The Subject-Object Move: How We Grow
➡️➡️My newest piece of work is just released: download The Meaningful Productivity Blueprint here, and read more at the bottom of this article⬅️⬅️
—
Oh, how I wish I could go back.
Sometimes.
That’s the feeling of growth for me.
A thing that I can’t unsee, which, now that I’ve seen it… has consequences.
The wish for the blissful ignorance of the past is as real as it is… a pretending.
In the end, more truth is better.
Our perceptions can never be The Truth.
Reality is too complex for a single being - with limited senses and perception - to be able to comprehend.
But each time we see something we had never seen before, especially about ourselves, we see something closer to The Truth.
We get a better approximation on reality.
In Adult Psychological Development, they call this The Subject-Object Move.
When we lived in what we can now call Blissful Ignorance, the thing we have since seen was still there. We just couldn’t see it.
It was a thing we were subject to.
It was running our life.
Perhaps it’s a belief, a response to emotion, a story we tell ourselves, a thing we take to be true.
Then, one way or another, we saw it.
The seeing from which there can be no going back.
Suddenly, it is an object that we can relate to.
It is no longer a thing happening to us without our awareness, but something else.
There is now space between it and me.
And in that space is the opportunity - no matter how small - to respond differently.
This - The Subject/Object Move - is why things like coaching work.
Places where we slow down, hear ourselves talk and think, and have someone else to reflect that back to us. Seeing new things. No longer subject to them.
On a very practical level: I sometimes wish I hadn’t developed the awareness of the impact of eating lots of sugar on me.
Before that, I was subject to that effect. The crashes, the poor sleep, the irritability.
It was a simpler time. I had a belief, essentially, that sugary foods were simply fun; and that my in-the-moment emotinal responses were about what I thought they were about. That my anxiety in the morning was just how I was.
And it was glorious: I could eat Minstrels guilt-free.
And then, somehow, I started to notice the effect. If I eat a whole bag of Minstrels, I feel like this. I sleep like this. I feel like this.
I’m no longer subject to it.
It’s a thing I can see.
And now, I have more power to choose.
On a much deeper level, many of my responses are coloured by the stories, ideas and worldview built into me in my earlier life.
The sadness or anger that rises up, triggered in the moment.
Before going through the looking glass of development, I might have thought - again - that the sadness or anger was always about what was happening in front of me.
The situation with the client. The conversation with my wife. The behaviour of my daughter. The way the chicken is cooked.
But if I know something deeper about myself. I am no longer subject to that emotional response.
It’s not, in reality, about the chicken.
And there is that tiny bit more space: that tiny power to choose.
Each time.
These Subject-Object Moves add up.
Adult Psychological Development is sometimes called Vertical Development.
While some learning might be horizontal - learning about tasks, say, or learning more information - other learning can be vertical. It can be about really growing.
These are the moves which allow us to see more of the complexity of reality: more of The Truth.
And seeing more of that truth allows us to respond more skilfully.
It may not always seem preferable.
But it is the only way to become more skilful in the face of the complexity of the world.
—
PS JUST RELEASED: The Meaningful Productivity Blueprint - my new model for taking action, reducing overwhelm and getting the things that really matter done. In it, you’ll learn about:
The Time Management Trap: why you need to STOP trying to manage your time and what to do instead.
The Six Pillars of Meaningful Productivity.
The secret to peak productivity, which I have seen used again and again by productive leaders and productivity experts.
Get the Meaningful Productivity Blueprint here.
—
This is the latest in a series of articles written using the 12-Minute Method: write for twelve minutes, proof read once with tiny edits and then post online.