It was clear my client was agitated. Worked up.

He thought he was worried about his board chair being unreasonable.

I asked the question again. “What do you notice in your body?” He seemed irritated, but he answered.

“There’s a tightness in my throat. I feel like I can’t speak, like I’m choking somehow.”

“Have you ever felt this before?” I asked.

He paused. “My dad. My dad used to get angry at me. I would get into trouble and he wouldn’t allow me to speak. I would try to object and he would just shush me. One time he was so mad he actually tried to choke me for a second or two.”

We sat for a bit with that. My client looked at me.

“I wasn’t really mad at my board chair, was I?”

So much of the time, when we are really triggered, it’s because on a subconscious level, the situation reminds us of something long ago.

From childhood.

We are reacting in the present, but we are reacting TO something long past.

In those times, we say things we regret. We do things we regret. We lose control.

We call those moments “triggers,’ and essentially we become unconscious.

Our bodies, with much longer and clearer memories than our brains, are on high alert. Doing their best to keep us safe, from threats that passed long ago.

Seeing the trigger for what it is can unravel it. Or it can be a longer process of catching it more and more quickly.

But the other side of this is freedom. Freedom to create what is called for in the moment, rather than reacting to a memory.

I still think I am going to get in trouble with my parents sometimes. Like I’ve been caught doing something wrong. But I recognize that quickening in my gut sooner now. And I can know the difference between what is in front of me and what is in the past. Most of the time.

This work, in some sense, never ends. But over time, it does get easier. And we all can become just a little more conscious.

Where do you notice your triggers? And where do you still struggle with them?

Last week, I was with my mom in Iowa, moving her into a retirement community. She’s 86 and this has been coming for a long time. I’m grateful that she finally agreed to go, and that, a week in, she seems to really like the place.

Early in the week we got frustrated with each other a lot. Whenever I was moving at a different pace than her she would yell at me.

I had a huge insight when we paused for a minute one day, sitting at her breakfast table.

Over the years I have spent so much time being frustrated with my mom. With the fact that she still yells at me and tries to make me feel small. With her politics. With her rapidly diminishing capacities and her very slow pace.

And for a moment, at that table, it all dropped away.

I saw her with love. I saw her courage and her struggles. I saw how much she had taken on, and how exhausted the move had made her.

And I saw that my own struggles were entirely of my making.

That the only thing that was wrong was that I wanted things to be different. That I wanted her to be different.

But her whole life, all of her experiences, some of them incredibly difficult, had brought her to this point. My perspectives, my desires, were based on my life. They make no sense to her!

And when I stopped trying to change her, I was finally able to be one hundred percent present. I was finally able to be there, with her and for her.

In that moment, everything was perfect. Not because it was the way I wanted it to be. But because I stopped wanting it to be different.

I could have sat at that table for hours. Pure bliss. Pure love for and with my Mom.

I started to think where else could this help me in my life? Where would simply loving the present moment be revolutionary?

Everywhere.

Where is your struggle just because you want something to be different?

And what if you could see, just for a moment, that it is already perfect?

It pains me to say that there is still a hurt little boy in me who wants, more than anything, to be loved, because was convinced he was unlovable. I just spend a week moving my mom into a retirement community, and it is amazing how deep the hurt still goes.

Mom was frustrated that he didn’t turn out more like his dad, the quarterback and homecoming king.

The boy didn’t want to be the sweaty fat kid. He didn’t want to be the weird kid. He was just born that way.

But there were a few things, like school, that he was good at, and he learned over time that he could get attention, which at least felt like love, when he performed.

Of course there was never enough attention to convince him that he was actually lovable, and he was stressed out all the time, but that seemed like a small price to pay.

He got really good at showing up however people wanted him to. The rewards of that felt good, at least for a little while.

You want high school valedictorian? You want highest honors in college? You want top ten law school? You got it.

You want polish and professionalism? On it.

But if you wanted to know what he really thought, what he really felt, what he was afraid of, then for years and years, he was not your guy.

Because he didn’t even know himself. It was too terrifying to think about. Too terrifying to risk disappointing someone by saying the wrong thing.

Whenever he thought about what he wanted, he drew a complete blank. But he was really good at figuring out what you wanted. And delivering it.

I can identify the specific moment I saw the path I was on was futile. I was driving home from a new job, listening to a book on tape (on cassette–remember those?). I think it was a biography of Harry Truman. I was always trying to learn more. To make every moment productive.

And it suddenly hit me that there would always be someone smarter than me, more successful than me, harder working than me. There were always more books on tape! There was always more to do!

I could never be enough, not at least by the standards I had set for myself.

So what to do?

That moment was in 1995. I started down another path. I started meditating because it helped with the panic attacks.

And I thought “enlightenment,” whatever that was, would be the ultimate achievement.

The actual results were quite different.

I began to see how much of my world was only my thinking (hint–all of it).

It was only very recently I started to see how much I protect myself from feeling things. How that little boy is still in me.

But the difference is he has come into the light, little by little.

He sees that he is inherently lovable. He might not be totally convinced yet, but he’s getting there.

He sees that he actually does want things, and that it’s OK to want them.

And finally, he is ready to come out into the world.

To see and be seen. To tell his story. To hear yours.

In watching the amazing World Cup final on Sunday, I was struck by a couple of things—

First, what an incredible stage for athletes who are best in the world at their sport, who have spent countless hours creating themselves as the best that they can possibly be. I was in awe watching.

Second, how many people feel most alive watching others do things, rather than when they are doing things themselves.

We live in a world in which it is becoming easier and easier to feel something like being alive, through sports, through entertainment, through video games and virtual reality, without bearing the risks of actually being alive.

If you have no risk of losing, how can you truly enjoy the victory?

Kylian Mbappe will feel so much more alive coming back from this loss because he had to endure it in the first place.

Where do you stay in the stands in your life?

What’s keeping you from getting on the pitch?