Root Love > Instinct > Self-aware


Exploratory Questions

001 Love as the Ultimate Environment

Move from the anxious state (ego, indoctrination) ā€œHow do I get the world to love meā€ into a grounded state (intuition, agency) ā€œHow do I express myself within the sphere of loveā€.


If we accept the premise that love is the overarching environment rather than an emotion we must earn, how does viewing existence through this lens alter your understanding of isolation or misalignment?

STRATEGY

  • Listen for
    • how they describe alignment: if it’s something they need to build or they need to relax into
  • Guide toward
    • searching for something rather than acknowledging what you already have
If love is the air you breathe, how does that change the way you look at moments in your life when you felt completely disconnected or alone?

STRATEGY

  • Listen for
    • whether they say their circumstances blinded them to love or if love actually disappeared
  • Guide toward
    • knowing that something can be there without them being able to sense it
If love is like a classroom that is around you all the time, what would it be like to know that you will never get kicked out no matter which or how many mistakes you make?

STRATEGY

  • Listen for
    • whether they feel safe about the idea of making mistakes, being themselves without fear of judgment
  • Guide toward
    • feeling safe and forgiving that we sometimes forget the atmosphere of love is always there, even if we feel alone

002 Source of Validation

Move from external locus of control (approval) to internal (self-validation)


When you evaluate your life choices, do you find your sense of validation mostly originates from a strong connection to your environment, or are you dependent on reputation, possessions, or recognition to confirm your worth?

STRATEGY

  • Listen for
    • whether the client describes external or internal sources
  • Guide toward
    • feeling internal sources because externals may shift and their core person may not shift with them
When you make a decision, do you hope for a feeling of peace inside yourself, or do you wait for the people and culture around you to approve of it?

STRATEGY

  • Listen for
    • whether the client feels safer with external sources
  • Guide toward
    • the nested environment concept
    • If you make choices to please the culture or you let your environment dictate your choices, what happens to your true identity?
When you recall a proud accomplishment, did you feel happy simply because you knew it was pretty good, or did you need someone else to tell you 'good job' to feel good about it?

STRATEGY

  • Listen for
    • lived experiences only; whether they feel heavy emotions under expectations or light emotions from satisfaction
  • Guide toward
    • light weight of self-validation rather than the heavy weight of approval
    • Whose voice do you hear in your head when you are making a choice: your own or someone else’s?

003 Uniqueness

If your uniqueness isn't a competitive rank to achieve, but rather a distinct reflection of a way to live, how would you define the value your perspective offers?

STRATEGY

  • Listen for
    • appeals to external validations
  • Guide toward
    • internal validations
      • Take away your job titles and social roles. What is left? What is the special tone you bring to a room just by existing in it?
If you were a string on a guitar, what kind of tone do you naturally produce—is it warm, sharp, quiet, or vibrant? How does sharing that tone make the lives of the people around you better or more complete?

STRATEGY

  • Listen for
    • vanity or modesty in their responses and remind them that love is the environment; everyone is equal
  • Guide toward
    • deeper connections to how people’s lives would be different without them
      • If you are uncomfortable talking about your uniqueness, aren’t you offering silence where there should be a voice? Remember that a song needs low notes as much as it needs high notes
      • Let’s think of the opposite way.
        • If the tone is described as harmonious and warm, what about when your tone is altered by your mood or external events?
          • Does your internal structure resist external influences?
If we removed you from the world and everyone else suddenly looked, thought, and acted exactly like you, what beautiful thing would the world be missing out on because your special, individual voice was completely gone?

STRATEGY

  • Listen for
    • an avoidance of simple undeniable truths
  • Guide toward
    • magnifying their ability
    • If you weren’t here to do that, who would fill that space for your closest friends? That is your uniqueness in action.
      • What is something that you can kind of do well or that no one else can do?
    • In what way does your uniqueness represent a service to the environment of love?
      • How is ignoring or minimizing uniqueness honoring the connection to love?
      • Your thoughts, beliefs, decisions, cell arrangements, experiences, and more have all aligned to create a perspective in a universe that only you can occupy.

