Reclaiming self trust in the process of taking actions that matter

Learnings from BGI weekend #1 (Jan ‘25) on premeditated and targeted action causation

Something I’ve found useful about coaching at the Beyond Goals Intensive has been seeing common situations / dynamics play out across so many people’s unique lives.

There is one dynamic that has been on my mind a lot, during and since our first weekend of BGIs. It’s a dynamic I’ve had intuitions about for a long time and am just starting to put some more language around. I’m using this post as part of my process of reflection and synthesis.

Here is a try at the general shape of the thing I’m interested in:

• Person (who sometimes is unusually capable in certain domains) has a perplexingly difficult time getting themselves to do actions that they’ve already identified as useful / generative relative to things they care deeply about (eg. steps forward relevant to a goal).
• Part of what’s perplexing is that the dynamic is somewhat structural / content agnostic – there seems to be something about what we could call premeditated and targeted action causation that itself pretty consistently elicits a lot of resistance. This feels hugely undermining in relation to one’s sense of agency and sense of self.
• The person either can’t get actions done, or they can get them done but at an expensive ongoing cost.
• Even being in the process of trying to get an action done or thinking about it is painful. It’s almost like there is a forcefield around the actions causing the person’s attention to bounce off
• The person can be in flow when doing things for others, or when there is an external deadline. But when they are unconstrained and have to choose for themselves what to do around something that matters deeply to them, it’s impossibly and infuriatingly difficult.
• Their life then over time gets shaped to some relative extent around this lack of access to their own agency

People’s situations are going to vary a lot. In someone’s life there will be unique parts / schema that animate this overall dynamic that have to be related with and understood in their own detail. Relatedly, there are various legitimate ways of responding into this kind of situation. I want to look at one particular approach here, which is essentially the rehabilitation of self trust in the process of choosing to do actions that matter (specifically self trust in one’s experience of premeditated & targeted action-causation).

Here is how I am thinking about this process of the rehabilitation of one important aspect of our agency: 

Hypothesis #1: The primary domain of learning is the very moment you are trying to get yourself to take actions you think are important

• When you want to get better at something experiential like a sport, you can study all you want – the main way you get better is by doing the activity. 
• Similarly here, it’s only when you are actually in the process of pre-meditated & targeted action causation (i.e. trying to do something you’ve already thought about as importantly goal-oriented), that the whole system you are wanting to shift has come online. The information most necessary for the process of learning may be embedded in the moment of trying to do the thing. Do all the planning you like – the information that arises experientially in the moment is one of the key layers of information here, and at some point you inevitably have to deal with it.

Hypothesis #2: In some cases the root problem is that the primary domain of learning has become inaccessible

• The problem on a process or developmental level is that the domain of relevant learning (the moment that you are trying to do important actions) becomes practically off limits. For example:
  • “When I try to get myself to do something, my attention literally bounces off and I find myself 30 mins later doom scrolling. I either need to coerce myself to do it or have some external constraint (beeminder, time constraint, coach, etc), or I bounce off the thing (towards planning, or reading a plausibly relevant framework, or something non related)”
• Why? because for too long getting this particular thing done >>> feeling safe and secure in the process of doing things like this one. There has been a historical prioritization of the particular outcome over the more general process of feeling connected with yourself as you do things that matter to you.
• There is a lifetime of painful signals saying “something isn’t working here” that are brought up via association any time you try to do important things, and your only options seem to be push through or bounce off, which both reinforce the dynamic. This leads to learned helplessness.

Hypothesis #3: The required resolution is that we need to regain access to the primary domain of learning

• The solution is literally learning to feel safe and secure as you approach doing things that matter to you
• You’re getting in pain because you are trying to “execute” agency in relation to something that is in fact beyond your range to consistently cause to happen. You can’t yet make yourself do important things and feel good about doing them, at least in the way you have been trying to.
• What’s needed is to re-adjust the focus/object of agency onto something that is more consistently something you can effectively choose.
• What’s helpful here is a subtle but profound reorientation where we loosen up our grip on the desired outcome so that we can foreground the process of taking action. I think what is helpful here is to create practice spaces where the conditions are right for you to practice releasing the association that the target must be accomplished, while still maintaining a relaxed focus on / attunement towards that target
• When you see there is a thing there you can do that both can feel safe and can expand your experience of agency relative to something you care about, this can be one strong basis for self trust and confidence to emerge.
   

