Have you ever felt like you’re trying to hold it all together while feeling secretly brittle inside?
You’re not alone.
And although the ‘brittle-ness’ seems self contained, it’s not.
It’s what’s getting in the way of your success, in both life and business.
Let’s dive into a story about a friend, and team member who sued me ten years ago – ruining our business relationship and our friendship – all because she was trying to “hold it all together”.
Ready to make some shift happen?
Being Sued
I’ve changed my friend’s name to Joan for this story.
Joan was an independent contractor who taught at my dance studio for eight years. An IRS agent contacted her and told her that she should have been classified as an employee, not an independent contractor. He told her she was in trouble and owed them lots of money.
He offered to ‘let her off the hook’. All she had to do was go after me. It seems I was the ‘big fish’ that they really wanted. 😳
Really? I had a small business with four to six independent contractors at any given time and I was perfectly legal.
This wasn’t about me. I was most certainly not a ‘big fish’ to the IRS.
This was about finding vulnerabilities and preying on them. It didn’t matter who, they were throwing out nets to see what they could catch. They caught Joan.
I can’t begin to put myself in her shoes. Like most people, Joan worked long hours to pay her bills and had little left over for anything else – little time, little energy, little money. The phrase more month than money is a stressful truth in our world – and it keeps us trapped in our drama. It makes us susceptible.
Joan was trying to hold it all together while feeling the pieces breaking inside.
Despite the abundance of options all around, she could not see them because had no space for an alternative perspective, or to even reach out to me.
Whoever contacted her pushed all the right buttons – telling her that she was at risk, that she owed all kinds of money, that I’d set her up and was benefiting while she was struggling, and more.
He painted her as the victim, me as the villain and himself as the hero, and it threw her into a spiral. Her fears exploded.
Joan felt backed into a corner. The part of her that was conditioned to being a victim took over. It commandeered the car and relegated all other thinking to the trunk.
‘Oh, that wouldn’t happen to me. I’d see that from a mile away.’
Fight, Flight or Freeze
I hear you, you’re thinking, ‘Oh, that wouldn’t happen to me. I’d see that from a mile away.’
The truth is that we become what we regularly practice and small versions of this happen to us every day – at work, at school, at home, etc.
Small triggers that lead to a reaction. A co-worker makes an insulting, off-handed remark. A family member judges a decision. Our work gets ignored, or credit is taken by someone else.
Boom. We’re triggered and in reaction.
We armor up (fight) or check out (flight) or become paralyzed (freeze). Those small moments build up and become our automated conditioned response, the thing that happens before we can even think.
For Joan, that response was to armor up for a fight.
She contacted a lawyer, had papers drawn up and had her offense in place long before she stopped and thought to come talk to me.
Eight years of relationship and trust dissolved with a phone call from a stranger. I became the bad guy.
She had no space for alternatives, no space to stop and ask if it were true, or consider if there might be another story at play. She had no space to connect to the trust the two of us had built.
It’s easy to see in hindsight. It wasn’t easy in the moment.
Daily Opportunity
So how do we make it obvious in the moment? How do we become so resilient that we’re not vulnerable?
It’s actually embracing those small daily annoying moments that trigger us. Those are our gold.
That’s our practice ground. Remember that we become what we habitually practice.
➡️ ignore the trigger, go into an automated response = reinforce the automation
➡️ notice the trigger, get curious, notice the automation = space and choice
Learning to stop and hold space in little ways puts us in choice in the big moments.
And it makes life much more fun and interesting because those little, annoying daily triggers just became the ally instead of the enemy. They are gifts in our lives.
Yes, triggers happen. We freeze.
Perfect.
👏 Start celebrating those moments – today.
That moment is the road sign, a moment of choice. Stay in an old pattern, or stop, get curious and invite a new way. Stopping for a moment gives us the space we need. Without that space nothing can change.
It’s our way to break out of the pattern, to shake it off, to separate who we are from learned, and reinforced, behavior.
For Joan, no one taught her to pause and separate herself from her patterns, her thoughts and emotions, so her reactions led the way. She was vulnerable to manipulation and she bought into the fear tactics and took on all the drama.
Just like we do.
“To the mind that is still, the whole universe surrenders.”
~ Lao Tzu
What Happened to Us?
I hired a lawyer who went back through my meticulous records. He was confident that I had classified my team members correctly, some employees and some independent contractors.
The lawsuit never made it to court and the IRS never contacted me. In regards to Joan, neither our personal or our work relationship survived.
A small amount of pause and space could have avoided the drama and expense of a lawsuit, a sour ending to a good working relationship and a lost friendship.
True strength, safety and resilience doesn’t come from building walls, it comes from having space inside – the kind of space we get from doing some regular, daily inner work – seeing the triggers for what they are, opportunities to interrupt patterns, and then seizing those opportunities.
Doing this work protects you. You won’t be vulnerable to the things in life that seek to prey on your fears.
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- Meet hard situations with steadiness instead of fear
- Stand in moments of tension with strength instead of destruction
- Accept challenges with interest and curiosity instead of dread
- Stop internalizing problems that show up later as migraines, auto-immune disorders, lower back issues, or worse
The next time something small triggers you – a comment, a slight, an unfair situation – pause. Just for a moment. That pause is where your power lives. Practice it in the small moments and you’ll be unshakeable in the big ones.
Would you like help putting this into action so that you feel more resilient?
Check out our Inner Mastery Series.
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When you care for yourself,
your mind, your body, your peace,
success starts flowing naturally.