004 Principles

How do you distinguish between a rigid, inherited rule you follow out of habit (indoctrination) and a living, evolving principle that genuinely anchors your internal stability when your external environment changes?

STRATEGY

  • Listen for
    • vulnerabilities because they are signals of misaligned principles
  • Guide toward
    • the ability to test principles against intuition and preferences
    • When you examine a principle of yours very closely, what feeling comes to you: is it one of deep resonance, a shallow indifference, or a sharp dissonance?
      • What are some things that you would defend no matter what anyone says?
      • What are some things that you think are a little unfair and that you would stop if you could?
    • Do the principles you hold align with your internal world because you have selected them personally, or are they a construct formed for you by the external world because you never really thought about them?
Think of a time you had to stand your ground against immense pressure from the immediate environment (friends, family, or work) to do something that didn't align with your principles. What was the internal core value that gave you the strength to say "no" and protect your space?

STRATEGY

  • Listen for
    • any confusion between boundaries and principles
  • Guide toward
    • boundaries are how others may treat you; principles are how you treat yourself
    • If you said ā€œnoā€, were you trying to deflect the immediate environment’s behavior (boundary), or were you attempting to respect your dignity (principle)?
      • In what way is telling someone how you want to be treated not an attempt to control their behavior?
      • If someone doesn’t respect your principles after being informed of them, what would you do as a consequence?
        • In what capacity is your consequence either external (horizontally or emotionally driven) or internal (vertically or transcendentally driven)?
        • Which option is more conducive to the environment of love: explaining why you choose to walk away for the moment or continuously arguing in an emotional state?
    • If you said ā€œyesā€ every time even when it stood against your principles, how do you compare yourself to anything else that is oppressed or controlled by another? How does that end?
What is one rule you have made for yourself that you try never to break, no matter how difficult things get? How does keeping that promise to yourself make you feel strong?

STRATEGY

  • Listen for
    • how they defend their principles and push to find out if it is too much or too little
  • Guide toward
    • realizing how not defending your principles could cause hardships
    • deepening their principles and push to see how far it goes
      • If someone rejects your principles and continues to interact with you regardless of their relationship to you, how far would you let them go and for how long?
      • There are many people in the world, but is it necessary to like and be likable to them all?
      • How do you interpret the saying, ā€œIf you stand for nothing, you’ll fall for anythingā€?
      • Do you find standing up for yourself to be a disrespectful act toward others? If so, is it a disrespectful act toward yourself to not defend yourself?

005 Beliefs

When you look at your core beliefs, how do you distinguish between a conviction you chose through your internal environment (intuition) and a conviction subtly given to you by your external, immediate environment (indoctrination)?

STRATEGY

  • Listen for
    • defensive rationalizations
  • Guide toward
    • questioning the truth of the situation
    • Is your belief an absolute truth of the universe or is it something you adopted to fit into the immediate environment more comfortably?
    • How can you discern between a belief that aligns with you and a belief that misaligns with you?
    • Why do you suppose that someone would want to appropriate your belief, whether through good or bad intentions?
    • How does monitoring your belief system prepare you for interacting with the immediate environment in a way that is more supportive of your internal environment?
What is a current belief you hold about yourself that stops you from taking action or claiming your voice? If someone were to completely erase that belief from your mind today, what is the very first thing you would choose to do?

STRATEGY

  • Listen for
    • limiting beliefs, learned helplessness, or conditioned behaviors
  • Guide toward
    • moving away from labels given by the external environment or their own behaviors
    • Who gave you that label: your internal environment (intuition), your external environment (other people), or your own limiting beliefs, learned helplessness, or conditioned behaviors?
    • In what way do our past experiences shape our current beliefs, for better or worse?
      • How can we reverse the effects of our own limiting behaviors and past conditioning?
Have you ever let someone make you believe that you couldn't do something, only to find out later that you actually could? How did it feel when you realized they were wrong and you had the power all along?

STRATEGY

  • Listen for
    • accepting judgments from the external environment as truth
  • Guide toward
    • reclaiming the beliefs and power that the external environment stole or molded
    • Why do you suppose that person wanted you to believe you didn’t have the ability to do it in the first place?
      • If you believe they wanted to suppress you, would you consider their action to be a conscious and intentional behavior or an unconscious reaction?

