Tiny Shifts

T.J Linnard

Audio by Paper2Audio.

Notice the Pattern.

Interrupt yer Script.

Rewire the Default.

Introduction

What is it that we all want?

Confidence?

Sure, why wouldn't we. Seems like it makes life easier.

Willpower?

Of course. The ability to push through even when we don't want to.

Logical want.

what about Self Worth?

Well, obviously, c'mon. That's a fucking given.

So why do so many people these days lack all of it? Or just perform the idea of it?

Is it because of society?

Yer parents?

That thing that happened to you in 5th grade?

Technology?

Also, why do so many people sell it?

"I've got a 7 point system to get you out of yer shell and into a shinier one!" I see this shit everywhere. Google one thing and you will be bombarded by ads telling you how much of that thing you lack, and there are too companies, influencers and products waiting in the algorithm that can "fix" it for you.

Self-help has become a commodity. Part of me wants to say, 'and rightfully so,' simply because helping yourself should be a priority. But more so these days, people have attached a stigma to it.

Charlatans everywhere. A.I-laden regurgitation. Internet gurus spewing out the same processed drivel that, at its core, is valuable, but any potential becomes a watered down sales pitch for a product not even created or believed in by the hucksters slopping it across the void to see what will stick and sell.

Marketing is everything. So we market self-help instead of actually helping ourselves.

The irony of me talking about this isn't lost on me. I know you're here because somehow I have done the same thing. Boy's gotta eat.

I'm trying to do it differently, so I'll let the content speak for itself. I mean, I piqued yer interest already, so I must have said something that resonated with you.

Yay, me.

One thing I can say is not only do I believe what I preach, I live it. Put it to use daily — for over half my life. It can't be distilled down to an elevator pitch either. I don't find that what I focus on is identifiable in a few words.

Humans are complex, and life is vast. Trying to accomplish 'being' or 'living' doesn't compute when put into terms that 'sell' an idea of who we really want to be. So I won't try. I'm just going to talk to you. About what I see and what I know. If it registers, keep reading.

I don't believe in quick fixes. Sure, change can happen quickly, but building slowly on that change is where the long term difference happens. Looking back over my own life, it's amazing to recall the differences — the epochal points of massive shifts in how I see the world, and more importantly, how I see myself.

I remember this terrible idea someone had in college to choose one word to define everyone in our class. One by one we would step outside while the class whittled away at our personalities. Mind you, this was after knowing each other for only a few months.

I found it fascinating that our instructor agreed to go forward with this. It was an acting conservatory, so I guess anything goes, but I chose not to participate in the judgement of others.

I did, however, want to find out what my word would be. Call me a masochist, but I was curious. So I sat in observance until it was my turn to be carved into stone, then stepped out for a few minutes with an internal smile, knowing what was taking place on the other side of the door. I stepped back in while my classmates sat in quiet stoicism with the self-assurance of what they had distilled me into; watching them all for a moment, then asked, "Well, what word am I?" It was pessimist.

I laughed. Not out loud, but to myself. Defensive? Maybe a little. More so intrigued at how I came across. I could see how they might perceive me as cynical, but I think it was a punishment for calling it like I see it. If I couldn't find the good in everything, I guess I was the opposite.

The exercise was callous. Young actors feigning depth as an excuse to pick apart their classmates. This concept stuck with me. A need to box someone in to an identity in order to feel comfortable with not actually knowing them. A need to justify our own view of ourselves by judging others.

It's easy to be a cynic these days, 'and rightfully so.' The world is in shambles. So much feels helpless, and our self images are consistently skewed and damaged by the constant barrage of conflicting information and capitalistic, fear driven content we are force fed daily.

So where does one turn to feel okay anymore?

Friends and family can cover that for many, but aren't they fed the same information? And some people aren't as fortunate. Many don't have others to turn to. So what then?

In a time when constant information systematically pulls us into its world, and we are intentionally programmed to be addicted to this incessant stream of conflicting viewpoints and vitriol, it becomes easy to grow mentally and spiritually drained, ultimately leading us to give in. Stop thinking for ourselves. Most often, we aren't even conscious of it.

And that, my friends, is the point of the entire system.

Introduction

A world of people who think for themselves is dangerous to the status quo. Someone whose thoughts can't be controlled or manipulated is a powerful creature. When you're in the rat race of just trying to survive, make rent, make dinner, get the kids off to school and make sure the shooter drills don't traumatize them to fear the world around them, it becomes so overwhelming that turning off and tuning out can feel like a respite from it all.

Being vigilant is hard; it takes constant effort. And when you're depleted on a baseline level, that baseline starts to feel normal. Feeling out of control, desperate for a break, can cause us to grip tighter on something that we should let go of.

the Walls that Protect us have A Way of becoming the Walls that Contain us.

Trying to force control feels like the answer. But the desperation for that feeling of control is often what got us here. The shift isn't about gripping harder. It's about thinking differently.

Starting smaller than you think. Using simple tools. Letting it unfold in yer own time.

That's it. That's the whole enchilada.

Now you might be thinking, "Cool, just think differently, thanks. Now how the fuck do I do that, pal?"

First off, don't yell at me.

Second, don't get ahead of yourself. I'm just getting rolling.

I allow myself to stay open. Pay close attention to the moments I close off; revert to a more patterned approach and reaction. I couldn't always do this. I still fall short, but I can always call myself out and activate a system in me that helps me step back from the thoughts, feelings, and old patterns to a place of observation where I can see my old identity trying to take control again.

the Shift isn't about Gripping Harder. it'S about Thinking Differently.

In this process, this system that is unique to me based on my experiences, my life, and my individual work on myself, I can see and understand my bullshit that holds me back from my potential. Then go to work to change that course. To let those worn out versions of my identity wear further and usher in a new wardrobe of curiosity. To let my identity remain open to change. Clean out the closet of my mind and let each new season have room to add and subtract the ever changing styles of myself.

I don't lock my identity into anything — ever. If someone sees something in me, I enjoy trying to see it too. Good or bad — I don't really care. Those are just judgements. I want to explore all parts of me, and usually I can find space to acknowledge and explore what others see in me. Does that mean I am that? No, but I believe we are capable of anything. We just put limits on what we are willing to explore within ourselves.

