How to Never Be Defensive Again

Hello and welcome to the Flynn Skidmore Podcast. My goal is to help you become exactly who you want to be. We are here to help you take your biggest, boldest, most beautiful vision for light and turn that vision into reality. Welcome back to the Flynn Skidmore Podcast. Today we're speaking about how to never be defensive or get offended again. I want to put something into context here. Okay. Let's say we're striving for a particular version of perfection and one of the expressions of that perfection might be never being defensive, never getting offended. I want to offer some nuance here. I think that it is worthwhile to spend life striving for perfection. In an interesting way, the pursuit of perfection includes a beautiful understanding, being in love with the idea that we will never be achieved. Actually, if perfection is achieved, the universe might cease to exist. It might not need to exist anymore. If what perfection is complete balance, complete symmetry. If there is complete symmetry, I don't think there is any need for a three-dimensional reality or physical existence. I actually like who knows what I'm even talking about, but that's just my sense. I think that three-dimensional reality and physical existence is really fun and really enjoyable and really beautiful. It's the pursuit of perfection with the understanding that we are not going to achieve that and we don't want to be operating with expectations that we should be perfect. It's just kind of beautiful to be like, "Wow, what is the most beautiful, perfectly symmetrical snowflake? What is that and what does it look like to make my life about the pursuit of that level of symmetry and harmony and coherence with the understanding again that it's never going to happen. It just gives us a process to engage in." If in that process we are, if our experience of holding ourselves to a particular standard is such that we are shaming ourselves for not being that standard, then one, that's not very enjoyable. And two, actually, the further we are away from that standard. It's an interesting thing. So I just want to make it really clear. I'm not suggesting that anyone pursue perfect balance with the expectation to ever be that. It's just something fun to do in our lives. I hope that comes across in a way that doesn't create any weird expectation for you. Really not setting you up. Because here's the thing, actually, wasn't even planning on offering this, but I'll offer this because it's helpful. I'm going to speak today about two things that a former mentor offered me, two really valuable things. Here's one of them, which I didn't know I was going to talk about. It's the idea of the four horsemen of the personal apocalypse. There's assumption, expectation, obligation, judgment. If I'm assuming that I should be perfect or I'm supposed to be perfect or I could be perfect, what I'm generally with that assumption, what I'm generally then doing is creating an expectation for myself to be the thing that I'm assuming I should be or I'm supposed to be. Then I obliged myself to be that thing. I forced myself to be that thing that I assume that I'm supposed to be. There's a gap there's where I am in the place where I think I'm supposed to be, the person I'm supposed to be, and then I judge myself for that gap. I imagine that when you're trying that framework on, you can feel that in your life, the way that you do that to yourself. What we're talking about here, the pursuit of perfection is actually really what it is giving us a process to melt the four horsemen of the personal apocalypse away. We don't want to be engaging with that. We want all wonder curiosity. Honestly, what I found is the best way of amplifying and cultivating all wonder zest, enthusiasm, curiosity, a deep passion for life. I want to move perfectly. I want to speak perfectly. I want to communicate perfectly. I want to be loving and curious about everything, even the most brutal and horrendous of things, with the understanding that I will never actually be that. I'm engaged. It's the intention to be that. That gives me the thing. It gives me an opportunity for a process. Oh, this comes up into my world. I'm getting defensive or I'm offended or I want to be right or I want to be better than someone in this way or I spoke in this way and I didn't clearly communicate. Amazing. I don't know what I'm talking about. It's not like resonating with love and curiosity. What is this thing in me that's actually motivated by shame or anger? I'm not even necessarily looking to force that thing to change or think that it should be different. It's an opportunity to move closer to whatever that thing is. People might describe it as a trigger. I've heard recently people actually start to evolve our understanding of triggers and call them glimmers, but that's how I see it. It's like I have this intention to have this beautifully enriched inner world, this beautiful symmetry, this snowflake and the geometry is just absolutely magnificent. But here are these little kinks, here are these little glimmers that are not the symmetry. I'm not going to try and force them to change. I'm actually just going to practice curiosity towards them and move towards them and seek to understand them. When I say how to never be defensive or get offended again, I'm not necessarily, I'm not trying to create the expectation that you won't. What I do want to do is offer you a version of reality where you get to make an intention for yourself to operate in a particular way, hold yourself to a beautifully high standard so that you get to notice the things that are misaligned with that standard. When you notice those things that are misaligned with that standard, it's just a beautiful. You always hear me say, you're just meeting what's on the surface with curiosity. You're just meeting what's on the surface with warmth, with wonder, with wanting to. It's like a desire to understand it, to have this thing about you that's shameful or angry or sad or grieving, to make