I thought a plant dieta might bring up something dramatic. I know that I don’t have any big T trauma in my life, but I thought maybe I was just unaware. Maybe there would be buried grief, a big life-altering vision or revelation. A giant spiritual truth delivered with enough force that I couldn’t possibly miss it.
NOPE.
Bobinsana, in her sweet, shimmering mermaid-like ways, continues to show me incredibly ordinary moments. Hence the (now what I will call) “initial boredom.”
What’s been shifting is the soft little voice that says, “Wait a second, what’s this right there…” and a pull of my self to look closer at what’s happening.
This is happening at moments like when I offer to pick up a tab at a restaurant when I actually wanted to split it. Or the instinct to reassure someone the second they doubt themselves. The unbearable urge to solve a friend’s problem before they’ve even asked me to. The tiny adjustment of my energy when someone I love enters the room carrying a completely different energy.
None of these moments are particularly mystical on the surface, but with just a split moment of pause, they suddenly become very not ordinary. Because I’m beginning to truly see how much of my life has been shaped by these nearly invisible moments when I leave myself to meet someone else.
Not because anyone asked me to do this, but because I am proficient in knowing how to do it. I am very very good at meeting people. I can read a room, I can feel what someone needs (not always going to do jack shit with that information, but that’s a different story). I can translate confusion into clarity. I can encourage someone when they’ve lost confidence. I can find the solution. I can shift the narrative. I can compromise. I can make things easier.
These are qualities I genuinely love about myself, and they’re often where I hear praise. And like everything, there’s another side.
Sometimes generosity is generosity.
And then sometimes I am giving something I don’t actually want to give because I like who I get to be when I am generous.
Sometimes compromise is partnership.
And sometimes I am adjusting myself because another person’s desire has entered the room and I have mistaken their desire for an obligation.
Sometimes encouragement is love.
And sometimes another person’s self-doubt makes me so uncomfortable that I rush to talk them out of it because I have to feel what their doubt awakens in me.
Apparently sometimes helping is helping.
And sometimes I’m rescuing.
Bobinsana is thankfully making the difference louder. Not a deafening ring, but enough clarity that I can’t pretend I didn’t hear the whisper.
What does this really mean? Let me give it to you in a story so that you can see this shit playing out in real-time; it’s quite fascinating.
I was sitting in a version of meditation last night. While I do love your typical cross-legged, eyes closed breathing, this time I was beading while listening to an ikaro. I was breathing slowly, letting the repetition bring me into that steady place where my mind finally stops reaching for something to do.
Gianni came into the room carrying an entirely different frequency. He had been working in the garage. There was a wildfire nearby. He was worried about it. He had projects going. Thoughts moving. Questions.
To me, it felt like he came in like a whirlwind.
What are you doing?
How long are you going to be?
Are you hungry?
Where is this thing?
What about that thing?
For clarity, since I know he’s likely reading this, he did nothing wrong. He wasn’t being pushy and he wasn’t being annoying; he was just being Gianni, in that moment.
Normally, I would have met him.I would have answered all of his questions while quietly resenting the interruption. I would have potentially shifted into his energy and then complained internally that he had pulled me out of mine. Maybe I would have told myself that responding was simply what you do when your husband speaks to me.
PS: The strong feminist in me honestly hates to admit any of this, but here I am, bearing open my chest thanks to Amazonian technology…
This timeInstead, I kept beading. I kept breathing. I kept listening. I did not respond. And almost immediately a voice appeared: Rocky, that is rude. When someone is speaking to you, you respond.
But underneath the narration, I didn’t actually feel rude. I felt calm. There wasn’t even much of my usual defiance in it. No righteous can’t you fucking see that I’m meditating? Just: No. Stay here. He can have his experience. You do not have to meet him there.
Eventually, having received no reaction from me, he wandered away. My meditation legitimately ended maybe five minutes later. Ha.
I realized that if I had abandoned myself to respond to his urgency, I would have missed the end of something that mattered to me. He didn’t need me. He may have been uncomfortable, but maybe he wasn’t and I was just projecting my discomfort with his speed onto him? Either way, none of it required my participation.
As is tradition, that whole thing seems incredibly obvious as I write it, but it did not feel obvious in my body at the time.
I clearly understand boundaries intellectually. I understand differentiation. I understand projection. I understand that another person’s emotions are not mine to manage. I could probably make you a fucking PowerPoint about it. And yes, I ironically even coach people on it.
