August 1, 2025 • 40 mins
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Look up with all the things will beat it on
the bottom all O, wow, is you you're my favorite view?
Speaker 2 (00:17):
But that's not and we are back.
Speaker 3 (00:23):
Welcome back you beautiful creatures should.
Speaker 2 (00:25):
Said welcome back family. I've forgotten habits, habitual phrasing. That's okay,
then we'll run with it. Anyways, today we're doing Friday content.
This is gonna be a quick episode because we have
about an hour before Peaces has to leave, so there's
not gonna be banter or hanging out in playfulness. We're
gonna just jump right into this. For those of you
who do not know, we do record these lives in
front of our Patreon audience so that if we stop
to read comments, it's from our patreon. If you're not
(00:47):
a member of our patreon, you're really missing out. This
article is from medium dot com. It is called not
taking things personally. Is the hardest thing I've ever tried
to do, but it may be the most rewarding skill
can learn.
Speaker 3 (01:00):
I've been in therapy for almost two decades. For about
one third of my life, I have sought help from
others to heal my emotional wound. I'm not weird or special.
According to SAMHSA. Over fifty million Americans received mental health
treatment in twenty twenty something point two.
Speaker 2 (01:21):
Hang on it, It says substance use and mental health indicators. Uh,
that's what That's what came up when I clicked on
that link.
Speaker 3 (01:29):
All right, Anyways, over the past twenty years, I learned
how I integrated or failed to integrate things that have
happened to me. I learned how my past shows up
in the present to create more suffering than the average
human should endure. I've learned that much of the suffering
is caused by things I do to myself during my education.
A tiny book of wisdom, the Four Agreements by Don
(01:50):
Miguel Ruiz, appeared on my radar.
Speaker 2 (01:53):
That's your shit. Yeah, I know that you're getting excited
when you read that.
Speaker 3 (01:56):
I do, and he has what the four agreements are.
That is, to be impeccable with your word, don't take
anything personally, don't make assumptions, and always do your best.
This little tone contains the biggest bang for the buck
out of all of the self help books, articles, and
podcasts I have consumed. It's simple, precise, and duck scent succinct.
(02:18):
The fuck is English.
Speaker 2 (02:21):
Words are stupid. Just move on, babe, You're you're cycling
in there. You're stuck, He's mape gosh, break that loop. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (02:31):
My pathway quickly led to overwhelm and I found myself
looking for a simpler approach to healing. I often returned
to Ruiz's Book of Tullock Wisdom. While I can follow
a couple of agreements fairly closely, two of the four
agreements don't make assumptions and don't take anything personally remain challenging.
Speaker 2 (02:49):
They boy do they? That don't take things personally is
the hardest of the four agreements for me. Yeah, yep,
But that's because I've had to This is not relevant
to anything, But that's because I've had to do everything
on my own for so fucking long that it is
personal because everything, every decision that I make, and everything
that happens in my realm can affect my life. And
(03:11):
when you don't have anyone else and everything falls on
your shoulders or lands at your feet, it's hard not
to take everything personal, because it fucking is. But as
I've healed, and I realized I have a team, and
like I have a wonderful relationship with you, Like everything
has changed now. So that's where my defensiveness is still
there with a whole lot of other things, but it's
becoming less and less with you. So, but that is
(03:33):
one of the hardest one for me.
Speaker 3 (03:34):
Yeah, continuing though hard to implement, the agreements provide solutions
to my problems. Is if I can boil all my
mental health work down to these two statements, self help
is not self centered, not making assumptions about communicating with
other people. We don't understand something, we can ask for
more information. We can learn to communicate better with our
(03:55):
partners and loved ones, to improve our relationships by reducing ambiguity.
This is the universal truth and a common theme. All
four agreements are found in one form or another in
many thought systems and religions. They are mostly common sense.
But just because something is obvious doesn't mean it's easy facts.
Another common thing amongst belief systems, including the Tolic lineage
(04:17):
to which Don Miguel Ruiz belongs, is the concept of interconnectedness.
Rather than existing as rugged individuals, humans are part of everything.
We breathe air, we exhal carbon dioxide, consume water, excrete, urine,
et cetera. We are connected to everything. The universe is
(04:37):
a bunch of molecules that move around, change shape, form things,
and dissolve back. This isn't speculative, but it is formidable, formidable, formidable.
Speaker 2 (04:49):
Ah.
Speaker 3 (04:51):
To remember that we are not separate, existing as separate
individuals working within a collective is confusing.
Speaker 2 (04:58):
It's not anymore.
Speaker 3 (04:59):
No, it is not.
Speaker 2 (05:02):
No, it is not che codes.
Speaker 3 (05:05):
Modern evolution has increasingly led us to focus on individuality
and away from the collective. But we would not have
evolved this far if we did not consider the hole.
Something changed in the recent path that is leading us apart.
I believe this is why so many of us are suffering.
Speaker 2 (05:20):
I actually agree with that.
Speaker 3 (05:21):
I agree with that too. When okay, right, so, just
looking at a forest, all of the trees are interconnected.
And I can't remember what we were watching, but it
was talking about trees that grow in pairs. So when
you're walking around a natural forest, not straight lines because deforestation,
(05:43):
you're going to see clusters of trees that are in pairs.
And those two trees have decided to live life together.
If the redwood on the right side passes away, the
left redwood is aware that it's no longer there.
Speaker 2 (05:58):
Yeah, well, and also the also say that if it
gets some sort of sickness, yeah, that it through my celium.
Speaker 3 (06:04):
They exchange nutrients, right.
Speaker 2 (06:06):
And the other tree will start building antibodies to either
help the other tree or to save itself. Yeah. Yep.
Speaker 3 (06:12):
When you look at collective like that, if there is
a whole collective happening and in a single sapling is
thrown into the mix and it's not part of that collective,
it's not going to fare as well as all the
other ones. Or if something is cut off from that collective,
it's not going to be receiving the nutrients it once was.
So it's going to weaken. What's happening with humans, it's
(06:33):
not about me or you. Focusing on ourselves the individual
is increasingly common. This recent departure from a more collective
evolutionary path is destructive and maladaptive. We would not have
survived this long in isolation from one another. Self centeredness
explains why we struggle not to take things personally. The
(06:53):
increasing focus on individuality is killing both the individual and
the collective. Yet it is so hard not to do
the problem with.
Speaker 2 (07:01):
That too, though, is for people like me and Sean
or Sean and I is the right way to say
that we go above and beyond to take care of people, right,
that's just part of who we are. And he's now
experiencing it on a level that I did because he's
a business owner. But you want to make sure that
the people around you are taking care of and are
eating and all the things that are going on in
their life is going well, and you give them money
and you try to level them up, and at the
(07:21):
end of the day, they're only there because there's a handout.
When that hand stops feeding, you're the bad guy, or
you've been a bad guy the entire time because you're
not doing as much as they want you to do
for them. Because the taker will always take. The giver
can only give so much. That's where bridges get burned
and people fucking do people dirty enough that people like
Sean and I will eventually stop helping. I'm not doing
(07:42):
shit for people anymore. No, well, okay, that's a lie.
I am doing shit for some people.
Speaker 3 (07:49):
I'm doing shit for people in my inner circle right exactly.
I'm not willing to stick my neck out for people
who I know are going to cut me.
Speaker 2 (08:00):
How was that for you? Coming in to all of
this when you did with Hurricane Ian and seeing everything
that I did and how fast those bridges got burned,
is that a wake up call for you?
Speaker 3 (08:09):
We paid for a family to leave the state for
two weeks and stay in a hotel room, paid for.
Speaker 2 (08:17):
All of it. Yeah, but it was more than that,
Like we did a lot.
Speaker 3 (08:20):
Now I know we did more than that. That was
just one of the things that came to my mind. Right.
Speaker 2 (08:23):
But and all of the people that we did for,
literally everyone, none of them are in our.
Speaker 3 (08:28):
Life anymore fairly received a thank you.
Speaker 2 (08:31):
Most of them didn't even get us Christmas cards that year. Yeah,
four months later. It's fucking crazy, right, two months later
because the hurricane happened at the very end of September.
It was a twenty ninth, Yeah, twenty eighth somewhere around there.
So October November December was three months we didn't get
to thank you like a Christmas cards. Fucking crazy to
me anyways.
Speaker 3 (08:52):
Anyways, not taking anything personally starts with remembering we are
less a part than we are together. The whole speech
cheese is greater than the individual. We knew this once
and we can again. Religions, communities, families, and even governments
can help us rediscover our connections. That they have failed
to do so in recent history does not mean we
(09:12):
can't do it. The complex human nervous system is adapted
to facilitate healthy societies and solve the cognitive dissonance between
the individual and the community. We know how to balance
those two inherently. All we have to do is remember
the hardest thing I'll ever do. My mental health education
has taught me that I take things personally. I have
(09:33):
discovered this causes nearly all my extra suffering when I
was young taking things personally and understanding that people wanted
from me. As an adult, when I take things personally,
I create more problems than I solve. Not only do
I not feel more love, but I also push people away.
