September 12, 2023 • 37 mins
In this episode, Luke and Pascal speak about how to relate to other human beings as an adult, and more generally, your place in the world. We start by speaking about the importance of approaching other people with a metaphorical cup that’s full or running over. We also discuss the importance of truth, boundary-setting as...
The post Your Place in the World (Ep. 3) appeared first on The Morpheus Clinic for Hypnosis.
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(00:00):
We don't recognize
love, respect,
esteem
as
needs.
We're always to being told you're not good
enough. And in fact, they lined us up,
in rows and the worse you were, the
further to the back and the left you
were. What you want to avoid is this
soul destroying
apples to oranges comparison.
(00:23):
Welcome to How to be an Adult.
We're a new podcast created by the practitioners
at the Morpheus Clinic For Hypnosis
in Toronto, Canada.
It's for people like you who've inadvertently become
adults and don't know what to do about
it. So whether you're 18 or 80,
this is a trail guide to the, life
(00:44):
that nobody gave you when you got equality
with your parents.
And so we are publicly sharing knowledge in
order to democratize,
self assurance.
Now,
episode 3 continues where episode 2 left off.
No Man is an Island.
How do you relate to the people around
you? Well, the the metaphor that I'm gonna
(01:06):
share is that you have a permanent seat
at the grown up table. Mhmm. So when
I was a kid, if there's a kid's
table and there's a grown up table and
the kids talk about, like, you know, the
kid stuff that kids talk about, you know,
GI Joe and, like, He Man and stuff.
This was the eighties for me. And then
the adults had the grown up table where
they talked about things that mystified kids like
me. Mhmm. I imagine they they probably talked
(01:28):
about things like politics. Mhmm. They talked about
things like working. They talked about things like
relationships and sex and who's dating whom.
And
as an adult,
your place is never gonna be at the
kids' table again. As an adult, you have
a permanent seat at the grown up table
where you are an equal
to the other adults in the room.
(01:52):
Once you're 18 and you show your ID,
your opinions count
so
highly
that you get to help set the future
of the country or the city or the
province or the state that you're in So
it's not just
talking
where you have a quality. It's actually
(02:12):
making important
civic decisions.
I want to point out that they wouldn't
ever let a 5 or 6 year old
foot.
They wouldn't even let a 10 year old
vote because with only 5 or 6 or
10 years of actual life experience,
you just can't make an informed
decision.
(02:34):
Society has basically decided in in in most
Western democracies that once you have a whole
18 years
of life experience,
that's enough years of life experience
that
you can
cast your vote at election time and have
your vote counted
equally. And I suppose the assumption is also
(02:55):
that maybe you don't know everything about politics,
maybe you don't know everything about human behavior
within power structures or hierarchies or any of
those things,
but
there has to be a a date point.
I mean, when I was
when I was 10, I was a communist.
I mean, and which in a way kind
of make I mean, excuse me. Any communist,
it it kind of makes sense. Right? I
(03:16):
mean, in the sense that
if in a perfect world where everybody was
nice to each other.
And we could all share equally. As a
child that makes a fair amount of sense.
Because in a sense that's like playing with
your friends, you know, in the playpen. But,
you know, come, 18 I was certainly not
a communist. I didn't know what I was,
(03:37):
that's for sure. But I suppose there has
to be a date point at which we
say, well you have the qualities and skill
sets that you need in order to make
a disarming
choice
about
how you as a person
operate within a greater community.
Right. It's never gonna be
perfect decision making. Mhmm.
(03:58):
It's gonna be good enough decision making. Mhmm.
A topic that was raised in the prior
episode
is when
should you feel like an adult? Or if
you don't feel like an adult,
what's up with that? I would suggest that
when there's such a clear dividing line
in pretty much
every democracy, it's gonna be 18. Mhmm.
(04:20):
Maybe that's around when our feelings of being
only a child are no longer truthful. Mhmm.
And our feelings of actually being at the
grown up table now are actually an accurate
representation
of our current stage in life.
That dovetails very neatly into the subject of
today's episode. Right. Which is
(04:41):
your place in the world.
In the few cases
where
we've kind of found feral children Mhmm. Basically
raised by wolves.
They never
quite learn how to integrate into society. So,
you know, when it comes to nature versus
nurture,
it seems to be
(05:02):
nurture
that causes one to be well integrated
into society.
That dovetails quite neatly into the next principle,
which is to approach others with a cup
that is full. Right. So so here's the
metaphor.
When you're a small child,
you can't get your own cup. You can't
reach the faucet. You can't
(05:23):
turn it on and fill up your own
cup. So
you had to either be thirsty inside your
own home
or wait for an older sibling or a
parent to come along and fill up your
cup so you wouldn't be thirsty any longer.
And then one day you reach
a size where
you don't have to depend on anyone else
(05:44):
to fill up your cup. And then you
never, ever, ever have to be thirsty inside
your own home again. And that was a
good day. As we
become increasingly adults,
there are more and more of these kinds
of milestones
where we fill up our own cups.
So at some point we learn to cook
our own fry. I hope
(06:06):
we all at some point learn to cook
our own. At least at least pop tarts
and, and. Yeah. So at least operate a
microwave.
While we all recognize that water
and food
are needs Mhmm.
That we have to give ourselves these things
if we're lacking in them.
For some reason, even though it's on Maslow's
(06:28):
hierarchy,
we don't recognize
love, respect,
esteem
as
needs.
So often we just kind of make do
without
and our cups are empty
in that regard.
Somehow no one tells us that, well, about
the time we're adults, we we have a
(06:49):
mature enough mind, heart, psyche, whatever you wanna
call it, that we can use our self
reflection
to be self loving and self accepting and
self respecting and self esteeming, which are verbs,
not nouns.
And
in doing so, we fill up our own
cups
(07:09):
ideally to the point where
our cup runneth over.
And then we can
be generous toward others
because we have enough for ourselves.
When people walk around and it's like sure
they have enough water and they have enough
food and they have enough air to breathe,
but they don't have enough loving
(07:31):
or risk or being respected,
being esteemed.
It it could go one of 2 ways.
Either they become a jerk Or a narcissist.
Or a narcissist
and they try to feel good by putting
others down. Mhmm. Or if they won't
hurt other people,
then they end up hurting
themselves.
(07:51):
And and and you know that this is
a very persistent
attitude or mental map to get caught in
because if you I mean,
I went to a ballet school, right? So
I went to the Royal Ballet School at
the age of 10. The audition to get
in is a big deal.
I hated it
there. One of the things that was,
that defines training as a ballet dancer is
(08:12):
that you are always told what you're doing
wrong.
You're always taught being told you're not good
enough and in fact they lined us up,
in rows and the worse you were the
further to the back and the left you
were.
So you were very, very clear
and if you if you moved one along
that was a good day, but that was
at the expense of the other person. Right?
It's a terrible way to teach children.
(08:34):
Right. So it's not just that your cups
empty. Yeah. It's that whenever it starts to
get full, someone comes along and Right. Empties
it out. Right. Yeah. So Or even you
do it yourself. Yep. Right. Now one of
the cool things
about being self validating, self accepting, self respecting,
self esteeming, self self loving,
etcetera,
is that then your happiness
(08:57):
and your inner peace
are independent
of what others think. So if I imagine
that there's a kid in that ballet class
and they can't really be broken
and they remain self validated and self accepting,
then they are keeping their cup relatively full.
