What Is My "Self"?

In this transcribed episode of The Shrink Think Podcast, Aaron Potratz and Nathan Hawkins explore the intricate concept of losing oneself within relationships. They shine a light on the common tendency to shift focus from self to partner, resulting in a gradual erosion of personal identity. 

Hey everyone, welcome to the ShrinkThink podcast. I am Aaron Potratz and I'm here with my good friend and co-host, Nathan Hawkins. That's me. As always, we are thrilled, riveted to be here. We love this. We love doing our podcast.

We love having you guys here. We love talking with you about all things ShrinkThink and today we've got another episode today. Obviously, if you are driving in your car, you know where you're going and that you're not lost. But if you are lost, then we will help you get found because today is all about finding yourself, staying connected to yourself and not losing yourself. Boom. How do you like that segue? Welcome to the ShrinkThinkosphere. I think that's a t-shirt, which it could be if you go to the ShrinkThink.com forward slash or is it backslash? Forward slash?
I don't know. Swag. I don't know.

What's the difference between a forward slash, backslash? It's got to be something.

Something with it. Go to our swag shop. Our website, it's got a link to our swag shop. You can buy all kinds of shirts, mugs, hats out there.

I'm wearing one right now. If you're watching this on YouTube, says ShrinkThink, it's cool. I'm not. My favorite one, I got to say, you are the biggest problem in your own life. I love that shirt. It's actually really, really, really soft. It is very soft. Yeah. That's great. So today we are talking about losing yourself and how people lose themselves, whether it's in relationship or maybe just in the world, but it's probably more likely to happen in relationship because oftentimes when you're by yourself, you know yourself, you enjoy what you do, who you are, all that kind of stuff. And then as soon as somebody else comes into the room or enters a relationship with you, all of a sudden your attention moves off of yourself onto that person and boom, that's kind of where the snowball starts rolling down the hill and you start losing yourself.

And before long, maybe it's instantaneous, maybe it takes a little while, but before long you don't really know who you are, what you're all about, what you're doing, maybe even why you're doing the things you're doing because you've lost yourself, but you think you do. Boom. For a long time. My point is you can go a long time thinking you're fine, you know, you're like, you haven't done anything.

Everything's like in other words, like no major thing has happened. There's nothing. Yeah. There's nothing big going on. You're just doing your life and it's when you feel like it's when you kind of encounter like rock bottoms are a perfect example. Like you get to a place where you no longer know why you did what you did.
You're like, why did I even do that? You know, like those are the places in my mind that I think where you start to wake up. At some point you have to wake up to look, to know, to kind of like look at why and what you did. Yeah. And just to, just to be clear, I don't think we're saying at all that you have to hit rock bottom to wake up. I think that's a great example of when people do wake up. But there can just be like this sort of I think it's called depersonalization or derealization where it's like you're living your life, you're doing things, but it's like you're not doing, it's like you're watching yourself do it and you're, you have the experience of thinking, I'm seeing myself say or do this. I don't really know why I'm doing it, but I'm doing it and it doesn't feel like me. Yeah. I think where this kind of whole concept comes from is I was working with a person who made, I made, I made the comment and I don't remember what had been previously said, but I made the comment, well, you don't want to lose yourself when, you know, and they said, they just stopped and they go, what does that even mean? Right. And I was like, I'm going to write this down.

I see your mouth moving. I hear noises. I don't comprehend that. Well, it's like, and when, when they said that, I was like, man, that is such, I don't know why, you know, we as therapists say this, but we never actually talk about what we're talking about. And we see it all the time as well. It's like we can, we have these people in front of us and we know them and then they're telling us a story about how it's unfolding. And we're like, I'm literally watching you like walk out of yourself. Like your body, your corpse is a door and it opens, right? And you're walking out of it and your body just flops to the ground and you're gone.

That was really dramatic. But it's like, well, our listeners need like a visual, right? Like they got to hear like, this is what we're seeing. And it's like, okay, you're no longer yourself. You know, it's, or, or it's like the mission impossible. You know, it's like you remove the mask from your face and it's like, Scooby Doo. Who are you? Yeah. Or Scooby Doo. Yeah. Younger listeners. Younger. Older listeners.

Has to be younger. Like Nathan.

