How to Stop Sabotaging Love: 3 Truths from Gay & Katie Hendricks

Drs. Katie & Gay Hendricks, pioneers in conscious relationships and transformation, founders of the Hendricks Institute, authors of over 50 books including The Big Leap and Conscious Loving.

In this episode of Shaping Freedom, Lisane sits down with Katie and Gay Hendricks, leaders in conscious living and relationships. They talk about what it really takes to show up fully in love and in life—commitment, authenticity, and learning to let go of blame. From tuning into the body’s wisdom to breaking free from old patterns and self-sabotage, this conversation is filled with practical insights on creating relationships rooted in truth, appreciation, and presence.Learn how to set boundaries without guilt. Join Lisane's next Protect Your Peace Shaping Session today: https://shapingfreedom.com/boundaries-workshop

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:05):
Telling the truth doesn't have to be profound, and it
doesn't have to be something that you've figured out or
you know that it's deep. It's really just something that's
actually happening right now.

Speaker 2 (00:16):
You know, there aren't that many things that make people
feel really good organically. On the ensign, of course, those
are start with paying attention to your body, what you're eating,
what you're eating, what's you're exercising, what's your who you're loving.

Speaker 3 (00:34):
Welcome to the Shaping Freedom podcast, where we dive into
conversations that inspire personal growth, transformation, and clarity and challenging times.
I'm your host, Lissan Basquiat. Today I'm honored to be joined, honored,
in a little humbled actually, to be joined by two
true pioneers in the world of personal transformation, doctors Kathleen

(00:58):
and Gay, and founders of the Hendricks Institute, an international
learning center devoted to teaching the power of conscious relationships
and holistic transformation. For over four decades, Katie and Gay
have been at the forefront of what it means to
live consciously, especially in love, embody, and in relationship with

(01:21):
ourselves and each other. You might know Gay from his
groundbreaking book The Big Leap, where he introduced the idea
that many of us unconsciously sabotage our success due to
what he calls the upper limit problem. And before that,
he shared foundational truths in Conscious Living, offering five essential

(01:43):
lessons that I'm hoping he'll share with us in a
little bit. Or maybe you've read Conscious Loving, where he
and Katie illuminate how to build thriving, honest, embodied relationships
rooted in radical responsibility and presence to get bather. They've
authored over fifty books, trained hundreds of coaches around the world,

(02:06):
and appeared on major platforms like OPRAH, forty eight Hours
and others. But beyond all of that, what they bring
is a deep, integrated wisdom, one that helps us drop
out of our heads and back into our bodies, where
truth and transformation really live and where we all know
we truly belong. This conversation is for anyone who wants

(02:28):
to stop sabotaging. They were on expansion, learn how to
show up honestly in relationships and explore what becomes possible
when we live in full integrity with our bodies, our words,
and our love. Welcome to the show. I again appreciate

(02:53):
both of you so much for taking the time to
chat with me. And I always start an episode with
an overarching question, and it's just a roadmap, but it's
kind of like the question that I have in my
mind that i'd like to share that we can all
kind of keep in mind, and that is, what does

(03:14):
it take to live in full integrity with ourselves and others?
And what happens when we stop resisting the love, success,
and aliveness and anything else that we say that we
really want.

Speaker 2 (03:31):
What a beautiful broad question. There's a great pull in
by Ee Cummings. It says, it's always the beautiful question
that gets the beautiful answer. And let me let us
see if we can make our answer as beautiful as
your question, although it may take us five or six
hours to answer. The rules of relationship were ones that

(03:54):
we kind of had to learn the hard way because
both of us grew up in families where sort of
the exact opposite of what it takes to have healthy
relationships with what went on, and so we had to
unlearn a lot of our early learnings. But really it's
it's a lot about three big things and then a

(04:16):
few other things that kind of ramify off that but
one of the big things is the issue of commitment.
You know, like we always get in life what we're
committed to getting, and the problem is that most of
the time it's our unconscious commitments that's doing the getting.
You know, old things like you got to hide from

(04:38):
the world, or you can't be a full success, or
you can't have love in your life. All of those
kind of limiting beliefs. People get stuck in them and
don't get out oftentimes and sometimes until they get to
grown up time. But that's one of the big ones,
is the issue of commitment. And we find, like you know,

(05:01):
we've worked with thousands of couples now here in the
office as well as in our seminars, and one of
the first big things we noticed is that not everybody
that comes in for relationship counseling wants to be there
or wants to have the thing work, you know, They've
got unconscious commitments that are sabotaging that. And the trick

(05:24):
is that usually one of them really wants to be there,
and one of them really does. So that's that's kind
of what we get paid for, is handling that awkward paradox.

Speaker 1 (05:36):
And with commitment and that was one of the first
things that I think, because really, you know, established our
ability to go all the way with love is that
we got in. Committing is taking yourself all the way in. Like,
if you want to learn how to swim, the first
thing you've got to do is get in the pool.

Speaker 3 (05:54):
That's right.

Speaker 1 (05:55):
And you can have lots of opinions about what's going
on in the pool, but you're not going to learn
how to swim until you get in. You can find
out you're a floater or you're a sinker, or that
you just dog paddle really naturally, but the whole usually
somebody is not in and they're not out there in limbo,

(06:16):
and that situation really creates a lot of actual danger
because you're not aware of where you are and you're
not aware of where your partner is. And so actually
making that first decision are you in? And it also
is well, I'll be in if he's in, or I'll
be in if she gets in first, or I'm going
to check it out, or I want to guarantee conditions.