Many of us do this. We commonly refer to it
as people pleasing or codependency. Why do we take things personally?
(09:58):
Why are we the central character in our life stories?
Why can we not let go of it being about us?
I can't answer these questions, but it doesn't make evolutionary sense.
Humans evolve because we cooperated and focused on both ourselves
and our group. Somehow, however, this awareness has been lost
in recent times. This movement is probably a result of modernity, modernity,
(10:25):
increasing group size, governmental structure, and shifting values. While the
cause of our increasing individualism is unknown, what is clear
is that increasing self centeredness is killing us. We have
shifted away from our evolutionary path. While our exceptional neurological
gifts are beneficial, they are also costly. Our advancement is
(10:46):
coupled with forgetting that we are our obligate of flock,
connected to ourselves and the earth. No one knows exactly
what happened, but many agree we have made a wrong turn.
Perhaps I struggle with self centeredness will help explain my
story trauma, old beliefs, and maledactive schema. I want to
(11:08):
say shima like shwarma. Okay, Like many, I am hypervigilant,
empathetic people pleasing EmPATH Because I did not receive enough
information from my parents and family of origin, I developed
ways of el cadating, elucidating, elucidating my world. Can you
(11:33):
google that. I don't know what that means. Make something clear? Explain? Okay,
So trying to cope the best you can as a child, Yep. Continuing,
I became a mind reader. I spent nearly all my
energy trying to be who I thought people wanted me
to be. I believe love was unconditional and that I
must behave this way to feel safe and loved.
Speaker 2 (11:53):
All right, guys, As you know, there was a TikTok scare.
We lost the app for a whole twelve hours, and
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our accounts, and we are trying to push people to
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(12:16):
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Speaker 3 (12:20):
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Speaker 2 (12:41):
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Speaker 3 (13:34):
The best way to support what we are doing is
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As an adult, this belief system caused trouble in my relationships.
I was the pursuer of my partner's retreat, driving them away.
I became a doormat. I sacrificed my needs and wants
and try too hard to make my family happy. Eventually
(13:54):
I lost the sense of who I was. I learned
most of this after my first wife left me for
another man. In therapy, I realized that my contribution to
that divorce was my loss of self. I became very uninteresting,
a clingy, needy shell of a man with no redeeming qualities.
Because I was an attentive father and nice husband, but
(14:16):
I was miserable. Years of denying my needs made me
exceptionally resentful of everyone, including the people I loved the most.
Although this behavior was protective when I was a child,
it became maladaptive in adulthood. I learned that trying to
meet other people's needs to make them love me was
manipulative and unkind. Who was I to think I could
read people's minds or to do so without their consent?
(14:40):
How could I possibly know what people were thinking? Anyway?
Wouldn't asking them be a better approach than thinking I
was clearvoyant or omniscent?
Speaker 2 (14:48):
Crazy? Crazy that We've talked about all of this on
the podcast over the last three years.
Speaker 3 (14:52):
Yeah, my fear of abandonment made me incredibly self centered.
The illusion of altruism didn't fool anyone but me. I
force my will on people without their consent, determine their thoughts,
and base my behavior on those observations. And if that
sounds crazy, well, there are a lot of crazies in
the world. This article summarizes some people pleasing statistics and
(15:14):
suggest nearly half of us behave like this sometimes. So
before judging me, look at those around you and yourself.
Speaker 2 (15:21):
We'll read that when we're done.
Speaker 3 (15:22):
Though I am on a healing path, I sometimes fall
back on my old beliefs when I experience conflict, disagreement,
or somehow perceive that a loved one is disappointed in me.
I can be triggered into automatic people pleasing behavior. I
take whatever they do or say personally and implement my
old strategies based and implement my old strategies based. I
(15:44):
become afraid subconsciously that I will be abandoned or worse.
I lose my sense of self, forget my needs, and
do whatever good things I think will make the other
person happy. I'm getting better, but I still miss the mark.
The way out is in. Despite our belief that we
are doing good things for our loved ones, people pleasing
behaviors can be manipulative and cohersive coersive coersive. The behavior
(16:08):
also leads to loss of self, anxiety, and depression. Rather
than protecting us from abandonment, it can be a cause.
As my experience illustrates, the fears we are trying to
avoid come true. Luckily, there is a simple solution, though
it isn't easy. Many therapeutic strategies tell us that changing
our minds is all we have to do. Or if
(16:31):
we stop believing that our people pleasing behaviors will protect us,
we can start being more selfish. But if it were
that easy, half the self help industry would collapse overnight.
Teasing a part of our old protective strategies for healthier
ones is perhaps the most difficult thing one can do.
I have been divorced but nicotine after a thirty year addiction,
(16:51):
and given up a career to be a better parent.
Like most of us, I had had my fair share
of challenges in my life. Sure a ton of privilege,
but I would estimate I am an average representative of
human challenge. Changing beliefs is difficult for all of us,
and it's easy to understand why we spend most of
our lives reinforcing old beliefs. During moments of childhood trauma,
(17:13):
we adopt whatever strategy we can think of quickly to
protect ourselves. These strategies don't have to make sense, they
only have to reduce the pain. A classic example is
a sad clown who uses humor to escape bullying or
feel safe in their family home. They grow out making
people laugh, but never address the trauma inside. They are
depressed when they are alone, but happy in public. They
(17:36):
believe they have to make people laugh to be loved.
The problem is we generate mounds of evidence over time,
thousands of instances where we insert the maladaptive behavior and
get the desired result. It is a massively repetitive cycle
of fear leading to maladaptive behaviors leading the safety. That
strength strengthens with each iteration. We not only believe the works,
(18:00):
but we feel empowered. Even when the cycle doesn't work,
we can use this power to convince ourselves that it did.
The fear is so strong that we double down on
the only strategy we have the bottom line is that
maledactive schemas like people pleasing are incredibly hard to change
because we believe they keep us safe, shifting from involuntary
(18:21):
to intentional. Our belief systems are so ingrained that they
are automatic. When a fearful event or trigger happens, the
behavior is implemented more quickly than we perceive. This mechanical
response is powerful, protective, and penetrative. We are miles down
the path of people pleasing before we realize it. We
don't feel the fear, but we react automatically. Not being afraid,
(18:45):
of course, was the original point in building the belief.
We repeat the behaviors because they have helped in the past.
The first step is learning to see what is happening.
Victor Frankel describes this most eloquently, and it's off quoted
Man's Search for Meaning.
Speaker 2 (19:02):
The book is on a recommended reading less guys, I
highly highly recommend that you read that book.
Speaker 3 (19:08):
Between stimulus and response, there is space, and that space
is our power to choose our response, and our response
lies our growth and our freedom. I can't love this
quote enough. Frankle describes what I have learned from meditation,
awareness and a feeling of connectedness with the world. The
stimulus is a fear or trigger. The response is our choice.
(19:30):
Realizing that our response is a choice is perhaps the
most powerful healing. What follows is recognition of our responses.
Why do we react the way that we do? Have
we ever even noticed? We assume that it's a result
of some external force, it is someone else's fault. In truth,
the reaction belongs to us and is under our purview.
(19:51):
It may not be under our control, but we are
the only ones who can do anything about it. We
can shift from involuntary automatic response to a voluntary choice.
The key is to learn to recognize what is happening,
learn a new skill set, and apply the new strategy repeatedly.
Simply shifting from being a victim of our circumstances to
the leader of our experience can be revolutionary. A solution
(20:14):
that is working for me volition intention, attention direction. Honing
our awareness is necessary to heal ourselves and form new beliefs.
We used to do this automatically, but the skill has
been lost as an artifact of modernty fought. Technology increases
our efficiency, but it also promotes apathy. We no longer
(20:39):
need to pay attention. As more and more of our
daily needs were met, we stop paying attention altogether.
Speaker 2 (20:44):
You know that they've actually done studies that say that
part of our brain that does socialization is atrophye. It's
becoming weaker. People are failing to read body language, they
can't read the room anymore. They struggle with with in
person communication. Some of it could be autism, but a
lot of the times there's people that struggle with eye
contact and communicating. There's a whole lot of things that
are decreasing because of that. This is one of those
(21:07):
articles that I agree with so much that like, I
haven't had to jump in and say shit the entire time.
