If you live your life only to achieve some desired future results, you are giving up present-day satisfaction for the sake of an uncertain outcome, because we live in a complex and volatile world. If you sacrificed your values or integrity or your relationships in anticipation of those results and then don’t get them, how would you feel? To make it

heard Deb Dana, a therapist and coach,9 describe this as leading “one nervous system at a time” (2023). Her point was that we can control only one thing in any situation, which is our own nervous system,

As you improve at this meta-skill, adding new skills becomes easier, creating an ever-accelerating learning loop9 and allowing you to expand your skills far beyond what Past You might have imagined possible. The other meta-skill you will build is addressing blockers to change. You will more quickly identify whether it’s Past You, Capacity,

Simply put: if you’re stuck, you’re likely to stay stuck until you start moving. The first step is to get moving and get inertia working for you, and then use experiments to figure out which way to go.

Rather than insisting that things “should” conform to my expectations, I can choose to relax and accept reality as it is. Instead of wasting my energy on resisting reality, I can focus my energy on having my intended impact within the world as it is, and take action to bring the world closer to how I wish it were.

Your situation won’t change until you change the situation. Building up the courage to take a different action will only happen when you decide that you are no longer willing to endure your present conditions.

A boundary is when you commit to doing something differently if the situation does not change, and then following through on that commitment.

Boundaries are setting limits on what’s in our control—which is our own actions. Telling somebody else that their behavior is unacceptable is not setting a boundary, because you are leaving the situation in their control: they can choose whether they will change their behavior in response to your request (kudos to you for making a clear request!).

Either way, they are more likely to listen if I communicate with their context and interests in mind.