Embracing Right Action May not Mean What You Think

When pushing through no longer works, right action offers another way. A reflection on resistance, consistency, and rebuilding trust with yourself.

The idea of right action first bubbled into my awareness a few years ago—at a time when I was still deeply shaped by childhood and cultural messages like “push through,” “stick with it until it becomes a habit,” and “discipline is the answer.”

That mindset kept me locked in a familiar loop.

Every time I tried to be consistent—writing blog posts, for example—I would hit a solid wall of internal resistance. When I couldn’t push through it, shame followed. I felt like a failure. And each time, I lost a little trust in myself.

Eventually, I made a quiet but radical promise:
I would stop forcing myself to do things.

If I kept hitting a wall, I decided there must be a reason. Instead of overriding it, I began getting curious about what was happening inside me.

I wish I could say that curiosity brought instant clarity. It didn’t.
What it brought was slow, honest understanding—the kind that unfolds over time, not on demand.

A Lens That Changed Everything

Two years ago, something clicked into place that gave me an entirely new way of understanding myself—and my clients.

I read Complex PTSD: From Surviving to Thriving by Pete Walker. It fundamentally reshaped how I understood trauma, resilience, and why certain patterns are so hard to shift.

Complex PTSD develops when a child experiences ongoing emotional or relational distress over time. The key danger is that the child doesn’t recognize it as abnormal—because it’s all they’ve ever known. These experiences can range from emotional unavailability to much more overt harm.

As my understanding deepened throughout 2024, I began to see something clearly for the first time:

When I used to push through or force myself anyway, I was reenacting a familiar childhood dynamic—one where my feelings, body, or health weren’t taken into account.

If I was sick and told to “get up and get busy,” the real need of the moment—rest, care, healing—was ignored. That was a form of self-abandonment.

So as an adult, every time I forced myself into action while my inner system felt threatened, I hit that wall. Not because I was lazy or undisciplined—but because my nervous system remembered.

A New Understanding of Right Action

This is where the concept of right action finally came into focus for me.

Simply put:
Right action is action that does not increase suffering—for yourself or others.

Let’s pause here, because this is where misunderstandings often creep in.

Right action is not perfectionism.
And contrary to what many of us were taught, its opposite is not wrong action.

As a child, “right” and “wrong” were determined by authority figures—by whether someone else was pleased or displeased. Right action meant staying safe by keeping others happy. Over time, that conditions a person to abandon their own needs in favor of constant appeasement.

I see this every day in my work with leaders—people who know the action that’s needed, yet hesitate because it might upset a peer, an employee, or a manager.

Right action is also not grinding forward through sheer force because the surrounding culture defines that as success.

I spent the first half of my life as a single parent, leading safety-sensitive teams, and relentlessly striving to improve myself. People used to tell me I was “too intense.” I never understood that then. Now I do.

I wasn’t driven—I was forcing life forward.

So What Is Right Action?

Right action begins with discernment.

Is this action driven by fear—by a need to feel safer, better, or more acceptable?
Or does it arise from a quiet clarity that says, “This is what’s needed right now”?

Most of us have experienced moments like this—times when we knew what to do without being able to fully explain why. Sometimes the body moves before the mind catches up. These are examples of aligned action.

Aligned action doesn’t promise certainty about the future. It doesn’t answer all the big questions. It simply knows the next step.

And it feels very different.

Aligned action feels like flowing water—not hammering against stone.

That’s the second marker of right action:
the body is in alignment with the movement.

It’s a signal that we are responding to what’s present without abandoning ourselves. Forced action tries to outrun discomfort. Right action stays close enough to listen.

That doesn’t mean right action is easy. It can still be challenging.
But it doesn’t feel like self-betrayal.

Trust, Rebuilding—Moment by Moment

Today, the concept of right action makes sense to me in a lived way.

I’m in a season of change and uncertainty, much like the world around us. I don’t have answers to the big questions. But I’m rebuilding trust with myself—moment by moment.

I’m writing this after nearly eighteen months since my last article. 

I’m also on Day 10 of recording a daily video series called The Daily Sanctuary—my small contribution to cultivating peace, safety, and non-judgment in the world.

What feels remarkable is this:
I’ve reached Day 10 without hitting that old stone wall of resistance. It’s as if it’s softened… or dissolved.

That tells me something important.

I may finally be able to stay consistent—not by forcing myself, but by staying aligned long enough to offer what feels true.

And that gives me hope that I can shine a little more love, peace, and compassion into the world—without losing myself along the way.