I mean, older. Anyway. So, let's talk about like what is self and what does that even mean to be connected to yourself, to know yourself, to be yourself? And then we'll talk about how do you actually lose yourself or prevent that from happening? So, I want to hit this two ways. We've talked about self in other contexts and I think that we, we didn't focus on it at all like we're doing right now. So, on, from a biological standpoint, um, the neocortex, we've talked about that. In the brain. In the brain.

Top part of your brain. It's like if you were looking at a brain, which you've, which probably if you've watched movies at any point in your life where there were horror or whatever, you've seen like this wrinkly brain, right?
Like it, those wrinkles. The wrinkles themselves are not the wrinkles themselves, but if you were to, if you were to grab somehow, be able to grab the top, the tippity tippity top and stretch that part taut so it's tight, it would be as thin as a credit card. So, the reason why that's important is because that, that teeny tiny layer, um, which by the way is cool for other reasons, even the one I'm talking about is basically what we understand to be our mind. It's the, and it's more complex than that because your, your frontal orbital lobes are, are heavily involved in decision making and your free will, like what you do with that.

But the neocortex is where we reflectively think. It's where we wonder, it's where we imagine, it's where we organize. So, it's when you're in your head and you're having those conversations in your head, it's happening from there. And, part of that is the other interesting component from, um, a physiological side is that when you get stressed or you get, um, and it can be any kind of variant of stress. And when I say any kind, I don't mean any stress at all causes a problem. I mean, um, for you, it's subjective as to what causes this problem. Like, like in every individual has their own limit where all of a sudden you could end up out essentially of your neocortex where you are in the other gray matter of your brain, so to speak, which are all those trillions of neurons and connections that are already made from other life experiences that you've had.

And so they're automatic. They're, they're essentially thoughtless. It's like, um, you already know how to eat if you are older than like four, you know, or three. Not to exclude our very, very young clients who don't know how to talk yet.

Stay in your sense. Hopefully not that young. Although, you know, Hey, we'll take the listener. Start listening now. Yeah. So, um, because you just automatically like take your fork and you don't think I'm going to put, take my fork and put that in this food. You're not even thinking about what you're doing when you're putting the food on the fork.

Most of the time it's all automatic. So when you get into those automatic places, your minds in a lot of ways already organized that years ago and been like, that's the way we do that, bro.

We just do it this way. And, and when we move slowly over into psychology, so we're moving away from the physiology and the psychology, that would be your unconscious. That would be the stuff that is just like in the fog that you're not directly thinking that you're going to do. So those, those things all together are essentially self it's like self is this calm, like it's this curiosity.

Remember the reflection thing in the neocortex? That's curiosity. Um, this creative and, and, and I'm ripping off of, um, Schwartz, Richard Schwartz here big time. Cause I think the brilliance of his work in internal family systems is, um, self like basically establishing that. So it's when you think about when you're, I picture like a four year old kid, five year old kid, who's looking at a water drop on top of a leaf and it's, you know, and the water drop is just sitting there and he's looking, he just mesmerized by it going, what in the heck?

Trying to understand that he's engaged with his creativity. He's engaged with curiosity.

He's looking for clarity. He, he knows, he knows he's totally present. And it's like, when you are like that and you are okay to express whatever your thoughts are in that space, you're just going to express them.

You're not going to filter them. You're not going to think, well, I better not say that. When you're in that space, that would be self. So in other words, first of all, if you have the top part of your brain, you haven't lost that. First of all, if you can touch up there and there's no slice shaving off of your head, your skull, and it's still there, you're like, okay, I must be in self or I have the ability to be in self. But first of all, if you're walking around, you see somebody with that sliced off, you might want to let them know, hey, I think you might have lost yourself, buddy. I don't know where it is, but follow the blood trail. Exactly. But also note, don't look up and try to find it because you won't be able to see it. Second of all, what you're saying, essentially, what you're saying, like experientially for our listeners, if through all of that is, I think if I am calm, like I'm relaxed, and it doesn't mean like I'm tired, I'm chilling, like, but I'm relaxed in myself, you know, there's stress, there's focused, and then there's just relaxed, relax is like, okay, go with the flow.