Speaker 3 (21:12):
Did you hear? I think this is happening in Japan,
maybe in China. There are people oh gosh, there's a
term for it. They will live in their room for
months or years on end. I read an article where
a guy his ten year high school reunion was coming up,
(21:35):
and he hadn't left his room in ten years, like
his mother would bring him food. He went to the
bathroom in his bedroom, all of those kinds of things,
and he said, I didn't even realize how long it
had been until I got the invitation for my ten
year high school reunion. And I'm too ashamed to show
up because I've done nothing with myself, Sane continuing, Yep.
The phrase pay attention suggests that we actively spend our energy.
(21:58):
This makes sense because we focus our things on the
targets of interest, but it can also suggest that our
attention is budgeted and decided. Attention, then can be conscious
or subconscious. Consider when you arrive at your destination after
a long drive having forgotten parts of the journey. Habitual
skills like driving may become so automatic that we don't
need to pay as much attention. We do lots of
(22:19):
things using this kind of passive attention, like inserting our
old beliefs or choosing how we want to react living
life on autopilot. I'm a good driver, way better than
I am. I'm a very safe driver, and there are
times where I am so lost in my own thoughts,
or like sometimes like even in a meditative state, that, Oh,
(22:43):
I'm pulling up to the house, how did I get here?
Did I use my turn signal every time I change lanes?
Because I don't remember driving like you're an autopilot. Yeah,
continuing awareness and meditation. Becoming aware of our attention is
the first critical step. There are likely many ways to
accomplish this, but I only know how I have done it.
(23:04):
A combination of therapy and meditation worked for me. Therapy
helped me understand how my past relates to my beliefs,
but others may already understand these things. Similarily, you nail.
Speaker 2 (23:17):
That every time I can't say that word.
Speaker 3 (23:20):
Similarly I can't say it like not even looking at it.
I ge, Yeah, my lips aren't touching when I say
that word, so I feel like it's not right.
Speaker 2 (23:30):
Sounds way better than why I do it.
Speaker 3 (23:34):
Mindfulness meditation has taught me how to take the observer
perspective and control my attention. Others may find their way
to these abilities via different routes. Meditation teaches us to
use our awareness. Meditation is to practice, like paying attention
to scales on a violin that facilitates daily mindfulness, like
playing a concert. We meditate so that we can be
(23:56):
aware of what's happening in our daily lives. Meditation acquires discipline, repetition,
and habitual habits. Meditation is also not what most people think.
Many believe meditation requires a quiet mind, a sense of calm, chanting,
or being completely isolated. In truth, Tibetan meditation is simply
(24:18):
about awareness. Meditation and mindfulness can be defined in the
Tibetan sense as learning to bring our attention to the
present moment and simply seeing what arises without bias or judgment.
There are a few keywords in the definition above that
deserves more explanation. Learning implies a process rather than a destination.
Even old monks are still learning to meditate. There is
(24:40):
no accumulation, no badges to be earned, and no levels
to reach. Each meditation is an individual experience.
Speaker 2 (24:47):
Each meditation not meditation each meditation. What do they say
at the first ceremony that we were in, Yesha said
that every moment that you do something that's the first
time you've ever done it, Yes, in that moment, So
you live life that way, to be truly present. The
past doesn't exist. In them anymore, and the future isn't
here yet, And if you want peace and happiness, you
have to live right now because this is what matters.
Speaker 3 (25:10):
The present moment implies staying in the moment. Humans tend
to worry about the past, depression, or the future anxiety.
Mindfulness suggests that those periods do not exist, and that
only this moment is real. Meditation teaches you to be
in the moment, and being in the moment helps you
catch yourself and triggered. Simply seeing what arises tells us
(25:31):
that there is no manipulation. We aren't trying to be
quiet or calm or enlightened. We aren't trying to do anything.
We are simply being sitting and observing without judgment or bias.
Is an interesting part of the definition. Like I said before,
there is no leveling up. There is no goal to reach.
A meditation session cannot be good or bad. We are
(25:53):
not advanced or beginner meditators. Simply meditation is all there is.
Letting go and placing value on meditating a critical attention
and mindfulness. During sitting meditation, we sit and pay attention
to our breath or some other target. The breath is
an excellent target to place our attention. When we become
aware that our attention has drifted away from the breath,
(26:16):
we note thinking and return to paying attention to the breath.
That's it. It is that simple practicing meditation makes it
easier to be mindful in our daily lives. Mindfulness allows
us to be more present and aware of our place
in the moment. Being aware of the present moment means
we can observe ourselves. This is how we learn to
(26:36):
find the moment. Victor Frankel refers to the moment between
the trigger stimulus and our maladaptive reaction response. Learning to
observe this pause means we have developed the power to choose.
Freedom might be defined as the power to choose how
we react. This could be the secret to life. It
is most certainly a pathway to healing. It is how
(26:57):
we take control of our reactions and become more peaceful,
making real and lasting change. Having agency in our human
experience transforms us from a passive existence to active awareness.
The only way to change our limiting beliefs is to
replace them with better systems. This involves breaking the cycle
of fear leading to maladaptive behaviors that leads to safety.
(27:21):
Some self help gurus tell us to have courage. Some
say we can do something different. Others say we can
find safety in other ways. Maybe if we could change
our thoughts we would feel better. I haven't been able
to do most of those things. Potential solutions include cognitive
behavioral therapy, exposure therapy, desensitizing, and somatic healing. I've tried
(27:48):
most of them with less than satisfying results. Undoing the
agreements Our limiting beliefs are agreements we made within ourselves.
And the sad clown example, the clown agreed that they
must make people laugh to be loved. Doesn't that sound horrible?
Why would a person make that sort of agreement simple
protect themselves. Learning to break an agreement you think has
(28:11):
worked for most of your life is challenging, to say
the least. It might be harder than breaking an addiction
in nicotine. Trying something new is risky, and the fear
of being unloved, abandoned, or isolated has real and evolutionary origins.
We are adapted to belonging to groups. Other agreements and
beliefs have similar power to help or hinder our needs.
(28:33):
Changing beliefs, however, is scary. Learning to override the powerful
impulse to protect ourselves sounds impossible. Our only hope is
to develop and trust a powerful system. I learned to
meditate when I became a certified mindfulness meditation instructor. This
course illuminated where I was wrong about meditation, and a
(28:53):
passive side effect was learning to become aware. Though it
wasn't my intention, I figured out what Victor franklant. After
a short period of regular meditation practice, I could see
myself in action. I felt the pause and gain. The
ability to observe myself in action, coupled with the years
of therapy and the knowledge of my past trauma, the
ability to witness to take the observer perspective myself has
(29:17):
been a game changer. Admittedly I am in the earliest
stages of what comes next, but I am too excited
not to share.
Speaker 2 (29:23):
I don't know how you were able to do that.
What do you mean You read that entire sentence with
me removing it from the screen, having to find it.
So it was a bloop bloop bloop, yeah, boop boop,
and you got it all until you got to non judgmental.
Speaker 3 (29:34):
Yeah. I mixed the words that was good, though. Thank you.
My new found ability to see myself in action, honed
by regular non judgmental meditation practice and informed by years
of healing work, has created a real opportunity. Once I
realized I had this ability, however, I didn't know what
to do next. Enter the Tolics and Don Miguel Ruiz.
(29:56):
Though I developed an ability to pause, I did not
know what to do next. Hell I had an intended
on learning this skill. As a result, I didn't know
what to do during the pause. Luckily, my healing journey
led me multiple times to the four Agreements. As I
learned more about trauma and healing, I realize I spent
too much time intellectually analyzing myself and too little time
(30:19):
trying to change. I knew what my issues were, but
I couldn't move forward into doing something about them. Even
with the power to implement change, I was unable. What
helped more than anything with simplification, I have learned that
the most obvious and basic solutions to a problem is
often the correct one. The parsimony of the four Agreements
(30:41):
can't be understated. There are only four things to do.
Oh I do that, the children will sit there and
list out a whole bunch of things. I have to
do this, and I have to do that, and that
is and not like that's only five things. You only
have to do five things. When I would get in
my thought patterns of overwhelmed, especially when it came to
(31:01):
cleaning the house, I would get so overwhelmed because the
house is chaotic. I'm chaotic. I don't know where to start,
so I'm just going to leave it the way it is,
and doom scroll. I started breaking it down to I
have to clean our bedroom, which is linked with our bathroom.
That's one thing. The living room, the fourier, the kitchen,
and the back whiskey room and the kids room in
(31:21):
the bathroom. That's only five places. That's five things that
I have to clean. Instead of thinking I have to
scrub the toilet, scrub the bathtub, sweep under the kitchen table,
get underneath the couches with the vacuum, I have to
move the dog's beds. When you simplify things, like he said,
simplification of all of it, it makes it so much
easier to handle life. Continuing yep, Like I said, I found,
(31:46):
always do your best and be impeccable with your word
less challenging than the other two. I often failed to
meet the agreements, but I'm more easily adhere to these
two regarding my actions in speech. You may find some
agreements easier than others. While don't make assumptions and don't
take anything personally are related, I found the latter more challenging.
