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facts never cause drama stories cause drama that's Jim Detmer the co-founder of the conscious leadership group and in this episode of the knowledge project Shane and Jim discuss how to own your mistakes it's really the decision to
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move out of blaming out of being at the effect of the world and move into claiming responsibility or agency ways to boost your emotional intelligence feelings are these gifts that allow life to move out of black and white into full
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color how to improve your relationships now again if I come back to relationships there has to be a shared commitment to feel feelings and all around how to live with more purpose if we come back to the idea that Integrity
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is aliveness there's so much more aliveness available to us when we're playing that game [Music] when I was thinking about where to start with you I listened to our last conversation that was just struck by how timeless it was and I think I want to
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start with integrity and sort of the four pillars of Integrity why don't I just riff a little and then you see what uh catches your interest and then we can go from there let's do it so first thing I want to do is um I always like to acknowledge my mentors and teachers and uh the four pillars of Integrity I got from Katie Hendricks Dr Katie Hendricks uh Debbie and I apprenticed with andrix for a number of years uh Katie brought
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this into my life gated as well but it's been a Cornerstone of my life for 30 years or so so let's begin by just differentiating the way I want to speak about integrity from the way it normally gets talked about you know when Integrity shows up as a
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value inside of a company for example and then you ask people what does the value mean the normal thing that people say is do the right thing which is beautiful I give that great Integrity then tends to have more of a
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like a moral or an ethical um kind of orientation and the way I play with Integrity is none of that so Integrity for me is more of an energetic and I'll say what I mean by that in just a minute but again let's just do a little
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etymology here so Integrity from the root same root as integer so think of whole number think of wholeness so that's where I like to go think of wholeness so to me Integrity is energetic wholeness now what that translates to very quickly for
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me is a phrase that I love full aliveness so when I am in Integrity I am energetically whole I am fully Alive we Illustrated sometimes with uh it doesn't work so much anymore because I think they've fixed this problem but when I was a kid and you put holiday lights on a Christmas tree kind of the deal was that if if one of the Lights Went Out the whole strand went out you know first it might blink a little bit and then it all went out
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and if you think about the circuitry of those Christmas lights being a circuit of wholeness and then if one little light goes out then they start to dim and dim and dim until they all go out so what I work with in my own life for
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many many years is am I fully alive I also love the question what am I willing to risk for fall aliveness we'll come back to that because that's a fun question uh and then when I am not feeling Fully Alive whole so alive in my
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head alive in my heart alive in my gut alive in my balls if I can say it alive in my spirit if I'm not feeling alive then I want to go check these four pillars because what reliably has been true for me is they
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are like light on the Strand and if they get loose my aliveness tends to diminish it doesn't go out all of a sudden but it diminishes so what Katie Hendricks articulated as the four pillars of Integrity the first pillar is radical responsibility
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and we talked about this a little bit in our last chat but it's really the decision to move out of blaming and criticizing out of being at the effect of the world and move into claiming responsibility or agency a sure
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way for me to blunt my aliveness my day-to-day experience of my Vitality is to live in victimhood blame the weather blame the traffic blame Debbie uh blame my body and what's happening in my body so what I notice is if I stop blaming and I
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choose to move the locus of control back over here and I choose to have agency to be responsible for my experience not the external world but to be responsible for my experience there's a surge of energy that comes
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back in the body so that's the first pillar radical responsibility the second pillar is as simple as am I willing to feel my feelings so I was a non-feeler much of my life now it came into the world like I think everybody does as a fulfiller so as an
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infant I was a whole feeler I had access to my anger to my rage to my fear to my sadness to my joy to my Sexual Energy and then like most people I got a little bit socialized out of that you know the average kindergarten teacher when I was
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in kindergarten didn't really want 25 kids to feel all their feelings all the way through to completion they imagined it would have been chaos that's changed meaningfully in the last years but then I had some trauma in my life
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in my family of origin that came meaningfully to a head on my 17th birthday this is really relevant to me and feelings on my 17th birthday I woke up about five in the morning to the experience of my dad having a massive heart attack he happened to be sleeping in the single bed next to me we'd gone to bed the night before watching a Chicago White Sox game and I woke up with him having a fatal heart attack and I was a 17 year old young man kid
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and I was all of a sudden introduced to the death process which I'd never been introduced to before and that was traumatic in and of itself but then we followed the ambulance to the hospital and we walked into the hospital into the emergency room and my dad had been wheeled into one of the Bays there and then the nurse walked out I can still feel I can still go back to that moment the nurse walked out and handed me his watch in his ring handed
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it to me not to my mom who's there and said he's gone he died and I instinctively almost like a wounded animal I walked away from my mom and I walked into a bathroom and again this was early in the morning the hospital wasn't crowded and I held
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my dad's uh ring and his watch in my hands and I remember just melting down the wall and disintegrating into all right grief and heartbreak and loss and complete Unknowing now here's what happened next so I did
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that for however many minutes I did that and then I I love the phrase I pulled myself together I stood up I walked out to my mother my mom at that point was um a functional but a meaningful alcoholic and didn't have a lot she hadn't matured to develop a lot of adult coping skills so I was in a role of caretaker and helping her I picked her up I held her I helped her when home I called my older brother told him that my dad had died called my
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sister neither of them were in the home and it's like I made a contract with myself in that moment Shane which is it hurts too bad to feel these feelings and I consciously unconsciously some dance there locked them away until my
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late 20s at least probably early 30s and I just didn't feel feelings now here's what I didn't know is the amount of energy not Integrity is wholeness energetic wholeness life force aliveness how much energy it takes to repress and suppress
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emotion I tell people now it's like your emotions are like a beach ball you know and you take them and uh you try to hold them under the water you know and the more inflated the ball is the harder it is to hold under the water and if you know one beach ball is sadness and one beach ball is anger and one beach ball is fear and after a while you're holding these things under the water you get exhausted and I got exhausted I was actually I
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think mildly depressed and a reason was that I was depressing my feelings so now this uh second pillar of Integrity is I just ask myself every day as part of my morning rituals is there a feeling here that wants to be felt and I've learned
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that these feelings can be felt very simply and efficiently and beautifully and the thing that I was terrified of was being overwhelmed by the feelings doesn't occur at all they become a natural enlivening part of life they actually
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allow life to appear in Technicolor in that black and white they allow Life Force to come back into my body so that's the second pillar the third pillar is candor so if I want to be out of integrity if I want to dampen my alignness all I
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have to do is start accumulating withholds things that I'm not saying thoughts that I'm having watch that I have judgments and opinions that I have beliefs that I have um we start with holding my anger by sadness my fear all I have to do is
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start holding back being authentic being revealed and I will I will and I find this to be true in almost all people I will immediately feel less alive now we could explore this when I reveal and I find this true to be everybody when people reveal when they say what they're not saying when they become more authentic they immediately feel more alive now I just want to put a little asterisk by this they also usually immediately experience chaos
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because I and we have been withholding for good reason I put air quotes around that because it made sense to withhold so I'm not questioning whether there's a reason to withhold what I'm questioning is its effect on integrity and its effect on
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aliveness and when we talk about integrity in relationships and does the relationship have integrity whether it's a personal relationship or a uh public relationship a professional relationship one of the questions we
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want to explore is how revealed are we how revealed are we because if we're withholding we say we use this little formula when you withhold then you withdraw and then you project which means you disconnect from relationship so when we look at
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high performing teams one of the things we see is they don't have many withholds everything is transparent to the Tran to the decision process okay and that's true with me and Debbie whenever I have any withholds our
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relationship goes out of Integrity I go out of Integrity the life force of our relationship diminishes and Deb and I have known each other since we were 15 years old and we've been in an intimate committed relationship for you know almost 30 years 25 30 years and yet almost every day if I do a real examination I could find something that I would withhold and not say because I'd be afraid of the things that we say we would be afraid of you know
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that it would hurt her or that it would create a little drama or it's not going to do any good you know the mind is all these reasons but whenever I do that I immediately dampen my life force and I immediately dampen the life force of the
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relationship so that's the third one and then the fourth pillar of Integrity is am I impeccable with my agreements am I impeccable with my agreements so an agreement is just anything I've said I would do or anything I've said I
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wouldn't do real simple it's just who's gonna do what by web and I find that one of the ways people bleed off Life Energy is they don't make clear agreements they just kind of live wishy-washy non-clear non-clarified
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non-intentional no clear agreement so they don't make clear agreements when they make clear agreements they break their agreements which creates a life force diminishment it also creates drama and relationships they they rationalize justify and
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explain why they didn't keep their agreements rather than just taking responsibility for it and they don't get back into Integrity so a great example before we started recording we got on at the top of the hour and you know I think I logged in you know a minute or so before and there you were and you said to me you said I was going to be on time for this because you have heard or know this to be part of me and you said you know most people
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maybe show up a little bit late I understand that most people believe the thought that they have busy lives and therefore they can't be impeccable with their word around time and stuff like that I think that's actually a story and
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a belief in its apps energy I just find it so beautifully simple and enlivening to go we agreed we'd meet at the top of the hour let's just meet at the top of the hour there's no yeah but you're not wondering you're not having
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to email or text me uh you know we're just clean we're so clean so those are the four pillars of Integrity take responsibility feel your feelings speak candidly authentically reveal and be impeccable with your
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agreements now in my experience when I live like that I feel incredibly alive no we could also talk about you know do you eat well do you get a good night's sleep but you know how do you exercise all of that of course would be part of feeling fully
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alive but it seems everybody knows that we might not be doing it but we know it but not everybody is playing the game of let's be fully alive and play with Integrity so there you go that's kind of a big download but see if anything there
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grabs your attention or there's so many rabbit holes that want to go down right now I'm trying to think of how to organize this I think we'll just start with the first in terms of taking radical responsibility and sort of
