Project PEACE 101

So far, we have covered the importance of mindset when it comes to our behaviors. We can do almost any behavior in one or two ways. Think of a time someone gave you a compliment, but it didn’t feel genuine, versus a time when you were complimented, and you felt like a million dollars. Or think of a time someone corrected you and you felt loved and encouraged versus a time when someone corrected you and you felt attacked. Both are examples of the same behavior being completed in two different ways. So, what is different? Our mindset. The way that we see others influences not only our behaviors but how others see us. When we truly care about someone, they can feel it. When someone is nothing but a problem to us, they can feel that too.

In class we discussed how trying to change our behavior without changing our mindset isn’t sustainable and will only result in us sling-shooting back to the less desirable situation we were in before. So, for us to truly change a situation or relationship, we have to focus on our mindset and let that determine our behaviors instead of the other way around.

We can do almost any behavior from one of two mindsets: inward or outward. One invites people to help us while the other invites others to get in our way. I had the kids identify the people in their life that make things easier or harder for them. After, I reversed it and had them identify the people who THEY make things harder or easier for. What we learned was that most of the time, two things are true:

1. The people that make things harder for us are the same people we make things harder for.

2. A lot of people make our lives both easier and harder; it just depends on the situation and moment. This teaches us whatever mindset we have towards others is usually the mindset we are inviting others to have back toward us AND that people and relationships are dynamic. There are no people in this world that are always inward or always outward. It’s impossible. We may try our best to always be helpful but there are moments every day where others become problems to us, and we invite them to see us the same way. Let me explain further:

Inward Mindset
I feel that people don’t matter like I matter. Either I think that I matter more or less than others. When I am inward, I am self-focused and blind to the needs of others. When this happens, I see people as objects: vehicles that I use, obstacles that I blame, and irrelevancies that I ignore.

This does not mean that I am an evil person or even that I intentionally set out to make things harder for people. I believe that this is almost our default setting—our brains, thoughts, and feelings are the only ones we truly know, so thinking about others as often as we think about ourselves takes practice and intentionality. However, it is this mindset that invites hardship, unkindness, and conflict in our lives which is why it is so important that we stay alive to it. If we never recognize when we are inward, how are we supposed to know when we need to be more outward?

Outward Mindset
I believe that people matter like I matter, which means I see them as people. I am alive to their needs, hopes, dreams, challenges etc. and they matter to me. It does not mean that I forget about myself; it just means that as I go throughout my day, I take others into account. I get curious about them and try to stay alive to my impacts.

This is the mindset we are striving to have but often fail at. In my opinion, the second we start to congratulate ourselves on how outward we are is the second we have gone inward. The most outward people I know are the ones who are really good at recognizing when they are inward and then do something about it. When we are outward, we hold ourselves accountable to our impacts, constantly strive to understand and stay alive to the needs of others, and don’t care about how others see us more than we care about how we make others feel seen.

When we continually choose to have an inward mindset, focusing on ourselves, we end up building habits and creating narratives about ourselves and others that aren’t always true. How we see others determines how we experience ourselves as well. To believe that others don’t matter like we matter is to believe either that we are better than others or that others are better than us. When we have an outward mindset and see people as people, we see others as our equals—meaning we see that they matter just as much as we do. However, when we go inward, we tend to place ourselves either above others or below them, creating inward mindset styles.

When we believe that we matter more than others, we put ourselves in what we call the “Better Than” box. Here, I believe I count more than others. We can also find ourselves in a similar head space in the “I Deserve” box, where we believe that because I count more than others, I deserve more as well. However, inward mindset can also put ourselves beneath others in what we will call the “Worse Than” box. Here, I believe that I count less than others. And finally, alongside the “Worse Than” box, we can find ourselves in the “Need-To-Be-Seen-As” box. In this box, I don’t want to be seen worse than others, but I feel it. You can find a diagram of this in the toolbox below.

The danger of these boxes is that when I find myself in them, I create a new reality for myself. I start to believe that I am better or worse than other people, and that is simply not true. We may be better or worse at certain things than others in our life, but that does not mean that others have more or else worth than you do. You matter just like everyone else matters. Another danger of these boxes is that I become too self-focused to where I become blind to the impact that my box is having on others. Have you ever been around someone in a Better Than box who thinks they are more important than others? What is it like to be around them? Not great. Or what about being around someone who is in a Worse Than box who thinks they are less important than others and worthless? Draining. Whether we are putting ourselves above or below others, we have negatively impacted the people around us because we are focused on “me”.

We all know that seeing people as people is the better mindset, yet we still see people as objects every day. Focusing on ourselves is too easy, because of the stories we tell ourselves. All day long we have senses to be helpful to the people in our lives. Whether it is to do the dishes for our partner, play a game with our kids, apologize to a friend, etc., we have a choice to either honor or betray that sense. When we honor our senses, we continue to see people as people who matter to us; but the second we betray our sense to be helpful, we start to tell ourselves a different story. If I had a sense to fill up my sister’s gas tank but didn’t do it, I now create a need for justification. So, I start to tell myself a story . . . “My sister knew I would fill up her gas tank, that is why she left it empty. She is preying on my giving heart like always. Typical Toryn, always looking for ways to take advantage of me.” And when I start to believe this story about my sister, I start to believe a new story about me . . . “I have always done so much for her. She never appreciates things that I do for her.” Now, these new narratives convince me that betraying my sense was the right thing to do. I feel justified. However, I have now gone from seeing my sister as a person and wanting to help her, to seeing her as an object to blame and resent. I no longer want to honor my sense to be helpful, and even more dangerous, I now live in a world where my sister is manipulative, and I am mistreated. It becomes a story that I will carry into every future interaction and relationship I have with my sister and even others. I have now become self-deceived, and my relationships are at risk.

This is why gaining self-awareness is so important, because the more we allow ourselves to be self-deceived, the more danger we put ourselves and others in.

Our mindset toward others always comes across. Others feel us blaming them and often respond in kind—with various solutions, defensive maneuvers, and so forth. Blame begets blame. Other people—who have their own tendencies to betray themselves and to be inward in characteristic ways—blame us and justify themselves in return. They see our accusations as unfair and defend themselves against us. Blaming another person acts as a self-fulfilling prophecy. The more two people operating with inward mindsets accuse one another, the more they provoke the very behavior they each are criticizing. They give each other excuses for behaving badly. We call this mutually destructive collaboration “collusion.” It’s when people invite the very thing they don’t want, driven by the need to be justified.

When in collusion, we exploit one another’s bad behavior. We take it as proof that we ourselves are innocent and we are genuinely justified in blaming the other person. In a twisted way, we welcome the very behavior we complain about. Because as long as we are being mistreated and blamed by the other, we have reason to mistreat and blame the person we are colluding with.

So, we often co-create the very behavior of others that bothers us. When we believe another person is the source of our problem, chances are that our very belief is the real source of the problem. Seeing others as the problem is the problem. When we are colluding with someone, we each feel that we are doing the best that can reasonably be done in the circumstances. Neither of us is malicious (even though we look malicious to each other). We both feel we are only trying to defend ourselves. However, when both sides see each other as the problem, no one changes because no one believes they need to. We each believe the problem would be solved if the other person would change. But the more we each try to change the other, the more the other feels accused and attached and the worse the problem gets. As long as we see the other as an object, anything we do will only perpetuate the problem and the cycle will continue. When no one thinks they need to change, no one will change. So how long are our conflicts likely to go on? Forever.