And such a kid can help to lift
up the other kids.
(09:18):
But then if everyone continually has their their
cups emptied of positive
regard and and esteem,
I can't imagine
that being a supportive,
collegial
kind of environment even among the students. Well,
it was and it also I think it
also affected the adults in the school as
(09:38):
well. I mean, bullying was rife, and even
amongst the I think amongst the teachers as
well between them. And the the teachers bullied
the children, the children bullied the children. I
mean, it was I could tell you stories
that make your hair curl.
So no one's cup is full. Yeah. And
yet every human being, the adults and the
children, have the capacity.
I I guess that the children less so
than the adults, but the adults definitely have
(10:00):
the capacity
to have their their hearts full of esteeming
and respecting and caring and then to operate
from that place. If the teachers were in
a position where their cuts were because they've
been taught in their turn by, you know,
tyrannical
blood drawing
teachers themselves, you know, in a in a
profession that is notoriously same
(10:25):
stuff
same stuff to their students. I mean It's
a cycle of abuse. Yeah. I mean, here
it's in a school, elsewhere it's in a
household. Yeah. Yes, exactly, yeah. So then as
an adult you might say, well, if that
is your unfortunate heritage,
then
it is incumbent on you as an adult
(10:46):
to be able to transcend that.
Yes. And by being self loving and self
expecting and self respecting to
have
a cup that's full when you approach others,
ideally even one that runneth over. Mhmm. I
wanna point out that
this is not antisocial.
To have enough self loving, then then, you
(11:06):
know, you you've got plenty of love to
give to others.
This
is not
selfish to the detriment of other people. Mhmm.
It's also a prosocial thing to do. Mhmm.
So in contrast to that school,
if we imagine another school
where everyone is filling up their heads and
hearts
(11:27):
with self esteeming, self caring, self respecting, self
loving thoughts,
then we can imagine how easily
the teachers are patient with the children, how
easily the students can support each other,
how the bullies are the unusual ones who
stand out and are ostracized.
If we just kind of imagine as a
(11:49):
thought experiment
this this other school. Yeah. Right? And
in sports psychology
telling yourself that you can,
not that you can't
is I believe a fairly well established principle.
But there's also with that, there's got to
be a certain
a certain honesty with yourself and with those
(12:10):
around you because you could say, listen, I'm
awesome.
I am great. You're gonna dress me as
the great Pascal. That's it. We're done. So
it's in a sense, it's a different kind
of
what is it? It's a kind of quiet
and I don't know, a deep sense of
self esteem which is not, when you say
it's prosocial, it's prosocial as a result of
this deep sense of self esteem rather than
(12:31):
something which is
demanded that the rest of the world give
you. So that's the difference between self esteem
and esteem from others. Right.
Esteem from others is is not guaranteed. Yeah.
Right? But self esteeming
as a verb, as an internal process,
produces then the feeling we call self esteem.
(12:53):
Mhmm.
And that is much more dependable
than esteem from others
that the person who demands that others must
esteem them
is never gonna be secure. Yeah. Whereas the
person who
holds self esteeming thoughts
(13:13):
and then achieves that feeling we call self
esteem,
he or she has a much more stable,
secure
feeling. Mhmm. I mean, for what it's worth,
I think that that's kinda like a a
superpower.
To to me that self that sort
of strong self esteem and
importantly an ability
(13:35):
to still have
self esteem as well as accepting
responsibility
for errors, for feeling shame and guilt, and
still
feeling that you're
a learning worthwhile human being, you know, but
without that flipping out into to being well,
in which case I'm not guilty. Do you
see what I mean? I would say that
(13:55):
self esteeming, and I'll I'll keep phrasing it
as per As a process. Yeah.
Self esteeming is what allows you to feel
guilt or shame, to acknowledge mistakes,
to acknowledge you're not perfect.
At the same time, you don't crumple up
Yeah. Into a ball. Because you don't need
to hide, I suppose. You don't need to
(14:15):
hide because you have this it's not you
don't run away from shame with the presentation
of esteem.
Yep. Right. Okay. Okay. Yeah. At the risk
of sounding moralistic, the the next principle I
want to share is is that
as adults
people will generally take you at your word
and
because they value your word
(14:38):
you
also
valuing your word, speaking with integrity, using your
word to uplift others not to cut them
down, I'm gonna say make you more of
an adult. Yeah. Well, because you don't hold
some you don't hold a child as accountable
for their promises of what they're going to
do in the same way that you do
an adult. And also, I suppose that integrity,
(15:00):
that sense of
honest commitment, I suppose. That's gonna spring from
self esteem as well because
if if you're afraid or if you're filled
with shame, you might
be fearful of achievement. There's all these other
things that come spring from that, right? You
might even be afraid to speak what you
believe to be truthful. Right. If you feel
ashamed, you might even be afraid to say
(15:22):
no, thank you. Yeah.
If you feel ashamed,
or if you think you'll be exposed as
a bad person just because you tell the
sales clerk, oh, oh, thank you very much.
And you walk away. Yeah. Yeah. I am
much more pleased
when people are honest
and straightforward with me. And if I've said
something that could cause them offense, or if
I've asked for too much, if they just
(15:43):
straight up tell me that pleases me quite
a lot. Yeah. What what doesn't please me
is when people lie thinking I can't handle
whatever honest answer
that they have inside their hearts. And it
reaffirms your view of yourself
as very much a mature adult who speaks
the truth when you say no,
(16:04):
when you may know. Mhmm. One other point
that I'm gonna put under this topic is
that a lot of people think it's cool
to be cynical. It's sophisticated
to be negative
and to to cut down others who are
sincerely trying to have a good time or
sincerely self expressed. Even dresses itself up as
a certain kind of honesty as well, which
(16:25):
is not It it You know, it looks
like it, but it's not. No. Because if
if we imagine an art critic Mhmm. They're
not going to be that negative
and cynical.
They're going to be quite open and they're
going to have appreciation for the piece that's
in front of them, even if they end
up tearing apart that piece in their criticism.
(16:48):
It is with appreciation for the art form.
Yeah. And and also,
the best critics understand that the things that
they're looking at most of the time
are the result of an enormous amount of
time or effort or dedication or
life choices,
collaboration between multiple skill sets. It's not a
(17:08):
negligent thing that somebody's just, you know,
put up that needs a negligent response.
No. Well, we could look at Marcia Duchamp's,
what's I hope you swap the sorry. That's
that's the the urine urinal.
Where, you know, we we could go two
ways with that.
We could be like, oh, well, I just
paid into 1 when I went to the
sports bar. Mhmm. Or we could spend,
(17:31):
you know, a few hours we wanted to
Mhmm. Questioning what constitutes art.
Mhmm. So the person who spends a few
hours questioning Mhmm. What constitutes art,
Right?
Mhmm. Is I'm gonna say more sophisticated.
They're cooler
Right.
Than the person who just says, oh, I
just peed into one of the sports bar.
(17:51):
Yeah. You're not gonna get any, disagreement from
me on that, but that's probably because that's
my domain. But I'd also argue it's not
just the arts. You can dismiss the sciences
in the same way. And in fact,
you don't need to think about French urinals.
You can almost anything that you can be
curious about and think more deeply about. And
if your knee jerk reaction is to be
(18:11):
dismissed and be cynical about it, whether it's
a pop tart or whether it's I've mentioned
that twice, I should sponsor
us.