(32:07):
Not making assumptions is about communication. Speaking and listening effective
effectively is crucial, but difficult. I learned a lot about
communicating from Marshall Rosenberg's nonviolent communication not making assumption as
part of not taking anything personally not taking things personally.
(32:29):
When we take things personally, we assume we know what
the other person intends, but almost always we don't. Without
communicating with people, we make up our own minds, determine
our reality, and decide what the other person feels or means.
Following this method, it is impossible to be accurate. Is
something humans can't do. We aren't mind readers. When we
(32:50):
don't take things personally, we free ourselves from the responsibility
to monitor other people. For people pleasers, we eliminate the
need to know the other person's needs because it is
our responsibility. We free ourselves of hypervigilance instead of being
responsible for others feelings. We let them care for themselves.
We want to help. We communicate, We don't make assumptions,
(33:11):
We ask questions. We stop filling in the blanks. To
stop taking things personally, we must accept that we can't
control other people's emotions and actions. Until we realize we
only control our choices, there can be no healing Until
we accept that we are not the center of the universe.
We will remain in a prison of our own creation.
(33:32):
Before we can heal, we must let go. Letting go,
not taking things personally is all about letting go. We
think we can do these things, but we can't. We
believe so strongly in our ability to read minds, predict moods,
and sense emotions that it's almost impossible to let go.
There's a meme from finding Nemo interjected, and I'm going
(33:54):
to do my best to do Marlin. Are you ready?
You think you can do these things, but you just
can't me. Yeah, Okay, Oh my gosh, did you just
hear my tummy?
Speaker 2 (34:05):
I downloaded that non violent communication?
Speaker 3 (34:08):
Yeah. Continuing changing limiting beliefs is like quitting any other addiction,
possibly even harder, because you believe this addiction keeps you safe.
Maybe learning new beliefs is like training wheels on a bicycle.
Before you knew how to balance, the training wheels kept
you from falling over, but as you learn to ride,
you no longer needed assistance. If you believe strongly that
(34:30):
the wheels keep you up, taking them off would be
incredibly difficult. You may even give up altogether. Learning to
let go of old habits that worked in the past
has no true analog. This is a unique thing, which
contributes to how hard it is to do. This process
isn't exactly about learning something new. It is more like
(34:50):
forgetting something that used to be important. It's about trust.
Letting go is about learning to trust yourself and the world.
We have to find faith and believe that not taking
things personally will not create problems. Taking things personally worked
when we were young because we believed it protected us
from fear. Changing our behavior means letting go of believing
(35:11):
in our old ways. This is not easy, but it
is required to create real change. I want to pause
real quick and just interject I agree with what he
just said. Can you scroll up a little bit. We
have to find faith and believe that not taking things
personally will not create problems. They shouldn't. If you are
(35:33):
with somebody who drops hints I'm fine, and then you
don't take that personally, and then four hours later that
person creates an argument because you didn't take it personally.
They were trying to manipulate in you in the moment
to try and get what they wanted from the situation,
and you shut that shit down because what you are
going through is not my problem. We can have a
(35:53):
conversation about it, but I'm not going to sit here
and try to read your mind. It okay, I hate
that shit, me too. Summary. Incorporating the four agreements and
changing limiting beliefs are among the most difficult things a
human can endeavor to do. They are also part of
the pathway towards healing. If we become aware of our
(36:14):
limiting beliefs, we create the opportunity to observe our behaviors.
We can then learn to trust that we no longer
need to protect ourselves from our old fears. This trust
allows us to feel safe when not taking things personally.
The more we implement new choices, the more confident we become.
Not taking anything personally might be the strongest and most
difficult habit a human canform. Doing so will relieve us
(36:37):
of excess suffering and pain, connect us more closely with
our families and environments, and facilitate a life of human flourishing.
I continue to take things personally, but I do it
less and less. I hope you can be similarly victorious
in your endeavors. If more of us learn to not
take things personally, it would be easier to change the
world as a long one. That was a long one.
Speaker 2 (36:59):
Do we want to look at this help self distributed people?
Whatever this is?
Speaker 3 (37:03):
No, I don't.
Speaker 2 (37:05):
Yeah, that's the whole last thing. I don't want to
get into that either. Come on, all right, So now
that we've gotten that out of the way, I think
that we when we come back and do Wednesday episodes,
I think that we should just do two podcast episodes.
I think because we're still behind on emails, I think
that we can just do emails for a while. And
I have to do these articles because there's a lot
of just sitting here. Yeah, and I'm sure I know
(37:26):
that people enjoy these. So maybe we throw these in
ands like sprinkle them as content, but maybe just not
do them as every Friday content. And give give like
a an email read for a month of every episode
we do is just emails, okay, you okay with that?
The days that we don't feel like doing emails will
find an article but plan to do emails kind of thing.
Speaker 3 (37:47):
I feel like that's just two podcast episodes son that matter.
Speaker 2 (37:50):
It could be okay, we look at it that way.
I think that I think that people are here more
for the email content than this kind of stuff. And
and though normally there are conversations that stem from those
kind of articles, today there was nothing. I feel like
we just agreed with everything, so we sat here in silence.
Speaker 3 (38:04):
I think it was still good information.
Speaker 2 (38:06):
What do you guys think in the chat?
Speaker 3 (38:08):
I learned things about myself in that article.
Speaker 2 (38:10):
Yea, like what.
Speaker 3 (38:11):
I would have to look at it again to tell
you exactly what it was. But there's just a new
enlightenment in myself, a better understanding of why I do
things the way that I do.
Speaker 2 (38:19):
I see that Taylor is in the chat. Alice was
in here earlier asking about selling off all her possessions
and living in her car, and we're going to put
you to in contact. I don't know if she's still
in the chat. Or not, but I enjoyed it, Okay,
So I mean people still enjoy the content. I guess
it doesn't really matter either way what we do. As
long as we're creating content people are happy about it. Yeah,
I just want to make sure that we're really helping people.
(38:41):
And like, I don't want to I don't want to
do the same thing every time, right, But we can
only have the same conversations that we've already had on
the podcast about emotional cheating and the dating scene and
all the conversations that we've already done over and over
again over the last three years. Like, I don't want
to keep doing that because I feel like it's just
redundant at this point, especially if people can just go
(39:03):
back and fucking watch it, right, Like, So, there is
definitely a need to continue to create content that is
refreshing or fresh for people who are doing a thing.
Demitra just bought the four agreements. I love that we
do have an episode that we will be going live
(39:25):
on Friday, guys for a bonus cast that we'll be
doing with Derek. He was somebody that came into the
He was at the last Ayahuasca ceremony that we did
and he's a big part of the group that facilitates
these things, and he wasn't at the first one we did.
No he was, and I didn't know who he was.
And the reason why he wasn't there is because he
had just went to the jungle to do the diet
YEA for thirty days. So we'll have to have a
(39:48):
conversation with him about what that looked like and how
all that went down, and be a lot of good
conversations there. But Angeliue said, I think with the topic,
it was a great reminder for those that have read
the book and encourage more to read it. That works.
Taras said, I think I missed the last Ultimate shirt.
Maybe it went out in April and it ended on
April fifteenth. If you missed it, you missed it. It's
(40:08):
gone all right, babe. Let's wrap up. You gotta get
the kids in twenty minutes, and I gotta be honest,
I'm done sitting here. Don't want to see it anymore. Okay,
So guys, thanks for tuning in. If you guys will
be here on Friday, we will see you then and
we made this for you will hope you enjoy it.
You are the author of your own life, grab a pen,
and we will see you on the next one.
Speaker 3 (40:27):
Bye guys,
Look up with all the things will beat it on
the bottom all O, wow, is you you're my favorite view?
Speaker 2 (00:17):
But that's not and we are back.
Speaker 3 (00:23):
Welcome back you beautiful creatures should.
Speaker 2 (00:25):
Said welcome back family. I've forgotten habits, habitual phrasing. That's okay,
then we'll run with it. Anyways, today we're doing Friday content.
This is gonna be a quick episode because we have
about an hour before Peaces has to leave, so there's
not gonna be banter or hanging out in playfulness. We're
gonna just jump right into this. For those of you
who do not know, we do record these lives in
front of our Patreon audience so that if we stop
to read comments, it's from our patreon. If you're not
(00:47):
a member of our patreon, you're really missing out. This
article is from medium dot com. It is called not
taking things personally. Is the hardest thing I've ever tried
to do, but it may be the most rewarding skill
can learn.