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ending blame it's one thing to know that yes I should do that what does it look like to do that yeah great how how do I what's the first step that I take how do I go about doing this because even um you know uh we're all victims at some
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point right and it's not there's chronic victims where everything is somebody else's fault or the world's fault or but then we're all also even if we're we're not in that headspace normally we all end up in that headspace from time to
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time how do we get absolutely all right bye so here's where it begins for me and the people that I see who develop Mastery of this it actually begins before there is a given stimuli In This Moment it begins when I'm sitting on my chair
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in the morning or I'm in a silent Retreat or I'm away with my team or my intimate partner and I'm asking the question how do I want to live life so it begins with a foundational commitment commitment again not being ethical or
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moral commit being more energetic in other words it begins by me saying declaring I want to go to San Francisco not Austin that's what it begins with so I get real clear I get on the web and I buy a ticket to San Francisco now I know the difference between San Francisco and Austin so it begins in quiet reflection or it begins on Retreat or it begins like I said with a team deciding do we want to play the blame game or do we want to take
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responsibility so it begins with me declaring to myself and deciding I want to play a different game in life I want to play the responsibility game I don't want to play the blame game that's really important because only then
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do I know how I'm going to be with life when it shows up now let's let's keep pressing the analogy of an airplane so let's say I decide I'm going to San Francisco not Austin so I buy the ticket to San Francisco which means I'm going
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to claim responsibility for my experience I've been told that no plane flies straight and true so it drifts off course you know it's always course correcting it commits to San Francisco but then it drifts and then it shifts
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back on the course great so now I start living my life I have gotten my ticket to San Francisco I want to play the no blame game I want to play the responsibility game all right Debbie does something just pick whatever it is Debbie Debbie
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looks at me a certain way that look that an intimate partner could have which is not a look that says I love you I adore you I wanna you be close to you it's that look that says uh you you know that look okay now I get a pop quiz now on my cushion in the morning I bought the ticket to San Francisco but now life is gonna say okay what are you gonna do big boy all right so now I get to go okay am I going to claim responsibility over her face
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is not the cause of my experience this is what radical responsibility is in the blame game her face that frowned the particular you know brow that she has that particular way she's forming her eyes in blame I go why are you looking
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at me like that I didn't do anything because I think the cause of my uncomfortable experience on the inside is her face so then of course what I want to do is I want to get her to change her face because I believe that if she looked at
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me differently I'd be okay I'm not okay because she's looking at me the way she's looking at me everybody can relate to this all right claiming responsibility goes she is looking at me and you know a video camera would record a particular mouth structure or a particular brow structure you know those little micro Expressions video camera would record something but it is not what the camera is recording that is causing my experience it's an
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internal mechanism inside of me that is generating my fear it's a mechanism that goes something like this no it's not conscious and it doesn't it doesn't occur at a verbal level but it's like this oh no Debbie is disapproving of me
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I can't be okay if Debbie is disapproving of me I have outsourced this is really important I've outsourced my need for approval to Debbie so I'm not okay that's victimhood and by the way I want to distinguish between being a victim
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and victim Consciousness this is a really important distinction there are real victims in the world when I was you know nine years old and my dad was uh you know having sexual relations with my older sister and my brother was a rageaholic and was physically abusing me and my mom had this complicated relationship with Alpha I was nine years old Shane I was a victim of the circumstances of my life there are genuine victims in the world
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victim Consciousness is if I'm 70 years old and I'm still blaming my mother my brother and my father for my current experience in life so I want to stipulate there are real victims now let's fast forward Debbie's making that face
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I'm not a real victim at that point now there might be someone who would want to argue that I'm I'm not the experience I'm having on the inside of nervousness apprehension anxiety fear uh resentment anger I am the cause of that because I'm
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believing I'm the source of the belief about Debbie and about my needs for approval and about my needs for control there are these core Watts approval control security and Oneness and at that moment I think those core wants are being threatened because of Debbie's face I've outsourced them to her okay now I'm in the pop quiz I'm on the airplane it's drifted off course now I get a choice I can say why are you making that face I didn't do anything
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I told you I might be a little late I told you the golf game might run long I told you I might miss dinner with the grandkids why you know non-justified explaining rationalizing now I'm fully in victim of it I'm I've lost all of my aliveness
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I'm powerless at that moment okay now I get to go back to the commitment I made a day a week a month a year earlier and say hold on a minute I chose to end blame and criticism and I chose to take responsibility okay now here's what's true of most
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people it's not going to happen in that moment it's not you can practice until it gets to where it does but at first it might be an hour later after I've said to her don't make that face at me and then I storm out of the house or something like that or you know I I I'm the one who should be upset okay then an hour later I go but oh I drifted off course I went back into the blame game or the next day when Dev and I first got married and started
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to apply this we committed them blaming criticism our relationship we gave it a 24-hour rule which was really a cool thing we said when we're triggered we can blame and complain for 24 hours I that was really a brilliant move
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but then at the end of 24 hours we're going to come back and we're going to re-commit the plane is drifted off course it actually you know let's say we're going from New York to San Francisco you know over Pennsylvania it loses its
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heading and it's going more towards Austin than it is San Francisco it's drifted off course no problem an hour a day later I recommit and what that looks like is I come back to Deb and I say hey I drifted off of my commitment to end blaming criticism and I was blaming you whether outwardly inwardly I saw myself as a victim at the effect of your energy I take responsibility for that Deb I was the cause of my experience you didn't do that to me
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and then we can have a whole conversation about how how to deconstruct that the one last thing I want to say and then I'll come back to how to do it on the Fly which is I think your question if over time in my relationship I'm
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regularly drifting off of the commitment to end blame and criticism like I'm regularly blaming then we're not going to have a conversation about what happened the day before then we're going to back up and we're gonna say hey I thought we were
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going Debbie would say to me I thought we were going to San Francisco which is a no-blame Zone looks to me like we're headed to Austin which is okay then let's just clarify what it is we're doing this is really important like on the
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practice of candor Debbie and I committed to reveal and not conceal but sometimes we conceal the lots of couples who conceal that's great that's Austin when I drift I just recommit so it begins with a clear commitment inside of
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yourself then it begins with growing in self-awareness so you can feel the difference between blaming and criticizing and taking responsibility and that it moves to a very simple practice and the simple practice is this I'm triggered it always begins with noticing I'm triggered because when we blame we are triggered and like we talked last time triggering is just I'm in a threatened state right now as you make that face Debbie I
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feel threatened again it's a threat to my wanting to be approved of to have control over her a threat to my Safety and Security and a threat to my wanting Oneness I feel threatened so the first thing I do is I go I'm triggered and I
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feel threatened no big deal just acknowledge it and then I say well that's all because I'm scared and can I just accept myself for being scared for just a moment acceptance is the antidote to fear and until the fear gets met and faced
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and felt and relaxed there isn't an option for a non-reactive behavior it's a really important principle so then I accept myself then I say am I willing to choose claiming responsibility and then we have a set of questions we go through when we're claiming responsibility questions like how did I create this experience how is this familiar how is this a pattern in my life what are the payoffs I'm getting from creating this experience
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how do I keep this experience going these are insight oriented questions that create a whole new Ernie that aren't as never available to us as long as we're in a blame and criticize mode so we commit when we drift we recommit we become
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aware of being triggered we accept ourselves for being in a threatened fearful State and then we reclaim responsibility and start asking a series of questions by the way it could happen again in the intimate relationship could
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happen on a team at work hey we missed our quarterly numbers great we could blame and criticize but we agreed we were going to go to San Francisco so in our post-mortem let's actually start to look at how we co-created the experience
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and then we'll get massive earnings as that giving you something to play with all wow yeah this is great I I love the depth and the insight you're providing here there's a couple areas that I wanted to sort of follow up with
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here one was the nature of the airplane and constant adjustments it's like there's an act of stability to it yeah right you need to be conscious and active in order to stabilize and then the other thing around the core wants
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that you said so approval control security Oneness can you explore those a little bit sure I think these are really important because I think they're at the core of a lot of the drama that's going on in our lives individually and collectively
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so I first heard about these from hail dwaskin who is the teacher of the Sedona Method it's a really great method and he I believe got them from his minister of Lester Levinson they're not original I'm sure but that's where I heard him I want to give credit so the four core watts of all human beings and these are natural they're not wrong they're natural they're instinctual the first core want is approval it's the desire to be liked loved valued
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respected wanted we all want approval great the second core want is for control it's just simply the desire for the world to be the way we think the world should be all of us have a belief about the way the world should be in the world could
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be how fast my computer is running the world could be my desk the world could be my children the world could be uh economic variables going on right now we all have a way we think the world should be and a way the world shouldn't be
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control is just our desire to make the world be the way we think it should be so I say to people all the time we're all control freaks by the way that's understandable because first of all we don't our very survival
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of ability is at threat when we lack approval and when we lack control think about it you know we're pack animals if we get shunned from the pack if we get cut out of the clan ostracized from the tribe because we're not approved of that's a
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death sentence so it's natural and normal that we are looking for approval love connectivity when we feel out of control it's threatening that third one which is security safety survivability literally it means I don't want to die
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but it's not just that it's I don't want to experience harm I don't want to um I don't want to experience ego dissolution I want my identity to survive these are all just as natural and normal as can be when I the first thing I want is
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security the way I think I can get security is by getting approval and if I can't get approval then I'll try like crazy to control the world they're related and then the fourth one is Oneness which is just simply a sense of connectivity
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it's probably ultimately a deep thirst for whatever you want to call it spiritual Oneness if you don't like that word just a connected a connection to the Transcendent a sense that I am not fundamentally alone fundamentally