And there's no way it is because I
had a pop tart for the first time
or a piece of a pop tart Oh,
yeah? Today, in fact.
What do you think of it? Well, it's
pretty good. I mean,
they're tasty. It's you know, they don't pretend
to be anything else. Yeah. I used to
(18:32):
love those, but like raw.
Right. Because I was like 20 at the
time when I loved Pop Tarts or Toaster
Strudos. And you know, it was easier just
to open it up and eat it. It
wasn't gonna kill me. But this is the
point is that there's there's also the reverse
cynicism, which sort of goes, you know, things
that are a Pop Tart. Oh, God. I've
never eat a Pop tart. You know what
I mean? There's a snobbishness which is Yeah.
Equally enforced as far as that cynicism is
(18:53):
concerned. Even the topic of this podcast Yeah.
How to be an adult. Well, we have
people who are listening
because they actually wanna do a deep dive
Yeah. Into this topic. They're not thinking, oh,
well, I'm bigger than the children are. I'm
definitely an adult. That they're actually interested in
exploring this subject. Yeah. They're
(19:14):
gonna be engaged in this discourse at least
in their own minds as they hear us
speak. Mhmm. What's next?
Disagree with others Yeah. When you believe they're
wrong. Yeah. Even
if you love and respect them. Yeah. This
is a this is a lifelong
endeavor, I think. So this is the problem,
as soon as you have a relationship with
(19:35):
somebody and you care about the relationship, in
words you're in a community or even just
interpersonally,
then they're going to say things and do
things and reveal things
that are uncomfortable,
unpleasant, that reveal your weaknesses, your less attractive
activities and so on. Right? It's inevitable. And
in fact, I say that's actually a good
thing. It's important to have
(19:55):
somebody else to sort of go,
yeah.
That's not so cool. So therefore,
to,
to say that
you have to be honest is also to
say
even in the situation where you fear the
most,
you have to be able to say what
you believe is being true and the stakes
(20:16):
may be very, very, very high.
And
that's what makes
it one of the most difficult rules, I
think, for
many of us. Is that because we care
so much about an an interpersonal relationship,
we might just
not say that thing.
Being surrounded by sycophants.
Yeah. Right?
(20:37):
Having no one around you who's willing
to challenge you, that's like going
about life
never
looking in the mirror. Mhmm. So let's say
you're eating a hot dog and you've got
like
mustard on one cheek and you've got like
ketchup around the other.
Now, if you're in a world with no
mirrors,
(20:58):
then you're just blithely
walking around
with mustard and ketchup on your face. And
if you're surrounded by by sycophants, no one's
even telling you that. And I never wanna
be the person walking around with condiments on
my face.
And I hope our listeners don't want to
be the person walking around with condiments on
their face. So having friends who are willing
(21:18):
to call you out on your behalf,
having friends who value
truth and truthful speech above just merely agreeable
speech or not rocking the boat. This is
extremely valuable even just for purely selfish reasons.
Yeah. So that you're not the person walking
around with mustard on one cheek and ketchup
on the other. Yeah. That dovetails very neatly
into the next point that I wanna share,
(21:39):
which is that as an adult,
you have to set and enforce your own
boundaries.
You can't just let other people around you
set and enforce their boundaries for you.
If you are gonna treat yourself as an
equal, if you are gonna count your opinions
as adult opinions that matter,
(22:00):
then you have to
determine and then set and enforce your own
boundaries. And Absolutely
not.
Go away. And absolutely
not, go away
and even the ruder variants,
which in some extreme situations
(22:22):
would be the correct thing to say Yeah.
And anything less would not quite capture the
sentiment Mhmm. Truthfully.
So
boundaries I see is
coming from one's moral center because often boundaries
feel like you're doing something bad to someone
or saying no feels like you're wronging
a friend
but when you feel like
(22:43):
setting a boundary or saying no
is coming
from a moral principle. Mhmm. Then you can
do it much more easily. Mhmm. Say you're
you're establishing boundaries with your parents for example.
And they
they don't want to sign on. Your choice
is right, I'm gonna cut this parent out
of my life forever. Well, maybe that's necessary.
I don't know. In some circumstances no doubt.
(23:05):
But in most cases
it's better to go (23:07):
Okay, here's my boundary.
It's a shock to you and it might
need some explaining.
Do you see what I mean? It's that
boundaries themselves coming from moral center does not
mean that it's gonna lead to conflict but
it might need negotiation.
Because people won't people often don't understand. If
you start suddenly saying no when you've normally
said yes,
then some people might find that offensive, might
(23:29):
find it unkind, might misinterpret why it is
that you're doing. All those things. Yep. Right?
So
boundaries and negotiating boundaries, if they're coming from
a good moral standpoint, you can actually explain
that. You can actually
Whereas a boundary for its own sake, if
it's unexamined,
is gonna be much much flimsier as a
result. Well, it's like the difference between elevating
truth above agreeableness
(23:50):
Right. Versus playing devil's advocate and being disagreeable
just to be a jerk. Yeah. If your
words, if your actions
come from a well reasoned moral place
then
it's not just that you can explain it
to others, it's that others will comprehend why
Exactly. You're doing things differently much more easily.
And if and if they don't understand, well,
that's not on you, which comes up to
(24:12):
another point. You can give yourself credit for
explaining it and setting the boundary and enforcing
it, without blaming yourself if someone else's moral
reasoning
is less
deeply thought out than yours
This ties into an idea that I often
have to convince people of which is that
(24:32):
it's never that they're automatically wrong and others
are automatically right. As a kid, as a
young child,
if there's disagreement
probably the adults right,
probably you're wrong.
And then as you gain more knowledge and
life experience, then sometimes you'll be right and
sometimes the adults will be wrong. And you
(24:53):
need adults to be honest about that too.
Yes.
And by the time you are an adult,
right, then, you know, let's say it's roughly
5050.
Yeah. So where there's disagreement,
sometimes you're wrong.
Sometimes
the other person's wrong and you're right.
And that's why you've got to have the
conversation about, you know, what's right, what's truthful
(25:14):
to try to figure out, you know,
an outcome where both people can be right.
Well, all of this kind of ties together.
And
the next principle that I wanna share is
that you as an adult
are not responsible for the decisions of other
adults. So let's say that you set a
boundary and they walk off in a huff
(25:36):
because now they can't take advantage of you.
You're not responsible
for them walking away just like you're not
responsible for them having taken advantage of you
in the first place. You are not responsible
for the decisions of other adults. Mhmm. You
are responsible for your own decisions, so you
can give yourself credit for setting a boundary
and refusing to let that other person do
(25:57):
things to you.
So when other people make mistakes,
if they're not like your child,
child, if they're a colleague, if they're a
partner, if they're a parent,
that's a burden for their conscience.
That's for them to lose sleep over. That's
for them to mull over and figure out.
It's actually not a burden for your conscience
(26:18):
nor is it for you to lose
sleep over the mistakes
of other adults.
Mhmm. You also can't,
use that as an excuse not to look
at your own role if it's there, but
also be honest when it isn't. Yep.
Most people who I, you know, see in
my hypnotherapy practice,
they're there because they can't sleep. Yep. They
think too much. Yeah. They plan themselves. Yeah.
(26:39):
You are right. There there are people who
would benefit from more self reflection. Mhmm. So,
you know, most of what I'm sharing in
this podcast
comes from my work with individuals who've gone
out of their way Yeah.