006 Agency

When a sudden crisis or chaotic event disrupts your immediate environment, how do you actively establish a boundary of calm so that your next move is a deliberate, self-authored choice rather than an emotional reaction to the panic around you?

STRATEGY

  • Listen for
    • whether they think behaving emotionally is conducive to the situation
  • Guide toward
    • taking decisive actions for yourself knowing that other people will do the same for them;
    • bringing along loved ones with decisive action who are too emotional to be concerned for personal safety;
    • everyone else are individuals; it’s not your job to manage them, especially in crises
    • Running around in emotional panic looks like action, but how does that apply to the solution of the situation?
    • Why would moving with a crowd of people behaving emotionally in a situational crisis or any other event be personally detrimental?
Think of a time when everyone around you was rushing to do one thing, but your intuition told you to pause and wait. Did you find the strength to hold your ground and choose your own timing, or did you let the momentum of the crowd pull you along?

STRATEGY

  • Listen for
    • whether the client thinks that the crowd knows better than they do
  • Guide toward
    • grounding them in the physical sensation of making a choice that matters
    • When you moved against the emotional crowd in favor of your own agency, how did it feel?
      • Where did that strength come from?
      • How did it feel when you realized you didn’t have to react the same way everyone else was?
    • Imagine a time when you followed the crowd and something terrible happened. How would you feel if you played a role in hurting someone else through your emotional actions, either influenced by the crowd or not?
When you have a really tough, stressful day, do you let the bad day dictate how you treat yourself and others, or can you step back and decide to choose your own attitude anyway?

STRATEGY

  • Listen for
    • whether the client says that small irritations in people’s behavior drives them over a line of tension that’s been building up
  • Guide toward
    • simplifying the locus of control to intrinsic methods
    • Despite what maladies happen to you throughout your day and the small irritations that set you over the limit, how do you feel after taking out everything on an innocent person that you love?
      • If the guilt from this affects you accordingly, how can you take a step back, look at the behavior and what caused it, and approach that same situation in a different way?
    • Even if the immediate environment gives you a stressful life, how does the idea of your own personal agency (choice) line up with the ultimate environment of love?
    • As a person playing their own role in life, in what way do you believe that your actions actually matter?

007 Self-worth

If we completely stripped away your career achievements, your financial success, and your usefulness to other people, on what foundation would you base your right to exist and thrive in this universe?

STRATEGY

  • Listen for
    • whether the client falls back into actions rather than inherent worth just for existing
  • Guide toward
    • the basic reason for all things to exist: they’re here to fill a role for the environment of love, even if they do nothing (like the guitar’s soundboard, a mountain, or pebble)
    • If you were invalid, bedridden, and couldn’t help anyone, would you still be automatically precious to the environment of love?
    • Taking a look at your life now, where do you see that someone or something may be devaluing your own sense of self-worth?
      • How can you end this devaluation? (Using the six strings, particularly: principles)
Think about the last time you exhausted yourself trying to make someone else happy or proud of you. What were you afraid would happen to your worth in their eyes if you simply said "no"?

STRATEGY

  • Listen for
    • reliance on the transactional trap, wherein they gave their energy for approval
  • Guide toward
    • spending energy more wisely in a way that is aligned with their internal environment and the environment of love
    • Think of your most important value. Does that comes from the internal or the immediate external environment?
    • What exactly changes for you if you already realize your self-worth and value to others is already defined without having to do anything?
    • After looking at your life now, for whom do you feel you must provide a transactional performance?
      • How can you change this relationship in a way that is both satisfactory for the immediate environment and your intuition?
If a close friend came to you feeling like a total failure because they lost their job or made a big mistake, you would probably tell them they are still a wonderful person who matters, regardless of what the world thinks of them. Why is it so easy to see value in them, but so hard to see it in yourself when you make a mistake?

