Stage 2. Stop Breaking Things
Stage 2 - Stop Breaking Things
Category 3 - Week 1
Remember Your Why
Before you continue, write down why you're doing this work. Not the general reason - your specific one. You'll be reminded of it as you go.
Category 3 - Theft and Appropriation
Taking what belongs to another. This extends beyond material goods to credit, time, attention, and emotional labor taken without consent or reciprocation. Showing up to a conversation to extract rather than exchange. Taking credit for shared work. Using someone's time in ways they didn't agree to.
Week 1 - Seeing: no scoring yet. You're establishing that this category is real in your own life, moving deliberately from its most dramatic, unmistakable form early in the week to its smaller, easier-to-miss forms by the end of the week.
"You shall not steal." - Exodus 20:15
Taking credit outright for someone else's work. Using someone's time, money, or belongings without their knowledge or consent. This is the version most people would recognize immediately as theft - start here to fix the category clearly.
Today's Practice
Notice any instance today of the plain, unmistakable version of taking what isn't yours.
Evening Sit
10-minute sit. No scoring this week - just sit.
"Let no one seek their own good, but the good of others." - 1 Corinthians 10:24
Treating someone as a resource for your venting, your processing, your need for validation - without checking whether they have the capacity for it. This is theft of emotional labor, and it surprises most people because they don't think of themselves as thieves.
Today's Practice
Notice one moment today where you used someone's attention or emotional bandwidth without asking whether they had it to give.
Evening Sit
10-minute sit.
"Whoever oppresses the poor to increase his wealth... will only come to poverty." - Proverbs 22:16
Half-listening while waiting for your turn to talk. Taking attention in a conversation without offering any back. This is the smallest, most constant version - and the one that shapes every relationship whether or not it's ever named.
Today's Practice
Notice one conversation today where you were extracting - attention, validation, information - more than you were exchanging.
Evening Sit
10-minute sit.
"What is hateful to you, do not do to your fellow. That is the whole Torah." - Talmud, Shabbat 31a (paraphrase)
Weekly Question
Where did I assert my needs at the expense of another this week?
Write one specific instance from this category this week: one moment, one person, exactly what happened.