Unhappy With Your Life? Why You Need to Identify Your Top 3 Values | Dr. Molly Burrets

Hello, what's the G's podcast fam? Welcome back to episode 141, and we're back from spring break. It's a little break from the spring because I'm preparing to put my first album out as a recording artist and songwriter, which I'm sure you've heard me mention on the podcast by now a few times or so, and don't worry, the next episode will sort of be an official reveal of that and will feature my co-writer so that you can hear the story of how we met and how I started writing music and his journey in the world and all the things, but for this episode to come back and ease into podcast land, I have a guess that I think all of the amazing listeners in this community will enjoy, and that is Dr. Molly Britz. She is a highly regarded licensed clinical psychologist and professor at the University of Southern California, and she's coming to us today with an episode about how to identify your core value so that you can start living your own life, your dream life, not someone else's life, not the life of values that society tells you is important, the life where you make decisions based on what truly matters to you unapologetically, even if those values are not what matters to somebody else. Now the pod's going to be a little bit different going forward because the pod has so important to me and it's something that I still very much want to do within the mix of my online sharing and my online ecosystem, but I think the weekly episodes can be a lot for me and a lot for you guys sometimes, and so what I want to do going forward is when I find a really special guest or I have a really important topic to talk about, I'm going to record an episode, and I'm going to share it with you guys, and that means the podcast will probably be popping in about monthly from here on out so that the episodes are a little bit more sparse, you're going to get about one a month, but they're going to be a higher quality, they're going to be with more heart, they're not going to be to just fill a podcast schedule and have something to post every week, it's going to be guests that I really care about that I've taken the time to source, and I'm balancing the podcast in the midst of all the other things in life, like my brand organic Olivia, and of course now my music career, so I still always want to communicate through the podcast, share information, share resources, share experts, share education from topics that I'm learning about on the pod, but I want it to be at a pace that feels good for everybody, and so that's going to be our schedule from now on, and this week's episode with Dr. Molly is just so good, it's one of those episodes where I'm like, yeah, if I could post one of these a month, I'd be a really happy camper and would feel like this pod was contributing positively to the world. There's just so many gems in this episode, we're going to talk a lot about relationships and genuine connection versus control, why control and joy can't coexist, how you're calling in life, what you're supposed to be doing is going to keep calling and keep knocking at you until you answer that call, and it's just going to get louder if you don't, there's a really motivating part of this episode where Dr. Molly gets real for those of you who are considering answering your life's call, and she also talks a lot about how to practice your nose, which is something that we need to learn if we're going to start living by our values. So I hope you love this episode, this is one of my favorite interviews of all time, and I'm really excited to be back with the pod with the new little cadence. All right, as always, catch you on the flip side, thank you for listening and for being here. Let's talk real life, right? I think the best way to move through life is to always be the student and to always be curious. Life will show you either way, it's just how you choose to listen, you can always count on you, you will always have your own back. This is not the last thing you'll create, play is the process, sometimes it has to be dramatic. That's the funny part. When you're back up against the wall, you will prevail, you're allowed to grow and change, you're allowed to birth something new. I hope you make your art. I am so freaking honored to have you on today, your energy is just infectious and like clearly you are so well-versed and just such a beautiful soul. So I would love for you to introduce yourself. Yeah, thank you. I am so excited to be here and just talking you as much as we have so far is really life-giving. So I'm Dr. Molly Buritz and I'm a clinical psychologist and my biggest passions are focusing on women's mental health and relationships and so I really come at relationships usually from a women's perspective. I do a lot of couples therapy in Los Angeles and I'm a professor at USC, I teach couples therapy there. It's so interesting that you say that you come at relationship, relational therapy and couples therapy from a woman's perspective because I think a lot of times women can be kind of hesitant and afraid to go into couples therapy because we're like, you know, what if we're not heard? I don't feel heard so. And that's why it's so important that you have an advocate. Yeah. Sorry, are you like on the low-inside naturally? I see a lot of same-sex women couples. Oh, amazing. Okay. But I also, I think the hetero couples that come to see me, you know, my website is unapologetic and it's very feminine and so I think for a man and a hetero relationship to agree to come see me, he has to be at least have some openness. Yeah. towards that. And so I think the couples that see me are self-selecting and there's, you know, a lid for every pot. Yeah. And so I'm great for some couples and maybe some couples would find a better fit elsewhere because I am on a paddle with jetically feminist. So I love that. I mean, you clearly are so in your alignment. You know who you are, who you're for and who you're not for, which I think is such an important journey for all of us in this life. And often the only way that you can kind of get to that point of radical self-knowing and acceptance is knowing other things about yourself, like your values, which we will talk about today. I can't wait. The journey of self-ownership and knowing. But you had originally, your team had reached out to me to talk about some of the work you've been doing recently around very high-achieving, successful women who are CEOs, et cetera, like have these massive careers and why they often struggle with barriers to intimacy and relationships and why they can get all this done at work, but then when it comes to a romantic relationship, it feels like the hardest thing in the world. Yeah. Yeah. And I read that email and was like, "Nope!" I'm not going to talk about that. We are not going there." And at first, I'm like, "I don't want to, you know, like position that this is a thing that I've powered women deal with." And then I was like, "But it kind of is." And I can't say I don't deal with the fear of intimacy myself. At first, I was like, "No, I don't want to talk about that." Then I went on your website and then I saw that you had this whole section about how so many of us kind of unknowingly craft our life and act from a place of not knowing our values. And then I'm assuming we can wake up one day and kind of live in a life where we look around and we're like, "This is actually not what I wanted. This doesn't feel like me, but how did I get here?" And so I wanted to have a commentary about that, which we will, but perhaps we'll come back around to the whatever you want, the intimacy, whatever you want. So let's get into the values piece because I think that's kind of the journey I've been on the last few years of noticing I was for so many years seeking from the external to find safety, validation, et cetera, instead of knowing how to find safety and friendship within myself. And I had to really take a good hard look at how many of my values are the things that I was striving for kind of came from that lack of safety that started in my childhood. So with that said, can you describe what our values are, period, and how many of us actually know our true personal values? Yeah. So I'm going to start by telling you what values are not because I think most of us define our values from a place of fear. And if you are saying that you value something because you are afraid of not having it or you're afraid of the opposite of it, that's not a value. That's a fear. And so no, I don't think that most of us know what our values are. I think most of us know what our fears are. I guess so many of us are operating from this place of fear because when we ever taught otherwise or modeled in childhood, like how far back does this go? As far back as it can go. As far back as you believe, whether that's birth or past life or the womb or I mean we come by our fears very honestly. And we don't develop fears irrationally. Every fear that we have has evolved within us for a reason because of an experience that we've had. And so we often live our lives wanting to avoid the things that we fear or wanting to avoid painful experiences. And so we tell ourselves that this is my value, right? For example, wealth is, I say, wealth