4 - Healthy/Unhealthy Ways to Belong and Matter (Part 2)

We got spirit and I know you feel it. There's no give up, give up, give up, give up and I know you. Welcome to the Living With Heart Podcasts with Dr. Chip Don. Good morning Dr. Chip Don. Hello, Brian. How are you? Great and great to see you. Great to be together. When we start this thing, the first thing we do before we sit down and do the task, I just need to check in a little bit. If you with me, you're good, I'm good. Are we good? Because if I don't have that safety, I don't mean insecure safety, but making sure you're ready, I'm ready and we're together. That to me seals it and I'm ready to roll. So I'm glad we're here. I'm glad to be here too. This is the pretty much the one week anniversary of us going live. Did you know that? Like we started, we started publishing the podcast a week ago and we will be if unless something catastrophic happens by the end of today, we will be at over a thousand downloads. That is great. That's good. I don't know. I have no idea what's better than that. I'm happy with it. It seems so much better than 721. Right. Exactly. We were in the marker. I looked right before we started recording. We were at 980. So in the past week. That's great. It's not so much that we're looking at the numbers, but we're looking at the reach. I promise anyone who's listening, I love numbers, of course, in terms of like because it means spreading, but one person gets it. That means that possibly another hundred get it. It is interesting what it is. It is interesting what numbers the way they've been distorted in the social media age because you almost like if somebody doesn't have 50,000 followers, you're like, what are you even doing? You take a thousand people and you put them in a room and you're like, that's a lot of people. Not just in terms of who's in the room, but also the spheres of influence they've been entrusted with is exponential as far as impact and growth also. I wanted to tell you that I was looking at where people have listened. We have had much probably not to your surprise. The vast majority of our listeners have been in the United States. The number one state listening is Tennessee. The number two is Colorado. Oh, I love that. It happens to be your old home. My old home actually was funny. Yesterday I heard from four different random people in Colorado who just texted me and actually one guy called and left me a voicemail, which is sort of a for an ancient art to say. For me, for me, yeah, you leave voicemails. I don't leave as many voicemails. I don't listen to them. You've ever heard the rule of calling people today. Basically, it's only permissible to call if somebody is on the brink of death and anything else is attached. So that's why if you hear a pixel, it's like, are you okay? Yeah, exactly. That's what's happening. Yeah, exactly. So Colorado is in Tennessee. Number one, Colorado is number two, but we have had five downloads in Japan, five downloads in Latvia, three downloads in Denmark, two downloads in Brazil, and one download in Jamaica. So shout out to our Latvian audience, whoever that is. I tell you, when Sonia and I, she was the huge impetus for this, we did the Jesse tree in Advent. And it was out for like a week and then two weeks and there was only a two week window to get it out. And it was in 50 countries. And so Latvia was one of the Denmark, Latvia, Romania, Northern Europe, and then it went east and south. Middle East Africa. Yeah. So thanks so much for listening. Okay. We're in the second part of our conversation about the need to belong and matter so to kind of set the framework of our conversation. We're talking about how we're made, how we're born, the way that God makes us is not a mistake. Now we're talking about being born as being needy. And our last episode we talked about the need, the foundational need to belong and matter. And here's the way we ended that episode to give context of where we're going. And I actually have no idea where we're going other than this topic, which I kind of like it that way. People might think that we spend like an hour talking about what we're going to it's like we talk for five minutes on the front end, which is mostly checking in in terms of how our families are doing and making sure we're good with each other. And so this is this is jazz as we've. Good thing though is as musicians, you know, I've had music in my head and heart for years. And I've been playing a long time. So we're ready. Right. I mean, we're prepared. Yeah, I mean, it was funny yesterday. I'll just say that's and then we'll we'll dive in. But I was asked fairly last minute to do a seven hour training on emotions with my good friend Cliff Roth, who I met because of you. Yeah, there's champions path cohort. And on the front end, I was just like pretty scared of doing something like that last minute. And would there be sufficient content. And of course, we went long. Isn't that amazing? Yeah. There's so much right there's so much to this right. Okay, so we're talking about the need to belong and matter. We'll call this part two. We'll see if we need to do a part three or not. But here's what you said at the end of this. Okay, to set you up and to you up and then we'll just go. You said the need to belong and matter, your powerless over it, the only choices, whether you'll have that need met in legitimate or illegitimate ways. You also said this and I thought this would be an interesting place to start. If you raise in a world that confirms and affirms your neediness is acceptable, then the likelihood that you have your need to belong and matter in a legitimate manner is far more likely. Much higher probability. Yeah, higher probability. We'll just call it stay on your journey in an authentic way. We'll just call it that for today. So what by the way, that means that you will be able to use your thinking processes to say what's happening in your heart and it's authentic. You'll be able to attach to others who can do the same or you can reach towards others who can't and offer it to them service. And then you're also connected to God. That's that you're authentically on the journey and the probability goes up if your needs are met by you being yourself, that connection creates the fullness, which actually creates the gratitude. You can trust that which is outside of you in some people and God and gratitude comes from the outside. So you have security, you have confidence, you have a sense of