"THIS IS WHY You Keep Having Relationship PROBLEMS!" | Dr. Shefali & Lewis Howes

when your worth is not tied to anyone else's opinion and it's all your own you own every day your child doesn't define you the mirror doesn't define you sure we'd all like it all to work in our favor but it doesn't define you you reach a place of i think you've got to have a dream the school of greatness please welcome us you've got a new book called a radical awakening turn power into pain embrace your truth and live free it's all about how to break free of a lot of things that have been holding women back specifically in their lives marriage relationships sex monogamy even their last name and i'm curious why do you think so many women play the victim in their relationships in general whoa okay because you mentioned beforehand that women play a lot of victimhood in certain areas not everything but certain areas what what does that look like in relationships well let let's just back up a little bit and and understand that women have had a really raw deal of course in this toxic patriarchy absolutely okay i grew up and i told you on my last interview with you i was molested up the wazoo by the time i was 11 and had to really learn how to protect myself defend against predators lurking behind every corner so as a woman it's been really difficult for me and i know every sister out there has had to deal with the toxic patriarchy yes we've been trained to be quiet trained to muzzle our true self trained to play small back of the line after everybody's served on the table trained to allow violation of space and mind so yes so we have to understand that if we want to awaken now we have to first name the toxicity for what it is so we have to name what's happened to us but then the radical awakening which is what my book is about is own how we now do it to ourselves okay so name the toxicity does that mean like naming the the abuse the shame the guilt the insecurity the fear yes name those things justification the oppression that the culture has given us a really hard time and has really put us in a weak position and call it you know so the women in the metoo movement took a long time to come out because culture told them they have to be the good ones they have to be quiet don't ruffle feathers don't rock the boat culture has subjugated us with these messages and we have bought into them yes so the first step is to recognize the cultural bs exactly and that we are living in a toxic matrix and we have to redefine everything we've been conditioned to believe like what what what things the lies about beauty the lies about being youthful the lies about wanting to be in a relationship where we believe we should be owned and possessed the lies are on motherhood the lies are on love you know i talk about all these lies in the book so one by one i systematically deconstruct and debunk these lies that have actually enslaved us so that's step number one is to recognize you've been living in a cultural matrix that has lied to you step number two when you radically awaken though yes is when you take ownership for how you are part of that co-creation okay so when you talk about victimhood we are victims however being and living in victim consciousness is where we get stuck so victim consciousness versus victimhood what is that well if i'm raped tomorrow i'm a victim of rape yes if the man i'm with if i happen to be with a man and he physically abuses me that is called physical abuse we should not be afraid to muddy the waters what abuse is call it i've been a victim don't hide from it don't not talk about it be silent speak up yeah if you've been a victim speak up empower your children to say i've been a victim that's very different than living and being in victim consciousness what does that mean victim consciousness is when you hold on to the perpetration and you now perpetrate yourself and you keep the power with the other person so not forgiving not forgiving yourself or the situation or not saying it's okay what happened but not allowing yourself to healing healing and not moving on got it blaming the one who took your power away and we don't realize when we blame the other we give them our power even more really right we stay tethered to them true empowerment is to take all power back including blame so how does when something horrific happens to a woman yes and they've got to go through a pro i mean men or women and they've got to go through a process of healing some of these things might take a while to heal though absolutely might take years right decades decades if something really tragic happens in your childhood exactly yeah so how does someone not shame themselves for for taking a longer time to let go and deal with the process that it takes for them the grieving process the pain process what right what is a timeline that we should be thinking of on how we could reclaim that power well you know lois all my work is unconscious parenting for a reason because the pain and trauma inflicted by our parents or those early years takes a lifetime that's what i do for a living is i help people uncover how they're replaying the same patterns of the trauma bonds from childhood this is our whole life is to recover from the trauma what was the main trauma for you that you still worked through the the main trauma which and which i write about in the book was a pervading sense of unworthiness which came from growing up in a very patriarchal culture you never felt on work you never felt worthy i never felt good enough i was always looking for validation from the men in my life or my achievement or my title my role i'll be the best mother i'll be the best wife it was only in my mid-40s when my kid two years ago just two years when my kid really grew up that i began to look at myself because i had finished checking off like half the list yeah went to the great school they got the the doctorate wrote the books the new york times oh bro all these things kid has grown up yeah now who am i and i realized that i had been living a false self because the bedrock was unworthiness and i didn't even know it until recently until recently i had a huge epiphany yes yeah so who are you so now i'm evolving and that's why to your question there is no timeline it's a process you will be asleep till you wake up and you often don't know you're asleep till you have some traumatic moment till you have some epiphany you know so i was on this spiritual path growing and then one day i grew out of my marriage and that's when that was my moment of trauma you were in the marriage i was fine and you grew out your life this is no longer for me yes and then everything looked unfamiliar and i was so identified with that marriage i was so identified with that idea of family but i was no longer that person who entered the marriage and i had no intention of leaving for years 25 years so it was traumatic for me why not just because it was an interpersonal dynamic but because culture has put so much pressure on us women to be nice and don't make anyone upset and don't end the marriage you know don't break up work sacrifice isn't there a part of working through challenges and not you know it's like okay what there's a challenge it doesn't mean you should end the relationship no it doesn't you i took me another two years after my epiphany to really to work through it and figure it out i stayed i work through it you you must because it's not the other person it's what's coming up for you and until you heal those wounds you'll carry the same baggage to the next relationship what was the thing that came up for you for me it was that i was the epitome of the self-sacrificial good girl and i was here to save other people so after 25 years of playing this role i burnt out and i had evolved enough to understand my pattern that i am doing this because i'm so scared to be out of the relationship i had become enmeshed and codependent in the relationship so it was all me the other person was just playing the role i put them to play right you know you make sure you're really xyz so that i can feel the same way i felt all my life you know we recruit people so that we can play the same emotional role we've played in childhood until what until when until we do all this inner work to evolve so when i did all this work and it kind of collided with the marriage now is the next confrontation of now what do you do right i always say in my courses you know all your relationships may break up because now you're a new you now is another path of a dark tunnel now you have to go through no no woman's land as you redefine who you are right now you're a whole new being so you discard all relationships that don't work for you you release with compassion those that are loving and kind but you begin to re-define who you are but people shouldn't be afraid of this this is a natural process of evolution of the soul we must evolve yes but culture has told us to stay scared to stay stagnant keep appearances up keep your relationship for longevity not for growth you know marriage follows a longevity model right you're only successful if you're forgetting decades forever doesn't mind if you sleep in different parts of the house one is in the basement one's on the right right doesn't matter the goal is you stay it's a longevity based model not a growth based model so i too was ready to do this for the rest of my life you were married for how long 20 i was with the same person for 25 years i don't really believe in marriage so we can talk about that too but but i i was with the same person so for me it was it's not easy to just leave but i we both needed to grow and once we can decide as a couple that this is not working for our growth we could release each other some do it more beautifully some don't right but we don't wait for permission we have to follow our own north star of growth and do what feels right for us after working through the process so what's it look like to own how you are part of it so that you don't stay in victim say victim consciousness yes what does that look like so the most important spiritual lesson i try to pass on to all my clients and all women is you are definitely a victim of the patriarchy we never forget that but within the patriarchy you are now a victim of your own oppression victim consciousness is where you keep the consciousness of the oppressor but make it your own so now you objectify yourself so give me an example what's that look like for someone today oh my goodness across the board so if you just take our mental attitude the culture has told us to be quiet be kind be sweet be polite and don't be powerful or real so now if a man molests us and it's a public space we that's why people in the metoo movement had such a hard time coming out because the culture has told us so now we do it to ourselves don't say anything right pretend it didn't occur denied or if our child you know how many clients women i have whose children are being abused but they turn the other cheek because they can't disrupt the family system so this is how we do it to our children now we do it to ourselves okay take another aspect of our physical uh looks you know we look in the mirror and we see now all the the falls that we believe culture has told us we should not have so we objectify ourselves you know no one is a greater uh invictus than ourselves and for women and beauty because we've been so objectified