Landmark Forum Leader Insights

In inventing ourselves, the way the world occurs shifts

By Angie Mattingly

In our relationships, when we focus on our problems or how wrong things are, we lose our power to be and act effectively. Problems lie in the lack of inventing a future for our relationships “as a possibility.” When there’s no possibility created, pretty much what’s left is being upset. The payoff in that is that we get to be right and see others as wrong. In being upset, in withholding our happiness and well-being, we both limit the other person as well as our own ability to be. If we switch that, if we invent ourselves (instead of just reacting), the way the world occurs shifts—we could be in a relationship with Godzilla, or anyone. If we don’t switch that, we don’t get a chance to celebrate all that’s available to ourselves and others.

When something’s missing as a possibility, there’s not a sense of insufficiency or inadequacy—we leave behind the conversation about how things are “not” going to be. What’s missing becomes a possibility “for” something. Making this switch requires disrupting our old conversations and most likely completing things from the past—there’s no wish for things to be different, better, or more. We come to know a space within ourselves where that can happen—it’s a state change, to being the author, as it were. The conditions and circumstances for our relationships begin to reorder and realign themselves. In creating possibility, we get to know what’s possible in being human.