competence and you have courage. You have courage to stay in life. You know what I mean, for this quote you just gave from from the last episode I gave it from the last episode, but it's you. You said if you were raised in a world that confirms and affirms your neediness is acceptable, let's start with the inverse because that's probably easier I would think maybe. Well, we'll start anyway. It's like the opposite. Yeah, like what what is it look like to be raised in an environment where neediness is intolerable or unacceptable. That's great. So the two of the many needs that we have and they're really it's limited. They're really no more than 20 and in the book the needs of the heart was I think I've got 16. And remember these are just primary just like the voice of the heart just primary colors of how we're made. The two primary needs of all the needs the need to belong and the need to matter. The need to belong is being accepted for how I am created. And the need to matter is to be appreciated for what I bring specifically and uniquely to how I'm created. Right. Some people have a proclivity towards music. Some people towards coordination. Some people towards an interest. Some people towards like can see structures and see how they go together quickly easily. Some people are able to sit in wonder and ponder and they're already in the stars and they're painting within visible ink sort of dreams and then living them out. So I mean everybody brings believe or not everybody brings a point 0.01% uniqueness to life that Psalm 139 talks about how I'm knitted together and my mother's womb knitted together in the secret places. And I made very specifically and uniquely a treasure to the one who knitted me together. And so that 0.01% is our presentation of what we're able and made and geared towards. Okay. So neediness naturally reaches out and it's reaching out to be connected towards someone reaching back. Okay. And like you know if you're in a cave in and you're you're peeling the rocks from the inside of the cave in moving what you can and you're reaching out towards the oxygen, the rescue, the connection. And you are powerless really over this hunger to live the hunger to get out the hunger to to to find what you're made to have again to get back into connection in place. And you also have the threat that if you don't get out the darkness will overcome you and the oxygen will deprive you of breathing. And if even if your your will is against your being alive, the cells of your life. about being alive, whether you like it or not. If you go out to drown yourself in a lake and you've willed yourself towards it, your lungs are going to protest when you suck the water into your lungs. Your lungs are going to go not today. No, this is a wrong idea. So the need to belong, we reach out. The need to matter. We're bringing who we are, how we're needed together. We're looking for two things. Affirmation and confirmation. Simple. I mean, it's so simple, it's scary. It's kind of garden, which we are told we need to graduate from quickly and many metaphorical ways and literally. And so when we reach out for affirmation, affirmation is saying yes. And confirmation is doubling, doubling it. Yes, yes. In other words, tomorrow you'll get the same. Right. And it doesn't mean you never say no, because those are the guardrails that keep us on the journey of being authentic. No is a guardrail. But yes, is this is the way walking it ancient paths, which we'll touch on. And so we can't help but bring that to life. And when we're affirmed for how we're made, we become congruent. In other words, we don't have to run from or suppress or push away how we're made. Now, we're so created for relationship. And this is the stepping into the real question you just asked. We're so created for relationship. We have to have it one way or another. Either we're going to have it as we're created or we're going to have to take over and try to become someone we're not so that we can receive the smile, the approval, the affirmation, the confirmation, the connection, which gives us all the other needs get met through that. But it starts with belonging and mattering. They're so powerful, like it's cellular. It doesn't matter what you do to try to stop it. Everything in you is geared towards it. It's almost like stopping your own heartbeat. That's just like not not a coordinated effort to do. So when your need to belong and matters not met as you're created, you find another way to do it. And I was thinking when we were talking about doing this, I remembered last night that when I was in Dallas, I had a practice in Dallas from it was '89 to '95 when moved here. I was a clinical director for a counseling center. We started out there with Kathy Gohler. And a couple of people would come in from a Bill Glass ministry, a prison ministry. And his guy found Jesus in prison. And so I'm working with him and working with his wife and so on. And he was actually a true safe cracker. I mean, he had the gift of being able to hear sounds, no clicks, and no how to see through walls. Oh, you said like safe, like somebody who cracks a safe. Like Bakeropper. I see. Oh, yeah, I see what you're saying. And he would, he could open the vaults. So they took him everywhere. Now he was raised in an orphanage. He told stories about being out in the potato fields and being beaten up by other orphans, talked about the horror of the darkness, aloneness, that the people who were overseeing them were, let's just say, disciplinarians, end of story. And it's almost like it was not a safe place. Your needs would be met if you survived. It wasn't about thriving, but it was about surviving. And that's what happens. The need to belong and the need to matter is going through affirmation and confirmation. Open me up to thriving or push me towards surviving. But either way, I'm going. I've got to. I've got to. And so he got in with this certain crowd. They affirmed him, confirmed him. This is why gangs work. Like they give you what you're missing. They address your loneliness. They address your fear. They give you a place to belong and they give you a place to matter. Substitute for family. So what he was looking for when when when stealing other people's money, he's looking for the experience of mattering. Man, they love his kids. Oh, you meant like he's a literal safe cracker. Yes. Oh, that's funny. I thought you were almost. I don't know if this is my own ignorance. I thought you were almost speaking