Speaker 2 (06:38):
You got conditions on my inness. Yeah. And the second
thing is it very much relates to that is commitment
is about showing up and I don't know whoever said,
you know, eighty percent of successes showing up, but I
think they were low on that, because if you think
of it, one hundred percent of success is showing up

(07:00):
because the first thing you have to do is just
get in the door. And so showing up authentically though,
is a real art form in life because so many
of us grow up in ways where we have to
kind of hide our true self or we've adopted a

(07:20):
self that wasn't really authentic to ourselves in order to
survive and thrive in the family and situation we grew
up in. And so, you know, one of the big
things I learned, especially when I learned to turn forty,
is that a lot of the things that I use

(07:41):
to get to be successful up until that point, I
had to start letting go of and doing the exact opposite.
Otherwise I didn't think I was going to thrive. And
so I think that a big issue in life is
first of all, showing up, But the second thing, am
I being my true self? Because if you're not, a

(08:04):
whole bunch of things start to wobble in life, and
life just doesn't let us get away with that. So
life has authentic authenticity as one of its goals it
wants to express, and if we're not doing that, then
life gets to be a problem.

Speaker 1 (08:23):
And also when people we've all learned what we call
personas ways of holding ourselves, of interacting that allow us
to get along in our families, and then those roles
we tend to bring into our adult life and impose them,
you know, on the relationship where it's really not current.
So you might have learned, like I learned, how to

(08:45):
be really polite and how I know, and how not
to interrupt, and you know, a lot of and I
remember a sesame street where there was one of the
things that said, do not bother the man, and that
was one of the things I learned with my sort
of angry with drawn dad, do not bother the man.
And so when I got into relationship with Gay, one

(09:06):
of the things was, you know, if I wanted his attention,
I didn't really quite know how to do it because
I didn't want to bother him. And so it doesn't
allow you to receive the nutrient of really giving and
receiving attention to each other, which is so vital for
all of us to really be able to thrive in life.

(09:27):
And when we let ourselves open to receiving, really receiving
another's attention, it's a game changer because it goes past
all of the roles that you've learned and really allows
you to go, oh, I can be myself here. Oh,
this is a place where I can let go of
all of the roles and discover. What then tends to

(09:49):
open up is that your relationship becomes about discovery and
sharing creativity with each other rather than power struggles. And
the big one that we needed to change early in
our relationship was a blame based relationship because both of
us grew up in very critical families, and so it

(10:10):
was only it was one day Gay came in. This
was many years ago, and I just had my haircut
and I came in and Gay said, oh, you've had
your haircut, and I went, oh, what's wrong? I mean,
my immediate response was what's wrong? And I then began
to realize I was listening for criticism, and we began
to unwind that and we made a commitment to creating

(10:32):
a blame free relationship. And that's one of the big
commitments that I encourage everybody to do. And what we
did was shift from blame to appreciation rather than we
went cold turkey on it. But it took us about
two years to learn how to really let go of
blame because what you get when you blame is that

(10:53):
hit of adrenaline haha, which a lot of people I
think is the fuel for their relationship. You have blame
and then blaming each other, and then you make up
and you have makeup sex, and then you think that's
how you know, that's how it operates.

Speaker 3 (11:07):
So how do you how do you create a blame
free relationship? Because I think that's that's the question that's
on the minds of the folks who are listening.

Speaker 2 (11:19):
Well, it's we call this Hendricks aerobics because it only
involves two moves. So here's the move. You stretch out
one hand and point your finger like you're catching somebody
doing something wrong, and you go ha, like I got you,
okay okay. And then the other half of Hendrix's aerobics though,

(11:39):
that what makes it works, is you come back with
your finger and point it benignly yourself and say, hmm,
how did I dream this up? What am I? What
would I be doing here in a life where this
is happening? How did I create it this way, so
that of wonder is the alternative to that ha of

(12:04):
I got you, I'm right. And the problem though, is, gosh,
it's so addictive, this whole thing about being right and
making the other person wrong that we've literally had couples
come in that have been doing that for twenty thirty
years and it's still making them just as miserable. They

(12:26):
don't know what to do about it. But the only
solution to it is to benignly and lovingly take responsibility
for whatever the thing is. Like, if you're blaming somebody
from criticizing you too much, I had to do that myself,
come back in here and say, hmm, why would I
have designed a life where I get criticized a lot?

(12:50):
Oh my gosh, Oh, I have an old belief that
I'm a constant source of criticism because that's the way
I grew up, you know. And so you learn things
like that and gradually transcend them. And the nice thing is,
here's the good news punchline. It took us a few
years to learn to do when I'm just talking about

(13:14):
you know, lovingly take responsibility rather than blame. But we've
been together now forty five years so imagine what thirty
or forty years of not blaming each other can do,
or even just a day a day, even just a day.

