Making the invisible visible and realizing the hard way what change really means
Making the invisible visible and realizing the hard way what change really means
I always thought I kind of knew a lot, read a lot, that I was an accomplished human being, that I almost was a bit superior from all that I achieved so far, that I would have figured things out more than others, that what I tell others about myself would be me.
But on the other hand, I always had been insecure about myself. Learning about myself constantly. Doing personality tests, trying to figure out what I want, want is important to me, defining my values, my goals, my objectives, and becoming insecure quickly and doubting myself and my goals.
I was oscillating from one side to the other. Either I was confident, charming, excited, joyful to be around and assertive or I was the opposite, insecure, unsure, depressive, thinking in circles, withdrawn, and more. The middleground was not present. And my confident and charming side could be destroyed in a minute by someone questinoning me and and my actions or just by giving me a “look” that I interpreted as not “dàccord”. On the other hand, the insecure, low-voice, depressed version could be improved by a great conversation, a careful hug or another act of kindness.
I was swinging back and forth, fluctating given how others reacted to me and how I anticipated that others would react to me. And given their reactions I would then react a certain way, which sometimes even resulted in me pre-reacting in a specific way because I anticipated what they would think about me, what they would expect me to do, and so my reactions were tied to those anticipations that were purely in my head.
How did I figure out that something was off?
It took me a long time to even realize that pattern. Before I became aware of it, many other things, thoughts and discussions had been taken place in my head and in conversation with others and it took me a long time to realize that it was something I did and that this is something I can actively change.
But let’s start with how I figured it out: mainly through events and moment that took place and in which I reacted in a way that was inconsistent to my inner truth and more so, eye-opening by the other persons’ response.
In one of the moments someone asked me whether I have an issue with the fact that my partner becomes a bit chubby when growing older. And I answered “yes, I have an issue with it, I love slim guys”. And the person answered, “oh, ok, then we have different opinions here” and started to elaborate their view. In that moment and especially some minutes later, I realized that the opinion the other person voiced was exactly how I felt about it and would have answered the question would I have been honest about it. But instead, I anticipated in my head that the person would likely not like it if I would answer my true answer, and thus I changed my response to the question. You can imagine, I was devastated about it. I could not even believe that this is what I did.
A couple months later, I had a similar moment. I was part of a hiring interview for someone joining my team and for me, it was the first interview I was participating and listening in. Someone else asked the questions and I was part of it, occasionally asking some own questions and sharing insights about the team. After the interview, I had a conversation with the interviewer and he told me that he things the person is a great fit for the team. I indended to clearly saying no to the candidate based on various factors that did not work out for me. During our discussion whether to put this person through to the next round, my standpoint was to not let this person go on, but because the interviewer was so convinced about his fit, I in the end gave the green light for the next round. Sometime later, I was talking to my manager and he asked me how I liked the candidate. I answered “oh, yes, I remember him, he was great and I like him.” And his answer was, “well, we interviewed him now and he was not good. We decided to not go on with him.” Again, I was devastated. How did I so easily talk about this candidate as a great candidate even though in my own analysis, he was not a good fit? I anticiapted that my manager would like to hear that this person is great and I even answered positively before consciously becoming aware what I answered. I realized shortly after that this was my response and that it was out of alignment with how I felt about the candidate in the first place.
I shared the latter story with some friends who told me to not be too hard about my own actions, as I was new in that company. But nonetheless, it was shocking to me, as it showed a pattern that kept repeating and let me in shock of what I did in both cases. How I molded my response in both cases based on the anticipation I had in my mind of the other persons’ likely reaction and then reacting upon it.
After these two incidents, I became super alert about these patterns and tried to figure out what was going on. But soon after, life kicked in again and I forgot about them. To very soon after be reminded that these patterns do not only show in these two situations, but in various other moments, thoughts and actions as well.
Where do these patterns show as well?