That same instinct that keeps us from going off the rails can also keep us from going anywhere at all. We build fences to keep the bad stuff out and end up accidentally fencing ourselves in. The walls that protect us have a way of becoming the walls that contain us.

So, along with the necessary guardrails we create — individually and collectively — we also end up subconsciously cutting ourselves off from possibility. Possibility of "what if...?" Most people arrive at a finished version of themselves far too early and then spend the rest of their lives trying to prove that's who they are.

The idea of identity has become a bit of an obsession. Not academically. I have zero interest in becoming a psychoanalyst. Personally, however, I have always been drawn to the 'why' of who people are — more so, who they project they are — because I watched what happens when people don't do this work up close for many years.

Let me take you back to how all of this got started...

Chapter One

The Vacant Vessel

My biological father is an extreme case study in finished identity taken to its deepest seclusion, locked away to fester in its own self satisfaction of how sure it is of itself.

Now, as a little kid, you don't have a clue what's going on. I was the kid in this scenario. My parents divorced when I was 2. Every other weekend I would have to spend with him (shout out to all the children of divorce reading this, you know what I'm talking about). I fucking hated spending time with him. Mainly for the fact that we did nothing, and I mean literally nothing.

He slept till 2 pm on average, would wake up for about an hour and make me something to eat, then sit on the couch, find a western and snore the rest of the day through it. He snored like a dragon with a deviated septum; I still can't handle listening to people snore to this day.

He also lived with another family — something I was far too young to make honest sense of. So there I was, a 4-year-old kid sleeping on some random family's living room floor in a sleeping bag for several years. Don't worry, I eventually upgraded to the loveseat.

As a child, I just accepted it. Over the years, they became my second family. We would go on vacations together; their youngest son took me under his wing eventually, and we would hang out; their holiday traditions became our holiday traditions.

After the initial shock of all our lives altering to help this fully grown man get back on his feet, we all settled in and it just became our new normal. Unfortunately, Thom (that's my bio dad's name) never got back on his feet. He lived with them from when I was 4 to 16. I stopped seeing him when I was 14.

He was a volatile and often scary man. He was a compulsive liar, something I didn't pick up on for many years. I'd spend many Saturdays listening to him and my 'second mom' have blow-out, screaming arguments.

For hours. The stamina of them both was incredible. Also traumatizing. I had nowhere to go — I was stuck to feet away, having to just endure. Not an ideal environment for a prepubescent boy.

After the fighting cooled, they got back to business as usual. Then I would get some manipulated version from my father as an explanation of what I was just forced to witness, or he would just never address it.

When I was 14, I finally had a confrontation with him. I mean it was a phone conversation; he scared the shit out of me, I'm not doing this in person.

It all started when I wanted to go to New York for a school trip. I was dead set on making it happen. The Big Apple at 14, seeing 7 shows as a young burgeoning actor with my best friends, the thought of it was the most excited I could ever remember being at that age. I had to figure it out.

It was expensive and so I approached my father to ask him if he would help to cover the expense. He then told me, "Ask your mother to fork over some of the $800 a month in child support to help". So what did I do? I asked my mother; my loving, nurturing mother who has always stood up for and taken care of me. Then, like the ungrateful little shit children can be, I blew up at her.

"Why can't you use some of the money that Dad gives you for child support?"

As I turn to huff and puff, staring out the car window... silence. I'm not sure what has happened, but I know something is deeply wrong. I turn back to my mother only to see tears streaming down her face.

"Your father has not paid child support in over 10 years."

This sentence really was a turning point in my life. Besides the fact that I was just a complete asshole to my sweet mother, I didn't understand why my father would make up such a blatant lie thinking I wouldn't find out. It also showed me how much my mother shielded me from the truth of who he was. That's the person she is. She ate reality for me so I could have some hope of a relationship with him.

It really forced me to pull the veil from my eyes. Though it was thin, I was still allowing it to blind me because it was easier than doing what pulling it away would compel me to do. Confront.

I called him the next day to ask him why he lied, and he couldn't admit that he did. He would just talk around the topic and continually turn it around on me. He was a master manipulator, but I was steadfast and kept coming back to the topic. It finally went on so long that I just hung up the phone... and didn't speak to him for a year.

As time passed, I attempted several times to patch things up. It was always me making the attempt. And every time he would approach with passive aggression or some form of manipulation.

He could never accept fault. Zero. It was a constant test of my patience and empathy, and created many internal struggles and questions.

Questions I battle with to this day. So much left unsaid, so much repeated on a loop. Why was this man so stubborn?

A finished identity always needs a debt that can never be repaid.

He had an obsession with talking about the time I owed him. It was his crutch to lean on that gave him some justification. Whether it was the time the courts allotted him for custody, or just that I had deprived him of what I owed him as his son — my time. What it was justifying for him is hard for me to fully comprehend. Though somewhere in me, I think I get it.

When I became a little more comfortable with my life and who I was becoming, I tried to accept him for who he was and just have whatever relationship he would allow. It was at this point that I realized — he didn't know who he was — and his identity was based on a fictionalized image he had created.

I had the hardest time wrapping my mind and heart around this, and it stunted my ability to feel anything for him for years. He was a living lie, and he hadn't a clue who he was at his core. So how could I ever show or convey to him — and how could he ever see me — for who I am? This was, at first, the hardest moment of my life. Realizing I would never know my father. And he would never know me.

After getting over the initial self-pity, this realization sparked a fire inside of me of monumental proportions. My father spent so much of his life blocking and hiding what he was afraid of, that he had turned into a vacant vessel of a human being who could only survive on very surface emotions and actions. He was so afraid to unleash his past mistakes and regrets and allow himself to be vulnerable that, without even knowing it, he ended up resigning from the world.

The most profound moment I ever had with him was never acknowledged.

We were driving somewhere in Tennessee when one of the screaming fights that were so common broke out between him and 'stepmommy.' It got so bad that he nearly crashed the car, then stormed out of it, while part time mom got into the driver's seat and took off with the rest of us petrified in the back.