Speaker 3 (01:00):
I've been in therapy for almost two decades. For about
one third of my life, I have sought help from
others to heal my emotional wound. I'm not weird or special.
According to SAMHSA. Over fifty million Americans received mental health
treatment in twenty twenty something point two.
Speaker 2 (01:21):
Hang on it, It says substance use and mental health indicators. Uh,
that's what That's what came up when I clicked on
that link.
Speaker 3 (01:29):
All right, Anyways, over the past twenty years, I learned
how I integrated or failed to integrate things that have
happened to me. I learned how my past shows up
in the present to create more suffering than the average
human should endure. I've learned that much of the suffering
is caused by things I do to myself during my education.
A tiny book of wisdom, the Four Agreements by Don
(01:50):
Miguel Ruiz, appeared on my radar.
Speaker 2 (01:53):
That's your shit. Yeah, I know that you're getting excited
when you read that.
Speaker 3 (01:56):
I do, and he has what the four agreements are.
That is, to be impeccable with your word, don't take
anything personally, don't make assumptions, and always do your best.
This little tone contains the biggest bang for the buck
out of all of the self help books, articles, and
podcasts I have consumed. It's simple, precise, and duck scent succinct.
(02:18):
The fuck is English.
Speaker 2 (02:21):
Words are stupid. Just move on, babe, You're you're cycling
in there. You're stuck, He's mape gosh, break that loop. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (02:31):
My pathway quickly led to overwhelm and I found myself
looking for a simpler approach to healing. I often returned
to Ruiz's Book of Tullock Wisdom. While I can follow
a couple of agreements fairly closely, two of the four
agreements don't make assumptions and don't take anything personally remain challenging.
Speaker 2 (02:49):
They boy do they? That don't take things personally is
the hardest of the four agreements for me. Yeah, yep,
But that's because I've had to This is not relevant
to anything, But that's because I've had to do everything
on my own for so fucking long that it is
personal because everything, every decision that I make, and everything
that happens in my realm can affect my life. And
(03:11):
when you don't have anyone else and everything falls on
your shoulders or lands at your feet, it's hard not
to take everything personal, because it fucking is. But as
I've healed, and I realized I have a team, and
like I have a wonderful relationship with you, Like everything
has changed now. So that's where my defensiveness is still
there with a whole lot of other things, but it's
becoming less and less with you. So, but that is
(03:33):
one of the hardest one for me.
Speaker 3 (03:34):
Yeah, continuing though hard to implement, the agreements provide solutions
to my problems. Is if I can boil all my
mental health work down to these two statements, self help
is not self centered, not making assumptions about communicating with
other people. We don't understand something, we can ask for
more information. We can learn to communicate better with our
(03:55):
partners and loved ones, to improve our relationships by reducing ambiguity.
This is the universal truth and a common theme. All
four agreements are found in one form or another in
many thought systems and religions. They are mostly common sense.
But just because something is obvious doesn't mean it's easy facts.
Another common thing amongst belief systems, including the Tolic lineage
(04:17):
to which Don Miguel Ruiz belongs, is the concept of interconnectedness.
Rather than existing as rugged individuals, humans are part of everything.
We breathe air, we exhal carbon dioxide, consume water, excrete, urine,
et cetera. We are connected to everything. The universe is
(04:37):
a bunch of molecules that move around, change shape, form things,
and dissolve back. This isn't speculative, but it is formidable, formidable, formidable.
Speaker 2 (04:49):
Ah.
Speaker 3 (04:51):
To remember that we are not separate, existing as separate
individuals working within a collective is confusing.
Speaker 2 (04:58):
It's not anymore.
Speaker 3 (04:59):
No, it is not.
Speaker 2 (05:02):
No, it is not che codes.
Speaker 3 (05:05):
Modern evolution has increasingly led us to focus on individuality
and away from the collective. But we would not have
evolved this far if we did not consider the hole.
Something changed in the recent path that is leading us apart.
I believe this is why so many of us are suffering.
Speaker 2 (05:20):
I actually agree with that.
Speaker 3 (05:21):
I agree with that too. When okay, right, so, just
looking at a forest, all of the trees are interconnected.
And I can't remember what we were watching, but it
was talking about trees that grow in pairs. So when
you're walking around a natural forest, not straight lines because deforestation,
(05:43):
you're going to see clusters of trees that are in pairs.
And those two trees have decided to live life together.
If the redwood on the right side passes away, the
left redwood is aware that it's no longer there.
Speaker 2 (05:58):
Yeah, well, and also the also say that if it
gets some sort of sickness, yeah, that it through my celium.
Speaker 3 (06:04):
They exchange nutrients, right.
Speaker 2 (06:06):
And the other tree will start building antibodies to either
help the other tree or to save itself. Yeah. Yep.
Speaker 3 (06:12):
When you look at collective like that, if there is
a whole collective happening and in a single sapling is
thrown into the mix and it's not part of that collective,
it's not going to fare as well as all the
other ones. Or if something is cut off from that collective,
it's not going to be receiving the nutrients it once was.
So it's going to weaken. What's happening with humans, it's
(06:33):
not about me or you. Focusing on ourselves the individual
is increasingly common. This recent departure from a more collective
evolutionary path is destructive and maladaptive. We would not have
survived this long in isolation from one another. Self centeredness
explains why we struggle not to take things personally. The
(06:53):
increasing focus on individuality is killing both the individual and
the collective. Yet it is so hard not to do
the problem with.
Speaker 2 (07:01):
That too, though, is for people like me and Sean
or Sean and I is the right way to say
that we go above and beyond to take care of people, right,
that's just part of who we are. And he's now
experiencing it on a level that I did because he's
a business owner. But you want to make sure that
the people around you are taking care of and are
eating and all the things that are going on in
their life is going well, and you give them money
and you try to level them up, and at the
(07:21):
end of the day, they're only there because there's a handout.
When that hand stops feeding, you're the bad guy, or
you've been a bad guy the entire time because you're
not doing as much as they want you to do
for them. Because the taker will always take. The giver
can only give so much. That's where bridges get burned
and people fucking do people dirty enough that people like
Sean and I will eventually stop helping. I'm not doing
(07:42):
shit for people anymore. No, well, okay, that's a lie.
I am doing shit for some people.
Speaker 3 (07:49):
I'm doing shit for people in my inner circle right exactly.
I'm not willing to stick my neck out for people
who I know are going to cut me.
Speaker 2 (08:00):
How was that for you? Coming in to all of
this when you did with Hurricane Ian and seeing everything
that I did and how fast those bridges got burned,
is that a wake up call for you?
Speaker 3 (08:09):
We paid for a family to leave the state for
two weeks and stay in a hotel room, paid for.
Speaker 2 (08:17):
All of it. Yeah, but it was more than that,
Like we did a lot.
Speaker 3 (08:20):
Now I know we did more than that. That was
just one of the things that came to my mind. Right.
Speaker 2 (08:23):
But and all of the people that we did for,
literally everyone, none of them are in our.
Speaker 3 (08:28):
Life anymore fairly received a thank you.
Speaker 2 (08:31):
Most of them didn't even get us Christmas cards that year. Yeah,
four months later. It's fucking crazy, right, two months later
because the hurricane happened at the very end of September.
It was a twenty ninth, Yeah, twenty eighth somewhere around there.
So October November December was three months we didn't get
to thank you like a Christmas cards. Fucking crazy to
me anyways.
Speaker 3 (08:52):
Anyways, not taking anything personally starts with remembering we are
less a part than we are together. The whole speech
cheese is greater than the individual. We knew this once
and we can again. Religions, communities, families, and even governments
can help us rediscover our connections. That they have failed
to do so in recent history does not mean we
(09:12):
can't do it. The complex human nervous system is adapted
to facilitate healthy societies and solve the cognitive dissonance between
the individual and the community. We know how to balance
those two inherently. All we have to do is remember
the hardest thing I'll ever do. My mental health education
has taught me that I take things personally. I have
(09:33):
discovered this causes nearly all my extra suffering when I
was young taking things personally and understanding that people wanted
from me. As an adult, when I take things personally,
I create more problems than I solve. Not only do
I not feel more love, but I also push people away.
Many of us do this. We commonly refer to it
as people pleasing or codependency. Why do we take things personally?
(09:58):
Why are we the central character in our life stories?
Why can we not let go of it being about us?
I can't answer these questions, but it doesn't make evolutionary sense.