The patterns started to show up in various situations and the oscillating between the two poles of confidence and insecurity became more visible. I started a company and soon after realized that the setup would not work for me. Instead of accepting it and moving on, I was torn between me ‘having told everyone about it’ and ‘me not wanting to do it anymore’. My mind was pre-occupied with all these voices I anticipated about what ‘they” could think about me, that “they” would think badly about me, that “they” would not respect me anymore, that “they” would not give me a job anymore. And instead of simply moving on, I would fluctuate between “listening to others’ opinions of what I shoul do” and thus working on the initial business idea, “listening to my anticipation” and working on my initial business idea and “listening occasionally to myself” and realizing that this is not working and trying to move to something else to then quickly being drawn back in the moment someone would “value my skills”, “talk about me as an expert in the field”, “recognizing my strength in that field” or “booking me for a consultancy”. at some point it felt like a playing ball, being torn between all these various directions without any firm ground.
Later on, I realized similar patterns like me saying yes to a training program I signaled my interest months ago, which did not feel right anymore months later, to me saying yes to making travel plans even though they did not fit my current schedule to me being nice to someone even though I was not happy about what they said, to me saying yes to things I did not care about, to saying no to things I wanted to to do but was too afraid I would look bad or inconsistent, to saying nothing instead of my honest opinion when I anticipated this would push someone away or result in someone being surprised about what I was going to say or in someone being disappointed about what I was going to claim.
Did this happen all the time? No, it did not. But it did happen too often as to overlook it, it did happen too often as to feeling good about it. And it did cause much stress, anxiety and unhappiness within me.
How to change these patterns?
Now we come to the very interesting and most complex part of this article. The way we can change these patterns and the reasons we want to change them.
Because why do we need to change them? Because they bring problems wiht them. And not only small problems, but big ones. And not only short-term problems, but long-term problems. These patterns run through everything, they are everywhere. In some tiny decisions and actions and some very big ones that have intricate and huge implications on how I live my life, with whom I am able to spend time with, which connections I build up and how I am able to achieve my goals. It shows everywhere.
This does not make it easy to change, but for that reason, more worthwile and important. Changing it will have a tremendous effect on how I lead my life, which decisions I make and how I will achieve my goals and objectives.
And for that reason it is extremely important to resolve these patterns. But how can I do that? How to just be “myself”, how to let go of all there is that brings those unhealthy patterns to life?
If there would be one clear answer, many books would not have needed to be written. And for that reason, here are some ideas that I am currently running with, but hey, this is not an exhaustive list, as I am learning and iterating each day.
Letting go of thoughts, relationships and “sensemaking”
One thing I practice is the letting go of thoughts, relationships and “sensemaking”. I realized that there are two ways of “thinking”. I can either think clearly towards a task I am performing or alternatively I can have “thoughts”, ideas, thoughts, emotions, that are running through my brain and spit out whatever there may be. These are things like “I think he meant that”, “Why did you not work enough today? You will never be successful”, “I think what you did is connected to the other thing you said sometime in the past and it means that you are stubborn” and so on. It is these thougts that try to make “sense” of everything that is going on, that try to find “relationships”, that try to find patterns where there are no patterns. They can become hyperfocused, anticipating, strong-willed, and tend to be on the extreme sides of poles.
When I follow them, I am quickly in a circle of thoughts. Thinking and thinking again of what A, B, and C mean, what he, she, it want to tell me, what I do or not do and if that is good or not good, it is black and white, intense and seldom valuable. Instead, it is a bog mumblewumble of thoughts with no outcome.
And they torpedo everything I do the moment I do it. “Is that really a good idea?”, “Does it fit into the wider scheme of things I have figured out for myself?”, “Does that really make sense to do right now?”, “What do you plan to achieve with it?”, “Did you not wanted to make money with your business, how does that fit into the picture?”, but also and more problematically, “What is he saying, when you do that?”, “In which light will they see you? Will they still respect you?”, “They will stop liking you if you do that. Stop doing that!”, “Do that, because that will bring you lots of recognition”, “Why did you act so stupid. Now they won’t like you anymore”, “Why did you go that way and not the other? Now you are out of the game?” and so on. It is a constant stream thoughts that are, as you can read, not constructive, not helpful and downright dramatic, unfair and fear-based. They pop up whenever the brain wants a break, things become difficult or it feels uncomfortable and looks for something comfortable.