Somebody can say something, you're like, oh, that's interesting. You don't you're not like having any big reactions to anything. You don't have any immediate emotions that are happening for you. That's not to say you don't have any emotions, right? Because you could be feeling things, contentment, probably. But you might be curious about something I'm imagining, like being at a restaurant and sort of observing the people, the surroundings around you. And you might be interested in like, oh, I wonder what those people over there are talking about.
Like you might be in self, if you're experiencing that. Or if you're, like you said, if you're being creative, you're at this dinner, you're joking around laughing, having a good time, you don't even know what time it is, maybe even, in some senses, you don't even know, you know, how many glasses of wine you've had. And that's not to get into, you know, you're an alcoholic kind of a thing. But it's just more like, man, like, I just haven't been there.
I'm just being here. I'm just enjoying this and having a good time. And again, that's not to say that every positive experience means your own self.

Although that might be the case. Well, let's take one example, not totally, but the idea of courage. So with courage, like you are not you probably don't feel like this relaxed, calm vibe when you're using courage. But what you are doing is you are you are going to be who you know yourself to be. Anyway, whatever that whatever you're encountering from a threat standpoint, whatever you're encountering, whatever your perceived moment that you have to overcome is you are going to intentionally stay in the space of who you are, you're not going to say like, I don't believe this, or I don't believe that you're going to say like, I free I do believe this.

I love that. I actually that's a great description. Because I think we're adding you're adding on to this experience of self. That's not just calm, cool, collected kind of a thing. But it's also what you're describing is like, I've had these experiences where it's like, there's a decision or it's like, I'm not sure what to do in this situation. But when I talk to friends, or if I like go inside myself, I'm like, what's really important to me. And I'm like, you know what, just caring about the person or being kind in response is like who I am. And I'm like, I don't really care what the right thing is, I don't know what I'm supposed to do. I just know that for me to respond with kindness or compassion.
That's who I am and who I want to be. So I'm just going to do that. And whatever happens is going to happen. I feel like that's self, because that's a huge part of who I am and how I operate. And I'm really unashamed and unafraid to do that and be that anywhere, anytime. It's it's I think of the the word judgment comes to mind in the way of it's not like that you are internally judging yourself. It's that you are responding in a way to your own judgment of what you've determined based on your moral values and all that kind of stuff. And you're going to own it rather than responding to judgment that you have experienced from others in the way of like, this is who I need you to be. This is who you are.

I'm only with you because you XYZ. So it's like, it's like clarity and discernment. You're you have clarity inside of yourself and discernment about who you are and what you want to do and how you want to operate. Right. So if you take take this kind of principle, which, you know, as we've roughly defined self, I know it sounds like I'm saying roughly like, dude, you've been talking about this for like, 15 minutes. It's got to be better than rough, bro. You went into the neocortex credit card layer.

That's a little specific. Yeah. But I think a scenario that comes to mind is this idea, if you let's say that you have, you've lived some life, you're in your mid to late twenties, and you run into somebody that you haven't seen since high school, and they remember who you were in high school, you know, like the things you would do the things you're interested in. Now, as human beings that have any kind of wisdom at all, no one's going to expect you to be the same person in the way of like, you have some wisdom.

Now, there's stuff you don't care about. But that doesn't necessarily change who you are. So if this person that you met, like you were radically different from that, they'd be like, what, like, you've had a faith change? Or I'm thinking in terms of negative, would be you're with, you've partnered with someone, and you are just different.
And they're like, what's, what's going on, man? You know, you used to, oh, I don't like that anymore. Well, what, how did you not like that? You know, when what happened and what changed? And you can't really say anything, you can maybe trace it back to a timeframe. But as they are putting this towards you, you're also realizing that you don't really know why, like, you don't really know why you did that, or don't do that. Now, you remember liking it, because it feels fresh, because this person is looking at it through the eyes that you had back like 10 years ago. So you can touch it, you can be like, Oh, my gosh, I do like that. And it can create some, some interesting space. Go ahead. Yeah, it reminds me of the scene in the Lord of the Rings, where I think it's in movie two, where, where Frodo is talking about the creature Smeagol, who was like a hobbit.

And he murdered his friend for this powerful ring, right, the one ring that to rule them all. And, and, and then he just started like, you know, obviously, like obsessing over this thing. And over time, they show him like deteriorating, and moving from Smeagol, who was just a hobbit guy, to this gross creature, Gollum, you know, gross. And, and like, over time, it's like he has, he had lost himself. And there's this particular scene where I think is Frodo says, Smeagol, that's what they called you, you know, and then he's like, Oh, Smeagol. That's right.