this thing about you, to have this thing have an experience of being known and knowing that you want this part of you to benefit from the ecosystem of your psyche and your world and you want it to benefit from and it benefits even the most shameful thing. When you have a relationship like that, it's just so liberating. I hope what I'm saying is clear. Okay, so we're going to go through two major things here today. One is the idea that opinions are tools and the other thing is a commitment to never being offended and I'm going to break each of those things down for you. Okay, opinions are tools. How to friend, one of my best friends of all time, is this guy who really smart, really athletic, really, really well read. I looked up to him in a whole lot of ways. I actually saw him as better than me in a lot of ways. He was this very cool guy who played basketball for public schools, a white kid who played basketball in New York City public schools and great athlete. Books all over his house. His parents made him go to museums all the time as a kid, which he hated, but he ended up appreciating it. He had this pretty far, far, this perspective of the world and social issues that was pretty far in the direction of highly progressive. I just like every single thing that he said and every opinion or perspective that he had, I thought was the best thing ever and I thought that it was so right. It created the forehorsement of the personal apocalypse for me. I thought I needed to be this person. I thought I needed to be this, but some of the traits that this person has, I thought that they were the best things ever. I needed to be this and the truth of me was that I wasn't that. I was ashamed that the truth, like the truth of my essence wasn't this thing, that was this friend of mine. His true essence was the things that he were and my true essence needed to be more like his in order for me to, I don't even know, to get to be liked, to be accepted, to be cool, whatever it was. Yes, I held him on a pedestal and I, like every book that he read, every opinion that he had, like I wanted to have similar things. I wanted to be able to see the world similarly. I remember at this time of my life, I was so afraid that I would never actualize my potential. I was so afraid that this thing that I experienced within myself, like how I thought I could be, what I thought I could offer the world, I was so afraid in my early 20s that I would never be able to actualize it and bring it to life. I thought I'd be disappointed and frustrated and forever. So it makes sense, thinking about it now, at that time, I was also desperately trying to consume someone that I saw as better than me, trying to consume everything that he thought was cool and the right thing. Trying to pretend to be the thing that he was while trying to hide away and pretend that the truth of me, that my true essence wasn't actually his essence, but trying to present as if it were. In some ways, not always. I wasn't like trying to murder him and wear his skin, but I really did want to be like him in a lot of ways. So for instance, you know that experience where you're in an argument with someone and you want to present as if you're in a relationship with someone. If you know something really well, you want to present as like, this is my identity. Here's what I'm in, the ways in which I'm informed by this thing. Here's what I know. Here's my like super complex nuance smart opinion that's like different than yours and way smarter and better than yours. I used to do that all the time getting an arguments with all sorts of people, like actually mostly friends, but like looking for arguments, looking for an opportunity to do. To try to flex, but it wasn't a flex that was aligned with who I actually was. It was a flex of like who I was pretending to be. So for instance, like I get, I can remember this one time around this trip, like a couple's trip, like another couple and me and someone that I was with at the time. And at night, we're in this like cabin and at night time, some conversation about politics comes up. I would have considered myself at the time to be highly progressive, but I was so progressive. Like I didn't even really know what I was talking about, but I knew enough to know that if you're super progressive and you're really well read in that world, then you don't think that Obama is that great of a president for public education and for foreign policy. I don't even remember any of these points, but supposedly Obama was not that great of a president for black people in the United States. So I had like the very basic understanding of that kind of stuff, but I pretended to have a deep understanding of that kind of stuff. And I was like at this couple's cabin experiencing, I got in an argument with the other guy who loved Obama. I was talking about how great he was, which maybe he was. Like honestly, I'm not informed enough to have like a super nuanced quality opinion on it. And I got in an argument with him about how Obama was at best a C president. And I was just like, and then I just felt so bad after. I felt so gross and icky and it was like hard to go to sleep and I was anxious and thinking about all the things I was like, oh my god, I'm in so much pain that is so painful that I was doing that. And I understand it now. I see these things with so much more clarity now. And I don't do that anymore. I never do that. It feels so liberating, so amazing, so liberating and amazing to never do that anymore. And I do have appreciation for myself. Like I like that I had fire. I like that I was seeking to be different, but I was seeking to be different by replicating a model that wasn't necessarily mine. And now I seek to differentiate. Like I like flexing. Now, like I was saying before, I was trying to flex pretending to be something that I thought I wasn't. I like flexing, but my flex hierarchy is kindness, warmth, consideration, humor, open-mindedness. Like those things to me are the biggest flexes. So anyone could have any opinion