Break The Stick
I actually got triggered this week, and still my emotions stood pat. I didn’t say what I wanted, but it was a reminder to sit back down at the table with all sides of me, and I needed a conversation with my inner child and my adult self. I know how I used to think and respond. I look at people in the most stoic way at times, and only my immediate family knows when I do it added a few cousins because we all have done it. I start there from how much better everything gets in reactive vs proactive, and knowing how fast 5 seconds to 5 mins in choices can change your life.
There is an old story about a teacher and a student. The teacher holds up a stick and says: If you touch this stick, I will hit you with it. If you do not touch it, I will hit you with it. The student decided to break the stick. I have been thinking about that story all week. Certain rooms and certain situations where the rules exist not to create fairness but to create compliance. Where no matter what you do, the outcome is already decided at times before you walk in. Where the game is not designed for you to win, your journey is your journey. Many of us spend a lot of time in recovery.
We were taught that fairness was the operating system. That if you did the right things in the right order, the right results would follow. That the environment would honor what you brought to it. Life doesn’t work that way. Understand your assignment and move accordingly. People will take ownership of your work and present it as their own. Rooms will diminish what you built while benefiting from it. Environments will trigger you specifically because something in you is worth triggering, because there is something in you that certain systems need to contain.
Most people are not thinking critically right now. They are reacting and following the pace of whatever is loudest. Making decisions and following instead of having self conviction. And the person who stops, thinks, builds something original from the inside out, that person stands out not because they are performing but because genuine original thought has become rare enough to be a distraction to people who have stopped practicing it. This is the moment to build and go in.
Every person who took ownership of what you built confirmed that what you built had value worth taking. That is information and data. Remember who you are in this world. There is a version of your being triggered that could break you down. And there is a version that breaks the stick. The difference is whether you let the environment write the story or whether you remember that you walked into that room with something they did not give you and can’t take from you. Break the stick and build the thing only you can build.
In a world that has largely stopped thinking, one person who thinks clearly and builds from that clarity is not a small thing. It is exactly what this time and each moment requires.
Until next time….