We drove for a minute; she apologized to me for leaving him, then turned around to scoop him from the side of the road. After he cooled down for about 15 minutes, he started clearing away some of the junk in the hatch of the G.M.C Jimmy. "Thom, T.J can sit back there. You can sit up here," but he just put up his hands and said, "No, I'll sit back here".

Then I saw something that I never saw again in my life. He began to cry. No one in the car acknowledged it, but there he was — weeping, clearing away a small space to squeeze his colossal frame into. A place where no one would choose to sit.

I was still very young, but I knew what was happening. He was so embarrassed with himself and had so much emotion pent up that he simply couldn't hold it in anymore. He felt defeated and aware of it, if only for a moment. I often think back on this as possibly one of the truest and most lived in moments of his life. It still breaks my heart.

My father died in October 2009. Any hope for resolution between us died with him.

Thom is what a finished, defended (to the literal death) identity looks like at the end of life. Like I said, it's an extreme case — but so many people have varying degrees of this going on in them. An unexamined idea of who they are portrayed as strength of character. A delusion wrapped inside a decorated box presented to the world as 'me.'

That's what I became obsessed with.

Not the grief of it.

The pattern of it.

Chapter Two

What Are You Protecting?

Thom is a very drastic example of what a life left unexamined can turn into, but most of us have more in common with certain traits of his than we may think. A defended identity doesn't have to look like a volatile man sleeping on someone else's couch. Sometimes it looks like a happy, perfectly functional, high-achieving, well-liked go-getter who never sits still long enough to feel anything or actually ask, "Did I consciously make the choice to be here?"

I get why most of us don't ask this question. It's fucking hard. Not just to ask, but more so to be honest about. Our internal mechanism is built to survive, and for most of us, survival is no longer the daily fight it once was.

the Performance becomes the Person.

We figured out the sleeping and the eating. Got the job we either like or put up with because, you know, 'survival.' We fall into good enough, we pay our taxes, we live for the weekend. We get comfortable.

Kick into autopilot. And introspection — actual sitting with yourself, asking the hard questions — never made it onto the list of things we needed to master. So we cruise. Through jobs, relationships, versions of ourselves we never consciously chose. Never really knowing who we are and what we are actually capable of. Never asking ourselves, "Is this who I want to be? Is this who I actually am?"

I live in L.A. I don't love it; I don't hate it. The ability to adjust to new environments is a conscious part of who I am — it has to be; my other work demands it. But I've lived here longer than anywhere else as an adult, so I have a pretty good read on the place. All the clichés are true. If you've heard them, you know.

What fascinates me isn't the industry or the ambition. It's the word seen. Everyone wants to be seen here.

And underneath that want is something that took me a few years to fully clock — this idea that many interactions have a transactional undercurrent. What can you do for me?

Simultaneously, many seem to be marred by an individualists mentality. It's quite confusing and dichotomous, yet most often subtle. It's everywhere, so it seems normal.

Harmless even in its collectiveness. It doesn't announce itself. The realization just settles in one day like smog.

Mine settled in on the 101.

The sea of cars, the heat emanating from the concrete, the collective frustration of all these people trying to get somewhere else. It hit me like a swing from Shohei. All of these people — alone in metal cubes, slogging down this arid freeway — on their way to perform a version of themselves that probably had very little to do with who they actually were. Or wanted to be.

The woman who cut that guy off because, fuck that guy for delaying me for another 2 seconds. Does she walk into the office and own it, laugh it off, tell the story? Or does she lock it away, justify it, smooth her face out in the elevator mirror, and become whoever she needs to be for the next eight hours? And then do it again tomorrow.

Most people would do the latter. Not because they're dishonest. Because that's just what you do. You react blindly. You perform. You adjust. You protect.

And here's what really gets my goat — we don't even notice we're doing it anymore. The reaction is ingrained. The performance becomes the person. The adjustment becomes the identity. The protection becomes a prison.

the Adjustment becomes the Identity.

And it isn't just L.A. I just happen to live here, so this is where I see it most clearly. But it's everywhere.

We have more ways to connect with each other than at any point in human history — and people are lonelier than they have ever been. Online dating exploded, yet participants tend to respond less and less. They match, if yer lucky, a little back and forth, then inevitably someone cancels. Now it's just another industry to profit from.

Using our deepest wants against us. It whittles the hope of connection to a dopamine hit. Gratification of being liked in the most disconnected way possible. Social media promises community and delivers comparison. Sews division algorithmically.

So much of our societal structure is filled with dichotomies like this.

An attempt to disconnect us, just to profit off our insecurities. The outcome is a lonelier, more desperate version of what we could be. Not just for each other. For whom we truly long to be at our core.

Then — because disconnection is uncomfortable — we find ways to fill the gap without actually filling it. The primary goal is consumerism. Keeping the baseline hatred of ourselves at such a level, we become the perfect little buyers. And we oblige. We take it in and justify how we got here.

We do this with our time in the same way we do it with our identity. We perform productivity. We optimize. We hustle. We manufacture urgency.

We carry every grocery bag from the car in one trip because God forbid we make two. Except now yer hands are turning purple, the eggs are crushed, and you've somehow pulled a muscle in yer shoulder. All to save ninety seconds and show how self sufficient we are.

We do like that feeling of accomplishment, though. The self righteousness. That achievement that means nothing. The one we just concocted all on our own and did all by ourselves. Not wanting to ask for help, because we don't need anyone else.

Oof — what depressing, little, efficient creatures we can be. And I fall right into this line of thinking way more often than I would like.

I can't pinpoint when, but I became an efficient person. I touted it like a badge of honor. Not only from a standpoint of doing everything myself, but eventually trying to do too much of it at once. It's a snowball effect of how my identity formed around this idea of efficiency. I don't want to go back to the kitchen for that other dish. I've got 2 more episodes of House to watch, and I need to start them now!

