It [choosing] requires knowing how what happened to us influences the choices we made and continue to make. Again and again I ask my clients, ‘How are you complicit in creating the conditions of your lives that you say you don’t want?

What would Obama do?’ we took to asking each other in moments when his heart flagged. How do you handle yourself on the way out, regardless of whether you were given the respect you deserved?

How am I complicit in creating the conditions I say I don’t want?

There’s only one way we can know if our disowned selves are calling the shots. We must take the radical step of inquiring into our selves, seeking to see ourselves with clarity, grace, compassion, and a fierce commitment to cut through our own bullshit. We open ourselves up to ways we’ve been complicit in creating the conditions we say we don’t want.

And, more telling, when does our typical pattern of equanimity get so quickly and readily disturbed?