Humans evolve because we cooperated and focused on both ourselves
and our group. Somehow, however, this awareness has been lost
in recent times. This movement is probably a result of modernity, modernity,
(10:25):
increasing group size, governmental structure, and shifting values. While the
cause of our increasing individualism is unknown, what is clear
is that increasing self centeredness is killing us. We have
shifted away from our evolutionary path. While our exceptional neurological
gifts are beneficial, they are also costly. Our advancement is
(10:46):
coupled with forgetting that we are our obligate of flock,
connected to ourselves and the earth. No one knows exactly
what happened, but many agree we have made a wrong turn.
Perhaps I struggle with self centeredness will help explain my
story trauma, old beliefs, and maledactive schema. I want to
(11:08):
say shima like shwarma. Okay, Like many, I am hypervigilant,
empathetic people pleasing EmPATH Because I did not receive enough
information from my parents and family of origin, I developed
ways of el cadating, elucidating, elucidating my world. Can you
(11:33):
google that. I don't know what that means. Make something clear? Explain? Okay,
So trying to cope the best you can as a child, Yep. Continuing,
I became a mind reader. I spent nearly all my
energy trying to be who I thought people wanted me
to be. I believe love was unconditional and that I
must behave this way to feel safe and loved.
Speaker 2 (11:53):
All right, guys, As you know, there was a TikTok scare.
We lost the app for a whole twelve hours, and
we have no idea what the future of the app
looks like, and with that, we are very concerned about
the loss of our following. We have a massed almost
three million followers across that platform with all four of
our accounts, and we are trying to push people to
other social media platforms so that in the event that
anything happens on one app, we have multiple other backup plans.
(12:16):
If you want to make sure that you're not missing
any content, we highly recommend that you check out our patreon.
Speaker 3 (12:20):
On Patreon, we have multiple tiers to choose from. Starting
at ten dollars, you begin to receive exclusive content. At
fifteen dollars a month, you get access to our private
discord server, where we've en massed in an absolutely amazing
community of supportive people. And beyond that, we have other
tiers to check out, along with my two private women's group.
If that's something you may be interested in.
Speaker 2 (12:41):
Guys on our fifteen dollars and higher tier, you have
access to live recordings. We record all of our content three, four,
sometimes five times a week live in front of our
Patreon audience, where they are able to chat with us
while we are recording. They can see all the flirting
and the outtakes, the hot topic conversations that never actually
make it on the podcast, and it's really worth that
aspect and it's elth We have it after Dark where
(13:02):
we sit down usually once a week and have a
glass of bourbon or and Impeach's case of glass of
wine and a bowl of cheese and we have a
whole lot of fun conversations karaoke in the discord we
finish the lyrics. We literally just hang out and you
guys get to hang out with us. There is a
host of other perks, including zoom calls that are coming
for the Ultimate Tier, so that if you guys are
having problems, you can talk to us. It also gives
(13:24):
you the heads up on private meet and greets because
when we travel we try to meet up with people
on our discord on a regular basis. There's a whole
slew of other perks that come through Patreon. I highly
recommend that you check it out.
Speaker 3 (13:34):
The best way to support what we are doing is
to share the content. The second best way is to
check out our Patreon. Thank you guys for being here.
As an adult, this belief system caused trouble in my relationships.
I was the pursuer of my partner's retreat, driving them away.
I became a doormat. I sacrificed my needs and wants
and try too hard to make my family happy. Eventually
(13:54):
I lost the sense of who I was. I learned
most of this after my first wife left me for
another man. In therapy, I realized that my contribution to
that divorce was my loss of self. I became very uninteresting,
a clingy, needy shell of a man with no redeeming qualities.
Because I was an attentive father and nice husband, but
(14:16):
I was miserable. Years of denying my needs made me
exceptionally resentful of everyone, including the people I loved the most.
Although this behavior was protective when I was a child,
it became maladaptive in adulthood. I learned that trying to
meet other people's needs to make them love me was
manipulative and unkind. Who was I to think I could
read people's minds or to do so without their consent?
(14:40):
How could I possibly know what people were thinking? Anyway?
Wouldn't asking them be a better approach than thinking I
was clearvoyant or omniscent?
Speaker 2 (14:48):
Crazy? Crazy that We've talked about all of this on
the podcast over the last three years.
Speaker 3 (14:52):
Yeah, my fear of abandonment made me incredibly self centered.
The illusion of altruism didn't fool anyone but me. I
force my will on people without their consent, determine their thoughts,
and base my behavior on those observations. And if that
sounds crazy, well, there are a lot of crazies in
the world. This article summarizes some people pleasing statistics and
(15:14):
suggest nearly half of us behave like this sometimes. So
before judging me, look at those around you and yourself.
Speaker 2 (15:21):
We'll read that when we're done.
Speaker 3 (15:22):
Though I am on a healing path, I sometimes fall
back on my old beliefs when I experience conflict, disagreement,
or somehow perceive that a loved one is disappointed in me.
I can be triggered into automatic people pleasing behavior. I
take whatever they do or say personally and implement my
old strategies based and implement my old strategies based. I
(15:44):
become afraid subconsciously that I will be abandoned or worse.
I lose my sense of self, forget my needs, and
do whatever good things I think will make the other
person happy. I'm getting better, but I still miss the mark.
The way out is in. Despite our belief that we
are doing good things for our loved ones, people pleasing
behaviors can be manipulative and cohersive coersive coersive. The behavior
(16:08):
also leads to loss of self, anxiety, and depression. Rather
than protecting us from abandonment, it can be a cause.
As my experience illustrates, the fears we are trying to
avoid come true. Luckily, there is a simple solution, though
it isn't easy. Many therapeutic strategies tell us that changing
our minds is all we have to do. Or if
(16:31):
we stop believing that our people pleasing behaviors will protect us,
we can start being more selfish. But if it were
that easy, half the self help industry would collapse overnight.
Teasing a part of our old protective strategies for healthier
ones is perhaps the most difficult thing one can do.
I have been divorced but nicotine after a thirty year addiction,
(16:51):
and given up a career to be a better parent.
Like most of us, I had had my fair share
of challenges in my life. Sure a ton of privilege,
but I would estimate I am an average representative of
human challenge. Changing beliefs is difficult for all of us,
and it's easy to understand why we spend most of
our lives reinforcing old beliefs. During moments of childhood trauma,
(17:13):
we adopt whatever strategy we can think of quickly to
protect ourselves. These strategies don't have to make sense, they
only have to reduce the pain. A classic example is
a sad clown who uses humor to escape bullying or
feel safe in their family home. They grow out making
people laugh, but never address the trauma inside. They are
depressed when they are alone, but happy in public. They
(17:36):
believe they have to make people laugh to be loved.
The problem is we generate mounds of evidence over time,
thousands of instances where we insert the maladaptive behavior and
get the desired result. It is a massively repetitive cycle
of fear leading to maladaptive behaviors leading the safety. That
strength strengthens with each iteration. We not only believe the works,
(18:00):
but we feel empowered. Even when the cycle doesn't work,
we can use this power to convince ourselves that it did.
The fear is so strong that we double down on
the only strategy we have the bottom line is that
maledactive schemas like people pleasing are incredibly hard to change
because we believe they keep us safe, shifting from involuntary
(18:21):
to intentional. Our belief systems are so ingrained that they
are automatic. When a fearful event or trigger happens, the
behavior is implemented more quickly than we perceive. This mechanical
response is powerful, protective, and penetrative. We are miles down
the path of people pleasing before we realize it. We
don't feel the fear, but we react automatically. Not being afraid,
(18:45):
of course, was the original point in building the belief.
We repeat the behaviors because they have helped in the past.
The first step is learning to see what is happening.
Victor Frankel describes this most eloquently, and it's off quoted
Man's Search for Meaning.
Speaker 2 (19:02):
The book is on a recommended reading less guys, I
highly highly recommend that you read that book.
Speaker 3 (19:08):
Between stimulus and response, there is space, and that space
is our power to choose our response, and our response
lies our growth and our freedom. I can't love this
quote enough. Frankle describes what I have learned from meditation,
awareness and a feeling of connectedness with the world. The
stimulus is a fear or trigger. The response is our choice.
(19:30):
Realizing that our response is a choice is perhaps the
most powerful healing. What follows is recognition of our responses.
Why do we react the way that we do? Have
we ever even noticed? We assume that it's a result
of some external force, it is someone else's fault. In truth,
the reaction belongs to us and is under our purview.
(19:51):
It may not be under our control, but we are
the only ones who can do anything about it. We
can shift from involuntary automatic response to a voluntary choice.
The key is to learn to recognize what is happening,
learn a new skill set, and apply the new strategy repeatedly.
Simply shifting from being a victim of our circumstances to
the leader of our experience can be revolutionary. A solution
(20:14):
that is working for me volition intention, attention direction. Honing
our awareness is necessary to heal ourselves and form new beliefs.
