Unlearn16: Class is in Session - The One Where I Broke Me to Find Me

00:00:00.000 class is in session what's up everybody and welcome to unlearn 16 classes in session you

00:00:09.280 know what i thought today i'd do a bit of a throwback i think i've touched upon this many

00:00:14.860 different ways at many different times but it's the new year and i feel like it's been

00:00:20.560 top of mind for a lot of people a lot of discussions i've had obviously it's been in my

00:00:28.120 past. And I think it's incredibly important to talk about it because I think it's at the

00:00:32.720 fundamental root of everybody we are. That's a dramatic pause. And what I'm talking about

00:00:40.620 is relationships, obviously. I think the motivating force of possibly everything we do

00:00:50.720 is either subconsciously, which is the dangerous part, or consciously built on relationships,

00:00:59.720 built on our perception of people, built on our perception of love, built on our perception

00:01:05.720 of dependency and interconnectivity and all of those things. And I think we, as people,

00:01:14.560 we struggle with what's important. We struggle with what's vital. We struggle with how to make

00:01:24.080 that part of our lives go perfectly. I think that's what we're all either overtly or covertly

00:01:31.180 focused on, right? We want to find that person we're going to be with, that ride or die,

00:01:38.560 that person that we love unconditionally no matter what no bound like all of these i don't know i

00:01:47.200 don't want to say delusions but all of these ideas these these over romanticized movie ending the

00:01:56.640 music swells ideas of love and when it doesn't work when we think we've got it and then it doesn't

00:02:06.720 work, let's say, then yes, I'm talking to a lot of people out there who have been through

00:02:12.920 a divorce, going through a divorce or a bad breakup.

00:02:15.640 You don't necessarily need to be married to understand the magnitude of what I'm going

00:02:19.320 to say, but a significant, serious, interconnected relationship.

00:02:25.580 And when that falls apart, I think all of us are very, very quick to point and say they

00:02:35.060 did that or they were this person or they were that person i mean my god tick tock is filled

00:02:41.860 with you know he was a narcissist she was a narcissist i've heard that word so much

00:02:47.460 so many times you know when you just keep repeating a word it ceases to lose all meaning

00:02:53.780 tick tock is just a word sort of a world filled with that and filled with judging the relationship

00:03:00.900 you've been in. And then don't get me wrong. There's some amazing sort of therapist focused

00:03:05.060 individuals on TikTok that you can go and you can learn a little bit more about and figure out

00:03:09.480 what works for you. But a lot of people talk, especially in that first break, right when it's

00:03:18.060 painful, right? When, when the breakup is painful, we point fingers and we lay blame and we say,

00:03:25.520 you lied to me. We say, you, you said this, you said that we, we lay out every horrible thing

00:03:32.940 that they've done since probably, you know, day one of your relationship and you sort of itemize

00:03:37.240 them. I should have seen it. I should have seen that. I should have seen that. We talk about red

00:03:40.760 flags. We talk about all of this stuff when it comes to other people. And we do it with our

00:03:46.740 friends and our family. And we all sit around like in that, that stage. And they're all like

00:03:51.680 wound up ready to tear down that other person that obviously possibly broke your heart broke

00:03:58.360 your worldview broke your home made you adjust sometimes broke your your finances and your

00:04:06.260 economic stability and viability and all this stuff happens and we point and we point and we

00:04:12.600 point and myself included right myself absolutely included you you and i'm not just talking about

00:04:21.580 being married i mean you date people and you're very quick to say yeah them that's what that's

00:04:28.780 what happened in that relationship oh that person was this way or that person was this way and we

00:04:33.820 very rarely seriously look at us now some people might have let me let me correct a little bit

00:04:46.040 Some people might have a tendency to always to blame themselves, and then the bad relationships keep happening, right?

00:04:54.080 I don't think that individual is truly blaming themselves.

00:04:57.200 I think they're taking the blame, but there's a big difference between saying, I'm sorry, and saying, I'm sorry, and meaning it because you understand what was lacking.

00:05:10.540 You understand exactly what you did.

00:05:13.560 You understand that your actions had that negative consequence.