we do it to ourselves it's a daily onslaught so we've taken what culture has done and we've made it our own so how do we how do we begin to recognize because i think for years i didn't even recognize that i had traumas of the past it's like i put them away i didn't want to think about them and i just focused on like accomplishing and achieving and being significant and being seen because i didn't feel seen as a kid so how do we start to identify the traumas of the past so that we can actually start to heal them yep so there's two pathways one is voluntarily or involuntarily so no very few people do it voluntarily you know who's like what do i want to think about today let me think about my truth my life and let me undo my patterns right so i went on a spiritual quest when i was 21. very unusual right i was so fascinated by self-work that i knew that was my path so i entered it without trauma necessarily so the involuntary way is how most people enter an event occurs that's traumatic and this doesn't work i'm going to break down they hit rock bottom yes so you have to really hit rock bottom right so what does that mean and as a therapist i want rock bottom for my client yes why that's the only way to go the next step yes yes if things are eighty percent good that's the worst place that's the worst place the worst place it's like things are good right now they're okay right that's the worst because you can't get out of that place yeah it's so hard to get out of that it's not amazing but it's not terrible i'd rather be everything falling apart because then at least i'm like okay uh this keeps happening i need to like figure out a new way of being right so what you're saying by that is that when we say rock bottom what is really hitting rock bottom is our ego our false self yes all the ways we were pretending don't work anymore what a beautiful gift that is that's why i call it the gift of the rock bottom because when you get to that place most people freak out but therapists are like come to me come together right because this is your portal because you're finally without your defenses the athlete doesn't work anymore the comedian doesn't work in charmer it doesn't work anymore yeah pretty girl doesn't work nothing's working how amazing now you get to go deep to figure out who you are without those roles or labels and a lot of people try to cling on to them as long as they can yes yes because they're so scared scary scary so what about the voluntarily it's it's hard to get there right voluntarily it's hard to be like somebody who let me prove myself today existential philosophers you know i was like that kind of kid like i was always seeking so i went for vipassana meditation when i was 21 because i wanted to find out another meaning to this madness i was like i knew this was mad and i was this can't be all of it i needed to go on a discovery of myself so i put myself in that position but it's not typical yeah you know why because we're in a rat race you know we're on this conveyor belt just chugging along yes checking off the prescription list our parents have brainwashed us culture has brainwashed us we're so scared to get off the conveyor belt you know we're like let me just stay on because we're gonna upset our parents our family our peers or whatever you know everybody the most daunting uh practical thing that happened to me when i got married when i was getting divorced was how am i going to tell people you know and then i realized is that my problem like other people and i realize yes other people is our problem because we're so tethered to what other people think other people's opinions and i realized i don't owe anybody any information about my journey until it happens organically so i really told people only when it happened organically and people got upset by that because they thought they were entitled and i had to let them know this is something very deep and personal this is my life not your life you can't have an opinion about this you know like people are upset they're crying i'm like you need to deal with your projections onto me because the projections are enormous yeah because they are they are for everything if you're famous people project aren't you if you're you look a certain way they project you're broke if you're rich yeah everything constant once you realize that oh people are not even noticing you they're just projecting that's a huge turning point in the spiritual process oh they're just projecting so once the ego has hit rock bottom how should we start to evaluate our traumas our pains so that we can move forward so we can heal them and move forward oh once the ego hits rock bottom it's the most amazing place to start it's ground zero when was the last time for you oh my god two years ago really yeah you hit rock bottom it you're already awakened i thought you were already conscious you were teaching people these things you go through many levels yeah so there's so there'll be another level in 10 years could be how lovely why do we got to go through so much pain no it's not pain it's unfolding okay yeah it's so i loved what i went through i honor and cherish all the pain because i need it to break down see we look at pain in a very uh absurd way in this culture we're so pain phobic as a therapist or as a healer or seeker pain to me is the most open place pain is openness isn't that what rumi said like light is where the wound enters or something what did he say there you go i don't know something like that like the light is er is where the yeah is where the light is yeah exactly but i think it's true once you go into the darkness then that's where you can shine the light and start to reveal things and peel back the onion yes it's interesting uh a few weeks ago i had a big realization in my life massive that might have been groundbreaking for me because i'm 38 for probably 38 years i have been conditioned to people please in every area of my life originally with family then with friends but most specifically in intimate relationships every intimate relationship for some reason i have allowed myself to let my boundaries be crossed to make someone happier or when there's frustration or disappointment with me whether i do something i don't do something i give in to create peace it's something that i realized i used to do as a kid with parents and you were the mediator the sweet boy the one that tried to make things light and easy and i stopped doing it over the years in friendships and family but i wasn't able to for whatever reason until a few weeks ago going through some some coaching and therapy and something awakened in me that i was just like i've been afraid to upset people my entire life yes and every time i do something to make someone else happier but then i disappoint myself i betrayed myself and i'm out of integrity very good and i feel and i always i'll feel a sense of like tenseness and tightness in the chest and the throat whenever that happens and i resent myself i don't resent them i resent myself yes because i give in something happened and maybe you understand this because of the work you do something happened where i had this tightness in my chest and i was feeling this on and off for years not because of someone else doing something because of me and all of a sudden there's like a ball of pain that went all i can say is it like went together and it kind of like disintegrated and i haven't felt that pain in my chest since that moment since that i don't know if that was a a layer peeling back of awareness but i felt like i was just like i'm sick and tired of feeling this pain wow and i think a lot of us have been feeling this low level or high level of frustration or pain or something inside of us we suppressed it we've suppressed it and i was not willing to let it go until recently and it's the most freeing feeling yeah freeing and what you talk about in your book is like just being your truth yeah allowing yourself to feel free which i feel like a lot of us men and women all humans don't allow ourselves to feel free yeah but you see you couldn't have predicted that i didn't know you didn't even know it was coming i don't even know that's why when you said how many times am i going to go through this it's a constant unpeeling watch when you become a dad if you ever become a dad it's going to be crazy what was the biggest awakening when you were in the first two years of being a mom oh what was it what did birth of this whole conscious parenting when i saw how unconscious my ego was to have significance through this infant i was like look at me don't look at him look talking you know you have a crazy talk that you become aware of when you become a parent what was your talk judgmental of my infant just mentioned your baby yes yes it's like a one two-year-old yes that don't make me see it so bad i'm trying to understand i'm just saying that when you become a parent you're like don't cry too much why are you yeah oh god something wrong with the kid something's wrong with the kid oh the kid doesn't look like me looks like my mother-in-law oh the kid is acting like this oh kid is not indian enough kid is the other person's culture you know this is in the mind i'm not telling my kid right you're beginning right you're saying this to yourself begin to become aware if you're aware at your crazy talk wow and you begin to get alarmed so when i heard these inner voices of judgment and control toward this being who i supposedly unconditionally loved that's when i realized oh that is the voice of my ego my fear my control coming out and i want to micromanage this being into a puppet when i but i was aware of that and it was traumatic for me to see the shadow within me really but that's what birthed my whole work in conscious parenting when i saw my own unconsciousness what's the thing you're most proud of and least proud of as a parent i'm least proud of those moments where i'm unable to trust my child i mean that's why all parents don't trust their child right because they make stupid mistakes i used to do the dumbest things again yeah i mean you hope you can trust them but it's like but we have to understand that you're going to make their own mistakes too right but the reason you are you is because of all those mistakes a lot of mistakes right but you can't prevent or you know preempt mistakes what happens if you prevent them or or suppress them too much from figuring out you're projecting utmost fear and terror into your child your kid is going to stop living so every time i put my fear by not trusting i curtail her that doesn't mean i let her smoke marijuana at the age of seven right and drinking back all night i trust you yeah drink all you wanted yeah this is about how i can see when i project my own terror so whenever i've done that i have not been proud and what am i the proudest of is that i've truly understood that it's all about me and i've done my work every time i see her react toward me in a way that upsets me i know it's something within me so i'm able to turn that mirror inward and that's my one achievement in paranoid is i can look at my crazy now you know so much crazy so when your child uh screams at you or gets angry or you in the past about something were you able to just look at it from a different perspective and not allow your ego to be attached and say no you're wrong and be in the argument is that what you're saying you could just kind of