Speaker 1 (13:32):
And what we found is that when people find them
when they're first playing with this or you know, committing
to letting go of blame, that they often if they
find themselves blaming, then they blame themselves for blaming, right,
you know, it's this infinite regress. And so that's why
we suggest that people insert appreciation when they find themselves blaming,

(13:55):
to give themselves and others appreciations, because then it begins
to shift you from your critical brain into your wonder brain.
And when taking responsibility, the key for me was getting
curious about what I could learn. Because the only payoff
for adrenaline is you get that hit and then it

(14:16):
fades away, and so then people have to escalate to
get more adrenaline because you get habituated to it. And
so then people escalate and escalate, and then there are
big dramas and then people think that's what relationship is about.
But when you appreciate, you're really you're you're creating a
new palette for yourself. And you know, if you're moving

(14:38):
from an addiction to Hershey bars and you want to
learn how to eat fruit. You know, the first time
that's going to be like, oh, the Hershey bar is
so quick and it's so instant. But when you let
yourself begin to enjoy the ease and the lack of
stress and fear that comes with letting yourself get present

(14:59):
and getting c curious. In fact, one of our commitments
in one of our books I think it's in the
conscious heart, is committing to use every relationship interaction as
an opportunity to learn. And so if you are in
that open to learning, even if you don't do it right,
the intention to be learning creates this flow of love

(15:22):
between you that you can then build on. But I
remember it probably for taking responsibility for things that recommitting
is also something you can use you catch yourself criticizing,
you can recommit to being open to learning, or you
can recommit to appreciating. The other thing I'd like to

(15:43):
have people commit to is to commit to seeing their partner,
and this can be your work partner and your friends
as well as your romantic partner, to seeing them as
an evolving work of art rather than your own personal
little improvement project. Because that's what a lot of people
get into he's like, oh, he's a little rough around

(16:04):
the edges. Yeah, but my love can kind of polish.

Speaker 3 (16:07):
And I'll take care of him. He's okay now, but
when I get finished with him, he'll be right.

Speaker 1 (16:14):
He'll be ready for prime time when I get finished with.

Speaker 2 (16:18):
One of the classic events in our life is a
couple told us the following event they were having struggles
in their relationship over his drinking, and I innocently inquired
in our first session, well when did this start? And
she said, well, at our first date, he drank two

(16:39):
two entire courts of vodka. And I thought at the
time she said that he might have a drinking problem,
but I knew that my love would fix that, you know.
And so most of us get most of us don't
get two bottles full of a queue at the first date,
but most of us get at least the wink of

(17:00):
an eye about what the problem is in the relationship
right from the very beginning. So we have to go
back and look at where have I not told the
truth in my relationship? Where have I not taking responsibility?
And those are things, oftentimes that we don't get around
to doing until long after a relationship has broken up,

(17:23):
you know, like for the longest time, I had a
very unhealthy and unhappy making relationship for a couple of
years in my early twenties, and I always thought that
we broke up because she was angry all the time.
But about ten years later, I realized, wait a minute,
I was angry all the time, and I just dialed

(17:45):
her up out of the world to project it onto.
And boy, the moment you start having realized, you know,
realizations like that, then real relationship becomes a possibility because
you're not connecting through your old learned personas you're having
heart to heart, essence to essence contact.

Speaker 3 (18:03):
Yeah, you know, there's two things that you said. One
that I'm very happy that you shared. One is that
you decided that you wanted to stop the blame game,
and that it took you two years as a unit
to do that. And I want to stress that because
so often we believe that if you try something once

(18:24):
or twice, especially in relationship, like you know, I tried
to actually listen to him and not interrupt him. I
tried once and it didn't work. So we're just going
to go back to what we were doing before, you know,
and yet things take time, and the decision to be

(18:44):
with another over the long haul is one that requires
the commitment that you're talking about, the commitment to being
responsible for ourselves, because once you're responsible for yourself, and
then that's where the real magic can happen. And I
think that to what you said, Gay, very often people

(19:08):
decide that they're going to become responsible for the other person, right,
and that's a losing game.

Speaker 2 (19:27):
Most people think that two people form one hundred percent responsibility,
and that this person's fifty percent and this person's fifty percent.
But the truth of the matter is both of us
are one hundred percent that's right responsible, And if you
get over into the other person's you know, if you're

(19:47):
the martyr type person and you get into the extreme
caretaking of a person who is not responsible, then that
can be a real energy drag.

Speaker 3 (19:57):
Yeah, and I think that's very challenging for pe people
to understand. I think that one way that I look
at it is if you're playing a match, if you're
playing a tennis match, or I don't watch a lot
of football or team sports, but every player plays one hundred.

Speaker 1 (20:14):
Percent right, and when they don't, it affects the team.

Speaker 3 (20:19):
The entire exactly. And that's what happens in families. You know,
when a family comes in and decides we're all going
to play one hundred percent, what can happen within that
family is.

Speaker 1 (20:33):
Amazing, amazing and inventive, and it can keep it can
keep evolving. Also, it's not as if you make this
change and then that's it. One thing I wanted to
emphasize about what we're talking about is that it's not
just committing. Committing gets you into the game, but it's
recommitting that really gets you where you want to go.

