Wherever You Go, There You Are

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Welcome to Still Here, Still Trying with Mike Baker. I’m Mira, and I’m so glad you’re here. Today’s episode is called Wherever You Go, There You Are. A friend said that to Mike in high school. 30 plus years later, Mike has a response. I appreciate a man who takes a moment to gather his thoughts. Have you ever said that’s how I am? And hope that would end the discussion. Hmm, how’d that go? We’re looking at the habits we’ve had so long we’ve stopped questioning them.

You’ll leave with one small thing to try differently the next time a familiar habit gets in your way. And yes, Mike still plays goalie for fun. Apparently, personal growth includes deciding which things you’d like to keep doing in a helmet. Get comfortable. Here’s Mike.

And it was a funny saying back then. We’ve repeated it many times through our lives, but 30 plus years later, I saw it as an episode title while watching the show Lucky on Apple TV. And I just remembered him saying it, saying it. And now I’m wondering how much of what I call who I am is still open to change. I didn’t spend much time thinking about it back then. Look, you’re in high school, a friend says something funny, and you just remember it. But now I’m hearing those same words with 30 plus years of experience that I didn’t have at the time. And look, there’s just a lot more to consider with that very wise phrase. So thank you, Dan, for that.

Look, if you’ve been here before, welcome back. Uh, if this is your first time, I’m Mike Baker. This show is where I work through questions about being human, usually while still having plenty of work to do myself. Um today we’re looking at the explanations that we give for who we are and whether those explanations leave us any room to grow. I’m 50 now. Kellie and I have three kids. I lead a healthcare organization and I write books and make music and just share my thoughts with the world.

I do some advocacy work. I try really hard to be a good human being that’s trying to make the world a better place. There’s a lot about my life that the high school version of me just hadn’t lived yet when I first heard that phrase. And I think about how strange it would be to let that version of me make every decision about the person I’m allowed to become. We we do a version of that when we keep using an old description of ourselves without checking it.

At some point, somebody decided that we were the quiet one, or we became the person everyone depended on, and being needed started shaping how we understood our place in the family. Years later, even with different circumstances, we still use the same description. Some of those descriptions still fit, others deserve another look, and that’s the work that I want to do with you today. Okay, well, think about what happens when you decide something about yourself.

You say that you’re terrible at different difficult conversations, and there’s evidence. You’ve avoided a few, you’ve had others go badly. So this the description feels honest. But it also starts influencing what you expect from the next conversation before anyone has said a word. And that brings me back to, I think it was episode 35 when I talked about things that I’d stopped teaching, and one of them was follow your passion. I’d said it myself, and in that episode I questioned how helpful it was to s to someone who didn’t know what they loved yet.

I talked about curiosity and giving yourself time to get better at something before deciding what it meant to you. The same willingness to reconsider belongs here in this episode. Saying I’m terrible at difficult conversations gives you a reason to prepare for the one that you need to have this week. You might write down what you want to say or choose a time when you’re less rushed. Now used that way, uming yourself really helps, right? The trouble starts when the explanation becomes enough reason to keep postponing the conversation.

Take somebody who calls themselves easygoing, and that might be accurate. They don’t need every decision to go their way and they make room for other people, and that is truly a good quality. But imagine that person agreeing to plans that they resent because saying what they want feels uncomfortable. The people around them hear agreement, but later they’re surprised by the irritation. The useful question becomes very, very specific. Did I agree because I was comfortable with the plan?

Or what would happen if I answered honestly the next time? You learn more from looking at that exchange than from spending an afternoon arguing with yourself about whether you’re an easygoing person. I think that’s where these big identity questions become manageable. Look at something you actually do. Notice what happens before it and what follows. An explanation should help you understand your response well enough to make a choice about it. Otherwise, you’re left with a description and very little to do, right?

This applies to flattering descriptions too, right? Being dependable feels good. Other people trust you and you take that seriously. But if dependability starts requiring you to hide every limit that you have, eventually people are making plans with information that you’ve just left out. They think you’ve agreed to something manageable. You know you’ve agreed to more than you have time for, and that happens time and time again, right? There’s room to be dependable and honest about your capacity.

