When Life Turns Up the Volume
I sometimes wonder whether extreme situations really change us as much as we think they do, or whether they simply turn up the volume on things that were already there.
Money is probably one of the clearest examples.
People can have enormous arguments about money, but quite often the argument is not really about the number itself. For one person, money may represent security. For someone else, it may represent freedom, possibility, success, independence or control. Two people can therefore be looking at exactly the same bank balance and still be having quite different emotional conversations about what that money means to them.
One person may be saying, “We can’t afford to take that risk,” but underneath that may be a need to feel safe and protected from uncertainty. The other person may be saying, “We can’t keep playing small,” but what sits underneath that may be a fear of missing an opportunity or feeling trapped.
Neither person is necessarily wrong. They are simply responding to the same situation from different internal places.
That is where I think these conversations become much more interesting, because if the deeper issue is fear, security, freedom, worth or control, then simply changing the external number may not resolve the real issue.
More does not always mean less fear
We often tell ourselves that when we have more money, more success, more certainty or more recognition, we will finally feel different.
We imagine that once the business reaches a certain level, we will relax. Once we have enough in the bank, we will feel secure. Once we achieve the next goal, we will finally feel successful.
Sometimes that is true, of course. If someone genuinely does not have enough money to meet their needs, then more money can make a very real and important difference.
But sometimes the number changes and the feeling does not.
A person may have very little and worry constantly about losing it, then have much more and still carry exactly the same anxiety. In some cases, having more simply creates more to protect and therefore more to worry about losing, which is probably not the peaceful outcome they had imagined.
The same can happen with achievement. We tell ourselves that when we reach the next goal we will know that we have made it, and when we finally get there it does feel good, at least for a while. Then, almost without noticing, the finishing line moves again.
There is another level to reach, another number to hit, another piece of recognition to gain, another thing we need before we are finally allowed to feel satisfied.
I find that idea of “enough” quite interesting, because although it sounds like an external number, it is often partly an internal state.
Sometimes life turns up the volume
I have been thinking more and more that extreme situations can act a little like someone turning up the volume on us.
Stress can make fear more obvious. Success can intensify ambition. Money can expose our relationship with security. Power can reveal how much we value control, and uncertainty can show us just how attached we are to certainty.
Some of us, of course, are very attached to certainty. Preferably written down, agreed by everyone and possibly laminated.
But this idea does not only apply to the harder parts of us.
Difficult circumstances can also bring out extraordinary courage, generosity, patience and kindness. They can show us resilience we did not know we had and make our values clearer because suddenly we are being asked to live them rather than simply talk about them.
So I am not suggesting that difficult circumstances only reveal fear or insecurity, nor am I suggesting that people do not genuinely change as a result of what happens to them. Of course they do. Loss changes us. Love changes us. Trauma changes us. Success changes us.
But I still think there are times when circumstances do not create something entirely new. They simply make an existing pattern much easier to see.
Maybe life changes the volume more often than it changes the song.
The same argument in different clothes
One of the things I find fascinating is how the same deeper issue can keep appearing in completely different situations.
A couple might argue about money one week, work the next, the children the week after that, and then later about where to live or whether to take a particular risk in the business.
On the surface, these look like separate arguments.
But underneath, the same questions may keep appearing.
Do I feel safe? Do I have a voice? Can I trust you? Am I being heard? Do I matter here? What happens if this goes wrong?
Once you begin noticing this, some disagreements start to look very different. The subject may have changed, but the deeper concern has not.
The argument has simply changed clothes.
That does not mean the practical issue no longer matters. It means that unless the deeper concern is understood, resolving one practical issue may simply cause the same tension to reappear somewhere else.
The thing underneath the thing
I have become increasingly interested in what I think of as the thing underneath the thing.
The argument about money may really be about safety. The disagreement about growth may be about fear of standing still. The desire to control everything may be a way of trying to manage uncertainty. The frustration about not being included may really be about wanting to feel valued. The relentless drive to achieve may, in part, be an attempt to prove something to ourselves or somebody else.
That does not mean the visible issue is imaginary.
Sometimes the problem really is the problem.
If there is not enough money, that matters. If someone is working seventy hours a week, that matters. If a relationship is unsafe, the circumstances themselves matter enormously.
It would be far too simplistic to tell someone that the external problem is not real and that the only thing they need to work on is themselves.
I think both things can be true at the same time. There can be a genuine problem in the world around us, and there can also be an internal response to that problem that is shaped by our own history, fears, beliefs and expectations.
Solving one does not automatically solve the other.
So perhaps the more useful question is not, “Is this an external problem or an internal problem?”
Maybe it is, “What is actually happening around us, and what is it bringing up inside us?”
What are we asking the outside world to do for us?
This is where the idea becomes a little more uncomfortable.
What are we asking money, success, recognition or achievement to do for us?
Are we asking money to make us feel safe?
Are we asking success to make us feel worthwhile?
Are we asking recognition to make us feel important?
Are we asking control to make us feel secure?
Are we asking freedom to make us feel peaceful?
There is nothing wrong with wanting any of those things. I enjoy achieving things as much as anyone, and there are few things more satisfying than reaching a goal and then, with impressive efficiency, inventing another one.
But I think there is an important difference between enjoying achievement and asking achievement to fix something inside us.
If we do not understand that distinction, we may eventually get exactly what we thought we wanted and still wonder why we do not feel how we expected to feel.
That does not make the achievement meaningless. It simply means we may have asked it to do a job it was never capable of doing.
A different kind of conversation
Perhaps one of the most useful things we can do is become curious about what sits underneath our own reactions.
Why does this particular situation bother me so much? What am I afraid might happen? What does this represent to me? What am I trying to protect? What am I trying to prove? What do I actually need here?
Those questions are not always comfortable, but they can take us somewhere much more useful than simply debating the surface issue.
It is certainly easier to argue about the spreadsheet. Spreadsheets, after all, rarely ask awkward questions about your childhood.
But sometimes the spreadsheet is not really the point.
Sometimes the money, the business decision, the job, the argument or the uncertainty is simply the place where something deeper becomes visible.
And perhaps that is part of what alignment really asks of us: not to ignore the external problem and not to turn everything into an internal one, but to become willing to look at both.
What is happening around us, and what is it stirring up within us?
Because sometimes life does not create the fear, the ambition, the generosity or the need for control.
Sometimes it simply hands them a bigger microphone.