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alienated and of course it can include connection to the other Oneness with the other so these are the four core Watts that human beings have now the big the big trick is that after about the age of four to six we forget that we already have all of these on the inside and so we Outsource them and we spend the rest of our life thinking that if we get enough money we'll feel safe and secure if we get ourselves bulletproof at work
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so that we can't get canceled we'll feel safe and secure if we get enough alarm systems on our house or enough guns or enough if we if we get enough um passports to live in other countries in addition to our dual citizenship here
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if we if we have the resources to buy a secure place on an island in the Northwest where we have all the first you know there's we start thinking if only I could get secure then I would feel secure of course anybody who's run that racket
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down very far you go uh oh that didn't work and we think if only I could get so and so to like me so and so to Value me so and so to want me if only I could get my mother to finally say she loves me before she died then my
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desire for approval would be sated I wouldn't need that anymore if only I could get control of fill in the blank but it never works so the ultimate Outsourcing is outsourcing our core needs and wants to people's circumstances and conditions and
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the growth path of life I've been playing a lot with these four stages of life and what happens in the third stage you know the first stage is learning the second stage is doing the third stage is mentoring the four stages arriving as I
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move out of a doing stage which is all about ticking the boxes of approval control security and Oneness that I think will stabilize you I love the word you stabilize my sense of volcanoes and then I if I'm self-aware I start to
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go uh oh it worked in the short room run but it hasn't really stabilized it so now in the third dimension of life I get to see actually test is there an okayness on the inside so now I start stop Outsourcing it I start resting it and this is not a
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belief it's not a theology it's not an Orthodoxy it has to be a direct experience or it's of no good whatsoever but if I can actually experience a profound sense of okayness related to those four things the entire game
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changes that's what happens in the third and four stages prior to that and I'll come all the way back if I'm Outsourcing approval to Debbie's facial expression I'm vulnerable to being disrupted if I have a profound sense of approval on the inside then I might get momentarily triggered by Debbie's facial expression but I don't need Debbie's approval to be okay it doesn't mean that it doesn't feel good but I don't need it so I don't
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become reactive and hyper reactive and I can come back into a Higher Learning state so that's how the four core wants relate to being triggered and how to come back off of drifting use the word stabilize you know uh in a Buddhist
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tradition they talk about first you recognize something then you realize it then you stabilize in it and it's true of this first I recognize that I've lost my I've outsourced approval control and security okay great I pray and then I
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have a momentary recognition not in that moment but maybe the next morning when I'm sitting quietly or that night when I look up at the stars or when I uh when I look in my baby's face before she goes to sleep at night or this actually
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happens at the height of orgasm I lose a sense of self and all everything is okay maybe I have a momentary tasting I recognize it but I don't yet realize it's my natural state so I have to do practices to create realization and
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enough practices and then it becomes stabilized imperturbable so that's the big growth pattern that we're all ah okay let me take a breath there I love that I think you know as I was thinking about this I was thinking
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sort of in terms of our biological instincts and our you know we're all hierarchical we're all self-preserving we're all territorial and we we tend to think of those things like a dog sort of peas and you know marks its territory and so we we
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conceptualize these things as like a physical territory yes but it's not it's our identity it's part of our territory so when somebody infringes on our our identity our sense of self something that we see as part of our core self we
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tend to react without reasoning just like an animal because it's embedded inside of our biology for most people the infringement is actually not like the infringement of a dog it's not territorial this isn't true of everybody
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who's going to listen to this podcast some people live in a world where the infringement actually is that but for most of the people you and I know they've created a world where they're safe and secure enough that the
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infringement isn't that the vast majority of the infringement is the infringement on the identity yeah it's the infringement on the eagle identity and here's the deal as long as I think I am my identity then it will be infringed upon
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it has to be that's one of the gifts actually of having our identities infringed upon not in the early stages of development but later one of the gifts of having our identities infringed upon in other words being disrespected for example
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the gift of that is later on in the journey is it invites you to go oh it happened again I re-identified with an identity that I am smart or that I am you know famous or that I am kind whatever comes after the I am is always
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an identity I re-identified with an identity it got questioned or threatened and I went into a reactive State that's great then later in life you just go oh thank goodness now I can disidentify from that a little bit and come back to the deeper truth of what I am because I'm not my identities so what you're saying is actually the gold mine that you get that it's not territorial infringement it's the infringement on the ego identity what
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locked Kelly one of my friends and teachers calls the mini me I love that phrase it's a little mini me that we think lives someplace between the front of our head the back of our head and our two ears this little identity who's
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craving approval control security and Oneness who does it by identifying and then when the identity gets threatened it just goes batshit crazy it has to because its survivability is being threatened I love this what's the counterbalance in
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terms of how do we get the proper perspective in order to step back from this infringement because the infringement's gonna happen yes we're gonna be triggered how do we add I mean most things most problems come from blind spots most problems come from misunderstanding and if you understood you would have the patience to sort of see things through without reacting that comes with perspective how do we what's the counterbalance to add that the
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perspective that we need to sort of like let the situation diffuse instead of escalating in the moment yeah okay so let's jump into the deepest end of the pool first and then we can work our way back to a shallower route if what we're doing here is we're exploring our identity and it being triggered and I'm suggesting that that happens when we have over identified with a role that we play in Life or with a notion of who we are okay good
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so the Deep work that needs to be going on all the while in life is practices where we actually understand the truth of who and what we are so now this is where I'd put a plug in for something like meditation
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and by the way I have a particular bias here for people who meditate I would put a plug in for meditation practices that are not just about developing uh concentration they're not just about being able to focus on the breath or a mantra or a candle
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they're not certainly not just about breathing or just about stress reduction the things I want to advocate for our practices that do all that but even more so are rooted in helping us have a direct experience of the truth of Who We
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Are so now we would be looking at practices in the jokshan tradition or the mahamudra tradition in Practical terms I'm a huge fan of luck Kelly like I mentioned and I'm a huge fan of Sam Harris and the waking up app I I you know I've
42:49
recommended to many people apps like headspace and com nowadays I recommend waking up um because of what we're talking about right now that everything on that app including the momentary glimpses and the 10-minute practice but also the library of stuff that Sam has go by the way I don't know Sam you know I'm not advocating for him for any personal reason whatsoever just the efficacy of the app the practices rooted in there when done
43:23
in a reliably disciplined way help us move through the illusion of thinking we are our bank account or we are our reputation or we are our bodies or we are these identities so what happens is every day for a few minutes we reconnect
43:48
we recognize for a moment the truth of who we are to your words we get a new understanding now you know there's a a cumulative Effectiveness it doesn't happen in day one unless it does by the way realization can occur in an instant
44:02
there are people who've reported instant realization it just hasn't been my path it's not most but I would say you could instantly realize but for most of us there's a path so 10 minutes 20 minutes a day maybe
44:16
once a month doing a little bit longer maybe once a year going on some sort of retreat again where I'm seeing through the illusion of my identity now here's what happens now when the identity gets triggered I have an understanding that I am not that
44:36
I am that which is actually always already safe which is actually always already fully approved of I am that which is already totally in control of anything that needs to be controlled and anything that I'm not in
45:00
control of doesn't need to be controlled it's an already always experience of that now again we look at these four stages of life in the learning and doing stage those things aren't stabilized but part of the reason we head into that third quarter of life
45:18
and we start to move in um you know the literal languages retire to the forest I'm in the transition from three to four we retire to the forest because the forest knows the truth of who we are we touch that this momentarily before we
45:33
started creation the forest life it tells us the truth of who we are it doesn't see the illusion and it reminds us so we spend more and more time in solitude and silence we spend more and more time being reminded of the truth of who we
45:47
are so we're more and more stabilized so that's a long-winded way of saying do a damn practice every day sit your ass in a chair for 10 minutes do it download the app and do it okay because that will lead you over time all the way to the most profound understanding of what you really are this is why Ramana maharshi you know taught us inquiry and his inquiry was real simple it was just basically who Emma or another way of saying is what am I
46:25
that's a profound inquiry because as long as I think I am a man a 70 year old man a 70 year old white CIS man a 70 year old white CIS rich man who lives in Michigan who and as always I think I am a grandfather as long as I think I am
46:42
those might be roles that I play those might be things that I occupy periodically but they're not the truth of who I am as long as I'm confused about that in your words until I understand the truth of who I am and what I am
46:56
I am always vulnerable to destabilization and of course in the second phase of Life the doing phase of life where most of I've imagined most of your listeners are let's just say roughly 25 to 50 years old I'm actually heavily invested in doing things that will secure my identity it's not a bad thing I'm trying to get a job build a career accumulate stuff get a bank account get a partner have some kids now there's those beauty in all those
47:33
this is what you know was called the householder role in India it's natural it's normal but if we're not careful we're just stabilizing the little mini me the egoic identity and that's why when we move through the later stages of midlife
47:50
the destabilization of those identities we don't think quite as sharply we're not quite as physically fit the body begins to slowly slow down and melt is so traumatic because we've attached it to our identity what happens is you transition
48:05
from stage four doing to stay stage two doing the stage three mentoring teaching and retiring to the woods is you start to disidentify with those roles and find the truth of Who You Are so the practice is do those basic simple things so that you start to stabilize and understand the truth of who you are rituals are the counterbalance to some of those yes absolutely and I love the word rituals I love that you're using that I I'd I'd love to
48:39
actually probe with you what ritual means how you use it because to me it's like a semi-technical term and I make a distinction between discipline with practices and Devotion to rituals and they're very different things in my
48:57
experience so go deeper on that what do you mean by that sure okay so a practice that I do that I have a desired outcome and I want to accrue a benefit so it could be that I um you know want to do cardio training three days a week
49:17
so now that becomes a practice I'm going to do a hit or something like that so now that's a practice and let's say I'm going to do it on my bike and now discipline is that I'm gonna show up and get on the bike with some regularity and
49:31
discipline of course is the whole idea that I'm going to um you know postpone gratification that's the basic idea of discipline so in life I find that there's tremendous value in being disciplined around practices you can talk about that
49:47
but I've entered into a new place as well actually I've I've resurrected a new place from the way I used to view the world and that and that is the word ritual so to me the difference between a practice and a ritual is if you look at