Oh, my gosh, I haven't heard that name in years. Whoa, that was like a world away.

How did I get here? Who am I now?

It's like this realization of like, I've lost myself, but it happens so slowly over time. And so let's, let's move into just the last bit of time we got for the episode here.

Like, how do you lose yourself? And what does it mean? What does it look like to lose yourself over time so that people can spot those? Yeah, I think what I was in, in the session in which all this stuff kind of occurred to me, what I was realizing and trying to explain what I meant, what was meant by that, is it's this idea that you're making the decisions for your life, nearly 100% based on what the what another person wants. You don't care if you want it, you're not attached to whatever this thing is. And the really the only reason why you're doing it is because it feels like you're doing it. It feels like you don't want to experience probably the disconnect from the other person. You but but the problem is, you might say to yourself stuff like, oh, it's okay, it's no big deal.
But you don't want to do this thing at all. And in light of that, what ends up happening is you've just made an incremental change. Like you've compromised yourself, or maybe one way of saying it is you've taken a step away from yourself. And that one step might not seem like a big deal. But if you do that again, and again, and again, you've taken steps, you know, several steps away from yourself, at a certain point, you're so far away that you can't even find yourself, you don't know where the self was or went, right? Because you just have taken those steps away. And I'm not trying to get ahead of myself. I'm just showing like, when you take that step, that one incremental step, it leads to a pathway that loses yourself. So what you have to do, essentially, is you have to be engaged. Like you have to, it's, there are some things that you know, that are that are actually no big deal. Like, we talked earlier in an episode, you have to be responsible to someone not for them.

So you Aaron was pointing out that like, oh, if I don't didn't realize that you, you know, I came up with example that you needed that I'm happy to do that. That's not a big deal. That's in in the bounds of who I am.
I'm a person who cares. So that's a way that I can care. You know, that type of thing. But if you, for example, are a person who likes to go to the movies and you're dating somebody who hates movies and they they're like, what were you gonna say?

Okay, I'll go to the movie. We'll go, well sure, I'll go to the movie.

And you stop. I'm not gonna be very present. I'm kind of like, sort of there, sort of checked out. Yeah, and in that way, what they're doing is, is they're trying to get you to shift in the way that Aaron was doing that shift from liking the movie to liking what they like. So now it's not okay for you to like the movie. It's, it's, it's like, if you want to stay with them, there's this vibe that's like, well, maybe I'll just go to less movies, you know, like, that's where it starts. And then after a while, you realize like, I haven't gone to a movie this year.

You know, that's the incremental type of change. So we're not, we're not saying, like, okay, there's a specific rubric for self that like, if you don't do it this way, because you are the only you that exists. And the thing that blows your mind, actually, when you really start thinking about this, we found this out in twin studies, there has never ever been a you before, like, and there never will be another one. It's crazy. You literally are, are showing what you who you are to the world, and literally no one else can do that. So you want to take that serious and think, like, yeah, who, what do I actually want in this scenario?

And why do I want that? Am I doing that only because this other person wants me to? And, and if that's true, is that still okay? Like, because it might be, it might be like, okay, they want, okay, like, yeah, I can still be me and, and get behind that.

That's kind of exciting. I like that. Yeah, there's, there's an interesting way of thinking about that. And, you know, I think, I think we might actually just extend this episode into two, because I don't want to cram this into this one short episode, because there's a lot to say, I think, on this, now that we're unpacking it. So hang with us, we'll, we will continue this episode into another one, and flesh out a whole lot more what it means to lose yourself. But the thing you're saying right now, I think that's so tricky is to do so it's possible to do something that you may not necessarily enjoy, or may not be your favorite thing to do. But you can find a way of being yourself and enjoying what you're doing while being yourself, even though it's not you.

And sometimes it's like you engage in something that you haven't done before. And you're like, Oh, wow, this is really great. You know, as you're learning it, you're like, Oh, I'm not sure about it, you or maybe it's a food or activity, you try it. And you're like, actually, I really like this. And maybe you integrate it into yourself.
That's one possibility. That's kind of like the most, you know, the best case scenario possibility. But that's less likely, you know, maybe it's that you engage in something. And you realize, you know what, that wasn't my favorite thing.