To seek guidance or clarity. Yeah. For for
and for many people, if you again, if
you don't have the self esteem, that's going
to be the default is the I must
be wrong. Yep. Yep. And it's never that
(27:02):
you're always in the wrong or that you're
automatically in the wrong. Or entirely in the
wrong, at the very least. Exactly. There's always
2 people involved normally in that.
So I'm gonna make a huge
bold
claim Oh, God. Here we go. Which is
that
morality, human morality,
in one
(27:23):
sentence
is to prefer
the prosocial
over the antisocial.
Right.
And that if you are indeed
embracing the prosocial
and doing your best to act in a
prosocial way and to avoid actions or words
that are antisocial,
(27:44):
then
you're almost obligated to adopt a pluralistic
live and let live attitude
toward the other
adults.
And there are so many fine grain details
as to, you know, what counts as prosocial.
Yeah. Yeah. But as a rule,
(28:07):
if
the the action
or the words
are prosocial
as opposed to antisocial,
you're probably not making an egregious
mistake
It's when the actions or words
are
detrimental
to others
That's where you could be making an egregious
(28:28):
mistake that could lose you a friend or
that could, you know, cause harm to others.
So
a really cool thing that happens
when you approach others with a cup that's
full
is that
people who approach you in the same spirit
will vibe with you.
And then if you're in any kind of
(28:50):
relationship with that person, so not just romantic,
but a friendship, a working relationship,
then there is twice as much esteeming and
twice as much respecting and twice as much
loving and twice as much caring
because 2 people with full cups
have gotten together
to form some kind of relationship. I I
(29:10):
heard something recently,
probably on podcast,
where the comment was, if you spend time
with somebody and when you walk away you
feel a little bit taller,
pursue pursue that friendship.
Yes. Often people pursue relationships
where only one person does the loving.
It's not even worth the the pursuit
And even worse,
(29:32):
some people are in relationships where 0 people
do
any loving.
Or even if a relationship kinda starts with
2 people loving each other, if it devolves
to the point where 0 people
do the loving, then each person
in that relationship is literally better off being
alone, being single. It reminds me of a
(29:52):
a metaphor for,
I suppose, you know, relationships,
which was that you're both rowing.
And you've both got an oar. Right?
The idea is to be rowing together in
a direction,
your joint captain in this case, of of
your ship. But then sometimes one person might
not need not be able to row. They're
(30:13):
sick, they're tired, whatever it is. And so
the other person might wanna take over for
a bit. If that's persistent and continues, then
you end up going in circles because only
one person is rowing. And if nobody rows,
nobody's going anywhere. And in fact, you shouldn't
be sharing a boat with
them. The final principle for this episode
is that if you must compare yourself to
others at all, if you must engage in
(30:34):
this game of keeping up with the Joneses,
only make apples to apples comparisons.
I'll give you an example.
If you
use
a visual based social media platform,
then
what you want to avoid is this
soul destroying
(30:55):
apples to oranges comparison
between the complexity
and the rawness and genuineness
of your very human life
versus someone's plasticized
photos
on social media
or someone else's 1 page CV or resume
Mhmm. Or someone else's linked in profile.
(31:18):
None of which are really all that authentic.
Mhmm. The people go to social media to
put their best foot forward.
Yeah. But I but I'd also say, all
media has a tendency to,
so at TV shows, like, you've got teams
of people doing costume and makeup, you know,
movies and theater.
You could say it's advertising obviously, you know,
(31:39):
it's all over the place. The
fantasy sort of spell weaving of an ideal,
right? This is where I tell you the
story about Christian Bale.
Okay. I was friends with Christian Bale at
the age of
9, 10.
Cool. And this is before he did Empire
of the Sun.
And, I won't tell too too much the
story because obviously you know this is, I
(32:01):
have no idea.
He became an adult. We became an adult.
Yes. True. He became an adult with, his
his his pathway and I had my pathway
and he had his. In an alternate universe,
we would have had a very similar pathway.
Let's put it that way. So as an
actor, of course, you might think,
well, that must be galling to see
somebody that you started off with.
(32:23):
Beginning of the apples to apples comparison here,
you know, somebody you started off
with being so successful and being a great
actor. And I really think he is. I
have a huge respect for for his acting.
The funny thing is that
in some curious way because
I knew him when we were just kids,
is that I see the human in him.
And I think I have no way of
knowing, nor should I ever assume that he's
(32:44):
either happier or more miserable than me.
In fact, the majority of what there is,
if you say how much is different between
us, it wouldn't be that much, ultimately.
And in some ways
that's much how I look at a lot
of social media is that,
I know that I post up stuff which
is pitched to a particular
audience. I don't show my worst aspects, my
(33:07):
worst times on social media. I do much
my friends and in certain
close communities should we say,
there'll be more range. But I know that
that's what I'm doing, I know what that's
what everybody else is doing. Even the fake
like waking up, oh, I'm so tired, look
at me. It's all it's all nonsense and
smoke and mirrors. And I look at that
kind of thing, there's just a bunch of
humans there who are just as miserable or
(33:29):
happy as anybody else
and there's and this is no evidence of
it being either one way or the other.
Absolutely.
And as a hypnotherapist,
I get to see people
behind closed doors.
Some of them have well known names
some of them are quite successful
in the you know traditionally
(33:50):
socially approved of sets
and I know that some of them you
know being let's say a dad or a
mom and in their 50s with like books
they've written or you know a very high
flying career they're listening to me
talk about
how to be
a happy, peaceful
adult
(34:11):
because we're all human
because no one is their social media feed,
no one is their IMDb profile, no one
is their LinkedIn profile.
And, you know, once we we kind of
look behind the scenes,
this sounds so cliched, but but no one
is perfect.
No one has a perfect life,
(34:33):
but everyone has a human life because everyone
is a human being.
And all the emotions that you go through,
all the emotions I go through
are human emotions.
The fact that we sometimes can't get proper
sleep and then we feel grumpy the next
morning
every single person on the planet comes through
(34:55):
this
This kind of neatly wraps up the episode
with the point that we all have a
seat at the grown up table
We don't have to be perfect
before being granted our seat at the grown
up table. You don't have to wait for
a magical day
when you are just like
(35:16):
you know the popular kids
social media feed.
If you cross the line of 18, congratulations.
Mhmm. You're an adult. Exactly. And then of
course that also means that the skills that
you need and the perspectives
that will work better for you as an
adult, you may not have got those in
your childhood and adolescence.
(35:38):
So that's when,
learning these new perspectives
and really integrating them into your everyday life
becomes,
pretty important.
Thank you so much for listening to another
episode.
If you want us to
think about
your specific challenges
in doing adult life
as well as you can and being as
happy and peaceful of an adult as you
(36:00):
can be. We're both available for hire through
the Morphis Clinic for hypnosis.
We're based in Toronto, Canada, but we do
see clients worldwide.
The website is www.morphisclinic.com.
You can reach out to our team through
there, and we'll write you a treatment plan
if we think we can help.
In case you're not quite familiar with the
(36:21):
h word,
I wouldn't be too concerned about it. It's
it's a way to suspend disbelief. It is
a way to set aside your prior beliefs
in order to accept and adopt new ones.
We're very careful
to suggest ideas that you have approved of
in advance.
And that's what the consultation process is about.
(36:41):
And so if you like, what we're talking
about and you haven't yet, please follow us
on YouTube,
at Morpheus Hypnosis.
