Shadow of Compromise
compromise, v. accept standards that are lower than desirable - Oxford Languages
The Shadow of Compromise belonging to the 14th Gene Key starts to ingratiate itself into our subconscious when we are children. It starts by being told by people in our lives (parents, friends, teachers, etc.) that our dreams cannot be fulfilled; that we should compromise on the dreams we have for lives in place of something safer or lucrative or whatever word was used to crush the ideas that you wanted to live your life by. This Shadow largely relates to the work we do and how we work, though it can easily seep into other parts of our lives.
“Whenever you compromise you are settling for second best, and so you can never fully enjoy what you do in life.” - Richard Rudd
The 14th Gene Key tells us that each individual has a genius that needs to be cultivated in our lives. “… Genius is a spark that needs to be fanned into action.” Everyone has a genius and it is different for each person.
The Repressive Nature of the 14th Gene Key is Impotent. This impotence arises from repeated compromising in life resulting, ultimately, in powerlessness. It is a fear of that prevents a person from standing alone and truly pursuing their unique gifts. Rudd even mentions this type of powerlessness may impact one’s sexuality. The repression of personal power by compromising your dreams in life may create an actual sexual impotence that impacts sex drive and deteriorate fertility.
The Reactive Nature of the 14th Gene Key is Enslaved. I have very mixed feelings around the appropriation of this word in this context, yet sticking to what is. The Reactive Nature drives a person to constantly prove themselves by working jobs that just are not right for them. “These people are enslaved to their need for recognition.” Even once recognition is received, it does not satiate that need because they are living an unfulfilling life and are failing to live up to their true potential in life.
How to work with the Shadow of Compromise:
The 14th Gene Key asks you to take a look at where you are compromising in your life. What jobs(s) do you work where you hate getting out of bed in the morning? What people in your life drain you, yet you continue to gift them your energy? Where do you need to set boundaries with yourself, people, your time, your energy, technology, etc.? I’m keeping the description of this shadow short because I want to focus more on working with this shadow (and all shadow to an extent) through the context of the book On Becoming a Person (OBAP) by Carl Rogers.
Rogers quotes philosopher Søren Kierkegaard “To be that self which one truly is” as the title of Chapter 9 of his book. It also makes me think of the Shakespeare quote “to thine own self be true.” While some people get into what the goal or purpose in life is by stating certain tasks or choices an individual makes, Rogers uses this Kierkegaard quote as the ultimate point of our purpose in life. Before I break down the different aspects of what Rogers defines as the trends toward being your true self, I want to note that this will look different for every person. As James-Olivia Chu says “Difference holds possibility.”
What becoming your true self may look like:
- Away from Façades: I call this Honoring Your No, but Rogers refers to this as moving away from that which you are not. These are the proverbial masks that we may put on in order to be or feel accepted by those around us. As an introvert, it may look like embracing your introverted traits instead of putting on a mask of extroversion to get through a party or gathering. This usually may also look like moving towards being a part of yourself that you believe is too awful to be seen.
- Away from the Oughts: I call this “shoulding.” Rogers points towards the labels of good and bad for the examples use in OBAP. As children we are taught what it means to be “good.” In attachment theory, it is said that once we find out from our parents or adults in our life what it takes be accepted or loved, in other words what is good, we internalize that as a part of our personalities. If being good looks like x and x means positive reinforcement or receiving love, then I become x. If being aware of someone’s demands and expectations is rewarded, then I should (or ought to) also be a person that meets everyone’s demands and expectations. The same can be said for bad. Some people end up feeling like they are bad or that they ought to be (or should be) ashamed of themselves for their behavior. So, moving away from “oughts” may look like moving away from always trying to be good or, even, as Rogers’ states “…abandoning the concept of himself as shameful or bad.”
- Away from Meeting Expectations: This one feels especially aligned to the Shadow of Compromise: “moving away from what the culture expects them to be.” For introverts this looks like becoming more extroverted, so that you’ll fit in. In the business world, it may look like trying to be more masculine. Both Rogers and Rudd link education to creating expectations for individuals to become members of a group and accepted. So instead of homogenizing ourselves to “fit” into whatever boxes a culture sets out for us, becoming your true self looks like moving away from the comfort of conformity and towards whatever way you wish to be.
- Away from Pleasing Others: “They do not wish to mould themselves and their behavior into a form which would be merely pleasing to others. They do not, in other words, choose to be anything which is artificial, anything which is imposed, anything which is defined from without. They realize they do not value such purposes or goals, even though they may have lived by them all their lives up to this point.” See also “Away from the Oughts” above. This feels a lot like stepping away from passively living your life where your life just IS, the decisions of your past are inevitable, so instead of making different choices, you go along with it as a perceived path of least resistance. There is a saying that if you go along with something to avoid conflict, then you start a war with yourself. That conflict avoidance does not necessarily mean with someone else; it can also mean a conflict within yourself of your life and choices.
- Toward Self-Direction: Rogers notes that this is an individual moving towards autonomy and becomes responsible for themselves. In the esoteric tool of Human Design, it may look like following what lights you up or what sparks joy. Rogers does provide a slight caveat to this: “I would not want to give the impression that my clients move blithely or confidently in this direction. No indeed. Freedom to be oneself is a frighteningly responsible freedom, and an individual moves toward it cautiously, fearfully, and with almost no confidence at first.” It is also to say that moving towards being yourself is not without consequences. You may fall out with the friends and life you’ve always known. You may feel directionless for quite some time and maybe that never really eases up. One of Rogers’ clients revealed “I feel frightened, and vulnerable, and cut loose from support, but I also feel a sort of surging up or force or strength in me.”
