The Illusion of Finding Ourselves Through Others

The Union Path Podcast - The Illusion of Finding Ourselves Through Others
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In a lot of ways we're raised, as Americans anyway, to look at others to solve our problems, so of course it's done in a myriad of ways.

There's nothing wrong with it as an idea. In fact, a lot of times it's pretty useful, but like a lot of ideas, taking them too fundamentally, taking them too literally, leaning on, only one way of doing things,

can lead us falling a bit short of what we're trying to actually accomplish, what we're trying to actually achieve, in the ways we're trying to actually grow.

We look at others to solve our problems in so many different ways. We look for role models, we look for examples. We ask advice, we outright copy what we see other people doing. We assume that simply by being around the right kinds of people, doing the right kinds of things, that somehow we will be magically altered to be like that too.

And obviously environment matters. We're constant sensory absorbing machines and the environment around us really does affect us in a lot of ways, really is the thing from which we create whatever we're able to create. It's the environment that nurtures us and supports us and gives us what we need in order to grow, but ultimately, it isn't actually responsible for that growth.

It might sound like splitting hairs, but I think that's an important distinction. That even though we draw resources from our environment in order to grow, growth is always an individual process. It's always an internal process that begins and ends with us.

And so when we look at our own growth, when we look at trying to create growth in a certain direction, it can be really alluring to try to involve others to make that growth happen as quickly as possible,

but so often, over leveraging the effect that others have on us, can not only turn the shortcut into the long way around can sometimes frustrate us and prevent the change that we're actually trying to create.

Think an easy example of this is thinking about our current living situation. It can be really enticing to think that if I could just move to some other place, all my problems would be solved.

If I could just be in a different kind of environment, that my life would take on a completely different tenor. The experience in my life would be radically shifted in every possible way, or at least in every way that I'd like it to be.

But of course, this is massively oversimplified. Nothing really works that way. It's never one thing that causes lasting, positive change in our life. It's usually a combination of things. In fact, a lot of times it's a combination of things that we don't even remember all the things we've changed. So even when we're trying to explain how we got to where we currently find ourselves, our explanations aren't really that satisfying, either to others or even to ourselves. A lot of times it just kind of happened.

Conversely, when we really want some sort of change and is not happening, we can go through years, if not decades, of it simply not happening, despite trying everything we can possibly think of.

Because again, it's not so much what we do, and it's not so much where we are, it has far more to do with what's actually going on inside of us,

what's actually creating the discomfort that we're feeling in the first place. Because when we look at outside circumstances, various people, places, things, to fix us or at least solve our problems, we can run into all sorts of issues of incorrect attributions. We can give things outside of us way too much credit while giving things inside of us way too little credit.

Because what so often happens if we finally find a way to do the thing we always wanted to do, we find ourself in a new set of circumstances, but we're largely the same person. We're largely the same person because even though our environment influences and affects us, it doesn't really directly change us, at least on a short period of time.

And so finding a solution, finding a way to actually feeling the way we want to feel of being the way we want to be, of having the lives that we actually want,

it's a far more internal process than I think we would initially assume, and it's also a far more nuanced and balanced process, than I think we would assume.

Yes, a lot of it is internal and a lot of it is external. It's both. It's holding the two in balance. It's using our experience to guide and inform where we should go and what we should do next, but at the same time,

it's also applying quite a bit of self-awareness to really be able to know what we can know, to be able to feel what we can feel, to really be able to gain the clarity and insight that we're after. It's both.

We can do this with relationships too. We can think if I can just be with the right person, everything in my life will be right. But then this idea obviously has a couple of pretty big problems with it.Other people aren't tools for us to simply get what we're trying to get.

Creating that kind of dependence on someone is only unfair to them, but sets us up to be in a situation where we could potentially become trapped. If we put a lot, if not all of our happiness eggs in this other person's basket, then what happens if that relationship doesn't work out? What happens if that other person goes away?

That doesn't sound very sustainable, doesn't seem like a very firm footing to try to build a life off of.

