The Approval Trap: Why We Keep Seeking Worth From Others

We start with the weather and end up uncovering why so many of us treat approval like oxygen. We follow the trail from womb and early childhood conditioning to adult people-pleasing, then land on practical reframes for unconditional self-love and real permission to exist. 
• noticing how nature exists without earning approval 
• tracing external validation to early survival wiring and attachment 
• exploring womb experience and emotional imprinting before language 
• walking through a regression story that explains fear of abandonment 
• naming conditional self-love and how it shows up as “I’ll be happy when…” 
• linking worthiness to social norms and the pressure to fit 
• using “Says who?” to challenge the should monster 
• adopting the student-and-teacher mindset as a path to self-acceptance 

If you have any questions, visit our website, drop it in the anonymous question box. 
See if you can spend the day saying to yourself, I love and approve of myself. 

Transcript

Morning Dreams And Weather Contrast

SPEAKER_00 0:09

We are on the line. I almost said finally.

SPEAKER_01 0:15

I had to take it to cartridge. I'm gonna talk about how I slept in. I was having wild dreams. But it's wild having wild dreams now when the the sun is up and I'm still in bed. That's weird. It's like you the the cycles are constantly changing. But today the birds are singing up a storm. The leaves are really green and they're everywhere. The breeze is coming out of the east, which is not usually a good sign, but we'll take it because the sun is up and the clouds are wispy, and the grass just keeps on growing.

SPEAKER_00 0:53

It does, does it? Well, it's not gonna be as hot today. It's only May 23.

SPEAKER_01 0:59

Pretty sweet.

SPEAKER_00 1:00

Yeah. We've been having like a little heat wave here last few days.

SPEAKER_01 1:05

Unbelievable.

SPEAKER_00 1:06

Yeah. It's crazy because in my mind we just had snow. Now it's like 30.

SPEAKER_01 1:13

So in a few days, my mind's gonna become conditioned to this and it's gonna expect this. And then some little bit of cloud and some little bit of rain will get me all worked up, and I'll have completely forgotten about the snowstorms and how it snowed like every single day this winter. Yeah. It's amazing the contrasts that we react to.

SPEAKER_00 1:37

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:40

So today So the weather must feel really lousy because it's like it's like everything we feel about the weather is conditional.

SPEAKER_00 1:47

Yeah, yeah, it has an option.

SPEAKER_01 1:49

We always think we're allowed to approve of it or disapprove of it.

SPEAKER_00 1:53

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:54

And and still it just keeps on being itself, honoring its cycles, honoring what it needs to do, taking care of the planet, washing things and refreshing things and feeding things. Yeah. Yeah. The weather doesn't worry about approval. The weather doesn't need permission. The weather doesn't need to think it's worthy.

unknown 2:17

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 2:18

That's why there's so much to be learned from nature. That's why people love being in nature. Nature just is. It just is good or bad, right or wrong, up or down, like it, don't like it. Doesn't really matter. Nature just is like the dandelions. They don't care whether or not you like them. They know the beetles, bees love them.

Nature Just Is Without Approval

SPEAKER_00 2:40

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 2:40

And they know their job to reach for the sky.

SPEAKER_00 2:44

I was thinking, why this morning, uh, you know, while we were mulling this topic over in our minds, I was thinking, you know, why number one, why are humans the only creatures that do this to ourselves? And number two, I wonder if we are the only creatures that do this to ourselves. You know, animals can't really talk to us, but maybe they feel it too sometimes. Maybe some of them, I don't know.

SPEAKER_01 3:14

Yeah, I think that nature is harsh and that it knows that there are strong players and it knows there are weaker players. I don't think every being out there is benign. I think that they every being out there is yeah, I just saw, there we go. A bird landed to get some seed, another bird chased it away.

SPEAKER_00 3:39

Pecking order.