about anything and I'm looking to understand it and learn about it, which I just, it's just so empowering and liberating to operate that way. Okay, so opinions are tools. We'll get caught up in this space of thinking that getting the correct opinion is the correct thing to do. I think most of the time what people are doing when they're operating in that way is actually trying to present a particular identity. I think it's the thing that I was doing, which is like I'm afraid that the truth of who I am isn't good enough. I'm going to hide that away by pretending to be something else. This identity, the identity of like well-read intellectual athlete, that's who I am, like super progressive perspective, like that's my identity, that's the thing that keeps me safe. So I'm desperately going to try to portray to the world that I am that thing and in doing so I'm going to fight to the death to protect my opinions. But really what I'm doing is fight to the death to protect the idea of I'm deeply insecure and I don't know anything and I can't have you know that about me. Opinions are tools that create an experience. So what I know now rather than getting caught up in the argument about like whether Obama is a great president or not, here's what I do now. Because I'm open to all perspectives on that. I'm open to all perspectives and I'm not looking for any one perspective to be the truth. What I do now is I get curious, okay, if an opinion is a tool or a spell, the answer the opinion isn't the thing, the internal experience while the tool or the spell is being enacted is the thing. So when I have this particular opinion, who do I become? When I believe this thing to be true, which now that I'm saying that I'm realizing is Byron Katie for question stuff, when I believe this thing to be true, who do I become? What is my internal experience? If I'm looking back on my like highly highly opinionated self where this dynamic of hiding the truth away and all that like insecurity, not good enough. When I look back at that, I can see, oh, my opinion or my internal experience is anxiety and angst and desperation and fear and insecurity. Okay, is that the experience that I want to be having? No. Okay, well, what is it that I'm seeking to do here? What am I hoping if I correctly use this opinion as a tool or a spell? What am I hoping it does for me? Now let's go with that for a second. We don't want to say, oh, nothing, it doesn't matter. Like, no, at the time, I really thought that it would do something. I really thought, and I was unconscious of what was happening, but unconsciously, I was desperately hoping that presenting to the world a particular way, being perceived a certain way, like successfully achieving an identity would be the thing that would create something for me. And I didn't know it at the time, but I know it was happening. So let's say, okay, let's say yes, Flynn, the world agrees. You are this person who's highly educated, yet you deeply acknowledge your privilege and you're invested in your super smart and you're invested in the well-being of the marginalized, which I am all those things, but I wanted to be seen as that. Everyone thinks that you're so well-read and you know all this stuff and you have such nuanced opinions and you're so different in how you see things and we're all going to see you as like, oh my God, that's just such a, such the right thing and everyone is going to revere you and respect you in the whole planet. The whole, you get the validation from the whole planet that you are, the thing that you are. What would that do for you? And if I'm thinking back on it, I'll do the exercise right now. So if I get that, if I get the reverence from the entire world and I get to achieve the identity that I want, what does that do for me? I get to relax. I get to relax. I get to not be anxious. I get to not be insecure. I get to not be having to run all these exhausting calculations of presenting to the world in a particular way. I get to be relaxed. And then if I'm relaxed, then what do I get? Well, then I get to be grounded. And if I get to be grounded, then what do I get? Well, then I get to have fun and to be playful and to be curious. Okay. I'm operating unconsciously, hoping that the correct presentation of an identity, the successful, the achievement of an identity, I'm hoping that that gets me relaxation. And if I'm relaxed, then I get groundedness, playfulness, curiosity, zest. Okay. Got it. Well, now I can be discerning. Well, the way that I'm relating to this particular opinion, the way that I'm going about it, is it actually creating the internal result that I'm looking for? Is it actually helping me become who I want to be? No, it's creating anxiety and insecurity and fear and all this rumination. Okay. So it's not that that's right or wrong. It's just that anxiety is not the intended result I'm seeking to produce. I'm seeking to produce fun, relaxed, curiosity, open-mindedness, relaxation, warmth. So if that's the case, what does it look like to evolve my opinion so that it aligns with the internal experience that I want to have? What's the way of thinking about Barack Obama that seems to be paired with an experience of warmth and curiosity? And if I'm holding myself to the high, remember, pursuing perfection with the expectation I'll never get there, if I'm holding myself to the highest of standards to be operating with openness, curiosity, warmth, then I am responsible for setting myself up to be presented with any opinion that anyone could have on Barack Obama or social policy or foreign policy or military policy or what Barack Obama did or didn't do for black people in the US, set myself up to be presented with any opinion and meet that with warmth and curiosity. Now this is the be the change that you want to see in the world thing. If a person has a super and we're going to get into being offended in a bit, but if a person has a super offensive perspective and my goal, what I really want, what I want as the result of an opinion is more