is my value. Well, is that really true or is it just that you don't want to live your life with the uncertainty and scarcity and fear that you grew up with for me in Buffalo, New York? You know? So that was a big one for me. Like I had this in my head that I wanted to be wealthy. And now I realize that wealth is not the value that safety is the value. You know? And it's not my top value. Safety is not my top value because when I feel safe, I am then free to explore values that are even more elevated than safety. Safety is like a base need. It's to me now at this point in my life because I do feel safe in my relationship and my career, I, safety is no longer my value. It's my foundation, you know? So I can ascribe to have values that are more elevated. And for me, I have a process that I like to take my clients through where we identify. We go through it together and they identify their top 10 values. They move that to their top five values. They move that to their top three values and then the hardest part is selecting one value that you identify as what I call your north star. And this is the value for which all other values are circumscribed within. So my top value, at least where I am at this chapter in my life, my top value is passion. I want passion in every domain of my life. I want passion in my relationship. I want passion in my career. I want passion in my self-care. I want passion with my children and in my life as a mother in my friendships. I want passion and all of my other values can be understood within the context of passion. As I'm hearing you say this, I'm like, no wonder so many women have trouble accessing the like, what might I want if my needs were met, could I perhaps deserve passion, etc. Because if we were having this conversation 50 years ago, 70, whatever, there would be no way that we could sit here and be like, I'm a woman and I demand passion in all relationships and I deserve that. And I believe it's possible for me. We used to be like chained to our husbands, you know what I mean, 50 years ago, I couldn't have had this conversation with you five years ago, Olivia, because it's taken me a long time in my life to get to the place of comfort and safety that I can aspire in this direction. And so I think structurally, of course, now we have more than we did 50 years ago, but there are still so many structural barriers that we face that make it very difficult for us to have the freedom and the bandwidth to think about ourselves. Structural barriers, economic barriers, institutional barriers, I just, you know, like the list goes on and on and obviously when we're talking about safety, there's that layer of financial safety as well for women of like, so many people period not having financial safety in this world, but also women not having financial autonomy. So I want to ask, what does safety look like and mean for women, what are the different layers of that? Well, I think it really depends on the woman. And I think that, you know, in domains where we feel safe, we often then don't think about our safety there because it's a given, right? But I think every woman can tell you about an area of her life where she doesn't feel safe. And that might be emotional safety in her relationship, that might be financial safety, that might be your physical safety out in the world. That might be the safety you feel around your individual rights and freedoms. That might be the safety that you feel in friendship and with women in your life, safety that you feel in your parental relationships, safety that you feel as a parent or not. There are so many important domains that we function in as women. And every woman can tell you where they don't feel safe. Every woman, like, take, take, yeah, exactly. Knowing that so many of these domains that we function within as social creatures and members of family systems and society and the like, what does it mean for women knowing that we don't necessarily have control over those external domains? How much of our safety then becomes a practice of building internal safety and how does one even start to begin to do that? This is so hard because our impulse to create safety for ourselves is to get control. What's up? Hey, same. I like to think of the part of me that wants control. I call her the manager. And she wears like an all white suit and she has like a white hat and she means business. We literally have skits of me and all my parts and I have the manager who's like, we don't have time for this. Like it's yes. Okay. I'm so sorry. Go ahead. No, I love this about you. She's the manager and here's, okay, the manager keeps us safe or the manager at least gives us the illusion of safety because if we're in control of everything, then if it gets messed up, then we're the ones that messed it up. No one else is going to disappoint us. We're going to be the ones in charge, right? But here is the problem with the manager. The manager is in the office late at night with the lights on when everyone around her is sleeping soundly and the manager does not get to sleep soundly. So when you pursue safety with control, you will always feel hyper vigilant, which is the opposite of safety. And this is so hard to navigate this because we don't know another way to feel safe besides being in control. Is that learned in childhood? For me, it was. Yeah. I mean, I think people who have had a lot of experiences of not being in control learn how to get control. Yeah. You mentioned kind of like the unpredictability in a household, the uncertainty kind of maybe one is a parent going to fly off the handle. What, you know, are we going to be able to afford food next week? Yeah. There's so many scenarios in which uncertainty and childhood I'm sure could lead to us being like, well, it is now my job for the rest of my life to have control. Yes. Yeah. And so here's the thing. This is so hard because I really feel like you cannot both experience control and joy simultaneously. Whoa. If you are in control, you are not experiencing joy. Can make me cry with that one. Yes. Yeah. And if you are experiencing joy, you are not in control. Wow. You know, when I first really, really learned this in my body, tell me, a couple of years ago, my husband took me and our child, we had one child at that time to Disneyland. And we got a babysitter one night so that we could go to Disneyland at night by ourselves. And he took me on the incredible star. And I was so afraid to go on it. I knew it was really fast and like, you know, I loved roller coasters as a kid, but I'm a lot older now and I haven't been on a roller coaster in a long time. So we went on this roller coaster and I was not in control. That roller coaster was in control. I could not pass. I seeded control. And I got off that roller coaster and I felt a joy and a freedom that I had not experienced since becoming a parent because I had to be in control to keep my kids safe to parent. And I said to him, I said, this feeling is so foreign to me and so beautiful. And it was because I couldn't be in control. I just had to let it go and take the ride and it was so fun. Oh my goodness. Have you been able to recreate the roller coaster, joy, feeling and other pockets of your life since? It's really hard. It's really hard. I feel like I have a lot of responsibility in my life. And I have to work really hard to take myself out of control. And my strategy for doing it is to soothe myself. I take my hand. I put my hand on my heart so that it's almost like the hand of a loving mother on my body, you know. Do you know about this? I mean, it's me in every episode being like, I put my hand in my heart and I say, hi, honey, how was your day? Like we talk about the inner mother. We talk about instead of the manager accessing your inner mother, how would she talk to you into the, this is, you're speaking our community's language. So glad. Give it to us. Yes. I just, I put my hand on my heart and whatever is worrying me, which I have so many worries, you know, I put my hand on my heart and I say like, I've got you. You have always taken care of yourself. And I will always be here to take care of you. And whatever you are facing, you have the resilience and the grace to deal with this. It might not be easy. It might not feel good, but I am never going to leave your side. The way that just speaking to yourself and just acknowledging yourself like that, however silly it feels at first, however funny you feel taking the time to do that, it can shift everything. And what I love about it is you don't have to pay for anything. You don't have to buy an app. You don't need another person to do it for you. Everything that you need to soothe yourself is inside of you and available to you at any time, whether you're on an airplane or you're in a studio or you're in class or you're on a date, you have everything that you need. You don't need any extras. My mantra lately has been, I can't wait to see what I do, because I always come through for me. It's been, I say it all the time now, I'm like, okay, yeah, I have that problem that I haven't figured out yet. Cool. But I just can't wait to see what I do to solve it, because I always come through for me. You trust yourself. It's been a journey to get here, but I do. And not only do I trust myself, I, as you were