“How did I create this?”
Or, “How am I creating this?”
Brian has asked me to ask myself these questions many times over the years, both in intensives as a student, and across the table as a team member working our way through challenging situations as a company.
It’s maddening sometimes, and I’ve definitely had a hard time swallowing the idea that I had anything to do with whatever challenge, setback, or failure is at hand.
Shit happens, right? People can be shitty, bad stuff happens to good people doing the right things, and sometimes you just get unlucky, right?
Sure, but what does focusing on the unfairness of life and what others “did to you” give you?
It does give you something.
It gives your ego and pride an out. A way to avoid feeling “bad” about yourself or taking a critical, possibly painful look inwards. It’s much easier to just throw your hands up and blame others, life, and the world. You might even get attention, sympathy, and support from others around you. And it might also help you avoid negative consequences from others (bosses or clients, friends, women you’re dating or in relationships with, etc) in the short-term.
Now, what does asking yourself how you created or are creating this give you?
Sit with that for a moment. Right now.
Asking yourself those types of questions – without beating yourself up about the answers that come up – is what gives you the most power.
Looking outwards does little to nothing to help you move forward. It’s likely to keep similar failures, setbacks, or shitty types of things coming to you. It’s likely to just harden you against people and the world. It limits your self-awareness. It limits your growth towards the success, relationships, other things…and overall life experience you want.
If a football coach’s players are really playing terribly – fumbling the ball, missing tackles, making bad decisions, blowing assignments, etc – the team keeps losing, and he insists to himself or others that he’s doing all he can and the rest is up to the players, right or not, what does that do for improving the team’s success?
Nada.
And the higher the level of the sport he’s at (major colleges and the NFL, for example), the more responsibility and pressure he’s expected to take for the team’s success, and the more likely he is to get fired if he doesn’t get things turned around. Even if his athletic director, general manager, or owner is making terrible decisions above him that are making things harder. That’s just how it is, bottom line.
But if he continues to ask himself – and maybe his assistant coaches and others he trusts around him, too – how he’s creating this and how he can do better for his players, he may well uncover things he wouldn’t have seen with a different attitude and that can start to improve his players’ success.
The same is true with powerful CEOs. The buck stops at the top. The more power you have or want, the more responsibility you have to be willing to take on, regardless of whose “fault” things may actually be. And the more credit you get, too.
Let’s say someone does something shitty “to” you in a relationship. Could be a personal relationship or a business one. Asking yourself how you created this could uncover where your boundaries, clarity of expectations, communication, standards and what you’re willing to except, or a littany of other things are lacking or could be stronger.
Maybe you could be more of a grounding force or more of a leader in the midst of tension or emotional swings in your relationship with a woman, friend or family member, or that client or coworker. Maybe you’re paying too much attention to the words they’re saying and you’re not in touch with the emotions and what else is going on underneath the words and you could learn to listen at a deeper level. (This applies to everyone you interact with – not just women.)
Maybe you need to be more real and vulnerable in your relationship(s) and the lack of that is what’s causing problems.
Or maybe you need to make your expectations clearer…or flat-out leave that relationship or job. Or at least distance yourself if it’s a toxic family member. Those things could be very scary, but you are not a victim, and unless you’re doing time behind bars…you’re choosing to stay in the situation or environment you’re in. Not making a choice is a choice. You’re the one that’s imprisoning yourself.
Maybe you could plan better to get places early, regardless of how bad traffic is. (SO guilty, right here!)
Got in a car accident that was someone else’s fault? How could you be more grounded, aware, and not in a rush on the road to be in a better position to avoid others’ mistakes. (I’m way guilty of the being in a rush thing in general.)
How can you be even better at whatever you’re doing or trying to do? How could your emotions be affecting your interactions with people, the solutions you find, the behaviors and habits you’re engaging in? How can you be more proactive?
What are you not seeing that you can control? That’s your power.
If it seems like women “just don’t like you,” it may be hard for you to see right now, but the question again is how you’re creating that – how are you pushing women away?
If you’re experience of women is that “they’re all bitches/goldiggers/only want guys who ____,” I really want you to take a hard look at how you’re creating that reality when so many men and scores of our clients have such a different experience of women.
…I’m 5’7 on a good day, walk with a very obvious limp and have a small, weak left arm, and I can definitely still be shy, a little awkward, and generally not as confident (yet) as the huge vision I have for myself sometimes…but beautiful women much, much taller than me have bent over to make out with me, women I’m even a little intimidated by have dated me, and I’ve had experiences with women that leave the jaws of some in the more “vanilla” crowd on the floor when I open up about it. So your excuses (outside of acknowledging you’re not where you want to be and that you’re working on it) are just that. Excuses. Refusal to look inwards and take responsibility for everything in your life.
And the more I do this work myself and face my bullshit with the women who I’m simultaneously most intimidated by, I see just how much, when things don’t go as well as I’d like, it’s actually me pushing them away and self-rejecting – not them truly rejecting me.
There are payoffs to every behavior or belief. Like we already talked about, the payoff of protecting your ego and not looking inwards. The payoff of drama, whether it’s with people, being late, procrastinating, complaining, the list goes on – the adrenaline hits those cause can be like a drug that you or your body subconsciously loves and feeds off of. (That was a big thing FEARLESS worked on with me and something I can still improve on.)
Being unhappy or angry all the time can actually (probably subconsciously) feel like home because you’re so used to it. That’s another payoff that can make you find tricky ways of continuing to end up in that same emotion.
Ultimately, ask yourself who you are trying to be. The bigger, more adventurous, or just even fulfilling life you want to live in any area, the more you need to take your power by looking at and taking full responsibility for how you’re creating it all.