50:00
the word ritual you know it it comes from Traditions often spiritual Traditions ecclesiastical traditions and what a ritual was was something that I or we did in the Physical Realm that pointed to Something in the other Realm
50:22
rituals they're actually beautiful things and so there's a big difference between between whether I'm doing a practice or a ritual and whether I'm exercising discipline or devotion so the difference between discipline and devotion is
50:37
discipline is this idea of delayed gratification I love it it's essential devotion is this idea it's like it's like I'm offering I'm offering something it's a very different energy and when I'm devoted or in devotion I'm offering
50:56
my attention I'm offering my time so let me let me illustrate a couple different ways so at our home in Michigan where I spend most of my time we live in the woods and I love to wander in the woods I love to go for walks in the woods okay I couldn't be disciplined doing a practice let's say I want to get 10 000 steps or some amount of climb or elevation and you know I want to do that X number of days a week so I'm disciplined I get
51:24
up I put on my shoes I go for my walk that's disciplined in a practice and there's real value in that Devotion to a ritual is a very different thing and the way that I now normally encounter the woods is as a ritual
51:43
um it's like I go uh okay the woods are an invitation to something Beyond it's the way I hold I actually um I have on my desk almost always a poem that I first heard David White uh it's David didn't write I think it's David Wagner who wrote it but it's
52:03
called Lost and a lot of times before I head into the woods I'll just re-read the poem can I re can I read it to you because it yeah for why why going in the woods for me is much more of a ritual something is happening in the Physical Realm that is pointing to another Realm then a practice of getting my 10 000 steps so the poem goes something by the way if you can find David White reciting this poem do it we will try it because as you know um
52:37
I just think David embodies something in the way he does poetry but the poem goes like this and I read it before I go it says stand still stand still the trees ahead and the bushes beside you are not lost wherever you are is called here wherever
53:00
you are is called here and you must treat it as a powerful stranger must ask permission to know it and be known the forest breathes listen it answers listen it answers I've made this place around you if you
53:23
leave it you may come back again saying here no two trees are the same to the Raven no two branches are the same to the ren if what a tree or a bush does is lost on you you are surely lost stand still the forest knows where you
53:47
are you must let it find you I love that Pope now that's when I take that as my presence and then I move into the woods in devotion I'm offering the woods my time and my attention I could go get my ten thousand steps disciplined in my practice walking
54:15
through the woods and listen to a podcast or listen to music that's fine you know but that's so different than offering the woods my attention my time and then when I move through the woods in this practice I'll still get
54:35
the same four four and a half miles in let's say but I often pause and I listen there's whole practices around listening to the woods so that's very different I'll give you another illustration um Debbie and I do Asana most every day
54:52
that we're in Michigan and I intentionally got a wood burning sauna because as opposed to an electric one because I wanted the ritual of starting a fire every morning in the dark okay so I have a ritual around starting the fire and that reminds me of a whole
55:08
lot of things and then Debbie and I enter into the sauna so I prepare the sauna and we enter in and it is devotional time I'm there giving Debbie my full attention and vice versa we're not covering the logistics of the day
55:26
we're there in a devoted usually 15 to 20 minutes practice of really getting with each other and we're using the Heat and the fire to create a context where the devotion of what our relationship is the mystery
55:43
Beyond just a man and a woman in a sauna is being um is being reflected now I could you know I listened to huberman long ago on you know heat treatment and culture I have a cold plunge right next to it so some days I just go do heat treatment
55:57
and cold plunge it's great that's discipline in a practice Devotion to a ritual is a very different thing the last illustration I'd give Shane is how do you spend time with your children so many people know the value of being with their children and they do it as discipline in a practice and it has all of the attendant energy of that versus Devotion to a ritual Devotion to a ritual I do this like with my grandkids or stay with my adult kids the
56:30
ritual is that I am seeing them as sacred beings it's a way that I attend to them I don't have to say any of that I like just the way I attend to them and then the devotion is that I don't I don't enter into the ritual of being with them
56:48
for whatever period of time while checking my phone if it goes off or while watching TV over their shoulder there is the devotion the giving of my full attention the giving of my time I first got introduced that years ago I
57:04
think Barkley was the guy's name who introduced the idea of special play time that children need 20 minutes of special play time a day which is Devotion to a ritual of seeing them and seeing the essence of who they are okay so that's
57:22
an important distinction for me how we're living in the world between discipline with practice which is great I do a lot of that and Devotion to rituals that makes sense is that I had never thought of it that way I think
57:34
when you phrase it that way it makes me think differently about the concept of rituals how do you you mentioned the term discipline practice that implies to me that you're using a lot of willpower yes that's great that's a great distinction the difference between discipline which implies willpower and devotion which implies a wholehearted offering it doesn't take willpower for me to give my attention to Debbie in the sauna or stand still in
58:13
the woods or get fully present to my grandchild while he plays a game very different energy so I'm going to tell you something that happens at my house on a daily basis and I want you to tell me how you think about this through the lens of
58:30
discipline willpower and ritual okay so my uh my kids come home every day after school and they go through a routine and they hop in the shower and they have their shower and then they sit down and they get a snack and they start doing
58:46
their homework there's no willpower involved in this because it's repetitive every day day after day how do you see that through the lens of ritual discipline willpower practice and you're saying from their perspective there's no discipline it's just part of their life they come home they shower they sit down they do their homework well at Stark there was right when we established this pattern of behavior it required a lot of discipline a lot of
59:18
willpower a lot of nudging on my part but after you know a month or two uh now now it's a routine pattern it's a routine I don't have to say anything it happens automatically it's an automatic sort of like execution if you will and it's and they they love it too right they know what to expect they know what to do there's no thinking uh they don't have to drain their sort of like mental energy to force themselves to sit down
59:44
and do homework because like who wants to do that right after school but that's the practice or the the sort of practice the wrong word that's the pattern how do you see that through that lens of discipline willpower routine okay great
59:56
so there's no discipline and willpower involved they actually now are doing it from freedom of choice they have a choice they're gonna do it so that would be the same as let's say again I'm doing interval training on my
1:00:11
bike well it doesn't always require discipline I actually like it at times I love the energy I love the burst I love the experience so now but it's still a practice not a ritual because it is not a portal through which I am seeing something
1:00:29
transcendent laughs yeah the elevation of my heart rate so the question would be are your kids taking the shower sitting doing their homework is it just part of the hygienes of life to create the life that they want to be in right
1:00:49
relationship with learning and to be in right relationship with you and they're uh and and their academics great then it doesn't require discipline it's freedom of choice they they make the free choice but it also isn't a ritual because it's not a portal through which they are viewing the Transcendent unless it is and then the question would be if you tune into them if they could speak for themselves is there a Devotion to it like you know
1:01:18
um sometimes children read a book A book that they really are like like they set aside time they they get to the right spot in the room they put on their pajamas at night they it's like a devotion it's like I'm here with my full heart my full mind my full body I'm giving my undistracted attention to this that's what I mean by devotion so you'd have to tell me it it doesn't have to be before this conversation before this conversation I would have
1:01:54
thought of this as a ritual and sort of like I think of that as like how do we establish an automatic pattern of behaviors that lead them to success or put them in the best position possible for Success yeah this is this has
1:02:09
challenged my notion of ritual I think well and I I just want to say in my world obviously not everything is ritual but I'm clear that there are some things that are ritual the operative term being what's happening in the Physical Realm
1:02:25
is a portal a window a passageway into something beyond that the material is a representation of the immaterial I think there's a reason for Millennia people have had rituals and of course rituals can be bastardized and turn into
1:02:45
fundamentalism and all that but when they are what they were designed to be they I think they were designed to give us in the individual and the collective a direct experience of something bigger than ourselves yeah to hand ourselves
1:03:00
over to something else yes you know rituals when they're done they are they create awe they create Wonder they create a sense of um well positive yes yes okay so um okay so so we I just want to orient everybody because we're sort of
1:03:25
like 75 minutes into the recording of this conversation at this point and we've started talking about the pillars of integrity and the four pillars were sort of taking radical responsibility uh being revealed and not concealing
1:03:38
feeling feelings and being impeccable with your agreement we went down the rabbit hole of taking radical responsibility and that's how we ended up here I want to reorient go back up let's talk about being revealed and not concealing so again if we if we review you know Integrity is being energetically whole no interruptions to flow another way of saying that is uh being in a fully Alive State all right so most people don't have to think a lot
1:04:10
about it just just think about this just go to the extreme uh the just think about when you tell a lie and you know you tell a lie almost everybody can feel a contraction in their body they can feel a dampening of their energy they can feel their life force
1:04:32
dwindling which can can show up in the form unless your sociopath can show up in the form of guilt or something like that what most people don't always feel is that when I am not revealed I have stepped away from being Fully
1:04:48
Alive I'm concealing so let's think about this in the context of relationship because I can be revealed to myself but let's think about it in the context of a relationship so again if I go back if I go back to me in depth
1:05:01
the the model that I like to use is kind of two columns imagine two columns on on one side is when I withhold so this is something that I'm thinking feeling wanting it could be a judgment a perception it could be any of those things it's
1:05:22
occurring over here in me and I'm withholding it from Debbie by the way usually when we withhold me personally and most of us it's because we're scared of the consequences of being revealed that's normal I'm scared that if I reveal this thought it's going to affect Debbie a certain way or what I'm really scared of is if I reveal this thought and it affects Debbie a certain way then she's going to react and that's going to affect me a certain way
1:05:54
or I think you know God we've had this conversation for it's not worth having this conversation so I withhold okay now what happens in relationships is right after I withhold I withdraw from the relationship now the first step back is subtle
1:06:11
it's just a little bit of withdrawing now the other side the other column starts with I reveal and that revealing is always risky now it's not I revealed to her like this morning we did our ritual of sitting together as we do and
1:06:30
connecting with each other and at some point Etc I'm going to reconnect with Shane today well that wasn't risky but there's almost always something that if I were to reveal to her it would feel risk like here be an example we're talking a
1:06:45
little bit about Thanksgiving and we're counting we're going to have like 16 people for Thanksgiving and then I had the thought to ask my daughter if she wanted to bring somebody she's in relationship with right now I didn't
1:06:56
know whether he was available she wrote back and said he was so I said to Deb now I got a little bit scared just a little bit scared because she's managing the dining room table got it and this is a this is an important thing for her so it's like a little pinch in my body to go God you know he's available I'd really like him to come okay now it wasn't a major risk but it was a little bit of a risk and I could feel I could withhold that
1:07:26
for another hour another day I don't have to say it right now I could slip it in later and that would be a withhold then I'd withdraw I'd be a little cautious that she might find out through my daughter or something but I just say
1:07:37
it I just risk hey he's available I'd really like him to come okay that's the risk then the next thing that happens when I withhold I withdraw when I reveal I connect so I'm either withholding and withdrawing or I'm revealing and I'm
1:07:56
connecting I'm opening myself up for connection Candor is the gateway to connection and the last thing that happens when I withhold I withdraw and then I project so let's say I have a judgment about Debbie what would be a judgment I might
1:08:14
have about Debbie a real judgment sometimes my judgment about Debbie is she doesn't make decisions soon enough like uh you know we took the Myers-Briggs years ago and she's a p you know so she she loves to have open-ended
1:08:26
optionality I'm like a j I just let the dot out of the eyes cross all the t's and make decisions which creates a wonderful dance in our relationship but we're doing some decorating our home and I said I this was yet yesterday I said I
1:08:39
said Deb um I think you're leaving this too open-ended so I would have this judgment that you don't make decisions you gotta make some darn decisions okay if I withhold that and I don't reveal my judgment of her then I withdraw I back