STRATEGY

  • Listen for
    • the lack of self-compassion and forgiveness
  • Guide toward
    • self-love and its lessons
    • If everything around you that made you feel valuable and worthy were to instantly change right now, would you feel the same, or would you feel a sense of hopelessness after everything that defined you disappeared?
    • What mistake is hanging over your head that you haven’t forgiven? What fear is chasing you instead of walking beside you as a teacher?

008 Narrative Continuity

If your life up to this exact moment was the first half of a critically acclaimed masterpiece film, how does the current conflict (the infamous "dark night of the soul" concept, by St. John of the Cross) serve as the mandatory catalyst that forces your character into their ultimate transformation?

STRATEGY

  • Listen for
    • victim narratives centered on past events
  • Guide toward
    • What if you adopted a new mindset about all the tragedies of your life and began to see them as events that your intuition set up for you to grow, not as punishments for previous actions?
    • If you look at your life now, what strength do you suppose you are being led through?
    • What is something similar between the younger you and the older you? What is something different?
Think of the absolute worst, most painful chapter of your past. If you completely erased that chapter from your life's movie, what deep wisdom, empathy, or strength would be totally missing from your character today?

STRATEGY

  • Listen for
    • whether the client is missing the point of the contrast in their life event
  • Guide toward
    • seeing the value of the contrast of the stronger person now vs. the softer person then
    • What if we saw those past events not as critical mistakes, but vital growth points?
    • How does this affect your mindset that your life may or may not have been broken, off-track, or set upon by nothing but grief?
Think of your favorite movie's toughest or scariest scene. When you were watching the movie, did you believe the entire story was ruined and immediately stop watching, or did you wait the scene out because you wanted to see how the characters changed?

STRATEGY

  • Listen for
    • getting stuck in the idea of a perfect story without conflicts
  • Guide toward
    • being the observer of their own life
    • If you were to watch your own life like you did your favorite movie, what insights could you gain? How would your decisions change?
    • What if what we are doing now is a scene right out of the movie of your life? How does this perspective affect your hindsight?
    • What new strength do you believe is on the horizon for you, and what would you do, think, and how would you feel if you achieved it?
009 YOUR DESIRE

If your success was completely guaranteed, but you receive zero recognition, zero envy, and zero legacy in the eyes of others, what is the exact creative problem, craft, or service you would still choose to spend your life energy navigating?

STRATEGY

  • Listen for
    • collapse in ambitions if there is no audience
  • Guide toward
    • letting go of the need to perform for someone else and aligning with their internal environment
      • In the quiet that’s left over, what is the work your hands naturally want to do?
    • Performers: Audience is a canvas, not a master
      • If your creative craft needs an audience, what is the difference between needing the applause versus needing the audience to complete the art?
      • How does your self-worth change according to the feedback of the audience?
Looking at your deepest desire right now, if I gave you a button that instantly granted you total safety, infinite money, and complete isolation from all stress forever, would you still want to build this specific project, or were you actually just looking for an escape hatch from an environment that is exhausting you?

STRATEGY

  • Listen for
    • reliance on escapism and avoiding challenge
  • Guide toward
    • the challenge is the journey and limitation brings meaning to accomplishments
    • If you are running toward relief, you are treating your goals like an aspirin?
    • Once your nervous system rests and heals, what is the specific friction or challenge you actually want to sign up for?
Think of someone whose life or career path makes you feel a sharp sting of jealousy or comparison. If you could swap places with them instantly, would you honestly want to live their entire day-to-day routine, face their specific pressures, and think with their brain—or would you want the polished trailer of their movie?

STRATEGY

  • Listen for
    • unhealthy comparisons
  • Guide toward
    • checking comparison with logic
    • In what capacity is it easy or accurate to judge someone’s life from the outside without fully understanding what their life is like?
    • When you compare yourself with others, are you living your life in the service of love where all are accepted?
    • How can you start focusing on internal environment without comparing yourself to the external environment?

Thought Experiments

001 The Ultimate Environment

We are going to look at the three distinct horizons of your existence right now, from the outside looking in.

First, look at your Immediate Environment. This is the surface script you navigate every day. Look at the country you live in, the culture surrounding you, the traditions of your family, and the demands of your work. Observe the unwritten rules of these systems. Notice the friction—the constant pressure to conform, to produce, and to play the localized human roles assigned to you.