speaking to, like you were saying, whatever burdens I have and things that I'm worried that I'm carrying, I talked to myself about it. I was thinking about this role that spirituality or religion can also play to kind of interface with that in so many forms, whether you believe in God or the universe or you have a relationship with nature, right? Because so many times I find myself not only doing that, but I find myself, you know, bawling up all of my worries into this kind of like stringy, glowy, messy white ball and like throwing it up and giving it to my grandmother, right? And that's one thing I do. And then I give her gratitude and say, thank you so much for holding this for me and for a lineage. Or sometimes I'll give my worries to God and I'll just say, listen, like I'm putting this in your hands and I trust you and it's like this trust for God and nature in the universe. And I think a big part of like the resilience that you were mentioning earlier is not only the self trust, but the trust in the unfolding of this kind of plan that's a lot bigger than me. That you can't predict and that you don't know where it's going, but you have a deep inner belief that it will be for your good. For my good and not always pleasant, yeah, that's that is the biggest, definitely not always comfortable. Yeah. Because, you know, sometime I think when I first started to become a little bit more existential and spiritual and all the things and you know, everything happens for a really kind of hate that phrase. But, you know, I started to look at the divine order of things and have somehow you'll look back and just each thing seems to have played a role in it, which you can only understand with hindsight. Exactly. Yeah. And, but when I first started to kind of try to have this trust, I was like, well, if I'm trusting that everything's going to be okay, then everything has to be good and everything has to be pleasant. And that is the only way that I'm ever going to be happy is if everything is just comfortable all the time and nothing ever goes wrong again. And I was waiting for the day this finish line when nothing ever went wrong again and I didn't even subconsciously realize I was living my life like that for so long until I was like, oh, if I were to really strive to be in relationship with reality, I would see that reality is life and it is a death. It is flowers in the spring and it's the trees being totally dead in the winter. And this is where like the nature part of spirituality comes in. And I would see that reality is that sometimes horrible things happen and that's not a bad thing. It means reality is doing the reality thing. And sometimes that just has to happen for this divine unfolding. Yeah. And I just started to take this like radical acceptance approach to like, all right, keep coming at me. Like I surrender because this is part of a greater plan. Yeah. Well, you have tremendous wisdom and I mean, it took me a lot longer in my life to start learning those lessons. The trick is to get the trauma in real. Get it in quick, quick, young, repeated, just do it all. And also the trick is I was saying before business like, yeah, start a business when you're 20 and see that'll teach you some bangs. Exactly. Because guess what? There's no one to blame. It's you. It's all you at the end of the day. So that's the good news and the bad news is that nobody's coming to save you but yourself. Yes. When I was 16, I got from within tattooed on my wrist and I was like, whatever problem is going to happen, I'm going to have to solve it from within. Yeah. So back to this control manager situation. That was such a beautiful tangent. Thank you. I was just thinking about the resilience of the human spirit period, but also like the woman spirit, right? And how it's so in our nature to evolve and grow and like continue to only solve everyone else's problems around us, but also solve our own and go forth. Do you think that we perhaps, like in a beautiful way, subconsciously will challenge ourselves to undergo experiences where we have chances to fully let go of control and practice joy, no matter how scary? Ooh. So like, do we subconsciously make those opportunities happen for ourselves? Yes. Gosh. Slash should we? Yeah. You know, I think the world is presenting those opportunities for us all the time. The way I like to think of it is the phone is always ringing, but are you going to pick up? Hey, my job. Can you expand on that? Yeah. The phone is ringing with opportunities for you to answer the call toward evolution of self. And I believe that deep down, if you're paying attention, and that's the big one because most of us, myself included, are not paying attention. We are living our lives, wrote, and in routine. And we're not paying attention to our real experience. But if you pay attention, you will get a feeling inside of you where something is calling to you. And the phone is ringing. And you can say, I'm not going to answer that right now. I'm going to turn my attention away from that. I'm not picking up the call. And you can do that many, many times. But I promise you, the phone is going to keep ringing. And the phone is going to keep getting louder. And it's going to be harder and harder to ignore that call. And the sooner you can pick up the phone and hear what it has to say to you, where is the call calling you? What evolution does this have for you? That discomfort of picking up the phone and answering the call towards something that you're afraid of, but you know is for you, that's where the good stuff is. Can you give us some examples of what that phone ringing might look like? Yeah. So look, the phone can be ringing with the message you don't want to hear, like your relationship is over, and you need to answer that call. But the phone can be ringing with, you need to go back to school and pursue this thing that you're passionate about. If you keep seeing something in the world around you that draws you, that compels you, and you keep paying attention to it and you notice it popping up in your life. The phone is ringing, baby. The phone is ringing, okay? Are you going to answer the call? So it can be fun things. It can be difficult news that you don't want to hear. But the biggest thing is having your eyes open and being curious, paying attention to what you're feeling and what you're experiencing, being present to the world around you so that you can hear the phone ringing. That was literally my next question. How does one in a world of so much responsibility, like you mentioned, so much stimulation, so many obligations, screens, all the things, begin to develop that conscious awareness, that presence. Just to, in my life, the hardest thing, yeah, because like I said, I have so many responsibilities, I'm so busy, and it's all things that I want to be doing. I co-created this life, you know, I created this life, and then I co-created it with my husband, who I've been with for 18 years, and it's very hard to slow down. But it is the only way to hear the phone ring. It is very hard for me at the end of a long day, instead of turning on the TV and watching Real Housewives of Beverly Hills to be in silence or be with my journal or be in meditation. It's very hard for me to like not take on the extra professional commitment that I'm really passionate about, that I know that I want to do, but it's going to make me too busy. It's very hard to find balance and to choose, especially when one of your values is passion, you want to do it all. But for me to really live passion, I have to create space for new calls to find me, rather than just keep doing the same thing over and over again. So I think slowing down is the answer and finding space and silence, and it's really hard because the things that we use to cope with our busyness, like our phones, like wine, like TV, I mean, they're different for everybody. But the things that we use to cope are the things that take us away from being available to hear the call. Yeah, a thousand percent, I mean, in such a way, it's like it kind of changes your frequency a bit, right? And then you're out of like where you can receive that, like that highest path. But in a very real way, it changes your brain to be distractible and to be less aware of magic in the little moments, less appreciative of the dopamine of, oh, that hawk flew by twice. I wonder what the meaning of a hawk is, you know? Yes. You have a hawk. I don't. Like, I know just what you're saying. Yeah, it's in the noticing, it's in the noticing, and if you're too busy, you're not noticing. You're not noticing how many times have you driven some place and have no memory of how you got there. Wow. Yeah. Yeah. You're like, I got here, but I don't remember the drive and I was the one driving the car. That's scary. Yeah. I was very mindlessly. Well, it's so many threads of this conversation feel connected because in the beginning of the conversation, you had touched on this, this human experience of wanting to avoid pain, right? And like wanting to avoid discomfort at all costs. Yeah. And until you feel safe, you know, like that's when you can kind of push past that interface with discomfort. And it also feels like the things that stop you from being present are often the things that are numbing that discomfort or