metaphorically of a guy who like understood they rob banks and went to prison. So you're talking in real life. These are he. He was the guy who cracked the safe when they robbed a bank. Yeah, also worked with a guy who was one of them like was like you know the what was it? The cat, cat burglar, the thief cat. He was he was broke into places like the mission and possible stuff and he was he was still jewels. Oh, okay. Well, like museums. I mean, these were extraordinary talented people. Right. Yeah, yeah. But they're criminals. Right. But they were using illegitimate means to get legitimate needs that doesn't make it right. It does make it wrong. But at the same time, I'm asking us to hear not just understand, but the face that we are powerless over how we're created. Either we face it and deal with it authentically or we will go over the guard rails off track. Ultimately to our own self-destruction while we are getting our needs met in a counterfeit way. This guy got his needs met. He was prestigious. He was sought after. He was significant. He was known. He was connected. People came to get him. He was paid handsomely. He had security. Had a place. Had a people he could trust. Yeah, like relational intimacy of something that dangerous together, a sense of mission, a sense of cause. Yeah. And so he was getting his needs met in illegitimate ways. An affair tragically is an illegitimate way to get legitimate needs met. I'm talking about relational affairs, sexual affairs. Right. Affairs have many, many names. They're not always sexual. You can have an affair with money. And betray your family over money or power or the fear of not being connected. Yeah. More and more story, man. I was working with, and this is truth everybody, from people who have mental acumen of a newt, all the way to the physics geniuses. I was working with Vice President of a multinational corporation. And their corporation, basically, they had the GDP of GDP's gross domestic product. Yes, thank you. I was like, is it the right one? Yeah, I think so. I'm traveling with myself. You don't understand. Yeah. Just say it fast and confidently and people will. I know what he didn't mean to say that. But they had the GDP of about 70 different nations in the world. And he had a form of cancer that needed to be operable. And but he made sure that he was not going to be operated on. At the time when the president of the company could find out. And I said, you have enough money that you and Elon Musk, when he gets prepared, y'all can fly to Mars together, right? Save yourself from a world of destroying itself. He goes, yeah. So you're going to go be absent from your position. At the same time, the president was being operated on for something. So the two top people in this corporation were going to be absent. And he was going to be absent from his duties. I said, what is going on with you? He said, if the president finds out that I'm not able, he will think, they will think because he was older. They will think I'm not fit for the job. And they'll start getting rid of me. Like corporate terror that he knew he was being used. He knew he was a thing. He had all the money in the world quote unquote. And yet what was ruling him was the fear of not belonging and not mattering. The man did not know who he was outside of his performance and applause related to it and rewards connected to the applause. Which probably speaks also to have you ever studied like the data about what happens to see sweet executives and pro athletes and doctors. I mean, these people who are in identity professions maybe, where it's the way you get introduced at a party. Some professions, if you work somewhere, you're not introduced like, hey, this is Brian, who works at Target. No shame at somebody who's working at Target. But if you're a doctor, lawyer, pastor, athlete, police officer, it's synonymous with your identity. It's the way you're introduced. It's the way you identify. A lot of times they have very strong corporate identity to leave the group as a sort of feel like leaving a cult. Sometimes and what keeps you in is kind of a cultic mantra a lot of times and the rate of depression and suicide on the other side of self-destruction, relational breakdown. Right. Are you killing it? And you know, what's amazing is you just said that cult and [BLANK_AUDIO] literally own the need to belong and the need to matter. They take advantage of it. And they're looking for people who have not received it in genuine ways. And they promise them to give it to them now. And it has a big if. And the moment you claim God's identity as you were shaped and formed and separated from their need to have power and control, you were officially thrown away. Right. Which means don't belong anymore. That's death. That's isolation, death. And it's terrifying. Oh yeah. I remember, well I mean we can go on and on. But I remember a pro athlete I heard an interview. He said he had been out of the league. It was a pro football. He'd been out of the league like for like four or five years. And in being interviewed he said there's nothing like he said there's nothing like it. You could hear the euphoric recall. Nothing like running to a stadium with 80,000 people screaming your name or screaming for you or screaming about you. And he said I've never been able to get that back. And that's applause addiction. And the applause addiction is feeding the craving to matter. And when you're no longer having an audience, you've got a mirror and you look in the mirror and you go, I don't know who that is. And do you think this is some of the mechanics of on the whole people who accomplish really significant things come from really messed up backgrounds. We, like you and I do a lot of work with leaders and all other people. It's not just one group of course. Because everybody believe or not everybody's created to lead. Everybody's created to be able to bring what matters and give it to a world in need of mattering. But the leaders are notorious for having come from the helping professions especially physicians, pastors, you know, the servants of society, theologians, academic people, people from medicine and jurisprudence, less with jurisprudence, tragically. But those are the four great helping professions. And if you start doing the interviews, you will find that almost all of them came from families in which they were put in positions to belong and matter when they performed at a high level that brought a claim to the family. And