1:08:55
up a little bit then the next thing that happens is I project onto her my judgment as though it's right I project onto her that she's a slow decision maker and she should be different now from that place I start seeing her through the lens of being a slow decision maker and guess what I find confirming data to prove that I when I see that I withhold that I withdraw I project now I'm in the death spiral of a relationship withhold withdraw project
1:09:29
I said it to her the other day so I revealed my judgment is that you're slow in making decisions here I open myself up for connection because once I reveal myself now what I want to do is sit with her while she has her experience does she get angry does she get scared does she get sad does she react defensively I stay present and I'm available for connection so I reveal I connect and now here's the last step in this column I own my projection
1:10:05
so I look over there and I see her being slow in decision making and it's bothering me then I say let me see in my life where am I not making a decision so I eat my projection and how's it bothering me then I get insight from my projection
1:10:22
and I can share it with her or I could go the opposite way how am I addicted to making decisions without giving them the time to actually come to full maturity so now when I reveal and I connect then I get learnings that
1:10:40
I can offer back into the relationship now Integrity is full aliveness in relationships you're either withholding withdrawing and projecting professionally or personally or you're revealing you're connecting and you're owning which creates aliveness I know this because over the years the hundreds and hundreds of couples that I've caught coach whenever they're a little bored in their relationship whenever there's a little deadness whenever they're
1:11:08
starting to look outside the relationship for something else almost always I'm certain that they are not being candid with each other there's something they're not revealing because I guarantee you if you practice the
1:11:26
pillar of being revealed of speaking authentically you won't be bored in a relationship you won't be bored it might be chaotic and messy but you won't be bored so that's the second pillar am I revealed in life and of course it doesn't mean that I
1:11:42
move through life revealing to everybody I don't reveal necessarily to the Barista every thought that I have as I order my latte but when I'm in a relationship with somebody where we are co-committed as we talked about co-committer we're both going to San Francisco and we both want to practice being revealed and not concealed so we can be fully Alive then I'm in Devotion to the ritual of revealing because it's a portal to intimacy and connection
1:12:13
liveness that makes sense what does that all bring up for you wow I mean just wow I think where am I where my reaction goes is that we tell ourselves a story about somebody else and we see confirming evidence of that story and and if we don't ever bring that story to light it just becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy effectively and to your point about withdrawing the more we're telling ourselves this unchecked story this fiction right
1:12:48
because it's not it's not sort of standing the test of bringing it up but the more we tell ourselves this story The more we take a step back in a relationship whether it's friendship your partner your customers anybody co-workers colleagues
1:13:06
and that space creates an opportunity um for not only does it reduce intimacy but it creates an opportunity for somebody else to enter that relationship and because if somebody if somebody feeds you in the way that you've
1:13:22
withdrawn and now they're affirming a part of you then uh I can see how that would spiral really quickly yeah absolutely so you know if you want to go the other way I love what you said you know we make up a story about somebody
1:13:39
well a real simple hack here is just to say uh hey Shane just so you can know me over here on planet gym this is the way I did over here on planet gym this planet where it has its own view of reality its own rules its own way of
1:13:54
seeing the world I'm making up a story about you and I just want to reveal my story so you a you can know me so I won't withdraw from you and in some cases I just want to check out my story with you so so we did this actually on because
1:14:14
this podcast this is we're recording part two it'll be part one for everybody who is listening like it'll all just be seamless but we had a a hiccup in the first recording and we had to delay uh the second sort of recording and I was
1:14:29
talking about my experience and sort of like how I felt bad about this not working out I was projecting onto you and I was revealing and not concealing but walk me through that conversation again from your point of view and and how you you saw that because I was stating my uh you know I'm I guess stereotypically Canadian right I'm always like how is how is the other person feeling how do I you know make them feel better uh I want everything to
1:14:59
go right I want it to be perfect and if it doesn't go perfect then somehow I haven't done all the things within my control to do yeah I haven't done everything within my control and then we had this conversation for like 30 minutes after
1:15:16
yeah so let's revisit it we can kind of invite everybody into the conversation and I remember the details you might have to cover some of it with me but it began with you I think apologizing I'm sorry yeah I feel bad yes okay
1:15:33
and uh I said now hold on a second because we had just talked about responsibility taking responsibility and uh and I was telling myself a story right this is what triggered this memory yes you worry that it one point you said you know
1:15:56
it's your time you know like your time is valuable you know and and like I'm we're taking your time or we're wasting your time something like that so you're over here making up a story about my experience that because we were having
1:16:09
technical difficulties and we're going to need to gather back again that I was having a bad experience that I was in some way upset frustrated something like that and that you were in some way wasting my time so you made up that story and you didn't check it out you assumed it to be true and therefore you assumed I was having an experience over here now here's another really important part you assumed you were the cause of my experience
1:16:43
all right so from assuming that you were the creator of my first you assumed I was having a bad experience then you assumed that you were the cause of my bad experience and then from there you apologized and you felt bad okay that's normal human interaction yes Canadians have a you know like a PhD in that that's true but we all have a version of that the way that could have gone so you say you start with you and you might have said hey
1:17:14
I'm feeling bad over here and you could have dissected what is the exact feeling are you scared are you sad are you angry is it some combo you're having an experience over there I'm making up the story Jim that this is a bad experience for you
1:17:32
that you're in some way upset about that and the other thing I'm doing is I have this little self-blamer who thinks that I'm responsible for your experience mm-hmm okay now you're playing above the line that terminal user you're playing
1:17:50
from presence because you're revealing yourself all right now remember when we talked about 100 responsibility here's what it looks like in relationships that I'm in and I'm in a relationship with you here's what I'd say to you Shane get me
1:18:02
about this you are not the cause of my experience you're not however much we ever relate in life you are not the cause of my experience I would say this way I actually won't grant you that power I am the cause of my experience
1:18:25
you act and in this case technology acted and it stopped working yeah there was an action but you didn't cause anything over here okay that'd be the first thing I'd say so therefore you don't need to step over there and try to make me feel better as though you were the cause of it that'd be the first thing the second thing you could check out your story hey Jim I'm making up the story that this is a bad experience for you you know you're a
1:18:52
busy guy you know uh this you got a finite amount of time you know you give it and I want to check out my my story about you is this technical glitch a bad experience well if you had done that because this is what I said to you I
1:19:06
actually said you know I said to you it's not a bad experience over here at all none in fact I'm glad before we knew it wasn't going to start again I said I'm glad you know I've been expending some energy I'd like to get a drink nice
1:19:19
place for me to pause feel energetically how we're doing it's not a bad experience all over here on planet gym I'm present I'm happy so if that's the case there's absolutely no need for you to to be apologized in fact apology
1:19:34
seems like a silly thing if in fact if you want to take responsibility you could say I feel happy because the technical glitch is allowing you to take a breath pause get present and have a sip of water okay and then the other assumption was
1:19:50
you had this assumption that time is something that I have and that time is something that is scarce now there's we could go on the deep end here and that therefore you're intruding on the management of this finite resource now you might believe all those things about time I don't believe any of those things about time any of them so again we could come back to presence and you would just say hey I feel bad sad scared maybe a little bit
1:20:22
I'm making up the story that you're having a bad experience I can feel myself wanting to rescue you from having a bad experience and I just want to tell you about all that and check it out that's candor that's actually speaking authentically
1:20:38
and then I can say thank you for telling me all that now if you want to know me here's what's going on I'm having a great experience and and I don't live A busy life I just don't and time is not a scarce thing for
1:20:51
me I stopped doing that those kinds of things years ago so we'll either complete today or we won't doesn't matter to me and now we're going deeper into connection so that's that's a great example because we use it live in real time with us
1:21:07
practicing responsibility Candor and feeling feelings three of the four are right there of the pillars of integrity and I've been chewing on that conversation ever since especially the times when I catch myself uh in like a
1:21:22
host role with friends or something and I'm about to say oh I'm sorry and I'm like oh this is that thing again right like this is me projecting and giving myself uh unwarranted agency over your experience as well right like but this
1:21:39
is what we do all the time all the time only not only we do it both ways though right in one way we do it is like we assume that we're the responsibility for other people's uh experience the other assumption that we make is that we have
1:21:55
no agency over our own experience and somebody else is the reason that we're not happy or we're not uh in a good place or our days not going right or things didn't work out with blind people and we blame circumstances yes yes and
1:22:08
that's why the first pillar of Integrity is that hundred percent responsibility where you get to take your 100 just your hundred and I get to take my hundred and then from a place of co-creation we get to have our experience if we come back
1:22:26
to the idea that Integrity is aliveness there's so much more aliveness available to us when we're playing that game if you're over there feeling bad blaming yourself because you hosted a party and something didn't go exactly the way you're guilting yourself you're out of presence you're actually out of presence you're not available to your guests because you're in your own mind doing your racket or if I'm over here going you know you
1:22:59
invited me over for dinner I told you I was allergic to shellfish and you served shellfish I feel disrespected you disrespected me which you know some people would relate to the world that way okay at that point I'm out of presence
1:23:15
so if we're both out of prayer and you say oh God I feel so horrible now we're in some drama-based cycle that doesn't allow for maximum learning there's no learning available to us there other than you could say oh God I
1:23:32
forgot you know I I forgot her what do we can learn there whereas if we take responsibility and I let you have your experience and I have my experience and I have Agency for mine and you have Agency for yours then we get to learn
1:23:47
but by the way I just want to catch this because some people when I say I grant you Agency for your experience that's not it doesn't live in me as a license for me to be an it doesn't go there it doesn't say well you're responsible for your own
1:24:06
experience if you're upsetting yourself that's your problem so I'll talk to you however I want it's not that at all there's something I better be aware of underneath that so I grant you the right to be responsible
1:24:20
for your experience and I want to come toward you with you from a spirit of fill in the blank love appreciation open-heartedness so taking 100 responsibility isn't a license to be you know and uh you know to be a mean person it's not that at all
1:24:41
that makes sense and the next one sort of like feeling feelings and we've sort of touched on this a little bit um but I think you you have more you want to say on that well in my mind this is a huge one again if I understand your audience especially for many of the people who really really join you in your podcast many of them have fantastically developed IQs they've really leveraged their Thinking Center it's been key to their success their
1:25:16
ability to discern to distinguish to make decisions they're just brilliant to that absolutely brilliant at that but they're a little more cut off from their EQ from their heart space from their emotional Center and in my experience greatly cut off from their BQ their body intelligence not everybody but often Okay so a great way to cut yourself off from energetic wholeness or from aliveness is to repress or suppress feelings feelings are
1:25:53
these gifts that allow life to move out of black and white into full color feelings are just Sensations if you if you actually break it down all the feeling is is a sensation or set of Sensations in and on the body that's all they are
1:26:12
they often arise with a thought accompanying them so there's a cognitive stimuli but then there's an emotive experience that's the sensations in the body now what we find is people aren't used to being with those Sensations because if
1:26:33
you bring your full attention to the sensations let's say anger arises in your body anger usually arises as a set of it could be heat it could be tension in the jaw you know gripping in the fists it can be tension in the back of the neck the shoulders down the back on the top of that that tends to be the anger Zone so when anger shows up there's heat and the jaw Force okay all it is is a set of Sensations now there's a thought like
1:27:00
that person shouldn't have cut me off in traffic that's the stimulating thought then anger arises okay most people either Express the anger okay so that's whatever you do with your road rage or scream or do Express or they repress or suppress
1:27:23
