What parts of your personality—who and how you are—will simply not change?

After decades of relationships with certain people, what patterns, clearly and deeply grooved, feel impossible to alter now?  And when those patterns bring frustration, anger, or even contempt, what do we do?  Life only gets shorter, friends.  How can we spend less of it in conflict and grief?

I marvel often at how we humans, each and all of us so uniquely, are who we are from an early age, and also learn, grow, and change throughout life.  It’s one of my favorite paradoxes.  I have done my fair share of Inner Work, much of it documented here over the past decade.  Self-exploration, bibliotherapy, talk therapy, coaching—all to dissect the origins and intersections of my personality with those I love.  It’s humbling, illuminating, and rewarding work.  It’s also exhausting.

Dysfunctional patterns in my closest relationships recur predictably, ad nauseum.  Even as I see the collisions coming, and I know where the off-ramps are, somehow I still crash.  Emotional hijacks still happen after all these years.   But it’s better.  Intensity, duration, and hangover today are all a fraction of those a decade ago.  Yesterday’s mangled pile-ups are today’s fender benders.  All the Inner Work has paid off.  And yet, why do these patterns persist?  Why have I not overcome them even more cleanly already?

Once again, my friends save me.  Christine and I met for brunch last week, our first in person meeting in over a decade.  She reminded me to ‘hold it loosely.’  Duh-HA!  Right there over eggs and pancakes, my long-time life coach and friend called forth a mindset that had somehow diminished to the recesses of my conscious practices.  I have plenty of insight and self-understanding, and I generally operate in high levels of awareness and regulation.  Dissecting more for root causes of my relational challenges at this point may yield diminishing returns.  I know what I need to do to improve my interactions.

Learn. Practice. Train.

Showing up and doing the work when it’s hard is when it counts most.  There is always another level of difficulty higher than the last one I have mastered in interpersonal skills.  Growth and progress can only continue if I commit to showing up to try, fail, learn, repeat. 

When I notice myself complaining and blaming, I can look inward and see how I contribute to and stoke my own unhappiness and dissatisfaction.  The humility and honesty here are uncomfortable, and I train to withstand the discomfort so I may keep from stepping into and fully immersing in victim mentality, that easy, tempting place from which nothing good comes.  Inevitably, I am responsible for at least 50% of my own suffering (dammit). 

It’s been a few decades since my brain approached its fully formed state.  Looking back on the long arc of functional adulthood, I see clear progress in my interpersonal skills.  The curve demonstrates periods of both stagnation and exponential advancement, with an impressive net gain.  I wonder how much better it could still get?  Statistically I have a couple decades yet to live—plenty of runway to gain more relational mastery and live even more joyfully than I already do. 

Consistence matters.  “All or something,” as The Betty Rocker says.  ODOMOBaaT.  I can choose to see every instance of friction and conflict as an opportunity to practice what I preach.  I can bring whatever I have in that moment to meet the challenge and feel good about the effort, almost regardless of the outcome. 

I am confident the growth will continue.  I just had to write myself this little pep talk tonight.