For example:

• I may not yet be able to get myself to consistently work on my creative writing practice
• However, upon reflection I might be ready to designate a space in my apartment for writing, and to make it feel warm and inviting and practically set up.
• And, I might actually feel some excitement and readiness around the idea of sitting there for 5 minutes a day, for 3 days this week, where I breathe and feel my sensations, journal about whatever comes up, and then practice self compassion at the end. If at any point I actually feel inspired to to dome writing that’s awesome, but it’s not a mandatory outcome in order for my practice to be a success.
• If I can do that for a week, maybe I expand it to 5 days a week, or to 10 minutes a day. As writing starts to flow maybe that gets incorporated – a sentence, paragraph or page at a time.
• Maybe I add new components – I start noticing some of the limiting beliefs or fears and I track them. I get familiar with various parts inside of myself that are caring for different things, and it kinda feels like they are pulling in different directions. I get to know more about the particular system of dynamics going on underneath my own surface.

Applied IFS and the “smallest-viable-step”

• Pranab, one of our coaches, was talking with some folks this weekend about applied Internal Family Systems (IFS), and in reflection I think what I’m describing here could be considered applied IFS. From this point of view, the purpose of the activity is about the metabolization of the kind of information that comes up in the process of pre-meditated & targeted action causation. You are focused on creating the right conditions where it’s possible for you to tolerate what it feels like to be in the process of taking meaningful actions, and then to learn what there is to learn from whatever your experience shows you. Depending on one’s preferred metaphysics we could say that there is nourishment / medicine / signal / truth in the moment of action, and we need to learn how to retrieve and receive from it.
• Another one of our coaches, Will, described a related insight in his own words:
  • “Generally growth is about consistently accomplishing the smallest actionable step, and the smallest actionable step is always orientation, practicing consistently turning towards alignment with that which is wholesomely in service of your well-being.”
• In a very general sense, my smallest-viable-step is often allowing myself to be in this moment and to know what I know. It is this knowing that is often being rushed over. In a more specific sense, relative to some particular goal or situation, I think the key is figuring out the particular shape that my next “smallest-viable-step” wants to take.

A practice exploring the rehabilitation of agency 

• I think creating practice spaces where the conditions are chosen is really helpful because this learning can be subtle and delicate. I could imagine it being helpful to work with a coach or a friend / accountability partner to:
  • Consider what conditions you need to create safety and space for your practice
  • Brainstorm and design a “next smallest-viable-step” (an activity, template or protocol) that seems like it might be a useful learning experiment
  • Think through how to adjust the level of challenge so the smallest-viable-step feels within your range of capacity
  • Maybe try out doing a few “spotted” repetitions of the exercise with someone there to accompany you
• After you’ve designed an experimental practice with someone else, then it’s time for the primary aim which is to start having some experiences of implementing this practice on your own. Which will often bring up other parts of the system (and especially new barriers) than when you were with someone else.
• Then, after some amount of time you are going to want to debrief with your support person, make adjustments, and repeat.

Interested in exploring this more? A couple of ways:

• There is still time to sign up for our BGIs this coming weekend! Sunday is almost full, Saturday has more availability.
• Fill out this interest form for a free community call I’m going to host January 19th at 1pm ET.
  • Lightly facilitated with some central question we will all speak, to like:
    • where have I been struggling, and what have I been learning, around self-trust in the process of taking actions that matter to me?
  • 60 min call + 30 min optional debrief
• If you want to explore this more 1 on 1 you can send me an email, I’m super fascinated in learning more about how some of these generalizations might unfold for folks with different life circumstances!

-Benjamin