00:05:18.220 And I don't think people do that a lot for one very, very particular reason.

00:05:22.160 I think most of us, most people lack a complete, a full,

00:05:31.500 a well-rounded understanding of who they are.

00:05:37.740 A friend of mine, Vanessa, told me that when we get into relationships,

00:05:43.560 We are often trying to, and I know this has been said before, but we are trying to subconsciously

00:05:50.080 work through a relationship with our parent or that we saw operate within the confines

00:05:57.980 of our parent.

00:06:00.560 And until we heal that, until we figure that out, until we understand that, we will continue

00:06:06.540 to duplicate our mistakes and continue to duplicate the people we are attracted to.

00:06:14.980 You know, everybody always says like, oh, you attract who you are and all of this stuff. I mean,

00:06:20.060 part of that is true. Part of that is true, but it's not like this negative charged magnet.

00:06:25.980 You're not walking around and idiots are just like attaching themselves to the side of your body and 1.00

00:06:31.240 your head and your face and your foot. You're dragging them around because you're just this 1.00

00:06:34.980 giant moron magnet. Here's what it is. It's even worse. It's even worse. 1.00

00:06:42.700 You're not the magnet. You're seeking it out.

00:06:47.980 Who you're attracted to, who you're fundamentally attracted to, you know,

00:06:51.880 that feeling in the pit of your stomach that nobody can explain,

00:06:54.400 that nobody can get rid of, that nobody can articulate quite properly,

00:06:59.640 that that feeling in the beginning of a relationship that draws you to that

00:07:03.280 person. What I'm talking about is if you have unresolved crap, if you have a broken relationship 0.93

00:07:12.600 sort of sensibility, if your child self and your love map has been skewed and you haven't dealt 0.68

00:07:21.240 with it and you haven't healed it, these people aren't going to be drawn to you. You're going to

00:07:27.020 be drawn to them. And you, me, are going to consistently make and remake and remake again

00:07:37.860 all of the same mistakes that were in past relationships that you still can't figure out

00:07:44.500 how to heal. So when people say, you know, how do we find that relationship? You know, first of all,

00:07:55.320 A, let me please admit that by no means am I an expert in any way, shape, or form. I am just

00:08:02.360 sharing life experience, conversations, other people's experience, the things that you have

00:08:08.220 gleamed since traveling around this world for as long as I have been here. And hopefully I get

00:08:15.280 smarter from, you know, today onward. But I think you need to develop, the key is to develop

00:08:25.420 an authentic self. And in order to develop an authentic self, you need to have all the tools

00:08:34.080 to do so. You need to understand all the subconscious stuff that you have been writing

00:08:39.880 off to attraction, to that's just my type, to, well, yeah, I realized that I got into this,

00:08:48.280 but if communication was better with that person, if ability to organize and plan was better with

00:08:57.320 that person, you keep coming up with all these externalities, but all these externalities don't

00:09:01.340 change the actual common denominator. And the common denominator is you, is me. Is the person

00:09:11.360 in the relationship and what do you need to heal? What do you need to figure out? Let me tell you

00:09:17.760 what I needed to figure out. I think very early on, most psychologists will talk about the way

00:09:25.320 that a child's love map gets designed, gets imprinted. So kids will learn from their families,

00:09:34.380 from their parents, and from their immediate families, the people they spend their time with,

00:09:39.000 what love is supposed to look like, how it plays out, the good, the bad, and the ugly. And we get

00:09:47.160 that very subconsciously, right? There's no parents sitting around going, you know, we're

00:09:55.240 imprinting upon this kid. I think parents are starting to understand it more now. But here's

00:10:01.060 the funny part. Unless as an adult, you've done that work and figured yourself out, you can try

00:10:07.460 to control and manipulate what your kid sees. But you can't control or manipulate how they still

00:10:16.900 perceive love if you haven't healed it for yourself so there's a lot of parents who like

00:10:22.740 won't want to fight in front of your kids sure i think that's healthy listen i think yelling and

00:10:26.900 and heaven forbid anything physical all those things are negative qualities having said that

00:10:33.380 if you are just because you're not fighting in front of your kid just because you're not

00:10:39.380 raising your voice you're spelling out words the kid gets it the kid understands it

00:10:43.700 And more so, I'm starting to believe that it's far more important for a kid and for people in general, not just to understand that there will be conflict.

