Originally Published on Feb 2, 2025
Explore the Being+Doing dilemma and discover how to balance your inner self with external expectations. Embrace a journey of self-awareness and authenticity.
“We are human beings, not human doings.” “I need to stop doing and be more.” When have you said something like this? Heard someone else?
I have. I can remember one instance vividly 20 years ago. I was living in a garden level flat in San Francisco; garden level is fancy for, basement. I recently moved from San Jose to be part of a newly forming spiritual community. We were united in a desire and sense of idealism and experimenting with what we called: Urban Monasticism. We were keen to find out what happens when a group of people commit to practicing what Jesus talked about and lived. It was our response to the present day incarnation of Gandhi’s quote “I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ.”
I took on this move inspired to live committed to values of justice, pragmatism, love, holism, and also contribute to creating a world filled with them. I recently completed my Master’s in engineering and worked as an independent IT consultant at the time to take care of the financial aspect of my life. A glamorized way of saying I was the welcome wagon for many complaints about technology and a fixer. I had finished several hours of work and a friend asked what I was going to do next – “I am just going to sit in that chair and be.” I felt the need for reprieve and a chance to breathe.
Diving deeper into those words.
Back then I had a constitution that was excitable internally, like putting a big speaker in a small room, it didn’t take much for it to get loud, at least inside of me. Outside I presented as calm and together, internally I was a flutter. There was a significant chasm between how I was showing up externally and how I felt internally. In order to stay “together” my attention would naturally be externally focused. This kept me from consciously encountering the swirl within. A keyword in that previous sentence: consciously.
We are not always aware of how much emotional, physiological movement is happening within us. The technical term for this is interoception – our ability to consciously be aware of what we are feeling and sensing within us. For example, we may not be aware of just how high our heart rate increases throughout the day as we encounter more and more requests OR that we are hungry and the way this impacts our mood. At certain moments the activity gets so loud it is no longer ignorable.
This was one of the moments for me – the swirl was so great I couldn’t ignore it any more. It was too loud. My response: get away from the external noise/demands/requests – what I was terming ‘just be.’ In other words, “just being” was really me saying “turn down the volume, it is overwhelming me.”
Steps along the way
Since that time I have learned that turning down the volume can be helpful. It is supportive to go on walks, take retreats, or in some way “unplug.” The removal of external requests, demands, or other input can help reduce the internal activation. Often this is a first step with noticeable effect. It is also one that can feel of limited availability. At that time in my life it was easier to pull back and take time away. Since then my commitments and responsibilities have increased. It is no longer as easy to unplug.
The next step and one with more significant and long-standing impact: making the metaphorical room bigger. In a bigger room, when the speaker is turned up it isn’t as noticeable – the speaker needs to be turned up louder to get the same change in sound. Game changing as some would say. Just as a larger physical room gives sound waves more space to disperse, expanding our internal capacity creates more space for life’s demands. For me, this expansion began with recognizing how my own beliefs were creating unnecessary constraints.
What this meant practically was expanding my view of myself and in turn possibilities for actions I could take. There is so much to say about this there will be another article coming on the topic. For now, one example. I did not want to disappoint people – said another way, I wanted people to like me and say nice things about me. This often meant I would over commit and take on more than I was capable of completing as promised. The belief I held was I needed to not only say “yes” to inbound requests but to also accept the conditions of when/how they were to be completed. Making a counter-proposal was not something I considered because of the internal belief I had. Shifting this story I had about myself and what is acceptable opened more possibilities – it made the room larger. Now when requests were made I could receive them and know I had an expanded range of responses. I could now be more present in my life.
There are other examples I could give of stories I had about myself and the world that limited my room size. What are beliefs, stories, narratives you have about yourself that keep your room the size it is?
More being less doing.
We are always being. As we stumble forward into each moment, be-ing is always there. We are by our very nature a be-ing. We cannot, not be-ing. When I hear myself or others say some version of “I just want to be,” I hear a longing, a desire for connecting to a place within themselves that feels stable, calm, resourced, peaceful or grounded. We wish to experience our bodily sensations, emotions, etc. and have it be a welcoming experience. Not something that feels overwhelming, off-putting, or some other thing we want to turn away from.
What can help is making our metaphorical room bigger. As we grow our capacity and the practice of being, we can welcome our internal experience, whatever it is. There is room for noise because we are expansive enough for it not to be overwhelming. In this state we are be-ing in such a way that we can also do, and not have our doing further our experience of overwhelm.
Clients I support, and most often those in leadership roles, focus attention on managing the external inputs through productivity enhancement, more skillful delegation, or mastering the art of declining requests. These are helpful. They are also limited in scope and miss addressing how we experience our life. Attending to our internal capacity enables us to experience being present, attentive, connected and get things done.
This shift from managing external demands to expanding internal capacity is subtle but profound. Rather than constantly adjusting the volume knob of life, we’re creating a space where both the noise and the quiet can coexist. Where ‘being’ and ‘doing’ aren’t at war with each other, but dance together in a larger room.
Sounds nice
The light is now on in the room of being-doing, where the two co-exist harmoniously. How do we occupy this room and live in such a way that our capacity is expanded?
What is your experience? How is this for you and those around you?
Twenty years ago, sitting in that basement apartment, I thought the solution was to simply stop doing – to find moments of pure being. What I’ve learned since then is both simpler and more profound. The path forward wasn’t about escaping the noise or finding perfect quiet. It wasn’t even about managing the volume of life’s demands. Instead, it was about expanding my capacity to hold both being and doing simultaneously.
Just as I expanded from believing I had to accept every request exactly as it came, to knowing I could respond in ways that honored both others and myself, each of us has our own walls to gently push out. Our own limiting beliefs to examine. Our own unique way of creating more space within ourselves.
The journey of expanding your room will look different from mine. Each of us comes with our own context, our own stories, our own particular ways of being in the world. The question isn’t ‘how do I copy someone else’s path?’ but rather ‘what walls in my own room are ready to be moved?’
If you’re curious about exploring this question further, I’m here to help support that journey.
Peace and love,
Adam Klein