warmth and curiosity and playfulness and love in the world than it is my responsibility to meet that person's opinion with those things. And I'm just telling you, I have had the experience so many times, so many times where I meet a person who has opinions that might be considered harmful. The only thing that I have ever found to be able to get in there and nudge that perspective a little bit is to meet that person in their opinions with warmth and curiosity. to not have their opinion knock me off of my center. I'm holding myself to the highest of standards of meeting everything with warmth and curiosity. Now, paradoxically, like it's for the purpose of changing that person's opinion. I want to live in a world where nine billion people are open-minded, playful, curious, and warm and have access to a life in the conditions where that just makes sense, where there is access to those internal experiences. So if I want to live in that world, then it's probably going to be the case that when I meet opinions that are hateful or oppressive, that it's my responsibility to create an environment or the conditions that are most likely to transform those opinions. And in order to do that, the only way to do it is to unconditionally accept those opinions, to be warm and loving towards them and just move closer and closer and closer with warmth and openness and understanding at each step of the way. Like I'm getting in a more intense environment. Whoa, I'm getting closer and closer to this thing that I've understood to be harmful. Well, am I going to be distressed? Like are my cells going to start producing distress hormones? Or am I going to continue to be the thing, to be the change that I wish to see in the world, even as I engage in the most challenging environment and the most challenging dynamics with the most challenging opinion. That's the standard that I hold myself to. And here's the thing, like the thing I'm telling you, like if we're talking about efficacy, I don't see it working any other way than to operate that way. And I'm totally open to there being a better way. I'm totally open to there being a more effective, more efficient way to produce the changes in the world that we want to create. I just don't know them. So an opinion creates, and I don't know if it creates, it's hard, when we say it creates it, we're talking about the source or the origin. And I don't know what the origin is, but I do know is what things are paired with what. So if I have a particular opinion about Barack Obama and what he did or didn't do for black people in the United States, and I'm experiencing, like I'm all worked up and I'm insecure and angry about it, well, okay, is that the result that I want? Is that what I want to exist in the world? No, it's not. And the opinion that I have, I'm ostensibly, like it's kind of about creating more love and more warmth in the world, but is it actually going to produce that result? Can it possibly produce that result if, when I have the opinion that I have, I'm not the person that I want to be. I'm not aligned with the external results that I want to produce. And I just don't think it works like that. I think the most effective, efficient thing to do is to hold ourselves to a the highest standard of being the change that we wish to see. So if it's not producing the result that I want, then I get to play, I get to be creative, I get to evolve my opinion. Well, what is the opinion on this thing that is aligned with the internal experience that I want and what I want to create in the world? What is it? And then when I do that, I'm actually not asking my intellectual mind. I'm asking warmth, openness, and curiosity, like how do you see Barack Obama's foreign policy or domestic education policy? How do you use it? How do you see that? Curiosity, how do you see that? What's the way of relating to this? What do you, and if I really care, if I really care about Barack Obama's presidency and being able to have grounded strong critiques and understanding of it, then it's my responsibility to really learn about it in the most open, warm and curious way so that I can identify which parts of it that I do like. Like what did Barack Obama do that I do like? And how can I help myself responsible for recognizing what I like so that I can grow it so that there's more of it in the world? Well, also recognizing what I don't like so that I can be responsible for transforming what I don't like into what I do like if I am so compelled to do that. That to me is that approach in general is the most empowered thing to do. I want to speak about another element of opinions. This is something that I can recognize in reflection over time because yes, there's a truth. We're talking about all internal things here, but I don't think internal I think is most of the game, but I don't think it's the whole game. So I'm a person who starting at about 18, I started to see things as possible that most other people saw as impossible or wouldn't even consider as an option. And when I was in a version of life where I was seeing things as possible that most people considered impossible, but I didn't think I was or I was afraid that I wouldn't actually make those things possible. All I had were my opinions that they were possible and the same thing was happening. I was afraid and insecure that I wouldn't make them possible. I wouldn't actually change these things. Stuff with epigenetics and neuroplasticity and the depth to which a person can actually achieve transformation in one lifetime in the ways in which those traits can get passed down to offspring and how that happens. I don't think it's just genetics how that happens. I think it has more to do with something called a morphic field and some sort of field where there exists energy almost in a cloud, look into things like morphology and morphic resonance and how memory gets stored if you're interested in that. It's fucking fascinating. But I knew that stuff at 18 or 19, but I didn't have words for it or language. And at the time, the