In case you are unsure if someone is genuinely unable to negotiate, here is the empathetic review of the three cases in which it might be so:

A circumstantial inability may be because you currently have duty of care. Trying to negotiate with a 5 year old to put on fresh long johns because it’s winter and he just peed himself, is a bad idea. Just help the kid out.

A physical inability may be that someone is heavily sedated after a forearm fracture but is adamant he can ride down on the bike himself because he “...totally can ride a unicycle”. Also, no point in negotiating with him, just hide the damn bike.

An emotional inability to negotiate may occur when we are in the midst of emotional upheaval. When tragedy or chaos hits, and we get engulfed in emotional pain. Our horizon of the future must become much smaller to continue forward. Sometimes even as small as just the next minute. Being pushed into a negotiation on the broader strokes of the future in that state, feels like a threat to one’s very existential safety.

Now you may argue, in the case of my potential-ist ex, that imagining himself in a negotiation with me about our future, put him slap-bang in the middle of the emotional inability category, because maybe it triggered some core wound he is terrorized by.

True. The answer to someone who cannot negotiate for air because they are suffocating, is generosity and grace. However, if the situation isn’t acute anymore, if it isn’t an emergency anymore but a chronic ailment, if a deadline was set and missed, we must attempt confrontation with the monstrous shadow.

Because letting yourself be terrorized, may make you the terrorist for others.

As a young woman I was often told not to be so impatient, not to fight, not to cry at the Greenpeace commercials about the whales getting hurt, to just shut up and do like smarter people do, not to rage against my Mum’s mental health issues, and to generally “be nicer, calmer and not so sensitive”.

I had night terrors (still do sometimes) of being either choked into silence, or ignored into oblivion. My insides felt like death by ignorance. Worse than death actually, because to die, you need to have existed first. I sometimes felt like I was floating in a pitch black void, with even the void denying my presence. The void was both outside and around me, as well as inside me. And it was infinite. I tried to claw my way out of the void and into existence by all means. Overdelivering on both good-ness and anarchy, underdelivering on existential duties like sleep and kindness towards others and myself. Drinking, partying, changing jobs, men, location - all at lightning speed.

I knew if I stopped and looked at the void I would die. It wasn’t just insurmountably hard or scary, it was an existential threat. So I kept clawing for sweet relief, and I hurt people.

My sister and brother, some friends who aren’t anymore, and I’m sure there are a few broken hearts along the trail I have unironically forgotten.

However, one of the many, many attempts at salvation eventually hooked the tiniest latch, and it was a combination of preparation, timing, circumstance, and crucially, the right therapist, who helped me look at the void. Together.

I’m still fast, I still like to party and I still change location a lot, but the void and I are best buds these days. His name is Sandro and we hang out sometimes.

So even in the worst of times, the worst attempt at solution, the most meager push for understanding, the weakest effort of helping yourself is more courageous than the cowardice of neglect.

Emotional inability to negotiate ALWAYS hinges on the unable person wanting to help themselves. They may not make it on time, by the book or alone, but if they’re willing, they’ll get there.

This free will is the core of our existence. Dante Alighieri, who wrote the ‘Inferno’, knew it, the Bible knows it, modern clinical psychology knows it, most spiritual practices preach it, heck, even Taylor Swift sings about it.

So if you see someone emotionally unable, but trying - give them grace and negotiate gently. If they're emotionally unable and blocked - step away…softly.

Which brings me to one additional, particularly notorious player it is futile to negotiate with: Martyrs.

↠ ↠ ↠ Ok cool. What about martyrs?

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“I know I should work on these things, and I will, because I love you, but I just can’t yet.”

I have an ex, who was insistent that the reason our relationship was not working was because of my emotional instability, whilst also admitting that he was too avoidant and clearly had some deep-seated issues (specifically with his mother). Whilst I threw myself into the problem, trying to fix myself and coming to the unfortunate yet inevitable conclusion, that yes, it must all be my fault, he told me that even though we “suffered some unfortunate incidents” (inflicted by me) during our relationship, it reasonably and realistically cannot be accurate that it is all my fault, and that he knows he should be doing the work on his end, yet he just doesn’t want to...yet.

When I was in kindergarten I would spend my summer afternoons standing in the garden watering the rocks. I had seen my mum water the flowers and they’d grow big and beautiful, so I figured if I ever wanted my very own mountain in the backyard, there was only one way. I had to water the rocks.

Banking on someone’s potential instead of believing what they show you is like watering a rock. Admirable, and kinda cute, but heartbreakingly futile.