that fear of the discomfort or helping you to avoid the discomfort. And so you kind of have to feel safe to be able to give up those things that are numbing the discomfort, to be able to slow down and notice. Like it kind of all comes back to that. You just put it all together in a way I never even had. You just put it all together. They're respective brain. Yeah. Yeah, it's because I gave up all my vices, that's why it's I that was a really big thing for me the last few years to come to the woman that I am today. I very slowly one by one was like, yeah, I've been smoking weed for 10 years time for me to stop. Yeah. I did a whole episode about it. We'll link it in the show notes. Yeah. Okay. I noticed that I really, really, really numb with food and that's like one of my big things I learned in childhood and that in my home, there wasn't comfort. There was no comfort. There was no like fuzzy clean blankets. There was numbing to avoid pain, right? It was the opposite of that. So I then really changed my relationship with food and had an experiment where I nourished myself, you know, to the top, but I avoided hyper palatable foods that I had noticed were like making me want a binge. Wow. And then I gave up caffeine for a while. And then I get like I literally was like, who am I when there is nothing left. Yeah. It's just me. Yeah. I was like, what? Because I woke up and was like, oh my God, what if I never meet her? Oh my God, you're inspiring me right now. You are inspiring me. I just, I was like, what if I never meet the version of me that's not obsessed with work and working all the time? What if I never meet the version of me that doesn't have weed or caffeine in her system and is looking for the next? Yes. I was so much at stake. Yes. You could never meet the real you. Yes. And I realized that we are setting ourselves up for that very quickly in today's world with all of these layers of padding from work, work of holism, right? That can be an addiction advice to substance use being super normalized. You know, he said, why even cannabis to this day, like I really think it's so over normalized even though it's a beautiful plant and medicinal, but it can become a problem in a numbing agent. And all of these things are at our fingertips, you know, and that's porn. Absolutely. Scrolling, television screens, like we said, so there's no shortage of like quick and easy and cheap dopamine. And it seems even when I was kind of preparing for this conversation and thinking about values, it seems like so much of living in alignment with your real values long term looks like sacrificing in the short term. And I'm sure that a lot of loss comes early before you get the gain of being like, oh, I'm looking around in this life actually feels like me. Yeah. I was, you know, like in a little way for me that looked like the pain of withdrawing from each of these things until I got deeper and deeper into the layers of like, oh, this is my body and this is me. Yeah. Yeah. Oh my gosh. I wanted, you're really inspiring me to give up caffeine. And it's the thing I'm most afraid to give up because I feel like it fuels my life. And that tells me that there is a problem with the life that I'm living. If it requires a drug, which caffeine is a drug, it requires a drug. And order to live it. I couldn't agree with you more. And I will also be so transparent because people get really upset with me sometimes when I talk about the caffeine thing because I get it. It's like what we hold the closest and so many of us do rely on the ritual, the, the capitalism of it. You know what I mean? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. The, sometimes you gotta use the caffeine to work. Like we did have such a beautiful industrial revolution boom once the introduction of this was bright. You know, it's like, make sense. All of that is true. And yes, it can make it hyper productive and all the things, but yes, it's the end. And I, people will be like, I see you drinking caffeine again. See, I knew it. Like it's, and they're, they're right. I certainly have ebbed and flowed with it. And now I'm, I've actually had a recent period where I was drinking way too much again. And then I brought it back down now to like a very minimal amount. But I haven't, I was off of it for like a year and a half maybe. And then it just sneaks back up on you. It's the hardest one. But you know what, Olivia, I don't think you owe anybody an explanation. Agreed. You know? Yeah. And also just because you decide to do something at one time in your life, you're not making a promise to yourself that it's forever. And even if you did bake a promise to yourself that it's forever, you deserve grace. Yeah. That's my promise. Yeah. That's my thing. Yeah. 100%. I thank you for that. Yeah. I appreciate it. Have your coffee. Yeah. And so they're like, wait a second. They want you to be authentic and they need to hear the full story, which is that the part about giving up caffeine for a year and a half is an important part of the story. And the story doesn't end right there. Absolutely. Absolutely. In fact, I'm trying to work myself towards that again. And because I felt the most myself without it, and it was so nice to wake up and have my own energy. And it was so nice because it was, it was real like, hell, at first, honestly. Yeah. Did you get headaches? It wasn't just headaches. It was like severe depression for at least at least a month because I didn't realize such an anti-depressant effect of caffeine. Yeah. The stimulant. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I guess again, it's a drug. I didn't realize I was taking a drug every day wild. So I was heavily depressed for like a month, month and a half. There's also interesting, like, you know, the receptors that caffeine kind of like fixes up that make you feel less tired. Not only can they cause headaches, but they can cause like leg and muscle aches. Oh, really? So I had really achy, heavy legs for periods of time. I had, you know, my water retention was up in my hormones were up and down. My first few cycles were different. So because you were on a drug and you went off of it totally, totally. And so when everything leveled out and normalized, I was like, oh, this is what it's like to be level. And I loved it. And my mental health was the best and all the things. So I would love to get back there, but I also recognize, like you said, it's like, we're busy. And how would I sometimes get all these things done in the day without the extra push? And maybe I would have to slow down. Yeah. But you know what Olivia, sometimes our values are in conflict with one another. Yeah. You have a value for ambition, right? But you also have a value for knowing your real self, be authentic to your true self. And sometimes it's hard to do both at the same time, you know? We try. We really, really try. And we're just doing our best. Absolutely. And our best is enough. Absolutely. All of that to say, the, you know, cutting external vices, external sooters, let's say, of the avoiding pain part of it was a chapter of my life where I felt a lot of pain all at once. And it molded me for the better. Yeah. And it made me more of a noticeer and it made me more present because once I adjusted my pleasure and pain scales and was able to face all of that pain. Yeah. I was also able to become more sensitive, not only to that, but to the small pleasure of a flower blowing in the wind and your scope of beauty and presence really increases as your scope of ability to tolerate pain increases. Yeah. You know what I noticed too is that when I'm less distracted, I'm able to notice my body more and my body has so much to tell me. So it's not just the world around me. It's my physical body and my body contains so much data. My body always wants to tell me what I need to be paying attention to and what I need to be doing, but I'm not always paying attention to my body. Say more like what? What does it tell you? If I, the easiest practice of just, I'm going to take 60 seconds to notice the physical sensation of my body sitting in this couch. Where do I feel pain? Oh. You know what? Another you're saying that? I'm going to sit across like I didn't take my shoes off. Do whatever you needed. I feel pain. Oh my goodness. Where? You know what? I never noticed. Oh my gosh. My left lower back. There's pain there. What's that about? I wouldn't have even noticed if you hadn't said, do it. Everything is like girlfriend or your shoulders. Just take a minute or your shoulders. Give yourself 60 seconds or two minutes to just notice your body in the chair. Notice the points of contact that your body makes with the couch, the backs of your thighs, all of your back and give yourself a good scan and ask your body, what are you trying to show me? What are you trying to tell me? I noticed my body feeling quite comfortable now that I shifted and my body was like, thank you for noticing me. Yes. It doesn't always have to be a bad thing. It can be a good thing. And then I noticed all of my energy buzzing up here in my head because I'm so excited about this topic and I'm so excited to be talking to you. Yeah. It's good stuff. And you did that for 15 seconds. Yeah. Imagine if you did it for five minutes, what might your body have to say? The noticing. It