results of my life didn't speak to the validity of my perspective. I knew I was right. I knew that this thing could be possible. That most other thing, most other people at the time saw as impossible. But the results of my life didn't speak to that perspective at all. So I was defensive about that and I was insecure about that. So what I did was I pretended like I was the person who had produced the results that aligned with the opinions or the perspectives that I had while trying to hide away the truth that I didn't, I didn't actually know if those things could be possible. I didn't know if I was going to be able to produce the amount of transformation in my lifetime that I saw as possible. But now that time has passed and I just haven't stopped. I've gone every day trying, trying, trying, putting the effort in, putting the effort in, putting the effort in, putting the effort in, the results of my life reflect the validity of my opinions. So now my opinions are valid, not because I'm trying to intellectually argue for them to be true, but because my life has shown what happens when you think that these particular things are true. It's very interesting. The results of my life have set me up. And I'm saying this with humility, but also it's true. Like the way that I've transformed my body, the way that I've transformed myself as a business person, the way that I've transformed myself in terms of how I interact with people and how much love I can bring into a situation and my confidence and transforming anxiety and so much, there's so many results that I have produced in my life as that have stemmed from the things that I knew to be possible, that most people thought were impossible. And the results of my life speak to those opinions. So I will say this, like when I now feel almost no defensive energy, it comes up sometimes, but almost no defensive energy. And almost none of that energy of pretending to be the thing that I'm afraid that I'm not though it still comes up. Because all I have to do is say, look at my life. Do you like these things? Like do you like the way that I pursue sports? Do you like the way that I do business? Do you like the way that I engage with my audience? Do you like the ideas that I share? Do you like these things that exist? If so, here are some of the opinions and the perspectives that seem to be associated with these results. If you don't like these results, that's okay. Like truly, truly that's okay. If you don't like the results that my life has produced, then it's gonna be valuable for you to seek to look elsewhere, look at whose life is producing the results that you want, internally and externally. That person's opinion is going to be more valuable to you than mine is and I could totally see that. Like there is a world in which like, like I'm thinking about one person who's like a coach, content creator in particular, who does like Bugatti, Lamborghini, Energy, like, wife is like, you know, tiny dress, super hot, like that world like watches and super jacked and making like millions and millions of dollars. And like I respect all that, that's beautiful. I love people creating the thing that they want to create. Those aren't necessarily internally and externally, this particular person I'm thinking about. I don't think he has the internal world that I want to experience and there's not much about his external world that I'm inspired by. But he is a high capacity creator and just, it's like Taylor Swift, like I don't like her music, I don't like her taste, but you cannot deny that she is a high capacity creator. She's one of the greatest creators of all time. So there's something in there, though the results that she's producing, like the way that she writes lyrics and her taste in music and melodies and like style and all that. It's just not, it's not for me, but there's something in there that's absolutely remarkable. But what I do is I'm going towards the results. What are the results this person has experienced? Okay, the person who's experiencing the internal and the external results that inspire me, that's the person whose opinion I am going to value. Not as objective truth. That's where you really get yourself into a trap. Not as objective. as a tool, it's a spell. Okay, when they see the world like this, what's the internal experience that they seem to be experiencing? And ideally, I get to ask them, but you can always pick up on that stuff. Like, what's their internal experience? Okay, that's the internal experience I want. And I can see how this perspective on compassion and other people, I can see how this is paired with like a men's amplification of their heart power. But also, there are a person who like doesn't look fit. And so, I'm also going to take their perspective with a grain of salt because I value fitness and movement and athleticism. So, I'm not seeing their thing as the thing, but it's one thing that seems to be paired with one particular internal result that I want to experience. And I know that when I'm setting myself up to have the internal experiences that I want consistently, then I set myself up to create the external world that I want. So, that's what I'm looking for. And the people, like, I'm looking for results, internal and external. And then I'm getting specific. Sometimes people's results are just that they are a high-capacity creator. And that in and of itself, there's value to learn from that because there are principles there. But I'm particularly inspired by like high-capacity creators who are the most loving and compassionate and warm. But also, like, again, sometimes those people are not necessarily fit. Like, Eckerd Hall is not the person that I'm looking for to understand athleticism. And if he doesn't understand athleticism, then that actually, to me, makes his perspective less valuable because it's not the full thing. And I don't mean that it makes it less valuable. I'm just not seeing it as everything that I want to be experiencing. I hope this is clear. It's like nuance. Oh, it's like fun. Like