I feel like also a lot of times what I see both in working with people like this and learning about other people is usually there is the absence of a parental, a stable parental figure which necessitates them, you know, not just performing, but performing 20 years older than what they really are. Before they're ready for it as well. Yes, the amazing, we'll get back to this too, Brian. But those families that are dysfunctioning, they're not functioning up to the level of authenticity which is really more about admission of powerlessness and need, which is like up to is actually what we think of now. But the one thing, the one category that's always central and it's like, doesn't fail. Is that the family members, the leaders of the family, the actual parents are not dealing with their feelings, the eight core feelings. They don't face them, they don't feel them, they don't tell the truth about them, and they don't take them where they're made to take them. It's the one thing. So what are the, I mean, there are many, there are many nice orphanages. And there are a lot of dysfunctional families are, believe it or not, kind of cultic. You belong a matter if they're weism, you only belong a matter because. And then also you just don't. I mean, orphanages. Right. So you're saying the mechanics of this is, okay, so we're talking about somebody striving to, or a child being told that their neediness is intolerable. You know, I'm understanding this or kind of picturing the mechanics of this being, you know, a lot of times something tragic or difficult happens in the life of the family. It leads to maybe the remaining parent or maybe it's both parents totally checking out, you know, a lot of times they revert into some expression of addiction, leaving the child to sort of navigate childhood in isolation. Am I? You know, that's a direction. That's one of the expressions of this. It certainly is because the child comes into life. Can we give a, like, let's make it like a super practical example? Right, let's just, I'm sort of, you know, you and I find people that we just like recognize and. Yeah, they start to see it. And want to say, hey, man, I could give you something. Yeah. There's a guy that I've been talking to and he grew up in, you know, the classic good family, both parents work, both parents stayed married. And his father, though, developed a form of mental incapacity at way too young, when age. And the mother compensated. What is that mean mental incapacity? Yeah, I mean, just, I think it was dementia. And it started in, like, when this young man, this guy was like 12. Up until 12, he, it's romanticized in terms of my dad and I did everything together. And it's, I'm not sure, it's true, coach baseball and so on. But at 12 things changed. His mother reached down into the family and the kid who was just happy, go lucky, not responsible, you know, just kind of being a child. He was, he was 12, 12. I've seen it appropriately for his age. Normal developmental processes. In other words, they don't think about taking out the garbage because they don't even know what that even means. Right. Like, I just see people do it. That's whatever. And why would you have to do it, you know? And so, nobody's raising them. Mother's overneeding them. What is it? Okay, so what is the mechanics of her overneeding them? We can't bring his tears to his mother because he sees her already overwhelmed with everything she has to do. Yeah, so he's going to this place of saying, mom is overwhelmed and consequently I need to be a perpetually stable, needless presence. And that's not said. It's not said necessarily. It's, see, children are extraordinarily intuitive and interpretive. Yeah. Intuition, the mood and the sounds and expressions of the parents without like, here are the seven rules. It's just, we make them up. We make up based upon how much we are connected to belonging matter as we're created. And if I'm not belonging to matters that I'm created, I better come up with somebody else. So, he practiced not needing. He started YouTubeing at 1415. Not stuff that adolescents do. He started YouTube in 1415. How to fix a refrigerator. How to repair a lawnmower. How to fix a squeaking door. How to change the oil. And he wasn't asking anybody outside the home. He didn't reach out to other people at his church or the grownups or the neighbors next door. Except under rare circumstances, how come? Because he believed that if it got out that his father was having these problems, his father would feel ashamed because he could pick up on that his father would be confused. His father would feel embarrassed and he didn't want to bring shame to his father. And he didn't want to put his mother in a situation of having to face what was going on. So, he started raising himself. His sister left, she was four years older, his sister left, let's say when he was 14, she's gone. And she got out. She had kind of been parenting him when she left. Now, he's officially on his own. Now, he gets older and he doesn't know how to belong and matter in a way that's authentic. Like, needy. And so, he puts on a face that shows really minimal affect. He believes that he's got to perform at a level that's beyond really reality. He's not equipped to do it because nobody raised him and YouTube cannot teach leadership. It could teach things to mimic. But leadership really ultimately comes from inside out. It's passion. But he gets misinterpreted as being arrogant, aloof, rejecting, entitled, believing that he's owed something or he needs to be put in the positions of leadership that he hasn't earned. Kind of like what people hate these young, what a millennialist type things. And the last thing he is is that. He's covering a scared, needy child who he is ashamed of. So, a long story for a short question. Once you become self-rejecting through the impaired affirmation and confirmation of people around you, which is still better than nothing. Once you recognize self-rejection, instead of seeing that the people who feed you are like you. not bringing the goods, you make up a story that something's wrong with you. So he made up a story back behind the scenes. I'm not wanted to something wrong with me. My needs don't matter. If I'm going to matter, I've got to meet other people's needs. So it goes in the ministry. All right? You see that this is all in photo practically. You can see how it works. And so what drives him is the thing that believe it or not, he uses to heal him. He