This isn’t working - A new way to see

Isn’t it interesting how some people can easily declare, “This isn’t working,” while others keep pushing, adjusting, and trying harder—sometimes at great personal cost—just to make things work?

What’s your default when things aren’t working?
 Do you respond differently at work than you do at home?

A world of understanding opened up for me when I read The Road Less Traveled by the late American psychiatrist M. Scott Peck. In it, he offers a brilliant distinction between two types of people based on how they relate to responsibility:

Neurotics take on too much responsibility for a problem.
 People with character disorders take on too little.

He summarises it perfectly: “Neurotics make themselves miserable; those with character disorders make everyone else miserable.”

This sounds familiar, doesn’t it!

Don’t Worry - This Isn’t About Blame

My intention isn’t to make anyone miserable by encouraging you to say, “This isn’t working.”

• If you tend toward the neurotic side, this isn’t an invitation to blame yourself for everything. In fact, it might help to hold things more lightly.

• If you lean toward the character disorder side, it’s not just about pointing fingers and telling others they’re the problem.

No matter where we fall on this spectrum, here’s the core idea:

The breakdown/issue isn’t “out there.” It lives in us.

That doesn’t mean we are the problem.
 It means the way we interpret, hold, and embody a situation shapes our experience of it.

Seeing the Breakdown Differently

We each carry a unique internal lens - shaped by our thoughts, emotions, and bodily states - that affects how we perceive and respond to challenges. This is the heart of ontological coaching.

As Alan Sieler puts it: “The event per se is not the breakdown; rather, it is how the event is ‘held’ by an observer that constitutes the breakdown.”

In other words: it’s not just what happens—it’s how we view it that creates the experience of “this isn’t working.”

In my previous blog, I shared that we influence any system we are part of by shifting our own way of being first. This is why the first—and often most important—conversation we have about a breakdown is a reflective one with ourselves. 

Questions to Explore When Things Aren’t Working

Here are some helpful questions you could use when you sense a breakdown:

• Why is this a breakdown/issue for me?

• What’s missing in this situation that matters to me?

• What value or priority is being overlooked?

• What assumptions am I making - about myself, others, or the situation?

• Are these assumptions helping or hindering me?

• What evidence do I have that supports or challenges them?

• What part am I responsible for?

• What action feels right from here?

The goal isn’t to fix everything overnight—it’s to become aware of what’s happening within us. When we take appropriate responsibility for our way of being and how we relate to the situation, we create space for real, lasting change.

Until next time,  Carine.

Note:
The quote by M. Scott Peck is from The Road Less Traveled: A New Psychology of Love, Traditional Values and Spiritual Growth (1978).

The quote by Alan Sieler is from Coaching to the Human Soul: Ontological Coaching and Deep Change Volume 1 (2003).