We used to do this automatically, but the skill has
been lost as an artifact of modernty fought. Technology increases
our efficiency, but it also promotes apathy. We no longer
(20:39):
need to pay attention. As more and more of our
daily needs were met, we stop paying attention altogether.
Speaker 2 (20:44):
You know that they've actually done studies that say that
part of our brain that does socialization is atrophye. It's
becoming weaker. People are failing to read body language, they
can't read the room anymore. They struggle with with in
person communication. Some of it could be autism, but a
lot of the times there's people that struggle with eye
contact and communicating. There's a whole lot of things that
are decreasing because of that. This is one of those
(21:07):
articles that I agree with so much that like, I
haven't had to jump in and say shit the entire time.
Speaker 3 (21:12):
Did you hear? I think this is happening in Japan,
maybe in China. There are people oh gosh, there's a
term for it. They will live in their room for
months or years on end. I read an article where
a guy his ten year high school reunion was coming up,
(21:35):
and he hadn't left his room in ten years, like
his mother would bring him food. He went to the
bathroom in his bedroom, all of those kinds of things,
and he said, I didn't even realize how long it
had been until I got the invitation for my ten
year high school reunion. And I'm too ashamed to show
up because I've done nothing with myself, Sane continuing, Yep.
The phrase pay attention suggests that we actively spend our energy.
(21:58):
This makes sense because we focus our things on the
targets of interest, but it can also suggest that our
attention is budgeted and decided. Attention, then can be conscious
or subconscious. Consider when you arrive at your destination after
a long drive having forgotten parts of the journey. Habitual
skills like driving may become so automatic that we don't
need to pay as much attention. We do lots of
(22:19):
things using this kind of passive attention, like inserting our
old beliefs or choosing how we want to react living
life on autopilot. I'm a good driver, way better than
I am. I'm a very safe driver, and there are
times where I am so lost in my own thoughts,
or like sometimes like even in a meditative state, that, Oh,
(22:43):
I'm pulling up to the house, how did I get here?
Did I use my turn signal every time I change lanes?
Because I don't remember driving like you're an autopilot. Yeah,
continuing awareness and meditation. Becoming aware of our attention is
the first critical step. There are likely many ways to
accomplish this, but I only know how I have done it.
(23:04):
A combination of therapy and meditation worked for me. Therapy
helped me understand how my past relates to my beliefs,
but others may already understand these things. Similarily, you nail.
Speaker 2 (23:17):
That every time I can't say that word.
Speaker 3 (23:20):
Similarly I can't say it like not even looking at it.
I ge, Yeah, my lips aren't touching when I say
that word, so I feel like it's not right.
Speaker 2 (23:30):
Sounds way better than why I do it.
Speaker 3 (23:34):
Mindfulness meditation has taught me how to take the observer
perspective and control my attention. Others may find their way
to these abilities via different routes. Meditation teaches us to
use our awareness. Meditation is to practice, like paying attention
to scales on a violin that facilitates daily mindfulness, like
playing a concert. We meditate so that we can be
(23:56):
aware of what's happening in our daily lives. Meditation acquires discipline, repetition,
and habitual habits. Meditation is also not what most people think.
Many believe meditation requires a quiet mind, a sense of calm, chanting,
or being completely isolated. In truth, Tibetan meditation is simply
(24:18):
about awareness. Meditation and mindfulness can be defined in the
Tibetan sense as learning to bring our attention to the
present moment and simply seeing what arises without bias or judgment.
There are a few keywords in the definition above that
deserves more explanation. Learning implies a process rather than a destination.
Even old monks are still learning to meditate. There is
(24:40):
no accumulation, no badges to be earned, and no levels
to reach. Each meditation is an individual experience.
Speaker 2 (24:47):
Each meditation not meditation each meditation. What do they say
at the first ceremony that we were in, Yesha said
that every moment that you do something that's the first
time you've ever done it, Yes, in that moment, So
you live life that way, to be truly present. The
past doesn't exist. In them anymore, and the future isn't
here yet, And if you want peace and happiness, you
have to live right now because this is what matters.
Speaker 3 (25:10):
The present moment implies staying in the moment. Humans tend
to worry about the past, depression, or the future anxiety.
Mindfulness suggests that those periods do not exist, and that
only this moment is real. Meditation teaches you to be
in the moment, and being in the moment helps you
catch yourself and triggered. Simply seeing what arises tells us
(25:31):
that there is no manipulation. We aren't trying to be
quiet or calm or enlightened. We aren't trying to do anything.
We are simply being sitting and observing without judgment or bias.
Is an interesting part of the definition. Like I said before,
there is no leveling up. There is no goal to reach.
A meditation session cannot be good or bad. We are
(25:53):
not advanced or beginner meditators. Simply meditation is all there is.
Letting go and placing value on meditating a critical attention
and mindfulness. During sitting meditation, we sit and pay attention
to our breath or some other target. The breath is
an excellent target to place our attention. When we become
aware that our attention has drifted away from the breath,
(26:16):
we note thinking and return to paying attention to the breath.
That's it. It is that simple practicing meditation makes it
easier to be mindful in our daily lives. Mindfulness allows
us to be more present and aware of our place
in the moment. Being aware of the present moment means
we can observe ourselves. This is how we learn to
(26:36):
find the moment. Victor Frankel refers to the moment between
the trigger stimulus and our maladaptive reaction response. Learning to
observe this pause means we have developed the power to choose.
Freedom might be defined as the power to choose how
we react. This could be the secret to life. It
is most certainly a pathway to healing. It is how
(26:57):
we take control of our reactions and become more peaceful,
making real and lasting change. Having agency in our human
experience transforms us from a passive existence to active awareness.
The only way to change our limiting beliefs is to
replace them with better systems. This involves breaking the cycle
of fear leading to maladaptive behaviors that leads to safety.
(27:21):
Some self help gurus tell us to have courage. Some
say we can do something different. Others say we can
find safety in other ways. Maybe if we could change
our thoughts we would feel better. I haven't been able
to do most of those things. Potential solutions include cognitive
behavioral therapy, exposure therapy, desensitizing, and somatic healing. I've tried
(27:48):
most of them with less than satisfying results. Undoing the
agreements Our limiting beliefs are agreements we made within ourselves.
And the sad clown example, the clown agreed that they
must make people laugh to be loved. Doesn't that sound horrible?
Why would a person make that sort of agreement simple
protect themselves. Learning to break an agreement you think has
(28:11):
worked for most of your life is challenging, to say
the least. It might be harder than breaking an addiction
in nicotine. Trying something new is risky, and the fear
of being unloved, abandoned, or isolated has real and evolutionary origins.
We are adapted to belonging to groups. Other agreements and
beliefs have similar power to help or hinder our needs.
(28:33):
Changing beliefs, however, is scary. Learning to override the powerful
impulse to protect ourselves sounds impossible. Our only hope is
to develop and trust a powerful system. I learned to
meditate when I became a certified mindfulness meditation instructor. This
course illuminated where I was wrong about meditation, and a
(28:53):
passive side effect was learning to become aware. Though it
wasn't my intention, I figured out what Victor franklant. After
a short period of regular meditation practice, I could see
myself in action. I felt the pause and gain. The
ability to observe myself in action, coupled with the years
of therapy and the knowledge of my past trauma, the
ability to witness to take the observer perspective myself has
(29:17):
been a game changer. Admittedly I am in the earliest
stages of what comes next, but I am too excited
not to share.
Speaker 2 (29:23):
I don't know how you were able to do that.
What do you mean You read that entire sentence with
me removing it from the screen, having to find it.
So it was a bloop bloop bloop, yeah, boop boop,
and you got it all until you got to non judgmental.
Speaker 3 (29:34):
Yeah. I mixed the words that was good, though. Thank you.
My new found ability to see myself in action, honed
by regular non judgmental meditation practice and informed by years
of healing work, has created a real opportunity. Once I
realized I had this ability, however, I didn't know what
to do next. Enter the Tolics and Don Miguel Ruiz.
(29:56):
Though I developed an ability to pause, I did not
know what to do next. Hell I had an intended
on learning this skill. As a result, I didn't know
what to do during the pause. Luckily, my healing journey
led me multiple times to the four Agreements. As I
learned more about trauma and healing, I realize I spent
too much time intellectually analyzing myself and too little time
(30:19):
trying to change. I knew what my issues were, but
I couldn't move forward into doing something about them. Even
with the power to implement change, I was unable. What
helped more than anything with simplification, I have learned that
the most obvious and basic solutions to a problem is
often the correct one. The parsimony of the four Agreements
(30:41):
can't be understated. There are only four things to do.