(20:53):
And with one issue that we were working with, and
I was trying to identify what was going on underneath
anger for me, what was actually feeling, and recommitting to
actually expressing myself and finding out what I was feeling.
I remember recommitting probably a couple of hundred times. I

(21:17):
mean like a couple hundred. So what often people do
is they when it doesn't work, they either give up
or they blame themselves or their partner, and that's just
a waste of time. What really will give you impetus
is recommitting, simply recommitting and then taking an action in
that direction. Like if I've recommitted to telling the truth,

(21:41):
I'll say something that's actually going on in the moment.
Then after I've recommitted, and that begins to rewire us
to be able to enjoy being authentic rather than being
scared all the time.

Speaker 3 (21:54):
Let's break the recommitment down for a moment, if you
don't mind. So, for example, let's say that the commitment
that you've made is to always tell the truth. What
does a recommitment look like? How does that practically happen?

Speaker 2 (22:10):
Yeah, it's a moment where you've become aware that you
weren't telling the truth about something. And that might be
in the moment where some friends says how are you
and you say fine, and then you realize suddenly, wait
a minute, that's not true. And then you say, let
me amend that, and you say, part of me is fine,

(22:31):
but part of me is still trying to digest lunch yesterday.
You know, whatever the issue is that's making you not
feel fine. So that is authenticity, that's getting underneath the habitual,
programmed response and saying how you actually are. And that
doesn't mean you need to unburden yourself to the checkout

(22:53):
person at a grocery store or anything like that. But
the key thing is to catch yourself in the middle
of it. Same thing with blame back in the eighties,
after we made this commitment to taking responsibility rather than blaming,
I would catch myself in a moment of going for

(23:16):
blame and then I'd say, oh, let me just take
a moment to digest that, okay, and I would bring
it back in. I'm feeling scared right now. I'll tell you.
There was this one moment. I guess we're about a
year or so into our relationship and Katie I started

(23:39):
to criticize her for something, and right in the middle
of it, I realized that my stomach was tight. It
wasn't that I was irritated, it was my stomach was tight,
which meant I was scared. And so right in the
middle of blaming her, I said, wait a minute, that
doesn't feel right. Let me go inside. And I realized, Oh,

(23:59):
I'm I'm afraid. What am I afraid of? Oh I'm
afraid it's not going to work with you. I'm afraid
I'm going to lose you. And all of that was
sitting right underneath me, pointing the finger of blame. And
so it's like the blame takes you away from what's

(24:19):
really going on inside yourself, which is the only place
where you can resolve things. And if both people get
willing to do that, you can really have magic in
your relationship.

Speaker 1 (24:30):
In fact, this was a game changer. This was the
turning point in our relationship because when he said I'm
afraid I'm going to lose you, I suddenly I could
receive him his authenticity and you know, rather than the
barrier of blame, this vulnerability and openness. I just melted

(24:51):
and I had the sense of, Oh, this is something
that I really want. I want us to be able
to continue enjoin this flow of aliveness. And the thing
I want to point to that I think was so
helpful for me and I teach to my students and
clients is go for a body sensation that you can

(25:14):
give your attention to and you can identify. And when
you share something like that one it's unarguable, like, oh,
I just felt my stomach clench. And then it also
opens up your own inner exploration and you can add
to that, Oh, I just realized this was just like
dinner time used to be when my dad would look
at me. And then the next thing was this big

(25:36):
barking at me. And so you then begin to bring
the flow of consciousness both into the past but also
into the present. That creates a new possibility for a future.
So body sensations are a great place to start.

Speaker 3 (25:52):
Yeah, that's a great segue to a question that I
have for you about body intelligence. But before we get there,
here's what I would love to know. So you, two
amazing human beings, as a couple, have created this movement
toward helping people all over the world, families all over

(26:16):
the world, to live more consciously. I would love to
know how that happened. How did that happen? How did
you two individuals on this planet come together and decide
that this was what you were going to do for

(26:37):
the world.

Speaker 2 (26:39):
Oh, that's that's a great question. Thank you for asking that. Wow. Well,
I think both of us come from a similar background
in the sense that both of us were unconsciously called
upon to be emotional caretaker of our mothers. H my, yeah,

(27:03):
you too, and father too. Well, my father had died
just before I was born, which was a whole big thing.
But but my mom had some addictive stuff, and and
she and and and also you know, past two bloody Marys.

(27:26):
Your mom was a piece of work. So bless her heart.
As let's say about South where I brought. Bless her heart.
That's the solution to every awkward communication issue. You know,

(27:46):
why does old Uncle Randolph like little boys so much?
Uncle Randolph bless us? So I think both of us
came from that and have done kind of great pains
to overcome it in a way, but we've also benefited
from it in the sense that, you know, both of

(28:06):
us came into this relationship we were already experienced therapists.
For example, Katie had her own practice, and I was
a professor of counseling psychology at a university. So not
only had I you know, continued by private practice, but
also taught therapists three days a week at the university.
So we both came from a kind of a helping background,

(28:28):
and both of us were fascinated, you know, Like I say,
I spent my twenties trying to figure out what keeps
people from feeling good all the time inside, And then
I spent my thirties trying to find out how we
keep from making ourselves miserable in relationships. You know, how
to feel good in relationships, and so I think both

(28:48):
of us kind of came in with that curiosity, and
in fact, our first meeting, I just recognized your.

Speaker 1 (28:55):
We recognized each other. Yeah, we recognized that both of us,
you know, I think came in to transmit consciousness into
the world. And I think of what we do as
the how of consciousness, because people talk about, well, let's
you know, let's get more conscious, let's raise the consciousness,

(29:15):
but the how was really missing.