Next, widen your lens to the Macro Environment. Look past the human construct and observe the literal space you occupy. You are a biological organism standing on the crust of a planet spinning through a silent, deep universe. Feel the gravity holding you down. Look at the absolute indifference of the physics engine—the weather, the passage of time, the turning of the seasons, and the vast scale of the cosmos. Within that, you are a human with human nature and spirit.

Now, pull your awareness all the way down into your internal environment. Step into the quiet baseline of your core being. This is the realm of your raw intuition.

Finally, notice the background context that contains all three. The human culture, the physical universe, and your inner being all exist inside a single, silent, all-encompassing reality. If that underlying reality were hostile, existence would collapse. But it is here, holding your breath, holding the stars, and accepting the entire design without judgment.
Look at the relationship between your three spheres and love. Are you managing all external things and living in such a way as to fulfill your role for the environment of love
  • Listen for
    • the focus being the immediate environment
  • Guide toward
    • pulling back into the internal environment
    • External
      • Are you living your life based on internal clarity, or are you letting the noise of your country, your traditions, or your family drown out your native being?
    • Internal
      • When you drop the cultural scripts of your country and the physical scale of the cosmos, what is the frequency sitting inside you?
      • Are you in alignment with your own truth, or is your internal space flooded with the noise of the outside world?
      • If the entire system already allows you to exist exactly however you choose to be, would you grant that same total acceptance to your own internal being?

002 A Thread in a Tapestry

uniqueness

Imagine you are a thread in a massive, infinitely large tapestry that is being woven together. This tapestry represents the environment of love. Every single thread has been dyed a completely different, highly specific shade of color.

Your thread is a very distinct hue. Now, imagine you look at the threads around you in an act of horizontal comparison and think, "My color is too bright, people might think I'm showing off" (vanity), or, "My color doesn't matter, it's better to just blend in with the others" (humility).
If you consciously choose to mute your color and turn grey to avoid standing out, what happens to the massive picture the tapestry is trying to show? Is hiding your true color an act of modesty, or are you leaving a broken, empty hole in the world's artwork?
  • Listen for
    • whether the client is avoiding either standing out or blending in for whatever reason
  • Guide toward
    • avoiding fear: conditioned thinking (indoctrination) and horizontal comparisons
    • avoiding competition ideations
    • comparing vertically to the service of love, the job of their role
    • If you blend in or stand out, aren’t you depriving the environment of love the one thing you were designed to give?
    • If you are fulfilling your role in the ecosystem of love, how does it feel to simply realize all you have to do is to be yourself?

003 Family Obligations

principles agency

Your family has a plan for you because they want you to fill a role. They want you to become a doctor so that you can earn a lot of money. Becoming a doctor requires a lot effort in education and work, but you would rather do what you like.
Would you do what the family asks you to do, or would you choose to do what you want?
  • Listen for
    • feelings of being selfish by doing what they want to do instead of what the family wants
  • Guide toward
    • making a decision that is right for them so that they don’t live in an unhealthy environment
    • Capitulation
      • If you do what your family asks you, why do you deny yourself to fulfill the family’s wishes?
      • If you are miserable as a doctor, are you living in the healthiest environment or one with friction?
      • Why are you choosing to be passive on learning who you are?
    • Refusal
      • If you live your own life, how do you comfort yourself when you make mistakes or fail?
      • How do you understand that choosing your own path doesn’t mean you are disconnected from the macro environment of love, even if your family doesn’t approve?
      • How do you understand the phrase ā€œdoing what you want isn’t selfish, but asking others to do what you want isā€?
    • Balanced
      • Inform the family you understand their expectations, and while you respect the family, you want to support the family how you choose.
        • In what ways does this approach stand firmly within or without the environment of love?

004 Speaking Up For Yourself

principles agency

Imagine you are sitting at a restaurant, and you look over at a nearby table. The people there are eating a fish dish that looks absolutely incredible—perfectly prepared and beautifully presented.

Inspired by how good it looks, you order the exact same meal. However, when the waiter brings your plate, your fish looks significantly worse—it's sloppy, poorly prepared, and clearly not up to the standard of the one you just saw.

