Stop Feeding the Monster

There’s an idea I keep coming back to: you attract what you put out into the world.

I don’t mean that in the simplistic sense that every bad thing that happens to us is something we somehow “manifested.” Life is more complicated than that. People can be cruel, irrational, jealous, dishonest, damaged, or simply chaotic, and sometimes we find ourselves on the receiving end of behavior we did nothing to invite.

But I do think there is something very real about the energy we repeatedly carry. This is especially true given that people are natural creators. We can create and manifest based on our thoughts alone.

What we focus on begins to shape us.

What we rehearse in our minds begins to influence what we notice.

What we constantly fight against can slowly become part of our identity. It clings to us, like a symbiote.

You can spend your days identifying every villain around you. You can name-call, diagnose, condemn, prosecute, and explain exactly why someone is awful. And maybe you’re even right. As a lawyer, I am especially skilled at assembling the evidence that I am. Believe, each opponent has their own file in my mind (and in some cases on my Mac’s desktop).

But what does that do to you? What does it do for me? Is it useful?

At some point, the question becomes less about whether the other person deserves your anger and more about whether you want to keep carrying it.

Let go of the things that no longer serve your path. Let go of it all as the truest act of compassion towards yourself.

The Villain and the Hero

Think about superheroes.

Would the villain exist without the hero?

Of course, literally, yes. I’m not blaming Batman for the Joker. Although, as I think about it some more, I might be. That’s a whole other conversation.

But there’s something interesting about the relationship between the two. They become defined by one another. The hero organizes his life around fighting the villain. The villain organizes his life around defeating the hero. Eventually, the battle itself becomes the relationship.

We do this in ordinary life too.

Someone hurts us, insults us, betrays us, attacks us, judges us, or behaves in a way we find reprehensible. So we fight back. Then we keep fighting back. Then we think about fighting back. Then we tell the story again. Then we replay what they said. Then we imagine what we should have said. Lather, rinse, repeat.

We obsess, plot, strategize, and ultimately become consumed. This person we supposedly want nothing to do with now occupies an enormous amount of space inside our minds, rent free.

That is the strange trap of hatred. It’s a dark and all consuming path. It’s all very Star Wars oriented. “Once you start down the dark path, forever will it dominate your destiny. Consume you, it will” (Yoda, Empire Strikes Back).

In all fairness, I am guilty of falling into it from time to time. I have also seen it happen with clients, family, friends, adversaries, and supposed enemies.

I have encountered people who documented my movements, sent threatening messages, filed repeated lawsuits, accused judges and attorneys of elaborate conspiracies, or tried to make others responsible for their own failures. I have watched clients and adversaries pursue scorched-earth litigation long after any practical objective had disappeared.

It never succeeds.

But cataloguing their behavior is not really the point. In fact, doing so too extensively risks repeating the very pattern I am describing. I was tempted to do it here while writing this article. Feeding that impulse does nothing for me. It’s the distraction, nothing more. It’s the heyoka, as it is called in Sioux ancestral teachings.

The lesson is not that these people were irrational and I was right. The lesson is that conflict can consume anyone—including the person who believes he is merely defending himself.

After seventeen years of resolving disputes, martial arts training, and continuing to deal with the occasional insanity of former clients and adversaries, I have become convinced that self-awareness, healthy boundaries, and a willingness to protect and prioritize your peace are the essential “true path”.

You may have to answer the occasional accusation, defend the lawsuit, take a punch, or confront the misconduct. Yes, sometimes you have to fight. We all do. But you do not have to carry the conflict into every other corner of your life.

What If I Stop Attracting the Bullshit?

That’s the question I’ve been thinking about.

Not: How do I defeat every difficult person?

Not: How do I prove that I’m right and they’re wrong?

Not even: How do I make them understand what they did?

But: How do I become less available for the bullshit?

Because there is a difference between recognizing ugliness and carrying ugliness around inside you.

I can recognize that someone is petty without becoming petty.

I can recognize aggression without becoming aggressive.

I can understand that someone is deeply unhappy without allowing that unhappiness to become the atmosphere inside my own mind.

I can establish a boundary without hatred.