- Toward Being Process: To put this another way, change is the only constant. There are no fixed goals or striving towards the end of something. This is a state of moving “…toward being a process of potentialities being born…” There are endless possibilities, so we look to the present and move through life as an endless state of becoming. Even baby steps are forward movement. Becoming does not provide a tangible end. There is no end to this journey. As we move through life, as we age, as we experience death, hearth break and endings, as we experience love, meeting new people and facing new beginnings, we change.
- Toward Being Complexity: We as individuals are walking contradictions. We feel contradictory feelings all at the same time. We sometimes even behave in contradictory ways. Toward Being Complexity is moving towards owning all of ourselves. All of our parts are welcome even the ones that we have previously abandoned or rejected or feared within ourselves.
- Toward Openness to Experiences: “…the individual moves toward living in an open, friendly, close relationship to his own experience.” I would like to call this Owning my Sh*t. When we shove away different aspects of ourselves or we fear our own feelings, we close ourselves off from not only ourselves, but from experiencing life. When you allow yourself to feel the feelings, even, and maybe especially, the ones you generally fear, you will find that they have less control over your life. When you experience them again, you may find that they are less potent. Rogers goes on to say: “No longer is he so fearful of what he may find. He comes to realize that his own inner reactions and experiences, the messages of his senses and his viscera, are friendly. He comes to want to be close to his inner sources of information rather than closing them off.” This openness to our inner experience moves us toward openness to our external experiences. In short, we become self-actualized. Rogers quotes Abraham Maslow: “self-actualized people have a wonderful capacity to appreciate again and again, freshly and naively, the basic goods of life with awe, pleasure, wonder, and even ecstasy, however stale these experiences may be for other people.” In case you are wondering, the ultimate goal of life coaches is to assist in the present with self-actualization.
- Toward Trust of Self: This one feels rather self-explanatory. When we start to truly become our true self, we also start to trust ourselves more. Our becoming is a stepping away from need for external validation and giving that validation to ourselves. Rogers says, “I have seen simple people become significant and creative in their own spheres, as they developed more trust of the processes going on within themselves, and have dared to feel their own feelings, live by values which they discover withing, and express themselves in their own unique ways.” No compromise about that.
- The General Direction: “… The individual moves toward being, knowingly and acceptingly, the process which he inwardly actually is.” This is you granting yourself permission to being all that you want to be and knowing that it’s actually ok to be you. “To be what he truly is, this path of life which he appears to value most highly, when he is free to move in any direction.”
When moving away Shadow of Compromise (and, quite frankly, most of the shadows that we have), we start moving toward self-acceptance and self-actualization. Society as a whole, but, more specifically, the self-help community tends to end this process there. That we are moving away from conformity. That we are moving towards an individual state of being. That it is all about the individual. All of this is true and it is far more complex than that.
I want you to recall Openness to Experiences. As we move towards our becoming our true selves and move towards self-acceptance, we also move towards the acceptance of others. We move towards allowing others to be their whole, complex selves with their own experiences. When we own our shit and honor our no, we start to understand when others do the same. Our differences are not personal or an attack. We are allowing for the experience of others to exist because their experience no longer needs to be your experience. We allow for both because all experiences are valid even if their experience is not your own.
This process does not happen easily or without bumps. The process of becoming takes practice. The more you do it, the more comfortable, or as Rudd would put it, competent you become. You cannot be rigid, stay the same, and be competent at the same time. Remember, change is the only constant. This competence does not mean that you always know what to do and you do it right. It means you are able to allow yourself the space in your becoming to always know that you are learning and growing. In coaching, we call it Beginners Mindset. The Decision Lab defines Beginners Mind as: “This state of mind is characterized by an attitude of openness and eagerness, in which a lack of preconceptions allows a person to see everything as though it is for the first time. In the beginner's mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert's there are few.” To me, our competence is in how much we are that self which we truly are. All faults, flaws, shadows, and gifts are welcome when we are competent in our true self.
Rudd refers to the enlightened level of the 14th Gene Key as Bounteousness. What better way to experience bounteousness, than to do as Maslow put it to “have a wonderful capacity to appreciate again and again, freshly and naively, the basic goods of life with awe, pleasure, wonder, and even ecstasy.”
Not sure how to work with this? Check out this Blog Post here to see how to work with the Shadows. Also, feel free to check out my courses Honoring Your No and Owning My Sh*t here to help work on that self-awareness piece.
Disclaimer: What I find unhelpful with the Gene Keys text is that it is more spiritual than realistic, especially when these states are resulting in mental illness. Maybe all mental illness has a root in shadow, but that isn’t for me to say and it is super invalidating for people who experience these states. So as you read through this, or any of these shadows, know that your own experience is valid regardless of impersonal spiritual texts. This goes for Gene Keys, Human Design, and any other spiritual text even from world religions. If these texts invalidate a person’s humanity, then it’s the text that is the problem and not the person. Always use personal discernment. More of my two-cents on spiritual and religious dogma, modalities, and texts here.