In fact, a clear answer about what you’re able to do gives people something more useful to work with. It’s more honest, it’s you. But the uncomfortable part is accepting that somebody might be disappointed. Oh no, I know how terrible that is, right? Oh, that actually kills me. But you have to decide whether preventing that feeling is worth making a promise that you’re going to struggle to keep, right? In episode 36, I spent time on what happens when life steadies and you still feel unsettled.

And that conversation belongs here because a change in circumstances give us some gives us something new to learn about ourselves. You get the breathing room that you wanted, and then you discover you haven’t figured out what to do with it. I understand the appeal of having something clear to solve. That is such a beautiful thing. Look, I lead Heritage Health and decisions are part of the job. A problem with a practical next step gives you somewhere to put your attention, right?

When you see it, you know where to go, it can be very clear. But there and and then there are people depending on the work and responding matters, and that part of being useful is real. But I want to be careful about how much authority we give that feeling outside the situation that requires it. Imagine an evening when nobody needs a decision from you. Can you imagine that? I hope you can. The work is done for the day as much as it ever is, and somebody you love is sitting nearby, and you’re checking your phone for something that would make you feel useful again.

You might put the phone down and find that the evening feels awkward for a few minutes, right? But there’s no task because there’s no task waiting for you. The conversation doesn’t need to produce anything. But just being there asks something different of you than solving a problem does. And it deserves a little time before you decide that you need something else to do. Savor those moments. That little bit of discomfort is worth noticing because you decide the evening needs fixing.

You might enjoy being busy, or there might be something that you need to talk about. But the point is to pay attention long enough to know instead of treating every unsettled feeling as an instruction to change your circumstances again. I also want to leave room for circumstances that absolutely need to change. A job that keeps taking more than you have to give deserves an honest assessment. A person living with mistreatment deserves support and safety.

We shouldn’t use a saying about personal responsibility to persuade somebody to remain somewhere that is harmful. There’s no wisdom in making every problem a failure to work on yourself. I think the question that I’m interested in is what you still have some say over, right? I mean, there’s some things you can control, you can decide. You might need a different job and a more honest way of discussing your limits. Both of those things deserve attention.

Finding a better situation gives you an opportunity to practice something that you had trouble doing before. You get to bring what you’ve learned into a place where it has more chance to work. Think about how we treat somebody learning a skill. We expect them to need repetition. That’s the only way to learn. So feedback gives them something to practice in the next attempt. Yet, with ordinary human behavior, we sometimes decide that awkwardness proves that we aren’t suited for it.

One uncomfortable attempt at asking for help becomes evidence that we should handle everything ourselves, right? I’d like us to be more patient with that first attempt, or the second attempt, or the third attempt. Somebody who has spent years answering immediately might need practice saying that they’ll check their schedule. That response might feel overly formal at first. It still gives them time to make an honest commitment, and it’s it takes just a step to do that.

Familiarity will come with you. So the more you do it, the better it’ll be. It doesn’t have to arrive before you begin. You can do that. Okay, well, now we’ve had that conversation. That all leads into what is it like to live with you? That was another episode that we did earlier. And in that episode, I asked us to look at what people experience around us because our intentions matter. The people closest to us also live with the consequences of our attention and our bad habits.

Knowing that you’re a caring person leaves you with a practical responsibility of making care part of their day. I talked about needing systems because my mind doesn’t arrange every responsibility neatly and produce it at the correct moment. It fails me all the time. I know what it feels like to have several thoughts moving at once and lose the one that is attached to something that I needed to remember, and it kills me when I do that. Understanding that about myself gives me information that I need to use.

Kellie shouldn’t have to become the solution to every detail that my brain loses. I love it when I get that help and she’s amazing at it, but it’s not her responsibility. So having a shared calendar helps because the information has somewhere to go. But checking it is still my responsibility. By doing that, I still remain the same person while doing something that just makes a shared life easier, and that’s better. There’s nothing dishonest about using a system to support the kind of husband that I want to be.

I don’t need to settle every thought that I have about my identity before I take responsibility for a commitment. And knowing that I lose track of details tells me where I need help from a system. And then the real challenge, I have to use it. I have to use it, and that’s really important. A very thoughtful explanation of my brain still won’t put the appointment on the calendar. I still have to get it to the calendar, I still have to check the calendar.

