What is the Impact of Your Script?
I have asked you to think about a situation where you wanted to take action but held yourself back from doing so.
If you have made it this far, then you should know the elements comprising your script.
You should know your current experience.
You should know your desired experience.
You should know the outcome you are wanting.
You should know the mechanism (actions, focus, ways of being) that you are using to bridge the gap between your current and desired experience.
Assessing the impact of your script is next.
How Your Script Impacts Your Life
What I’m going to say now might surprise you.
Every problem, challenge, or barrier you perceive in your life has a single source. It is how you are trying to bridge the gap, or your pathway.
Now admittedly, trying to assess the impact of your script through the internet is very difficult. Without real-time interaction between us, what follows can only be approximations.
Let’s say you currently feel disconnected and alone. You desire to feel connected. The outcome you are wanting is to find a person to have a romantic relationship with. The pathway you are using is to read all kinds of books or watching youtube videos about how to attract your perfect match during the day and going out to a bar at night, sitting at the bar drinking until you feel drunk enough to talk to people.
How does this pathway impact the way you experience other people?
Would you see people as fellow travelers on a journey you are familiar with, or would you see them as puzzles and mysteries that must be figured out?
Would you see meeting people as an opportunity for sharing what is going on for you, or would you see meeting people as necessary obstacles or hurdle that you must get over so you can meet someone?
Would you be present to the person in front of you as they are expressing themselves to you, or would you be lost in your head judging what they say to see if they are “right” for you or to see how you can impress them next?
Starting to see how the specific pathway you choose presents obstacles, barriers, or opportunities shaped by your choice of pathway?
Here is another example:
Lets say you feel powerless. You desire to feel powerful and in control. The outcome you want is to get a promotion at work. And the pathway you are using is to play office politics.
How would this script impact how you experience the workplace-world around you?
Would the world be a safe place or a place filled with obstacles, hoops to jump through, and difficulties?
Would the world be a place of opportunities and excitement for finding your personal edge and self-growth, or would it be a place of alienation, anxiety, and stress and not giving a shit about you?
Would the world be a place full of things to be filled with gratitude and beauty, or would it be a place of heaviness, drudgery, and interoffice injustices?
Your current experience is never the real problem. Sure it blows to feel nervous or anxious in the moment, but that is not a problem in itself. It is natural to feel anxious when you are being challenged.
Your desired experience is never the real problem. Sure if you did not desire the things you do, then some of your problems might go away, but your desire for a better life is not a problem in itself. It is natural to want to be content, happy, and fulfilled.
All problems have to do with the pathway you are following to bridge the gap between your current and desired experience.
The Spectrum of Pathways
There are two general pathways that clients tend to settle in to, and each creates their own unique challenges, barriers, and opportunities.
The two pathways are dependence and independence.
Think of them like this:
A pathway is considered more “dependent” if the outcome you want relies on a more things out of your control and less things within your control.
It looks like this:
The arrows here move in a circle because the very pathway the dependent person chooses to solve his issue is the cause of even more experiences of powerlessness. The classic “catch 22.”
Here a person’s current experience is powerlessness. They desire to feel powerful. The outcome they want is to be admired by others for their accomplishments. The pathway they are using is putting other people down and telling everyone how much better they have it than them.
This pathway relies on things outside of the control of the client.
- they have to find people willing to listen to them brag
- they have to find people to put down
- they have to be sure to always be mindful of how they present themselves, as if they have their life altogether always
- they have to avoid places where people are “better than them.”
This is called “dependent power” because the experience of power created by this is one that relies on much that is outside the control of the client.
The real impact of this script is that it actually creates more senses of powerlessness because at root this client gains their power from attempting to control external things that are beyond their control.
They perceive their world in terms of finding moments to knock other people down.
At anyone point and time we are literally bombarded with millions of bits of information. But our senses and our awareness can only process a small fraction of that, blooming, buzzing confusion of information.
The pathway we choose determines what we pay attention to. And what we pay attention to IS our experience of life.
Returning to the person who gains their sense of power through a pathway of “putting other people down,” their experience of life is shaped by a very specific focus that leaves them susceptible to noticing opportunities to talk ill of other people, to judge them, to find faults in the way they live, or to avoid those they cannot put down.
What is is like to always be on the look out for threats, or opportunities to judge, or belittle? Sounds exhausting doesn’t it?