Behaviour is a language. If someone says they care, but acts like they don’t, even if they themselves truly believe both, over time, people are how they act, not who they say they are.

The “unfortunate incident” was me losing my shit and eventually hyperventilating into a full blown panic attack landing myself in an ambulance while out in the city. My mum had passed away a few weeks prior in an emotionally quite violent way, I had severe abandonment issues (oddly unrelated to my mother’s death) and he had just told me that he was considering leaving me, because I was not the fun, joyous outgoing person I was when we first met. Again, my mum had just died.

After many months of blaming mostly myself and trying to negotiate a new deal between us, I failed miserably. In the end, I was stuck with his things in my apartment because he had moved to Canada and simply left what he didn’t want in his new life. Myself included.

The emotional warfare that ensued is another story, but one of the things that pissed me off the most, was that I had to literally - take out his garbage for him. And if you happen to live in Europe you know how retentively anal our recycling system is, so it took weeks on end.

Refusing to negotiate implies that you would be able to, if you wanted to. It’s a particularly manipulative version of stonewalling, one that exploits the other party’s trust in future potential. It’s quite cruel really.

Giving hope for a future negotiation could mean that you will be negotiated with at some point down the line, but still should be given a severely limited life span. In my experience, one moon cycle. One month. One season. One switching of the tides. Whatever feels natural to you. Any longer than that, and you are not in a negotiation, you are in a stalemate, usually enabling weaponized learned helplessness.

There are as many variations of these two core statements (“I know I should”, “I can’t yet”) as there are people. Even though it is admirable to believe in someone, we have to be super careful not to let perceived potential overrule required action.

The tipping point is this:

If we don’t negotiate...will you be left with someone else’s shit to clean up?

Or, if it’s you who’s avoiding the negotiation, will they be left picking up your slack?

↠ ↠ ↠ I’m all action over potential. What now?

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Have you ever had that feeling that it won’t matter what you say or show someone, it won’t make a difference? Good or bad?

Most likely, it’s because you are already sitting at the negotiation table, wants - needs - considerations - solutions - ideas all laid out, raring to go, maybe even excited to learn something new about or from the other party(ies), but you forgot to check whether they’d even show up. You may be so overwhelmed by the chaos of your wants, that you just assumed everyone necessary for the negotiations would be there. And when you look up from your battle plan, you notice, they’re not only not at the table with you, they’re not even in the room with you.

So you panic a little, get up, start looking around for them, maybe they’re behind that big plant in the corner? Maybe they’re just getting a coffee and prepping their end of the negotiation and they forgot the meeting time? Maybe they’re held up in a different meeting?

You can’t find them, so you try and re-schedule, giving them the benefit of the doubt, but after the third reschedule you suspect they are actively avoiding you, so you check by the water cooler, and there they are...happily chatting away with someone else, leaving you and your strategy papers looking like fools.

If you’re prone to self-doubt, you may start blaming yourself, if you’re more disagreeable you may get angry, there are as many reactions both natural and learned as humans under the sun, but the stark truth is this:

Your negotiation partner didn’t show up, because there is no version of their future in which they find it necessary to negotiate with you.

Your strategy papers and efforts left undealt with, are now the manifestation of their core indifference or very low priority to the matter at hand. One time, I showed up to a job interview with a hand drawn design board and several original pitch papers for TV shows. I was overprepared because I thought I was interviewing for my dream job. The interviewer showed up 20 minutes late, only to comment that I was blonder than he expected, and laughed at my board. I was devastated. A month later, his golf partner was hired for the position. The cliché of it all was so loud it had circled back in on itself and I became the caricature of a mid twenties go-getter whose naivety became the exact reason she couldn’t be promoted elsewhere in the company.

I know that’s shitty news and can be heartbreaking, but despair not, because there is respite in being the “not cared about” one. The logic of someone not caring is so ironic, it will make your however flawed attempt at showing up, triumphant:

The mere statement of not showing up at the negotiation table makes the stater irrelevant to you. If the thing you care about doesn’t matter to them, then the person saying or acting like it doesn’t matter also doesn’t have to matter to you anymore.

Even if they still do, they don’t have to. Consider the breathing space for your soul here. Imagine what it feels like if someone doesn’t have to matter to you.

They can, and maybe you let them matter to you forever, but you can go on caring as intensely and deeply about whatever you want, as they fall into the very oblivion they chose in the first place. Most casual nihilists aren’t conceived by careful philosophical contemplation anyway. Most are just contemptuous cowards.