you're a curator. You're looking at results. So, like, what opinions are perspective or associated with those? This opinion and perspective is not the truth of reality. And sometimes people like to present it as the truth. It's just a tool. It's just a spell. When you know that your opinions are tools and their spells that are paired with a particular internal experience. And you are holding yourself accountable to cultivating and generating creating opinions that are paired with the internal experience you want. And then your patterns over time where you're having the internal experience that you want. And then that's expressing itself in your external world. And your life starts to speak to the results of your opinion. That's when you are to really setting yourself up to not be defensive. There's nothing you need to defend. All you do is say, look at the results of my life. Here are the opinions that are associated with it. If you're inspired by it, please take it all. But if you're not, that's okay. I hope that makes sense. Now, here's one thing that I mentioned this before. I really like that I was super strongly opinionated through my 20s. I also recognize that much of my strong tendency to be strongly opinionated was a way of trying to hide fear and insecurity. This is a tough thing to say. But I do think that this is true. I think that it is valuable to operate with a sense of earning an opinion. So yes, everyone is entitled to their opinion. And some opinions are exponentially more valuable than others. If we're looking at this thing of opinions are associated with results. There are a whole lot of results that I have not yet produced in my life that I want to produce. So my opinions on those particular things are not that valuable to me. Because they haven't produced the results that I'm inspired by or that I want. Now, I have an idea of how things could go. I have a sense of how I'd like them to go. But I'm no longer being like, this is what the right thing is. This is who I am. This is I haven't earned that yet. When it comes to the things that I haven't yet created, my opinion on those things is not that valuable. Maybe my opinions on the things that I have created. The results in my life that I like that I have created. My opinion on those things is pretty valuable. If I want to continue replicating that or if I want to continue amplifying it or if someone else would like to have similar results, then my opinion is valuable. This is a tricky one because I don't want to be gaslighty. But I also think that this is a really important standard to hold ourselves to. It's not like shut up and don't speak and don't share your opinion. It's not that energy. I think there's some, I don't have this totally figured out yet. But I think that there's some like space of nuance between being highly opinionated and convicted about how you see things while also operating with immense humility and openness to understand that some opinions of yours are way more valuable than others. Based on the results that you've produced. And when you have opinions on results that you haven't produced yet, those opinions are not that valuable. You haven't really yet earned the right to have a strong opinion on something. But again, also operating with even if you have earned the right to have a strong opinion on something. It's almost like it's not even an opinion. It's just like here's what worked for me to produce these results. I don't need to be defensive about it. Here are the results. I hope you understand the nuance that I'm saying that I'm suggesting here. I guess one of the themes that's coming through is in my experience, strong opinions have always like strong bullheaded opinions have always been paired with a pretension, with a pretending to be something that I'm not with an attempt to hide away fear and insecurity. And that may not be true for everyone, but that is certainly, certainly true for me. Okay, let's speak about committing to never being offended. This is a fun one. So I spent about like four years, I think, as a school counselor in the school district of Philadelphia. And there were so many parts of it that I liked. So many parts. About a year and a half in, I started my private practice so that I was doing both at the same time. Because I knew that it wasn't going to be the long term thing for me. I knew I needed, I knew I needed a way out. It's, I love the kids. I love the families. But I wasn't making enough money. I didn't, I wanted to make way more money. And it, the lifestyle was just not conducive to the experience of life that I want to have. Like I, I've had this deep passion to live summer camp life and to be an athlete and an artist and to help, help the world to do the same. And I, it just wasn't the place for me for my soul to flourish. The fluorescent lighting, the like weird having to follow certain rules and like abiding by a sword or a thorn, authority hierarchies, just because like I just don't operate well in the spaces. I really don't. So I knew, I knew I needed to get out. So I set myself up in my business to like, I saved a certain amount of money. That was a nice cushion for me. I got, I built my business to a particular place. It was, I was really exhausting myself, like doing both at the same time. School counselor, like 7 30 AM until 3, felt kind of bad because I was just leaving immediately. Like a lot of, like really good quality, good educators and teachers tend to stick around. After school, I wasn't operating that way. I wasn't, my heart wasn't in it. I was not invested in the work. I was invested in a relationship with the kids, but not like the, I wasn't invested in being great at it. So I would leave and then go to my private practice and see clients. And so life was pretty difficult for a little while just in terms of how much work per day I was doing, how much time, how many hours per day I was working. I put myself in a position to, to be able to leave, but and then, and then I had the closer I got to being able to leave