I was working with a founder who has having a problem with the CFO he had just hired. And he noticed that he had certain expectations of her, based on how he was creating her moment to moment.

He was expecting her to be difficult. And therefore, everything she did came through the filter of that expectation, and emerged through that filter as difficulty.

I’ve found this to be true universally. Even for my own mother.

We instantly create people a certain way. It’s so fast that we don’t see ourselves doing it.

And then we treat what we have created, the entity living in our heads, as real and solid.

My client creates his CFO as combative and she shows up as combative.

Another client creates his boss as abusive and he shows up as abusive.

I treat my mother as fearful and she shows up as fearful.

We even create ourselves in a particular way, and defend it as if it is solid! As if there was a solid thing called an introvert, or a procrastinator, set in stone!

We say we want things to be different, but then over and over we create them in the same way. The way that keeps us small, the way that keeps us in something that looks like safety but is actually victimhood.

Typically, it’s related to the way we created ourselves in our childhood to keep ourselves safe. It’s innocent, and at the time, it worked amazingly well.

Forty or fifty years later, we are still creating, well beyond its usefulness.

We are creating it all, even our own apparent helplessness!

Your experience of the world is 100 percent internal, 100 percent of time.

And therefore, 100 percent created, consciously or innocently, by you.

When you see that, your world will change.

And it will change as much as you are ready for it to.

When you finally see that it is you creating your life and everyone in it, what will you create?

If you remember high school physics, you might remember resistors.

Resistors systematically step down electricity as it runs through a circuit. You see, most things cannot handle a full charge of electricity. You know the saying “blowing a circuit?” This is what happens when there is too much electricity. Things stop working. Light bulbs burn out. Computers have to reset.

The same is true for humans.

Except it is our stories that are doing the resisting.

We think we get tired and overwhelmed from effort, but have you ever noticed how your energy is when you are doing something you love?

It feels unlimited. Because, essentially, it is. Your love releases all that pent up energy that you’ve spent so much of your time resisting.

I have noticed that when I get out of my own way, when I stop acting as a resistor to my own life, I am capable of almost anything.

It’s not because I somehow have more capability or capacity.

Instead, I have redirected my energy from resisting to creating. And I have never blown the circuit—the energy is clean and pure and seeming unlimited.

I’ve begun to notice how much energy it takes to keep me small. To keep me from fully showing up. To convince myself that I shouldn’t fully commit to something.

For 2023, that commitment is to showing up as love.

I discovered in the process of making that commitment that I AM love. I can cover it up, but it takes a lot of energy to cover it up. I am so used to covering it up, to keeping myself small, not wanting to impose, not wanting to see possibilities both for myself and my clients.

Resisting my own infinite love was exhausting. And yet I was afraid to stop. A lifetime of resisting has taken its toll.

My pledge to myself is to stop doing that this year. And to stop letting you do it.

Small may feel safe, but small is actually more tiring than big.

Incremental is more tiring than exponential.

Ordinary is more tiring than extraordinary.

I’m tired of being tired.

How about you?

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?