But to break the circle and the constant influx of negative thoughts, it is essential to let go of these and this is what I practice. Whenever there is a thought, I take a break, look at it and talk with it. Is it supporting? Then I say in my mind: “oh wow, you think so, that is amazing, thank you for your wonderful view, I really appreciate it.”. Is it in one way or the other not helpful, then I say in my mind: “oh, that is not a nice thought that you have here, that is not helpful to be honest.” And depending on the thought I either try to simply let it go after I acknowledged it or alternatively, I ask the thought why it has these thoughts and start a conversation, give him the emotional encouragement it needs and move on afterwards.
The important piece is that I give it my respect, dignity and recognition it apparently looks for when it has these thoughts, to then move on with my own activities.
This is not always easy, and sometimes it takes a bit of time to realize that the thoughts I think are not direction-oriented, productive thoughts but those that are circling around. But the more I practice the better I get to differentiate between these thoughts and to realize that they are within me but not me nad even less my acting me, my intuiting me, my productively thinking me, my inner relaxed me. And this allows for a freedom and a calmness that is the real treasure.
Learning from the world, deciding by ourselves
How often have I opened an internet page and asked a blog writer, an AI, a Quora question responder, a friend, a colleague, a somebody else about what to do next. About how to act, about what to say, about what to think. I thought this is how we do it, we learn from others, we learn from what they say, we listen to their feedback, to their ideas, to their insights.
And yes, we are social creatures, of course do we learn from each other, we serve each other, we support each other, we exchange best practices and ideas, we exchange learnings and experiences. Learning from each other is crucial and important.
But there is a big BUT. Learning about how others are doing things, getting inspired about how they live their life, how they make decisions, how they interact with others is great, asking others “how they would do it” is also all fine, but then it has to be our own decision to decide what we want to do instead of taking the “others’” advice at face-value and deciding how they told us and believing that this is how to do it.
I realized that I tended to not only learn from others, but instead seeked others’ opinions and ideas because I was uncomfortable making that decision myself. Instead I would give them pieces of the variables that I had at hand and then would ask them how they would decide in the hope that they would make that decision for me. And as I tended to give them only a part of the whole picture, they of course made those decisions with only the little of information they had. I realized how destructive that would be. And that it was mainly about me not trusting myself enough to make that decision by myself in the first place. I would feel a direct intimate feeling of yes or no or neutral in my stomach, but instead of following it or listening to it, I would let my mind — not the productive part — take over and think about it, think about “the others” and what they would most likely think about me depending on what I decide towards, think about how “the others” would feel given my decision and so on. Soon after i would be paralyzed and I would start to ask friends and family about the “situation”: “Can you help me? What would you do in that situation? And here are the facts about it!”. Then afterwards I would be so paralzed by all the factors, opinions, dynamics and more going on that I would not even remember my initial direction and decision I made and would be completely lost. And the final decision very often was not what I initially wanted, it was becoming way too big of an issue, too complicated, to problematic and everyone involved got stressed out as well.
So what does that mean for the practice and change process? It means, stopping to do that and trusting my initial first reaction that I have and going with that. If that is a hell yes, going with the hell yes (for big decisions, sleeping a night to make sure the hell yes is still a hell yse the next morning), of that is a not a hell yes, then it is a no for now. Only if it pops up various times again, or it is a yes with a small itchy feeling, then I look at it again.
Again, this is not always working, I jump out of it several times, or I realize after I started typing in a question into the Google Search bar that this is me falling back in that pattern, but with practice it gets easier and with it comes a beautiful calmness, more inner confidence and trust, not only towards myself but also towards others. A beautiful side note I just recently realized is this — The more we trust ourselves, the more we trust others is so true and makes the world look more colorful the moment we realize that within yourself.