00:10:58.420 Because guess what? There are always going to be conflict. Always. I don't care who you are.

00:11:03.720 There will always be conflict. There will always be discussion. There might even be levels of fighting or arguments or all of those things. And those are important. Those are important. But you can't hide the discussion. You can't hide the fight. You can change the way you fight. That's important.

00:11:23.540 So you can put that over there and decide that you're going to fight respectfully and you're going to you're going to fight without, you know, name calling and screaming and all of those things.

00:11:33.820 But the key, the key is to figure out and to show people around you, especially kids, how you resolve the fight.

00:11:44.620 That's the there it is. How do you resolve a fight?

00:11:48.620 How do you resolve a conflict? Because then for them, love isn't avoiding it or love isn't

00:11:55.880 whispering about it or love isn't just fighting and then waiting for it to go away. And then it

00:12:00.320 goes away magically one day because you never saw the back end of it. Now, I'm not saying kids need

00:12:06.480 to be privy to all their adult conversations. That's not what my point is. But my point is

00:12:11.800 to, to, to be aware that those kids are like animals in the sense that they, they just feel

00:12:20.000 emotion. They don't necessarily understand your words. So if they're feeling it, they're going to

00:12:26.600 feel it, whether you're yelling or you're not, they're going to feel different things if you

00:12:29.660 yell, but they're going to work their way through it. Right. And so at that age, that's what you

00:12:35.860 start to figure out. So when I was young, I mean, my parents got divorced when I was very, very

00:12:40.980 young. So I didn't see a relationship between my mom and my dad. Like it was, I saw a relationship

00:12:47.820 of like, they were, they stayed friends and my mom, they was very cordial and all of those things.

00:12:52.100 I never saw them fight. That's not the point. I didn't see a love relationship between them.

00:12:56.440 The way that I saw my mom love was with her family. And I joke with my mom now, because I think

00:13:02.300 she says sometimes that, you know, maybe some of the things that I had to carry and work through

00:13:07.840 and all of those things had to do with the divorce and my dad and whatever. And I said,

00:13:11.280 I don't think that's the case. In retrospect, and here's something hysterical, I think I learned how

00:13:17.220 to love or what I thought love looked like from the way my mom loved family. And the way my mom

00:13:25.160 loves family, and by the way, she's also a nurse, right? Was unconditionally, was all in, was no

00:13:33.780 boundaries no limits no big discussions no consequence like and it's not like horrible

00:13:40.980 things were happening in my family it's just that my mom didn't have those lines because she always

00:13:47.060 wanted to be there for whatever family needed and to me that was my model because i didn't see her

00:13:55.540 in a romantic relationship i used i'm assuming this is a lot of assumption right because how

00:14:00.820 the hell do we ever really know i used the model of how she loved family and and to some degree

00:14:10.820 even how she nursed to be perfectly honest as my love map as the way that i'm supposed to love

00:14:17.860 so when i got into relationships um as i was older and after i came out i was all in

00:14:24.740 all in and what that meant was people would talk about things like boundaries and I would see them

00:14:32.240 as being if you have a boundary then you aren't all in if you have a limitation then you're not

00:14:41.120 loving big enough and if I was if I had a partner and I had a limitation then somehow they would see

00:14:48.800 that as my failing to love them big enough. And, and this is my number has been obviously my number

00:14:59.200 one issue. That's not about the, it has nothing to do with who I was with. This conversation will,

00:15:05.080 I will spend no time talking about my ex, my exes in any significant way. I won't talk about,

00:15:10.800 You know, any of those things, because those people, those other people, those are, let's say, proof.

00:15:20.040 They're proof of what I was trying to heal and did badly at it.

00:15:27.120 It's about me.

00:15:29.300 A good relationship is about you, where you draw the lines, what your boundaries are, what your love map looks like.

