Direct answer
Many choices aren't yours: they're responses to the environment. When you improve at work to be accepted, or invest in a marriage to be valued, the context is deciding, not you. The choice becomes yours again when you know who you are within that scenario.
Andrea Eboli describes this as the capture of identity by context: when the environment stops merely influencing you and begins to judge and organize your inner experience.
There's nothing wrong with wanting to be a good professional, a good partner, a good friend. She uses the image of veils: they are roles you take on through life, and that's fine. The risk is mistaking the veil for the face.
How to reclaim authorship of your choices
- Acknowledge the context without dissolving into it: this is the scenario, and I, with my identity, position myself within it.
- Before acting, ask whether the decision comes from who you are or from fear of losing approval.
This is what the ECP calls Movimento, movement: turning awareness into choice and choice into action, without being led automatically by context. When you know who you are within a relationship, you stop giving power to the other, because the power is already yours.