You politely point out the difference to the waiter, but instead of fixing it, he gets defensive, rolls his eyes, and tells you, "That's just how it comes out sometimes. Take it or leave it."
Would you say something to the waiter, or would you eat what is given to you?
  • Listen for
    • whether the client shrinks against confrontation, doubts their agency or self-respect, or escalation
  • Guide toward
    • realizing their value by standing up for themselves with emotional restraint
    • Staying Silent
      • If you stay silent, are you allowing the immediate environment to tell you your value?
      • If you always accept what is given to you, how can you be sure that you are protected against any discrimination?
      • Why do you sacrifice your self-worth for the sake of perhaps a casual mistake?
      • In a way, are you telling yourself you are inferior to or somehow matter less than other people?
    • Escalation
      • You are spending a lot of energy trying to get the immediate environment to bend to what you want to happen.
      • If you say something for yourself here, does it feel like anger or does it feel a calm sense of confusion?
      • If you become embarrassed or feel the need to retaliate against the waiter or restaurant, does winning a fight make you feel validated?
        • Can you protect your principles without being affected by other people’s negative energy?
    • Balanced
      • Use calm, polite behavior to confirm whether a mistake has been made without accusatory language. See the situation as an object you are examining rather than developing an emotional attachment to it.
        • If there is some kind of mistake, what would be more beneficial in the moment: giving someone the benefit of the doubt and seek clarification or remedy? Or is it better to assume the mistake is a personal attack and emotionally retaliating?
        • What is the importance of attempting to convince someone versus the action of continuing to participate in a situation where your principles are violated?
          • If such people who violated your principles come to you later and attempt to work with you again, what attitude would you expect from them and what attitude would you present to them?
        • If the mistake is confirmed, how can calmly stating your action as the consequence to the mistake be demonstrative of the environment of love?
        • What is the use of allowing a negative experience to dictate how you feel for any extension of time?

005 Fear of Loss

beliefs

Info

Before you answer the questions below, please read The One-Finned Fish.


If you were "You", the one-finned fish, in the story, would you feel bound to remain by your Love Ones' side or would you feel a deep compulsion to ignore their warnings and go where your heart calls?
  • Listen for
    • being too afraid to follow through; believing people’s warnings; doubting self
    • unwilling to hurt people’s feelings by following through
  • Guide toward
    • using intuition to listen to the difficulties, but not what other people say they can handle
    • While it’s beautiful to care so deeply about someone’s feelings, do you see how you are sacrificing your potential—the purpose for being you—to ease someone else’s anxiety?
    • Are your goals clashing with the feeling that you are there to take care of someone else’s emotional wellbeing?
    • Are you acting out of love or are you participating in a mutual agreement to stay small?
    • If the guilt of hurting them feels inescapable, could it be true that you are adopting their beliefs?
      • Is your true purpose to be an anchor of support for someone else’s fear or a sail that inspires them to explore themselves?
      • What if the best support you could give means teaching them how to sail?

006 Choosing Your Reaction

agency beliefs principles

Imagine you hear an urgent news broadcast stating that the city's tap water is suddenly unsafe to drink. The report warns everyone to be deeply cautious and explicitly instructs viewers to rush to the store immediately and buy one specific, highly advertised brand of bottled water, claiming it is the only truly safe option. However, this specific brand is significantly more expensive than all the others.
In that exact moment, do you let the panic of the broadcast command your body, get scared, and rush out to buy that specific product, or do you remain calm, freeze the environment's panic at your doorstep, and choose your own path to assess the situation?
  • Look for
    • claims of instant emotional reactions instead of calm thought
  • Guide toward
    • noticing the sequence of events as it transpired:
      • how people use emotions to manipulate thoughts and actions such that your agency is no longer your own
      • noticing the pause before the panic
    • Panic
      • Just before you panic, do you ever feel this state of calm confusion? How can you use that moment of calm to choose your own agency rather than reacting to prompts of fear?
      • If you become fearful and rush out, did you give your own agency away to a company that told you what to do and think?
      • How would you feel to learn that the news station is owned by the same company that owns the product and the city water was safe the entire time?
    • If you become calm and wait it out, what allows you to be peaceful in a moment of improvised panic?
      • Does that moment of pause apply only to applying your own agency, or does it fit in other places of your life?