detach well it's taken work you know very you're still many years ahead of you yeah a lot of work to understand two things one the child is acting the way they are because of something in them right so they're not doing anything against you as a personal vendetta it's not a personal attack it's something inside them right we only act badly because we feel bad is this in relationships also intimate relationships that the other person yelling or screaming or getting angry or blaming it's not about the other person it's about them yes when they're getting angry yes so how should people who are in intimate relationships respond when the other person is yelling or blaming or getting angry at first you're going to respond in the typical way which is fight back defensiveness angry yeah you did that no i did it but when you begin to see that this is the dance at some point somebody has to stop the pattern and go oh we have been here before this game doesn't work dance somebody has to break the pattern somebody has to misstep not show up in the room turn away and what happens when that happens then the other one has to fall right because they they have to dance alone are they trying to grab on to you right so it's a dance but the most beautiful gift we can give our partners is to say i see that you're hurting i know you want to make it about me but i can't play this game right now oh man it's really hard but but you grow up you you grow up and you don't be part of somebody else's drama and they have to grow up what happens if the partner doesn't grow up over time of working it's really hard then you come to a tough precipice of okay can i keep growing with this person or do we just stay here it's it's a lot of questions do i stay in the game or the dance with the person where they want to be yeah do i no we can't play the game anymore so say that has decided i can't do this game then what i'm waiting for them to heal now you're saying it takes five right incremental now you have to make a very tough choice it's hard and you know how hard it is for women and mothers to make those kind of choices very hard with children with all the pressure that culture has told them that you don't get to work out ever women have to be the glue but if their partner isn't growing what are they supposed to do and that's why the way we live right now in these nuclear little pods is so unhealthy for our women because they can't get out of these relationships what do you mean nuclear little pods like we're living new in nuclear families right we're not living on our community our families small isolated families isolated so if the male is abusive or toxic and is holding the money what does this mother do she's been conditioned to be quiet to be submissive now she's given up the money now she now she's raising children that's why women and mothers need other women to support them in a toxic patriarchy that we're living in right now sure sure and and men can fulfill that job too of providing support i'm just saying we our women are getting neglected especially the mother she wants to be a businesswoman she wants to look skinny and amazing she wants to a lot of pressure a lot of pressure the modern woman has and she's neutral they're putting on themselves or are they allowing others to put it on them it's both it's both it's a semi-permeable membrane interesting so it goes in and out you know and we put it on our daughters they see us you gotta have perfect you gotta do this you gotta be yeah yeah we are really driving ourselves to the end of our rope we women in the expectation to be perfect men don't have it so much men have the expectation to be competent and achieving women have it with this internalized oppression to be perfect that sounds exhausting yeah men can't even really relate to how exhausting it is to battle this conditioning right you know we get it from when we're like knee-high i mean men have their own conditioning which is we've talked about this but you have an advantage because you're in the patriarchy so the patriarchy favors the man really and favors the white man it's a way to fight patriarchy so whether we like it or not the men are a little a few inches ahead you know more of a bandage yeah it's like come on so we all have to deal with our emotional demons yes yes i don't care what are there two levels right so this culture yes so in the culture men have an advantage the white man especially in the personal family we're all messed up right the same way exactly yeah exactly patriarchy comes into the home right but also no matter how much money or success a man has if they are they have a demon inside they still didn't learn how to deal with that so you could be a prisoner to these traumas or expectations you might have yes yeah it doesn't mean you don't have advantages in life and could be dealing with the same demons exactly in the home that's why i do the work in conscious parenting in the home we're all inheriting unconscious shame blame unworthiness all of us now when the boy steps out he's in a in an advantage position the girl is not in an advantage position she's getting double whammy you know yeah so what can women do to not be to not be double whammy or when they're getting double whammy and what should they be thinking and doing instead yeah well it's two levels one is like i said to you you have to name it you have to be able to call the lies like we need to teach our daughters this is a lie this is a lie and this is a lie and we need to as women debunk and tear up this prescription list that we were raised with to be this way and perfect and skinny and white and whatever we were raised with we need to change the prescription list and teach our daughters to call the lie and then the second way is to give them a legacy of worth but that can only come when they see us work worthy yeah the mother the mother is the key how do we how do mothers start to feel worthy again yeah when they haven't for so long potentially or they've made everything else about everyone else except for themselves yeah so it you know and the movement is is incipient but it is growing to allow women to have their voice so i think there's several layers one one big level is that we sisters we women need to stop competing against each other for the attention of say a man like we need to we need to bond we need to be with each other why does that happen so much do you notice that why why do women do that do you see that i think men do that as well for a woman but why is that i know what's the under a lot like to feel good enough worthy enough if he chooses me that i'm worthy enough but we're giving in to the patriarchy when we do that but what happens if we convince someone to choose us what happens if we play the game or whatever compete against someone else and convince a man to choose i'm acting like a woman here but i'm convincing a man to choose them [Music] as opposed to them seeing you whoever you are yes and choosing you because your energy not because of your playing games that's what i mean we play right into the patriarchy that we then say oppresses us right so we're trying to out beauty each other for example it's exhausting and it's we're we're just enslaving each other in the same you know clutches and we don't realize we're doing it to each other you know we should all go you know with our saggy faces and saggy bottoms out into the world and not give a damn and in that way we sisters support each other and we teach men this is how we really look and deal with it right but we can't because she's got the botox and she's got the really big nice curvy ass and i look too ordinary so now i'm feeling unworthy so at the bottom of it all is unworthiness but we need to stop competing with each other we need to celebrate each other we need to stop putting on the false roles when we're with each other and let me tell you women are constantly really when you're together when women are together in general you're there's false roles happening a lot of false roles there's fake support of course really of course why because we're unworthy we feel them we feel like we have to compete with the other so you made 12 cookies okay 37. in these very subtle ways you know we're always trying to out mother the other really yes what do you think all these facebook posts are about look at my kid eating spinach and look at my kid is the star of the baseball team or posting where your kid goes to college and i know i'm saying things that people are not going to like but i want people to examine when they post why are we posting our life because we want to give an impression that we have a better life right what if it was just like i'm proud of my child and i'm proud there's an element of just but even pride it's like does the whole world need to know how proud you are isn't grandma enough grandma used to be enough but now the whole world needs to know you know what i mean it's coming the social media madness feeds the insecurities so that's one thing did you get acknowledged by oh what a good mother but you also get more dependent on it now you're checking to see how many people liked your post liked your new hairstyle so this is how we continue the oppression okay we feed into it so we need a second thing yes and the second way and the ultimate way to liberate ourselves is what you and i have been talking about is looking at our childhood trauma and how it has clutched us in unworthiness and the roles we've played because of it so in my book i talk about the three main roles that women play what are those the givers the controllers and the takers so the givers are you you would fall in the giver the people pleaser the savior the victim the martyr the empath that's then you have the controller who's the overachiever the perfectionist the tyrant or the unemotional shield and then the takers are those who are like divas and princesses and complainers you know they're just expecting life to change okay yeah they have expectations we are some of all but when we notice that wow i'm that and i'm that and i'm that and how did it come to be so i talk about that in my book so every woman can see her patterns and go wow that came because i was traumatized in this way now you begin connecting the pieces right and the the biggest liberation will not come when our patriarchy becomes a matriarchy the biggest liberation will come when us women heal our unworthiness i think it goes both ways when men heal as well so they don't keep hurting people yes or so when we heal we will raise our sons and daughters to be whole and healthy and of course there's a lot of focus on the men but i'm just letting women know don't wait do your work don't wait for the man to change exactly or the patriarchy to change right we have a lot of work to do so someone is a giver they give there when they people please they're always thinking about others first what do they need to recognize and what action steps could they take to start the process of moving forward yeah yeah so the first step and i did this to myself is i gave myself a seven day experiment that i wouldn't speak until i was authentic okay so if any time i was doing it to people please or avoid a conflict or because i was getting nervous or anxious that's been me my whole life don't talk yeah i didn't talk practically the whole week because everything out of my mouth was to people please or to take care of somebody else's