becomes what's called toxically ashamed of how God made him, of what he feels, what he needs, what he desires, what he longs for, and what he hopes. He believes that there's something weak, disgusting, pathetic, inadequate or incompetent about being a feeling and therefore needing creature. So he's self-sufficiency, independence, being realistic, getting power is the only way he can be significant, applause like the pro-athlete. And toxic shame says every time I have a feeling, I'm going to potentially get rejected. So I've got to convert my feelings, hide my feelings, run from my feelings. And at the same time, toxic shame says this is what's wrong with you. You look in the mirror and say you're weak, you're pathetic, but it also says you need to get strong, you need to get smart, you need to get tough. So there's your solution. So it condemns you and then it hands you a twisted hope. If you do these things, you're going to be cared about. If you do enough of them, you'll be loved. So you start climbing the ladder of seeking love and then finally you get maybe the money. You got the money, you don't have the love and then all of a sudden you've got cancer and you can't say I've got cancer because you're terrified, you'll be labeled as weak and toxic shame is driving the person and owns the person and you become enslaved to the faces of other people, the applause of other people, the recommendations of other people, you're slave to hiding your heart. I mean, it's this bizarre reality, which I mean, it's even biblical. You know, it's interesting like as you read the Pentateuch, for example, the frequency to which people replicated the things that were most painful about their own families. Right. I mean, this is family systems to some degree. And that, you know, these people generational curses, generational curses. Right. I mean, I think this is, I think this is some of the mechanics of generational curses. It's the law. It doesn't matter. Yeah. I've saying, you know, I would assume, you know, whoever this guy is and whatever somebody's expression of this is is, you know, you hate it and you can even develop some vocabulary to talk about it and you load the and you almost are trying to create this reality. And all the times that's where your anger comes from and leadership to say, I want to make sure that nobody ever, you know, you know, for example, if it's somebody in the church world, hey, I want to create a church where I want to make sure that our vision is a creative safe space that nobody ever experiences, the pain that I experience in childhood ever again. And the really bizarre thing is you tend to instinctually replicate the very things you hate it. And then all of a sudden, you're trapped in Michael Irving did a great interview and he was talking about Deon Sanders. Oh, like the Michael Irving, the Y receiver. Yeah, yeah, I'm sorry. Yeah, they see that's he's old, that old athlete. Yeah, yeah. Michael Irving, very famous. That's right. That's right. That's right. That was a star. Deon Sanders, I think probably most people still know about. Yeah, and he's more famous now. Yeah. Michael Irving was the three Super Bowls, Troy Eggman, the sports announcer. Yeah. It was quarterback. But he was talking to Deon here, apparently very good friends. He said, isn't it amazing? He said, how a lot of times what you never get you so want to give to others when you're talking about. Yeah. And he said, Deon's everybody's daddy. He said, anytime Deon's around somebody, he's going to become their daddy. He's going to help them. He's going to pick them. He's going to favor them. He's going to praise them. He's going to encourage them. And Deon's literally given his life to give him something he never got. So our wounds can drive us to do great and extraordinary things. But no matter how much we give, it doesn't heal us. Because the toxic shame still says, I must have done something wrong for me to be in this situation. And that's phenomenal. By the way, I'm not going to ask you to say it again, but I will tell whoever's listening to it just hit the little button that goes back 15 seconds to hear that again, because I think that nuance is really careful because to your point, I mean, most great leaders, it's their healthy anger. I saw this. I'm going to create something about this. But I think the differentiation of saying, but the leadership does not heal you. You know, it's like no matter how much you're the dad for somebody else, it doesn't replace that. When I go and get this thing done, then I will finally have the right to be in need. I can finally belong in matter without working, but see toxic shame is the setup. It assigns you the project and tells you if and when someday and you pursue it because you can't help it. And then you get rewarded for it. And then the reward becomes the thing. And if you're not rewarded, you go into toxic shame. It's such a trap. It's a circle of self-destruction that makes you successful. Now here it again, toxic shame creates a circle of self-destruction that makes us and the world's our successful often. So that's an illegitimate way to get legitimate needs met. And whenever our needs are met, if somebody says, "Hey, Brian, like when you and I check in with each other, I'm really assessing what we talked about in a former podcast about safety and care. I'm asking, can I be myself with you and that behind your face that there's actually a care about me, a wanting to do this with me, because see, this really, really matters to me. I've been hungry and thirsty to be able to offer all that I've been given, a full cup after having known holes in the bottom of my bucket that could hold nothing. I'd say, no matter how much I pour in you, it seems to run right through you, which we need to get to. But getting my bucket sealed, being able to contain, it's just made it ferociously important that I get to communicate this. So therefore I'm vulnerable and like, "Man, this matters to me and I care about it and I know what it can do for people. What's done for me." And so when I offer this, I'm like exposed. And do you know, Brian, if somebody mocks me, or you, for something we're already ashamed of, you know, like I missed this shot or I harmed someone and look at what you've done, well, I'm like, "Yeah, I got it." I've already rejected myself on that so you can reject me too and it's not going to hurt that much. But if I bring my private joys, not deepest hopes, my cravings, so I believe what God