Ask the Author: An Exclusive Q&A with Tom Rosshirt

Dear Reader,

The responses I write below are drawn from the same central idea, which I believe is a useful lens for making sense of our lives. I’d like to explain that idea first: 

Chapter one of Chasing Peace is titled “The Self-Image Model of Happiness.” This approach to happiness is how we all start out. As children, we do some things that make us feel good, and we start telling ourselves, “I’m someone who does these things.” And we do some things that make us feel bad, and we start telling ourselves, “I’m not a person who does those things.”   

Before we know what we’re doing, we’ve tied our search for happiness to a story of who we are. We get high when others tell our story back to us, and we get hurt when they don’t. So, we’ve handed our happiness over to the opinions of others.  But here’s the key point: We get hurt when people and events contradict our story—not because they’re creating fresh pain for us, but because they’re unleashing the pain that was always there—the pain we created our story to avoid. 

We create a positive story to push away fear, anger, hatred, guilt, shame, and envy. But the pain trickles out when the story starts to crack. This can be a good thing – because if we organize our lives to avoid the feelings we’re afraid of, we will never know peace, joy, wholeness or true happiness. Instead, we will be fighting an endless civil war—trying to promote the parts of ourselves that make us feel good and hide the parts of ourselves that make us feel bad. The only happiness that lasts comes from the peace we get when we’re unafraid of any feeling. This means that every breakdown, every loss, every painful moment is an invitation to the peace that’s on the other side of the pain, if only we’re willing—with the help of grace—to give up our story and feel the pain we created the story to avoid.

ASK THE AUTHOR WITH TOM ROSSHIRT

Kerrie, that’s a great question. Let me give two answers. First answer: Nothing. I would give no advice to my 30-year-old self. He wouldn’t have listened. His story was working for him. When our story is working, we think we have it all figured out. We’re listening to no one, and giving advice to everyone. That was me, and I’m sure you’re glad you didn’t know me.

Second answer: I would have said, “Watch what’s happening when you’re suffering.” I would try to get him to see that his suffering comes from the difference between what’s happening and what his story says should be happening. If he drops the story, he loses the suffering. If I’d told him this, he would have growled, “I KNOW that already!” But he didn’t. 

Laureen, I know the feeling! Ultimately, I’ve found I can’t tune into peace by tuning out politics—because I can’t get peaceful if I’m running from the feelings that politics stirs up in me. 

I find it helpful to read about politics just enough to start getting angry and then withdraw and take stock of my mind. If I’m patient, I usually find that I’m suffering because of a hateful thought in my head. And I nurse the hateful thought by telling myself the story of someone ruining my dream or insulting my self-image. The core thought is “Those people are awful. This should NOT be happening!”

So is there a method that can help me loosen my grip on that story? Or, going deeper, is there a feeling that I’m refusing to feel, that if I were able to feel it, would begin to dissolve the hatred that drives my story? The greatest harm that comes to us from our “political opponents” is that we obsess over their flaws and lose sight of our own—which is backward, because we can do almost nothing to remove their flaws, but a lot to remove ours.

Dropping the hateful thoughts doesn’t mean we don’t take action for freedom and justice. It means we do it without hatred, without a hidden motive of trying to make ourselves feel better, which in politics often means ‘hurting the other side.’ 

Alex, I get it. For me, I sometimes wonder, “What will happen to me when I stop worrying about what will happen to me?” But why do we need to know who we are? We don’t know who we were before we were born. We don’t know who we become after we die. Some of the best expressions of our gifts and talents come when we are lost in our activity, without any thought of who we are. Imagine the difference between seeing a person struggling and rushing to help them versus seeing someone struggling and helping them while saying, “I know who I am. I’m a good person doing a good deed that gives my life meaning and purpose.” Yuk. Self-conscious virtue is no virtue. Perhaps this is what Jesus had in mind when he said, “Take no thought for your life.” 

It's not that we can’t step back and plan our next move—but that’s different from giving ourselves an identity, which is often just a way to hide from fear. Byron Katie says, “I have no life of my own; my life is not my business. I’m following orders.” To me, this is what the peace of the second half of life looks like. The first half is about getting what you want. The second half is about wanting what you get. The first half is becoming who you want to be. The second half is becoming who you are. 

Toni, yes, in my view, 58 might not be a great age for creating a new narrative—because you can do something so much more exciting! Fifty-eight could be a great time for exposing the old narratives—and living into something larger.  

Here’s an idea. Go to page 53 in Chasing Peace and read “In Search of the Self-Image and Shadow.” Ask yourself the questions that help you pinpoint your story—the things you’re proud of, the things you’re ashamed of, the things you claim you are, and the things you insist you’re not. Now, ask yourself how you monitor your story. We not only create a story of ourselves; we monitor our story obsessively. So ask yourself what it is you measure to make sure you’re making progress on your story. Is it keeping to a diet, measuring your income, your weight, your net worth, your fitness exercises. Then, consider what would happen if you stopped measuring the things that reassure you that your story is on track? Then maybe stop monitoring for a week or so—just to see how you feel. Monitoring our story can make us very self-absorbed—especially when it’s part of an obsessive effort avoid the feelings we’re afraid of. The opposite of that is peace. 

Dear Mary, my heart goes out to you. It’s a shock to the body and mind to lose your life’s companion, to lose the person who loved and cared about you the most. He can never be replaced. Human beings, thank God, are very generous in reaching out to those who’ve lost a loved one, so first of all, accept every bit of kindness and sympathy your family and friends offer you. It’s soothing, and it’s healing.  

Next, don’t worry about moving forward. Don’t worry about creating a new life.  This is your new life. Stay where you are. Make a date with the sadness. Feel it. Welcome your sadness as a sign of your love for your husband. Sadness—like sympathy—has come for a time to soothe you. It honors your husband and your loss. But you won’t need it forever. At some point, it will be time to giggle again. And this doesn’t mean you ever have to let your husband go. He will always be in your mind and heart. But you will let go of the story that he shouldn’t have died. After a period of saying a strong NO, you may start to whisper a soft ‘yes.’ And then your heart opens to the world. This is your new life. 

Donna, I think we all have a higher power that’s guiding our practice from above. Even the dead ends and detours have a purpose. When I try to make sense of my path by looking back, I see that everything I did, in one way or another, is related to the art of reducing fear. Fear is one of the greatest causes of suffering in the world and reducing fear is one of the greatest sources of healing—whether physical emotional or spiritual.  

When I was in my 50s, I had a stress-based illness that sidelined me from my life. I traced it to certain triggers in my environment—mold, chemical smells, certain foods. I tried to remove all triggers, but I didn’t get better. So I moved away from my home to a very clean new apartment. But there was one huge flaw in my plan. When I moved to the new apartment, I was taking my fear with me. I thought I was moving away from danger, but actually, I was running away from fear, and running from fear increases our fear, and fear was the number one cause of my illness. My limbic system was on fire. My brain was seeing danger everywhere – and that made my body ill.

Luckily, I met a person who pointed me toward a new practice. Instead of running from the fear, I began facing my triggers in small doses and retraining my response. All the methods I’ve used since then have focused on this—practices and exercises that reduce fear.

The critical point is to find a teacher or a practice that can guide us in feeling the feelings we’ve been running from. It could be guilt, it could be sadness, it could be anger, it could be shame, it could be fear—but refusing to feel that feeling, and organizing our lives to avoid the feelings we’re afraid of, is the number one way we sabotage our own peace.