got those back to the damn noticing. You know, this is one of my favorite topics to discuss the whole truth in the body and yet we ignore it type beat. Yes. Basically, first I want to start by asking you like, when and why did we, especially as women learn to get out of our bodies and not live there? Well, most of us can find that answer in our childhood. So when, many of us, when we're small children, small girls, I have a daughter who's 18 months. Oh my God. She's wonderful. What a sweet and beautiful age. Yes. Oh my God. And I worked really hard to have her. So she's my little miracle. And she knows how to run and play and climb. And she looks in the mirror and she takes on, puts on a little hat and she sees herself and she loves what she sees. And she's so embodied. She's so joyful in her body like, it's amazing how she is both in her body, but totally unattached to her body at the same time because she doesn't see herself as an object. She just experiences her body doing whatever it wants to do. And I really think that early on women, girls, we start to experience ourselves as an object. We start seeing our bodies through other people's eyes. Now I can tell you, I remember my first grade school photo, I had really thick glasses. I had really bad eyesight. You did too. I love you. I know, true soul sister. And I remember my mom said, for the second grade photo, make sure you take your glasses off because there was a glare. We couldn't really see your eyes because you had your glasses on. So I knew that I had to take my glasses off for my second grade photo. And I knew that I wasn't going to be able to see. But I also knew that I wanted to have a nice picture. I was seven years old and I knew that I wanted to have a nice picture. So I remember the night before my second grade class photo, I practiced smiling in the mirror with my glasses off. And I tried to memorize the physical sensation of what my face looked like when I smiled in a way that made me look pretty. So that I could replicate it when the camera man took my picture. And that is my first memory of seeing myself as an object. And seeing yourself outside of yourself and totally leaving your body, your center. Yes. Seven years old. Oh my God. And that's when I first started caring about being pretty. Seven years old. Oh, I mean, that's a question for the listeners to ponder right now. Do you do you remember your first conscious experience of wanting to be pretty? For me, that was it. It was that night. I wanted to be pretty in my second grade photo because somehow I had internalized that I wasn't pretty in my first grade photo. And that messaging came from your mom mentioning the glasses. Yeah. And it totally was not intentional in her part. I'm sure it wasn't the only thing. There's a whole world around me that wanted me to be pretty. And I was getting those messages too. But I knew that in my second grade photo, I needed to look different. And I wanted to be pretty. Wow. I needed to look different. It's powerful language. It's a guy. I am not enough as I am. So I will now begin to change myself and we'll begin to self-monitor if that change is successful or not. Yes. Maybe in hypervigilance and tracking, huh? Yes. Absolutely. Been known to track. Yeah. To a lot of, is this good for everyone? Kind of thing. And it's very, you know, mentioning that you were talking earlier that you have a background of performance and musical theater. And yeah, you know, there's just so much wisdom in your childhood experiences like this and what you were originally drawn to and the expectations of you, looking at my childhood footage. I've been kind of going back through it. And in every, every scene, I am like being asked to perform. And that's what all my childhood footage is. Is Olivia do this? Do this thing? Okay. Me playing piano, me singing, me this. Olivia, do the thing with your hands. Yeah. It's like, it was all performance from three four years old. And so how does that not, you know, maybe that's not everyone's experience, perhaps everyone's family was not making them perform, but it's little things like this where we start to perform beauty. We start to perform pleasing everyone around us. We start to perform being small, even if we're really big, yes. And it just compounds. That's right. That's right. And there are, I think, you know, I am so grateful, honestly, that I didn't grow up with social media because, you know, I'm probably a bit older than your target audience. But I did grow up with really, really toxic fashion magazines. And I started reading them when I was 11. And I remember comparing myself to the models in those magazines and asking my mom, why don't I look like that? Why don't I look like that, you know? And it just, just our spirit is stolen from us, so young as, as girls. And we lose our embodiment and we start feeling and knowing that we have to be something different to be pleasing to the world. Yes. As you're saying that with your experience, I like keep thinking about this one time that I wanted so badly to wear a crop top and from like limited to and for me. And I was, I was an overweight kid. And I just wanted to rock a crop top because it was a, yeah, invoke and it was in fashion. And I was like, I look bad. I'm good. And I will. Right. At this point. Man. Yes. Eight. Okay. Nine. I don't even know. I mean, perhaps I shouldn't have been wearing a crop top. But I really wanted to. And I don't know. But I'm just thinking about like when was it that you were comfortable in your body? Yeah. You were still comfortable in your body at eight or nine that you would wear a crop top and own it, right? Yeah. Because I was a very willful child. I was just like, I, again, perform. I was like, yeah. Wonderful. Yes. And so my mom was like, you can't do that. And I was like, why can't I wear this and she's just like, that's something that your cousin Julie can wear because she's, she said that's something your cousin Julie can wear, but you can't. And I said, why can Julie wear it, but I can't. She said, there's a scale, right? And like maybe on this side of the scale, it's someone that's a little toothed and on this side of the scale, it's someone that's a little too big. She's on this side and you're on this side. And I was like, Oh, I am too big to be beautiful. I will never got it. Like I will never become to pull my body again. That is something that other people who have beautiful bodies get to do and I don't. And that memory that I will never forget the way that T-shirt looked, I will never forget the way it felt of me looking in the mirror after she said that and the whole image changed. Like it was such a formative moment. And I mean, in that case, my mom probably could have said it differently, but my girl Linda, we love you. We love you so much. She had her own societal. That was your trauma. I believe that was what she was taught, yes, she was just projecting her trauma onto you. Absolutely. And the best she could with what she had and it hurt you. Yeah. And she really experienced severe trauma in her lifetime and so much messaging that she was not good enough and still like fought back against it for so long. But I just understand now I'm like, Oh, no, like she did not even have a chance to receive these kinds of tools and watch a podcast like this to be able to rewire it and so everything I do is for her and for all the women who didn't have a chance to kind of like experience this freedom. So, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Massive, like love and forgiveness for that. I'm like, yeah. Yeah. So how much, I mean, we're talking about the familial experiences, the societal experiences of you must be different. I also recently explored this feeling of my body, like you mentioned, is a harboringer of truth. It's like a, an antenna of truth at any moment. And it will tell me who I don't want to be around by my body language refusing to sit, like, you know, move towards them. It'll tell me when I'm uncomfortable, it'll tell me whatever, when I'm tired, all the things, and I need to go home. And I think one of the reasons for me personally that I left my body so young is that I had a messaging in my childhood that was very unconscious, it was an unspoken belief in my family system that the truth is not safe and we don't tell the truth here. So how much does the experience of truth and like kind of familial conditioning of like, you know, we're not allowed to say things out loud or we sweep things under the rug. How much does that cause us to ignore our bodies? Well, so much because it tells you that you can't trust what you're feeling. And if you don't trust it and certainly don't tell it, yeah. And you know, this is, this is such a present experience for people, for girls who experience abuse as children, when their bodies are violated. And they're told that they can't trust their bodies and they can't tell the truth about their bodies. And that's a way to lose your body really quick. Yeah. I actually want to give you a follow-up question about that. But before I do, I want to mention that the way that I was even originally referring to it wasn't even that severe and is almost like when you just have a feeling that you don't want to hug a family member, and then they're like, you can't be