00:15:40.800 And the way that you set up that dynamic to be both, you know, somewhat dependent, but not codependent, you set it up to be loving, but not all consuming.

00:15:54.060 You set it up to be giving and compromising, but not compromising to the point in which you lose yourself, you lose your character, you lose your priorities.

00:16:06.840 And for me, I stopped doing that.

00:16:10.800 Truly for about 11 years, all I did was try to figure out how to please, was try to figure

00:16:19.560 out how to not rock the boat, was try to, how to, how to love somebody past the stuff

00:16:24.460 they've been through and the trauma they've been through and all of that stuff.

00:16:26.780 I just got to love more.

00:16:27.980 I just got to love them more.

00:16:29.380 If I love them more, they will feel that they will be energized for that.

00:16:34.280 They will be uplift, lifted from it.

00:16:37.160 But here's the funny part about that.

00:16:40.800 and i don't even i don't know how to articulate this um if you are loving somebody with no

00:16:50.080 honesty if you are loving somebody with the zero ability to be let's say constructively critical

00:17:01.840 if you are loving somebody and you aren't able to sit down and have honest conversations and still

00:17:10.000 sit in who you are and what you need and be able to put that on the table you're not loving anybody

00:17:17.680 and number one you're not loving the most important person because you're not loving yourself

00:17:24.080 when people say like what's the one thing i would ask i would i would recommend to my former self

00:17:28.720 i'd say therapy not to fix me it's not about fixing it's about understanding no we all need

00:17:33.760 things to fix right we all need things to work through we need things to heal but that's not

00:17:37.280 really fixing it's not necessarily changing it's just understanding and i don't think

00:17:43.040 in our world in our culture we spend any time doing that we're constantly looking for the right

00:17:48.960 person external we're constantly looking for the right relationship external we're constantly

00:17:56.080 looking for the the person with the right job and the right position and the right belief external

00:18:02.080 you know when they say you shouldn't be looking they don't finish the thought you know they say

00:18:08.440 you're always going to find that person when you stop looking well they don't finish that thought

00:18:12.280 there's a bigger thought there and the thought goes something like this if you stopped looking

00:18:18.700 the the back end of that is that at some point you have become impressed enough and happy enough

00:18:30.160 and aware enough about who you are and what you bring to this world and what you get from

00:18:35.680 all the different amazing people you connect with, that you feel whole. That's why you stop

00:18:43.300 looking. Because when people are looking, they're looking to fill something. When you stop needing

00:18:48.580 to fill something, that's the magic moment. You know, it's not like you don't go to bars anymore

00:18:56.400 scouring the hemisphere on on dating apps scouring away it's not about meeting people

00:19:01.920 it's about figuring out and it's and it's hard and and it's it's counterintuitive to everything

00:19:10.980 else we're told but it's hard because we're constantly inundated with you know go to high

00:19:17.560 school go to university get a job get a get married have kids get the like we we have a plan

00:19:23.920 And this plan is really quite in the way of one of the most fundamental things, which is figuring out who we are externally, internally to all of that.

00:19:37.400 When do we have that time?

00:19:40.040 You know, when I was a kid, and I mean, people still talk about it.

00:19:42.920 Go backpacking around Europe and find yourself. 1.00

00:19:46.020 I always thought that was such a crock of shit. 1.00

00:19:48.800 But the sentiment is this. 0.99

00:19:51.500 The sentiment isn't the backpack.

00:19:52.720 The sentiment isn't like some dodgy hostel in, you know, Nice.

00:19:59.320 The sentiment is take the time.

00:20:03.240 Take the time.

00:20:04.900 How do you carve that time?

00:20:06.860 And when they say do it in Europe, they mean do it away.

00:20:10.440 It's what I think, right?

00:20:12.560 I'm a bunch of people in the comments saying you don't know what I'm talking about.

00:20:14.580 But I'm going to say this.

00:20:15.940 When they say backpack around Europe, they're saying it because of a few reasons.

00:20:21.100 do it outside of your peer group. So again, you're not influenced. Do it outside of your culture

00:20:29.420 that you've grown up with, that you felt comfortable in, that has become like this

00:20:33.680 safe space for you. Do it outside of that. Hell, do it outside of the language you speak.