But I had a really good time. You know, I was able to be myself, I, you know, was laughing and making jokes. And I was able to connect with the people that were playing. And I didn't like some of these aspects of it, or whatever. But like, I was still able to be myself. That was, that's the tension between doing something or engaging in something that might pull you away from being yourself. Right? Like you don't like it, you don't want to do it.
It's compromising you in some way. But you found a way to still be yourself or protect yourself inside of that experience without losing yourself. So yeah, I was thinking as you were saying that the so let's think man, this is gonna it's you're right, this does open up a can think in terms of core beliefs. Okay, so core beliefs are core beliefs, they are in your core, you believe them.

And some of them you don't even know. Wait, that's a little confusing. Why do they call it core beliefs again?
Oh, because of course, where is your core? I'm not doing my abs. I did so much core workout, break the wrist one way. My core belief, your core beliefs are found in this region right here.

Don't touch too much. Yeah. So there's things that you believe. And, and this is what we're kind of getting at, to some extent to that half that they're going to be challenged, either because somebody else that you respect has a different belief. And, and when you see the way that they're doing that belief through their eyes, you kind of can't help but respect it.

So you're like, crap, you know what? Why do I do? Why do I care as much as I care about this other thing? Or it could be that you care about the person and you are afraid. It may be, and more likely, it's unrealistically afraid that you could do something to lose that connection or lose them if you disagreed with them or if you held a different belief than what they held. So there could be some fear that if I don't agree with their belief, if I don't align with them, then they're going to think something of me and either I'll lose the connection or they might judge me, reject me, not like me as much. And again, this could be real or it could just be my fear and I won't be able to tolerate that experience. Which would be what we're talking about in the whole idea of that would be a way that you lose yourself. It would be a step away. If you obey that, it would be a step away because it's not about, it's about understanding your beliefs or maybe encountering them because I don't think that you need to understand everything that you believe. Like we're not born that way where we just all of a sudden understand all our beliefs like, welcome, this is who you are and you believe all these things.

But when you encounter them, it's taking your own self seriously and your own life seriously and going, wait, I do believe this. Why do I believe this? I'm going to go ahead and try this out. And if you realize in the moment that this other person kind of has formulated their beliefs more deeply than you because they kind of answer more questions with that. It doesn't necessarily mean that what you believe is wrong, but it, but it does mean it does. Well, it does indicate anyway that you probably haven't thought about it as much as they have. So one way to, or I was going to say, or it could mean that you have thought about it, but you haven't clarified how important that is to you so that you, you're not holding on to it as tightly as you should because you might be quickly letting go of it or abandoning it as soon as this other person presents their different belief in front of you.

So it's like you might believe A and then they say B and you're like, okay B. It's like you've, you've too quickly let go of, uh, of your own thing in favor of what they believe. Maybe because you believe that you're wrong and other people are right, which tends to be like an anxious attachment dynamic. Yeah. One of the common places this happens in relationship is, is with around the area of faith and religion. Where, um, and people kind of quote unquote know not to do this, but that connection that they want is, is so important to them. They will, they will change the way that they, that their faith works or they will have faith all of a sudden, you know, like that they, no, no, I believe, oh yeah, I believe all that, you know? And, and the person's like, well, I really want you to own it and I really want you because, because you know that what you're really going for is this person that has their own belief system and believes this way and you really would like them to believe the same way as you. Like, but if they got to come to it on their own or whatever, and it's hard because it may be that the way your, your belief system works in this example would be like, well, can I see myself with this person in five years the way they are?
It's not like you don't accept who they are. It's more like, does this jive with where you see your life going from who you are? I mean, that's where you're making the decision. You're not making a decision to lose them or abandon them. You're making a decision to keep yourself, which is not, is not the same thing. So you have to deal with, with all those different challenges one way or the other. And in younger relationships, it's like, um, you've got to take some of that more seriously than you are because you're compromising that stuff. And I would say, honestly, man, probably nine times out of 10, um, those relationships end up not working out because somebody comes to the conclusion like, oh, I guess, I guess this does matter to me.