rude. Yeah. So that's another thing. Totally. Like, you're not allowed to tell the truth. You don't have to be autonomy. Yeah. Yeah. You're Uncle LaHug. Exactly. Yes. And being like, don't be rude. And now, as an adult, you're like, but you know, there's clearly these funky dynamics that I was recognizing that I, but I wasn't allowed to say it out loud. And I, in fact, had to, you know, self betray what my body was telling me. And so, when you knew, always known. And I can only imagine that's amplified times a thousand. Like you said, an experience is a factual abuse. And so I'm curious, how might that then translate one of my friends says to me like, man, the like red flag meter in that body is just not on, huh? Because like still struggle with it to this day, sometimes of sensing when a situation or a person's not safe for me. And I find out later through my intellect, but I don't always find out through my body. And so how might that translate and what could it look like as an adult for someone who, you know, was like kind of taught to shut off that red flag meter. Yeah. So here's what I really think. Even when you can't spot the red flags, I think people still know what it feels like when it's a full body. Yes. Ooh. So if it's a full body, yes, you could trust it. And if it's not a full body, yes, and you're not a person who's deeply embodied, whatever, whether it's this chapter of your life or whatever, long term, look for the full body, yeses and say yes to those. And if it's not, say no, well, that brings up a scary thing which is saying no as a woman. How do we broach that? No as a complete sentence. And it's a really important not one to learn to say really important. It will change your life. I've really struggled with that, like putting that into practice, I think. I'm sure a lot of women do too. Yes. Do you think it happens with time, with practice, with little nose? Little nose first, little experiments. My friend wants to grab a coffee and I'm really tired and I don't feel like it. I have a choice to either go even though I don't feel like it. Tell a white lie about why I can't go or just say I'm sorry, I'm not up for it this time. You know, catch me next week and use safe people and little experiments to practice no. And then work your way up. Use safe people with maybe bigger things and practice saying no with safe people. And then maybe you're going to approach someone who doesn't feel as safe, but it's a little ask, practice saying no in that situation and work your way up the hierarchy till you are just an expert in boundaries. I mean, that's like one of the most actionable things anyone's ever shared on the show. It really matters because when you don't have the practice in the field, it comes time for the really, really, really big nose and you can't, can you even get out of your mouth? You can't. And it's your paralyzed, basically, with fear. It's such a good point of a friend asking for a colleague, a safe friend of someone who you know would understand. And I guess it's also like something around learning this language because even when you phrased it as, I'm not feeling too up for it, but I'll catch you next week kind of thing. That's such a lovely phrasing that I think also not hearing that modeled in childhood. Not hearing anyone say those kinds of like well crafted kind, yeah, boundary responses. It takes a while to even learn the language. It does. And when it's someone that you're close to and you love and you're safe with and you do want the relationship to continue, saying no can always be accompanied by an expression of connection, catching me next week or, but I'm so glad that you asked, it's so good to hear from you, right? But there are circumstances where we need to say no and we don't want the relationship to continue. And a phrase that I like to give to women who are being asked to give of their time, their energy, their space, and they don't want to period is, I'm fully committed right now with that felt good in my body. You know your body. Wow. I'm fully committed right now. Because you're not saying I don't want to, even though you might feel that you don't want to and that's perfectly reasonable, but people can absorb it now when they know you just don't have space and you don't have to explain why. You do not have to tell someone why you're saying no. What if it's not someone inviting you somewhere, asking to take something on, but it's someone asking you something that you don't want to share? Hmm. I'm not comfortable sharing that right now. What if that changes the dynamic? I'm like, oh no, what if they don't have you with me? And they won't be happy with you. And then you will learn something about that person and your relationship that when you set a boundary, it changes the dynamic. Hmm. I think there's a lot of talk nowadays about, you know, how the pendulum swings. It's like we never talked about boundaries before and then we started talking about boundaries. And now it's so boundary. It's so boundary city. Oh my god. You're like texting casual friends with like, I have a boundary around that, but thanks so much. Yeah. And then now we're seeing the other side of the pendulum swing where we're having psychologists on social media being like, I actually think the boundary thing is, you know, really counterproductive to community. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Where do we, I guess, begin to find a middle ground with that? Yeah. I mean, let's just be honest. As women, the big work is finding the boundary. Yeah. Okay. Like, you got to start there because so few women are well practiced in boundaries. So if the pendulum is going to swing one way and you're a woman, let it swing in the direction of boundaries. As you get practiced in that, maybe you practice pulling it back a little, you know, and ask yourself, do I want connection with this person? And what is the risk versus the benefit of setting a boundary? Do a little, it's called a cost benefit analysis. What's the cost of setting this boundary? What could it possibly cost me? And what is the benefit of setting this boundary? What could I gain from it and then decide from there taking connection into account and make your decision? Do you think a man ever think about these things? You know, I can tell you this. I'm married a man who's a people pleaser. So they're out there. And I don't want to over generalize about men too broadly, but our world is built for men. And I think broadly, it is more acceptable for them to say no. And they are not villainized when they do so. To the contrary, they are seen as important and powerful and women are seen as bitches. Yeah, I'm just sitting here listening to us practicing our phrasing to be firm and kind and all the things. And I'm like, this literally is not the experience of a lot of the men that I know. And wow, this is a world where we have to sit and kind of practice these things and by doing so, we're changing so much and taking our autonomy back and learning what feels good and creating a new world. So, so beautiful to have the conversation. And part of femininity is valuing connection. Connection is an inherently energetic, feminine trait. So it's okay to be thinking about how you're going to set a boundary in a way that still values the relationship. That's a deeply feminine practice. And I love that for women. You don't have to just learn how to set a firm boundary relentlessly and it doesn't matter who you cut off. As women, we value connection, many of us, if not most of us. And so it's okay to be finding phrasing and ways that honor both your autonomy as well as your connectedness. I really used to believe internally and maybe unknowingly that connection was the opposite of boundaries. And then I had to learn along the way that boundary is what allows for the depth of connection. Yeah. Safe connection. Yes. The depth and the safety. Yes. Absolutely. Because if you are connected without the boundary, it does not feel good and causes a lot of problems. Eventually. Yeah. So feeling so guilty for setting the boundaries is something that is so counterproductive to our values, which is often connection. Yes. When you are, I just had a quick thought. When you're first starting to practice these nose and for example, a friend is reaching out asking you to go to dinner and you're stuck in that. Oh my God, wait, I totally just lost contact with my body. I have no idea if it's a yes or no. What do I do? And like a part of you knows you don't want to go, but you can't even access that. And let's say you go against your body that day and you still go and then you're feeling like crap the whole time. And then when you get back in bed way too late and have to wake up early the next day, you're beating yourself up. Okay. Do you have any advice for those who are still in that phase of like baby deer walking and how to avoid that shame spiral? Yes. Girl, give yourself grace. Yeah. We're all just doing our best. And we are very practiced in our ways. They were taught to us. They were structured for us. They were modeled for us and we're all in the growth, you know, process. So my gosh, if you're going to just expect perfection from yourself right away and all the time, you're always going to be disappointed with yourself and in the shame