Polishing The Spanner: Mastery, Victimhood, And Why Retreats Are Not Magic Pills

Leading people is relatively easy when everyone is in a good mood, open, and willing to change.

The real test comes when:

• Someone you care about is deeply unhappy.
• They complain, blame circumstances, and feel stuck.
• You know there are tools that could help, but they either don’t see them or refuse to use them.

You may recognize this dynamic:

• In a partner or family member.
• In a colleague who always finds a reason why nothing works.
• In an organisation that keeps buying “programs” but never changes behaviour.

This is where leadership becomes less about insight and more about mastery.

It’s also where we need to stop treating retreats and development as magic pills and start treating them as the beginning of real work.

When the roller coaster isn’t the problem

Everyone has ups and downs. Life will always have:

• High points of joy and possibility.
• Low points of loss, frustration, or exhaustion.

The issue is not the movement itself.

The real friction arises when:

• People hit the low points,
• Interpret them exclusively through victim mode, and
• Refuse to recognize their own capacity to create change.

In that space, you will often hear:

• “It’s all the circumstances.”
• “It’s everyone else.”
• “I can’t do anything about it.”

Even if you:

• Offer help,
• Suggest concrete steps,
• Share tools that worked for you,

the response is frequently:

• “That won’t work.”
• “You don’t understand.”
• “I’ve tried everything.”

It is like:

• Watching a fire burn,
• Standing there with a bucket of water,
• And being told “water does not work on this kind of fire.”

That is where frustration can quietly harden into resentment.

The pill illusion

This victim dynamic doesn’t only show up in personal life.

It is also baked into how many people and organisations approach change:

• “If I go to this retreat, I’ll be fixed.”
• “If we run this away day, our culture will transform.”
• “If I take this pill, I won’t have to change my behaviour.”

In this frame:

• Retreats and programs become magic pills.
• The responsibility for transformation is outsourced to:
• The facilitator.
• The medicine.
• The teacher.
• The “shamanic body de-armoring” or equivalent.

What often happens:

• People come back temporarily lighter, inspired, hopeful.
• Then everyday life presses in.
• Old patterns resurface.
• The pill is declared “not strong enough” and a new one is sought.

The core pattern remains:

“Something outside me should do the hard work, so I don’t have to.”

At that point, it almost doesn’t matter whether the pill is a drug, a leadership program, or a spiritual retreat.

The toolbox and the spanner

A more honest image is the toolbox.

Imagine you have:

• A solid box of tools.
• A spanner, screwdrivers, hammers, and so on.
• Each tool representing a practice, insight, or method that can help.

You see someone you care about struggling with a specific “mechanical” problem in their life:

• You open your toolbox.
• You pull out a spanner.
• You say, “This one will help. Here, try this.”

They reply:

• “I don’t want to do DIY. I just want someone to come and fix it for me.”

You:

• Can see the solution is possible.
• Know the spanner can work.
• Are faced with a fundamental limit:

No one else can do your inner DIY for you.

Even if another person appears to “fix” something, at a deeper level it is:

• Your own willingness to see,
• Your own willingness to act,
• Your own application of tools,

that changes your life.

The same goes for organisations:

• You can bring in programs and experts.
• But if people don’t apply what they learn in messy reality,
• Nothing fundamental shifts.

Mastery starts where the magic pills stop

It is tempting to stand outside this dynamic and cast judgment:

• “They are stuck in victimhood.”
• “They don’t want to do the work.”
• “They just want pills.”

There is some truth in that.
There is also a mirror.

If you:

• Keep seeing the same pattern in multiple people,
• Feel intense frustration about it,
• Notice that your offers of tools are regularly rejected,

it is worth asking:

“Where is the same pattern inside me?”

There is a shamanic story that captures this perfectly:

A village is in drought.
They beg a shaman to make it rain.

The shaman:

• Asks for a quiet hut.
• Withdraws into solitude for some days.
• Then emerges, and it starts raining.

When asked what he did, he says:

“I looked for the dry period inside myself, and I fixed that.”

It is a powerful reminder:

• Before trying to put out someone else’s fire,
• Look for the part of you that still burns the same way.

If you see “people who don’t use their tools” everywhere:

• There is likely still a part of you that:
• Knows about your own tools,
• But doesn’t fully use or trust them when it matters most.

From that angle:

• Every “unhappy person who won’t use the spanner” is also:
• An invitation to polish your own spanner.
• A mirror showing where you still default to blame or resignation.

Teflon, Lotus, and staying open without drowning

So what do you do if:

• You love someone who is stuck in victim mode.
• You feel their sadness and frustration.
• You also feel your own.

You essentially have three options:

1. Withdraw completely:
• Cut contact or reduce it to a minimum.
• Stop being exposed to their energy.
• Pay the price of distance and potential loss.
2. Stay, but absorb everything:
• Let their moods determine yours.
• Feel responsible for fixing their state.
• Slowly drown in their emotional weather.
3. Stay, and build a different surface:
• Stay connected.
• Care deeply.
• Let experiences pass through and over you without sticking.

