How the Honor Window was born
A mountaintop vision, a confrontation, and the moment everything changed
Mountains outside Reno, Nevada - 2003
A gust of wind against my chest, I steady myself on the rock beneath me, inhale and slowly open my eyes.The rising sun has crested the mountains on the horizon before me and now warms my face—but the warmth that fills my body radiates from within. My hands clasping the hands that clasp mine, I look into the eyes of the person on my left and go around the circle one by one — These are my allies.
It's our last morning together atop this mountain, voicing the visions emanating from our hearts. Most of these faces I'd never seen before a year ago. Now each of these people are standing with me and for me, as allies.
My body's buzzing with excitement. For seven years I've been developing practices for facing fears, being radically honest, and standing for others as their ally—practices that began when I united my own fractured family in 1997.
"I Want to Talk to You"
"Michael?" a woman's voice wakes me from my memories of the morning.
"Michael," I turn to see a woman with long blonde hair and clear blue eyes, "I want to talk to you."
It's Deborah, my ally and former girlfriend. It's hours since the mountaintop morning visioning, everyone else has left and I've been reminiscing in the office. Her face and her voice tell me she's hurting.
I turn to face her, brace myself, and inhale, "OK."
This is the woman who just over a year ago had challenged me to bring my life's work to the world sooner than I thought I was ready. I'd accepted her challenge and together we'd facilitated a 4-day intensive, which many attendees—including those who were with us this morning—had called the most powerful experience of their lives.
Seventeen years older than me, she brought vast wisdom and experience as a yoga teacher, body worker, spiritual seeker and student of life. She'd been my girlfriend for three years up until just a few months ago, when we broke up, but she was still my ally and I was hers. And that meant that she stood for me and I for her, regardless of our fears or past conditioning.
It's our last morning together atop this mountain, voicing the visions emanating from our hearts. Most of these faces I'd never seen before a year ago. Now each of these people are standing with me and for me, as allies.
My body's buzzing with excitement. For seven years I've been developing practices for facing fears, being radically honest, and standing for others as their ally—practices that began when I united my own fractured family in 1997.
"Michael, I feel like you're judging me."
"I can feel your judgments," she says, and I notice an increase of victim tone in her voice. "And I want you to tell me to my face what your judgments are."
I feel a rush of excitement. I relish challenge and I sense we're on the verge of exploring unknown territory. The body of work I began developing seven years earlier centered around bold honesty with one's self and others. Criticism from others always brought this rush. It's up to me to embrace what she's bringing me now, even in the face of whatever resistance or defensiveness I may feel.
I squint as I try to imagine what she's referring to, and as it comes to me I inhale deeply, then exhale slowly.
I have indeed been judging her.
Facing. Feeling. Standing. Seeing.
Facing. Feeling. Standing. Seeing. This is our work. She's being my ally right now. She's being my ally as well as an ally for herself.My body's buzzing with excitement. For seven years I've been developing practices for facing fears, being radically honest, and standing for others as their ally—practices that began when I united my own fractured family in 1997.
Now, thirty-two years old in 2003, I've been like a surrogate father for my siblings, the one who stays, the one who's not giving up on family. My heart, my love, my honor compels me—STAY. I'm an ally. This is the essence of the work I'm sharing with others.
Others walk away in judgment, allies stay, family stays! Families Are Forever—this was the credo of my Mormon youth. Then when my parents divorced when I turned fourteen, I'd lost all sense of trust in adults and left home a few years later, leaving my brothers, sisters and parents to deal with their trauma and find their own way—as I tried to find my own way.
I told my self
In choosing to stay and face me now, Deborah is being my ally as well as an ally for herself.
I feel my stomach tense up in preparation to speak my judgments. I'd seen my mother completely break down at times throughout the divorce years, and even though I was an incredibly difficult child for her to raise, I'd learned to withhold things that could have her completely break down. I felt activity in my stomach now, afraid to further hurt the woman now in front of me.
Speaking the Judgments
"Okay…," I say as I search for the words. My judgments of Deborah, I now realize, have been coming out mostly in my jokes, teasing and sarcasm, not directly. "I'm going to just speak my judgments."
"You're too afraid," I start.
I'm thinking of her reluctance to invest her money in this work that we've been collaborating on. I felt frustration and disappointment that after seeing how well received I was at my speech in Vegas after 9/11, and especially now after two incredible events full of miracles and people raving about our work, she was still hesitant to invest in this. I'd given away my previous business in the weeks after the first event ended, and was "all-in." I felt if she really saw me, she'd be all-in too.
Eye to eye, I continue, "You're too small-minded."
I feel some sadness as I speak these words, realizing I've been saying this for a long time, just usually not directly.
