’s such an expansion of feeling…blessed. Nurtured. Cared for. Loved.

In essence, forgiveness has given me the experience of receiving from my mother what I wanted all along, and what my Story insisted that she wasn’t giving to me.

This begs the question: Where in your life are you not receiving?

Where in your life might the thing that you want… be the thing that you are denying yourself?

I know–it’s tricky. This thing that I was denying was something that was so right under my nose, so obvious, so right there–and at the same time, my Story about my life was so, so, so, so very strong that I couldn’t see clearly.

This is the beautiful thing about expanding and seeing more–the question that opened one door for you can be used somewhere else.

If the question is “Where in your life are you not receiving?” it can just as easily be turned into an action step: “If it seems like I’m not receiving something, check for where I’m denying.”

Not enough money? Not enough time?

–Where are you denying something?

Feeling unloved? Feeling unwanted?

–Where are you denying something?

Experiencing frustration? Experiencing a sense of lack?

–Where are you denying something?

If the experience of receiving is all about our choice to open our palms skyward rather than keep our fists clenched tight…then what are we waiting for?

Have you heard? The Coaching Blueprint is coming. If you’re a new or emerging coach who wants to create a blueprint for a fulfilling coaching practice, click here.

I’ve spoken about the importance of checking out Stories–and then letting them go. I’ve discussed the worst-case scenarios of someone responding to your check-in with harsh criticism and anger, and how aligning with the choice to have a respectful dialogue can move mountains.

“But wait,” you might be thinking, “I’ve done this before–asked someone if they were upset with me. Instead of getting angry, they’ve just sort of brushed the question aside and said nothing was wrong, but clearly, something was definitely wrong. Sometimes, I’ve even had them confirm, later on, that something was wrong at the time, and they just weren’t admitting it.”

We all know these people, right? And hopefully, aside from the annoyance of that kind of passive-aggressive behavior, there’s some room to have compassion for them. Clearly, they were not raised to believe that they would be respected and heard if they spoke their truth, or they’re afraid that they won’t know how, or they know what they want to say but they’re too angry to say it and they’re fearful of their own anger.

And now, after that centering in compassion…this is the part where we get to let everyone do something really radical: be adults.

If you check in with someone and they’re saying one thing, but you definitely sense another thing is going on, you could speak into that: “I hear that you’re saying you’re not upset, but when I see ABC action/hear XYZ tone, I notice myself sitting with a Story that you really are upset. If that’s just my mis-perception, fine, but I just really wanted to make sure that everything’s okay.”

That tends to bring more honesty to the table, in a loving yet no-bullshit kind of way. It’s a way of saying to someone, “C’mon, now. Work with me, here.”

But what if they won’t cop to it, even then? Be an adult.

Let. It. Go.

Let it go. Let them be where they’re at. In any relationship, there’s the integrity of each person owning their own part. You’re owning your part–sharing what you notice with an openness and honesty that also leaves room for their interpretation of what’s going on. Beyond that? It’s not your responsibility to change them or get them to tell the truth. Repeat after me: Not. Your. Responsibility. Be an adult. (And let them choose whether or not to act like an adult, too).

In fact, repeated overtures to try to coax “the truth” out of them will only result in perpetuating their pattern of detaching from you so that you’ll run after them to bring along the Big Fix.

We’re not six years old anymore, sitting in corners with crossed arms and pouty lower lips. If someone is upset with you and pulling that with you, don’t support their behavior by engaging with them as if they’re six. Engage with them as an adult–let them know that when they’re ready, you’re there. Until then? Not your work. Let them act like an adult.

Meanwhile…Take care of yourself. Go into a room and scream into a towel. Cry. Take time for solitude. Feel the full hurt of it, because it’s real and it’s there. The only way out is through, you know. No need to put on the brave face–the reality is that it hurts when we feel disconnected from other human beings. Keep on having compassion for whatever part of them faces so much fear in expressing their truth and having an open, honest, respectful dialogue.

