Making space for relating
Is there enough space in your being for relating?
Authentically relating changes you.
What do I mean by this?
When you authentically connect with someone and you allow the essence of their being to touch you, a change unfolds in your being.
Every word, every proposal, every question, every invitation is opening a doorway to change.
As opposed to when you pretend to connect, or you pretend to relate, but what you’re doing is going through the motions of what you or they think is connecting.
This is called box-to-box relating, where no meaningful change occurs.
This is the most common form of relating seen nowadays. People go on about their days, repeating the same motions day after day, chasing something external, caught up in the hamster wheel, relating with their masks that keep them safe in their comfort zone or what we call the marshmallow zone.
Are you accepting the invitations to become? Or are you putting on the mask that is safe, familiar and comfortable?
You use your masks as a "free" ticket to survive a world that constantly threatens to kill the aliveness of your becoming.
But, is it really free? What is the real price that you pay for using a mask for fake relating?
The price that you pay is your freedom, your authenticity, your integrity and your aliveness.
What feelings come up when you think of relating without your masks?
Can you BE with the feelings that come up when you think of relating without a mask?
What is the resistance? What stories come up?
What I'm finding is that more often than not I choose the mask because it's comfortable, because it's what I’ve known to do most of my life and because it's safe.
Every time that I use a mask instead of authentically relating, I'm stopping my becoming, my evolution, my unfolding. I cut myself off from the world, I deprive the world of my being, and I avoid the feelings that I'm feeling, consciously or unconsciously, beneath the mask.
This is a celebration! That I can notice these masks now and not when I'm on my deathbed, regretting having lived a whole life of fakeness, pretending and denial.
How do you make space for relating?
This is the type of question that is alive. I would do you a disservice to give you a simple answer to this question. Meaning that you can take this question and let it be alive within you.
“How do I make space for relating?”
What needs to change? What is getting in the way? What happened that you stopped relating? Why is relating important for you? What is missing in your relating that is not fulfilling? What does it look like to authentically relate as an adult?
If there’s no space in your being for relating, then relating won’t happen. Instead, you’ll experience busyness, confusion, tiredness, avoidance, a wall, something dead, predictable, ordinary, habitual, safe and familiar, and for most people, sadly, they’ve made that their point of origin.
Authentic relating is ecstatic and extraordinary.
Notice how children play and relate with one another, how they aren’t pretending, or holding back. Notice how children make invitations, how they share, how they connect, how they listen.
Now, as an adult, it’s up to you to discover, to feel, to heal, to explore and to reconstruct what authentic relating is like for you.
Are you ready to put your masks down, to feel and relate?
Suggested experiment:
For the next week, when you notice that you're putting on a mask with others, use that as a way of creating a new level of intimacy by putting it on the table.
For example, you can say: "I notice that I'm putting on a mask to avoid feeling the fear of saying how I really feel about relating with you".
Be with the feelings that come up (anger, sadness, fear and joy), and stay in touch energetically with them and with your purpose.
What do you notice?
What feelings come up for you?
What happens to the space?
What happens to them?
Journal about what you discover and share with your team.
See you on the other side. 🌉🎭
P.S.: Becoming Alive Feelings Training Offering.
Still, 2 more days to get the end-of-the-year offer for a 4-week one-on-one feelings crash course for $111.
P.S.2: If 4 weeks is too long of a commitment for you at this moment, I’m offering a few spots for single 2-hour one-on-one sessions of Feelings Coaching at $55.
P.S.3: Both of these offers expire by the end of the year. There are limited spots available. Details here: https://jorgepedret.substack.com/p/coming-alive-and-end-of-the-year