So I stack everything up to make that {30} foot journey in one go, and sometimes I spill it all. Now because of this irrational need to be efficient, I'm only half watching my favorite tv doctor because I'm pissed and can't focus, there's baked ziti in my rug forever, and I'm beating myself up because I don't actually have anywhere else to be and I can't figure out what the fucking point was to get there so quickly.

"T.J, what the hell does this have to do with anything?"

Look, just let me have my tangents, the point is coming.

In efficiency, we lose nuance. We don't take the cute way to the store.

We take the one where you have to cut across 4 lanes of traffic and stress the fuck out because we saved 3 minutes and luckily didn't hit that stroller in the road... this time.

This type of thinking translates to much more macro decisions. The career chosen because it was the most direct route to stability. The relationship stayed in because walking away feels like wasted time. The dream shelved because the timeline was too long.

We optimize our lives the same way we optimize our commute. The same way we optimize our identity.

the Protection becomes A Prison

By trying to be so efficient, you lose the journey.

You're trying to efficiently get from point A to point B without realizing that getting from point A to point B is the whole point. That's what you're filling yer life with.

Time is finite. It's the one commodity you can't buy back. Yet we obsess over wasting it when in reality we are always just living in it — never thinking what we might have possibly missed out on just by slowing down and taking the cute way. Who we might have met along the way that could show us a new perspective of ourselves if we hadn't put on our blinders, put our heads down and pushed to the end.

Now, I'm not talking about the parent with three kids and two jobs who has to be efficient or the whole thing falls apart. That's real. That's necessity. I'm talking about the self-manufactured version. The urgency we invent. The deadlines we create for ourselves that have no actual consequence if missed. The socially acceptable destinations and timelines we try to fit into, and wonder why they don't feel right once we stand in that room with everyone else.

That kind of efficiency isn't time management. It's avoidance etched into a calendar.

You get there quicker. Great. Why? How does that serve you? If you're making up the deadline yerself — when the urgency is self-manufactured, the parameters invented, the finish line arbitrary — how does the efficiency hold any weight or validity in what you're actually doing?

Or if it's a deadline in life that society has collectively agreed on, why?

Why do I need to have the job, spouse, kids, home, 40k by a certain age? How did we get here? I didn't consciously agree to this.

We often arrive at these efficient, socially acceptable destinations as a homogenized version of who we could actually be simply because everyone around us is doing the same — and no one wants to talk about the 'what if.' Because once that can of worms is open, we see, and force others to look at, parts of ourselves we all left behind for the sake of efficiency and appearance. To fit into the herd. To keep up with the Jones'. To hit that goal at a certain age, otherwise — we failed.

We're creating parameters for ourselves that don't exist. They are social constructs. Performative. And we fall efficiently in line, never asking — is this the life that fulfills me? Or am I just grasping at an identity that others will accept?

Chapter Three

The Role of a Lifetime

In yer group of friends, family, or workplace cohorts, how often do you have these people's script figured out? The kooky cat lady, the over-serious people pleaser, the funny extreme guy. What do they think of yers? Whatever it is, have you consciously found yerself playing into that role willingly?

When we hear the same thing said about us repeatedly, our subconscious identifies with that depiction. Over time, we perform around it — making choices, telling stories, delivering lines that confirm what's already decided. Eventually, everything we do becomes a scene in a script that has slowly calcified in our minds.

The script is our finished identity.

How often have you ever stopped to think, "Am I actually this person? Or was I just handed a script so long ago that I forgot I didn't write it?"

Take that funny guy. Sure, he performs his lines with aplomb at work or school. But what's actually going on offstage? What if he's writing heartbreaking poetry throughout his days — but doesn't dare share it because it's not in the play everyone else memorized? It's the opposite of the role everyone cast him in. What if they don't accept this other side?

Or worse — what if they reject him fully for going off-script? That's a terrifying notion. And one that every single person can identify with.

We have all had moments where we wanted to speak up, to oppose our own status quo, to take a risk at being seen differently — then paused — because the fear of the outcome felt like it could get us fired from the role we spent so much time perfecting. Or at least that's what we tell ourselves.

I'm an actor. Shocker, I know. Pursued it since I was 12. Pretty seriously, too — I went to a conservatory. There's no backup plan at that point. A B.F.A in Acting doesn't impress in corporate America. Not that I was ever headed there, but the failure rate in this industry is astronomical and requires a modicum of delusion to attempt it anyway. Luckily, I possess some of that. A healthy amount, chill out.

I honestly think going for anything that initially feels out of reach requires some level of delusion. Otherwise, logic and rationale take over — and you can't be rational when doing something you have no proof of concept on. You just have to trust yer improv skills enough till you can figure it out.

For thirty years my script was clear. Actor. That was the role. That was the only role. I had always shied away from pursuing anything else because then I'm not serious about my craft. What a fucking actory trope to live by. The script I handed myself was just as confining as any script handed to me by someone else.

When I started this current chapter — the writing, the course, trying to help people work through what you're reading right now — I had to put down that script and pick up a blank page for the first time in decades. No one has ever known me as anything other than an actor. I hadn't known myself outside of that either. And I've been successful. That's a hard role to transition from. I mean, if the next isn't — will that replace everyone's view of me? Will it replace my own?

Luckily again, I am blessed with delusion, so fuck it. Let's see what happens.

The ideas and writing just flowed. I couldn't contain it. It felt raw and needed form, but that would come later. I was just in it and it felt right. The initial leap was paying off internally.

Then came the moment I wanted to share it with the world. The internal was now going to become the external. All the work I put onto the page now had to translate on stage.

So I walked to the edge of the curtains...

And I froze.

What if everyone thinks I'm full of shit? More so, what if the people I love most don't accept these new pages? What if they only recognize the old script?

I still sit with that. Some days it still plagues me. Even while proving I know what I'm talking about, I can still hear it. The scoff. The internal and external doubt at the audacity of going off script. It's hard to take.

But I can take it. I've been here before — at the edge of something I couldn't yet prove — and I figured it out. I'll figure this out too. Over time, this version of me will be undeniable. It's going to take some rehearsal. I'm going to make some choices that don't fit the role, but they will lead me to the stronger ones that will build this version of me. I just have to let it breathe, give it life, and trust that the naysayers — internal and external — don't hold validity in what I can turn this character into.

am I actually this Person?

or was I just handed A Script so long ago that I Forgot I didn't Write it?