00:20:40.000 Do it outside of the things you see every day that serve to reinforce past behaviors and past

00:20:47.360 beliefs-y systems and past structures, the more new you can make things, the more unknowable

00:20:57.240 you can step into something, the more discomfort you might feel, the more you might figure out

00:21:03.900 little pieces of yourself that you never would have figured out before. And I think that's what

00:21:09.180 the backpacking thing is. It's not about getting a sore back with a giant, you know, or every time

00:21:14.320 I think about backpacking across Europe, by the way, side note, I think about American

00:21:17.580 werewolf in London. Why is that? You know, with his red jacket and his backpack and his

00:21:21.760 strolling off the path, I think there might be a lesson there as well. But I think it's

00:21:28.120 all incredibly important to carve that space. And you don't need to go backpacking for that,

00:21:32.940 but we need to carve space and we don't do that. We also all need to agree, agree that

00:21:41.240 everything we've done up until the point you're at is has been inundated with influence I'm not

00:21:51.100 saying we're all part of like some massive brainwashing campaign I'm not about government

00:21:55.360 conspiracies and cultural listen I'm just saying you grow up with a certain culture you grow up

00:22:02.820 with a certain family you grow up with certain television shows clothing you know fads music

00:22:09.360 influences. You grow up in a certain kind of academic environment. You grow up and you go

00:22:16.780 into a certain work environment and there's expectation there and dress codes and time

00:22:22.760 management skills and workplace culture and fitting in with the right peer. All of those

00:22:29.560 things are getting in the way possibly of you figuring out you and then one day you turn 35

00:22:41.860 you turn 40 you're in the midst of divorce and you feel like you've never known yourself ever

00:22:46.320 and the possibility is you haven't not really not completely I also don't know if you ever

00:22:55.900 completely understand yourself but when you start with things like boundaries and you start

00:23:04.680 understanding that who I am matters what I need matters what I my my the things I'm willing to

00:23:14.320 compromise on the things I'm not to be able to write them down to be able to articulate them

00:23:18.660 and here's the kicker are you ready for the kicker to be able to walk away from a relationship

00:23:24.200 no matter how much you think you are in love if those things aren't met there it is

00:23:32.860 right and i wasn't god a relation everything was falling apart like not a single thing was being

00:23:43.500 met and yet i was holding on with both hands why because i thought that's what love was

00:23:49.520 that is the opposite of love you can never hope to be in a healthy amazing complete relationship

00:23:57.960 if you are not healthy amazing and complete which means you have to work through whatever

00:24:03.780 you went through as a kid all the subconscious stuff put it on the table you know at the beginning

00:24:10.520 of a relationship and well at the I mean I guess at the end of the relationship you look at the

00:24:14.600 beginning you say oh look at all those red flags you know it's funny we never go oh what was my

00:24:18.220 red flag? What were my problems? What were the things that were red flags, should have been red

00:24:26.440 flags in my personality where I looked at that and went, what the hell was I doing? And if I didn't

00:24:32.220 draw a boundary then, if I didn't stand up for myself then, what's broken in me that had nothing

00:24:39.200 to do with the other person? Because other people are going to treat you the way you demand to be

00:24:42.440 treated, period. And if they don't want to step up and treat you the way you need to be treated,

00:24:47.360 then you can say thank you have a lovely life i'm going this way now but we don't do that

00:24:55.040 i think a big reason we don't do that is we hate change who doesn't hate change

00:25:01.920 right it's like the the and that massive kind of overhaul especially you've been in a relationship

00:25:07.600 for a long period of time no matter how good bad or ugly it's become it is you know it you know it

00:25:15.200 it's like you know the the worst and the best of it so there's a comfort in that i think there's

00:25:22.320 the danger for most of us i think the danger is we get very very comfortable in at best mediocrity

00:25:30.000 at worst um in some cases and i've listened to people in some cases we we are actually

00:25:39.200 comfortable in the chaos right we are comfortable in the extremities of emotion we've convinced

00:25:48.560 ourselves that the low lows and the screaming and the fights and all of that and then the big

00:25:56.320 over the top i love you i can't live without you that range is passion that that range is that

00:26:05.920 That insanity, that feeling, that pure anxiety-driven insanity is somehow what you think love is supposed to feel like.