Imagine the guts it would take to actually listen to a younger employee, break with the cronyism tradition and change the system. It’s been twenty years since that failed interview, and those bosses have long been replaced by overzealous tech bros. I still care deeply about movies — I went on to make plenty of them professionally — but I don’t care anymore if anyone hires me to do it. Turns out, one can just tell stories without anyone asking.

↠ ↠ ↠ I’m no coward. What now?

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We’ve established that being able to negotiate is a luxury. Now we look at the absolute beauty of approaching our wants via a negotiation process. Negotiation has one absolute advantage over expectancy, demand or hope:

You don’t need established trust to negotiate. You can open a negotiation with anyone, instantly — by assuming they have full agency until they show or tell you otherwise.

However, we may be stumbling through our lives along a sliding scale of awareness - of the deals we are working. If you’ve gone to your car dealership to look at that minivan you swore you’d never buy, you’ll be painfully aware of the negotiation you’re about to enter. A long-standing friend blindsiding you by commenting they’ve always really enjoyed watching the shit show that is your life, may sound like a friendly in-joke rather than a negotiation, but believe-you-me, you’re either gonna renegotiate the terms and conditions of your friendship, or you’ll end up in an emotional Mexican standoff.

So, the more conscious we are of our negotiations, the more effectively we can turn that life stumble into a purposeful walk, a gruelling but do-able marathon, or even a decisive sprint.

Talking to our friends, partners and pets about our woes, therapy, writing diaries, making lists...any form of articulating what we are dealing with, is essentially a negotiation not just with others, but more importantly, with versions of our own, and collective, future. And this can be done anywhere, with anyone, immediately, and with no holds barred.

So, whenever you feel despondent, know this:

The feeling of hopelessness is proof that you are actively negotiating with your future.

If you didn’t imagine your future self, you could not come to a conclusion of hopelessness. The very feeling of hopelessness is, paradoxically, a manifestation of engagement with life.

Engagement with your experience, whether hopeful or hopeless, is all that is asked of us by the gift of consciousness. Thus, if you feel hopeless, worry not, for it is simply proof that you care.

The only feeling and behavior you should worry about when heading into a negotiation with yourself, or trying to sit down at an actual or metaphorical negotiation table with someone else, is indifference. Because the opposite of love is not hate. It’s indifference.

To negotiate is to care. To show up. To show up for life.

↠ ↠ ↠ Ok cool. I care. What now?

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A negotiation is reserved for two parties, both of equal autonomy in possession of something the other party wants. A classic trade. Product for money, commodities between sovereign nations, more responsibilities for increased wages, a farmer wanting fresh pastures for her goats and a landowner wanting clearing of the brambles before the frost.

We can negotiate well when both parties want, or both parties need something. If one wants and the other needs, it is not a negotiation, it is a power struggle.

Don’t let the “bootstrap” brigade tell you otherwise. Being in an objectively weaker position doesn’t make one helpless. It just means we have to be aware that negotiation is indeed a luxury we sometimes can’t afford yet.

Sometimes you need to take any job so you can make rent the following month, and sometimes you’ll make desperate attempts at emotional contortion to avoid the abandonment by a partner...in those cases you are in a fight. Not a negotiation. Your nervous system detects the imbalance of power and puts you on high alert, a state in which we are notorious for making bad decisions.

We can sustain this imbalance short term, even attempt to fake away our need and pretend it’s only a want to make false progress in a saddening caricature of a negotiation, but any results will soon implode if pressured by our truths. The strategy to “fake it, ‘til we make it” is too fragile to withstand whatever monster (and ultimately treasure) is hiding behind our greatest fears.

Let me give you an example. I once literally begged someone, on my knees and all, not to leave me. He had re-triggered my abandonment trauma. It would have been more humane to just leave, instead of threatening me with the possibility of it all the time. Slowly but surely the constant threat put me in survival mode. Like a lobster being boiled alive.

I wouldn’t touch that man with a ten foot prong now. Hell, just one year later someone mentioned his name and I genuinely didn’t know who they were referring to. I was too busy creating a new life. At the time though, I was humiliated and if he had wanted to, I would have negotiated away my dignity, my apartment and possibly my whole career.

If the fear of abandonment by others drives us to abandon ourselves, we will still have been abandoned.

If the fear of failure drives us not to take a job when we need it, we will still have failed.