So it's a complicated way to find our way through the world with all these influences, that we can have what we want, if we can just be like so and so, and, if we could just do such and such,

but it doesn't really work that way. The linkage between external and internal isn't quite as tight as I think we assume it is, and you can make the argument that our outsides are affected just as much by our insides as the other way around.

So even the way we think about causality, about where happiness comes from, what despair is created from, it's really easy to miss where these things actually come from,

and more importantly, what actually sustains them.

Then if we dig a little deeper into these sorts of questions, if we not only want change in our lives, but what we really want is to be different,

it can be really alluring to think about just casting ourselves into a completely new environment. Because on some level, who we're currently being is a direct reflection of our environment. We act differently around different types of people. We do different things in different sorts of places. That's true. That's real.

But the truth and the reality of that is fairly superficial. Sure, we may find ourselves doing different things, and we may find ourselves feeling different feelings,

but the deeper down we go, the more consistency we find. The more uniformity we find. The more we really understand ourselves, the more we really understand that who we really are, deep down, isn't really affected that much by what goes on on a day to day basis outside of us.

And thank goodness, thank goodness we're not that vulnerable. Thank goodness that from a deep sense, our being cannot be cast about by the myriad of things that either does happen to us or doesn't. It's nice to know things are a little bit more reliable than that, that we're a little bit more solid.

But that's also the problem when we have a lot of our identity, a lot of our conception of ourselves wrapped up in more superficial, external things is then we can be tossed about by events. And the more superficial, the more trivial those events can be. If we're going out in the world constantly needing validation, constantly needing people to tell us how good we are, how important we are.

If everything we do is measured against some sense of approval, then obviously that leaves us open to all sorts of different harms. It makes us desperate. Even when things are going well for us, that still doesn't feel great.

To be that dependent, to be that needy on the external world can drive us to be neurotic, can drive us to be insufferable, can drive a level of anxiety that is,

at the very least deeply uncomfortable to live with, and as a person might make us deeply uncomfortable to live with to another.

We may find that our overwhelming needs for acceptance and approval can actually alienate us, by making us that much harder to be around, that much harder to live with. It's a really cruel irony that the more desperate we are for connection and companionship, the more challenging experiencing that connection and companionship can get.

But that irony exists for a very benevolent reason, that fallacy is created because we're basing our sense of ourselves on something that isn't actually real. We're basing our sense of ourselves around beliefs that we hold that aren't true, or the very least aren't true on a deep enough level to be consistently true.

In order for something to be true, that truth has to be enduring. That truth has to be durable. If it's purely contextual, if it can be rendered fairly arbitrary based on what's happening, if it has all sorts of external dependencies, then it's not really the truth. It's more like a truth with an asterisk.

And sure this thing is true and valid, but only if certain criteria are met, only in certain times or places, but these lessons are really difficult.

It can really be a deep sense of loss once we realize these things, because so many of us endeavor, at least in the first half of our lives, towards these things that let us down, that fail us. It's like we've pursued things that not only can't really give us what we want, but then ultimately we decide we don't really even want to do that either.

We were chasing something simply to get something done, only to realize that not only is what we're trying to get not available here, we're having a pretty rotten time along the way.

That feels like taking two hits, that feels like disappointment and deception.

But how else would we know? A lot of these deep fundamental truths, the only way to know is to try. The only way to know is to really experience it for yourself. Is to really exhaust as many things as it takes and have them not work, to be able to find and appreciate what finally does.

That's the thing about wisdom. In order for something to really be taken in and known, it really has to be experienced first. We have to have some kind of domain experience to really know what we're talking about. Otherwise, it's just theoretical. Otherwise, it's often just someone else's idea, and it's not really real to us until we've actually lived it, until we actually know what's the truth and what's not.

So how do we do this? How do we actually live our life that is meaningful, fulfilling, suits us, is actually what we want, and how do we do it in a way where we're not just copying someone else? We're not just assuming that other people are the solution to all of our problems?

We do it through awareness. That's why we have to live all of these things first, because we have to know for ourselves. And to know for ourselves, we actually have to live through these experiences. In order to grow, we actually have to go through certain things.