Oh I do that, the children will sit there and
list out a whole bunch of things. I have to
do this, and I have to do that, and that
is and not like that's only five things. You only
have to do five things. When I would get in
my thought patterns of overwhelmed, especially when it came to
(31:01):
cleaning the house, I would get so overwhelmed because the
house is chaotic. I'm chaotic. I don't know where to start,
so I'm just going to leave it the way it is,
and doom scroll. I started breaking it down to I
have to clean our bedroom, which is linked with our bathroom.
That's one thing. The living room, the fourier, the kitchen,
and the back whiskey room and the kids room in
(31:21):
the bathroom. That's only five places. That's five things that
I have to clean. Instead of thinking I have to
scrub the toilet, scrub the bathtub, sweep under the kitchen table,
get underneath the couches with the vacuum, I have to
move the dog's beds. When you simplify things, like he said,
simplification of all of it, it makes it so much
easier to handle life. Continuing yep, Like I said, I found,
(31:46):
always do your best and be impeccable with your word
less challenging than the other two. I often failed to
meet the agreements, but I'm more easily adhere to these
two regarding my actions in speech. You may find some
agreements easier than others. While don't make assumptions and don't
take anything personally are related, I found the latter more challenging.
(32:07):
Not making assumptions is about communication. Speaking and listening effective
effectively is crucial, but difficult. I learned a lot about
communicating from Marshall Rosenberg's nonviolent communication not making assumption as
part of not taking anything personally not taking things personally.
(32:29):
When we take things personally, we assume we know what
the other person intends, but almost always we don't. Without
communicating with people, we make up our own minds, determine
our reality, and decide what the other person feels or means.
Following this method, it is impossible to be accurate. Is
something humans can't do. We aren't mind readers. When we
(32:50):
don't take things personally, we free ourselves from the responsibility
to monitor other people. For people pleasers, we eliminate the
need to know the other person's needs because it is
our responsibility. We free ourselves of hypervigilance instead of being
responsible for others feelings. We let them care for themselves.
We want to help. We communicate, We don't make assumptions,
(33:11):
We ask questions. We stop filling in the blanks. To
stop taking things personally, we must accept that we can't
control other people's emotions and actions. Until we realize we
only control our choices, there can be no healing Until
we accept that we are not the center of the universe.
We will remain in a prison of our own creation.
(33:32):
Before we can heal, we must let go. Letting go,
not taking things personally is all about letting go. We
think we can do these things, but we can't. We
believe so strongly in our ability to read minds, predict moods,
and sense emotions that it's almost impossible to let go.
There's a meme from finding Nemo interjected, and I'm going
(33:54):
to do my best to do Marlin. Are you ready?
You think you can do these things, but you just
can't me. Yeah, Okay, Oh my gosh, did you just
hear my tummy?
Speaker 2 (34:05):
I downloaded that non violent communication?
Speaker 3 (34:08):
Yeah. Continuing changing limiting beliefs is like quitting any other addiction,
possibly even harder, because you believe this addiction keeps you safe.
Maybe learning new beliefs is like training wheels on a bicycle.
Before you knew how to balance, the training wheels kept
you from falling over, but as you learn to ride,
you no longer needed assistance. If you believe strongly that
(34:30):
the wheels keep you up, taking them off would be
incredibly difficult. You may even give up altogether. Learning to
let go of old habits that worked in the past
has no true analog. This is a unique thing, which
contributes to how hard it is to do. This process
isn't exactly about learning something new. It is more like
(34:50):
forgetting something that used to be important. It's about trust.
Letting go is about learning to trust yourself and the world.
We have to find faith and believe that not taking
things personally will not create problems. Taking things personally worked
when we were young because we believed it protected us
from fear. Changing our behavior means letting go of believing
(35:11):
in our old ways. This is not easy, but it
is required to create real change. I want to pause
real quick and just interject I agree with what he
just said. Can you scroll up a little bit. We
have to find faith and believe that not taking things
personally will not create problems. They shouldn't. If you are
(35:33):
with somebody who drops hints I'm fine, and then you
don't take that personally, and then four hours later that
person creates an argument because you didn't take it personally.
They were trying to manipulate in you in the moment
to try and get what they wanted from the situation,
and you shut that shit down because what you are
going through is not my problem. We can have a
(35:53):
conversation about it, but I'm not going to sit here
and try to read your mind. It okay, I hate
that shit, me too. Summary. Incorporating the four agreements and
changing limiting beliefs are among the most difficult things a
human can endeavor to do. They are also part of
the pathway towards healing. If we become aware of our
(36:14):
limiting beliefs, we create the opportunity to observe our behaviors.
We can then learn to trust that we no longer
need to protect ourselves from our old fears. This trust
allows us to feel safe when not taking things personally.
The more we implement new choices, the more confident we become.
Not taking anything personally might be the strongest and most
difficult habit a human canform. Doing so will relieve us
(36:37):
of excess suffering and pain, connect us more closely with
our families and environments, and facilitate a life of human flourishing.
I continue to take things personally, but I do it
less and less. I hope you can be similarly victorious
in your endeavors. If more of us learn to not
take things personally, it would be easier to change the
world as a long one. That was a long one.
Speaker 2 (36:59):
Do we want to look at this help self distributed people?
Whatever this is?
Speaker 3 (37:03):
No, I don't.
Speaker 2 (37:05):
Yeah, that's the whole last thing. I don't want to
get into that either. Come on, all right, So now
that we've gotten that out of the way, I think
that we when we come back and do Wednesday episodes,
I think that we should just do two podcast episodes.
I think because we're still behind on emails, I think
that we can just do emails for a while. And
I have to do these articles because there's a lot
of just sitting here. Yeah, and I'm sure I know
(37:26):
that people enjoy these. So maybe we throw these in
ands like sprinkle them as content, but maybe just not
do them as every Friday content. And give give like
a an email read for a month of every episode
we do is just emails, okay, you okay with that?
The days that we don't feel like doing emails will
find an article but plan to do emails kind of thing.
Speaker 3 (37:47):
I feel like that's just two podcast episodes son that matter.
Speaker 2 (37:50):
It could be okay, we look at it that way.
I think that I think that people are here more
for the email content than this kind of stuff. And
and though normally there are conversations that stem from those
kind of articles, today there was nothing. I feel like
we just agreed with everything, so we sat here in silence.
Speaker 3 (38:04):
I think it was still good information.
Speaker 2 (38:06):
What do you guys think in the chat?
Speaker 3 (38:08):
I learned things about myself in that article.
Speaker 2 (38:10):
Yea, like what.
Speaker 3 (38:11):
I would have to look at it again to tell
you exactly what it was. But there's just a new
enlightenment in myself, a better understanding of why I do
things the way that I do.
Speaker 2 (38:19):
I see that Taylor is in the chat. Alice was
in here earlier asking about selling off all her possessions
and living in her car, and we're going to put
you to in contact. I don't know if she's still
in the chat. Or not, but I enjoyed it, Okay,
So I mean people still enjoy the content. I guess
it doesn't really matter either way what we do. As
long as we're creating content people are happy about it. Yeah,
I just want to make sure that we're really helping people.
(38:41):
And like, I don't want to I don't want to
do the same thing every time, right, But we can
only have the same conversations that we've already had on
the podcast about emotional cheating and the dating scene and
all the conversations that we've already done over and over
again over the last three years. Like, I don't want
to keep doing that because I feel like it's just
redundant at this point, especially if people can just go
(39:03):
back and fucking watch it, right, Like, So, there is
definitely a need to continue to create content that is
refreshing or fresh for people who are doing a thing.
Demitra just bought the four agreements. I love that we
do have an episode that we will be going live
(39:25):
on Friday, guys for a bonus cast that we'll be
doing with Derek. He was somebody that came into the
He was at the last Ayahuasca ceremony that we did
and he's a big part of the group that facilitates
these things, and he wasn't at the first one we did.
No he was, and I didn't know who he was.
And the reason why he wasn't there is because he
had just went to the jungle to do the diet
YEA for thirty days. So we'll have to have a
(39:48):
conversation with him about what that looked like and how
all that went down, and be a lot of good
conversations there. But Angeliue said, I think with the topic,
it was a great reminder for those that have read
the book and encourage more to read it. That works.
Taras said, I think I missed the last Ultimate shirt.
Maybe it went out in April and it ended on
April fifteenth. If you missed it, you missed it. It's
(40:08):
gone all right, babe. Let's wrap up. You gotta get
the kids in twenty minutes, and I gotta be honest,
I'm done sitting here. Don't want to see it anymore. Okay,
So guys, thanks for tuning in. If you guys will
be here on Friday, we will see you then and
we made this for you will hope you enjoy it.
You are the author of your own life, grab a pen,
and we will see you on the next one.
Speaker 3 (40:27):
Bye guys,
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