assigned to me, and you mock that, you're mocking me. You're mocking who I really am underneath the toxic shine, somebody's daring to hope again. So I think that's that moment where we check in, by the way, to get the need to belong and matter met in genuine ways is what I was getting to. We're belonging and mattering with each other in genuine ways. Doesn't mean that we're enmeshed. You can have your opinions and feelings and needs and thoughts and I can too. But it's like, "Okay, we're good. Then let's go." Yeah, that's really interesting. I mean, because, I mean, so for example, it's always weird being like, "Here's one of my deepest fears." But one of my deepest fears. That's right. One of my deepest fears that overflows from practical pain and experience is I have always had a lingering fear of like, "Are people in relationship with me because of who I am or because of what I can do or what I can achieve, what I can reduce and accomplish?" So for example, and this is sort of tangential to where I want us to go in terms of like healthy ways. We've talked about the unhealthy ways or the healthy ways. So a healthy kind of point of connection is to check in or even you being like, "How are you? How's Megan? How's your family?" It's like, "I'm not just a resource to leverage, to generate content that advances your career. We are passionate and angry for the same thing over two people who have lives who love each other because we love each other not because of what we can do, who work together because of what we can do." Affinity. Affinity. But I would like you even if you couldn't do for me. The same way this other guy was talking about like, "Hey, I like that guy." He comes across a certain way, but I'm thinking there's somebody else behind there. Yeah. And like, if you just want to get tacos, but you can't do a podcast, let's go get tacos. Right. That's. If I ever take time to play. Yeah. So by the way, did you know I hope this is too far off, but I can't wait to see where you go. Somebody will say, "Hey, do you want to go to lunch?" And it took me a long time to tell the truth, but I'd say, "No, I don't. Now if we want to go to lunch, definitely, let's go to lunch and we'll sit down and eat like slabs. That's great. But if you want to go to lunch with the idea that we're going to talk to each other, I mean like take time to really talk. Sit down somewhere else, let's go get coffee and talk. Because when I'm eating, I'm hanging out, I'm eating. I'm not thinking like, you know, we're going to be really connected. We're connected with this food and just kind of being with each other. Like you and I the other day, do you remember I had my lunch, you had no lunch, you got to head out, head to Nashville. I'm like, and we were with Colton, like, "Hey, Brian, because I love this part, because I know that if I share my lunch, it's going to double my fullness. It's amazing." And we had chicken, Swiss cheese roll-ups, grapes, cucumbers, peppers. Which is really, I don't know if I told you this, but that's what I would do for lunch, too, is I would not make, you had like a pile of deli meat, a pile of cheese, you were just kind of like making breadless sandwiches. That is exactly, it drives me getting crazy, to be honest, because I do that. She's like, "What are you doing?" And then toast the bread and put, you know, and I'm just, you know, it's about, actually one of the things, when we first started working together, I never ate lunch, because my schedule was so crazy. Oh, yeah. And you said to me one time, "It's always stuck with me, I've used it a lot. I always attribute it to you." You said it is a dignity-giving thing to stop any lunch. Nobility. Yeah. So now I do. So now if you stop and take a moment, they'll let the previous four or five, six, seven hours catch up with you. If you're tuned to giving, then if you don't refuel, replenish, restore, take a moment to acknowledge who you are, how you're made and what you're doing, then you're going to, it's marginal diminishing returns, the only thing I learned in economics, in which I made a D minus, thank God. Well, you learned GDP. Yeah, GDP. Okay. Margin diminishing returns, when you keep doing the same thing without stopping to assess what you're doing, you're going to have a same effort put out in less return. So the dignity of the nobility even of stopping and believe it or not eating lunch is really important. Yeah. Start your day again. No, I'm getting hungry. But. So let me ask this before we finish is. So I don't tell a story too. Okay, do you want to do that first? No, no, no. It's a real practical story about the generational curse. Once you become loyal. You know, do it right now because I'm. Okay, okay. So do that and then what I want to do, so do that and then I want to. Let's talk about positive, like what people can do because I'm sure somebody's listening to this thinking themselves like, "Oh gosh, okay, I know what I'm going to do. What should I do?" Yeah. Yeah. And then we'll land the plane. That's good. What's your story? I think we're going to do five moves to make. When we do what you do, when you're made to do, we'll pop those out. Okay. I think. Yeah. We don't pop anything out. As much as we move. Yeah, as much as you move. Even though we do roll up deli meat and cheese like we're long cook, we're smokers on this. The generational curse, it's that once you become loyal to the denial of protecting the people who did not affirm you for who you were, they affirmed you for what you did if they did that. And I've worked with many of the person who waited their whole lives to receive something and still got nothing from the people they needed with most. I remember a guy treated, he was sitting by his father's deathbed, waiting to hear finally these words, "Son, I love you or son, I'm proud of you." Just a drop. And his father came too, looked at the television, said, "Change the channel. There's a fight on channel, whatever." And he changed the channel. He sat back down at the bedside and his father died. So he was in treatment for the second time for drug and alcohol addiction, a physician. But so you become loyal to protecting the very people who you're born to desperately need their affirmation and confirmation. And so once you develop ways to try to get that, it becomes what the Biblically was referred to as idolatry. So you become addicted to the pursuit, the idol of avoiding having to face your grief, having to face your loss, having to face