the job as a school counselor. I noticed this really interesting fear in me come up. I really wanted to be liked. And to be liked, I guess what I had learned was that I need to be perceived as a good person. And the idea of people, okay, so like, let's say I meet someone, right? I am these things that my understanding of these things was such that someone might like judge me or not like me for being these things. Like I have certain access to external privileges like white, male, six, one, Ivy League educated for a master's degree, not undergrad. I would never have gone in. You probably already know this, but I was just like atrocious grades through, from middle school through undergrad. I thought that most people would hate, and I look a particular way, like I sometimes certainly spent periods of my life not being attractive, but like generally, I think people perceived, perceived me as attractive. And I thought that people would hate me for being all these things. I was really insecure about that. And I really wanted to be liked. And I noted when I was thinking about leaving the job as a school counselor, I noticed that I was terrified of not having the safety of the identity of being a school counselor anymore. Because when I, you know, it's like these things that I thought that the world was going to hate, and most of the world would hate and judge and want to reject me for being this collection of things. I thought that if I got to meet someone and immediately let them know that I'm a counselor in the school district of Philadelphia, that they would see me as a good person, and that that would take precedent or priority over these other things that I thought that they were going to hate about me. So I needed to hold on to this like tool, this tool for being liked. And when it became time to leave the job as a school counselor, I could feel that I was terrified of not having that anymore. anymore. It's like how are people gonna see me as a good person? What are they? "Are they gonna see me as? "Are they gonna see me?" They'll see me as selfish. And all these different things about me XYZ. Here's what I understand about this now. So I said, I'm gonna tell you two things that a former mentor gave me. The one thing was the four horsemen of the personal apocalypse. This one is something that he called the empty chair technique, which is this idea that what we all do is we put out a chair in front of ourselves and we say, "This is how I need to be seen. "This is how I need you to see me. "And I'm gonna actually force and manipulate you "to sit you in this, you need to sit in this chair. "You need to see me the way that I need to be seen "because if I'm not seen the way that I need to be seen, "I don't know how to create safety in that way. "I don't know how to be safe "unless I'm forcing a minute." Like, you know, for some manipulation, it doesn't have to be like aggressive or violent force manipulation. It can be like low key, it can be, it can come off as kindness, but it's not like it's inherently bad. It's just not necessarily the safety or the experience that you're looking for. And so I could see myself doing all these empty chair things with people, like needing people to see me a particular way, like really trying to craft a particular image being in so that people see me as a good person so that I'm liked, really, really being invested in that. And then sometimes this is actually like, he pulled this little coaching technique on me where he pulled the empty chair for me and he didn't sit in it. And it was interesting to see, this actually is actually like a full, funny story about that. It wasn't that crazy of an experience for me, but I think he thought it was, but I just remember it because it stood out and the concept stood out to me. I think he thought it was like super, this is like deep fear in me that got surfaced in super transformation. All this is more just like, oh, it's gonna do whatever. I don't need that, whatever. Okay, so let's get into being offended now. What I have found is that people are offended when they are presented with evidence that someone or the world doesn't see them the way that they think they need to be seen in order to be safe. And rather than leaning into that evidence and being like, oh, that's fascinating. I want to be seen as kind and a good person, but you see me as a huge asshole and super selfish. That's so interesting. What's going on here? Like actually, I do perceive myself as kind and warm and what's happening here that you don't see me as that. Generally, people are terrified to be presented with information that doesn't align with how they think they need to be seen. Because it lets them know that they may not be successfully achieving the identity that they think they need to achieve. So they get scared. And rather than leaning into that fear to with curiosity, they protect themselves. Because we've all kind of had this socially agreed upon thing that if you offend someone that's bad and you shouldn't do it anymore, so then it's like the, I don't know, I can't think of a funny way to describe it. But the police get involved. And all of a sudden, this person isn't allowed to say it. And he's saying what they're saying anymore because you've been offended and we've all agreed that once you get offended, then you're not allowed. We're not allowed to explore that information anymore. And then what I've seen in conflict and in arguments, like if I, this actually really frustrates me when this happens, if I share something that's like a perspective or a pattern that I've noticed, or I'm like, this is how I'm feeling about this. I'm not saying I'm right, but this is my sense of what's happening. This is my experience. And the person gets offended by it. I'm so frustrated about that. Because what that person is doing is, and I've done this myself, but actually not so much of it over the last few years. So I can mostly think of examples where other people have done it. What that person is doing is, this is what's happening. Okay, I'm being presented with evidence that lets me know that this other person isn't perceiving me the way that I think I need to be seen. And I'm afraid to lean into that. I want to avoid that because I don't want to activate the wound of maybe I'm not the person that I am. And maybe I'm not actually safe and all that stuff. So I'm going to use this thing called being offended to set myself up to get to avoid any more information that might let me know that I'm not being perceived as a person that I think I need to be. And the thing that what I want, like what I want you to operate with, when I think is the most next level way to operate with this. 