There aren't no shortcuts. All of the things we need to do in order to grow in the direction that we need to grow, we can't avoid. We can defer, we can procrastinate, we can put those things off as long as we want, but in some ways we're just delaying the growth we're actually after.

So when we're trying to find a path through life when we're trying to, solve real problems, when we're trying to grow, of course we can look at the examples of others.

Of course, we can use our own experience and intelligence, both emotional and otherwise, to try to make some sense out of what we might want to try, what we might want to do,

but at the same time, when we decide to do anything, the most important thing we need to do is keep our eyes open. The most important thing we need to do is not have the snow blindness of strong expectations blind us to what's actually happening, what things are actually like for us.

We can achieve the change that we're trying to create. We can grow in a direction that only feels better for us, but objectively is better for us.

We have to do that through integrating our outsides and our insides by finding ways to actually have these two things work together by living in a way where our outsides are a reflection of who we really are,

and our insides are properly supported by our external environment.

It's one of the funny, unfortunate realizations of life. For anything meaningful, there are no shortcuts, but in hindsight, we wouldn't have wanted any shortcuts anyway. Because it's kind of like cheating on a test. Sure, you might get a better grade, but when the time comes to have to actually know this information and be able to apply it, well then we're just gonna fall down.

We can't really use something until we really know it, and we can't really know it until we've really experienced it.

And so to find our way to where we want to go, to find our way to the external situations that we think would be better,

we actually have to ask ourselves how natural would those situations be right now? For the person that we are, if I was to actually land that dream job, if I was actually to live in that dream city, if I was actually to have that dream relationship, whatever it is,

how natural does that feel to me right now? How easily can I imagine living that life?

How easily can I see myself in those situations? When I imagine myself, am I actually looking through my own eyes in that situation, or am I seeing myself from a distance? Meaning if I look around in this situation, do I see myself or am I actually looking through my own eyes In that situation, do I only see what would be external to me?

This is an interesting exercise. I think it can be a really interesting check to see how our own beliefs, our own concepts for ourselves, line up to these things we want, or at least we think we want.

Because the less we believe those things are currently us, then the more separate they will stay. Even if we're able to obtain them somehow, if these things aren't really us, if these things don't really match where our consciousness is, regarding ourselves, then we won't be able to hold it.

Consciousness always bears out at least over the long term. That might sound cruel, that might sound like, now wait a minute, like, I already feel tortured enough by this self-confidence issue or what have you, now I have to feel like I'm never gonna get what I want? No, this isn't a judgmental thing. This isn't saying that you should be one way or the other.

This is awareness. This is coming to understand where you are, and coming to understand you're living the experience you are because of who you are on the inside, deep down, really. Your life experience is a mirror to who you are.

And the good news is this concept of ourselves, this consciousness around ourselves is malleable. We aren't actually born with it. We develop it over time.

And yes, a lot of these beliefs can be pretty deep seated, can be rooted way down in who we are, but it's still changeable.

And so we're trying to create any kind of change in our life, that's usually where the work is. It's internal. It's bringing ourselves, our consciousness, our concepts of ourselves and our beliefs about ourselves in line with what we actually want, which is the purpose for the desires in the first place.

We want what we want from that deep down, in our bones place, because that's part of ourselves leading us to being more fully ourselves.

That's our guiding light. On a deep level, we want what we want because that's leading us to greater fullness, that's leading us into being more of who we actually are.

And so our work, oftentimes, is in alignment. Our work oftentimes is in creating that alignment, in creating that congruity between who we really are, our beliefs about who we really are, and who we're currently being.

I believe our goal for this life is to bring all three of those into as perfect as alignment as we can, knowing that that idea perfect is infinite.

There's always more alignment that we can create. There's always better alignment that we can experience, but that's our path, to bring our insides and our outsides into balance.

To align and expand our beliefs more towards who we really are, allowing desires, really deep felt in our heart desires, to only help us find what we're really looking for, but be able to tell us who we really are.