spiral. You know, I mean, give yourself grace. The world is so hard. Yeah. Don't be hard on you too. So besides following our full body, yeses and maybe having periods of life where, like you said, we're only saying yes to full body, yeses as a way to practice self trust, right? Because maybe one of the only ways to sort of build that safety and embodiment and that self trust is to have proof that I listen, hey, I'm here for you. What are some other ways to begin to practice embodiment and what even is embodiment? I feel like that's a pretty new term as well. Yeah. Embodiment is just the feeling of noticing and being in your body. You know, I think for myself, my body was the last thing that I paid attention to. The last thing on my list was always, look, I know the things that I have to do to feel good and they are yoga, weightlifting and meditation. So you tell me why are those always the last thing on my list, the things that I will do once I get everything else done. And so how often do you think those things happen for me? And that is how I know I am not in an embodied place because my body is coming last. We expect that our bodies are just going to keep functioning for us. And when you're young, they often do. Now this isn't true for all people, many people at a young age have health conditions. But many people who are young, their bodies work for them and they will up and tool a certain point. But I want to promise women that when they get into their forties and as they experience hormonal shifts, your body will pay the price for the neglect that you treated it with. And things will start to happen to you that will tell the truth about the neglect that you experienced earlier in your life. And I'm really coping with that now, that all those things were last on my list for so long. And then you have to over index. Now those things have to be so important, Olivia, and they take up so much space in my life because I have to take such good care of myself to compensate for the fact that I neglected my body for so long, you know, free lunch, you pay the price exactly. So I wish that that's one of the things I would tell young women. I wish that I could go back. And when I was still really healthy and not having problems, still treat myself well, don't take that as a permission slip to neglect yourself because it will catch up with you. And your body will say no many times where it will scream it. That's right. Like scream. And like, you know, as we're saying, it kind of can then be a longer road to get back in even because then the self-trust is harder to repair. That's right. And I think self-trust and like building a relationship, a real friendship with yourself is so key for women and also something that we're not modeled or taught really either. Yeah. And I didn't want to know how my body felt. I didn't. I wanted to know what it could do. It could do. And how it could perform for me. And how it could look. Yeah. How it could look. How it could get all. It's to do list done. Yeah. The manager was like, keep going. Yes. I didn't want to know how it felt. And the worse it felt, the less I wanted to know about it. So what has your experience been with integrating? I wouldn't say like quieting the inter-manager. I'd say integrating her, the inter-manager. Yeah. I like to tell her that managers don't work 24 hours a day. But the work day is eight to nine hours long. And the manager needs a break if she's going to be able to keep managing. Because we're saying, hey, appreciate you. Thank you, manager. Thank you for your services. You have helped make my life so wonderful. Thank you. I have such gratitude for the manager, but the manager needs a break. So manager crops up with lack of consistency, let's say, uncertainty in childhood due to perhaps childhood experiences in trauma. And then women who have a real strong manager tend to build really cool, robust lives and go on to do really high-functioning things. Seem into me like there's a connection between trauma and really high-functioning women with strong managers. Maybe you could just kind of give us a taste of the bits about women who are highly successful or career-oriented or ambitious or whatever that language is and why that connects to us often having trouble with intimacy in our relationships. I work with so many high-achieving women in my practice and they are so special and the work is so sacred. In order to get to that kind of place, you have to embody a very masculine energy. Masculine energy. And I don't mean male versus female. I mean masculine versus feminine and all of us contain yin and yang. So a woman really to pursue success and to be ambitious needs to be very attuned to her masculine energy and use that to be productive. What happens I think is that we lose the ability to connect to our feminine. We lose the ability to be vulnerable because we're busy keeping ourselves safe and it's very difficult to have a successful romantic relationship when you can't be vulnerable. When you come home so focused on your safety and control, that's not conducive to a relationship. So it's really important to seek out partners who give you emotional safety so that you can take the risk to let go of control, to seed control, to seed the masculine energy and hand it to your partner. Whether your partner is a woman or a man or a non-binary, it's irrespective of what their gender is. It's about you seeding control and letting go of some of that masculine energy and handing it over to your partner and saying, hold it for me. So does that often mean that your partner, again, regardless of gender identity, has to have a really integrated and strong relationship with their inner masculine? I think so. For a person to be with a very successful woman, they have to be a very strong person. Both psychologically and just in tenacity and resilience and self-esteem. But I always say if that for women, I'm going to give you some bad news. Give it to me straight to my 17 LLCs. The more successful you get, the smaller the dating pool will become because you will elevate yourself and you will only then be energetically a match for people who are on your level. And those people are fewer and far between. So when you're very ambitious, when you're very successful, the pool is smaller. My person was right in front of me for so long before I finally let him in. Really, it took me a really long time. What was the turning point? It's a long story, Olivia, but I had to learn that the same old dynamic that was familiar to me of being with a man who was hard to pin down, who was emotionally unavailable. That felt very familiar to me. I had to learn that familiar is not always good. And a man who was truly available to me and wanted me in every aspect and committed in every way felt very unfamiliar to me, it felt very boring to me. And I thought, where's the passion? And where's the chaos? Like chaos, but I love so much. Exactly. And that was the mistake I made. It wasn't passion that was missing. It was, it was the chaos that was that was missing in that relationship. There was no chaos. And I was like, well, this is not familiar, this can't be my person. But he was so steady and he was so unyielding and he just would not give up on me. And now he's my husband and the father of my children. And the best decision I ever made in my life was marrying him. Who you choose as a mate is the most important decision of your life, I think, because it affects every area of the rest of your functioning. Who you are in relationship with affects how you show up at work. It affects how you show up as a parent. It affects how you show up for your health because they are there in it with you for everything. And they're either going to be your partner or they are going to be your nemesis. And so you really have to choose well. It's interesting to hear you say, you know, that the catalyst to you choosing this person or like just to being able to enter such an aligned union that was clearly so productive and wonderful for the both of you was not like, oh, you know, men had to do better or like it's like the guys that I was dating had to do better or whatever. You were like, I had to recognize my pattern and the dynamics that I was furthering and participating in and choosing and becoming a match for. And I actually had to become self aware enough to take radical responsibility and change my role. It was me the whole time. I always thought I was the victim until I realized I was being the, you know, I thought I was being made the victim, but I was playing the victim. I was doing it to myself with these mate selections over and over and over again. Same guy, different name. I will just ask one more follow up on that, which is what is maybe like step one for a woman who's like, oh, some of this is resonating with me to even beginning to interface with that level of radical personal responsibility. Yeah, so ask yourself, is this the first time I've experienced this? And if you're asking that question, the answer is probably no. So I want you to go back and say, when was the very first time I experienced this feeling? Whatever the feeling is of not being seen, of being mistreated, of not being committed to of not getting validation, when what's the first important time that I remember