SPEAKER_01 3:41

Yeah. Pretty pretty normal that we react to each other uh as we perceive sort of limited resources. But I don't know that what they do is stop eating because the other guys don't like them.

SPEAKER_00 3:57

Yeah, it's more of a their their survival is that the survival and procreation is it, I think. You know.

SPEAKER_01 4:04

They just be. Yeah, human beings are funny things because I uh I'm gonna answer your first question. Do you remember your first question?

SPEAKER_00 4:14

Are we why are we the only ones that do this to ourselves?

SPEAKER_01 4:18

And I'm gonna answer that with program.

SPEAKER_00 4:21

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 4:22

The program is instantaneous, the program is inherent in the condition, I think. Right? We we have the experience of individuality, but suddenly we're here and we're totally incapable. And I don't know how much we remember, but we certainly don't have the ability to survive without others. And so in our, you know, I always think of the body mind, that we have a higher mind, but I always think of the body mind as as being real, that part of the body that that has instincts and reflexes and sort of that programmed response to discomfort. That there is a there is an aspect of the mind that just has the simplest of programming. Survive, avoid pain, resolve hunger, reproduce. And there's that lowest level of mind that seeks to survive. And as soon as we start to have an awareness, as soon as we start to have a consciousness, a consciousness implies other, right? Consciousness means other. You gotta have something to be conscious of. You move away from uniformity, you move away from oneness, and you move into duality. And here we are dropped into a world of duality, and we're conscious of ourself and others. And at first, I talk about this in the in a baby's development that at first the baby sees itself as part of mother because mother reacts so quickly. And I think one of the things we don't really put enough attention to, I know there are scientists that do, but I think we as beings don't put enough attention to how much we learn in the womb.

Womb Learning And Early Attachment

SPEAKER_00 6:17

Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 6:18

And how we function in the womb is an incredible nonverbal, non-word-based, completely emotional and energy-based communication with mom. And I think that's part of the reason why, you know, as a man, I've always had to embrace the idea there's no one in the world like your mom. And that's just the truth of it. Because even before you were, even before your body-mind saw yourself as a being, you were communicating with mom. And you see yourself as an extension of mom. And mom is in the process in those first couple of years of reminding you that you're not. She can read you, she can love you, she can attend to you, she's she can center her life around you, but that's gotta change. You know, at some point or another, mom wants her being back and wants you to be a being of yourself. And we can be really patient and say that's gonna take years and years and years. And sometimes we're really impatient and we want that to happen sooner. But the point is, is that instantaneously we become conscious of the other, and we're constantly realizing, first of all, that we are not mom, and that mom is choosing to care for us. And we begin the process of Pavlov's dog, of learning what we gotta do to get mom to care for us, to get mom to deal with our needs. Yeah, we are then programmed to expect that approval, acceptance, love comes from someone else and is conditional on our behavior. Yeah, it's the simplest of things, and it's the nature of our reality for those first few years, very much in the first few months, and then we have this deeply embedded program that suggests my survival, my survival is contingent completely on mom's approval.

SPEAKER_00 8:37

Yeah, yeah, it's pretty amazing when what we find when we go back into the womb in sessions. Oftentimes, if mom is going through a hard time, or even there's uh someone recently where there was fighting between mom and dad. Often what comes about is the little baby inside the womb uh wanting to there's like this want to take away the pain. And so they take it on themselves and they just squish it in there into that little body. And and then, you know, 50 years later, they've been experiencing all this turmoil and pain, don't know where it's coming from, and it's uh linked to the womb. Like what they took on from mom and dad and the experience that was happening outside of the womb. I mean, we're such energetic beings. Like you said, you know, it's all about emotion and energy when you're in there, uh, because we don't understand words yet. That we, you know, we won't get into it. We understand the energy.

