When a person does not produce in the way we believe they should, we often call them incompetent.

As the parent of children with significant support needs I had to find the balance between roaring and/or attacking like a lion or collapsing like a jellyfish when my children’s needs were met with what I considered to be disdain at worst or nonchalance at best. And this is often the reality for parents such as us.

Neither extreme was effective, and neither was a reflection of either my intentions or who I wanted to be or how I wanted to be treated

Incompetence and insufficiency are not ideas that began with us, and yet they are ideas that begin with us.

Labelling people this way did not come from our wholeness or our vitality as individuals and as communities. This began in our defensiveness as somewhere along the way doing a lot, in our minds, became tied to survival and success.

With production as survival at the forefront of our minds we began to devalue persons who did not produce as expected, and chose the words incompetent and insufficient as the label to define them. Those labels carry heavy judgment.

What would change if instead of labeling others incompetent or insufficient we would look at the person, at their capacity, and ask: how can I support you to meet this goal?

What I have learned is that when we slow down to see the person instead of what they are producing, we have the opportunity to help that person repair whatever affects their capacity to meet a particular goal. We see more of how we can work together and less of what is not being done.

And when we become connected to a person, in an attempt to share our strengths with them, or to sit with them and work out a way forward to produce together what we expected them to produce alone, life becomes so much less stressful.

We begin to use our energy to flow instead of using our energy to judge.

And what’s even better is that our judgment no longer rebounds on us, and we cease to carry the stressful weight of working alone to prove ourselves to be capable.

Because how can we face ourselves if we treat ourselves the way we treat others when we deem them to be incompetent and insufficient?

Would we thrive more when there is the expectation of continuous mutual cooperation?

There is that word mutual again. It seems to be a core part of success and peace.

It seems that working together with mutual respect and dignity creates more opportunities for the development of ideas that make life more profitable and enjoyable than we could ever ask, dream, or imagine.