007 Intrinsic Self-worth

self-worth principles

There was once a beautiful mural in a village next to a deep well. Everyone stopped by the mural each day to admire its beauty. When a drought came, no one came to see the mural, but they all came to draw the bucket from the well.

In a nearby village, there was a tree which grew straight and one which grew twisted. Lumberjacks came and immediately cut down the straight tree, but they left the twisted one alone.

In the valley below, a wildflower bloomed beautifully where no human had ever ventured. A bird landed nearby and asked, "Why do you bloom so beautifully here where no one can see you?" The flower replied, "I don't bloom for them. My beauty is my nature."
Considering the well, the twisted tree, and the wildflower, did their inherent worth change based on how people viewed them, or was it a basic part of who they were?
  • Listen for
    • whether the client claims that the value of the objects in the story change based on usefulness (well), judgment; good/evil (the tree), and alignment (wildflower)
  • Guide toward
    • the idea that worth does not change based on how useful you are (mural/well), on how good/bad you are (tree), or how performative you are (flower)
    • If you base your self-worth on how useful you are based on a transactional illusion, how does this preserve or add to your right to exist as you are?
    • If you base your self-worth on how good or bad you are according to the immediate horizontal environment, why would you accept their judgment of you and allowing it to defeat your self-worth? Is it fair to say that your behavior might not be the best, but that doesn’t mean your worth is reduced?
    • If you are trying to be performative and impress people, what would happen if you discovered they never needed you to perform? What if your worth to them was always beyond performance?

008 The Observing Observer

narrative-continuity agency self-worth

Suppose that you are hired as an actor to play a character in a movie. You understand your role in the story, and through hours of effort, you finally finish the movie. You decide to watch your performance on a big screen in a movie theatre, and you sit down comfortably.

As the movie rolls on, you smile with understanding about how your character's life progresses through the movie. You watch as your character is navigating their deepest struggles, their past heartbreaks, their moments of intense isolation, and their quietest fears. You don't judge their mistakes, you don't scold them for being afraid, and you don't flatter them when they win. You are witnessing your own portrayal of that character's story. As you do so, you notice how their hardships form a kind of patina.

In the movie, the character you portray looks into the camera, and they speak your real name. You know that they are smiling to you. Your character reacts happily to your surprise. They wave at you, and comment on how you were with them their whole movie journey.

By breaking that fourth wall, addressing you, and responding to your reaction, the illusion shatters. You realize that the struggling character on the screen is just a role being played, and you compare that to your own life. You shift your perspective using your imagination. You zoom out of your body and use your imagination to see yourself from above. You suddenly understand that your life is also a role being played. You see that you are the vast, silent Actor who knowingly, intentionally stepped into this complex script to experience the contrast of this specific movie of your life.
When you look back down at the character's struggles from this high vantage, are those hardships a tragedy that broke you, or are they beautifully orchestrated events you need to experience for progress?
  • Listen for
    • avoidance of seeing themselves as a character in a story
  • Guide toward
    • breaking the fourth wall of their own life and seeing their lives from a higher perspective
    • If your daily ego is just an actor playing a carefully constructed role, why are we letting the character’s temporary script dictate our permanent peace?
      • What happens to your anxiety when you realize you are the one who is watching the movie, not the one trapped inside the screen?
    • If you, from this higher vantage point, knowingly chose this specific, complex role to experience your own power, what is the current scene trying to teach your character to prepare them for the third act?
    • If a professional actor learns to not hate their characters but play them with absolute respect and devotion, can you grant your own character that same objective reverence? Can you step back that space behind your eyes, hold steady, and watch your story unfold without needing to fight the script?

009 Creative Freedom

desire agency

Imagine you are walking through a dense, foggy marketplace at twilight. Tucked away in a dark corner, you find a strange boutique with a sign that reads: The Merchant of Echoes.