You can also find us on Spotify,
on Apple podcasts
and,
make sure that you get notified for next
week's episode which is
lessons from childhood you need to unlearn
(37:02):
to become an adult.
We don't recognize
love, respect,
esteem
as
needs.
We're always to being told you're not good
enough. And in fact, they lined us up,
in rows and the worse you were, the
further to the back and the left you
were. What you want to avoid is this
soul destroying
apples to oranges comparison.
(00:23):
Welcome to How to be an Adult.
We're a new podcast created by the practitioners
at the Morpheus Clinic For Hypnosis
in Toronto, Canada.
It's for people like you who've inadvertently become
adults and don't know what to do about
it. So whether you're 18 or 80,
this is a trail guide to the, life
(00:44):
that nobody gave you when you got equality
with your parents.
And so we are publicly sharing knowledge in
order to democratize,
self assurance.
Now,
episode 3 continues where episode 2 left off.
No Man is an Island.
How do you relate to the people around
you? Well, the the metaphor that I'm gonna
(01:06):
share is that you have a permanent seat
at the grown up table. Mhmm. So when
I was a kid, if there's a kid's
table and there's a grown up table and
the kids talk about, like, you know, the
kid stuff that kids talk about, you know,
GI Joe and, like, He Man and stuff.
This was the eighties for me. And then
the adults had the grown up table where
they talked about things that mystified kids like
me. Mhmm. I imagine they they probably talked
(01:28):
about things like politics. Mhmm. They talked about
things like working. They talked about things like
relationships and sex and who's dating whom.
And
as an adult,
your place is never gonna be at the
kids' table again. As an adult, you have
a permanent seat at the grown up table
where you are an equal
to the other adults in the room.
(01:52):
Once you're 18 and you show your ID,
your opinions count
so
highly
that you get to help set the future
of the country or the city or the
province or the state that you're in So
it's not just
talking
where you have a quality. It's actually
(02:12):
making important
civic decisions.
I want to point out that they wouldn't
ever let a 5 or 6 year old
foot.
They wouldn't even let a 10 year old
vote because with only 5 or 6 or
10 years of actual life experience,
you just can't make an informed
decision.
(02:34):
Society has basically decided in in in most
Western democracies that once you have a whole
18 years
of life experience,
that's enough years of life experience
that
you can
cast your vote at election time and have
your vote counted
equally. And I suppose the assumption is also
(02:55):
that maybe you don't know everything about politics,
maybe you don't know everything about human behavior
within power structures or hierarchies or any of
those things,
but
there has to be a a date point.
I mean, when I was
when I was 10, I was a communist.
I mean, and which in a way kind
of make I mean, excuse me. Any communist,
it it kind of makes sense. Right? I
(03:16):
mean, in the sense that
if in a perfect world where everybody was
nice to each other.
And we could all share equally. As a
child that makes a fair amount of sense.
Because in a sense that's like playing with
your friends, you know, in the playpen. But,
you know, come, 18 I was certainly not
a communist. I didn't know what I was,
(03:37):
that's for sure. But I suppose there has
to be a date point at which we
say, well you have the qualities and skill
sets that you need in order to make
a disarming
choice
about
how you as a person
operate within a greater community.
Right. It's never gonna be
perfect decision making. Mhmm.
(03:58):
It's gonna be good enough decision making. Mhmm.
A topic that was raised in the prior
episode
is when
should you feel like an adult? Or if
you don't feel like an adult,
what's up with that? I would suggest that
when there's such a clear dividing line
in pretty much
every democracy, it's gonna be 18. Mhmm.
(04:20):
Maybe that's around when our feelings of being
only a child are no longer truthful. Mhmm.
And our feelings of actually being at the
grown up table now are actually an accurate
representation
of our current stage in life.
That dovetails very neatly into the subject of
today's episode. Right. Which is
(04:41):
your place in the world.
In the few cases
where
we've kind of found feral children Mhmm. Basically
raised by wolves.
They never
quite learn how to integrate into society. So,
you know, when it comes to nature versus
nurture,
it seems to be
(05:02):
nurture
that causes one to be well integrated
into society.
That dovetails quite neatly into the next principle,
which is to approach others with a cup
that is full. Right. So so here's the
metaphor.
When you're a small child,
you can't get your own cup. You can't
reach the faucet. You can't
(05:23):
turn it on and fill up your own
cup. So
you had to either be thirsty inside your
own home
or wait for an older sibling or a
parent to come along and fill up your
cup so you wouldn't be thirsty any longer.
And then one day you reach
a size where
you don't have to depend on anyone else
(05:44):
to fill up your cup. And then you
never, ever, ever have to be thirsty inside
your own home again. And that was a
good day. As we
become increasingly adults,
there are more and more of these kinds
of milestones
where we fill up our own cups.
So at some point we learn to cook
our own fry. I hope
(06:06):
we all at some point learn to cook
our own. At least at least pop tarts
and, and. Yeah. So at least operate a
microwave.
While we all recognize that water
and food
are needs Mhmm.
That we have to give ourselves these things
if we're lacking in them.
For some reason, even though it's on Maslow's
(06:28):
hierarchy,
we don't recognize
love, respect,
esteem
as
needs.
So often we just kind of make do
without
and our cups are empty
in that regard.
Somehow no one tells us that, well, about
the time we're adults, we we have a
(06:49):
mature enough mind, heart, psyche, whatever you wanna
call it, that we can use our self
reflection
to be self loving and self accepting and
self respecting and self esteeming, which are verbs,
not nouns.
And
in doing so, we fill up our own
cups
(07:09):
ideally to the point where
our cup runneth over.
And then we can
be generous toward others
because we have enough for ourselves.
When people walk around and it's like sure
they have enough water and they have enough
food and they have enough air to breathe,
but they don't have enough loving
(07:31):
or risk or being respected,
being esteemed.
It it could go one of 2 ways.
Either they become a jerk Or a narcissist.
Or a narcissist
and they try to feel good by putting
others down. Mhmm. Or if they won't
hurt other people,
then they end up hurting
themselves.
(07:51):
And and and you know that this is
a very persistent
attitude or mental map to get caught in
because if you I mean,
I went to a ballet school, right? So
I went to the Royal Ballet School at
the age of 10. The audition to get
in is a big deal.
I hated it
there. One of the things that was,
that defines training as a ballet dancer is
(08:12):
that you are always told what you're doing
wrong.
You're always taught being told you're not good
enough and in fact they lined us up,
in rows and the worse you were the
further to the back and the left you
were.
So you were very, very clear
and if you if you moved one along
that was a good day, but that was
at the expense of the other person. Right?
It's a terrible way to teach children.
(08:34):
Right. So it's not just that your cups
empty. Yeah. It's that whenever it starts to
get full, someone comes along and Right. Empties
it out. Right. Yeah. So Or even you
do it yourself. Yep. Right. Now one of
the cool things
about being self validating, self accepting, self respecting,
self esteeming, self self loving,
etcetera,
is that then your happiness
(08:57):
and your inner peace
are independent
of what others think. So if I imagine
that there's a kid in that ballet class
and they can't really be broken
and they remain self validated and self accepting,
then they are keeping their cup relatively full.
And such a kid can help to lift
up the other kids.