The harder moments come when somebody tells us something that we don’t enjoy hearing, and those are that’s always hard, right? Imagine being told that you interrupt. Hmm. Does that sound familiar? You think of yourself as engaged and interested, right? And you’re responding because you have something to add. From your side, the conversation feels lively. The other person is still trying to finish their thought. And it’s tempting to explain your enthusiasm.

That explanation might be completely accurate, but the next conversation still gives you a chance to wait just a little bit longer. You might discover that the other person says something that you would have missed. Your interest becomes more useful because you’ve given it time to take in the rest of what they were saying. And there is some humility involved in allowing another person’s experience to change your understanding of yourself. You know your intention from the inside, and they know what happened in the conversation and how it felt.

So seeing curious about their account gives you more information than defending your intention over and over. And if you do respond differently, just give that change some time. People who are used to an old response might be cautious. They have their own experience to make sense of. One good conversation doesn’t create an obligation for them to reassure you that about how much you’ve grown. It’s fun when people notice, but consistency gives them something to observe without requiring a verdict.

And the same care and focus belongs in the way we think about other people. If we want room to learn, we should be willing to notice when somebody handles something differently. And that doesn’t require ignoring what happened before or restoring trust before it feels warranted. It just asks us to look honestly at the present as well as the past. So here’s what I’d like you to do with this, because I always love leaving you with some homework. I love it even when you tell me that you did your homework, so great job.

Go check it out. But here’s the work for this week. Just choose one sentence that you use to explain yourself. Something along the lines of, I’ve always been this way. Pick a manageable behavior and then decide what you’ll do differently the next time that specific situation happens. For somebody like me who interrupts, it might be letting the other person just finish and asking a question before adding their own story. That little pause, that reflection, right?

If you agree to everything too quickly, the practice might be checking your calendar before answering. It’s really okay to do that. Choose the one that fits your life. One response is plenty to work on. There’s lots of overachievers that’ll pick ten and they’ll work on them this week, and that’s amazing. But just pick one. But be concrete enough that you’ll recognize the opportunity. So if you say I’m going to become a better listener, well, that leaves a lot of room for interpretation.

I think I’m a better listener, but I’m deaf and I can’t hear half the conversation. So I should probably get those hearing aids that Kellie’s been talking to me about, right? But knowing that you’re going to let your partner finish telling you about their day gives you something to do this evening, right? You can do that. You’ll know whether you did it, and you might also hear something that you didn’t expect. Keep the skill reasonable. A habit that you’ve practiced for years deserves more than one attempt.

You’ll probably mess it up the first time you try it. And when you miss the moment, just look at what happened. Perhaps you were trying to remember your own point and stopped listening, but that gives you something specific to work with next time. Calling yourself hopeless doesn’t tell you nearly as much. You also get to notice success without turning it into a declaration about the rest of your life. You listen differently in one conversation? Good, that’s great.

Let that experience count and let that teach you. See what made it possible and just try it again. Because over time you’ll have more than a hopeful description of the person that you want to be. You’ll have experiences that help you trust your ability to respond differently. And I want the permission in this episode to go both ways. There’s room to take responsibility and there’s room to stop treating yourself as a problem that requires constant correction.

Being quiet is fine. Enjoying a full life is fine too. The question is whether a particular response is costing you or somebody else something that you care about. And that’s just a useful place to put your attention. We’re allowed to have qualities that don’t need improving. And you don’t have to spend every evening reviewing your performance as a human being. This is one experiment with one familiar response. Just give yourself enough room to find out what happens when you do it differently.

Well, I hope you enjoyed this conversation. I like that this conversation started with something a friend said in high school. And then more than 30 years later, you know, we still remember it. It’s been part of our family sayings for years. But there are parts of who we were that we get to keep, including a funny saying and the person we associate it with. But growing older gives us a chance to decide what those things mean to us now. At fifty, I want to leave room for things that I haven’t learned yet.

There’s plenty of them out there. Kellie and our kids deserve that willingness from me, and so do the people that I work with. They ought to be able to tell me something about their experience without having to prove that my entire understanding of myself is wrong. I want to hear enough to do something useful with what they tell me. Wherever you go, there you are. You’ll be there for the next conversation with everything you’ve already lived and whatever you’re willing to learn.

Choose one familiar response you want to practice differently. You have a chance to make that next exchange just a little better for somebody you care about, including yourself. I’m Mike Baker, and this is Still Here, Still Trying. I’ll see you next week.