"Too uptight, too anal," I say, pained that I'm insulting this woman who is right here in front of me looking at me with love in her heart, still here with me, facing me, standing for me, supporting me, believing in me.
The words I'm saying don't feel fully true…
"Can you see what I'm standing for?"
"Can you see what I'm standing for, Michael?"
Tears fill my eyes, and I pause just looking into her eyes…
Here's this woman who's been hurting on the other side of my wall of judgments, feeling completely unseen and judged by me. I've been hurting her with my judgments all this time, and here she is… standing for me still! My heart's pounding, tears streaming down my face now…
Something happens—like a veil dropping—I see you…
"Wow! It's like… a wall just came down—literally like a wall came down!" I exclaim.
And now another rush of excitement as I sense that what's happening here can be duplicated for others—I can create a process for others to bring down the invisible walls that keep them suffering and separate.
The room is suddenly brighter.
"Can you see what I've been standing for?" she asks again.
"You've been standing for being responsible…"
"And, I stand for being a person of integrity," she says emphasizing every syllable of the word in-teg-rit-y. "Michael, do you realize I've never been late on a single bill in my life?"
I laugh as I realize the extent to which this woman has been standing for being in integrity all her life, even in the face of judgments of people like me.
She reaches forward and takes my hands firmly clasping them. "My word means everything to me, Michael!" she exclaims.
In that moment I reflect on my own ways with money: extending bill payments as long as possible, playing games with accounts payable and accounts receivable, focusing far more on making money than saving money and paying things on time.
It's sinking in… who this woman is in the world. I'm silent, nodding my head. And now there are tears in her eyes too.
The question that changed everything
If I've had these invisible walls causing separation and suffering between Deborah and I, who else have I been judging?
Where else in my life do I have walls against the people I love?
Who else in my life am I not fully seeing with my heart?
What if I could see everyone in the world with my heart? What if I could see everyone as my people? What if all of us could?
How can I capture what is happening here, so I can repeat the process and bring down my walls with everyone?
Mapping what I was seeing
I scramble for a pen and begin to draw out what I'm seeing... how I'm judging her, what she's standing for... soon I've got four quadrants:
My judgments of her
What she's standing for
Her judgments of me
What I'm standing for
(01)
Over time I would realize the best way to display and order these quadrants to most easily and consistently duplicate the power of what I would first call the Judgment Window and later come to call the Honor Window.
Deborah and I continued into the night, and that was how the Honor Window was born. It would be featured prominently in our upcoming Wealth Warrior Boot Camp and Wealth Creator Boot Camp later that year and many other programs over the next ten years.
What I didn't know then is just how fundamentally and beautifully the Honor Window would undermine my own personality structure and habits in the most beautiful ways, softening me, humbling me, opening me, evolving me and leaving me with a sense of awe and grace about human beings, the world we live in and the great mystery.
The Honor Window: My example with Deborah
I'll share with you now the Honor Window between Deborah and I as a way of introducing it to you.
Voicing my judgments of Deborah was how it began in 2003, and we still begin this way—with our judgments of the other person. However, this Honor Window is something one typically does alone or with a facilitator, and a conversation with the person one has been judging may or may not follow.
This first step—verbalizing my judgments of Deborah to Deborah was in itself humbling, because I prided myself in being a non-judgmental honoring person and a teacher of "honor." The reality was there were ways I was clearly looking down on her and judging her, and she was feeling it
Quadrant 1: My judgments
I judged her as being afraid. As I mentioned, Deborah was hesitant to put her money behind this work that we were offering, and this was frustrating to me. I felt like she didn't fully believe in me. And after numerous conversations, if there were a label to sum up how I was looking down on her it would be "too afraid," or "a coward."
I judged her as too small-minded. I saw her as being too much into the details, the details that frustrated me, that bored me. She spent a lot of time in the world of details, and she pushed me on the details and spoke of details that frustrated me.
So after a while, my mind associated a label that she was small-minded. She would get frustrated when I would share my visions with her. It seemed that too much talk of expansive vision would be frustrating to her, and that bothered me, so it's like my mind was saying, "oh, remember she's like this."
There were times that I was embarrassed by the way she would write an email, and there were times where she would misspell words and use what I would judge as poor grammar, and not remember names. And, in the context of speaking to people about my work, this was embarrassing for me.
I tried to force her to pay more attention to these by judging her. I judged her for being "West Texas," or poorly educated, but West Texas was the label I used (my apologies to all the people in West Texas!).
I judged Deborah as being emotional. She was a very passionate and emotional woman and that was way outside of my comfort zone. Feeling like I had to deal with her emotional issues, with all the time it took and with the frustration I felt from it; and again my mind said, "yeah, she's like this, she's too emotional." These were all ways that I was looking down on her, or judging her.