00:26:17.600 And that's not just from that relationship, that's from before.

00:26:21.580 Now, you can be in a relationship that breaks things and you need to heal from because you never felt like that before.

00:26:27.580 And it was a slow grind for a while, so then you got to heal that.

00:26:32.980 Right?

00:26:33.460 And that's why a lot of us make consistently similar mistakes is because a lot of what I'm talking about, and I think this is the scariest or hardest part. It's not conscious. You can say, listen, you can say when I was six, this happened. You can say that, but can you feel it?

00:26:54.300 and if you can't feel it if you can't draw that sensation to that moment when that sensation

00:27:01.800 rears its head somewhere else that is seemingly totally disconnected from when you were six

00:27:07.500 you never make those connections you never figure out what you need to heal you never figure out

00:27:12.280 what you have to adjust you sure as hell never figure out how to draw the boundary

00:27:16.240 so that sensation ceases to control and drive you

00:27:21.420 right and i'm not just talking i guess when i talk about all this stuff a lot of people like

00:27:29.480 i can't go you know i can't go to therapy twice a week 300 bucks a pop get out of town

00:27:36.060 i'm not really worried about the the in therapy thing because i think a lot of people can do

00:27:43.100 a lot of work um with themselves i think there's a lot of amazing things you can access now

00:27:49.100 and you can you can figure out and you can journal you can write down I I personally

00:27:54.640 needed that help that's just the way I work there's there's no way I couldn't have done it

00:27:59.480 without like at some point I was like therapy twice a week I would go over to Stacey's house

00:28:06.000 when I leave Stacey's house I'd call Amy on my way home and I'd get home and then I'd talk to

00:28:10.200 Stacey again or I'd call Lou and then I'd go into work the next day and I'd sit down with those

00:28:14.760 people and I taught I had so many these this amazing sort of freaking army of people that I

00:28:21.560 could lean on left right and center I know that's so so so lucky and and uh that I was in that

00:28:28.500 position and I had those people but there's a lot of different ways that I think that we can

00:28:34.400 reach out to other people but the key is and I don't know when this happened I would love to tell

00:28:40.460 you. I knew when this happened, but I don't. The key is when I stopped trying to figure out how to

00:28:45.200 heal the hurt of that one relationship, there was a moment that I shifted from healing that hurt

00:28:54.300 to trying to figure out what it was about me that I brought to that situation and trying to identify

00:29:03.360 those things and trying to figure out. And then I went to extremes, right? Because I went to an

00:29:10.200 extreme where my boundaries were thick and ginormous and a little ridiculous because I

00:29:17.060 hadn't tried them on before. So it was like, oh, I need boundaries. I'm going to try. All 317 I can

00:29:24.840 think of, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, right in front of me, right? I created a moat.

00:29:28.080 um now i i happen to um meet a woman who i don't know if she's so incredibly intuitive 1.00

00:29:40.080 if she's for all of her amazing qualities could see them and go what is that okay and she's gonna

00:29:47.440 she's gonna let me through work through that but she's not gonna let me work through it without

00:29:51.260 acknowledging her boundary softly, seriously, calmly. This is what I'm seeing. This is what

00:29:58.860 I'm okay with. This is what I'm okay you working over and through. This is where I'm not okay.

00:30:05.240 And I never once felt at risk in that situation. I was given time to sort of slowly work through

00:30:12.200 it, not say stagnant, not, not just live in it. I was given time to work through that.