The same is true for you.

Authors can't survive on publishing one book. That's why the prolific ones have multiple; some have hundreds. So why can't you? Why would you just publish one so early in yer career and convince yourself that you have writer's block the rest of yer life?

We are always going to have an internal critic. And it will be swayed heavily by the external ones. You have to find a way to keep adding pages to yer script rather than letting it close on a version of you that was written too early. You have to be willing to make choices that may not fit this new character, knowing that it will lead you to realizations about who that character actually is.

This idea is scary. It's exposing. It's even harder when everyone around you has already memorized yer old lines. Now they're staring at the old script, trying to find the rewrites, wondering if you have lost yer goddamn mind. "That's not in the version we are working with!" Now yer forced to defend a character you never consciously agreed to play forever.

This is why so many people never try. Breaking free of a well known role doesn't just require internal work — it requires confrontation. With yourself, with an audience — the surrounding people who have branded the old version of you into their minds and may not be ready for the next role you take on. Because if you show them you are more than what they identify you as, what does that say about what they thought they knew? If you can fit a new role, what does it make them question about their own script?

Chapter Four

The Sky Blue Weight

While internal work is challenging enough, oftentimes it's those two closing questions from chapter 3 that hold more weight. The fear of what our actions may make others feel. If I make them uncomfortable, will they still be there for me? The fear of what that question invokes can often be enough to keep us stuck forever. Because if my evolution is too much for those around me to handle, is it worth taking the chance of possibly losing them?

This is where I think my views, philosophy, whatever you want to call it, differ from the average approach of the self-help world. Most brochures are sky blue with a smiling couple, a cloud welcoming you into a light that "holds the answers." Promises of awakening without mention of the reality of what you must first endure.

When you decide to start the path of self-discovery and personal evolution, it doesn't make life easier. Not at first. Sometimes — not for a while.

It comes with a heaviness.

When you become aware of what's going on around you — in the people, the dynamics, the unspoken agreements everyone's been quietly honoring — it gets harder before it gets easier. Not because the world got worse. Because you stopped being able to unsee it.

And when you turn that awareness inward, the same thing happens. You understand what's happening with others because you're finally honest about what's happening with you. Both ends come with a heightened level of empathy. And empathy isn't just caring about people — it's being sensitive to energetic shifts.

It's feeling the room. It's carrying what other people can't name yet.

That's exhausting.

And nobody puts that on the brochure.

But here's what's on the other side of that exhaustion — and I mean the real other side, not the Instagram version. The relationships that survive the work get richer. Deeper. Because you stop needing them to fill the parts of you that only you can fill. You become okay with yourself in any instance. Even when it doesn't feel good.

The loneliness of self-reflection — and it is lonely, not in the way where you feel alone, but in how you can only accomplish it alone — fades.

What's left is connection that doesn't require performance. The sense of well-being that fills you will emanate. Now you have become a beacon for those around you. It will draw in the energy and relationship dynamics that feed mutually and with so much more ease.

That's the trade-off. It's a fair one. But you should know what you're signing up for.

There's something else worth naming here, too. Something that sits underneath all of it.

Vulnerability.

We talk about it like an aspirational attribute — and it is — but we rarely talk about what it actually asks of you. When you open up to someone and don't get the response you were hoping for, that can feel jarring. And that feeling makes sense. You took a risk. You invited someone in. And they couldn't step inside. How dare they?

But here's the part that's hard to swallow — that's still on you.

the Contradiction isn't the Problem the Contradiction is yer Humanity.

Not because you did something wrong. But because you made the choice. You chose to be vulnerable with that person, which means you put trust in them. And trust is not a contract.

You can't hand someone your openness and then hold them responsible for what they do with it. You don't control them. You never did.

The only thing you ever controlled was the choice to open up in the first place. The expectations you put on that are not a prerequisite for others to fill.

If you take the response — or the lack of one — and internalize it, make it about yer worth, let it calcify into proof that opening up isn't safe, that's when it becomes yer responsibility. That's when the closed loop tightens. Because now you've added evidence to the case yer ego has been building against change.

Vulnerability is the ultimate open loop.

You put something out there and you cannot control how it lands. And therein lies the vulnerable part.

The person who only opens up when they can predict the outcome isn't being vulnerable. They're being efficient. And we've already talked about what that costs.

The brain doesn't like open loops. It never has. We are pattern-seeking creatures — wired to resolve, to finish, to land somewhere familiar.

An unresolved loop creates a low-grade discomfort, like a song stuck in yer head that you can't quite place. You know it. You almost have it. And until you do, it just nags.

Now take that feeling and apply it to identity. To the unresolved questions about who you are, what you want, and what you're capable of. The brain will do almost anything to make that discomfort stop.

It will decide you're a finished version of yourself before you actually are. It will accept other people's definitions of you because at least that's something settled. It will perform the same loop on repeat because familiar is less exhausting than uncertain.

We call this knowing ourselves. Most of the time it's just reducing ourselves to something manageable. Something easier to explain. Something that fits.

There Is No Efficiency in Becoming Who You Are.

Something that gets lost in that reduction — the contradictions. The parts that don't fit the loop or the script. The version of you that is funny and serious.

Spontaneous and disciplined. Soft and immovable. If we contain multitudes, why spend such enormous energy pretending we don't? Why try so hard to fit inside the box that we and others create for ourselves?

Because multitudes are harder to explain, harder to defend, and can make other people uncomfortable. Well... so what?

The contradiction isn't the problem. The contradiction is yer humanity.

The most interesting and alive parts of a person live in the unresolved spaces. {Questions} they're still sitting with. Things they haven't figured out yet. The version of themselves they haven't become. A curiosity so strong that it can't be closed. In fact, it only thrives because it stays Identity work isn't about finding the answer to who you are. It's about staying curious enough to keep asking. It's about resisting the pull to close the loop prematurely.

Tolerating the unresolved. Letting yourself be a work in progress with no need to announce what the finished piece is going to look like. This keeps you open to the people you surround yourself with.

