The First Step

Fifteen minutes. One person. One thing you’ll actually do this week.

There’s someone you keep thinking about. Maybe you know them. Maybe you’ve never met them. Maybe they only live on your feed. Either way, their attention (or the idea of it) feels good. But they also make you feel a little smaller.

You already know who this is about.

If you’re reading this, you’ve probably found yourself chasing this person in some way. It shows up as going out of your way to get them to notice you. Or automatically agreeing with them. Or overthinking what you say around them. Or regularly looking through their profile.

Then you have a moment when you realize that they don’t care about you as much as you care about them, and you’re left feeling empty.

What I’m here to tell you is that this dynamic isn’t about them. It never was. It’s about something lying dormant in you.

Fifteen minutes from now you’ll have one specific thing to do about it. Doing this thing will make you feel the same way their attention does. But this time, it will last.

What you need: paper, or a notes app. You’ll want to write your answers down.

Step 1 — The name

1 minute

Write down one name. Remember, nobody has to see this.

You probably already know who this is about. You admire them, but not necessarily from a place of security. Their presence makes you feel a little smaller.

It could be someone you’ve met. It could be someone you’ve only seen online. If they’re not on somewhat of a pedestal, this isn’t the right person.

If two people came up, take the one you’d least want to say out loud.

Step 2 — The feeling

1 minute

Finish this sentence:

makes me feel .

Note that this isn’t “how do I feel about them,” because you probably like them. This is about what being near them (whether in person or online) does to you.

Common feelings we’re looking for: late, naive, inferior, small.

Underneath the admiration, there’s this feeling of “they have something I should have”. That should is what drives your fixation.

If what came out was anger, that’s real. But look under it. Anger is usually there to protect something more vulnerable underneath.

Step 3 — The symbol

2 minutes

Pinpoint the sharpest, most recent, instance of the feeling from step 2. What was the specific thing they said or did when the feeling arrived?

Could be the way they dressed. Could be specific language they used. Could be a skill they displayed, or a facial expression they made.

If you can’t remember, wait until you’re around them again, and keep this question in mind.

Step 4 — The associations

4 minutes

What does that thing they said or did — that symbol — represent to you?

You may need to write three or four associations. One of them will “click”.

Examples:

• they mentioned their hunting trip → Masculinity. Reliability. Competence in practical matters.
• a curse word → Rebellion. Honesty in the face of disapproval.
• they talked about when they went skydiving → The spirit of adventure. Doing something scary on purpose. Taking risks.

Sit with this one. You’re looking for the association with some heat on it, and the first one you write down might not be it.

The association you land on isn’t about them. They might not even see themselves that way. Your answer here is a description of something in you that hasn’t been let out.

Step 5 — The promise

2 minutes

The association helps you understand what’s going on. But understanding alone doesn’t resolve the fixation. You have to let that dormant part of you out. You have to actually do something. You have to make a promise to yourself and keep it.

You could do the very thing they did. Go on a hunt. Go skydiving. Say something honest to someone it might upset. Often that’s the cleanest route.

But you don’t have to. The important thing is that you pick a physical action that you associate with the trait from step 4.

For example, one of my dormant traits was having an appreciation for beauty. As a man, I often felt like I wasn’t supposed to care about how things look, so I repressed that part of myself. I associate multiple things with this trait: caring about how my home looks, and caring about how I dress. Either direction works.

Write it down. One thing you could do. One promise you’ll keep to yourself.

Step 6 — The First Step

3 minutes

You have something to do. But we need to stress-test it, because often, it’s not something you can actually act on yet. Some examples of how this can go wrong:

The first step should be the very next physical thing to do. If it’s not, you’ll put off doing the thing because your brain knows there’s still something left to decide or to figure out. That vagueness is how you end up breaking promises to yourself.

Eliminate the vagueness by figuring out the first step.

Optional: if you’re a fan of AI and could use some help

Step 6 is the one that’s hardest to get right. It’s easy to think we’ve discovered the very next step when there’s actually something hidden inside of it.

Use this prompt to have ChatGPT or Claude help you get the true next step.

I’m turning something I admire in another person into one specific action I can take this week. The trait I’m after is: [your Step 4 association]. The promise I’m keeping to myself is: [your Step 5 promise]. The task I came up with is: [your Step 6 task].

Run my task against this bar: is this the very next physical thing I could do? If it fails, tell me what I’d have to look up or who I’d have to talk to first — that’s my real action instead. Keep going until what’s left passes. Don’t make it bigger or more ambitious. Make it smaller and more specific, and fill in any detail I’d otherwise have to invent — the exact search terms, the actual wording, the name.

Don’t help me with the trait itself. That part’s mine.

How you’ll know it worked

The person from step 1 is the measuring stick.

1. Do they still intimidate you?
2. Do they still hold power over you?
3. Do you still fixate on them?

Or can you just let them be?

Expect it to take more than one

Your identity doesn’t change in a single afternoon. You’ve likely spent years not identifying with this part of yourself. Your promise makes that story harder to keep telling, and sometimes one thing really is enough. More often it’s the first of several.

So if you were honest during this process and you kept the promise to yourself, but the person still has some hold on you, it’s likely that you simply need more reps, or there’s another association you have with this person that you need to turn into a different promise.

One more possibility

Somewhere in your history there’s a version of this you never acted on. The chance came, you were too afraid, and you’ve been carrying a complaint about it ever since — against a person, against your parents, against a church, against circumstance, against luck.

Grief is what’s actually there. You lost something real and it isn’t coming back. So you’ve been complaining to protect yourself from feeling the grief. It’s possible that the thing you need to do is grieve something you lost, then commit to being braver next time.