Speaker 3 (29:18):
That's the missing part.

Speaker 1 (29:20):
Yeah, and so we use our own natural resources, breathing
and moving. You know. I was a registered dance movement
therapist and taught that, and so I could see what
people were withholding by the way they were moving. And
when I met Day, the first thing that I recognized
was the enormous amount of consciousness that you were transmitting

(29:41):
into the world. And that's what I first fell in
love with, was his whoa and then he opened his
mouth and I thought, not only is this the smartest
person I've ever met, but he's the funniest. And so
one of the things that's happened for me over the
years is that I've enjoyed so much more laughter then
all of the years before I met gay, and that's

(30:03):
also how people know where we are because that's where
the laughter is coming from. And so that's a whole
different ground for your relationship rather than being careful or
controlling each other. And so we really think that you
can trade in all of those old problems for how
can I expand my ability to give and receive more

(30:25):
love every day? That's our basic commitment.

Speaker 3 (30:28):
Body intelligence, Katie, What does that mean?

Speaker 1 (30:34):
Body intelligence is opening up to the messages in your
inner landscape, the intelligence that you carry not just in you,
but that you've inherited from thousands of generations, and those
that inheritance comes through your feelings, your emotions, your impulses,

(30:55):
and you can learn how to dialogue with your inner
life in a way that allows your body intelligence to
inform you. One of the basic ones that I begin
to teach people is are you moving at your what
I call your essence pace? Because most of us are
going way, but we're in that adrenaline faster, faster, more
and more, and we're not present to ourselves at all.

(31:20):
And when we move at a pace that allows us
to give awareness to ourselves and then also be aware
of what's going on around us, it opens up this
inner space to be able to inform us, like your
inner voice is soft. I found that your inner voice
doesn't yell at you. It's more like a little nudge.

(31:42):
But if you've got all kinds of debris and static
going on, you can't hear it, you can't sense it.
And so body intelligence is really opening up to that
you have intelligence through your whole body, not just here.
Most people carry their head around on the plate. And
when you your whole body enjoy being alive, then you

(32:04):
can just expand your real intelligence life long.

Speaker 2 (32:08):
You know, this has incredible practical value too, because, like
I remember, I was consulting back in the nineties with
a big corporation and I was consulting with their top
couple of guys that are already worth, you know, hundreds
of millions of dollars. But one guy I was working with,

(32:28):
he kept having problems with anger explosions, and then it
would take him sometimes a couple of weeks to repair
a relationship. Once he'd had a big blowout and we
were talking about that, and as he told me about
it and things that made him angry, I noticed that
he kept touching his chest. And now the chest is

(32:50):
where most of us carry our heart feelings sadness, rejection, sorrow,
but also positive feelings love, compassion. But he kept touch
his chest when he was talking about the anger, and
I brought it to his attention and I said, have
you noticed how often as you're telling me about this
you were touching your chest And he said, no, what

(33:12):
the heck does that have to do with any day?
And I said, well, it's a place where most people
feel sadness or sorrow. It occurs to me that what
you're angry about is actually also something you're sad about.
Take a moment and connect with that. Well, we're sitting
in this gigantic, sumptuous office, you know, And this guy

(33:34):
does it for about ten seconds and bursts into tears.
And then he tells me, I haven't cried since the
third grade when everybody laughed at me because I cried.

Speaker 1 (33:45):
Whoa.

Speaker 2 (33:46):
You know that whatever business issues he had going on
in his life, I can guarantee you that that emotional
issue was either draining from his business or fueling his business.
And what I want is for people to use all

(34:07):
of themselves. And that involves claiming ownership and claiming agency
over yourself and ownership and at the same time giving
other people ownership, giving other people one hundred percent responsibility. Also.

Speaker 3 (34:22):
Yeah, and for so many people, I think that that's
very challenging because they've been taught to disregard the communication
that's happening inside. They've been taught to shove their feelings down,
to not cry, to ignore that little voice, or to

(34:43):
override that voice, move faster, right, And so how do
you begin to and this is for the person who
perhaps is so far away from even understanding that there
is a voice that they need the baby the simple, small,

(35:06):
tiny steps. How can a person begin to walk themselves
back into the sensation and experience of their whole being?

Speaker 2 (35:18):
Remember the Vietnam that.

Speaker 1 (35:21):
Oh yes, oh yeah, thank you. I was working with
couple who when they first came in, they sat on
opposite ends of the couch and they were, I.

Speaker 2 (35:30):
Mean clearly stiff as boards.

Speaker 1 (35:32):
Right, And I was I was trying to teach them
exactly what we're talking about here, like, well, you know,
like what is it to actually, you know, say something
that's true? And and so I was giving them some
examples and then quite suddenly he said, oh, you mean,
like my hands are sweaty. I said, yeah, yeah, just

(35:53):
like that, my hands are sweaty. And so telling the
truth doesn't have to be profound. So he said, my
hands are sweaty, and then there was a pause, and
then he said, I feel touched as here. He said,
I don't know why I'm so angry, and his wife
burst into tears and said, that's the first time I've
ever heard you you know what you're actually experiencing. And

(36:17):
so then we were able to go, oh, so it's
like this and like this, and and the next time
that they came in the following week, I came into
the room they had come in first, and she was sitting.