(09:18):
But then if everyone continually has their their
cups emptied of positive
regard and and esteem,
I can't imagine
that being a supportive,
collegial
kind of environment even among the students. Well,
it was and it also I think it
also affected the adults in the school as
(09:38):
well. I mean, bullying was rife, and even
amongst the I think amongst the teachers as
well between them. And the the teachers bullied
the children, the children bullied the children. I
mean, it was I could tell you stories
that make your hair curl.
So no one's cup is full. Yeah. And
yet every human being, the adults and the
children, have the capacity.
I I guess that the children less so
than the adults, but the adults definitely have
(10:00):
the capacity
to have their their hearts full of esteeming
and respecting and caring and then to operate
from that place. If the teachers were in
a position where their cuts were because they've
been taught in their turn by, you know,
tyrannical
blood drawing
teachers themselves, you know, in a in a
profession that is notoriously same
(10:25):
stuff
same stuff to their students. I mean It's
a cycle of abuse. Yeah. I mean, here
it's in a school, elsewhere it's in a
household. Yeah. Yes, exactly, yeah. So then as
an adult you might say, well, if that
is your unfortunate heritage,
then
it is incumbent on you as an adult
(10:46):
to be able to transcend that.
Yes. And by being self loving and self
expecting and self respecting to
have
a cup that's full when you approach others,
ideally even one that runneth over. Mhmm. I
wanna point out that
this is not antisocial.
To have enough self loving, then then, you
(11:06):
know, you you've got plenty of love to
give to others.
This
is not
selfish to the detriment of other people. Mhmm.
It's also a prosocial thing to do. Mhmm.
So in contrast to that school,
if we imagine another school
where everyone is filling up their heads and
hearts
(11:27):
with self esteeming, self caring, self respecting, self
loving thoughts,
then we can imagine how easily
the teachers are patient with the children, how
easily the students can support each other,
how the bullies are the unusual ones who
stand out and are ostracized.
If we just kind of imagine as a
(11:49):
thought experiment
this this other school. Yeah. Right? And
in sports psychology
telling yourself that you can,
not that you can't
is I believe a fairly well established principle.
But there's also with that, there's got to
be a certain
a certain honesty with yourself and with those
(12:10):
around you because you could say, listen, I'm
awesome.
I am great. You're gonna dress me as
the great Pascal. That's it. We're done. So
it's in a sense, it's a different kind
of
what is it? It's a kind of quiet
and I don't know, a deep sense of
self esteem which is not, when you say
it's prosocial, it's prosocial as a result of
this deep sense of self esteem rather than
(12:31):
something which is
demanded that the rest of the world give
you. So that's the difference between self esteem
and esteem from others. Right.
Esteem from others is is not guaranteed. Yeah.
Right? But self esteeming
as a verb, as an internal process,
produces then the feeling we call self esteem.
(12:53):
Mhmm.
And that is much more dependable
than esteem from others
that the person who demands that others must
esteem them
is never gonna be secure. Yeah. Whereas the
person who
holds self esteeming thoughts
(13:13):
and then achieves that feeling we call self
esteem,
he or she has a much more stable,
secure
feeling. Mhmm. I mean, for what it's worth,
I think that that's kinda like a a
superpower.
To to me that self that sort
of strong self esteem and
importantly an ability
(13:35):
to still have
self esteem as well as accepting
responsibility
for errors, for feeling shame and guilt, and
still
feeling that you're
a learning worthwhile human being, you know, but
without that flipping out into to being well,
in which case I'm not guilty. Do you
see what I mean? I would say that
(13:55):
self esteeming, and I'll I'll keep phrasing it
as per As a process. Yeah.
Self esteeming is what allows you to feel
guilt or shame, to acknowledge mistakes,
to acknowledge you're not perfect.
At the same time, you don't crumple up
Yeah. Into a ball. Because you don't need
to hide, I suppose. You don't need to
(14:15):
hide because you have this it's not you
don't run away from shame with the presentation
of esteem.
Yep. Right. Okay. Okay. Yeah. At the risk
of sounding moralistic, the the next principle I
want to share is is that
as adults
people will generally take you at your word
and
because they value your word
(14:38):
you
also
valuing your word, speaking with integrity, using your
word to uplift others not to cut them
down, I'm gonna say make you more of
an adult. Yeah. Well, because you don't hold
some you don't hold a child as accountable
for their promises of what they're going to
do in the same way that you do
an adult. And also, I suppose that integrity,
(15:00):
that sense of
honest commitment, I suppose. That's gonna spring from
self esteem as well because
if if you're afraid or if you're filled
with shame, you might
be fearful of achievement. There's all these other
things that come spring from that, right? You
might even be afraid to speak what you
believe to be truthful. Right. If you feel
ashamed, you might even be afraid to say
(15:22):
no, thank you. Yeah.
If you feel ashamed,
or if you think you'll be exposed as
a bad person just because you tell the
sales clerk, oh, oh, thank you very much.
And you walk away. Yeah. Yeah. I am
much more pleased
when people are honest
and straightforward with me. And if I've said
something that could cause them offense, or if
I've asked for too much, if they just
(15:43):
straight up tell me that pleases me quite
a lot. Yeah. What what doesn't please me
is when people lie thinking I can't handle
whatever honest answer
that they have inside their hearts. And it
reaffirms your view of yourself
as very much a mature adult who speaks
the truth when you say no,
(16:04):
when you may know. Mhmm. One other point
that I'm gonna put under this topic is
that a lot of people think it's cool
to be cynical. It's sophisticated
to be negative
and to to cut down others who are
sincerely trying to have a good time or
sincerely self expressed. Even dresses itself up as
a certain kind of honesty as well, which
(16:25):
is not It it You know, it looks
like it, but it's not. No. Because if
if we imagine an art critic Mhmm. They're
not going to be that negative
and cynical.
They're going to be quite open and they're
going to have appreciation for the piece that's
in front of them, even if they end
up tearing apart that piece in their criticism.
(16:48):
It is with appreciation for the art form.
Yeah. And and also,
the best critics understand that the things that
they're looking at most of the time
are the result of an enormous amount of
time or effort or dedication or
life choices,
collaboration between multiple skill sets. It's not a
(17:08):
negligent thing that somebody's just, you know,
put up that needs a negligent response.
No. Well, we could look at Marcia Duchamp's,
what's I hope you swap the sorry. That's
that's the the urine urinal.
Where, you know, we we could go two
ways with that.
We could be like, oh, well, I just
paid into 1 when I went to the
sports bar. Mhmm. Or we could spend,
(17:31):
you know, a few hours we wanted to
Mhmm. Questioning what constitutes art.
Mhmm. So the person who spends a few
hours questioning Mhmm. What constitutes art,
Right?
Mhmm. Is I'm gonna say more sophisticated.
They're cooler
Right.
Than the person who just says, oh, I
just peed into one of the sports bar.
(17:51):
Yeah. You're not gonna get any, disagreement from
me on that, but that's probably because that's
my domain. But I'd also argue it's not
just the arts. You can dismiss the sciences
in the same way. And in fact,
you don't need to think about French urinals.
You can almost anything that you can be
curious about and think more deeply about. And
if your knee jerk reaction is to be
(18:11):
dismissed and be cynical about it, whether it's
a pop tart or whether it's I've mentioned
that twice, I should sponsor
us.
And there's no way it is because I
had a pop tart for the first time
or a piece of a pop tart Oh,
yeah? Today, in fact.
What do you think of it? Well, it's
pretty good. I mean,
they're tasty. It's you know, they don't pretend
to be anything else. Yeah. I used to
(18:32):
love those, but like raw.