'Cause like I'm never, if I'm ever presenting a perspective or an experience, I'm not, yes, yes, I'm like, okay, yeah, I'm noticing this and it's this way. And I'd like it to be this other way. That doesn't necessarily mean that the way that I'd like it to be is correct. You don't need to want to be that way. But I am noticing you being this one way, is that who you want to be. And so if a person is using the being offended thing, then they're depriving themselves of an opportunity to be like, okay, actually, yes, I can see that pattern, I can see how you might see that. And that does not align with who I want to be. I want to be this other person. So I'm not going to use this thing called being offended. I'm going to be with the truth of my own truth of maybe I haven't been the person that I want to be. I'm going to lean into that and I'm going to take ownership of that and I'm going to say, okay, well, no, that I want to be this other person. This is the truth of what I want. So I'm going to be open to all information, not that I necessarily value all information, but I'm going to be open to it all because I'm so committed to becoming the person that I want to be. And I recognize that me being offended by stuff is actually me avoiding the information that I possibly need in order to become more of who I want to be. I hope that's coming across clearly. It's never that an experience or a perspective is right. It's not about it being valid or invalid. It's just the experience that's being had. And if you are the person who's, who may have been offended before, I think it's so valuable for you to hold yourself to a standard of not allowing yourself to fall into the trap of temporarily protecting yourself by saying that you're offended so that you can close yourself off from information, but rather to reflect and say, okay, this is how someone sees me, what's happening here? Is there some truth to how they see me? Maybe not the whole thing is true, but maybe some parts are true. And what happens internally, what happens within me when I'm presented with information that lets me know that someone sees me a particular way? Is there actually something happening here where I'm inspired to become something else? Is there some truth in this that it may be hard to be with the truth, but it's truth. And I'm so committed to creating the life I want in, becoming who I want to be in, becoming the change in the world and having the internal experiences that I want. I'm so committed to that that I will be okay to move towards the heart of this truth. I think that is the way, I don't wanna say the way, but I don't know of any other ways to operate, and there may be, and I'm excited to find them if there are better ones. But I really think holding yourself to that standard and noticing when you want to be offended and noticing the ways in which you taking offenses protecting you from something, like noticing all those things and choosing to be the person who just doesn't do that, who doesn't do that thing, but instead it's just hungry, hungry to become who you want to be, hungry to be the person who takes the thing that you see as impossible and makes it possible. Okay, so how to never be defensive or offended again. Opinions are tools, which create internal experiences. The results of your life speak to the validity of your opinions, and there is, I do think that there is such a thing as earning an opinion. And what's interesting is that when you've earned an opinion, you don't have like angry energy around the opinion. It's just more like, yeah, this is what worked to help me produce this. And if you like it, take it. The other thing, committing to never being offended. So the empty chair, the ways that you need to be seen in order to be safe, that how that actually is like a very temporary and fragile version of safety to force people to sit in your empty chair. And instead being open to all perceptions and perspectives of who you are, but really you're looking into the internal compass, the compass of your soul like, okay, I'm open to all information and all feedback, but I do value feedback differently. And my main concern, my thing I'm mostly focused on is becoming who I want to be, becoming the change that I want to see in the world, creating, cultivating, amplifying the internal experience I want. And I'm not going to use this little trick of being offended in order to avoid information that might help me do that. Love you all. Thank you so, so much for being here. I hope you found this interesting and valuable. I appreciate you tremendously. Have a great day. (upbeat music) (soft music) - Thank you so much for being here. I run a membership where we meet once a week for live conversations. Some people have described it as the place where they get to have the discussion that they've always known could exist, but were afraid that they'd spend their life never finding it. It's a place of real quality discussion. And what we are really here to do is to illuminate the truth of what your seed is, your intelligence, who you really are, and cultivate the growth of that seed as you become unmistakably you while compassionately, gently and with grace, dissolving, cutting away the falseness. If you would like to join this incredible group of people, and these conversations, you can find the link at the top of our show notes below.