Big Goals, Small Goals, Stories and Narratives
How often have I talked about my big goals, have I created storylines and narratives that seemed great. “I am building that business now”, “I already have all these clients”, “I work hard on this topic”, “This is important to me”. I worked on keeping that storyline intact, I was telling a story, a story about myself. And a story about my work. And then I would act according to that story, because, hey, “I told everyone about it”. Telling stories over stories. And then I would come up with these great business concepts. And believe me, I am good with it, I can create a business concept with everything — storyline, website, color concept, business model, sales funnel, pricing and more — within two days. A gift one could say, but also a problem when I do this to myself. I would create concepts about who I am, concepts of how I would be, concepts of what I value, concepts of what I plan to do. And then I would run around and tell everyone. And shortly after, a new concept emerges, a new idea emerges and the old concept disappears. And in the meantime, time goes by and my daily activities are not necessarily related to the concepts I come up with. The narratives would not always match what I would do in my day-to-day. And then I would re-do my concepts again. This is not only exhausting but also not part of reality. It is an image, a concept, a way I want to be. Striving towards a way we like to interact with others, towards values and principles is inspirational, but if this striving is going into any direction changing like floating water and not set in reality, it becomes problematic.
So what to do about it? I came across a concept that I came up with a couple months ago that highly resontes with me and it is called “gelassene fokussierte Unbekümmertheit” in German, which means roughly “calm focused insouciance”, so basically the idea that I go through the day with a focuses mindset towards what I want to achieve but do not get out of control with any kind of “sense making”, “narrative”, “story” I want to tell. Instead I just do my stuff and that’s it. No need to tell a stroy, to show off, to build a big construct around it of how it has to look like. Instead, it just is as it is and that is all enough.
Focused Awareness & Relaxed Being
With this concept comes the practice of focused awareness and relaxed being. It is first the idea of being in the “calm focused insouciance” state and secondly to be focused on the activity at hand or the situation at hand without having the mind wander to “how to be perceived”. I had been in those situations often, where I would be more focused on how I would be perceived, how others look at me, how they see me, what I am doing, judging me and being focused on me, that I was focused on myself and each and every step I take as well.
I would be hyper-aware of my environment, but not because I cared about the environment — people, moments, relations, connections — but because I cared about how others perceived me and making sure that I am seen in a positive light. For that reason, I would focus on each step I take. “Is that a good step? Does that step make sense? How do they see me when I take that step?” It is exhausting to say the least. And then I would slowly start in to the pattern of taking on the others’ behavior, their goals, their opinions, their views of the world, their interests and their likes and their intentions. If the other person liked sailing every weekend, I would tell them that I like sailing too and would go sailing with them and even organizing a sailing session, even though it was a great activity, but not one of my preferred ones and not one I wanted to do every weekend. Or someone told me that they love to solve a particular problem at work and asked if i want to be part of the project and even though I would not be interested in it, I would say yes, because I did not wanted to be the “spoilsport” by saying no and giving them a negative feeling and disappointment. Or someone would say that they do not like the flowers a family member newly planted in their garden and even though I thought it made the garden much more beautiful, I told them I agree with them as I did wanted to show them that I value them more than the other family member and felt bad to disagree for that reason. Or a friend gave me a nice surprise visit and even though I liked the idea, it did not fit my schedule as I wanted to travel over the weekend, but because I did not wanted to be unfriendly, I agreed and said no to my initial plan to travel that weekend. There are many more of these moments, where I molded my actions, thoughts, beahviors and more based on my idea of what I should say, what may be correct or what is bringing me closer to others, that by doing so did exactly the opposite or at least did not earn me any respect.
So how to change that? How to not doing that? The answer to this one is not that easy, as it is more subtle in recognizing. But again, what helps me and what I practice is the method of letting go, of being there and of taking a small “break” in between. It is mainly changing my attention towards other things, mainly my environment, my objectives and my tasks and reflecting (but not too much) about how much I was pure being and when I was reflecting on how to be perceived and adapting my responses.
