202302272020 Status: #idea #🧠 Tags: #meditations-with-seb # Supporting Someone Has Nothing to Do With You > “Everything in my own immediate experience supports my deep belief that I am the absolute center of the universe, the realest, most vivid and important person in existence.” > ― David Foster Wallace ## Meditation I think That we generally like to think That we're good at supporting others That we're a good friend Or partner Or colleague Or mother Or son Who can listen and support When those we love need us But I think We're much worse at it Than we think Because it's much harder Than it looks Dealing with someone else's stuff Means, first and foremost Not making it about you Not taking someone else's sadness Or anger Or disappointment Or even joy And turning into a story Where you're the protagonist Listening to "What you did hurt my feelings" And not hearing "What you did proves your deeply held suspicion that you're a bad person" Which is why if we want to help others work through their story We need to make sure we've worked on our own Because if we don't know where our story ends Then we don't know where someone else's begins In sum It's very hard to focus on somebody else's story If we're still busy reading our own --- #### Holding Space Seb never made my bad day about him. He let me feel whatever it was I was feeling. He didn’t make things worse by taking my anger or sadness or disappointment and turning into a narrative where he was the protagonist. Probably he didn't know how to do that. But however conscious, the net effect was the same. ## Quotes > "Feeling vulnerable, imperfect, and afraid is human. It's when we lose our capacity to hold space for these struggles that we become dangerous." > — Brené Brown --- # References -