feelings or to to not say what i wanted because i was afraid of conflict so i became aware the first step is always awareness whether we like it or not and that's arduous and painful we have to look in the mirror then the second step after you become aware you have to ask yourself what is that moment before i jump in like what's happening in my body like you said that pain that's when you feel that tension or the tightness or the clenching or whatever what is that telling you yes what does that tell you when you feel like i don't want to say this or i don't want to do this but i think i have to because whatever so let me tell you that pain is coming from old inner child pain that's why it has been sitting inside you yeah you suddenly become a five-year-old boy terrified of pissing the coach off or pissing dad off or pissing the teacher off that's what is in you so you have to get in touch with that and go oh my goodness i've felt this all my life it's for my inner child the neglected little boy or girl now what do we do now step three very hard and hopefully people should recruit a coach or a therapist by now because you need help now you have to heal those needs of the inner child versus jump to do the roll so you see the pattern is that every time you felt that pain you just jumped and did the roll you took care of the pain by suppressing the pain and you took on the roll what happens if we suppress the pain long enough you'll be it won't go away you'll become ill you will have dysfunctional relationship after dysfunctional relationship you'll become addictive you cannot suppress your faith you'll do something pain you cannot suppress it will find its outlets somehow just dysfunctional this is why i feel like a lot of the men who are the angry men who are causing harm physical harm emotional harm in the world now the national suppression now that i've been through a lot of it myself and still growing and working through it i can see it for what it is and know that okay they haven't healed something this is why they're so angry defensive needing to win at all costs whether it be politically business relationships intimacy all the domestic violence there's a pain there that hasn't been healed yes a lot of men are unwilling to look at the pain or they've been shamed for their pain or whatever it is as well just like women a lot of us in general so how once we feel the pain and we have this awareness how do we actually start the process of healing what does healing look like from the seven six eight year old who's dealing with this still right so now you recognize it's a pain i've carried all my life i see now the pattern now i have to re-parent myself so i talk about re-parenting a lot in the book taking our sovereignty back means taking our healing in our own hands and i talk about how we can become the inner mother that we never had or the inner father that we never had and you have to do a lot of inner dialogue to stop yourself from playing that role right you had to stop yourself from being the pleaser then you felt the inner child now you had a breakthrough yes yeah it's so it's a breakthrough this was literally like it was one of the cr it felt like magic i'm not i'm not lying this is so recent for me it's so like i felt it felt like a ball of pain that disintegrated and it literally shrunk it was taking my whole chest and it shrunk and then it just like disappeared and i was like wait a minute what just it was the weirdest thing you know i've had experiences where and i tell people you know the pain came out of my hip and it shrunk really because we stop pain in in our minds in different ways and places somebody stores it here somebody so you you have an experience we don't know whether it's real or it doesn't matter it feels like that and you can't explain it to me it's so weird it means that you're the way i look at it is that the the power of your awareness disintegrated burned through the the ball of pain that's insane but awareness is our greatest spiritual sword and we need to use it we're so scared to look in the mirror it's all clear but you see when we come from unworthiness we're in denial because we're in need if we're in need for love and worth and we're constantly saying do you see me do you love me do you know me do you validate me do i have permission to exist then that is the fuel for all our behavior so we can't see we're hungry when you're hungry you know how cranky you are you can't really think straight your brain is fogged up our brain is fogged up with unworthiness we can't see straight so the first thing we have to do is understand unworthiness is fueling it not real love that's a hard lesson oh man yes need not love i tell so many couples you need her i don't know whether you love her yet and they're like yes i do when someone when someone is feeling that in a relationship they need to feel worthy by this person or they need to feel worthy in relationship in general right or what does that look like well there's love i know my pattern of stuff in previous relationships of uh feeling the need for someone to love me and accept me for who i was that's why we get into relationships that's why we become parents and we don't want to acknowledge that it's coming from an inner whole h-o-l-e a void we don't want to own this about us right we're like no i love my child unconditionally that's why i want him to you know play soccer and ski do what i wanted to do all the things oh it just happens to be all the things i want or this is why i'm in the relationship and the way we know that it's need and attachment and not love and unconditionality is how much we want to control them how much we want to possess them it's attack all that smells of need and attachment because true transcendent love true intimacy very hard to achieve because it requires two whole people trusting fully and who are in their own sovereignty who don't need very rare that kind of achievement that kind of aspiration cannot occur unless you do the work and you heal so most of us who haven't healed are in need and attachment control-based relationships sorry i'm sorry i'm sorry how many people are in control-based relationships almost every relationship really i know yes every parenting relationship i know is it control need and attachment and possession what does it look like for most people what's the common ways of control and need and attachment okay repetition of drama where the cycle just can't break um you know not a mutual honoring of each one's absolute freedom the boundaries or freedoms or yeah and and honoring each other and true articulation of one's needs who knows how to articulate their needs nobody and i'll allow the other to be heard and seen and to be seen honestly and authentically that's intimacy so we think we're in intimate relationships but we're just in functional transactional dynamics what if someone's authentic about their need and their need is well i need you to i don't know uh check in with me multiple times throughout the day so i know where you are authentic should i tell you how is that an authentic knee if someone's no the this is the authentic need tell me okay so the person says i authentically need you to check in with me 10 000 times a day right now here's the thing that's not an authentic need here's the need i have such low sense of worth and i'm in such a panic i get panic attacks because i have control issues from my past abandonment can you help me in some way by not feeding the need i don't want you to call me 10 000 times because that will just feed my monster but can you help me and be kind with me because that's my need my need is for ultimate supreme safety but i know i can't have that the need is from my childhood that's what i'm talking about wow i'm not saying i need you to give me 10 massages that's not a need the need is why do i have the need really getting to the core so it's not about it's not about communicating the need to the other part everyone's good at doing that it's about recognizing wisely the real need and when you find the root of the need then you heal the need and you release the other person from meeting your need gosh right so everyone's good about saying what they need louis i need a bentley i need a mention very good at doing that we have to go to why are we looking at the other person to fill that need number one where's this need really coming from that's the real need but won't i mean i don't want to generalize this but won't you hear a lot of women say well i need to know i can trust my man that he he makes me feel safe he protects me that i know where he's at that he lets me check his phone that i can know where you know where he's when he's going somewhere or what who he see like doesn't isn't that a common thing theme for women yes what happens when a woman does that when the woman does that it means she's completely an inner child believing that she needs those things from a man she doesn't need that because if she has need for that she's going to be dependent on his every move and looking at him like she's a detective and he's under the microscope and that means she's enslaving herself to him and giving him her power when we want to control the other we think we're getting control we are getting enslavement to the other oh my goodness what is the common uh the common fear insecurity that women have when they're in relationship and that men have when they're in relationships is it safety and protection can we just say that the way men and women are relating in relationships is based on conventional possession control and ownership both parties it's already messed up okay now within the messed up matrix you want to ask what is the most common insecurities yeah what's the main insecurity for men in general is it i don't know that they're going to cheat on both is possession really both is controlled in some way really now you'll say but isn't there a real need for the one to find the money and the other to cook the food sure but you know what's the core need what's the root need possession is what their control and possession we've been told that relationships especially marriage means that the other one betrothes themselves to you like gives themselves to you for keeping right and you put the ring like you know and i own you and i own you and you give the woman a big diamond ring so everyone around can see that she is owned i have never won a ring one day of my life because i have no desire to let the world know i'm owned so what about women who are like you know what i love my partner i want to be their partner i want to wear this show a symbol of my commitment doesn't have to be a diamond we follow convention because this is what society says he didn't give you a diamond ring or the bigger the ring the more the love you know we know it's in the comparison it's like it's not yeah you can have many sally gay got a bigger ring so maybe his symbols of love it's funny that we all have the same symbol right so it's not creative anymore it's not spontaneous every relationship should have its own symbol how come we all want the diamond ring as the symbol right yeah because it's convention we're conditioned we have to own how we've been conditioned for these things the diamond industry is so happy with it right yeah we really told them that these little pebbles mean something and they all bought into it and they all make their partners