I can walk away without revenge.

I can defend myself without making the fight my identity.

And the fact that those that attack me are unable to do so, is ultimately irrelevant. It’s not about them.

What We Rehearse, We Become More Available To

If I continually rehearse violence in my mind, I become more available to violence in the world.

Not because the universe is punishing me. But because my attention changes.

My nervous system changes.

My language changes.

My expectations change.

I become quicker to notice the insult.

Quicker to anticipate hostility.

Quicker to return aggression.

Quicker to enter the fight.

And then, unsurprisingly, the world begins to feel increasingly hostile and negative.

I can point to all the evidence around me and say, See? Everyone is awful.

But I may also have spent months training myself to experience the world primarily through conflict.

Anger can feel like power at first. Arguably sometimes it’s fuel. There is a certain satisfaction in righteous indignation.

I see these people for exactly what they are.

Maybe you do.

But eventually, you have to ask whether seeing them clearly requires thinking about them constantly.

It doesn’t.

The violent mind and the peaceful mind have one incredibly crucial thing in common. They will become you if you choose to feed them. The key is recognizing that you have a “choice”. You can wake up and choose violence, or you can wake up and choose peace. Every moment, every action, every breath you take begins with a conscious, intentional, and meaningful  choice.

Spoiler alert: there’s far more power in choosing peace. You simply have to trust in that process.

You Don’t Have to Become What Happened to You

This may be the deeper lesson:

I can acknowledge what happened without becoming what happened.

I can acknowledge that someone hurt me without building an identity around being harmed.

I can acknowledge that I hurt someone without building an identity around being guilty.

I can recognize cruelty without becoming cruel.

I can experience conflict without becoming conflict.

I can be angry without deciding that anger is where I live now.

None of this requires pretending everything is fine.

Forgiveness does not require reconciliation.

Peace does not require access.

Compassion does not mean abandoning boundaries.

Sometimes the healthiest thing you can do is say: I understand exactly what this is, and I want no part of it. Or, I understand exactly what this is, but it doesn’t serve my path. 

And then actually leave it there.

Not every action requires a reaction, from you. That’s the beauty of choice.

Stop Feeding the Monster

You don’t have to defeat every monster you encounter. Sometimes you just have to stop feeding it. To quote John Nash in A Beautiful Mind: “I think that’s what it’s like with all our dreams and our nightmares, Martin, we’ve got to keep feeding them for them to stay alive.”

Maybe that’s the simplest way of thinking about it.

Attention feeds it.

Obsession feeds it.

Rehearsing arguments feeds it.

Imaginary conversations feed it.

Constantly explaining why the other person is terrible feeds it.

And somewhere along the way, you may realize that the monster is no longer entirely outside of you.

You’ve been carrying part of it around.

That doesn’t mean suppressing anger. It means letting anger deliver its message and then allowing it to leave. Let the anger be informative and in doing so you allow anger to work for you, not against you. What is the anger informing you about?

That hurt.

That crossed a boundary.

That person is not safe for me.

I need to choose differently.

Fear.

Message received. Now choose peace. Be the warrior in the garden.

What Do I Want to Be Available For?

This may be the better question.

If I become less available for conflict, what do I become more available for?

Love.

Humor.

Curiosity.

Creativity.

Movement.

Friendship.

Family.

Work that matters.

Being outside.

Being fully present with another human being.

The thousands of ordinary, beautiful things we miss while we are busy prosecuting imaginary trials in our own heads.

There’s a famous line from Paul McCartney about the love we receive being connected to the love we create. I think there is something profound in that idea. What we put into the world changes the world immediately around us. And perhaps more importantly, it changes us.

So maybe the goal isn’t to walk through life pretending there are no villains. There are. Oh trust me, there are plenty of villains, nay, there are a fuck-ton of villains. The goal is to refuse to let them become the central characters in our story.

See them. Protect yourself. Prioritize your peace. Choose peace. Learn what needs to be learned. You can practice peace and still be a warrior. The two are not mutually exclusive.

Then turn your attention toward what you actually want to grow. Because eventually, whatever we continually feed becomes stronger. And, again, the beauty of it all is we get to decide what that is.