Let's you see through the performance and create a space where they can open up more. It makes you see the rest of the world from a place of its own contradictions. Knowing that when we try to act like we have it figured out, all we are really doing is planting a flag of ownership on something that was never ours to own. There is no full understanding of life and people. That's one of the greatest realizations.

It's so freeing. It halts judgment; it creates empathy; it opens the door to connection.

There is no efficiency in becoming who you are.

Who you are is a continuing discovery. It is a constant journey. It is the journey.

It requires the extra trip.

Every time.

Chapter Five

The Finished Version

So how did we arrive at this finished version so early?

Well, hold on; I don't want you to lock in the idea that yer a finished version. It's not inevitable, and it is possible to open up that door again. But we all arrive at some kind of subconsciously finished version at some point. That's just survival.

When we do something long enough, it just becomes a part of us, but that 'part' can feel like a 'whole' if you don't keep paying attention. At some point in life, we all have those things that happen so many times that we eventually believe them.

I was a fat kid. Well, chubby, but kids are cruel, so I became very self-conscious very early. In order to counterbalance that insecurity, I became the funny kid.

It started with me making fun of myself first so others couldn't, which I realized made people like me more. I liked being liked. I was funny as well, so I leaned into it.

Did the fat jokes stop? Not completely, but they diminished, and I was happy about that. So I built an entire identity around avoiding that feeling of being poked fun at.

I became funny, which often led to me getting into trouble. Now, being in trouble is not where I wanted to be, so I became charming. Got me out of a lot of jams. When that didn't work, I learned to logic my way out of things. I became very good at debating and seeing all sides so I could manipulate the scenario into what I needed. And so on and so on.

This single wound that cut so deep at an early age influenced most of my personality. That personality was what I carried with me for a very long time.

Along with it came a lot of gnarly stuff as well...

Body dysmorphia, over-analyzing, a need for validation...a whole plethora of traits. Ones that for a long time dictated so much of how I moved through the world. I could have let it dictate much longer, but fortunately I let the over-analyzing work in my favor — eventually.

It would raise questions instead of spiraling into negative reinforced thinking. That led to the body dysmorphia propelling me to take better care of myself, sparking a curiosity about nutrition and how to shape my body into what I imagined I wanted. Comedy and my need for validation led me to acting, which became my first passion. I loved doing these things and felt very good about myself at a pretty young age.

I figured it out. I didn't let my demons take control. I controlled them.

So I thought.

These traits I thought I had found control over and could use to my advantage also became a mask. My over-analyzing created confusion over making decisions. Don't take me to a diner if you want to eat in the next hour. Those biblical menus were a nightmare for a food obsessed tubster chasing the perfect bite.

My body dysmorphic evolution became obsession with physique, which was never where I wanted it to be. This helped fuel an extremist tendency I already had of going really far in one direction, only to flip flop to the opposite for 'balance.' Newsflash, that isn't balance.

it was Survival. Smart, Necessary, Understandable Survival – but Survival, Nonetheless.

My need for validation became this arrogance once I found something I was good at. King of the theater department. The entitlement is embarrassing to reflect on. These things I had 'figured out' became a cage of my ingenuity.

Were they always or did I create it? Had I just traded one cage for another? Did I have any clue who I was?

and what Kept you Alive at Twelve isn't

Necessarily

what'S Going to Let you Live Fully at Thirty or Forty or Sixty.

I thought I had it figured out, but doubt would say otherwise. "Being alive is exhausting," 14-year-old me would lament. Can't believe I didn't have all the answers by then. What a loser.

Most of us experience some version of this around the same age. It's where the script starts to set. When we are most impressionable and least equipped to question what's being written. Much of our adult self gets decided around this time — then we spend the rest of our lives reinforcing it if we never stop to look deeper.

Now, I was always a curious person; that curiosity led me to tinker with hallucinogens at a pretty young age. Was it reckless? Sure. Was it right for me? Absolutely. I was fortunate to have friends who were asking the same questions as I was. We were also weird kids. Very weird. And these little goblins we experimented with helped all of us figure out things we may not have otherwise.

At least not as young as we were. They cracked open my perspective to see reality differently. Grounded me at a time I was dealing with a lot of confusion and emotion I didn't know where to place. Could it have gone a different way? Maybe. Are they for everyone?

I don't know, and that's not the point. This isn't advocacy. It's just a recounting. It was a genesis of sorts for me because I found myself thinking differently in my day-to-day life.

And I give the choice a certain amount of credit for my ability to stay open to this day. It was my first big interruption.

Image summary: a teal-colored oval containing the white text, "We all need to interrupt our script. It's how we evolve."

We all need to interrupt our script. It's how we evolve.

Otherwise, we stay locked into a finished version of ourselves — and we are never finished, my friend. My version looked like that. Yers may look like something else entirely.

Maybe it wasn't being the chubby kid. Maybe it was a parent who told you that you were too sensitive. A teacher who decided you weren't smart enough before you had a chance to prove otherwise.

A relationship that confirmed the thing you already feared about yourself. A culture that told you to be smaller, harder, quieter, louder — whatever fit the mold better than you did in yer natural state.

The trigger was different.

The adaptation was different.

But the mechanism was identical.

At some point, the adaptation stopped being a response and started being a personality. And then it stopped being a personality and started feeling like the truth. The reinforcing voice telling you on repeat, "This is the way you are." Fixed. Decided. Done.

But that has never been the truth. It was survival. Smart, necessary, understandable survival — but survival, nonetheless. And what kept you alive at twelve isn't necessarily what's going to let you live fully at thirty or forty or sixty.

When we start to identify repeatedly with negative self-talk, whether it's solely from us or influenced from without, this image of ourselves begins to set like concrete. If we don't interrupt it from time to time, then our brain just runs with it. Then, being the efficient creatures we are, we become very good at keeping the status quo.

We fill ourselves with excuses. A way to reason with the way things have taken shape. But most of those excuses aren't laziness or dishonesty — they're the finished version doing its job.