buy them and if they don't buy it it's a sort of betrayal the industry is making whopping profit over our buying into this yeah being brainwashed it's just one way we've been brainwashed we've been brainwashed in every way because it's a consumer society what what should be three questions that say someone's starting to date someone they're six months three months in six months and things are moving along i have the questions and you want to ask three questions to determine if this relationship has the chance yes of being um you know powerful growth-minded uh acceptance not controlling what would those three questions be well you know you first want to know how much inner work the person has done you want to talk to that therapist you want to see the appointments you want to know how long they've been doing this i'm just kidding you'll get a sense of their consciousness quotient okay that is number one yes you have to see how integrated is this person from their childhood to their adulthood have they worked on their wounds here's the challenge everyone shows the best version of themselves in the first year and they act like they've done this in general right so how do you truly know when everyone's on their best friend so you don't move in don't move in you want to hang out with that guy or that girl go ahead yeah did it with the you know stuff don't get so excited in that first year you know that each one is trying to present the false self so don't you know that so don't give in for the first year you know it takes time so you can't be jumping to the altar right away right yeah so number one is what is the consciousness quotient and then i would you know i'm a little unconventional so i will not find anyone probably but it's because they'll fail my questions so i would ask them about their beliefs about you know all the stereotypical institutions and i have done so much work deconstructing cultural lies that i want to be with someone who has deconstructed the otherwise you're fighting against values beliefs then it becomes a schism of basic values you know and the more work we do you know the more i you know you deconstruct what the is you can't be with someone who's bought into the distancing more and more correct your beliefs so i think consciousness quotient which is healing from childhood and then the cultural bs radar you know how good is their bs radar and then the last thing would be you know just how present they are are they worthy of their own love are they whole you know that's all connected to the first two but it then shows up in that person because they're present they're they're radiant their joys they're liberated you know you can see liberated people because they don't need anything from you right because they're whole they're not expecting anything they don't need something to feel good they don't judge they are good and they're bursting with that yeah so you feel it that's true chemistry right you want to be attracted to the essence of the person not to their sports car or their bank account or the way they look because that's going to end that's transient consciousness lasts you're living with the person's consciousness you're living with the person's inner demons because after the first two years when the cars are old you've been more and you've done that you've traveled the world you've done yeah now you're living with the inner child do you like the inner child that's what we go like whoa and your inner child comes out so does your inner child know how to play with their inner child and that's when you say the bubble bursts but it's no one's fault it's because we both presented with the bubble so now don't fall in love until two years up then fall in love board of people are like this is amazing this is not amazing it's the illusion wait i still have a client used to get so upset with me she was like before you burst my bubble she always knew i'm going to burst her bubble because this is what the ego does it presents the best self you think you're falling in love even the idea of falling in love that's you don't want to fall you should not be falling right right so the fact that we fall is because we are falling for the illusion you know and then we're upset in two years that another relationship didn't work out because it was the false self the survivor who was holding on and after some time the survivor stops or the ego breaks down and now you see each other's raw self behind the prison wall and you're not both convicts looking for the other to rescue them i call them twin beggars give me give me give me give me you're not giving me enough right yeah it's never going to be enough wow because we were beggars all along we needed to only dare to enter a relationship after we've been full very hard to do i know so you're gonna beg away how does a 23 year old she doesn't get full after she goes through the the the pain and the pain like we all have gone through heartache after heartache blaming the other crying to our girlfriends he didn't do this she didn't do that and then everyone commiserates and go yeah he was really horrible horrible leave him what a what a what terrible bad man yeah a bad girl right with bad good good bad you know we don't realize it's just inner child to inner child trauma to trauma bigger to beggar what happens when two people who have truly healed their traumas i mean done the years of work they're not expecting they're not holding grudges they're not resentful they're not needing something yeah what happens when those two type of people get together i i think there's such a thing as a beautiful intimacy you know i talk about intimacy where you truly can see the other person but as their own being and you don't need anything from them you don't need them to be a certain way and they know and you know that it's a journey so we walk together for some sunsets and maybe others we don't and each is okay with that we'll be sad if the other one walks away but not devastated or broken see we sometimes think to be broken is to have really loved if they left similarly when our kids go off to school or college if we don't cry that means i didn't really love my kid we have this weird romance around crying a lot or pain or brokenness that means we really loved no love is freedom so we need to be happy for the other person when they go to their other lover that's big that's big right but if you truly loved that other person then how is it about you it's what that what makes that person happy very hard because culture has raised us with possession and monogamy as the main goal so anyone who deviates from that is a freaking cheater and we know what we call cheaters you know yeah it's interesting i'm just listening to you and thinking about my my life and my journey and i've always i'm no way am i a perfect human being but i've always wanted the best when relationships didn't work out and a lot of them didn't work out well like there was arguing and frustration on both sides me included but then i was like okay we're not working out and i've always wanted them i like i hope they find someone that's a better fit for them i've never felt like the girls ever want me to be happy afterwards he needs to go down he did this to me he ruined my life yeah it's like i've never felt like ever anyone ever wanted the best for me and it's like you can't blame us because we've been conditioned that when a relationship ends it means the others to blame and there's been a betrayal it's their fault right and betrayal you know we fully bought into this idea of betrayal and i don't believe in betrayal i believe we only betray ourselves you know what does that mean what does that mean it means that when we enter a relationship without understanding that we are going to be with the other person's inner child yes we betray ourselves we we want daddy or we want prince charming or we want mr perfect or miss perfect you can be in a same-sex relationship and we put on the other the expectation that they will be there for us in the way we need they'll be our savior our hero our knight or whatever of course we all want that that's lovely but that was the job of mommy not another human being our parents are supposed to be there to help they could barely do it right so how is this person going to do it but we put on them this unconscious expectation and burden when they don't fulfill it instead of wishing them well and going i get it i'm an inner child too i must have been really hard for you to deal with or we're both misaligned you know our inner children were just fighting in the sandbox i own my part thank you for showing me yours it's not aligned i get it yeah we had a season of life and we learned something hopefully when we move on you know and say the guy cheated or the girl cheated we look at the cheating not as a personal betrayal but as it's a message yeah okay we're not super he wasn't supposed to be with me that night he felt like he needed to be somewhere else he's following his soul but she's like oh but he lied to me of course he lied to you because he knew you'd react like this and now look you'll have broken up right right no one ever says where were you last night honey you can tell me and mean it right every guy knows they don't mean it right the woman will kill you we are raised in a conventional idea around man and woman it's changing now you know with all the gender fluidity and all the uh ownership of of rights for all kinds of affiliations we're changing the paradigm but still at the core is this paradigm that there's an ownership between the two and that is the dysfunction it's toxic we all want to own everybody we all wish that the world was our puppet of course why do we have that because it's a childish desire to have control you know i i want you to say exactly what i want because then i'll feel competent and in control really yeah and what is control what does needing control mean we need to feel safe we need to feel protected child stuff just i want to be secure mommy's going to come in at every you know hour to check in on me i want predictability so the greater the kid or teenager didn't have predictability they're going to go reactive either they're going to to silence that through an addiction or they're going to go into mass control either through mass achievement or mass obsession of the other person it's like i've done all those things everything masculine mass possession manipulation anger resentment don't do this control all these things questioning your twenties i wanted to make sure you would not be that helpless little girl absolutely who didn't have predictability but you didn't know you were doing it because i had no idea so unconscious nobody knows so unconscious for so many years it wasn't until i had 30 when i started to really realize oh that a lot of the trauma i haven't even talked about because i've been so shameful of and just the process of talking about it allowed me to heal an element of certain things but not everything yes we have to talk to a trusted confidante or a therapist you must talk because talking allows you to hear your own narrative and then somebody or you can both go oh my god i said the same thing as my mother oh my goodness at 7 i felt this at 11 i felt this you have to narrate your life that's why it's called a narrative because you have to create a consistent narrative to integrate your life experiences so people poo poo