Right. Because I was like 20 at the
time when I loved Pop Tarts or Toaster
Strudos. And you know, it was easier just
to open it up and eat it. It
wasn't gonna kill me. But this is the
point is that there's there's also the reverse
cynicism, which sort of goes, you know, things
that are a Pop Tart. Oh, God. I've
never eat a Pop tart. You know what
I mean? There's a snobbishness which is Yeah.
Equally enforced as far as that cynicism is
(18:53):
concerned. Even the topic of this podcast Yeah.
How to be an adult. Well, we have
people who are listening
because they actually wanna do a deep dive
Yeah. Into this topic. They're not thinking, oh,
well, I'm bigger than the children are. I'm
definitely an adult. That they're actually interested in
exploring this subject. Yeah. They're
(19:14):
gonna be engaged in this discourse at least
in their own minds as they hear us
speak. Mhmm. What's next?
Disagree with others Yeah. When you believe they're
wrong. Yeah. Even
if you love and respect them. Yeah. This
is a this is a lifelong
endeavor, I think. So this is the problem,
as soon as you have a relationship with
(19:35):
somebody and you care about the relationship, in
words you're in a community or even just
interpersonally,
then they're going to say things and do
things and reveal things
that are uncomfortable,
unpleasant, that reveal your weaknesses, your less attractive
activities and so on. Right? It's inevitable. And
in fact, I say that's actually a good
thing. It's important to have
(19:55):
somebody else to sort of go,
yeah.
That's not so cool. So therefore,
to,
to say that
you have to be honest is also to
say
even in the situation where you fear the
most,
you have to be able to say what
you believe is being true and the stakes
(20:16):
may be very, very, very high.
And
that's what makes
it one of the most difficult rules, I
think, for
many of us. Is that because we care
so much about an an interpersonal relationship,
we might just
not say that thing.
Being surrounded by sycophants.
Yeah. Right?
(20:37):
Having no one around you who's willing
to challenge you, that's like going
about life
never
looking in the mirror. Mhmm. So let's say
you're eating a hot dog and you've got
like
mustard on one cheek and you've got like
ketchup around the other.
Now, if you're in a world with no
mirrors,
(20:58):
then you're just blithely
walking around
with mustard and ketchup on your face. And
if you're surrounded by by sycophants, no one's
even telling you that. And I never wanna
be the person walking around with condiments on
my face.
And I hope our listeners don't want to
be the person walking around with condiments on
their face. So having friends who are willing
(21:18):
to call you out on your behalf,
having friends who value
truth and truthful speech above just merely agreeable
speech or not rocking the boat. This is
extremely valuable even just for purely selfish reasons.
Yeah. So that you're not the person walking
around with mustard on one cheek and ketchup
on the other. Yeah. That dovetails very neatly
into the next point that I wanna share,
(21:39):
which is that as an adult,
you have to set and enforce your own
boundaries.
You can't just let other people around you
set and enforce their boundaries for you.
If you are gonna treat yourself as an
equal, if you are gonna count your opinions
as adult opinions that matter,
(22:00):
then you have to
determine and then set and enforce your own
boundaries. And Absolutely
not.
Go away. And absolutely
not, go away
and even the ruder variants,
which in some extreme situations
(22:22):
would be the correct thing to say Yeah.
And anything less would not quite capture the
sentiment Mhmm. Truthfully.
So
boundaries I see is
coming from one's moral center because often boundaries
feel like you're doing something bad to someone
or saying no feels like you're wronging
a friend
but when you feel like
(22:43):
setting a boundary or saying no
is coming
from a moral principle. Mhmm. Then you can
do it much more easily. Mhmm. Say you're
you're establishing boundaries with your parents for example.
And they
they don't want to sign on. Your choice
is right, I'm gonna cut this parent out
of my life forever. Well, maybe that's necessary.
I don't know. In some circumstances no doubt.
(23:05):
But in most cases
it's better to go (23:07):
Okay, here's my boundary.
It's a shock to you and it might
need some explaining.
Do you see what I mean? It's that
boundaries themselves coming from moral center does not
mean that it's gonna lead to conflict but
it might need negotiation.
Because people won't people often don't understand. If
you start suddenly saying no when you've normally
said yes,
then some people might find that offensive, might
(23:29):
find it unkind, might misinterpret why it is
that you're doing. All those things. Yep. Right?
So
boundaries and negotiating boundaries, if they're coming from
a good moral standpoint, you can actually explain
that. You can actually
Whereas a boundary for its own sake, if
it's unexamined,
is gonna be much much flimsier as a
result. Well, it's like the difference between elevating
truth above agreeableness
(23:50):
Right. Versus playing devil's advocate and being disagreeable
just to be a jerk. Yeah. If your
words, if your actions
come from a well reasoned moral place
then
it's not just that you can explain it
to others, it's that others will comprehend why
Exactly. You're doing things differently much more easily.
And if and if they don't understand, well,
that's not on you, which comes up to
(24:12):
another point. You can give yourself credit for
explaining it and setting the boundary and enforcing
it, without blaming yourself if someone else's moral
reasoning
is less
deeply thought out than yours
This ties into an idea that I often
have to convince people of which is that
(24:32):
it's never that they're automatically wrong and others
are automatically right. As a kid, as a
young child,
if there's disagreement
probably the adults right,
probably you're wrong.
And then as you gain more knowledge and
life experience, then sometimes you'll be right and
sometimes the adults will be wrong. And you
(24:53):
need adults to be honest about that too.
Yes.
And by the time you are an adult,
right, then, you know, let's say it's roughly
5050.
Yeah. So where there's disagreement,
sometimes you're wrong.
Sometimes
the other person's wrong and you're right.
And that's why you've got to have the
conversation about, you know, what's right, what's truthful
(25:14):
to try to figure out, you know,
an outcome where both people can be right.
Well, all of this kind of ties together.
And
the next principle that I wanna share is
that you as an adult
are not responsible for the decisions of other
adults. So let's say that you set a
boundary and they walk off in a huff
(25:36):
because now they can't take advantage of you.
You're not responsible
for them walking away just like you're not
responsible for them having taken advantage of you
in the first place. You are not responsible
for the decisions of other adults. Mhmm. You
are responsible for your own decisions, so you
can give yourself credit for setting a boundary
and refusing to let that other person do
(25:57):
things to you.
So when other people make mistakes,
if they're not like your child,
child, if they're a colleague, if they're a
partner, if they're a parent,
that's a burden for their conscience.
That's for them to lose sleep over. That's
for them to mull over and figure out.
It's actually not a burden for your conscience
(26:18):
nor is it for you to lose
sleep over the mistakes
of other adults.
Mhmm. You also can't,
use that as an excuse not to look
at your own role if it's there, but
also be honest when it isn't. Yep.
Most people who I, you know, see in
my hypnotherapy practice,
they're there because they can't sleep. Yep. They
think too much. Yeah. They plan themselves. Yeah.
(26:39):
You are right. There there are people who
would benefit from more self reflection. Mhmm. So,
you know, most of what I'm sharing in
this podcast
comes from my work with individuals who've gone
out of their way Yeah.
To seek guidance or clarity. Yeah. For for
and for many people, if you again, if
you don't have the self esteem, that's going
to be the default is the I must
be wrong. Yep. Yep. And it's never that
(27:02):
you're always in the wrong or that you're
automatically in the wrong. Or entirely in the
wrong, at the very least. Exactly. There's always
2 people involved normally in that.