Speaker 2 (36:27):
On his lap. Yeah, they were all cut up together.
So I mean it was just this.

Speaker 1 (36:33):
You know, it was just so stunning that telling the
truth doesn't have to be profound, and it doesn't have
to be something that you figured out or you know
that it's deep. It's really just something that's actually happening
right now. So my palms are sweaty is sort of
my go to and I'm saying to people, you know,
what is it like to actually take responsibility and to

(36:54):
let your body intelligence speak? And you know, sometimes that
comes through your breathing, your tone, a voice. There are
all kinds of ways that you can get curious about
your relationship with you as well as your relationship with others.
And the more you learn how to love yourself and
express yourself, the more open you are to having other

(37:16):
people share their essence selves.

Speaker 3 (37:18):
Yeah, thank you for that. I think also people we
sometimes jump to how we're going to relate with other
people and we ignore ourselves. And we have such a
lab right here. Here's a great playground where I can
say to myself, I'm tired, I'm a little I'm grumpy,

(37:40):
and I'm a little tired right now, or to ask myself, Liissan,
what do you need?

Speaker 2 (37:47):
Yeah?

Speaker 3 (37:47):
You know. And the more you are able to do
that with yourself, I think, the easier it becomes to
have that experience with another person. But we really do
have to start with ourselves.

Speaker 1 (38:01):
Yes, and to come back to ourselves also because opening
up to just simply giving yourself attention, and we encourage
people to do that by learning how to appreciate themselves
and because a lot of us have learned how you
know better to give than receive, So actually appreciating yourselves
seems kind of selfish or self centered. But when you

(38:23):
genuinely appreciate yourself, you bloom in a way that allows
other people around you to go, oh, oh, this feels good.
I think it's you know, these are safe waters here
to enter into.

Speaker 3 (38:35):
Yeah, you've become safe with yourself and therefore other people
and see and feel you emanating that safety. Okay, how
do people unknowingly sabotage what they most deeply desire? Sir?

Speaker 2 (38:50):
Well, Well, One of the phrases I use in the
Big Leap is the upper limit problem. And what happens
is the upper limit problem is something that kicks in
because of old, unconscious limiting beliefs, and there are only
a few that we really need to get handled in ourselves.

(39:12):
The first one is a feeling of being fundamentally flawed
in some way, and the underlying belief is that I'm
underneath I'm fundamentally flawed in some way and therefore don't
deserve the good things of life. And so that really,
if you can move through that one, if you've got

(39:34):
a dose of that one, which most of us do,
then another possibility opens up, which is a lot of
us are very afraid of the spotlight. We resist we've
got a story to tell, or a talent to share,
or an art to express. Well, that needs to You

(39:56):
need to be able to own the spotlight. You need
to be feeling good enough that you deserve some time
in the light. And many of us believe that, oh,
my job is to stand over here in the shadows
and support people in the light by appreciating them or
buying their records or whatever. But I think that every
single one of us has this part I call your

(40:19):
genius zone inside, where it's made up of all the
stuff you love to do and all of the stuff
that would be your greatest contribution in life. And we
just need to breathe on it. We need to open
up to it. We need to at least acknowledge the
existence of it. And so two things there. One is

(40:39):
start looking for your limiting beliefs, and number two, start
looking for what's in your genius zone. What do you
love to do more than anything else, and particularly what
do you love to do so much that time disappears
while you're doing it and.

Speaker 1 (40:54):
You get more energized than before you were doing it.
So and then it also then ends to make a
contribution to others into the world and the flow of
that is so delicious. I want everybody in the world
to have the experience of the deliciousness of finding and
expressing your genius because it also inspires others to share theirs.

(41:19):
You get to have a good time while doing.

Speaker 3 (41:21):
Good And what are some of the signs that someone
is actually hitting their upper limit?

Speaker 1 (41:27):
So one of the key ones in relationship is criticism.

Speaker 2 (41:32):
Another one is worried. Yeah, percent of worry thoughts are
about stuff that has never happened or never will happen.
And save that one percent, I say, for times when
a predator is chasing you. That was what fear was
originally designed for, exactly we Fear wasn't designed to make

(41:54):
you withdraw from your beloved anger, you know, but we
use fear to do that out. But most worry is
just upper limiting. You know, you're feeling good And I've
done it myself, you know. I was walking down the street.
Beautiful jewelry store, we've shopped in there. I stopped to
look at the beautiful jewelry in the window. Ten seconds later,

(42:19):
I'm walking down the street and I'm thinking of all
the starving people that I've seen when I've been on
trips to India. How did I get from beautiful jewelry
to starving children in ten seconds? Well, that's about not
feeling good about feeling good now. I was appreciating the

(42:40):
jewelry and here all these kids are starving, and so
my default is to go down to that, you know,
not even let myself feel ten seconds of enjoying the
beauty of the artistry. So we've got to always be
on the lookout for that, because most of us learn
to control and manage our feelings in problematic ways. We

(43:02):
learn to either stuff them entirely or blow them out dramatically,
and neither one of those work very well. We always
say your life will improve if you can say three
things without flinching. I'm angry, I'm sad, I'm scared, I'm angry,
I'm sad, I'm scared. None of those need to be

(43:26):
shouted at that person.