therapy perhaps or think they don't have the time well yeah i think it's some of the greatest time you could spend for yourself for your inner peace for awareness for greater levels of love for yourself and compassion for others yeah i don't think i'd be a as compassionate understanding and again i'm not always compassionate understanding but i don't think i would be have the levels of intimacy and connection and love to myself or others without on and off therapy coaching workshops emotional intelligence training like all of it and i think it's so important for so many people are you still practicing yes you're still saying i see people resume i have a full practice i have a coaching institute where i train people to become coaches and they're going out into the world so for me self-growth and self-help is the cornerstone of my living and my being what happens when people say you know what i'm not into therapy or self-growth or developing myself or looking at my pain i'm just i don't need to do that stuff my life is good things are fine i'm succeeding i'm winning my relationship is good what tends to happen in general people like that well you reck you as a coach or a partner recognize that they are in resistance because nobody's life is so good until they've done a lot of work right but you can tell when people are not ready and you can break your head waiting for them you can show them pattern after pattern i now in my 40s have gracefully learned to identify these people and release them from any expectation you know everyone has their own level of awareness i call it where are they on the continuum of consciousness so just because you change don't expect you going home and your partner changing it's not gonna happen it's not it's not by osmosis so how does this i mean there's a lot of married couples in the world that have two three kids they've been married 10 15 years and you'll see it where the woman it tends to typically be the woman i feel like is starting to grow and evolve right emotionally being more emotionally conscious and i'm generalizing this where the man is more resistant again generalization what should the woman do there if the man is maybe 20 behind and then 40 behind like and but she loves him she wants to keep it together she wants to be married to this person does she just accept the behavior and live with it and do the best she can and find her relationships elsewhere and how does a woman in that position where it's not horrible yeah it's at eighty percent seventy-five yeah it's maybe it's like uh half the time he's conscious half the time he's not what does a woman do there yeah it's really hard you know i can tell you the second or third question in every seminar i do is what do i do my partner is not doing the work it is the second to third question if not the first yes so women you're right take the lead because we are already tuning in we get our menstrual cycle we're connected to our bodies we're breastfeeding our children we're raising where in the world emotional connectivity anyway we are the connectors you're communicating with other women about challenges shame hurts right whereas men typically tend to not say this you're in the outside world achieving you know and you've made it a mechanistic hierarchical dogmatic world we're in the world of feelings and raising children and they keep us close to our heart so now the woman is growing and it's not terrible then she has to kind of compromise yeah she fills her bucket through other means this is most women are doing this yeah she's just decided okay he is what he is he's good enough she's good it could be a same-sex relationship the partner is good enough so if you're willing to be with good enough good enough is good enough then if it's really abusive that's when she's in a pickle yeah and that's where she needs her sisters to support her and be there for shelter and protection and other men and then when it's when it's you know if if the other person is just not growing right so one is abuse that's that's direct you get to know what to do one is 50 50 that's hard but if the other person is just not changing then the woman has to make a pivotal decision how important is growth and consciousness for me and then she has to follow her own governance and her lead and that's really hard for women to do but she needs to honor growth relationships should be growth inducing growth fulfilling growth focused growth destined if both are not working on growth then you can be good friends right right see them once a month and certainly if they're taking away from you if they're constricting you you know in our 40s and 50s we realize we don't need that anymore we are worthy you're like i don't need this yeah i don't need this but you know till then we do right and we've already had five children and you know a lifetime with this person but it's okay to say now i'm ready for the next chapter of my life to be brave to say it's okay i can i can do this change is not easy because it brings such a fear of rejection and abandonment but we it's okay it's okay seasons change the tide changes the moon and the sun go up and down it rises people come and go people are born people die yeah we were young once we're older so change is inevitable as we know right nothing is permanent neither should our relationships be what are the three things or what are the three reasons that you would say most relationships fail what three things they're not growth-minded or right they haven't really shown that so not growth-focused so both don't enter the relationship with a pledge that i'm not committing to you i'm committing to growth oh right that's what that's what the ring exchange ceremony should be really yeah i am i am committing that you grow and i'm going to help your growth and the minute i don't help your growth you can give me back this ring right now wouldn't that be beautiful that's freedom yeah not you can not grow for the rest of your life and i have to be with you forever sickness and to death do us part right it's death of the ego you can abuse me you can emotionally abuse me physically abuse me it should be till death of the ego and if then we want to stay great right that the ego is going to die so it should be growth focused and then um i think both need to do their own inner healing and show up as their true self and also and the last thing i think the reason why relationships fail is because we are looking for mommy and daddy oh man what happens when we look for mom or dad well it's not if we look we are looking for mom and dad uh we place a great burden on the other person to fulfill that role and and your partner is not your mom or your dad they're your partner and they're just a fallible bumbling human being with their own demons so they're not psychic they're not dead and they're not your mom you know how many times in my relationships i've said i'm not the mother i am not the mother you know but we women want to be the mother so that's our little trap and we'll be the mom to the the partner yes and that's the worst thing we can do when we want to do that because we have a savior mentality and we're like it's our nature to nurture so we want to save everyone it is the most damaging thing we can do to our partners because we don't let the males in our life grow because we are like we want to be everyone's mother that's our issue that's our sickness we want to please and nurture and save you know we want to be the mother in the ego but that's the most dysfunctional us and them but then the romance is but i want to have a rescuer someone who says exactly so then the woman wants to have daddy and the savior and we're talking stereotypical relationships okay it's also applies for same gender core really yeah so in different ways same thing i think in different ways we put expectations that the other can heal us and fix us and make it all okay because inside we're all five-year-olds so when the person who's being treated as mom and dad realizes that they're being put in the mom or dad role that takes a lot of courage because you don't want to hurt the other person but you gotta say like i said many times i think you think i'm some long-lost dad or long-lost mom and it's hurting our relationship so let's go to therapy right now because we to break this i am not who you think i am and you know projection is so powerful they don't see you they see the other in so many moments of my life i used to move because i was like see you're not even looking at me you're seeing your mother or your father or would you want me to be here i could tell you know i could you're not seeing me it's a projection so at first i liked the projection because i was in my false self and i wanted to be the rescuer and you were i was happy worthy of helping someone else and you thought and i was you know the other person plays that role too i'll rescue you i'll be a people pleaser right you were a people pleaser so now you're happy that somebody's treating you like daddy or mommy you're like i want to be a people please then you begin to realize after two years that we are both playing these roles i'm faking it by pretending i can rescue you and you're faking it as if you're in love with me you want daddy or mommy but both people don't even know they're faking it this has been my life for a long time so then you enter the fight and the fight is the same fight what happened after fight number 200 you did this no you did this and and no one's hearing each other by the way so after fight number 232 you've got to have some therapy you're like okay we're in the same cycle we've tried this we've tried that nothing's working then you gotta take yourself for some professional care because you are enacting some serious old wounds that are eating you up you have to treat it as a physical illness you know i think it's fascinating from an athlete's point of view i know that in order to be a great athlete or to excel at some sport you go to a coach i need a coach yes you can do it on your own yes there's not any world champion that's like no one ever coached me i did this on my own for 20 years to get here and i had no help no you had a team a team and a coach i don't understand why we don't do it in relationships because we have we have great shame and stereotypes against airing our dirty laundry this is the total ridiculous lunacy where you need it the most you don't get professional help what about parents there's no training there's nothing teach you how to be in a relationship just a model of what didn't work what didn't work so parents don't have any license certificate passing grade couples don't have any help and you need help so in spiritual traditions they do talk about needing a teacher right every eastern spiritual tradition has the guru and now the guru has been blasphemized so let's not talk about the guru but has the teacher meaning you need somebody to teach you this who's older relationship and same for relationships we should have you have to go to a therapist there's no doubt about it every relationship should be in therapy whether you're at the brink of the end or trying to get better i always think it'd be interesting for people to start a relationship in therapy absolutely they should and say let's okay we're to start dating and be exclusive whatever it looks like let's get into therapy now six months in three months it's coming the inner child is