I would focus on my intuition again and feeling what is it that I want to do in that moment and then talking about in that moment before my thoughts had too much time thinking about it and re-thinking it. Additionally, I work on my attention and focus my attention on the moment, situation, or task at hand. Focusing on the moment in the moment and keeping the focus there instead of wandering off, which often results in these unproductive thoughts and the me-focused thoughts.
and then practicing everything above helps with this piece or practice as well. Not an easy one, but one that is highly valuable. Meditation is helping here too, but I only do this sporadically, even though a bit more would probably help as well ;)
One last Practice — Outcomes, Joy & Energy
I want to share one last piece of practice with you that I do. And this is related to me having realized that I tend to focus on outcomes while forgetting about the process towards these outcomes. How is that related to the patterns I realized above? It mainly is related to me trying to make sense. I had this unhelpful idea in my head that whatever I do needs to have an outcome, needs to result in something. I would have started an activity and shortly after I would stop. Not because I did not like it, but because I would have started to ask myself if that is helpful, right, a good idea. “If you do this, how can yo profit from it?”, “How can you make money wiht it?”, “Let’s do this now daily”, “Let`s be consistent with it” I would tell myself. And while I would tell myself that I would lose any interst in it, I would stop doing it. Everything I would do, I would tie to an outcome and then restrict myself and tie myself to that outcome. For achieving results in a business, that is likely a good idea, but for personal hobbies, projects and especially relationships this is just impractical, unhelpful and downright destructive. I always had a blog. And I loved that blog, I loved writing, I had some 100 viewers daily about my writings , but then my thought machine kicked in: “If you want to earn money with that blog, you may need to change it” and “be more consistent with it, otherwise no one is readingit anymore” or “if you want to become as successful as this guy with your writing, you have to do something about it. You have to write in a different way”, or even now that I write this piece of text, the thought “I think you wrote something similar in another part of the article already, I think you should delete it, it is double and people may not like it and besides, do you really think you should publish it, what will they say given that it is such a personal post?” and so on. If that outcome-oriented mindset would only pup up from time to time and with things that are clearly business-focused, it would be helpful, but for me it pops up for everything and always. “If you do this, how can you professionalize it in a way that it brings you more followers?”, “You cannot do that just for enjoyment, you need a plan, what is your plan?”, “You are playing piano now? But you should work.”, “You like communication, let’s make a plan of how to professionalize it”. Over and over, in business questions, in relationship and friendship questions, the thoughts are looking for ways to “achieve” something, to “synthesize” something, to follow an image, an idea, a thought and then all I do is making that plan, putting myself on the direction of that outcome. But I forget one key element here, these plans, outcomes, ideas, these are ideas. They are not thoroughly evaluated whether they fit activities I genuinely enjoy, ativities that interest me and activities that give me energy. Again, they are planned without me in the picture, without incorporating my strengths, my wishes, my goals and aspirations. It takes them all out and when it then is about me trying to achieve these outcomes, they are not aligned. And I have to take on effort to get detached from that outcome and remember again that the real beauty lies in the joy of the moment, the joy of working on an activity that bring that joy (that does not mean it is easy, not at all), real curiosity and real interest and excitement. And when it does, then I am in my element, then I often forget about how I am perceived by others, what I should anticipate to be respected and liked and how my grand plans and thoughts and “sense making” plans and images are getting along, then I am just in the moment, with sparking eyes, excited joints, focused flow work or calm relaxed being and the innate feeling of being right here, right now, in the only moment that counts.
I often told people I really do not like those that are not themselves. They are wrong, they are not authentic, they are not real. And I deeply believe that. But I also learned, that we often distance ourselves the most from those that we are ourselves. And with that one, I realized that there is a horrendous truth in it. A truth that showed me that I was sometimes that person that I disliked the most.
But as bad as it is, there is always hope. And there is always the possibility to change and to become the person we are proud of. And I decided that this is more than worth it. The hard work already started to pay of. I already started to realize how I let go of old patterns and automatic behaviors that were ingrained into me a long time ago. Change does not happen overnight, but it happens each and every day, in each moment and each interaction. It takes time and it is not easy, but it is the best thing and the only thing we can do when we truly really deeply want to change.
I would be excited to hear from you if you have a similar story to tell, if that resonates with you, if you want to share your thoughts. Not for me to take on yours, but for us to grow together in our journey of change and growth and joy :)