Speaker 3 (43:29):
For yourself, yourself, you shared a lot about some of
the elements of what has helped you in your relationship,

(43:50):
like you know, the blame game and and such, and
telling the truth and being authentic. Four people who might
be struggling in a relationship as many people are, what
would be maybe three steps that a person could take

(44:12):
toward helping to improve that relationship. And I know you
shared quite a bit so far.

Speaker 1 (44:19):
Well, one thing that's just occurring to me is taking
a moment to say, you know, I love myself for
feeling upset, or I love myself for just feeling flemings
right now, or I'm willing to be with myself in
this mess right now. Just a couple of breaths to

(44:42):
be with yourself begins to unlock that log jam and
begins to circulate some positive attention towards yourself. So that's
one thing that occurs to me.

Speaker 2 (44:57):
A great philosopher named Blaise Pascal about three hundred years ago,
said all of humankind's problems stem from not being able
to sit in a room by yourself for ten minutes
doing absolutely nothing. And in a way, if you take
that down to the actual microscopic level, one of the

(45:17):
things that we human beings need to learn is how
to simply tune in and feel what we're feeling. And
so I would say, take ten seconds to simply observe
and do a whole body scan and check out your
shoulders because that's where you hold anger. And check out

(45:37):
your chest, because that's where you feel the cloudy feelings
of sadness or the heavy feelings of sadness. Check out
your belly, that's where you feel the clutch of fear
type belt feeling of fear. So check out those zones
because oftentimes you can learn something in ten seconds that
you've been avoiding for ten years. I mean, I've seen

(45:59):
it in this office. And you know, people stop resisting
something they've been resisting. Like we had a woman coming
in here one time in a relationship issue where she
had failed to have an orgasm in seven years. That
was the problem she presented us. Our question was, what
did you not tell the truth about seven years ago

(46:21):
when you stopped having more gass? And she had a
big breakthrough and it turned out that she'd had a
one night stand with her husband's best friend and had
neglected to tell her husband about it the next day. Well,
those kinds of things life doesn't let us get away with,
and so life shut down her feelings inside and also

(46:44):
fatter and mader fatter. She'd gained thirty or forty pounds
during that time.

Speaker 3 (46:48):
She held it all in.

Speaker 2 (46:49):
Yes, so listen to what we're saying, folks, and you'll
have you'll lose weight and have better orgasms.

Speaker 3 (46:55):
Well, and listen, we all want that.

Speaker 1 (46:57):
Happy ending to that story was they, you know, they
had a little like, oh, you know, and you know,
twenty minutes of the you know what happened? And I'm mad?
And then they went back and they within a month
she had dropped that thirty pounds. She didn't even try to,
and they and the next time we talked to her,
they were both beaming and clearly had gotten back into

(47:21):
a great sexual flow. So the the starting point is
to just be willing to make that move of hmm, hmm,
what's going on? What's going on? What might I learn
from this? Just the hmmm also shifts you from your
critical brain to your wonder brain. So hm is something

(47:45):
that I really encourage people to use before they ask
a question, so hmm, what's this really about? Hmmm? And
then it's you know, you start falling out?

Speaker 3 (47:59):
Did you feel it? Gay? I promised that we would
come back to the five truths that you shared in
conscious Living.

Speaker 2 (48:10):
You're asking an eighty year old guy to remember five things.
I couldn't even do that. When they gave me a
cognitive test. A couple of weeks ago.

Speaker 1 (48:21):
I want to say that's a great book. Conscious Living
is a wonderful book. It's got all kinds of great
suggestions about the how of consciousness, but I couldn't tell
you those fother.

Speaker 3 (48:33):
Joy, self love, creative power.

Speaker 2 (48:37):
Well, one of my greatest lessons is simply to start
loving the things that I used to criticize myself for. Okay,
that's so important because love is space. If you love something,
you give it space, You appreciate it, you give it consideration,

(49:01):
you give it interest, you give it attention, and you
create space around something you love. If I love Katie,
it means that I give her space to be who
she is, to feel her feelings, to go to her
highest potential. That's what love is. And the moment you
love something in yourself, you let it breathe, you give

(49:25):
it space. To not love something is to keep it trapped.
But a lot of people don't realize, speaking of joy,
that if you start letting yourself feel what you're feeling,
even though you might feel sorrow on the surface, if
you stay with it, it'll change to something else, which

(49:47):
is what I call pure consciousness. You're simply inhabiting the
space you live in. You're there with whatever is, and
that's a magical place because it has intrinsic joy and people.
You know, if you stood outside the local liquor store

(50:09):
and said why are you going in, and if the
guy didn't hit you in the mouth, he'd probably say, well, listen,
I need a little hit of joy. You wouldn't believe
the day I've had.

Speaker 1 (50:22):
Let's go have a drink.

Speaker 2 (50:23):
Let's go have a drink. And a lot of people have, unfortunately,
alcohol associated with that. Whereas I've been in cultures, you know,
like I've been at Jewish celebrations where they ceremonially drink
a little bit of alcohol, and that's a whole different feeling.
There's reverence towards the moment, there's using this little tool

(50:45):
of wine to get to some experience. Well, that's a
good thing. What's on the other side of that, though,
is a lot of folks are so out of touch
with that their inner experience, that they keep applying more
and more sort of called makeup to on the outside,

(51:06):
try to fix things on the outside to make themselves
feel better on the inside. And you know, there aren't
that many things that make people feel really good organically
on the inside, And of course those are start with
paying attention to your body, what you're eating, what you're breathing,
what you're exercising, what's your who you're loving.