If you’re upset with someone, go deep within yourself to figure out where it’s your issue and what your part is, commit to respectful conversations, and then check in…and let it go.

Let. It. Go. Don’t let them go–just let the control of the situation, or their behavior, go. You can’t control it, anyway. You can only do your part. You can choose to be an adult, and let them make the choices they want to make about their own behavior.

Fair enough?

P.S. Here’s the part where everyone reading this post is officially invited to take a moment, and breathe, and ask yourself realistically if you have been That Person who passive-aggressively resists cleaning up a sticky situation…and now, release yourself from that dungeon by dropping everything and making the phone call you know you need to make–cop to it. Come clean. Call the person who invited you to speak your truth and tell them, “So sorry that I chickened out. Will you forgive me? Can we talk now, and work this out so that we can be free of it?” Align with love. Align with respectful communication. You can’t go wrong when you’ve got those two on your side.

I nodded and smiled back. No sense denying that one. He had given me some tips to improve my running form, and now I was eager to soar across an open expanse of land.

“Keep the enthusiasm,” he said, “But progress gradually.”

It’s important–critical–not to underestimate micro-movements. The micro-movements provide the foundation for something larger, and without them, change is far more difficult. Here’s a short story that illustrates that idea:

When I was in high school, I started to work on Mozart’s Concerto in C Major. It’s a deceptively simple song because the key signature is in C Major, meaning no sharps or flats, and the song is composed mostly of a series of scales. When you work scales on the piano, you focus on micro-movements, getting the fingering right four notes at a time, then pairing two sets of four, then adding four more notes, and you do it slowly until you can execute the scale in one stretch with each note evenly struck.

I started the C Major while my piano teacher was on a summer break, and crashed through it without taking the time to really get the fingering even, thinking she’d be impressed that I had “learned” the whole song during her absence. When she came back, she chastised me (gently but firmly) and tried to reign me in by having me go back to basics and work the scales a few notes at a time to correct my uneven execution. When a musician plays scales unevenly, they’re as glaring as a mis-struck note.

So I went back to basics, but a curious thing happened: I would practice the micro-movements slowly, but then once I tried to play everything up to tempo, I would go right back to my “crash through the piece” fingering and musicality that I’d practiced in like a dervish. It wasn’t intentional; the muscle movements had simply worn a neuronal path in my brain and didn’t want to let go.

I think that a similar phenomenon happens when we’re trying to enact other changes in our lives–we want the sexy A-ha moment, the good story that would bring the audience to tears if we were ever on Oprah. We want to be able to say things like, “After that moment, I was never the same.” We want to “learn” a song in two weeks while our piano teachers are on vacation, or get Italian down pat overnight, or go to two or three couples therapy sessions and see our partners declare their love on bended knee (did you know that statistically, most couples who pursue therapy go to fewer than five sessions before quitting? Yikes). We want the pill to fix it, the friend to cure it, the parental apology that will make up for a bad childhood.

I do believe that instant transformation happens, sometimes. I’ve met people who told me that they had an insight that forever changed them, and I knew that they were speaking the truth.

However, it’s not the norm. More often, change is first practiced in micro-movements that pair up, and then those pairs pair with other pairs (say that five times fast). We need the small steps. They are critical. They might not seem as sexy, and they might not get as much attention, but they are everything.

Duh, Kate, you might say. I knew that.

Well, I know you know. We all know. But how often do we give ourselves the benefit of that kind of practice?

How often are we respecting the Law of Gradual Progress, vs. how often are we insisting that life bends to our will, and the lesson/insight/transformation comes when we want it to come?

How often are we reading the inspiring book or taking the inspiring workshop and feeling the high of a new idea–only to tell ourselves that “nothing’s really changed” if we get triggered or feel less inspired a week later?

Those sorts of reactions deny the impact of those small micro-movements that deserve, just like one note in a scale, to get their due. Change happens in micro-movements. The inspiring book or e-program or workshop really did make a difference in your life–it’s now up to you to pair that micro-movement with another one of your own, so that they can build.