most people don't know how to be with the anger with full attention to experience it until it releases and it releases in a fairly short period of time which is just wow my face feels hot my jaws that's my I'm gripping the
1:27:44
steering wheel so hard I could snap it into take a breath now I'm not trying to get rid of the feelings I'm just saying could I just let the body feel what it feels could I actually be so present to let all those
1:27:57
Sensations be there and then what we discover is the half-life of any set of Sensations tied to an emotion is fairly short it's minutes maybe even seconds it's not hours and days and then I'm alive the same with sadness or the same with uh
1:28:15
fear the same with joy so people repress and suppress because they didn't know how to feel their feelings most of us weren't raised by people who could say we're getting better at this with children we can say honey you look
1:28:30
like you're really angry I'll just sit here with you while you feel your anger in fact if you want to take a wiffle ball bat and go hit the couch and feel your anger and Screen dad will just sit here with you I'll just witness your anger
1:28:44
I wasn't raised with people like that so we were taught to suppress and repress and then that cuts off our full aliveness and if we want our aliveness back we have to include with our IQ our heart and feeling States now again if I
1:29:00
come back to relationships there has to be a shared commitment to feel feelings and to do it in a way that is safe and friendly for me for you and for the environment meaning our house so that's a little bit on feeling and
1:29:18
that pillar of feel your feelings all the way through to completion so as an adult though if you weren't brought up in an environment where that was okay and I read somewhere that feelings last like 60 seconds if you actually let
1:29:32
yourself feel them and you suppress them and that comes out as like passive aggression or aggression aggression in some cases right like you you suppress so much and then uh the littlest thing goes wrong and all of a sudden it's it's
1:29:45
you know ever the whole world is uh out of your way and wants to run away and and it wasn't that one thing that triggered it it's the series of all these little suppressions but if we haven't been taught how to do that how
1:29:59
do we learn to recognize the the physiological signs that okay we're having a feeling whether it's uh we're we're sad we're angry we're happy we're and then allowing ourselves to feel that is that sort of um like a pause or a ritual or something
1:30:17
that we do where we can just be like okay I I noticed these tingling Sensations I noticed that you know my blood pressure or my heart rate is beating faster I'm just gonna take a breath close my eyes and be with this sensation until it passes yes yes okay so like many of these things that you and I are talking about first I like to have people practice in a way that feels friendly and safe so let me show you what that might be
1:30:50
would you be willing to let me coach you for just a second yes oh gosh okay great does it feel friendly to you to let me we're not going to do any big thing here just we're gonna do a little thing but I want to make sure it feels friendly to
1:31:05
you yeah totally okay great so all you need to do is just take a breath okay and then just allow to come into your Consciousness a situation or a person and when that situation or that person comes into your mind you feel irritated
1:31:26
you feel a little frustrated maybe even a little bit angry and you don't have to say what it is so just okay do you have one yes totally okay beautiful great so the first thing we're going to do is I'm just going to ask you
1:31:39
to let the movie play so go ahead and see the person or persons if they're talking go ahead and hear them or if they're doing whatever they're doing go ahead great so we're actually using the mind to stimulate to bring up a feeling State
1:31:59
good so there's some irritation frustration anger here good so now we're going to move from the mind where do you feel it in your body it and this is not a big one I don't imagine unless it is which is great too where do you feel the
1:32:14
irritation frustration in your body where are you beautiful great and just so everybody can ride along here what do you feel in your jaw is it just hot cool tense like tense it's it's like not relaxed it's it's on okay working harder
1:32:33
than it should be so I feel tension hard it's on it's working okay so now here's the magic move bring your attention to your jaw now and as best you can just let the tension be there so I'm not trying to get rid of it
1:32:54
change it I'm actually just giving it a little bit of attention almost welcoming the tension oh there's tension and as you bring your attention to your jaw and you just allow the jaw to have its experience tell me what's happening is it getting
1:33:17
more intense less intense moving because away it just goes away great all right now this is exactly what we're talking about so we use a cognitive stimulant you thought of someone or something that's great we use that simply to prime the pump
1:33:42
to get the body having a feeling which is going to be Sensations now this is really important then we interrupt the thinking we stop thinking about that person and we move our attention from our thought to our sensation
1:34:01
we rest our attention on the sensation and we just watch it do what it does in your case in probably a few moments it went away now I do want to say this in some cases it'll get more intense first it'll get hotter it'll start to
1:34:23
quiver it's okay what I'm doing is just resting my attention and letting the body do its thing now what that will do is it will release that wave of feeling it'll release that okay so actually on our website and we can link
1:34:45
to this um I've recorded a meditation which is doing exactly what I just did with you I think it's like a 10 minute meditation where you can just sit and practice this with anything we can do the same thing think of something in your life that makes you sad think of something that makes you scared we stimulate it with the mind the body gets activated we bring presence awareness acceptance loving attention to the body the body
1:35:11
releases okay now here's what has so now we've got the cognitive stimuli the body reaction we interrupt the stimuli bring our attention to body the body relaxes now if I said think about that situation again good thing about it and you check does
1:35:30
the body light up again if it does you relax the body now eventually here's what we go because then you're in what we call a cognitive emotive Loop cognitive of thought emotive the body feels something this is a really
1:35:43
important thing for people to learn who want to experiment with this when you're in a stimuli the person cut me off on the road they shouldn't have cut me off the body is in anger or Scare I stopped the Mind from judging the
1:35:57
person I bring it back I let my body relax then I go up and I deconstruct the thought I have to do a work on the thought where I see my attachment to being right about my belief and it's my righteous attachment to being right that is
1:36:18
stimulating the feeling so people can spend years in a cognitive emotive Loop my father-in-law disrespected me when he walked out of last year's holiday celebration okay I could think that thought see him walking out the door I
1:36:36
could get pissed off again now here's the deal I don't complete it in my body my body lights up I don't complete it I actually use the energy in my body to fuel the thought that son of a how dare he walk out now I'm literally back in the scene
1:36:55
again yeah the body lights up some more I don't complete it in the body I use that to fuel the mind that turns into this cognitive motive Loop which you can stay in for years and to your point that turns into a mood
1:37:10
it's not a Feeling Anymore now it's not a feeling of anger it's a mood of resentment it's a mood of bitterness now it becomes a posture all because I didn't release the energy out of my body by giving it a moment of attention and I didn't deconstruct the
1:37:32
thought to become free from my righteous beliefs so you said how do you do this well before you practice with your father-in-law the next time he shows up or the somebody cuts you off in traffic just I might say for a couple of weeks just do a little morning practice couple days a week where you do just what I did with you so you get real familiar at okay yesterday I did an anger thing today I'm going to do a sad thing just think of
1:37:57
something in your life that brings up sadness see the picture really let the movie play where is sadness okay it's in the front of my chest it's in my neck it's in my eyes could I just let the sadness be or the sensation I don't make it bigger
1:38:12
till it goes do the same thing with fear do the same thing with joy and you're learning to let the body have its experience without interrupting it by the way this is something our children knew right from the beginning
1:38:28
you watch an infant they do this automatically we just had to socialize them out of it because we were afraid it would be too chaotic if everybody just kept feeling their feelings so now I have to go back and relearn how
1:38:41
to let the body have its experience okay I want to make that point about practice in a safe way then you can start to apply it in real life situations I think that's really important and it's also how a tiny sort of slight can turn into
1:38:56
and and this brings up a really interesting point I think you know we think about allow me to explain this a lot here for a second so we think about these big moments in life like marriage and what job you have and how much of an impact
1:39:14
they have on your life but it's really these the the series of these ordinary moments that accumulate uh into sort of your position right so so if if I in this case you know I get angry over my my stepfather or father-in-law or
1:39:36
whatever and I allow that to eat me I'm spending energy on this and all the energy I'm spending on this could go to something more productive something more productive for myself more productive for society more productive for this relationship at some point I have to ex like maybe I don't but if I'm going to I have to expend a lot of energy to repair this relationship so so I've now spent a lot of energy that didn't do anything for me and my
1:40:05
relationship is now in in this worse situation if I don't repair it so it's fragile right so I'm not well positioned to withstand the next sort of uh slight or a front so I'm increasingly getting into getting in a worse and worse position
1:40:21
and so I think these ordinary moments that nobody thinks about and nobody talks about and nobody teaches you how to handle turn into extraordinary results or almost like a death spiral yes and it's how you handle these moments the these
1:40:42
sort of like decisive moments if you will or whatever you want to call them that nobody's ever talked about and nobody ever teaches you but these are the moments that sort of determine your future are you getting closer to what you want are you getting further away from what you want is your trajectory improving or is your trajectory declining are you taking steps towards being the type of person you want to be or you walking away and making that
1:41:09
harder and more difficult and then if you are making it more difficult unintentionally because I don't think this happens consciously eventually the Gap becomes so large that you just bury your head in the sand so if you're you have a slight with somebody in a relationship context whether it's your partner your kids you know somebody at work somebody driving it doesn't matter but you don't repair this you don't get it back to equilibrium
1:41:38
then you're in this spot where things just go wrong right and they start going wrong in other areas of your life and I I think we just don't think about these ordinary moments because we all put all this effort into who you marry
1:41:55
and what job you take and we're taught to be rational about these decisions but it's sort of like it's almost like a micro um these these micro moments have more of an impact on your life than that in a lot of ways because you know if I I
1:42:10
might pick the right spouse but if I don't turn these ordinary moments into extraordinary outcomes it doesn't matter like that whole choice is like a multiply by zero I can pick the perfect person but these ordinary moments are what
1:42:26
makes that relationship amazing or terrible what's your reaction to this well people are just listening unless they're watching I have a huge smile on my face and my heart feels like I just want to go because it's such a
1:42:48
profound Insight that it's a million little moments that I didn't handle it's not that I didn't have the slight it's not that it's not about creating a life free from slight to use that word it's that I didn't know what to do with
1:43:13
the slight or I just handled the slights the way I my personality automatically handles slights and then one slight became a whole accumulation and it could be in an intimate partner it could be with my business partner and then you
1:43:31
have these dozens and dozens of little slights that slowly over time corrode the partnership the connection the intimacy and now this is where we're back to Integrity being wholeness and aliveness now all of a sudden I'm not fully alive I'm sleepwalking my way through life now I I want to grab one more thing that you said you went like you know okay so now I've got this disrupted relationship with my stepfather and my father-in-law okay
1:44:03
it's taken a ton of energy to get to this place because I had these slights these resentments and you know I've repressed it suppressed it I've held a position and now it's going to take a ton of energy to fix it now what do I do I do want to say
1:44:21
something there are two Dimensions to repairing that relationship one is literally repairing it with the other person but there's a repair that can occur that doesn't require or even need to involve the other person
1:44:44
that's incredibly important because I don't need the other person to cooperate and to be co-committed to repairing our relationship for me to repair myself on the inside so that I'm free and again if we did there are many other tools we could use but we'll just stay with these four pillars I don't need the other person to do anything for me to claim agency and stop living in victimhood I can take responsibility I don't need the other person to be
1:45:23
involved for me to feel my feelings all the way through to completion I don't need the other person to be involved for me to bring up all of my thoughts judgments and reveal them I don't even need to reveal them to the person I've learned over the years if you pick a surrogate and reveal them to the surrogate you will experience the liberation of candor so you can repair meaningfully just by yourself then from a repaired place you can decide do I
1:45:57
want to have a relationship with my stepfather not the answer might be no but here's the deal if I say no to having a relationship with him I still get to be alive on the inside my wholeness isn't damaged I've done my work
1:46:16
and then we can decide if we want to repair the relationship but that's going to take a co-commitment to repairing the relationship so here's the like I I like this uh when you talk about deciding it's so interesting because that
1:46:34