So I'm gonna make a huge
bold
claim Oh, God. Here we go. Which is
that
morality, human morality,
in one
(27:23):
sentence
is to prefer
the prosocial
over the antisocial.
Right.
And that if you are indeed
embracing the prosocial
and doing your best to act in a
prosocial way and to avoid actions or words
that are antisocial,
(27:44):
then
you're almost obligated to adopt a pluralistic
live and let live attitude
toward the other
adults.
And there are so many fine grain details
as to, you know, what counts as prosocial.
Yeah. Yeah. But as a rule,
(28:07):
if
the the action
or the words
are prosocial
as opposed to antisocial,
you're probably not making an egregious
mistake
It's when the actions or words
are
detrimental
to others
That's where you could be making an egregious
(28:28):
mistake that could lose you a friend or
that could, you know, cause harm to others.
So
a really cool thing that happens
when you approach others with a cup that's
full
is that
people who approach you in the same spirit
will vibe with you.
And then if you're in any kind of
(28:50):
relationship with that person, so not just romantic,
but a friendship, a working relationship,
then there is twice as much esteeming and
twice as much respecting and twice as much
loving and twice as much caring
because 2 people with full cups
have gotten together
to form some kind of relationship. I I
(29:10):
heard something recently,
probably on podcast,
where the comment was, if you spend time
with somebody and when you walk away you
feel a little bit taller,
pursue pursue that friendship.
Yes. Often people pursue relationships
where only one person does the loving.
It's not even worth the the pursuit
And even worse,
(29:32):
some people are in relationships where 0 people
do
any loving.
Or even if a relationship kinda starts with
2 people loving each other, if it devolves
to the point where 0 people
do the loving, then each person
in that relationship is literally better off being
alone, being single. It reminds me of a
(29:52):
a metaphor for,
I suppose, you know, relationships,
which was that you're both rowing.
And you've both got an oar. Right?
The idea is to be rowing together in
a direction,
your joint captain in this case, of of
your ship. But then sometimes one person might
not need not be able to row. They're
(30:13):
sick, they're tired, whatever it is. And so
the other person might wanna take over for
a bit. If that's persistent and continues, then
you end up going in circles because only
one person is rowing. And if nobody rows,
nobody's going anywhere. And in fact, you shouldn't
be sharing a boat with
them. The final principle for this episode
is that if you must compare yourself to
others at all, if you must engage in
(30:34):
this game of keeping up with the Joneses,
only make apples to apples comparisons.
I'll give you an example.
If you
use
a visual based social media platform,
then
what you want to avoid is this
soul destroying
(30:55):
apples to oranges comparison
between the complexity
and the rawness and genuineness
of your very human life
versus someone's plasticized
photos
on social media
or someone else's 1 page CV or resume
Mhmm. Or someone else's linked in profile.
(31:18):
None of which are really all that authentic.
Mhmm. The people go to social media to
put their best foot forward.
Yeah. But I but I'd also say, all
media has a tendency to,
so at TV shows, like, you've got teams
of people doing costume and makeup, you know,
movies and theater.
You could say it's advertising obviously, you know,
(31:39):
it's all over the place. The
fantasy sort of spell weaving of an ideal,
right? This is where I tell you the
story about Christian Bale.
Okay. I was friends with Christian Bale at
the age of
9, 10.
Cool. And this is before he did Empire
of the Sun.
And, I won't tell too too much the
story because obviously you know this is, I
(32:01):
have no idea.
He became an adult. We became an adult.
Yes. True. He became an adult with, his
his his pathway and I had my pathway
and he had his. In an alternate universe,
we would have had a very similar pathway.
Let's put it that way. So as an
actor, of course, you might think,
well, that must be galling to see
somebody that you started off with.
(32:23):
Beginning of the apples to apples comparison here,
you know, somebody you started off
with being so successful and being a great
actor. And I really think he is. I
have a huge respect for for his acting.
The funny thing is that
in some curious way because
I knew him when we were just kids,
is that I see the human in him.
And I think I have no way of
knowing, nor should I ever assume that he's
(32:44):
either happier or more miserable than me.
In fact, the majority of what there is,
if you say how much is different between
us, it wouldn't be that much, ultimately.
And in some ways
that's much how I look at a lot
of social media is that,
I know that I post up stuff which
is pitched to a particular
audience. I don't show my worst aspects, my
(33:07):
worst times on social media. I do much
my friends and in certain
close communities should we say,
there'll be more range. But I know that
that's what I'm doing, I know what that's
what everybody else is doing. Even the fake
like waking up, oh, I'm so tired, look
at me. It's all it's all nonsense and
smoke and mirrors. And I look at that
kind of thing, there's just a bunch of
humans there who are just as miserable or
(33:29):
happy as anybody else
and there's and this is no evidence of
it being either one way or the other.
Absolutely.
And as a hypnotherapist,
I get to see people
behind closed doors.
Some of them have well known names
some of them are quite successful
in the you know traditionally
(33:50):
socially approved of sets
and I know that some of them you
know being let's say a dad or a
mom and in their 50s with like books
they've written or you know a very high
flying career they're listening to me
talk about
how to be
a happy, peaceful
adult
(34:11):
because we're all human
because no one is their social media feed,
no one is their IMDb profile, no one
is their LinkedIn profile.
And, you know, once we we kind of
look behind the scenes,
this sounds so cliched, but but no one
is perfect.
No one has a perfect life,
(34:33):
but everyone has a human life because everyone
is a human being.
And all the emotions that you go through,
all the emotions I go through
are human emotions.
The fact that we sometimes can't get proper
sleep and then we feel grumpy the next
morning
every single person on the planet comes through
(34:55):
this
This kind of neatly wraps up the episode
with the point that we all have a
seat at the grown up table
We don't have to be perfect
before being granted our seat at the grown
up table. You don't have to wait for
a magical day
when you are just like
(35:16):
you know the popular kids
social media feed.
If you cross the line of 18, congratulations.
Mhmm. You're an adult. Exactly. And then of
course that also means that the skills that
you need and the perspectives
that will work better for you as an
adult, you may not have got those in
your childhood and adolescence.
(35:38):
So that's when,
learning these new perspectives
and really integrating them into your everyday life
becomes,
pretty important.
Thank you so much for listening to another
episode.
If you want us to
think about
your specific challenges
in doing adult life
as well as you can and being as
happy and peaceful of an adult as you
(36:00):
can be. We're both available for hire through
the Morphis Clinic for hypnosis.
We're based in Toronto, Canada, but we do
see clients worldwide.
The website is www.morphisclinic.com.
You can reach out to our team through
there, and we'll write you a treatment plan
if we think we can help.
In case you're not quite familiar with the
(36:21):
h word,
I wouldn't be too concerned about it. It's
it's a way to suspend disbelief. It is
a way to set aside your prior beliefs
in order to accept and adopt new ones.
We're very careful
to suggest ideas that you have approved of
in advance.
And that's what the consultation process is about.
(36:41):
And so if you like, what we're talking
about and you haven't yet, please follow us
on YouTube,
at Morpheus Hypnosis.
You can also find us on Spotify,
on Apple podcasts
and,
make sure that you get notified for next
week's episode which is
lessons from childhood you need to unlearn
(37:02):
to become an adult.
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