So here I am, learning that to understand something and remain inside yourself while it is happening are entirely different skills. Heart and head work, baby. My podcast title that I developed two years ago is rising to the surface as my biggest lesson in life. I am totally psychic!
Bobinsana is showing me that she is less interested in what I understand. She keeps pointing toward the split second before I act. The moment when someone doubts themselves and my internal cheerleader leaps to attention.
No! You can do this! You’re capable! Don’t talk about yourself like that!
Which sounds loving (and often is), but I caught that voice recently and became curious about why it is so quick on the trigger.
Why does someone else doubting themselves create such urgency in me?
Why do I need to lift them out of it immediately?
The answer that came was: I don’t like self-doubt.
And it’s not theirs. It’s mine.
I am a confident person. I have spent decades practicing confidence. I know how to move toward fear. I know how to make decisions. I know how to trust myself. I know how to become my own hype woman when things are hard. And that confidence is real, but perhaps part of its strength comes from how fiercely I have learned to outrun the voice underneath it. The one who isn’t sure. The one who feels insecure. The one who wonders whether she is enough. Maybe the cheerleader didn’t appear because doubt disappeared. Maybe she appeared because doubt became intolerable.
Bobinsana showed me the other day that beneath all the old patterns, another person’s negative self-talk is actually a mirror. I don’t want them to feel that because, in full transparency, I don’t want to feel that. To avoid feeling it, I rescue other people from the thing I am still learning how to sit beside in myself.
Fuck. There it is again. Another ordinary moment. Another little doorway.
Value has been coming up too. I care deeply about people feeling valued. I have always had a thing about paying people what they ask. When Maven businesses would offer me discounts because I was their landlord, I usually refused them. If I believe what you offer is worth what you charge, I want to pay you. If I don’t believe it is worth that to me, I don’t have to buy it. Your value does not need to bend itself around my desire. That belief has shaped how I think about pricing, business, boundaries, negotiation, generosity, and relationships for years. And I still believe it, but the plant whispered another question underneath it: Why is making sure other people feel valued so important to you? And then the harder one: Do you feel valued?
Ah. Shit. Another goddamn mirror. This feels like a carnival.
I have also spent meaningful portions of my career feeling underpaid, underestimated, taken for granted, or treated poorly. There were times I knowingly accepted less money because I valued something else I was receiving: freedom, experience, autonomy, access, opportunity. That is different. There is something incredibly clean about knowing what an exchange is worth to you and choosing it consciously, but there have also been places where I accepted less while secretly wishing someone else would recognize I deserved more. Places where I gave generously and hoped my generosity would communicate my worth. Places where I was exceptionally good at valuing everyone around me while quietly waiting for someone to return the favor. Again, there is nothing wrong with wanting to be valued. I think I’m just interested now in the places where I have outsourced the answer because no amount of paying another person full price can settle the question of whether I believe I am worthy. No amount of rescuing someone from self-doubt can make mine disappear. No amount of accommodating another person can create safety inside of me. No amount of being useful can prove that I deserve to belong.
The dieta is literally doing what I signed up for: peeling apart everything and turning everything inward.
The difference between what I freely give and what I give hoping to receive something invisible in return. The difference between responding and reacting. Between loving someone and managing them. Between compromising because I genuinely don’t care and compromising because I am afraid of what happens if I do. Between being of service and needing to be useful. Between empathy and leaving myself. None of these parts of me are bad. I don’t want to become less generous, less helpful, less encouraging, less collaborative, or less loving. But I do want to let those qualities become cleaner. To notice when they arise from abundance and when they arise from fear. To let someone doubt themselves for a minute without rushing to fix it. To let someone I love be disappointed. To let another person carry an energy I do not need to match. To allow myself to want what I want without immediately negotiating against it. To give when giving feels good. To say no when no feels true. To remain where I am.
It is such a subtle shift that I am gagging on my own giggles and tears because how am I still learning my ABCs? Because this honestly feels enormous.
The diet isn’t giving me a new life. It is showing me the nearly imperceptible ways I leave the ordinary one I already have.
Moment by moment I’m being asked:
What happens if you stay?
What happens if you let them have their experience?
What happens if you don’t rescue anyone?
What happens if nothing needs to be solved?
What happens if someone else’s desire is simply their desire?
What happens if doubt is allowed to exist?
What happens if you value yourself before anyone else confirms that you should?
So far? Well, shockingly and not shockingly, the answer is nothing. Nothing happens. The world just continues to keep moving, humans continue being humans, and everything in its everchangingness is really quite beautiful.
As Maestro Pablo would respond to any and all thoughts, “Bueno.”