implies you've you've thought of this as a decision and what we're talking about with these ordinary moments like if somebody were to tap you on your shoulder as you're having an argument with your partner at home
1:46:48
and said you're making a choice in this moment to escalate or de-escalate the situation your rational brain would sort of kick in and be like I don't want to do this it's not worth it I don't even know what I'm upset about I'm just reacting
1:47:04
without responding I'm an animal right this is what we are we're animals we're reacting without reasoning which is what animals do other than humans and if somebody were to tap you you'd be like yeah I'm opting out and both
1:47:18
Partners or both parties in in this sort of situation would opt out right everybody would see what's going on and their ability to think rationally would kick in and when you think about decision making it's so fascinating to me because
1:47:30
we have a gazillion books on decision making and they all imply that we're not rational right if only you were more rational you would make better decisions but I think as we're talking about this and we're sort of working this out a bit in public
1:47:48
here it's not that we're not rational it's that we don't even know that these ordinary moments are decision points that again make the future easier or harder move us towards who we want to be or who we don't want to be
1:48:03
and they sort of aggregate over the period of our relationship yes so so how do we interrupt the pattern when it's occurring because like how do we metaphorically tap ourselves on the shoulder that's you know you said what if somebody tapped you on the shoulder you'd go hold on man let me take a breath yeah this is crazy what I'm doing how do we do that okay again that tap on the shoulder that Interruption that pause doesn't occur naturally
1:48:36
we have to train for the pause so again we I touched on this a little bit at the beginning I believe so let's let's go back to the intimate partnership so you have this fight you both get into your pattern you know you're going down that pattern you've been to a million times before okay the next day or a week later on your next date night you say hey would you be willing to have a conversation with me where we can take a look at the pattern
1:49:06
we're not going to review the content of last Tuesday night's fight content just the content changes actually we recycle the same content all the time but the content can change can we look below the content can we see what we do so now we're doing a
1:49:23
post-mortem we're deconstructing now the way we do that is I take responsibility for looking at my pattern you take responsibility for looking at your pattern we look at the third pattern which is the pattern of the relationship
1:49:36
okay so we start to get some awareness then like I said last time we have one of these conversations where we say hey I want to play a different game with you I really do and I want to check would you be willing to play a different game and the game I want to play is I just want to begin to end blaming criticism I want to value responsibility and curiosity I want to start to Value appreciation over in time I just want to play a different game
1:50:03
okay so now we have started to learn our patterns we've co-committed to a different game okay now it's the next Tuesday night and we're back in the fight all right in my experience most people still won't tap themselves on the
1:50:19
shoulder in the midst of the fight because it's the pattern is there again and we're in the grip of the pattern that's great but now on Wednesday morning when I'm having a little bit of meditation or I'm doing my journaling I
1:50:32
say oh I did it again hey honey I said I was gonna shift out of blame I was in blame and criticism I want to back up okay so now I'm learning after the event okay the next time I learn an hour later the next time in the midst of the event
1:50:51
and this is you know what we've done in the world is we created all kinds of tools that you actually use real time like the drama triangle you put it on the floor and you say we're in it we're in our pattern let's exaggerate it and
1:51:05
make it bigger by getting in the drama triangle so now we're doing it real time and then eventually we can start to feel the stimuli come up and we can interrupt that with a different breath pattern something like that so we're training
1:51:19
training training so that and that's in my experience the way we do this in relationships I think that's super powerful are there other tools you mentioned the drama triangle what do you do in the moment what are the what's
1:51:31
another tool that's really effective in the moment where you said you have a physical sort of like these cards or whatever it was that you put on the table uh to to get people out of this what are the other things in the moment we can
1:51:45
use or one other tool that's really effective okay moment when you're in the midst of the conflict by the way you have to pre-decided that we're gonna shift so like in our relationship either of us can call the game whenever we want
1:52:05
either of us can it's like we have a card we can play which says we're gonna stop this conversation and we're gonna do something different now that's just an agreement that we have a lot of teams that we work with have this agreement
1:52:19
okay now when I call the game real time we've pre-decided we're going to do this here's a couple of on-the-fly shift moves first of all we're going to do some conscious breathing because we are animals and when we are
1:52:34
triggered there is a blood and brain chemistry that is running the show so the first thing I have to do is I have to deal with my blood and brain chemistry otherwise I'm just going to stay in fight flight freeze faint
1:52:48
reactivity so it might be we're gonna do uh 478 breathing or we'll do um four by four breathing or just for 30 seconds or a minute we have like seven different breeding techniques that we're just going to bring our attention away from the conflict and to
1:53:07
our breath okay now that changes my blood and brain chemistry the next shift move to do in the midst of conflict is to say hey I stopped listening to you 15 minutes ago you said these words and I got reactive now that I've come back to a stable blood and brain chemistry I want to recommit to listening to you so I'm going to practice conscious listening Debbie and I we don't get in drama Much Anymore hardly ever maybe never but when we used to
1:53:45
one of us would say sweetheart I stop listen to you you know like a day ago I just wanted to argue with you and prove I was right so I'm going to back up I want to deeply listen to you would you tell me again what it is you're saying
1:54:00
and then we just use conscious listening techniques where I might say what I hear you saying is that right is there more and then I might drop into my heart and say God when I hear you say it I imagine you feel scared and then I drop into my
1:54:13
belly and I might say it sounds like what you really want is this and my whole purpose is to get her so interrupt change breathing choose conscious listening the drama Triangle really is Big that's carpent straw I'm a triangle we have plastic cards well here hi plastic cards now people who look at this on YouTube would see I'm holding off my plastic cards they're in my office I have them in my bedroom they're in our kitchen there are three cards
1:54:40
that say victim villain and hero we throw these down on the floor we start a timer for two minutes and here's the key you exaggerate the fight you don't stop the fight but you stand on the bases and you make the fight bigger you know Diana
1:54:58
Chapman you've had her on and Diana is my partner at CLG she is world class at turning drama into play and I've learned so much from her and the drama triangle is one way to by the way kids love the drama triangle too so that would be
1:55:15
another one and then yeah I'll give you one more little shift move which is incredibly useful and that is okay let's separate fact from story here we're having this conversation about money let's deconstruct what are the facts unarguable video camera would record unarguable facts and what are the stories we're making up about the facts because here's what you learn facts never cause drama stories cause drama and then you learn
1:55:49
that you are the source of your stories and that your drama is caused because you're wanting to be right about your stories prove you're right and make the other person wrong so gemini or Diana and Eric and I my business partners we
1:56:03
do this all the time we'll differentiate fact from stories the facts are these let's just write them on a whiteboard put them up now let's all tell each other all the stories we're making up and that distinction between fact and
1:56:18
story relaxes us and brings us back to responsibility because I'm making up a story by the way you'll make up stories based on your ego structure your personality things like that so those are four shift moves breathe conscious
1:56:36
listen drama triangle and differentiate fact from story some of them are instant shift moves and some of them are practices that can start to create a different Dynamic about how we're being in relationship that's so powerful thank
1:56:53
you for sharing that with us I I want to come I'm not losing sight of this I know we're going down a lot of rabbit holes here and a lot of uh asides I think it's incredible I want to come back to sort of the fourth pillar of Integrity which is being impeccable with your agreements what does that mean so in agreement let's just start there an agreement is anything I've said I would do or wouldn't do that's an agreement and an
1:57:19
agreement I can make agreements with myself I make an agreement with myself to work out every morning at whatever time something like that but agreements often exist between two or more people so an agreement is anything I've said I would
1:57:31
do or wouldn't do and an agreement involves who's going to do what by when so a lot of drama in life is cause because we have unclear and unkept agreements just think about it so much drama is caused so much energy
1:57:50
is wasted you're in a team meeting you say I thought you said you'd give me that report by five o'clock and the person says no no I said be next Tuesday or the truth of the mayor is we never said when it would be so I just assumed
1:58:02
it would be five o'clock and I thought the scope of the report would be this and you thought the scope of the report would be that and so we're just wasting massive amounts of energy with unclear agreement so the first key to being
1:58:16
impeccable with your agreements is make clear agreements who is going to do what by when so simple so like you and I had an agreement we would get on our call today at 11 o'clock Central Time okay who you and me gonna do what be on our call 11 o'clock Central Time about it now in this case because of the way you and I are relating I actually trust you to keep your agreement because every time I've made an agreement with you you keep it now there
1:58:50
are people in my world who don't keep their agreement so I handle them differently but with you I relax I don't need to follow up ahead of time I don't need to send you a reminder I just go ah I can relax I'll keep my agreement so
1:59:04
about 10 55 this morning I opened up the email that you'd sent me I got ready I clicked on the Google meet thing okay I click on Google meet I get it's all up on my screen 11 o'clock I notice you're not here now this is really important in my mind
1:59:24
this is so important because I trust you around agreements I go something's going on because I trust him to keep his agreements so I text you and I say I'm here on Google ready for you you text me immediately back and you say
1:59:45
not Google zen caster no drama then you send me the link bang we're on zencaster okay now if I were being perfectly impeccable with you I would I so let me back up there are four keys to be impeccable with grievance make clear
2:00:04
agreements who's going to do what by when by the way there's a really important aside here which would open up a whole discussion I'm just going to say it and we probably won't open up the whole discussion only make agreements you have
2:00:17
a whole body yes to step one make clear agreement you have a whole body has to step two keep your agreements so as I watch people and as I coach people and watch teams over the years when people and teams get aligned
2:00:31
to be impeccable with agreements they start keeping about 90 percent of their agreements now when you go in and you look at a relationship or a team that's working together and you say what percentage of agreements do you guys
2:00:43
keep with each other usually it's time in the 30 to 40 range and I just want I then know how much energy they're wasting on explaining justifying critic criticizing rework missed opportunities so one make clear agreement you have a
2:01:01
whole body has to two keep your agreements three as soon as you know you're not going to keep an agreement let the other party know and renegotiate so let's imagine that this morning at uh or let's imagine yes afternoon I realize
2:01:18
ah something's come up uh you know I would like to renegotiate our start time from 11 to 11 30. as soon as I know I reach out to you and I say Shane we have an agreement to meet at 11 o'clock I would like to renegotiate our agreement
2:01:32
to 11 30. now that's not a unilateral announcement it's a bilateral relationship are you available to that you say sure no problem we renegotiate so trust doesn't get ruptured now if I'm renegotiating 80 of my agreements you
2:01:51
won't find me trustworthy but if I'm periodically renegotiating you'll find me trustworthy you'll count on me and then the fourth thing is if I break an agreement technically I broke our agreement today because I don't think I
2:02:04
was on zencaster to like 1101 or 1102. this is really important to me because Tom Peters years ago had that great quote there's no such thing as a small breach of integrity well there are different consequences
2:02:19
for integrity breaches but energetically there's no difference so I was out of Integrity so I get on with you at 1101 and I clean it up I just said hey man we said we had an agreement to be here at 11. I was here at 1101 I take responsibility I didn't
2:02:34
pay attention to Zen Caster I went to Google meet now here's the key I just want to know if that affects our trust at all I imagine you'd say no big deal but if I did that all the time if I was always 15 minutes late we'd have a trust problem so what we find is energy goes up dramatically when I make clear agreements I have a whole body yes with when I keep 90 of them when I renegotiate ahead of time and when I clean up broken agreements without
2:03:07
making excuses justifications or rationalizations I just take responsibility what happens is my aliveness goes up and our trust goes deep a major reason trust is where it is in many relationships is because we're not impeccable with our agreements I I
2:03:28
love this concept I want to dive a little deeper at something you said at the start here which is you handle people who you don't know if they can keep their agreements I think you use the word untrustworthy in a different
2:03:39
way and I'm curious as to what that is because I know for many people myself included there are people in your life who are chronically late and it really it's one of the few things that drives me crazy for some I don't
2:03:57
