What If Fairness Is Keeping You Stuck?

“That’s not fair.”

You probably learned those words very early in life. Maybe your sibling got something you didn’t or a friend seemed to get away with something you would have been gotten in trouble for. From a young age you learned to notice who got more, who got less, who was right, who was wrong, and whether everyone was being treated the way they should be.

And you may have carried that habit of measuring into adulthood without even realizing it.

Maybe you compare how much effort you put into a relationship with how much the other person gives back. You notice who gets recognized at work and who doesn’t. You remember who called last, who apologized first, who received more help, or who seems to have had an easier path.

Sometimes those observations might be useful. But when you become attached to making everything “fair” you can spend so much time keeping score that you forget to ask a more useful question: What can I choose here that will create more?

When Fairness Becomes Comparison

Fairness sounds like a positive thing. Of course you want to be treated well. You want honesty, consideration, and respect, and you probably want those things for the people around you, too.

But there is another side to fairness that I became much more aware of through the tools of Access Consciousness®: Fairness can become constant judgement.

If someone else has more, does that mean you have less? If they were rewarded and you weren't, does that mean something is wrong? If you worked harder, shouldn't you receive more? If you gave this much, shouldn't the other person give the same amount back?

Before long, you can find yourself constantly keeping score.

This can happen in relationships very easily. Maybe you're always the one who calls. You remember birthdays. You organize family gatherings. You help when somebody needs something. Then one day you notice that nobody seems to be doing the same for you.

You might feel really hurt. But when you become focused on making things fair, you can become trapped in measuring every conversation or interaction against what you believe should have happened. Instead of asking what actually works for you now, you keep looking backward at the balance sheet.

The Pressure to Be Right

Fairness can also become tangled up with being right. I saw this for many years while I worked as a medical doctor. My training reinforced the idea that there was a right answer and an wrong one. I was expected to know. I was trained to evaluate information, make decisions, and get things right.

That way of thinking can be very useful in certain situations. But I began to recognize how exhausting it could become when I brought that same expectation into other areas of my life, because relationships are not always that clear. Neither are family dynamics, money, work, or the choices you make for yourself.

You can experience a conversation one way while the other person experiences it completely differently. You might remember a family event one way while someone else insists it happened differently. Something that feels perfectly reasonable to you may feel unfair to somebody else.

And if your entire focus becomes proving you're right, you may spend so much energy defending your position that you never stop to ask whether it's actually creating anything better.

What if being right is not always the most important thing?

What Happens When You Stop Keeping Score?

This doesn't mean accepting poor treatment or ignoring situations that need to change. It doesn't mean you should never speak up, ask for something different, or recognize when an arrangement is not working for you.

It just means you have another option besides staying inside the question of fair or unfair. You can ask yourself: What am I aware of here? What would work for me now? What choice could create something different?

Maybe you realize you no longer want to be the person who organizes every gathering. You can stop, or ask other people to contribute. Or maybe you see that you're giving far more to a relationship than you enjoy giving. You can choose differently instead of continuing to give and becoming resentful. Or perhaps somebody else received an opportunity you really wanted. Instead of staying focused on whether they deserved it, you can start looking at what other possibilities are available to you.

That is very different from pretending something didn't hurt. It's simply recognizing that you don't have to let your judgment of what should have happened determine what you can choose next.

Awareness Gives You More Options

One of the things I appreciate about the tools of Access Consciousness® is that they invite you out of conclusions and back into questions. Instead of deciding, “This is unfair, and I can't move forward,” you can become curious. What else is possible?® What can I choose that I haven't considered? What would create more ease, joy, or possibility?

When you're focused on deciding who is right and who is wrong, you may overlook information that could help you create something different. Awareness gives you the opportunity to notice what is actually happening and consider choices you haven't made before.

And sometimes the most freeing realization is that you don't need everybody else to behave differently before you're allowed to change what you're doing. You can acknowledge that something isn't working and make a different choice without waiting for anyone else to agree with you.

Try a Different Question

The next time you hear yourself thinking, “That's not fair,” you don't have to tell yourself you're wrong for feeling that way. Just notice it.

Then ask yourself what you're actually looking for. Do you want acknowledgment? A different agreement? More support? A change in the relationship? A new opportunity? Or are you trying to make someone else behave differently so the situation will finally feel balanced? From there, try asking: What choice can I make here that will create more?

You may not have an immediate answer, and that's okay. The purpose of the question is not to force a solution. It's to move you out of the fixed thinking of fair versus unfair and create room for something you may not have considered yet.

You don't have to ignore injustice, abandon your values, or stop caring about how people treat one another. But you can begin to recognize when your attachment to fairness is keeping you in judgment, comparison, or the need to prove you're right.

And you can choose something different.

What might become possible if you stopped keeping score and started asking what would actually create more for you?

If this opens something for you, I invite you to explore my Access Consciousness® classes, Akashic Records classes, private sessions, and resources. These are some of the tools I use to help people become more aware of the judgments, conclusions, and points of view that may be limiting what they can choose and create.