This third option is what the Teflon or Lotus metaphor points to:

• A surface that does not hold on to what lands on it.
• Not a wall of stone, but a quality of not gripping.

Practically, that looks like:

• “I see you are suffering, and I care.”
• “I feel the impact on me, and I notice my own sadness or frustration.”
• “I also remember my tools, and I do not build my identity around your state.”

The risk here is subtle:

• If you treat Teflon as a hard shield between “me” and “you,”
• You smuggle in the assumption that we are fundamentally separate.
• You may unintentionally shield yourself from yourself, not just from others.

The deeper principle is:

• Stay open to feeling.
• Do not let every feeling dictate your state.
• Let things touch you, without clinging to them or building your self around them.

Retreats, clients, and the moment of application

This tension plays out clearly in organisational life.

Many companies:

• Commission programmes.
• Run away days.
• Bring in speakers.

They often act as if:

• “We did the programme, therefore we changed.”
• “We went on the away day, therefore culture is better.”

But:

• The insight is not the transformation.
• The programme is not the new habit.
• The offsite is not the new normal.

The real work begins when:

• The routine returns.
• The pressure hits.
• The old triggers fire.

At that point, mastery looks like:

• Remembering, “We have a toolbox.”
• Taking it out when a real-world conflict appears.
• Using the tool in the heat of the moment.

For example:

• Having a difficult performance conversation.
• Leading through a restructure.
• Facing a sharp disagreement on strategy.

Do people:

• Default to blame, avoidance, and politics?
• Or do they reach for the skills they claimed to value in the workshop?

For leaders, the key message is simple:

“The enlightenment is the learning.
The hard work is the application in the most difficult moments.”

Judgment and the illusion of separation

There is another subtle trap in this entire territory: judgment.

When you think:

• “They are wrong.”
• “They should be more conscious.”
• “They should use the tools.”

you:

• Immediately split reality into:
• Them (wrong, unconscious).
• You (right, more aware).
• Implicitly assume separation.

From a unity lens:

• Whoever you are looking at is also you in another form.
• Every time you judge “the other,” you reinforce a false boundary.

This does not mean:

• Approving harmful behaviour.
• Pretending you agree when you don’t.

It means:

• Not turning perspective into identity.
• Holding the possibility that:
• Your view is one angle.
• Theirs is another.
• Neither captures the whole.

This also applies to public figures:

• It’s easy to judge leaders or politicians.
• It is harder, and more useful, to:
• Notice the part of you that wants a wall where they want a wall.
• Notice the part of you that believes you are right and everyone else is ignorant.

The more you reflexively judge, the more you:

• Live in a world of “me vs them.”
• Lose access to the very unity that makes Teflon and Lotus meaningful.

No objective truth, many perspectives

A key realization in this conversation is:

• There is no objective truth available at the individual level.
• Truth, as we usually use the word, is a function of:
• Perspective.
• Agreement between perspectives.

We often say:

• “This must be true, because you see it this way and so do I.”

That is:

• Two cameras aligned at the same angle.
• Not a guarantee of truth, just a shared lens.

On a planet with:

• Around 8 billion humans,
• And many other species,
• There are at least as many perspectives.

From a development standpoint, this implies:

• The more perspectives you can hold without collapsing,
• The closer you come to a fuller understanding of any situation.

But to get there, you have to give up something:

The need to be right.

You can still have a view:

• “This is how it looks from where I stand.”
• “I prefer this course of action.”
• “These are my values.”

You simply:

• Stop confusing your view with the entire picture.
• Stop making disagreement into a personal threat.

So what does this mean for your leadership practice?

Bringing this down to your own life:

1. Notice where you are offering tools as pills.
• Are you hoping a single intervention will “fix” someone or something?
• Are you subtly promising outcomes that only sustained practice can deliver?
2. Map your mirrors.
• Who in your life most triggers your frustration?
• What quality in them (victimhood, passivity, anger, avoidance) might be reflecting something in you?
3. Pick one tool and polish the spanner.
• Choose one practice you already know (listening, breathing, reflection, boundary-setting).
• Commit to using it specifically in the next difficult moment, not just in easy ones.
4. Experiment with Teflon that doesn’t harden into a wall.
• Stay present with the person.
• Let their mood touch you without defining you.
• Notice when you start to armour up in a way that cuts you off from yourself.
5. Practice sharing your view without smuggling in “and I’m right.”
• “Here is how it looks to me.”
• “What does it look like from where you stand?”
• Resist the urge to “upgrade” your view to an absolute.
6. Give up the demand for a neat conclusion.
• Sometimes there is no answer yet.
• Sometimes your growth edge is learning to stay with the question.

In the end, the message is not:

• “Stop going to retreats.”
• “Stop helping others.”

It is:

• Use retreats as starting points, not finish lines.
• Let others’ resistance show you where you still have work to do.
• Polishing the spanner of your own mastery is always within your control, even when everything else feels stuck.

(This article was inspired by a Conscious Conversation with a dear friend & professional colleague on 29th April 2025.)(ID:CO|SP)