Eliciting and verbalizing these judgments is the first step in completing an Honor Window. You can see how I've filled these in Quadrant 1 of the Honor Window diagram below:
Quadrant 2: What I stand for
And in my mind, in the way that Deborah was too fearful, I saw myself as standing for being a bold, risk-taking entrepreneur. I was willing to take risks and go for it.
In the way I saw her as small-minded, I saw myself as being a visionary.
In the specific way that I judged her as being too West Texas, I stood for being intelligent and being respected.
In the way that I judged her as too emotional, I stood for being logical and in control.
Quadrant 3: Her judgments of me
In quadrant 3, we're looking to see how Deborah may have been judging me.
In the way that Deborah was too fearful and I stood for being a bold entrepreneur, she would say that I was too irresponsible, not paying attention to the financial details, not worried about the risks, willing to just jump off a cliff and go for it.
In the specific way I judged her as too small minded and I stood for being a visionary, she would say that I was a dreamer, like a head in the clouds dreamer. I had notebooks full of great ideas that were filling up her garage. She had plenty of evidence to suggest that I was too in my head and a dreamer.
In the specific way that I judged her as too "West Texas," yet I stood for being intelligent, she would say that I was too arrogant, and she's right, I was, and still am at times.
In the specific way she was too emotional and I stood for being logical and in control, she would say that I was too much in my head, not connected with my feelings and my body, too disconnected. I'm sure Deborah felt a lot of frustration coming to me with her feelings and me just being logical and in control.
I know that in itself just frustrated her. In conversations with me, I probably made her more emotional by judging her as emotional, which made me appear even more arrogant and in my head.
Quadrant 4: What She stands for
Now for quadrant 4. This is often the most difficult, because it asks us to see beyond our own judgments and really come to grasp what the other person has been standing for.
This is where I began to see what Deborah was standing for.
In the specific way that I judged her as being too fearful, she's standing for being a woman of integrity, for being her word, for being responsible. This is a woman who is 17 years older than me and who has never once in her life been late on a single payment or bill to anyone. This is how powerful she stood for being in integrity, even in the face of people not keeping their word with her.
In the specific way that I judged Deborah as being too small minded, she stood for being complete, she stood for being in harmony and balance. Her great care for details meant I was now living in a place where everything was beautiful, everything was clean and spacious. She created an amazing work environment for me to develop my work in.
In the specific way that I judged her as too "West Texas," she was standing for being connected with her emotions, in her body and feeling, and present with people. She wasn't worried about looking good with everything that she wrote, or concerned with being in her mind. She was present in her body, and connected with people and her own feelings.
In the way that I judged her as being too emotional, she was standing for being herself, for being passionate, feminine, a woman. She was standing for being connected with me, for being seen by me.
Now here's this beautiful, passionate woman who's a fierce stand for integrity, taking action and getting things done; who has been my partner in co-creating this work and bringing the exact pieces I was missing.
Connecting me to my body and introducing me to yoga, connecting me to my feelings and enriching our events with her feminine voice and her offering of yoga, and her emotional wisdom.
And yet in my mind she was this (quadrant 1), and I was this (quadrant 2). She was just my judgments of her: afraid, small-minded, West Texas, emotional; yet I was this great risk-taking entrepreneur, intelligent and logical and in control.
In a sense, this was my world, this was my relationship to Deborah. I was quadrant 2, and she was quadrant 1.
My relationship to Deborah
In my world, I was the bold entrepreneur, the visionary, intelligent and logical. She was afraid, small-minded, West Texas, emotional.
In Deborah's world, she was quadrant 4, and I was quadrant 3. I was irresponsible, head-in-the-clouds dreamer, arrogant, disconnected from my body, from my emotions and emotional truth.
Whereas she was a powerful woman of integrity, responsible, someone who gets things done, connected to her body, connected to heart and other people.
Deborah's relationship
to me
In her world, she was a woman of integrity, complete, connected to her emotions and present with people, passionate and feminine. I was irresponsible, a head-in-the-clouds dreamer, arrogant, disconnected.
The wall between us
So you can imagine, not only is she feeling judged, but I'm being judged also, and there's a felt separation between us. She's much more sensitive and present to the separation of the judgment, which is one of the gifts that Deborah brings.
(01)
There's a potential here for partnership, where we can have the best of both worlds: risk-taking entrepreneurship with powerful integrity; visionary ideas that get done and come to completion; intelligent connection in our head and our body and emotions, all the way present and plugged in; logical and connected to our hearts, authentic.
Yet, these judgments were becoming a wall that could have kept us apart, that could have prevented this work from growing, prevented our love from growing, and resulted in a lot of pain, suffering, and torment.