Protecting itself. Keeping the concrete intact. Keeping you inside the prison walls. It's solely up to us if we want to rid ourselves of them.

It can be very difficult to be that honest with yourself. Most people never get there. Not because they can't, but because nobody showed them it was possible. Nobody handed them the hammer.

But concrete can be broken.

You just need the tools... and a little muscle.

Chapter Six

The Cost of Not Looking

Running on default is perfectly normal. We have to for most things. Yer body is managing thousands of processes right now without yer input.

It just knows how to survive and takes care of itself so you don't consciously have to.

We run the rest of our internal life this way most of the time. We've gone through the motions of living long enough that our brain just knows what to do. But with that brilliant mechanism that pulls so much of the weight comes a downside. With it, the mundane moves in. The lack of necessity to actively accomplish the same goals brings with it a quiet complacency. A malaise creeps into every aspect of who we are, what we do, and how we interact.

And we don't notice. Not at first. Not in any obvious way. It doesn't knock. It just moves in.

It looks like busyness. It looks like responsibility. It looks like being practical, being realistic, being a grown-up who has learned to manage expectations.

It looks, in other words, exactly like the life most people are living.

The cost of running on default doesn't show up all at once. It accumulates. Quietly. In the relationships that never quite get past a certain depth. In the career that pays the bills but feels hollow on a

Sunday night. In the creeping sense that something is missing — not dramatically, not catastrophically — just persistently. Like that low- grade noise I mentioned earlier — the one you've learned to live with so long you forgot it wasn't always there. And if that noise disappeared, the silence might be deafening in its absence. So we keep it around.

Because at this point it is better than the alternative. We're fine with it.

Most people will tell you they're fine. And they mean it. Fine is real.

Fine is functional. Fine gets the kids to school, the rent paid, and the texts returned.

But fine costs too much in the long run. Because fine is what we settle into when we've stopped asking whether this is actually what we want.

Fine is the default, comfortable in its own maintenance.

How often when someone asks you "how are you" do you actually stop and think about it? Answer honestly. The simple and polite response is most often what everyone gets. And it may be true, but it can't always be. And what happens when you do answer honestly? Someone who thought they were gonna get a "fine, you know...

Mondays" and trudge off with a smirk to their cubicle now has to sit with the reality of what they just asked. A pretty personal question we brush off as nicety most of the time.

That's the default in action. Right there. In something as small as a hallway greeting.

The pleasantries we have in our back pockets for so many interactions, never really stopping to wonder why. Sure it's to just get on because people don't know how to simply sit in silence or get past our own discomfort with being alive in the presence of others, but we should think about it. We should be more intentional about who we are and how we give our energy.

that Feeling isn't A Problem to Solve.

it'S Information.

I'm not saying we should all divulge our inner struggles in every social interaction. There's a deference that makes sense in most scenarios. But we often aren't really paying attention to what is being said or what we are actually saying.

Not everything needs to hold weight — but there is a virtue in being intentional about where you actually are with yourself. There is a balance somewhere between an apathetic exchange and delving into yer soul with every conversation. Finding that balance is part of staying open. It's a massive part of how you coexist with everyone around you.

And the thing about fine — the thing that hides within its politeness — is that it compounds. The longer you stay in fine the further the other thing gets. Not impossible to reach. Just further.

You know the other thing. You've felt it. That pull toward something more honest, more alive, more yers. It shows up at strange moments — in the car alone, in the middle of the night, sometimes in the middle of a perfectly good Tuesday when nothing is wrong and yet something feels off.

That feeling isn't a problem to solve. It's information.

There's a version of this work most people never act on. Not because the person isn't capable. Not because the desire isn't there. But because the cost of starting feels higher than the cost of staying put. And that calculation — usually made somewhere below conscious thought — keeps more people stuck than any external circumstance ever could.

So.

What does intention actually cost?

And is it more or less than what you're already paying to stay where you are?

Chapter Seven

A Convincing Disguise

How you feeling at this point?

What thoughts is this bringing up for you?

Are you finding yourself opening to the notions or closing off and getting defensive?

I ask because I need to call something out explicitly. Not because I am trying to manipulate you or tell you that if my words make you defensive, then you are wrong or a slave to yer own ego... but think about that (smirk emoji). I am asking because as we get older, we become very good at making excuses for who we are. We very efficiently know how to fool ourselves into justifying who we've settled into being — and how to make anything that challenges that feel convoluted, ridiculous, callous, too hard, who cares...

That heaviness that awareness brings with it only seems heavier the older we get. The farther along we travel, filling our knapsack with excuses. The weight of that can feel insurmountable. Unrealistic in pursuit of change. This is where the beginning and end of it all lie.

Avoidance.

Avoidance looks like so many things. It looks like being too busy. Always another thing on the list, another fire to put out, another reason now isn't the right time. Efficiency in service of never having to stop and sit with yourself.

It looks like research. Reading another book, listening to another podcast about the thing you want to change. Consuming the map without ever leaving the house.

It looks like cynicism. If nothing works, you never have to try. If everything is broken, yer off the hook.

Image summary: A text quote inside a teal oval stating, "Cynicism is avoidance wearing a leather jacket  it looks cool, but it's hot out and everyone can see you sweating."

It looks like helping everyone else. Staying so focused on other people's problems that yer own never get the airtime they need. Generous on the surface. Terrified underneath.

It looks like humor. Deflecting with a joke right before something real was about to happen. I know this one intimately.

It looks like spiritual bypassing — wrapping avoidance in the language of acceptance and peace. "I'm just letting it go." Are you? Or are you just rebranding avoidance so it sounds enlightened?

It looks like anger. Picking a fight right when intimacy gets too real. Creating distance through conflict so you don't have to create it through honest conversation.

It looks like 'fine.'

It looks normal.

And here's the thing about avoidance — it's not weakness. It's not stupidity. It's not a character flaw.

It's intelligence. Yer brain doing exactly what it was designed to do — protect you from discomfort. The problem is, it can't tell the difference between discomfort that will hurt you and discomfort that will grow you. It just sees a threat and responds.

the Discomfort is Where the Work Lives.