coming in two years it's going to happen now and get through it and let the therapist tell you if you can even manage and save us some time yes save you a lot of effort and heartache and i feel like you'll respect each other more if you get into it sooner saying we're both looking to grow right no one's resistant we're both here revealing open amazing i'm messed up you're probably messed up i like your messed up let's go yeah let's go to therapy no harm no shame but people will get all upset because they're in their ego they're like i don't have any problems oh my god right that was probably me my whole life about eight years ago so i understand but what do most people gain when they have a coach or therapist in their relationships what is the thing they get out of that the most oh my god they gain awareness of their pattern and they get to see how it's happening in real time i show my people well there it was two hours before you said this here's your pattern again so they can catch the dysfunction and disrupt the patterns in real time so they save themselves a lot of a lot of years of book you know how do we learn to embrace the truth about ourselves even if we're scared yeah whether it be a pain or shame or whatever how do we learn to actually embrace it because that's what your books love because we have to have greater fear for what will happen if we don't right it will eat us up and break us down and this is why the unvoluntary is probably the the easiest way is when you hit rock bottom or when something tragic happens or a near-death experience or divorce or breakup or bankruptcy when that happens it forces you to look at the pain yes you have no choice you have no choice anymore yes thank goodness i don't hope that on anyone i hope we can all like be consciously aware and voluntarily go into the growth but unfortunately for probably i don't know 90 plus percent of us we've got to go through something but i will tell you you know once you commit to this path and break free from the cultural lies and the tethers of the institutions and people and what people will say and and and living for others you do reach a place of great likeness of being you know i never thought i would experience this lightness really what do you mean by lightness like freeness light energy yeah because finally when your worth is not tied to anyone else's opinion and it's all your own you own every day your child doesn't define you the mirror doesn't define you the interview doesn't define you the ratings doesn't define you sure we'd all like it all to work in our favor but it doesn't define you you reach a place of healthy distance and space and you begin to flourish like you feed yourself and that's a beautiful feeling what should define us should what should define us is the awareness that we are only interconnected beings there is no permanence this is all an illusion if we can keep this is what i keep in my mind it's all cause and effect whatever i'm seeing right now is through eons of cause and effect we're interconnected so there's a we are like what matters to me matters to you if i hurt you i hurt me and everything is impermanent you know there's only the present so these are the things i live by and that's my that's what i chase yeah you know what do you think is going to be the next break down in your life whether it be five years 10 years 20 years where you have a new awakening what's that thing the next level of ego death that you think you'll need to go through yeah um that you haven't yet yeah i think you know the physical death of say you know a really close but like i only have a few but you haven't experienced that yet i haven't experienced that so i can't claim to say i'm going to be fine and i'm not going to go through some other epiphanic shock but in terms of the material world the physical world as i see it right now in terms of house relationships money i think those i have i've released i don't identify with those what was the what was the thing you held on to the longest the idea of being the perfect girl and keeping my family together you know i couldn't let that go it was very hard when did you how many years did you stay in that space when you knew like you needed to let it go but you kept holding on to it yeah i would say ju i i used to convince myself and it was so worth it and it was so important to me that i didn't even know i was resisting or fighting a conflict but the last two years was when i you like knew but you were holding on and uh it was so painful to let go of what you've been so attached to you know and to to release it and to say that it was for that moment and it was perfect and no regret and no blame come to wholeness you know yeah that was very powerful is attachment one of the roots of suffering and pain or something else around suffering well why do we attach right so we have to understand what attachment means attachment means that we are believing we are that give me an example i am the wife i am the mother i am the achiever i am the role that identity the identity and in essence we are interconnected cause and effect there is no solid eye so the i am doesn't exist it's a we are and the i am only exists in the egg you know in the energetic not in the ego so when we attach to something that is outside of us we are now going to suffer because that is not going to last nothing lasts everything dies so fame comes and goes beauty comes and goes youth comes and goes achievement so you have now claimed that as you and you don't know who you are without that so that's why you will suffer you know so when you drop that and you discover who you are something more cosmic more spacious more liberated now you don't need these things to feel worthy or enough or significant interesting do you think we're more driven by significance or safety like do we want to be more significant and acknowledged yeah or is it do we just want to feel safe yeah or do they the significance bring us more safety no i think you know it's like maslow's hierarchy of needs safety trust is the primal core foundation and when we didn't get that as children we're shattered if we're looking for safety we're in trouble really yeah because we're not going to find safety anywhere where do we find it it's not it doesn't exist it was only to be found in that primal bond with the with the earliest caregiver as an infant as an adult it's an eternally unpredictable unsafe world therefore when you don't have that primal need met the world is forever threatening to you and everyone's an enemy every moment is a disaster right you know those people like that that's probably for a long time in my life but because you were in in disaster preparedness mode your whole life yeah i left home when i was 13. yeah because i didn't feel safe i didn't feel safe i mean i know my parents loved me and i know they were there for me but you couldn't count on them it was just you didn't know when there was an argument was going to break out or fight or an unsafe feeling and i was the youngest of four my siblings were off and you know they were crazy in their own way they've all evolved and transcended that but i was like get me out of here yeah like subconsciously i beg them to send me away at 13. usually kids are sent away for being bad or whatever and i was like no please send me away not because of i didn't say because i wasn't safe right but i was just like uh that's a sign when a kid wants to bolt too early we know that the home is not conducive and it knows the kid knows so significance is a higher order need you know after your needs for safety and trust are met now you can go up the ladder and you're like oh now i can achieve now i can you know but first the infant has to walk you know that's safety that's trust yeah i wanted safety and then i was driven to succeed in significance for so many years right to cope with never being helpless ever never being seen or never being held by never feeling worthy or enough for whatever it was and you weren't looking for significance and when i got it i still didn't feel enough no you never will for years if the bottom is unsafe right this is empty so if if someone is listening or watching right now has realized they're having their awakening oh i never felt safe and i still don't feel safe and i'm driven by significance to feel seen or loved or whatever i need what should be the steps they take to create safety in their life and not need to feel significant by accomplishments yeah imagine if that person comes to that point to go oh my goodness i've been ruled by my need to be safe and significant listen this is a powerhouse moment this is an epiphany yeah right like you had yes now they have to take themselves straight to a therapist is there any other way besides therapy no sorry because you have to uncover the patterns now meditation is huge you know i've been meditating since i was 21. it is huge meditation gave me wisdom to understand the cravings of the ego right so it was a that's why i teach east meets west psychology and spirituality because both together was beautiful in my life yeah but i needed both you needed meditation and coaching or therapy yeah okay so that's the next step don't try to trust yourself and figure it out allow someone to support you and coach you through it yes just like an athlete would to become his best self or her yes that's true we wouldn't just go and say i want to win the world series and do it on our own we wouldn't write a book without an editor that's true what would we do we wouldn't learn the piano without a teacher right we won't go to school with our teachers so why in when it comes to inner work we don't do it because the very thing that blocks us from doing inner work is the very thing that blocks us from thinking we need to do in our work to go and get help right it's vehicle that i'm perfect everyone thinks they're perfect yet everyone i have met has been broken in such a significant way louis not just like a little bit broken like shards lambasted torn apart bomb blast in their childhood i've rarely met individuals who were raised by conscious parents i can maybe say a few you wrote the book unconscious parenting do you feel like you were a conscious parent to your child no i was not i was not i really wasn't and you know but i i'm trying not to have shame or guilt about it but i really made quote-unquote grave errors in terms of my own egos needs for control and possession i caught on pretty fast by the time she was three about what i was doing and since then i've been course correcting and teaching others and the reason i could correct it fast is because i've been on this path i'd been meditating and i still messed up because no one prepared me for how that parental ego looks i knew the ego in relationships i knew the ego around food around looks i didn't know the ego around the parents so now i've helped other parents to discover their parental ego so hopefully i've helped other parents not do what i do right even even when you're researching this teaching this coaching others it's still challenging for us to follow through on certain things yeah and we all never done i never never met this child before do you have your own coach i have in you know intermittently relied on coaches but i take a lot of courses yeah i'm always doing my work every day i don't let myself go yeah i'm on myself what does the work look like for you what's a