When reality offers such sharp edges, all the mindset coaches of the internet, the clever books and Pinterest boards seem laughable at best, and are fodder for more self-flagellation at worst. Not only will your mind be racing with the very real mental and physical shit-show vortex that comes from fearing for your existential needs (shelter, food, sleep, reciprocal love, social inclusion), you are now adding the pressure of apparently only needing the right “mindset” to get on the road to success. Additionally, you may blame yourself for evidently not having had it so far, otherwise you wouldn’t be in this position in the first place, and on and on and on.

It’s like staring down the barrel of a gun but because you’re a self-reflecting adult and love a good self-criticism, you’ve decided to hold an additional gun to your head.

If you saw someone else do this, wouldn’t your heart break for them? Wouldn’t you step in, and tell them to go easy now, and fix one problem at a time? You must do the same for yourself.

Emergency situations of the nervous system are no place for crucifying yourself for mistakes made, nor pre-judging yourself for a future not already perfectly curated.

To pretend otherwise, or for someone to claim your only problem is an attitude problem, is ignorant, dismissive, and blind to their privileged resources. So put the metaphorical gun away and deal with the barrel you’re staring down, first. If you can do that, you already have the positive, can-do mindset you need.

You can, and probably should, open the box of self-analysis later. But for now, park it.

Simply work the problem.

Humans can accomplish monumental tasks under pressure, but to do so, we must focus. One cannot negotiate for air, whilst under water. They must either be given it, or come up for it, first.

That’s important to recognize, especially if you’re the one in the more powerful position. This doesn’t mean you cannot want something from someone who simultaneously needs something from you, but it should remind you that now is the time when a little generosity goes a long way.

↠ ↠ ↠ Ok cool. I have the luxury to negotiate. What now?

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^{My big sister with our Dad.}

When I was 10 my Dad gave me a birthday card that read: “Starting now, you are responsible for your own face.” Now, that I made double digits, he explained that I was old enough to understand concepts such as emotion and reason, and that with understanding came both the freedom and responsibility of choice.

From now on, I could choose how I would face the world, and those choices would be etched into my actual face over time.

Who I would be in old age started now.

I was ten, so old age felt like, I don’t know,....thirty? But I got the gist of it. Dad had started teaching me about agency. He would also always say: “The worst thing is not having tried it”, reinforcing my zest for adventure. I live by those two beacons of guidance to this day:

Everyone is responsible for their own face.

The worst thing is not having tried it.

Fast forward twenty-three years and there I was, contemplating driving my car into a tree, so I could set myself free. I’d had a good day, an animal, family and friends to take care of, but at that moment, I was genuinely convinced the tree would be the best solution for everyone. Except my car, but she’d understand.

I won’t tell you how I got there. That part is mine. What I can tell you is how I got out of the proverbial car of my life and into a life that feels truly worth living, in the hopes it may help someone else.

Another self-help book, you wonder? What good can she tell me that’s not already written in a thousand texts, taught in readily available lectures, spoken in many more podcasts, and summarized in ever more music, poetry, art, and maybe...pottery? I agree. I am also not sure I’ll be of any help.

But I know this is the handbook to life I’d give to my children if I had any.

The handbook I would have needed when trauma annihilated my becoming of a Self, grief shocked me, relationships crushed me, work burnt through me, adventure saved me and beauty and love overwhelmed me. For all the times I wish I’d known learning to love and accept myself would start from the outside - in, brought on by the pure love of an animal.

When I was in my darkest hours, I never had a problem finding advice. But I was so unsure of myself I trusted everyone and believed nothing.

In the fog of self-help...how do we know which advice to follow?

I yearned for practical, step by step, “if x - then y, if y - then z” guidance. On the day - in the middle of the storm stuff, instead of reverse engineering gratefulness and meaning after the fact.

I needed something that didn’t demand I already know who I am before I could choose.

Dad gave me a card. I’m gonna give you the book he never got the time to write. So if you want to learn HOW to choose your face, this is for you.

Thank you, Mum and Dad. I miss you every day.

There are six sections, which can be read in any order:

Who am I - on Self

Who are they - on Others

What do I want - on Decisions

How do I get what I want - on Negotiation

How do I want what I have - on Perseverance

How do I enjoy the ride - on Courage

Each full chapter does three things:

1: How to define the situation you are in - right now.

2: How to get operational — your next practical steps. Each chapter ends with a downloadable flowchart: a guide for the day itself, mid-crisis, to get your feet back on the ground.

3: Personal, tried and tested book recommendations on where to learn more, once you have the time.

“Out of Bounds” chapters come out in seasons.

Each chapter comes out in short parts.

We start in autumn with “How do I get what I want — on negotiation” — for free.

From there, each new season is for paid subscribers.