Um, so I don't know why I'm still here. Like this is never going to work. And, and, and what we're talking about in the loss of self is there's this whole period of time that you go through stressed out, not being yourself until you kind of snap back. So in some ways there's some fail safes that we seem to have where we start to like at some point kind of wake up, you know, cause we, we realize things, but our, my contention is why do you, you probably shouldn't wait for the fail safe, right? Which is why, you know, just in the context of, you're talking about like dating relationships, for example, or just in relationships in general, it's so important to be yourself as much as possible at all times in every scenario.

And of course there are like appropriate ways of doing that. You know, um, like you're, if you're a, uh, like if you need to be in a professional setting, be a professional. Right. But be yourself, be who you are with your same, you know, personality, your same values, your same like ways of, of interacting with people. It's so important to be yourself because it gives other people an opportunity to see if they can connect with you, be in relationship with you and get along with you as you are. You don't actually want to be in relationship with people who cause you to pull, to come away from yourself or, or okay with it. Exactly. You don't want to be in, because think about that. If you're in a relationship with somebody, whether it's a friendship relationship or romantic relationship with someone who is okay with you losing yourself, they're essentially telling you, I don't respect you.

I don't like you as you are. I want you or prefer you to be more like how I want you to be. And that's not really saying I like you and care about you as you really are. You have, you're a unique, you know, actually I'm a unique me and I want you to be more like me. I want you to be my twin or something, right?

They're not communicating a genuine value for you. And over time, what that's going to do in your relationship, like we're saying is it's going to erode the connection. It's going to erode your authenticity. It's going to erode really just all the fundamental, like trust and honesty kinds of things that you have in a relationship that make it sustainable and make it healthy and good. Whereas when you're yourself, just to put this on the, the shoe on the other foot here, when you're yourself, you get to see how other people are with you. And if somebody is not okay with who you are, that's okay.

You just don't have to be in relationship with them. If we're talking about dating, this is very critical. You know, it's like, I know, I know you want to find somebody you want to, you know, find that relationship and, and move on with your life, you know, and settle down or whatever the case may be. But you don't want to do that with somebody who causes you to lose yourself. You want to do that with somebody who actually likes who you are and supports and encourages you to be more yourself all the time, because that's the mutual giving kind of relationship that you're looking for. It's fulfilling. It's satisfying. You're not fighting against the other person or against yourself. You're just growing and blossoming, maybe in who you are, and confidence and security with who you are, which gives you more permission to say your opinions, to express your needs, to be open and more vulnerable to have more intimacy in that relationship.

Well, and, and the openness and expression of your needs is vulnerability, right? So it's, it's that idea of going ahead and just being you. And you know, there's a, as you're saying this, I'm realizing there's a kind of a crystallized and flexible component to this. So, and if you are, there are dangers, both sides of the coin. So a crystallized component, meaning you, you, you rigidly know what you believe.

There is no movement on it. You're not flexible whatsoever.

It is this way, the end. That's like a, well, that's who I am. Beep. Just take it or leave it. Right? It's like, well, that's kind of rude. And you don't want to like, there's an arrogance to it maybe. And there's also kind of an immaturity to it because the immaturity is this realization. Well, it's a lack of realization that you grow over time. As time goes on, you have new experiences, you get older, you see the world differently and you should change and evolve along with that. Yeah. And, and in the other side of the coin is flexibility.

The problem with flexibility is that you can be too flexible. Am I, do you want me to be too flexible? I can be too flexible if you want me to be. That's okay, Nate.

I can be, yeah, that's cool. I'm super flexible.

Whatever you need. And then you can take advantage of that. Oh, Aaron, go outside and get me. Okay. I'll be right back.

I also need $100. Oh, well, I don't have it, but I can go take on another job and do that for you if you need. Just, just let me know if it's what you need. Oh, I need so many things right now. But so the idea is, is that you can kind of see the fallacy on both sides of there, right? But it's okay to have crystallized parts and ideas. It's just that you, you have to have both. You have to have the flexibility because you have to be able to know where you're willing to compromise. And, and you, you don't have to, I'm just feeling like speaking out of the both sides of my mouth. You do not have to know that upfront. You do not have to know that upfront.

You have to be able to encounter it. When somebody is saying, I don't think, I don't think I agree with you. If you're, if you're coming from a very crystallized place, you're going, your response is going to be, bye. You're wrong.
The relationship is over. And, and honestly, that would be loss of self. And, and it would be loss of an opportunity to grow also be right. Just because somebody has a different opinion or different belief doesn't mean you can't sharpen or clarify what you think and believe in the conversation. In fact, that can be a really good thing to have the difference of opinion in a relationship because it can actually make both of you more yourselves if you give it the opportunity.