00:30:18.960 and then i was able to once i really could look at myself once i really shouldered what i needed

00:30:27.520 to shoulder from that and i still do it only then did i start understanding what love was supposed

00:30:35.680 to look like love should be peace you you can have a fight in peace you can disagree that's

00:30:43.760 not what i'm saying nothing's perfect but the idea of anxiety ridding fireworks that you never know

00:30:53.920 exactly when they're going to go off the the misconstrued notion of passion that's that's not

00:31:03.200 love that's manipulation and and i think a lot of people do it without knowledge without

00:31:13.680 foresight, without understanding what they're doing or why they're doing it, just like I did,

00:31:19.980 right? Most of us walk through this world doing things, being drawn to things, reacting to things,

00:31:28.880 all subconsciously driven, meaning you have no idea why I did what I did, why I didn't do that,

00:31:43.320 why i overreacted here you don't even know it's an overreaction you just assume it's the reaction

00:31:48.360 you should have because you don't question it you're not questioning you you're only questioning

00:31:55.140 other people because it's easier and how the hell are you supposed to question your subconscious

00:32:00.320 what are we you know carl young am i supposed to journal all of my nightmares and dreams in order

00:32:09.300 to gain some sort of insight into you know the flying bowling balls i don't know but what i do

00:32:16.500 know is that unless we're trying pieces tiny little chipping away tiny little pieces we're

00:32:23.940 not getting better and you're just going to keep replicating that and replicating that again

00:32:30.180 you know so i think that looking externally is never the answer also i think this

00:32:40.200 Deciding that you're perfect is never the end.

00:32:43.260 Like, I'm good.

00:32:44.940 You know, I've heard people say things like, it's just who I am.

00:32:48.720 It's who I am.

00:32:49.800 And if you don't like me, fine.

00:32:52.280 Listen, if that's where you're going to stand, what you're saying is,

00:32:57.940 I have all these broken parts, but I'm just going to be okay with them.

00:33:02.300 I'm never going to try to fix them.

00:33:04.360 You get okay with them or get the hell out of my life.

00:33:06.540 Well, that's a recipe for disaster.

00:33:09.300 In no way, shape, or form am I saying we are all supposed to be perfect and whole.

00:33:12.980 I'm saying if you see a piece of yourself that doesn't seem healthy, that isn't healthy by your standards, by any other outwardly objective standard, it's your job to fix it.

00:33:25.560 Not spill it on everybody else around you.

00:33:28.540 No matter why it was broken, no matter who broke it, no matter how long it's been fractured.

00:33:33.800 It is only your job to figure out how you deal with it, you heal from it, you put it back together, you recognize it, you carry it, but you know how then it affects you so you don't let it control you.

00:33:49.820 That's it.

00:33:51.840 When we do less than that, we devalue our relationships, we devalue ourselves, and we don't become as great a people as we're going to become.

00:34:02.140 you know i i just i i was with a bunch of friends yesterday and and all of us knew each other in

00:34:10.500 grade nine so for like 400 years and these are the kind of people you sit down with and you look

00:34:16.660 around the room you go what we've been through it like we've just been through a world of we've

00:34:22.880 been through a whole lifetime and we've kept in touch and no matter how close you've kept in touch

00:34:29.000 with those people I don't know about you when you sit in that room there's an ease to it right an

00:34:35.000 ease of it and in a I can pick up the phone and call them anytime I want and I might have missed

00:34:40.500 big life things but you know what I didn't miss who they are like I just that person stays constant 1.00

00:34:45.640 but the cool thing about sitting in a room with a bunch of you know later 40 year old women

00:34:52.180 outside of the fact that they had to put their glasses on to read the wine bottle

00:34:56.300 um uh the cool part is that you look around and if you're if you're lucky if you put in the work

00:35:06.800 you look around and you see these women who have stepped into more of themselves

00:35:12.380 who feel since grade nine we were 13 14 years old who feel more confident about who they are

00:35:18.920 who have been through it who have figured out that's the boundary i need to draw that's what

00:35:23.560 I need to accomplish. These are the people that I'm going to have in my life. These are the people

00:35:27.700 that I can't. And you see this, this shift. And when people talk, you know, don't you miss your

00:35:34.400 twenties? No, no. I don't know why. Cause I feel like when I look back at that, I'm like, well,

00:35:41.740 I was not smart. And I don't just mean smart in school, obviously. I mean, intelligent.