the reality that you're raised by humans who wouldn't do human well and wouldn't need God therefore well. So what was amazing, a tiny little story, this is so crazy though, Sonia and I had been married for a very short period of time. We'd known each other for a long time. We didn't realize we were in trouble already. We were kind of both came from places where feelings were not faced or processed. And my family too much later on, that was gone. And she said something about ironing or clothes, my clothes. Okay, her clothes, my clothes because I didn't know how to iron. But she said, well I'm just going to put the clothes, or small bun of clothes in the freezer. I'm like, what would you put them in the freezer for? To harden them so you won't need starch so you can unfold them when they're solid and you put them on an ironing board and you can just iron them and they'll melt then be whatever, you know, follow and say them. Yep. I'm like, oh, that's ridiculous. You can't do that. That's crazy. I said to her, my mother always used starch or always used whatever. Do you follow? And so I said red necks do stuff like that. People who are from poor places do stuff like that. That's ridiculous. That's embarrassing. And she's like, she's stunned. She's in shock. And I'm committed to running over her. I'm self-inflicted wounds on her. Self-inflicted wounds in me taking to her because I can't feel this loyal to my family the way we do things, the way it's supposed to be, the rules, all those things. Because that's just something you would have overheard at some point or it's just a thought. But it was like the tiniest of things. Because I was protecting the dignity of whatever my family was doing has to be right. Otherwise we're wrong. And my whole world was about protecting the secrets of what at that time we're growing up in a world of addiction. Significant addiction, depression, lots of things that belonging and mattering was directly connected to performance. And so she's crying. And I'm right. And I'm going to be right. And she's weeping. And I wasn't able to form a new relationship because of the old relationships I was loyal to. So this generational curse is, I'm bringing curses upon her. And unless you do it this way, you don't belong in matter with me. And if I'm disrupted, then you've got a problem. Because I can't tolerate my own feelings. I can't tolerate newness. I can't tolerate change. You follow? And I think a whole lot of the generational curses we say God doing, well, yes, is God handing us over to what we do and what we won't face. So just think about how tiny that is, Brian. And think about the pain inflicted over something so small because there's nothing small. If you're running from your feelings, everything's big. You know, you would think that if you come from an environment where you've experienced the pain of not belonging and mattering, you would want to give that gift. But more you want to make somebody feel, because that's kind of the root of what you're doing in that scene, right? As you're making her feel like love is unpredictable. It's unobtainable. It's. There's a lot of things. Yes, there are rules that I've made that I know that you don't know. And I'm here to help you. I'm here to teach you. Right. I'm going to lead you. Exactly. Which you've become your parents at that point. And many of us, because of our loyalty to the love needed from places where we didn't get it as we're created to get it, becomes our disloyalty to the present loves in our lives. Yeah. And lots of marital conflict is over unfinished business. Can't give what you don't have. So I had to get it to be able to get it, which requires a defeat, a sweet defeat of the self-protected devices are no longer self-protected. They become self-destructive. You're telling the truth about where you really came from as opposed to creating fantasies that make the pain more tolerable. Yes. So does it mean throwing out the good things, but it means not using the good things to run from the things that weren't so good? Right. Yeah. And so the healthy bond. Yes. So we talked about the unhealthy. So what if somebody said, okay, well I do want to cultivate. environment in my home or family. You know, it's conducive to somebody belonging and mattering and feeling like their needs are tolerable. Okay, so what do they do? By the way, you use such a beautiful word if I want to cultivate because which means create a culture that belonging and mattering literally cultivates, which means grows out of the ground that which the seeds that were planted or made to become versus cult. From the word culture, we get cult or we get cultivate. You use that word so beautifully. It's like, if I want to cultivate and there's the beginning of the answer, if I desire something different than what I've come from, it doesn't mean that I recreate, this doesn't mean that I create a whole new place. It means I face fully where I came from so that I can create a new place. Right? It's not running from something, it's fully facing the destruction. So, but the solution is tragically simple, hard to do because we become hardened and hard. Okay, tragically simple but hard to do because we become hardened and hard. Which Paul talks about where most of our problems come from, any Ephesians 4, 17 through 19, he says we've lost our senses and he references above because of the ignorance that is in us due to the hardness of our hearts. And so it comes down to number one, find, of course, find, face, feelings. Feelings will take us to be in need. Be able to tell the truth about my internal feelings and needs, never as weapons of blame but as ownership of responsibility. So, find my feelings, face my feelings, feel my feelings, tell the truth about my feelings and then give them to God. Or another way of saying the same thing is give them to the process of how life actually works so we can live fully. God owns the process. And we just entered the process, the genuine process by finding, facing, feeling our feelings, let them take us to needs and telling the truth. Then, two more things. Dare to stay angry. Angry means staying in the desire of what you really want and be willing to be in the pain that it's going to cost to get there. So, stay angry and then be willing to seek forgiveness. So, I mean, if forgiveness seeking were a paramount of a paramount cultivated in a paramount way, there would be a revival in this nation that couldn't be stopped. And it would be a parent