A Mason's Work

[00:00] so when somebody brings you a challenge uh that they're experiencing a problem they have in their
[00:05] own life there's really kind of three ways out of this right the first way is to fix it for them
[00:15] and we've been talking a little bit about why we don't want to do that the second way is to
[00:21] walk away like well it sucks for you buddy off you go uh the third way is abiding
[00:31] the the movie the big lebowski is pretty great for a lot of things it's funny it's
[00:38] got a lot of cultural relevance but one of the best phrases is the dude abides
[00:44] and the idea here about being with somebody while they're suffering while
[00:50] they're going through it just being present in and of itself creates an opportunity for relatedness
[00:59] to increase so it sounds cold when we say things like work your own stone and mind your own business
[01:07] and you know your work ends where you end right it can read like a a license to not give a shit
[01:17] but we're not there right we're not trying to say don't care we're trying to suggest that while we
[01:29] build relatedness with each other that discomfort that you're experiencing is shared together
[01:39] their problem they're sharing in the context of the problem they're experiencing you're receiving it
[01:47] as the felt discomfort of a friend that's hurting if you again try and translate your discomfort
[01:56] into solutions to their pain you are effectively making it go away but in that process you are building
[02:09] some behaviors in that person that will inevitably hurt the relationship long term
[02:17] so i'll give you some examples of how this can play right um one of them is a concept that we find in
[02:26] psychology called codependence where you regularly solve somebody's problem and they regularly bring
[02:32] their problem to you and then they lose agency and capacity over time you use it as a technique to
[02:38] make yourself feel good and now you're in a relationship that's so entangled and so difficult
[02:45] to navigate because you both are profiting by that um that cycle then you can't get out
[02:53] that's like a worst case scenario for where some of this stuff goes but even the lighter side of it
[03:01] you've solved their problem now they bring the next one to you but you're not available because
[03:06] you can't solve all the problems all at once and you can't be everywhere all the time you've now
[03:11] created this problem in the relationship itself where you're on the hook for all of the things
[03:20] and you don't have an unlimited amount of time resource or capacity so as we work through
[03:29] what it means to meaningfully help others and be with them when they bring problems to you
[03:36] well you have to learn in a lot of ways that there's almost for lack of a better way to say it nothing
[03:45] to do which feels really weird because you're uncomfortable and you want that problem to go away
[03:53] you're uncomfortable because your friend is suffering and yet all you can do is nurture the conversation
[04:01] and be present there are some things you'll find as we go as you work through what it means to become
[04:12] a leader as what it means to become the the worshipful master or the father or the mother in your world
[04:20] those ways that we solve these problems that is not directly providing the solution but in fact
[04:30] helping build capacity there's some techniques for this there's some ways we can do this one of the
[04:36] ways we talk about in the book the mentoring process is where you essentially help drive a line of
[04:43] questioning where you help open a conversation the worshipful master's role in this case is an opening role
[04:52] we're going to open an area to explore
[04:56] be careful as you develop this skill opening can be used to sound a lot like solving
[05:07] you know somebody's comes to you with a conflict they're having with a friend and you say well
[05:13] have you talked to them are you sure that's the right thing to do are you suggesting that they have
[05:20] a conversation so be careful with that sort of socratic technique that masquerades a lot of times as
[05:29] uh not solving but in fact turns into again you being the solution to their problem so as we go
[05:38] through this and as you learn more about what this looks like you'll find how easy it is for you to
[05:45] trick yourself into solving somebody else's stuff to think about how this works in your everyday life
[05:53] we'll talk a little bit more in detail tomorrow about ways that you can do this and be mindful
[06:00] of the ways that that might go wrong if you let your ego creep back into the conversation