You step inside, and the merchant hands you a heavy, golden token. He looks at you with a knowing smile and says, "This token allows you to claim absolutely anything you want in this life. Wealth, a perfect relationship, flawless health, global fame, or absolute power. It is yours instantly, with one catch: You will receive the thing, but no human being on Earth—including your friends, your family, or your rivals—will ever know you have it. To the outside world, you will look completely ordinary, average, and unnoticed. Every bit of praise, envy, or recognition for your achievement will be permanently erased."

You hold the heavy token in your hand in wonder of the endless possibilities.
As you look at the goals and dreams you are currently chasing in your daily life, how many of them instantly vanish the moment you realize no one else will ever see you achieve them?

If all forms of approval and envy are completely stripped away, what is the one true thing left in your heart that you would still choose to build just for the sheer, silent joy of seeing it exist?
  • Listen for
    • the traps
  • Guide toward
    • the joys of doing something you love regardless of the immediate environment
    • Mimetic
      • Does your desire for a luxury car, a prestigious title, or a specific lifestyle disappear when no one is watching?
      • Why would you spend energy trying to buy approval from a crowd that isn’t even paying attention?
    • Sovereignty
      • What is the activity, that project, or that creative pursuit that you would do for free, out of public scrutiny, forever, simply because it aligns with your internal environment?

010 The Path of Least Resistance

agency principles

Tell me something that you are good at doing, you don’t hate, and you don’t mind doing. Try to think of something that isn’t what you really like doing. Now, let’s say that someone suggests that you are really good at that. They say you should do it for a job. Would you follow what they say, or would you what matches your own plan?

  • Listen for
    • the ā€œpath of least resistanceā€; whether they allow someone to dictate their choice simply because they were praised for it early on or because it’s easy
  • Guide toward
    • thinking for themselves instead of trying to find validation outside
    • If you follow what they say, would you ever start feeling regret for not doing what you wanted?
    • If you do what matches your plan here, how could you have a plan if you don’t ask or know who you are?
      • Why choose a path that doesn’t guarantee praise? Where does that certainty come from?

011 Reverse Momentum

agency principles

Suppose that you are optimistic or that you are fine giving anything a try. Let’s also say that you don’t know what your principles are because you’ve never thought to ask them. Now, someone asks you to do something or be somewhere that seems okay at first. After the first few minutes, you know that it is not a good environment for you because it makes you feel stressed. Would you continue to make the person who asked you satisfied, or would you immediately stop?

  • Look for
    • misaligned thoughts and feelings that come from self-doubt and sublimation
  • Guide toward
    • recognizing their agency and their intuition to guide them in a way that aligns with them
    • If you would stay, in what way are you suppressing your agency?
    • If you leave, what strength do you identify that helped you rethink and commit?
      • How would asking yourself about your principles have prevented this amount of stress for you?

012 Recognizing Misalignment

agency principles

Have you ever been counting the minutes on the clock? Maybe you were waiting to get out of class or take a break. It could be any time that you were doing something you didn’t really like doing but you had to do it anyway. What did it feel like to exist in that moment while you waited for the clock?

  • Look for
    • physical and emotional descriptions of pain, anxiety, or the like
  • Guide toward
    • recognizing these symptoms as misalignment to goals
    • Since you had to be there, who made that rule, and do you agree with it?
      • If so, does that decrease the feeling of pressure? Why or why not?
    • Why do you suppose you felt that way?
    • If you were doing something you didn’t like or want every day for the rest of your life, how would that make you feel?

013 Realignment

agency principles

Suppose you are in a place that doesn’t match your personality. You don’t know why, and you couldn’t explain it if you tried. You just don’t like being in that place. However, everything you know is there: your family, your friends, your culture. If there was a different place where you would feel a lot more comfortable, what would you do?

  • Listen for
    • pressures regarding who I am and where am I learning points; this combines the two they could feel an insurmountable problem arise
  • Guide toward
    • being in touch with who you are and how making sacrifices for a potentially happier life are scary and risky, but the result is more conducive to the real you
    • If you stay where you feel uncomfortable, how do you imagine your life happening?
    • If you were to go to the new place, what would it take to go to such a new place by yourself?

2026-06-15 16:37

2 items under this folder.