So I was looking into this woman's eyes who had been standing for me, and standing for me giving my gift to the world, and standing for bringing her gifts also to this work, her connection to the body and heart and emotions. She had been standing for me even though I had been judging her.
I was very moved; tears filled my eyes. It was as if I was seeing her for the first time. It was so moving and powerful for me that I immediately tried to map out this process we'd gone through so I could repeat it and bring down walls in other relationships as well as share it with others.
Seeing vs. Saying
I've shown you the Honor Window as a simple diagram, and soon you'll get a chance to try it yourself. However, for me the Honor Window is just a beginning. It's a way to see through my walls to the heart of another. It's a way for my heart to see their heart.
But it's one thing to SEE; it's another thing entirely for me to SAY.
If I've been judging someone as Quadrant 1, the Honor Window allows me to SEE them in a new light. It allows me to see that while I've been judging them as Quadrant 1, they've been standing for being Quadrant 4.
But I still have a choice to make.
Will I keep my walls up and choose to continue concluding that who they are is Quadrant 1, or will I let my walls come down and choose to define them in terms of what they've been standing for being?
I have a choice of how I see someone, and I have a choice of who I say that they are to myself, to them, to others, etc. Seeing who they are is a choice in the moment. Saying who they are is more like a commitment; it's like saying this is how I'm committing to see you and hold you, even if I feel judged by you, even if I feel afraid to get hurt, etc.
I had been relating to Deborah as if she was a coward. I wasn't only seeing her this way much of the time, it's as if I was defining her this way—as if that is who she is.
But I can choose to see Deborah in terms of what she stands for being for me, for herself, etc. And in choosing to define Deborah in terms of what she is standing for being, I am taking a stand for her!
Is Deborah simply a coward? Afraid to support me? No, there is a real, valiant stand she is taking. Even in the face of being judged by me. Being in integrity is important to her. When she gives her word to something, you can bank on it. And she's standing for being a woman of integrity even in the face of being judged by the man she loves.
Who is she? I get to SAY. And for me, this is my choice alone. It does not require her permission or approval—or that of anyone else.
Others are seeing through their walls
For people who've had their walls up, what happens with the Honor Window occurs like a miracle. Just like my experience with Deborah when I saw my mind's walls of judgment, and then saw through those walls with my heart.
What follows is one of many stories of people around the world who've been impacted by this Honor Window work, and who are now using this tool to help others see through their walls.
Andrew's Story: Healing with his father
A man from the Netherlands was invited to an iStand in Australia in 2010. Andrew experienced the Honor Window work as part of the iStand, and then carried it into his own life.
I'd like to share a little story with you. It is about my father and me and our relationship. My father is old-school, medical doctor, academic, Left brain (rational) man. Since I started to activate the Right side of my brain (in my early 30's), open and follow my heart…… we drifted apart. He was so judgmental of me and my actions.
This felt so not good. So, I decided I would minimize our contact and try to imagine that he wasn't here anymore. Easy enough as he had suffered multiple severe diseases over the last decade: heavy stroke, cancer (stomach out), open heart surgery, etc. Still this approach it didn't sit right with me. It meant not feeling my father and I couldn't do it.
I wanted to have a nice and loving relationship with him. My reason told me this wasn't possible, as did my sister… just accept him as he is: "judgmental, grumpy, disapproving, etc"
In comes the Honor Window…
I did an Honor Window for my dad all by myself in June this year. In July and August we went to Netherlands (where my dad lives) and I grabbed the first possibility to be with my dad alone and I spoke to him like we had learnt from Michael at our iStand. What happened was sheer magic.
My dad couldn't believe where I was coming from, he was expecting hostility, resentment, frustration etc. None of that, he got understanding, love, honesty, honor! We both spent the rest of the afternoon with Anouk and our kids and things were just great. We laughed, we had fun, we spoke openly, like… like we hadn't done for a loooooong time.
This marked the beginning of our renewed relationship. Now we skype every few weeks and it is just great. There is respect, love, joy. So when I skyped him for his birthday earlier this month, he said that me skyping him made his day. Wow, how far had we come.
So, I guess, this is my way of saying thank you to you Michael.
Andrew M.D. Troostwijk MBA
PS. One of my friends had his wife offor 30 years leave him. Sitting by a beautiful lake (Zaca Lake) I did an Honor Window with him in October when she had already been gone for 6 months. This took 20 minutes. He very much wanted her back….. she was his goddess. They're both in their late 70's and he wanted to be with her till the end of days. Anyway, within a month they got back together again and he is very grateful to me for the Honor Window session we had.
This stuff is very powerful.