non-negotiable on a daily basis like in just in terms of my life for your life yeah yeah with a beer non-negotiable now for me is ultimate alignment with my inner voice so i don't say yes to things that are not aligned i don't go for lunch i don't eat things that i i refuse i'm become pretty when did you learn how to do that over the last you know my radical awakening my last couple years last yeah it's i was inching forward and now i've just stepped into it like recently i just told someone do not show me this person's photograph because it triggers a past issue with this person i don't even want to see a photograph so taking my self-care and my alignment in a really adult way and cleaning up my my life so it really matches with who i authentically am and i'm not serving anyone else's ego you know i will not talk to people i will not have someone on a chat if i i'm not aligned everyone in my life is intentionally placed now and intentionally kept i'm glad you still reply to my text that's good i'm hanging on by a thread um okay so you've gotten very clear to say yes and no to things that you either want to say yes to or not but not doing them out of the need to please or because you don't want to hurt someone that's an incredible gift that's a skill that most people don't think have mastered right it can only come after arduous self-knowledge you have to know who you are so i've spent a lot of time figuring out who am i you know why am i here what makes me the most joyous being in this one body that i got this time who knows if i'm going to come back again now i'm here how am i going to make this life the most liberated abundant buoyant life it's up to me i got gotta create it i gotta curate it i got to plant the right seeds so it's very intentional now but i say know a lot which i never used to do really you say yes to everyone i used to say yes i used to say i'm so sorry i can't say yes if i couldn't say yes you know now i just ignore or i let it go it has nothing to do with me what happens if someone's mad or hurt or frustrated or emails you back i thought you were going to say yeah how could you do this to me what do you do that right so you know when it's a stranger you know it's projection yes and when it's a deeply held relationship i will clean it up i'll never do that to you right or to somebody who i honor then i'm in a relationship but if i'm not in a relationship i've learned to let it go you know they can project whatever they want like on social media how many people project they can have a party it's okay they have a right people have a right to project you know when i was young i didn't like when people projected i thought they didn't have a right now i realize oh you can have your inner child and your inner child can dump all its crap on me what am i going to do with it is the question what do you do with it now when someone's dumping on you or yelling at you there's no disappointed how could you dr folly right if there's no inroad to their consciousness you've got to walk away you've got to disengage right but in the past i used to get upset that they used to dump now i say oh here's another dump now i got i finally in my last decade understood of course they're going to dump because they're an inner child i used to protest that i used to resist it i should get angry with it how can you be an inner child now i've accepted how can they not be an inner child now i see it everywhere and i'm very accepting but i get to decide if i stay if i accept or i leave yeah coach told me once like when someone's throwing their anger or projections onto you they're trying to give you a gift of trash and you can either receive and take the gift or say well no thanks or just pass it along or right but don't be upset with them that they're trashing on you they have a right you can walk away but that feels horrible especially for women because we've been trained to be trash receptacles the garbage bin please give me your trash right now i empower women to go oh they can give you their trash don't blame them don't expect them to be different because we're always begging the other please be different what if we're like okay you know what that's not the environment i want i don't want to be yes a place where someone dumps trash even if i take it or not i just don't want that environment for some time that's why i said if there's no in-road you gotta walk away or you gotta accept it and say this is gonna be my life i can't change them maybe they'll buy you fancy shoes or cook you with some nice food at least right something right because trash can you expect someone to change or can you change someone else you can try to become your best self and hope that that will leak onto them and they will absorb your love your dignity your esteem but don't expect it and don't hold your breath and allow that person to not change do you know how many relationships we've had where we're so upset with the other person because we tried so hard we did all the right things and the other person couldn't heal that's so hard for us because we tried so hard right and that's where we're getting into victim consciousness because it's okay the other person doesn't have to change just because we're stellar you know we think it's a quit pro quo i'm amazing can you please see i'm amazing and heal it's not connected and that's so hard in a relationship to go i'm doing my best i can't fill this void it's beyond my need i am retiring from this position you know does that mean i'm retiring from the relationship as well well yeah now we have to see yeah i'm i'm letting go of the role at least the role i can't fix you i'm trying really hard i adore you i love you i see your pain but i can't fix you and when you retire from the role and if you are mainly that role you may retire from the relationship because there's nothing else you were doing except trying to fix yeah it starts differently never go with how it starts it's after the the ego starts breaking down and the true self comes out the wound itself comes out not the authentic self i think everyone should get the book a radical awakening turn pain into power embrace your truth and live free by the great dr shafali um get a few copies for your friends as well this is really inspiring and i think a lot of us have never learned how to turn our pain into something more peaceful and powerful for me i lived in pain internally most of my life without others really knowing about it and i was the one suffering until i learned how to turn pain into healing into peace and it's a process and i'm sure i'm gonna have to learn it many more times in other areas of my life but it's definitely a process so i want people to get your book you've got a lot of great lessons practices examples stories to support them in this journey because most people may not want to get a therapist right away so get this book if you don't get a therapist right away and go through it i have a couple final questions for you before i ask them where can we follow you online or support you in any other way so they can just go to dr shafali.com i'm doing a course actually on the book so they can do the course with me um and just find me there or on social media what's your favorite place on social media are you an instagram facebook facebook i think i'm old old older generation more on facebook so crack uh i just read cracking the matrix when i go check her out on facebook and a lot of powerful stuff in here so make sure you guys dive in here um everything in here is really inspiring check it out uh a couple final questions for you what are you most proud of that most people don't know about you i don't know what i'm proud lewis but maybe something that people don't know about me is that i'm really like very quiet i know it's like because i chat all the time but simple and just i like to be in my pajamas and just you know chill relaxed very quiet and basic i'm just like a very basic girl you know and i think people think of women like me that we must be you know big personalities at home but my daughter completely dominates me i get dominated yes really by my daughter you're just like i'm relaxing and she's all over the place very quiet personality at home yeah okay okay that's cool um this is a question i think i asked you last time but i'm curious your response this time it's called the three truths question i ask everyone at the end so imagine it's your last day on earth many years away and you've accomplished everything you want to accomplish you've written many more books or you've created the life you want to create for whatever reason you got to take all of your work with you all of your written work this interview all of your content no one has access to what you've shared in the past but you have a piece of paper and a pen and you get to leave behind three lessons to the world three things you've learned this is all we would have to remember your information by your message to the world i called three truths nice what would be your three dreams wow i think number one would be wake up to the lies of the matrix and don't sell your soul to cultures lies it's a lie number two uh it's your destiny to be your authentic self and to live free so claim it don't believe that giving it up is a virtue oh yeah and i think the third one would be you know my name my daughter maya it's just all of this is an illusion and it's so insignificant in the cosmic scheme of things your ego makes things significant but you know the freedom comes when you realize you're not that significant you know you're not there's freedom in that for me yeah you know yeah it's beautiful beautiful i want to acknowledge you dr foley before i ask the final question for constantly evolving yourself for constantly growing shedding and creating information for us to awaken ourselves and to heal our pain and to learn how to parent our inner child all things that no one's ever been taught how to do a lot of people haven't been taught how to do so i acknowledge you for showing up i know this is challenging work and the fact that you are in service to want to support and help people in their healing journey is such a gift so i acknowledge you in being that gift to so many people i appreciate you and your friendship i'm so glad i've made the text in communication still you haven't come out of your life yet i'm so happy and my final question is what's your definition of greatness daring to be real and authentic that's greatness for me appreciate you thank you thank you appreciate it if you want to learn how to make yourself more desirable in relationships then check out this powerful interview with relationship therapist esther perel the love stories per se are not life stories there's some things that you don't need in order to have a beautiful love story with someone

Channel: Lewis Howes

Views: 177,410

Rating: 4.7818689 out of 5

Keywords: Lewis Howes, Lewis Howes interview, school of greatness, self help, self improvement, self development, personal development, success habits, success, wealth, motivation, inspiration, inspirational video, motivational video, success principles, millionaire success habits, how to become successful, success motivation, dr. shefali, dr. shefali interview, dr. shefali the best way to deal with your pain, relationship issues, relationship tips, love advice

Id: hBENly_svs0

Length: 97min 37sec (5857 seconds)

Published: Fri May 21 2021