I remember there was a, this old supervisor that I had. And I mean, that's what we called him. He was old, like seventies or I hope the guy's still running around, but he was working on a research book and he would be, he would get, he would come into the office and be there at 4am. And all he was doing is writing. Anyway, long story short, he retired and he still is working on that book. Good Lord. I bet you he's still working on the book.
And I got a bunch of people. I couldn't help it. I was just picturing if he's not, he's like in a coffin somewhere, but his hand is out with a pen in it. It's like out of the coffin. It's on the paper, like still writing. It's still, it's still going. His body's dead, but his hand is still working.

Oh my gosh. And, um, I invited him because he's, he was just freaking brilliant. And the way that he looked at things, I invited him to a supervision group, like out of retirement, like, Hey, can you come and talk to us about these different concepts that you're going through? And so he puts this thing out there. I don't even remember what it was, but one of my colleagues goes, I disagree with you.

And he goes, thank God. He goes, okay, good.

Like, tell me. It's like, cause he's, because he's in, um, his own opinions in mind and thinking about everything that's going on. And the reality is what he was craving is there was no real feedback from anything except for a book. So it's like, you can't interact. Right. And that's really, it was a, it was a really cool picture for me.
I never forgot that to like, wow. You know, you, you really, there is a, there's a huge value in meeting that. Like he was not remotely crystallized in this thing. I mean, he definitely thought it was the way that it was according to the research he had done. But when, when she said that he moved right into flexibility to go like, okay, let's, let's really figure this out. Um, he was not saying I'm going to abandon all this. I'm going to move away from it. I know I now no longer agree with what I thought because you just said that, right?

Like, that's not what happened at all. Yeah. I can relate to that. I, I have, I know when my clients will say this, they'll say something and, you know, cause in this context, we're kind of exchanging ideas and sometimes they'll have different beliefs or whatever. Um, I have this initial, in my experience of this initial moment of like, oh no, you disagree. You know, there's this sort of fear or this like discomfort with like the disconnection or being at a different place, but I've learned how to tolerate that.

And I'm like, okay, take a breath. And it's like, okay, that's okay. I take a moment to like reflect on what it is that I believe. Um, and, and then I'm also, and this is all within the matter of a couple seconds, right? The other person, um, explains what they believe. And I actually find myself saying to myself, and then even out loud after that, I really appreciate this because I like thinking about things in a different way. I like exploring alternatives that I haven't thought of before, because I don't want to come to a conclusion in myself. That's something I believe, but there are these other possibilities that might actually be more of what I believe that I just wasn't even willing to consider because I thought, oh, this is what I believe.

I'm too rigid. Um, sometimes people have helped me, um, clarify, maybe just take what I believe and nuance it a little bit more or take it in a slightly different direction or apply it more specifically or more broadly that, um, better, uh, reflects what I actually believe. So those instances can be really helpful. You know, there have been sometimes also where somebody has said something and I'm like, wow, I've never actually thought about that. Wow. I need to actually rethink what I believe in light of that.

That doesn't mean I'm going to abandon what I believe. It just means there's some new information here that I need to update my system with. Right. And, and there is, as we're talking about not losing yourself, it's this idea of being able to be present and then having the courage to fight for the clarity, like to, to go like, you know, like you might, for example. People believe you need to be a good person and good people are respectful. Okay. That's a, that's a very normal and very healthy way to look at things, but maybe you've never actually been in a situation where you've had to employ that in a sit in a place or a time when somebody that you have no respect for as far as what they believe, you just have never thought about it. Maybe somebody on the other side of the political aisle or something that you're like, I can't believe they would ever think that is saying or doing something. And in order for you to maintain this core belief of being a good person who's respectful, you now have to do something or say something according that you have to challenge it. Right. Cause you just, you just believed that that was not, you haven't really employed it in situations that are difficult, like that are, that where you maybe don't care, quote unquote.

