It’s Family Day in Ontario. And if you’re wildly competent in life but still turn into a defensive teenager around your family — today hits differently. The curated Instagram version of reality doesn’t make room for that version of you.
The thoughts that percolate my mind about families are vastly different than those of the people celebrating.
The truth is, I love my family. I have been practicing making peace with who they actually are for a few decades. This has not been an easy process, but it has been profound and eye opening.
For the first time in my life, I can finally look at who they each as displayed by their behaviours and go “yup, that’s reliable behaviour”, and move on.
In the past, I would catch myself fighting myself to prove people weren’t who I hoped they wouldn’t be, despite all the evidence to the contrary. I would sacrifice my internal well-being to prove people could change if only they knew how.
I was wrong.
But what I wanted from them was to be who I thought they should be in order for me to feel safe.
Turns out, it was a selfish desire all along.
It wasn’t until I discovered a process that allows me to take ownership of my own safety and create it that “everything changed”. I no longer sought safety in familiarity, habit, or cultural belief systems. For me, that meant something deeply personal.
I chose to stop fighting, myself and others, because the depletion of the fight would leave me exhausted and lacking the necessary energy to create that which is meaningful for me.
I chose to stop trying to fight for them to see the error of their ways — it turns out, they never really wanted to.
I didn’t realize this, but it turns out that most people want to live their life in the habituated way, despite how much it hurts. When the fear of change is greater the fear of staying the same, change is not possible.
This was the hardest part for me to wake up to: some people like the way they are, even if it’s killing them. The get a certain kind of dopamine high from purposefully manipulating, lying, and shit-talking. I spent a lifetime believing this was unintentional, when it turns out that it is highly intentional.
The difference? Their intentionality to live their life that way no longer holds charge for me. It is the antithesis to how I choose to live my life, but it is not inherently wrong. It simply is the truth of how they live. And for the first time in my life, I am okay with that.
Here’s the unpopular truth: If you’re honest with yourself, you already know the cost.
- You leave family gatherings drained.
- You replay conversations for days.
- You either over-explain yourself or shut down entirely.
- And then you judge yourself for not being “evolved enough” to be able to deal with it all.
What I’ve come to discover is that separation from the binds of family, tradition and bloodlines is essential to our well-being. And by separation, I don’t only mean physical distance. I mean identity differentiation.
Why is this importnat? Because well-being can only occur in the difference of who we are — not in blending in with the status quo.
Well-being can only exist when we individuate.
Well-being is only possible when we align with the truth of our unique and individual experience and live from it.
I can go on and on about what gets in the way of us living this way, and I do in our membership. But for this post, I will share this: boundaries are essential to the quality of our life.
Here’s the part no one wants to admit: When I don’t know where I end and you begin, all that’s available to me as a process is manipulation. When I seek to change the behaviour of another so that I feel safe in the relationship, that’s manipulation.
You can’t — ever — change another person. You can only change yourself and how you relate to other people. No one teaches us how to change — we take personality tests and think it’s who we are.
It’s not.
We are not fixed beings; our identity is fluid. When we learn to align to our emerging authentic self, our lives transform. But if we insist on living from the same behaviours, habits and beliefs that led to our current reality, we will create more of the same.
For the first time in my life, I have no problem with that. When people show me who they are, I now believe them.
So, there are two ways you can approach your next moment.
One: close this tab and continue being the version of yourself that already exists.
Another might be you consider the possibility of taking ownership of your life by taking ownership of your mind and how you show up in relationships.
Imagine … being so congruent in your own skin that you want nothing from anyone outside of you.
Imagine … being so certain in who you are that you have no expectations of others to be other-than who they are.
Imagine … being so authentically boundaried that your voice is the primary one you trust.
Imagine … trusting your inner cues so deeply that you have nothing to prove to anyone because your internal validation far outweighs their opinions and judgements.
How would your life transform then?
The longer you rehearse the same identity in the same rooms, the harder it becomes to remember who you actually are. If this resonates, it’s likely because you’re tired of being the version of yourself that only exists around your family.
And that can change as you intend to evolve and live differently.
This workshop is intended to show you that you have a choice in who you become in the presence of your loved ones. It is an exploration intended for you to see no one can “make you” be anything other than what lives inside you.
If you don’t like who you are in the presence of others, then it is on you to change how you show up by changing who you are. To become more than the perceptual limitations of the family or the past is no small feat. That’s what our five day intensive is all about.
But to begin to notice who you become is the work of this upcoming workshop. Together we will:
- Identify exactly who you become around specific people and why
- Recognize the trigger patterns that activate that version of you
- Understand where those patterns were formed
- See what keeps them in place
- Define one boundary you are now aware you need
If that’s something that interests you...
And if this landed — tell me: who do you become when you don’t feel safe? Feel free to hit 'reply'. I’m here for the conversation.