revival, parents pursuing their children to be disloyal to where they came from and loyal to who they were assigned in life. Isn't that amazing? So, find, face, feel, which connects the needs, tell the truth, give it to the process, give it to God, stay angry, that you need to look at the voice of the heart. And then, we're talking about feelings and the next things. Okay, great. You didn't do more sense of your other than existence. Seek forgiveness. And that requires humility, ownership, look, seeing them person in the mirror before you see the purpose and you think is a problem. Don't let somebody else but stand between you and the mirror. Yeah. So, even like, you know, I'm trying to contextualize this as a parent of young kids who are constantly bringing needs. Problems to me. And, I mean, you talked about this some of the last episode of a child has an emotion where a need and a parent, a lot of times, especially if a parent cares. Right? They a lot of times go to that toxic shame place of this is somehow an indictment on my parenting and this is me. Absolutely. And so, what you're encouraging me to do is basically like, I need to tolerate one. This is just the way that my, I mean, not just tolerate, but celebrate. This is the way that my kids are made. I'm teaching them in not. Hey, it's good for you to express. It doesn't mean everything you're saying is right. It doesn't mean everything is fair. It's not mean, we're not going to say yes or. No. But I can't sit in it and I can't listen to it and I can try to. And face the limits too. When you can't go any farther, you better take ownership of it and do some separating. That's why it's so beautiful to have two parents and have a society you're connected to. Because like, I can't, I can't hear these tears anymore. I just, I just don't have what it takes, but I love you. I'll be back. You maybe sit on the sofa and cross as long as you need to. I'll be back in like five minutes. Right. Then you gotta come back. You know, so. Yeah. I mean, patients, you know, like patient in the patients in the process of life. And your children are being normal, but your children will awaken something in us as parents. And they say, they're saying, they're saying, you better go to the mirror and look at your powerlessness. You don't have control of me. You have feelings too. You got to deal with yours. If you don't deal with yours, you certainly are not going to be able to help me with mine. And children strip us of perfection. They strip us of egotism where we have to ease got out. They take away our ability to control life. They put us at risk because anything can happen to them. If they're not under our wings, they won't grow. If they're not under our wings, then we're often fearful. But if we don't let them come out from under our wings, they never develop their own. So I mean, it's like, "Ahh!" Right. And patients means willing to carry the burden of hope. And that means also you better get some passion. Right. You better be willing to be in pain for something that matters more than pain, which means the long range focus on raising the child to have a life. Like patients said, "Passion." Right. And I think what's helpful in what you're saying is what you're not suggesting is that this is some equation to be solved. Right. It is a perpetual tension in place of struggle that you enter into for the rest of your life. Right. The alternative is what a lot of times we do, which is telling a kid that their neediness and their desire to belong and matter, is intolerable. Right. And we just shut it down. Absolutely. We say, "Hey, we don't do that around here." We don't do that around here. Right. We don't do that around here. We're strong. We don't have problems. We don't have a problem around here. You know, like one of the things to seek forgiveness for in my world, you know, which is, and I mean, when you, you know, I burdened by the recognition of this and then dealt with the recognition of this, I would say to both my son's, "Hey, finish the job. You got the job, finish the job. You were assigned the task, finished the task." This is like taking out the trash or whatever. I mean, we're bigger than that, you know, like moving boards or all those things. And then just responsibilities and problems. It sounds like it doesn't, and it's good, what I was telling was true. But I didn't give them the rest of the story. Like, sometimes it's going to be painful. And guess what? Sometimes you can't. And guess what? Sometimes you need to stop. And guess what? Sometimes you need to turn away from the task, because it's not the task that you can do. And, and, and, and. And I was accidentally, and at the same time intentionally, to avoid the pain of me having failed them not finishing the job, right? Because that was my big thing. Whatever it takes, Chip, you finish the job. Even if you put your life at risk. That's insanity. I remember in a construction site being crazy, standing on the five gallon bucket on a board that was on other two five gallon buckets. Three stories up, nailing a piece of side board onto the top gable while it was bouncing back and forth on my hammer. I'm like, and I had to do it because what they would think I had finished the job. It's crazy. Yeah, or you can say, hey, this isn't safe. I don't like I'm not doing it. Right. Like I'm not doing it. So I finished the job requires also staying fully in relationship to tell the whole story. Sometimes you need to quit. You need to quit. Yeah. And turn around. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Okay. Let's end there. I mean, we've got the way less thing. Yeah. Okay. I know less thing in the world. Last thing. You know, divulges. I know that a lot of people when they listen to these podcasts, they may find themselves irritated, even threatened. I was. Yeah. The fine themselves irritated, even threatened. But I want the people to know, I know you want a list. But I did give you a list of five things, six things, you know, find your feelings. But see, we want a list so we can go do the thing and then we can check off no longer having to find, face, feel, need, stay angry and seek forgiveness. We use lists to escape learning and living. Yeah. A lot of times. So I won't be able to give you enough list for you to be able to stay away from life. Yeah. And health, I've learned from you is just willingness to live in the river, engage in the struggle, live life on my story. Alright, let's go. Thank you for that. Yep.