00:35:48.780 I had zero emotional intelligence. If it's on a percentage of scale, I might have been running in the negative, guys. I might have been running in the negative. And you gain that emotional intelligence when you learn what emotions are used for, how they're used against you, how they can be manipulated, how you get to take control of those thoughts and therefore control of your emotions as you gain experience through this.

00:36:18.780 life and some people do it way better than me way younger than me way easier than me but looking

00:36:25.100 around that room and thinking about where i am i wouldn't want to be a day younger i would love it

00:36:33.020 if my back didn't hurt all the time but outside of that i wouldn't want to be a day younger because

00:36:40.780 a day younger means I get it less. I wish and I think young people in today's world are starting

00:36:50.500 to get it better than us. Younger people are always smarter than us. Who am I kidding? Because

00:36:55.840 they'll talk about things like mental health and what they're really talking about because a lot

00:37:00.760 of people like to say, oh, they always have something. What they're really figuring out

00:37:07.520 and I think tapping into, it's not just mental health and who has depression or anxiety or OCD

00:37:14.440 and all those things. And that's there as well. It's about these young individual souls trying

00:37:22.580 to figure out who they are internally without the external influences of every single other thing.

00:37:31.840 And I think that's what drives a lot of adults crazy because they're jealous.

00:37:37.700 They're looking at these kids.

00:37:39.800 And I think it's always been the case because you look at kids and they dress for the most

00:37:44.580 part.

00:37:44.940 They put on what they want.

00:37:46.340 They dress.

00:37:46.880 They listen to music you don't like.

00:37:48.920 They do things differently than you.

00:37:51.620 Nobody's perfect.

00:37:52.780 But what they're trying to figure out is their identity.

00:37:55.400 And if we would get out of their way for like 30 seconds,

00:37:59.600 if we could just like move out of their way a little bit more

00:38:04.120 or a little bit longer,

00:38:05.780 maybe they could establish a little bit more truth,

00:38:09.100 a little bit more space,

00:38:10.760 a little bit more of that personal authenticity

00:38:14.900 before they get into big relationships and marriages and kids

00:38:20.640 and all of those things.

00:38:21.900 So when they walk into it,

00:38:25.400 they they understand more of who themselves and then that relationship and then that dynamic has

00:38:31.080 more of a shot of being authentic being lasting and being real and if it has to end it ends in a

00:38:37.320 real healthy aware way because not everything needs to last forever for it to be good

00:38:43.960 things can come to an end that are good but that's not what i was taught that's not what

00:38:49.240 that's not the space that i was made you know when i talk to my students about the things that they

00:38:54.840 like that we talk about the most. You want to know the number one thing they want to be able to talk

00:38:58.600 about. And as young as grade seven, they want to talk about boundaries. They want to understand

00:39:03.420 what that means. They want to understand what can they draw. In a situation where you're 14,

00:39:10.760 15 years old, or you don't control a lot in your life, what boundaries can you draw? How can you

00:39:16.140 draw them? What's rational? What's healthy? What's too much? What's too little? How can you stand on

00:39:23.320 your own two feet they are desperate for that conversation so I say we take our 47 years of

00:39:30.680 wisdom clear the road so they can actually have a better go at it they can start from a better

00:39:37.180 position you know everybody talks about the next generation doing better than us economically we

00:39:43.480 might have a bit of a problem with this one but emotionally but you know politically you know on

00:39:52.300 the basis of diversity and equity and sort of a social justice level. No, I think this next

00:39:58.960 generation is going to do exactly what we always wanted them to do. They're going to be better.

00:40:04.580 And they're going to be better because we're going to give them more space to be exactly who

00:40:09.360 they need to be with respect and awareness for everybody else around them. My final thought,

00:40:17.360 you want a healthy relationship figure out who you are what you need and what

00:40:22.400 your boundaries have to be and then have the strength sometimes the audacity to

00:40:30.440 stand up for them thank you guys so much for hanging out with me I will see you

00:40:35.280 next week same bad time same bad channel

Unlearn16: Class is in Session - January 17, 2023

The One Where I Broke Me to Find Me

Episode Stats

Transcript