Near the end of the coaching session, after the woman has tasted genuine presence, she asks the inevitable question: “How do I stop fixing people?” Joe’s response: “That’s the question that leads to failure. It lets you stay in the loop.”
The question “how do I stop” is itself a form of fixing — it’s trying to do something about the pattern, which is the very pattern she’s trying to escape. She recognizes it immediately: “I am in a doom loop 100%.”
“The question is how do you be with people? And it’s the exact opposite of a doing. It is an undoing.”
Joe reframes the entire orientation. Being present isn’t something you do — it’s what remains when you stop doing. The mind’s job, when it shows up intellectually, is to deconstruct itself: “Every thought — how is that not true? How is that not true?” — until you’re simply here. Trying to “carry” the presence or “make it last” are themselves forms of doing that collapse the very state they’re trying to preserve.
This mirrors a fundamental paradox in all contemplative traditions: the effort to achieve effortlessness defeats itself. The only way through is to notice the effort and let it dissolve.
Related Concepts
- Accomplishment is undoing, not doing
- Compulsive fixing avoids being present
- Awareness changes what shoulds cannot
- The feeling that everything I touch fails drives compulsive fixing
- The fixing mindset perpetuates the very stuckness it tries to solve
- Feeling your essential nature dissolves avoidance behaviors
- You can’t stop being present