Do they feel in control in their world, or are they more likely to feel like they are RESPONDING to the world around them, like the way a firefighter might put out fires that keep forever flaring up?
How do you think they feel at night just before the twilight of drifting to sleep? Are they excited about the next day?
Do they perceive themselves as having the inner confidence to know who they are, what they want, what they are capable of?
Do they perceive themselves as capable of being vulnerable, open, and free?
Do they move towards their desired experience of “power,” or do perceive the world as a place where they must avoid place, people, and moments, they may make them feel “powerless?”
Ugh. This is even tough to write about. I’ve been there. Let’s move on…
The opposite of the dependent pathway is an independent pathway.
A pathway is considered more “independent” is the outcome you want relies on less things out of your control and more things within your control.
It looks like this:
Notice the arrows do not move in a circle with independent pathways. That is because it moves forward toward desired experience rather than avoid it.
In the image above, a person’s current experience is powerlessness. They desire to feel powerful. The outcome they want is to get a promotion at work. The pathway they chose is to push through their personal fears about sharing the ideas they have about projects.
This pathway relies on mostly things within their control.
- they have to direct their focus on their fears so they can recognize them in real-time
- they have to come up with a clear way of expressing their ideas swiftly and succinctly
- they have to work on models of projects ahead of time beyond their normal work related projects too test out their ideas
- they have to show up to meetings on time, be engaged in discussion
- they have to develop a practice of being vulnerable outside of work, speaking their mind because doing so will create a familiarity with the experience of overcoming communication apprehension in less stressful situations than work
This is called independent power because their desired experience of power relies on little that is outside of the control of the client.
Within your control at all times are your actions, your effort, your decisions, and your focus/intention.
The real impact of this script is that it create more empowering experiences because the outcome is not determined by what other people do, or the right situations, or even luck.
The experience of power is sourced not by an outcome, but through a focus on pushing your own limitations, seeing what you are capable of, and what kind of experiences you can create independently.
What’s it like to be in their world?
Do they feel out of control in their world, or are they sense they are actively CREATING their experience of the world around them, like the way an artist might adjust the mood of a painting based on the first strokes?
Do they worry about having no confidence in knowing who they are, what they want, what they are capable of, or are they building confidence by pushing through their personal perceived limitations?
Do they perceive others as people who judge them, or do they perceive themselves as capable of being vulnerable, open, and free?
Do they move away from experiences that avoid their desired experience of “power,” or do perceive the world as a place where they must continually push themselves to find places, people, and moments where they can challenge themselves to feel more in control?
Exciting isn’t it? How do you think they feel at night just before the twilight of drifting to sleep? Think they are excited about the next day?
Again, at anyone point and time we are literally bombarded with millions of bits of information. But our senses and our awareness can only process a small fraction of that of information.
The pathway we choose determines what we pay attention to. And what we pay attention to IS our experience of life.
These pathways exist on an ever evolving spectrum in real-time. No one’s pathway, for the most part, is ever completely dependent or completely independent.
Neither one is necessarily better than the other for solving the issues you are facing. Every pathway in real-time will have elements of dependence and independence.
Nonetheless, my coaching is focused on helping you discover more independent pathways on the spectrum. This is because independent pathways are the only pathways the maximize your focus on what you can control in your life and thus maximizes your self-transformation journey.
What if instead of desiring to feel powerful by getting others to admire you, you felt powerful through pushing through your own limitations?
How would this change your life?
What if instead of desiring to feel connected to others by finding a relationship, you felt connected by finding other people who shared themselves openly and you listened deeply and felt past their words to the deep emotions within them?
How would this change the possibilities of finding a relationship with the person that is right for you?
What if instead of wanting to feel free by waiting for other people to give you permission to take the action you want, you felt free by giving yourself permission to do what you wanted in spite of other people might think?
Back To Your Problem: Your Move
So hopefully by now you get a sense of how your script impacts not just this single issue that I have asked you to explore, but also all other areas of your life.
Your script is the source of most of the challenges and difficulties you experience in your world, between others, and within yourself.
There are 5 more steps in the coaching progression that can only be done when we get a chance to chat and explore the specifics of your situation.
So…
Thinking back now to this specific situation where you wanted to act but did not, how is that working out for you?
Is this creating the experience you want?
If you continue to live your life implementing this script in moments when you feel challenged, what kind of life will you be living in 5 years?
Is this really the life you want?
Are you ready to make a change in scripts?
Get started now!