It's like, how do I be respectful in a situation that's like toxic or that's confrontive or that's abusive? I mean, these are extreme words, but maybe it's doesn't have to be quite as intense as that. But how do I employ that belief practically? How do I be respectful in a situation with somebody who's not being respectful back to me? Right. And I think in our day and age, what the culture struggles with is with this whole, and we've talked about it in a different podcast, this idea of being offended is like, it's a crystallized way of looking at things because what's happening is I'm offended.

So that means you need to change. That's, that's at least, that is the vibe, big picture. I'm not saying one side or the other out there. Cause I know that this is a whole topic. What am I point is is that that culture wise corporately the group think behind that is yep. Change because it just, I don't like it. Only one of us can be connected to self and that's going to be me.

You need to change. Um, because if you are different than me, then yourself is not okay. Judgment. Yeah. I mean, it's essentially what's happening. So, um, just to kind of wrap this up here, it's like the thing that I guess, if I could give you a tool, I would love to say, take time to think about what matters to you and like, what are your values? Like sit down, think about, you know, what is important to you, who you are in your relationships, you know, what virtues and characteristics and traits are important to you. And then try to live those out, adhere to those.

I know that sounds very broad. Um, and also like that's a big project. That's a big undertaking, but that'll help you to know yourself. And then in the moment, in the moment, what I always try to tell people is try to think critically for yourself. When somebody else is presenting their opinion, it's really, really easy. Even for me, somebody who has pretty strong opinions and I'm pretty clear with myself, it's easy to just dismiss it. Or it's easy to be like, okay, I believe what you, what you think, you know, to go one extreme or the other. Instead, I try to encourage myself and encourage other people to pause and to think, okay, they're saying this.

Do I agree with that? What do I think about this? What thoughts do I have about it?

Not that I'm necessarily right or wrong. I'm just trying to be clear about who I am and what I think about it. And then I can present that in the conversation, or at least just to know I've heard this and I think differently about it. Now I know, and I've preserved myself and my connection to myself based off who I know that I am and what I think and believe. At the risk of belaboring what you just said to clarify it a little bit, it would be like, what, what you're saying is you have your belief, but you're going toward the other person. You're, you're, you're not trying to protect your belief outright. You're trying to be very curious about where, how did they even get where they are?
Try to really actually understand it and hold that. That doesn't mean you're walking away from what you believe. It just means like you're really trying to understand them. You're trying to be curious and you're open to them. And then you might end up going like, Hmm, I mean, uh, this is interesting other side.

I'll give you a really, really short and fun example. Just as we close up here. Um, I was doing a gingerbread houses and my kids several years back, we're decorating them. And my oldest son is far more creative than I am. I was found myself literally following the example on the box. I was like, I could do that. Um, and he was like creatively making something new.

And I was like watching him. And I was like, Huh, that's interesting. How did you, what made you think to do that? And it just was like, and then just sparked some of my creativity and curiosity, um, to maybe do a, something a little bit different on my own. I didn't abandon what I was doing and I wasn't trying to protect my own. I just was looking over and be like, Oh, that's interesting.

That's a different way. And of doing it, I kind of like that. I think I would like to do something a little bit different on my end. Um, so it's a really silly example, but it was this, you know, stepping away from exploring and then coming back to myself to, to do what I wanted to do with my own gingerbread house. So more specifically, and lastly, um, Aaron gave the broad idea before kind of like taking a, taking a moment and looking at kind of what you believe, um, to even potentially make that more specific to give you a place as we close up. Think of a relationship that you have some tension in. I'm not talking about your most intense thing that's going on. I'm talking about where you are kind of like, uh, you kind of have a little bit of, and then try to go ahead and jump off and then say, what do, why do I feel that way? What does that feeling start with naming the emotion, naming the feeling, and then start to just be curious about it and be curious about what comes up in your mind when you consider the emotion and the feeling.

I bet it will be a memory. It'll be something that, uh, you will remember a specific communication that happened. What you can assume in that is that that communication was important to you. It, it essentially needs to be integrated somehow. So that's kind of where you start focusing on yourself.

Don't lose yourself. It has to be very breathy. Okay. I won't lose myself. What, who, how do you want me to be?
Have a great day. Okay. I'm going to do this while we're here.

You want to do something? Um, yeah, we need to record. Okay. Hey, have a great day.

Thanks for listening to this episode. We have the second half of this episode coming up next week, so stay tuned, but still have a great day.