Speaker 1 (51:28):
Yes, all of those, the question of what do I
really want? People? I was surprised when I found out
how many people actually have no idea what they want.
They're so attuned to what are is expected of them
and what's going to keep them out of trouble that
they haven't really asked themselves what do I really want?
And I think that's an incredibly valuable question. And it

(51:51):
also is what we call an essence question because it
allows you to open up to more than you're currently occupied.
And so I love the question of not only what
do I need, but what do I want? And in
one of our books and Conscious Loving in the back,
we have various exercises and one of them is called

(52:13):
the Choice Map, and it actually leads people through how
do you choose? How do you know.

Speaker 2 (52:18):
What you want?

Speaker 1 (52:19):
From a very fundamental body based level. So those kinds
of tools we've been playing with. We have dozens, if
not hundreds of them. And one of the places that
you can find and your viewers and listeners can find
a whole bunch of free videos like for Essence, Pace
and Breathing and Communicating with your Partner. We are nonprofit.

(52:42):
Website is called Foundation for Consciousliving dot org and we
have ways that you can learn to love yourself, ways
that you can learn to express what you really want,
and they're all no cost and free and we just
love to have people make use of those resources.

Speaker 3 (52:59):
Excellent. How can we support you? How can those who
are listening support you?

Speaker 1 (53:06):
Oh?

Speaker 2 (53:06):
What a lovely question. No, I don't think.

Speaker 1 (53:12):
That's amazing.

Speaker 2 (53:13):
Well, thank you. Well go to the website either Hendrix
dot com or a Foundation for Conscious Living and just
enjoy that. What our lives are all about now is
getting the message out to as many people as possible.
That what makes us do podcasts like yours or troop
over and do Oprah or something like that, because we
really believe in people. We think that people do carry

(53:38):
the seeds of their own genius around in them, and
we need more genius on this planet. We need more
people who are expressing who they really are and bringing
that out to the world. So we want to save
the world with authenticity and genius.

Speaker 3 (53:54):
I think the one thread throughout this entire conversation, and
what is kept coming up for me and over again
is a very simple scripture, the truth. The truth shall
set you free. And that has just kept coming up
for me as as we've had this conversation, because at

(54:15):
the end of the day, what you're talking about and
what you're teaching and sharing is it comes down to
telling the truth. Yep, just tell the truth. Tell the
truth in your relationships, down.

Speaker 1 (54:27):
To feeling the truth resonating like what's actually going on,
and then just expressing yeah. And I call it because
we the T word truth has sort of become the
T word, you know that, and we're just misunderstood by
a lot of people. But what I've discovered from all
of our practice is that we now do what I

(54:47):
call speaking from discovery. So I'm just actually speaking what
I'm experiencing. So I found that when I explained it
that way to people, it's a lot less threatening than
I'm going to tell the truth? Do you right now?

Speaker 3 (55:01):
You know?

Speaker 1 (55:01):
But if I'm saying, here's what I'm experiencing right now,
And like one of them is, like I just was
having a thought that you were angry. Are you angry?
So I'm just speaking from discovery, and there's a quality
about that that's so inviting and creates safety and invites participation.
And so that's that's what we've really found, that it

(55:25):
moves from telling the truth to enjoying, discovering and evolving
with each other and with everybody because you are letting
your inner voice communicate and without fear.

Speaker 3 (55:40):
And part of the conversation I have. I could sit
and listen to and chat with you two for hours.
I could. I've taken so much from this conversation.

Speaker 2 (55:54):
You belong in our living room. You should come up
here in business. Sometimes you're only sixty miles away.

Speaker 3 (55:59):
I will if that's I would love. I would love
to sit down and chat and riff I do. You
two have shared so much, so much, and it's so appreciated.
And I challenge those of you who are listening to
for the next few days, give yourself maybe the assignment

(56:22):
of what speaking from discovery, Speaking from discovery, I challenge.

Speaker 2 (56:27):
You whatever you've discovered in this moment, you just saying it.

Speaker 1 (56:30):
Oh I just felt a hiccup, or I mean, it
doesn't really, it doesn't have to be profound, but it's
what's actually going on, and so it creates presence, yes,
your present to yourself, and then you can presence with others,
and boy, I think that's what we're all longing for,
is presence and connection, and then you can you can

(56:50):
really be an advocate for that. So thank you so
much for your presence too, and you'recome the melody.

Speaker 2 (56:57):
Of your voice.

Speaker 3 (56:58):
This has been wonderful. I I appreciate it so much.
Thank you both. I am humbled and I feel filled
by this conversation and I myself have so many gems
that I'm walking away with. So thank you, Thank you,
Thank you so much for your time, for your presence,

(57:22):
and for your beautiful, beautiful love that you're sharing with
the world. It means, it means a lot, and it's
so impactful. And I know you already know that, thank you,
but I just wanted to share that with you.

Speaker 2 (57:34):
Thank you for being in your genius as

Speaker 3 (57:36):
You're welcome, You're welcome.