even know why right I've often like tried to think about why does this bother me and I think it does come to the agreement right like we made an agreement I'm here upholding my end of this agreement and it's also been a source where I've
2:04:10
chosen to let people out of my life because of their un inability I guess to keep their agreement especially in this if you're chronically late and it drives me crazy like I just don't want any part of that because I'm sitting there you know so I had this one person years ago where I would actually tell him that we were meeting a half hour before we were actually meeting and one time he showed up and it was hilarious because he showed up five
2:04:40
minutes before I got there and uh he was like I thought you said we were meeting at like 6 30 and it's like 6 55 and I had said 6 30 because I knew he'd be there at seven and I was like yeah I mean like I just I just thought you'd be late and so I planned around it and he's like how long have you been doing this and I've been like years and it really it opened his eyes too right into this this sort of he's like I I didn't and I was like because
2:05:10
otherwise I'm sitting here for a half hour like that's not fair you're breaking the agreement at the time that we had planned right yeah so I'm curious as to how you handle these okay beautiful so they're basically three things you can do with
2:05:24
people who don't keep their agreements let's just say around time but it could be around anything with people who aren't impeccable around agreements by the way the place to always start is starting your own business
2:05:35
how am I being with agreements get clear about what my commitment is so my commitment is to be impeccable with all of my agreements not because it's the right way to live not because there's some moral code or ethical thing
2:05:49
because I want more aliveness and more energy I just don't want to invest my life in the drama of being unimpeckable okay that's where I started good here are three things you can do let me let me I could illustrate with a couple of a casual one and then a
2:06:02
meaningfully important one So like um I get I used to he's gone now but the person right around the corner I'm in downtown Chicago now the person right around the corner cut my hair and so I went to him and I formed a relationship
2:06:13
with him and uh you know I started noticing I'd show up to get my hair cut at 11 o'clock or whatever it was and he you know after two or three times I noticed he shows up at like 11 10 11 15 it says okay I'm ready for you
2:06:27
so I go great no problem so I sit down in the chair and I said to him let's say his name was Ben or whatever it is I say Ben it's going to sound a little weird to you I imagine but the way I like to live my life is I like to make agreements around time and then keep them it just found that it works really easy for me in life and so it's the way I want to live my life it's not the way everybody wants to live a life might not
2:06:51
be the way you want to live your life perfect you get to live your life however you want but when we're in relationship together I wonder if you'd be willing to keep your agreements with me around time so if we have an 11 o'clock appointment I'd
2:07:05
like to be seated and ready to go at 11 o'clock now you notice there was no there's not a lot of judgment or criticism he gets to live his life however he wants you know and I and he's so much better than what I do well
2:07:18
he thought about it a little bit and he said yeah and I think I remember like six months later there was a time I had let's say metaphorically an 11 o'clock appointment I get a text from the person who works at the front desk saying he's
2:07:36
running 10 minutes late I thought I never even talked to you about renegotiating agreements he's renegotiated I show up I say Ben thank you so much okay I'm illustrating this because option number one you can talk to people in your life and
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you can invite them not from a harsh judgmental time cop place but from a place of presence in our relationship would you be willing to play this game with me now I found loads of people who want to do that you know I've coached a lot of you know meaningfully high-powered CEOs some of whom are notorious for being late well I remember I was in it the first time I had an experience with this one CEO you know a fairly common household name I'm
2:08:24
in the meeting room his whole senior team is there he walks in he sits on his cherries about 10 minutes late now we'd already contracted to coach and he wanted feedback so he starts to meet and I haven't been working on their computer so I get there
2:08:36
and I said hey before we get started I just want to clear something with you we had an agreement to start at 11 o'clock we were all here you weren't here those are the facts there was an agreement a video camera would record
2:08:48
so I notice I feel angry and I want to use that anger to get into right relationship with you and I want to ask if you'd be willing to keep your agreements with me around time and then I said and I wonder if this is a pattern for you at which point his whole team is laughing because the way they actually ran their lives were will show up but the meeting never starts till he shows up and then you know now we start he shows up 10 to 15 minutes
2:09:20
now I start to now we've just got a show going on he looks at me pauses and goes it was really great because he got present he said I will do that with you now I still coach this guy this is like six seven years later he's impeccable with his agreements with me okay so we can ask people to get in the right relationship with us that's option number one question number two this happened with one of our kids uh one of our kids is notorious for not
2:09:50
keeping time agreements I mean he just he's just full of life and there's always one more fun thing to do and we were he at that point lived out in Newport California and I was out there doing a workshop or something and we
2:10:03
were going to meet for dinner and uh he showed up now here's what I I talked to him a couple of times about it and I said Hey listen here's the deal I want to be in relationship with you I do and I don't want to be in drama in my
2:10:20
own mind about whether you're going to keep your agreements around time so I'm gonna count on you I'm gonna trust you to not keep your agreements around time notice where I said that I'm gonna trust you to be you
2:10:38
I'm going to show up taking care of myself so because I like to keep my agreements if we're going to meet at seven I'll still be there at 7 but I'll bring a book or I'll listen to music or I'll listen to podcasts I'll just admit it doesn't
2:10:51
matter but I won't be sitting there going where is he because I trust you to not be there on time no drama now I did say sometimes if it goes a particular length of time I might choose to leave because I didn't want to sit there any
2:11:10
longer and I'll give you a heads up that I'm leaving now this is option two stay in relationship with people who don't keep their agreements but don't suffer this is the key suffering is optional on my part and one way to suffer is to
2:11:29
think that they should be different or that they're going to be different that's a formula for suffering it's a way I could destroy my relationship with him instead I just trust you to be who you are keeping your agreements around
2:11:43
time isn't important to you great I still want to be in relationship with you that's option two option three is the one that you mentioned which is oh many times in my life after having the conversation hey again just over and
2:12:00
I always say something like this over there on planet gym I just like to keep my agreements around time and especially people in my inner world I populate my life with people who keep their agreements it doesn't look like
2:12:17
that's the way you want to live your life with me as evidenced by the results so I want to ask you would you be willing oftentimes they will say yes and then what I basically do is after the third time of them not keeping their agreement
2:12:32
I say listen I hear that you want to keep your agreements but you're unwilling to keep your agreements as evidenced by the results so I'm going to go ahead and end our relationship I still value you like you love you I still think you do great work or whatever it is I'm not blaming you for what's occurring I'm just saying I'm gonna choose to be in a different kind of relationship with you now so option one invite people into co-commitment
2:13:03
around option two trust them to not keep their agreements and take care of yourself option three end the relationship from presence you don't end the relationship by saying you know what you're a real selfish ass you know you're disrespectful
2:13:23
now I'm ending the relationship from the drama triangle and it won't feel complete inside of me so this whole deal on how to end relationships from presence or we call complete a relationship versus quit a relationship
2:13:38
so those are three options of what to do does that make sense yeah totally what it brings to mind in a way you're you're taking agency over leaving in sort of the end one right where it's like I'm choosing to leave this relationship because you can't keep your agreements this brings to mind the conversation I had with Alan malali on episode 151. and how his working together system worked and if you weren't on board with that system
2:14:11
how he handled that and the way that he handled that was super interesting because he would go to you and say like we've agreed that this is we've had an agreement this is how we're going to work together you're choosing
2:14:23
not to follow that agreement which means you're choosing your choosing not to be a part of this relationship any longer you're choosing not to be uh in sync with the team you're choosing not to work with us go home think about it and if you come back
2:14:39
tomorrow and that's we love you we're still going to love you but you're choosing not to work here it's beautiful and I thought it was a very powerful sort of framing because it's like you're making a choice but they often going
2:14:52
back to what we said earlier we don't recognize we're making a choice so sometimes this is like that metaphorical tap on the shoulder and you're going to them and you're saying by breaking our agreements you're choosing not to be in a
2:15:05
relationship with me and you're checking right because you're sort of surfacing this and you're saying I'm I'm this is what's happening and this is what will happen so this is like your last sort of like warning if you will or whatever and what happens from this moment on is completely within your control but I'm going to tap this shoulder and I'm going to let you know the impact that it's having on me and the fact that you're choosing not to
2:15:29
work with me if you continue to do this you're choosing not to be in a relationship with me because if you want to be in a relationship with me you need to be 90 impeccable with your agreement God it's so beautifully empowering laughs
2:15:45
and it sort of takes the blame or the blame is the wrong word but the agency off you because you're not really doing anything you're you're you're just sort of like why do I have to end this no this person's ending this relationship I'm
2:16:00
just the one who's gonna tap them on the shoulder and tell them that as a result of their behavior if it continues this is the path that we're walking I'll still love you I still think you're a great person but this is a type of agreement that I can't uh you know that we have that we need and with your son you can you can walk away from certain things right and be like I know you're gonna be you right but there's certain things that
2:16:24
probably if you were to violate those it'd be like okay well you're choosing that we're gonna have a different relationship from this point hold on and we all have these relationships in our life and to your point about energy they consume so much energy because they're constantly in our thoughts right even when you're booking a meeting with these people like they're like all these people with the CEO you were talking about
2:16:45
they're probably like laughing right in their head because they book a meeting and they're like he's not going to show up for 15 20 minutes um right and so it becomes a joke too and when it becomes a joke it also takes
2:16:57
on this power and it causes resentment and it causes passive aggression and over years it wears on you to the point where you start acting differently behaving differently right and then at work you're not fully present work becomes a job instead of
2:17:13
something where you're all in and you're committed because you don't feel like you can be all in with somebody who's violating or or not maintaining their agreements with you who's not showing you respect by keeping their time so how
2:17:26
can I go all in for this person I'm not going to go all in for them I'm going to work nine to five and I'm going to do my job and I might do it really well but you're never going to get that 5x or 10x performance because you're never going
2:17:36
to get that all-in attitude that you need to get that oh God that's good I'm reminded one of my favorite quotes Bob mentioned gay Hendricks before one of my favorite quotes by gay because it's such a profound statement and then you can
2:17:48
test whether it's true for you all drama in relationships if we just start with that all drama in relationships is caused by unaligned commitments and or unclear and unkept agreements so remember at the beginning we talked
2:18:07
about commitments are a big idea about what you're aiming for in life it's the San Francisco okay so it's like I imagine you know you and I have only met this way but if we were going to become friends and really good friends I think we would have a
2:18:22
conversation which looks like hey I commit to take responsibility I commit to uh be responsible for myself and let you be responsible for yourself and you'd say yes same thing so now we're co-committed so now if we do that
2:18:38
thing where you apologize and think you know it was a bad situation I'd say hold on a sec we may we co-committed let's back up great we back up we commit to be candid so we're really revealing our judgments and opinions about each other
2:18:50
we do it so we're co-committed drama occurs when we're not both going to San Francisco one's going to San Francisco one's going to us okay and then the second thing is exactly what you were pointing at we don't have clear
2:19:03
agreements and we don't keep them so all drama comes because we didn't get aligned on where we're going and we're not impeccable with our agreements and I really offer to you and to others test that almost all drama is caused by one of those two things there are other things that get implicated in it but those are really big ones I think that's such a powerful concept Jim I could talk to you forever I think this is a good place to end this
2:19:30
particular conversation because we've we've hit on the four pillars of Integrity I know if we go into another topic we're going to be here another two hours and I'm conscious of not mixing these things into I think
2:19:45
this is a great this is one of the best episodes we've ever recorded I really appreciate it I just I love co-creating with you it's really fun it's like there's a you know it's a one plus one equals four experience for me I just love it so thank you