Yer brain doesn't know the difference between what is actually true and what you believe is true. Picture something long enough and the brain doesn't know that isn't reality. It doesn't work that way. It will believe whatever you repeatedly tell it.

So it avoids.

And it's been doing it so long — and doing it so well — that most of the time you don't even notice.

The performance in the elevator mirror. The efficiency etched into a calendar. The finished version maintained at all costs. The loop that closes before it has a chance to open.

All of it.

Avoidance.

The most sophisticated thing about it is how it disguises itself as the opposite. As diligence. As self-awareness. As having figured it out.

It convinces you that no one else has the answers. You know better. It vindicates. It relieves you of accountability. And that's the point where you have quietly given up. Now everything is out of yer hands.

The world has wronged you. You have become a victim. Give over to a higher power. That's all that can save you, and in doing so, whatever happens is justified and designed by the Divine.

But shouldn't the Divine, in all of its wisdom and altruism, have given you capability? Where did that go? If it's all out of yer hands, where is the free will?

I'm not trying to discount religion or spirituality, but if that's something you believe and live in, could you actually be misconstruing the message to serve a darker part of you? Now the Divine is shaking its head, watching you squander the abilities it blessed you with.

I only move to that because belief can be dangerous when not backed up with truth. We will hide behind anything that casts a shadow to protect ideas of ourselves. People get lost in ideology, religious or otherwise, because it takes away accountability for one's choices and puts it in the ethereal hands of 'the other.' Whatever that other is for you. It doesn't have to be religious; 'the other' can be just other people.

Being a victim of what they have done to you. And since it was out of yer hands to begin with, you don't have control over what that has made you into. All just excuses to coast through life knowing you aren't responsible for who you are.

The fact is that we all use multiple combinations of the aforementioned versions of avoidance. Eventually, they become our reality.

and the Work is the only Way Through.

I watched someone do this for twenty five years. Up close. The most committed avoider I have ever known. He was so good at it that by the end there was nothing left underneath the avoidance to find. He had avoided himself right out of existence.

Thom didn't know he was doing it. That's the part that still gets me. The part that helps me let the anger go. Helps me relieve the victimhood I felt and open to the humanity of what he struggled with.

He wasn't a villain. He was just a man who never learned to sit with the discomfort of not knowing. Not knowing who he was. Not knowing how to be a father. Not knowing how to admit fault. Not knowing how to be wrong. Not knowing how to ask questions.

So he built an entire identity around the performance of knowing. Around certainty. Always having the answer. Around being owed. Around the version of himself that made sense if you never looked too closely.

And nobody ever handed him the hammer.

Or maybe they did — and he couldn't pick it up.

That's the cost. A cumulative effect of a life spent on the surface of yourself. Never going deeper because deeper is where the discomfort lives.

And the discomfort is where the work lives.

And the work is the only way through.

Chapter Eight

Do I Want to Do the Work?

So, what is the work?

I'm not going to tell you exactly. Not because I'm being coy or trying to create a mystique around it. But because the work is unique for everyone. The triggers are different.

The finished version is different. The avoidance looks different. The cost looks different.

What isn't different is the mechanism. And you've just spent an entire book learning to see it.

You've seen what a life left unexamined looks like at its most extreme.

You've seen how we perform our way through the day, optimize our way through our lives, and close every loop that asks us to stay uncomfortable long enough to grow.

You've seen how the finished version forms before we're old enough to question it.

You've seen the default. The fine. The quiet accumulation of a life running on autopilot.

And underneath all of it — every single layer of it — avoidance.

So ask yourself the questions this book has been sitting with:

Did I consciously make the choice to be here?

Is this the life that fulfills me? Or am I just grasping at an identity that others will accept?

What am I protecting? And what is that protection helping me avoid?

Is this actually who I am — or just who I've settled into?

What version of my life have I missed because I was too busy getting somewhere else?

What does intention actually cost? And is it more or less than what I'm already paying to stay where I am?

If any of those landed — if even one of them created a moment of genuine pause, that low-grade discomfort that doesn't quite go away — that's not nothing. That's the spark. That's exactly where Tiny Shifts begins. Not with answers.

With tools. A way to take everything you've just felt reading this and actually do something with it. To make the awareness actionable. To turn noticing into movement.

The work isn't about overhauling yer entire life. It isn't about burning everything down and starting over. It's about just starting to move a little differently.

The tiny interruptions in the pattern. The moment you notice the loop closing and choose to leave it open a little longer. The breath you take before the old reaction fires.

The question you ask yourself instead of the excuse you usually reach for. It's about remembering the child in you that kept doing the small, repetitious activities simply because yer curiosity was bigger than yer fear.

You learn and unlearn in the same way. In small increments. Creating micro-habits to break apart lived-in patterns. In tiny shifts.

That's what this is built around. Not telling you who to be. Not handing you a finished version of yourself wrapped in someone else's framework.

Handing you the hammer.

Showing you where the concrete is. And trusting that you're capable of the rest.

The capability was never missing. It was just buried under the performance, the efficiency, the avoidance. Under all the creative ways we find to keep the door closed. Inside the room built from the concrete of comfort, solidifying our excuses.

But the door is not heavy — and concrete can be broken.

You just need the tools. And the willingness to use them.

Regardless of what you choose to do from here, I hope my words have cracked you open, even if only slightly. I hope it has made you ask questions of yourself, not in judgment, but in curiosity.

Change comes in the tiny ways we choose to close or open. Because we are choosing. Even if only in our subconscious. So let's raise that level of awareness within ourselves to make the choices that expand rather than collapse into habit.

To trust that we are in charge and our thoughts are only that — thoughts, not truths. That when we avoid, we are simply putting away another obstacle that will never go away; it will just find creative ways to keep hiding in our shadow.

So whatever you choose to do from this day forward, keep that glimmer of light on in the shadow of yer mind, keep the eyes of awareness peeking through the door, and...

Keep noticing what runs you.

If you're waiting to feel ready, you never will.

If you do want to do the work, join us here.

Website & Course tinyshifts.co

Instagram @tilinnard

Tiny Shifts @tinyshifts

You have reached the end of the document.