feeling this? And I want you to start going through your life and identifying important times where you have this feeling. Because what's going to happen is you're going to see a pattern. And what that's going to do is it's going to make you attuned to the pattern so that you will notice the pattern and it is not until you can notice the pattern that you can say, oh, look, I'm doing it again. It's not being done to me. I'm doing it again. Yeah. Yeah. And it won't just be a romantic relationship, it'll be everything. It'll be everything. Oh, no. Again. Okay. Let's go around. We're going to do a little bit better this time and maybe we'll catch it earlier and maybe we'll correct it and set a boundary and say, hey, I'm going to take you on a trip for this. I'm going to change my behavior. That's right. You get sharper each time. It doesn't happen. Yeah. But you know what Olivia, too, it doesn't always just get solved for the rest of your life. I really think these things circle back to us and they come up in various domains of our lives. And we have to revisit them because they are core foundational templates that we've learned to live by. It's taking the call. It's taking that call. Oh, things are in feeling it key again, and who's the through thread. Yeah. As an alternative, I just want to offer to the listeners. You can also tell chat GPT every single detail of every relationship in your life, upload all of your text messages and then say, my personal growth depends on your harsh honesty. Give me a list of 50 of my blind spots and areas where I need to take radical personal responsibility. Girl, I'm doing it today. It will give you everything you need to see to have that aha moment of, oh, my God, thanks me, chat GPT. Thank you, chat. Chatiana. That's my girl. She knows everything about me. And honestly, if anyone ever got my data, it is over for me, but that's why I don't have an account. I just go in generically. I'd never bought the, I never bought the account. I'm bought in. I am bought in it. And you can just voice note it. You could just be like, okay, I'm going to tell you about this friendship that went wrong. I'm going to tell you about this blah, blah, blah. And here was the kind of dynamic. And here's when it fell apart in my blah, just give it the information. And, you know, be specific again, like uploading things and that it's such a wonderful machine that it will really just be honest with you. And you're given all the goods. Yeah. I love reading. And better pay. Yes. I'm on it. Oh my gosh. Okay. Okay. I mean, I could talk to you for 17 more hours, but I want to wrap and close the loop on the values that we started with on the beginning. Yeah. Because you mentioned passion as your number one value. And you mentioned the process of like five, three, one, can you throw out some other values for us and kind of go a little bit deeper into that? Like types of values. Yeah. Because I don't even think we have the language. And I know you have a worksheet, which we will link in the sign up in the, in the show notes. Yeah. A lot of people will work with all these words on it and like no one has ever put these words in front of us. It's so true. Like, what are we doing in school that we're not teaching kids about this? Yes. Like, teach them how to balance a budget. Parallelograms. Parallelograms. We got to learn the parallelograms first. Yes. Okay. Elge bros. So important. Okay. So values. Authenticity, monogamy, curiosity, productivity, integrity, respect, wealth, ambition, family, rights, is like time, freedom of value or is that any words? Okay. Yeah. Because I think so much of like to me, freedom is a value, but it's more like being free to use my time as I see fit to serve, slash, spend time with family, slash, love, slash. I love that. I don't know what the word is, but it's a value. Yeah. Autonomy, maybe. Autonomy. Yeah. Hmm. Hmm. Hmm. Flexibility. Wow. Yeah. Without going too deep into it and just kind of doing like a mini crash course because I know you have resources for this. How might we be able to recognize that we're living a life that's kind of, because I'm guessing if you don't have a value, it's kind of like, I think it's osmosis, right? Like if there's like an empty space, water's going to flow into it or whatever. I guess if you don't have the certainty around this is my known value because I know myself. Yeah. You will then I guess absorb societies values at large. Probably. You know how else you're going to know that you don't know what your values are? If you have a hard time making decisions. Oh. Yeah. That's a really good one. Yeah. Because when you know your values, any decision that you make, you can evaluate in terms of, is this aligned with my values? What choice here is most aligned with my values? That's called a values based decision. And if you have a hard time making decisions and you don't know what's best for you, you probably don't know what your values are, I mean, you're blowing my mind because I think of the process of making a decision where I'm feeling stuck. And when that's happening, so much of the pressure is going on, if I make this decision, then I might be a bad person for it or they might look at, like, it's totally external versus, it makes it a little bit more objective and less emotional and just more like rooted in truth and clarity when you're just based on values and then you take the moral judgment away from the decision. Yes. I'm going to do this because this is more aligned with my values. And sometimes when a decision is super hard, it's because you're comparing against two values and deciding which one means more to you. And that's really hard. But at least you'll know that that's why this decision is hard because there are two things that matter to me and I'm having, I can't have both. I have to choose which one is going to take precedence in this particular decision. And then you decide, in this moment, which do I value more? Dr. Molly, oh my goodness, you've just given me so much life. I know that our community is going to just drive so much value and love from this episode. So thank you for sitting here with me and having this conversation. But you are so inspirational and life giving to me, I feel just really energized talking to you and your wisdom and like the connection, you are really so good at what you do. We are going to have to link up for sure. Thank you very much for those very kind words as it is like wonderful to receive that. I wanted to ask you, what are you working on these days? Where can we find you? What can we expect from you? Because now we all need more. Yeah. I've got my practice in Los Angeles and I teach at USC but I'm writing a book and I'm writing a book about my relationship experiences with men throughout my life because I'm a relationship expert and I think that people, at least what I've seen is people always make assumptions that I'm a relationship expert because I've always done well in relationships and that's how I'm able to help people is because I've always known what I'm doing and I've always been good at it. But it's actually the exact opposite. I feel like a lot of what I have learned about relationships, I've learned the hard way and I think that most therapists have a hard time understandably sharing their own experiences but I think that my experiences are really valuable and I have a lot to teach women especially about what to do and not to do in relationships essentially learning from my mistakes. So I'm writing that and I'm looking forward to that coming out. I'm so excited to read that because I do find story is so important for us humans. Like I've watched a lot of TED Talks on how story is how we learn and how we say safe and all the things and that's why it's been weaved into culture and life and all the things. And that's something I struggle with on the podcast even these days especially when I'm doing solos is sort of how do I distill knowledge and just deliver kind of like vanilla knowledge without telling the juicy story that the knowledge came from and because it wouldn't you know incriminate people in my life I can't tell the stories. And so it can be it can be hard to like give a true long-lasting lesson without it. And so the fact that you're willing to open up about that part of your life as a therapist and public figure and all the things like it's just amazing and so brave and so wonderful. Thank you. I've decided about it. It's my story and it's only my story and it's only my side of the story. So it's a totally biased one-sided account. And therefore I'm not incriminating anyone else. This is just how I experienced it. And that's all I can speak for. Absolutely. And names may or not be, may or may not be, may or may not be, may or may not be names. Yes. Yes. Oh my gosh. When is your book going to be out? I'm hoping within within the next eight months. Wow. That's so exciting. Congratulations. Thank you. I know we're going to be seeing a lot. Like, you are a true star. You are so wonderful. And just like your communication to all the things. I'm like, I can't wait for all the things that you do. But we will link it all in the show notes and you guys can engage with Dr. Molly and learn more. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you. [MUSIC PLAYING]