We often think of giving as something intentional—gifts, advice, encouragement, or support. But we are always giving something, whether we intend to or not. Along with our words and actions, we give our emotional state, our assumptions, our fears, and our way of seeing the world to the people around us. What fills us tends to overflow.
When we have cultivated patience, we are more able to offer patience. When we have developed compassion, we are more able to respond with compassion. If we lack peace, it is difficult to share peace with others. If we have little love for ourselves or those around us, it is hard to give that. We give what we possess, and we struggle to give what we do not possess.
The same is true of our darker emotions. We give our anxiety, our frustration, our anger, our insecurity, and our fear to those around us. We may try to hide these things, and we may not even recognize that they are present. Yet what fills us tends to overflow. When we are consumed by anxiety, we do not need to announce that we are anxious for others to feel unsettled. When we carry resentment, we do not need to explain it for it to affect our relationships. People respond not only to what we say, but to the emotional state from which those words emerge.
Because of this, every day we try to manage what we give. We smile when we are angry, reassure others when we are afraid, and project confidence when we are uncertain. This is not inherently a problem. We do not need to express every frustration we feel, and not every emotion needs to become an action. A physician who feels overwhelmed still needs to provide reassurance. A parent who is exhausted still needs to provide safety. A leader who feels uncertain still needs to provide direction.
The problem arises when performance becomes our primary strategy for interacting with the world. Much of modern self-improvement focuses on this external layer. We learn communication strategies, difficult conversation frameworks, and techniques for appearing confident, calm, and empathetic. These skills matter, but they operate downstream. They change what overflows without changing what fills us.
We can say the right words while carrying resentment, offer reassurance while feeling panic, and project confidence while internally feeling uncertain. The words may be correct, but the underlying message often still comes through. All the trappings of confidence may be present, but we intuitively recognize when confidence is being performed rather than possessed.
This creates a frustrating experience. We follow the communication strategy, choose the careful wording, and respond exactly as we have been taught, yet the interaction still feels strained. The reason is that people do not simply experience our behavior. They experience the person behind the behavior.
This is also one reason I struggle with how authenticity is often discussed. Authenticity is sometimes treated as though it means expressing whatever we happen to be feeling in the moment. If I am angry, authenticity means showing anger. If I am anxious, authenticity means sharing anxiety. But what if we view ourselves as a fearful, resentment-filled, greedy, or judgmental person? If authenticity simply means expressing whatever is inside us, then we may be rightly reluctant to give them free expression.
But authenticity does not require us to hide behind a polished exterior. We do not have to express every emotion exactly as we experience it– we can express our relationship to that feeling. Instead of spilling our resentment onto another person, we can share that we are struggling with resentment. A spouse may need to know that we are struggling. A friend may need to hear that we are afraid. It Authenticity that allows us to grow and feel truer to ourselves is not the unfiltered expression of whatever we feel. It is the honest sharing of our experience in a way that invites connection rather than asking others to carry our emotions for us.
There is a significant psychological cost to constantly managing the gap between who we are and who we want to appear to be. It is exhausting to live as though every interaction requires monitoring ourselves, choosing exactly the right words, suppressing the wrong reactions, and trying to control what leaks through. It contributes to burnout, disaffection, and a sense of disconnection from ourselves. We become exhausted not simply by the work itself, but by constantly maintaining the distance between our inner experience and our outward presentation.
Imagine two people who encounter the same frustrating situation. One is suppressing anger, consciously controlling their facial expression, monitoring their tone, and choosing not to say what they are thinking. The other genuinely is not angry. From the outside, they look almost identical. Both speak respectfully, remain composed, and respond appropriately. Internally, however, the experience is completely different. One is fighting against something inside themselves. The other is acting from what is already there. This is the difference between performance and becoming.
I think about this often when caring for families whose child has just been diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes. They rarely remember every detail of the education we provide that first day. The insulin doses can be looked up, carbohydrate ratios adjusted, and technical details reviewed later. What many families remember is whether the people around them seemed calm. If we communicate, even subtly, "This is overwhelming, but it is manageable, and we will figure this out together," they often borrow that confidence. If we communicate panic, urgency, or hopelessness, they borrow that instead. If we communicate judgement on blood sugars, that lesson is absorbed. If blood sugars are viewed just as data for decision-making, that is also learned.
Performance has its place. Much of growth begins with acting before something feels natural. We often have to behave like the person we want to become before we fully become that person. But performance cannot be the destination. The goal is not to become better actors. It is to become the kind of people who need to act less often. We are not trying to seem less judgemental and more accepting– we are trying to actually judge less and accept more.
Practice matters, but so does knowing what we are practicing. If we want to become more patient, the first question is often not, "How do I act more patiently?" It is, "What keeps me from being patient?" Am I exhausted? Afraid? Rushed? Protecting my ego? The work is often less about manufacturing patience than removing the obstacles to it. As fear, insecurity, and self-protection loosen their grip, patience, generosity, and compassion emerge with less effort.
Every day, we are giving something to the people around us. The question is not whether we are giving, but what we have been cultivating that inevitably overflows into the lives of others. We spend enormous effort trying to polish what comes out of us. The deeper work is tending to what fills us, because sooner or later, whatever fills us becomes what we have to give.
Love,
Doc
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