The power of the witness-er consciousness is that potential is never compromised by conditions (that, that happens to you) and therefore, you always are empowered to implement, from your unconditioned potential, the changes that serve your wellbeing. Conversely, if you constantly identify as the witness-ee (the one who things are happening to) then you personalize your experience and maintain a subjective identification with your conditions or state of mind and, consequently, feel that you are no more than the sum total of your issues.
What follows are issues from both the witness-er and witness-ee vantage points. You will see how the witness-er vantage point empowers true change.
Finances
Witness–ee: I am my debt history, as well as my financial struggles; I am my fear thoughts about money, and my self-judgment and guilt surrounding my money experience. I am what people conclude about me based on my financial situation.
Witness–er: I see how my mind has been conditioned into believing the constricting parameters when it comes to money; let me discover how to reprogram those perceptions so that my mind has a healthier perspective on money issues.
Relationships
Witness–ee: The insecurities I feel regarding relationship dynamics is just a part of the way that I am and therefore are difficult to overcome. There are simply a lot of jerks “out there” so it’s no surprise that I encounter them. It’s because of what happened in my childhood that I relate to (wo)men the way I do. There’s something wrong with me because I keep attracting jerks or no one at all.
Witness–er: I see how the mind’s conditioning is triggered, consciously and unconsciously, from my experience. I am not a robot, and do not have to live from the conditioning that has compromised perspective, no matter how pervasive the limited conditioning may be. The desire in me to live harmoniously must come from somewhere; let me see how to access it more fully.
Success
Witness–ee: What I have (or have not) accomplished is a barometer of my self-worth therefore I am only as worthy as my success or perception of my success.
Witness–er: Potential is infinite therefore I will allow my mind to receive whatever it needs to actualize greater and greater expressions of that potential. I will not allow my mind to forget that it is merely the instrument that infinite potential uses to express itself and therefore recognize that I can always grow.
The difference between identifying as the observer (the witness-er) rather than as what you observe (the witness-ee) does not have to be contextualized as some Zen, philosophical belief system, but rather, as simply an acknowledgment of a capacity you access continuously; there must be an observer in you or how else would you be aware that there are issues plaguing the “you” you tend to subjectively identify as? The emancipating question is, “how long will you maintain the idea that you are what you witness?”