On Being

How do you change your life?

You change what you are Doing.

How do you change that? You change who you are Being.

What you are Doing always flows from who you are Being.

You can think about it like an iceberg. The smaller part of the iceberg above the surface is your Doing - the visible actions you take in the world.

The much larger part below the surface is your Being - your thoughts, values, beliefs and worldview.

If you want to change your life, you have to get down to the level of Being. You can willpower your way to a short term change in your Doing. But after a day, a week, a month, it will snap back to align with your Being.

So. How do you change your Being?

This can be controversial. Many people hold their personality and beliefs and values as sacred, or even permanent. If you see your Being this way, it’s near impossible to change. If you see your Being as “who you truly are,” then it would be inauthentic or deceptive to Be anything else.

But studies have shown that our personality changes drastically over our lives.

Look back at who you were Being 20 years ago. 5 years ago. Yesterday.

This morning, I went to apologize to my wife for who I was Being an hour earlier.

Who you are Being has changed. And it will continue to change.

(This brings up some interesting questions. Three questions I find fascinating: 1) Who or what am I if I change? Is there a constant “I” over time? 2) What is driving the change in who I am Being? Is it in my control or out of my control? 3) What does it mean to be “authentic” if I am changing? But those are for another blog :)

When we see our Being as fixed, we are limited in our options. What we can see doing or creating or having is limited by our “fixed” way of Being.

This simply isn’t true, from my experience.

Our Being is dynamic and responsive. It would be wrong to reduce it down to a simple input-output equation, but for simplicity it’s accurate enough to say that we CREATE our Being with our thoughts. More specifically, the thoughts that we attach to.

If you look at any action you take, there’s a thought behind it. Maybe it’s true or untrue, helpful or unhelpful. But there is a thought or belief that lead to acting in that way.

Much of our “personality” comes from our patterns of thoughts, which lead to patterns of actions.

“Brandon is usually quiet and then has something witty and philosophical to say.”

That’s often my personality in many settings because of my underlying thought patterns like, “I need to sit back, observe and deeply understand situations in order to be safe.” Or, “others think well of me when I say something insightful.”

I’ve attached to thoughts like that over my lifetime. They produce certain actions. They also prevent me from seeing or taking other actions. That’s not good or bad. It just is.

Sometimes a thought pattern can become unhelpful when it is getting in the way of a goal or outcome I want. Maybe they are ruining a relationship I love or keeping me stuck in my business.

Then I can either throw up my hands and wave the personality card. Or I can dig into my Being and see what thoughts are out of alignment with what I am wanting to create.

I’ve been working with my own coach for the past two years and it has shown me that some aspects of my Being are quite simple to change. (1) Become aware of the thought, (2) see how it’s not serving you and (3) replace it with one that does. Done.

Other ways of Being have deep roots. It takes time, patience, creativity and compassion for yourself.

I’ve found that a crucial step in shifting certain ways of Being is forgiveness. To forgive the thoughts that aren’t serving you. Not because they are wrong, but because they need to be met with understanding and compassion.

The coach Steve Hardison has said that trying to replace an old thought with a new one too quickly can be like “putting icing on a turd.” You first must understand, be with, and forgive the old thought or belief before replacing it. It needs to be met with love and not war.

After working with several of my deeply held beliefs that I wanted to change, I wrote down the new beliefs that I want to believe and live into. I try to read them every morning (usually out loud if I’m not too embarassed). It is incredibly powerful. I find the statements coming to me throughout my day when I need them.

The other week, I was walking up to meet a new client at their house and I could feel my heart racing. I like to make a good first impression. I often try to figure out what they want me to be in order for them to like me. While I was waiting for them to answer their door, one of my new belief statements came to my mind. “I am that I find my security in being who I am with breathtaking integrity.” My heart calmed slightly and I could feel my Being shift into the relaxation and excitement of meeting this person with full presence, and letting them meet me. That wasn’t even an option in my old Being. I had to perform to win their approval because I believed that’s where my security came from. That’s less and less true each day now.

My Being is transforming. The old is gone, the new has come.

Seeing personality as fixed and sacred can leave a person rigid and fragile. If a goal or situation requires them to Do something that is out of alignment with their current Being, they might crumble. They might be blindly attached to a thought pattern that they believe is who they are.

But when we see that our Being is something we have created through thoughts we have attached to, it then becomes something we can mold and shape with new thoughts and beliefs.

It’s my experience that this is best done with a trusted partner. Sometimes I have done this work on my own, but often I’ve found it invaluable to do this work with Ashley, a close friend, a therapist or with my coach. I’ve found that I can more quickly find compassion and forgiveness for unhelpful thoughts when I feel someone else hold my thoughts with compassion and love first.

On your journey of creating the life you want, may you start by creating who you are Being.
May you see your “self” as a beautifully dynamic and changing Being.
May you have the courage to examine what beliefs and thoughts have shaped you up tho this point, the strength to forgive them and not fight them, and the imagination to decide what you want to live into now.