SPEAKER_01 9:50

And we're very reliant on that because there's still a higher mind. It's not like the higher mind doesn't exist, it's just the higher mind is learning how to become integrated into the body. Sort of there's you know, uh, there's there's sort of two wills in competition, right? If we accept that there's a body mind that has its own program, and it's now and its program is now going to become much more complex as it learns what's going on in the world. Yeah, we have a higher mind that still drives us to be here, and it's busy trying to integrate into this world, into this body, because you know, apparently it doesn't remember everything. Then we we come in and we are in a bit of a dilemma because our survival and our body-mind being dominant is completely contingent on somebody else. And our emotional self is reacting to whatever it perceives and interprets. I mean, the mechanism remains the same. Things happen, we interpret it, that creates emotions, those become experiences and they become locked in.

A Baby Moment Becomes A Pattern

SPEAKER_01 11:02

So I had a client who was not really aware of what was going on for them, but after a regression, they became aware of what that term, you know, fear of abandonment meant. So they were a baby and they went back to a moment, and there they were, they were a baby on a bed. So I, because perception limitations, I had them rise above and watch.

SPEAKER_00 11:27

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 11:27

And so the baby's crying on the bed, but the baby has no diaper on because the mom went to get a diaper and got distracted by something else. My recollection is she was she picked up a phone. It was like an actual phone back in the day, sitting on a wall that you had to answer there. Anyway, that they were lying there that had no diaper on. They were surrounded by pillows, so they couldn't go anywhere, and they were young enough they weren't going anywhere. But they were essentially left alone longer than they'd ever been left alone before.

SPEAKER_00 12:03

Yeah, even if it's just a minute.

SPEAKER_01 12:05

Well, for them, what they perceived was almost five minutes.

SPEAKER_00 12:08

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 12:09

Right? They're what when they stood over top and asked, Well, how long is mom gone? Well, she's doing something else. You know, she's on the phone with somebody and she's she's got the diaper, she's coming back, but I'm I'm here waiting.

SPEAKER_00 12:21

Yep.

SPEAKER_01 12:22

And in that few moments, yeah, that baby developed a fear of being alone.

SPEAKER_00 12:30

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 12:31

Right. And that fear of being alone was so so intense that they were living it out through their whole adult life that there's this, they just want to be around people all the time, even when they don't want to be around people. So this is the kind of thing they were going through. Of course, you know, in regression, it was really simple to resolve. You know, just go down to the baby and tell the baby you're fine, you're gonna be fine, everything's fine. See, look at me. Uh for me, it's one of the easiest techniques. Just say, look, here I am. I am you. If I'm here as an adult, that means you survive this. It means you survive everything. It means you're a survivor. So don't let anything like this bother you. And then it's really easy to clear out the timeline of any similar kind of emotions because the the existence of the adult self is proof to the to the deeply buried child self that they survived.

SPEAKER_00 13:30

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 13:31

But I remember dealing with that as the simplest of issues. Like it's it shocked me that this was the kind of thing that became so complex and so reinforced that as an adult, this was an issue.

SPEAKER_00 13:47

Yeah. Yeah. I as you're talking there, I think about uh one type of issue that comes up a lot. And I think we're gonna circle back to this idea of permission and and worthiness here because I think they're all intertwined, right? The permission to really exist. This one comes from a number of instances where I've worked with people about this. And the womb work again comes up where you know, mom was having a hard time after discovering she was pregnant, accepting that she was pregnant. So there was like a feeling from the baby like she like the the baby wasn't wanted, right? And so this the clients like this happens a lot. The clients uh go through their life striving to grasp that attention or feeling like they need permission to simply exist and and go through life. And I mean, when we talk about this stuff, it's just a moment of mom grabbing the phone. It's maybe a moment of mom thinking, is this right for me? I mean, how natural is that, you know? And these are just moments that I mean we can't get away from, right? These are so natural, they happen. I mean, you live life, right? Life, life happens. So I guess what I'm getting at is, you know, we can't we can't get away from all this stuff happening, but we can start the process of looking at uh releasing whatever that is for ourselves. And I don't think that, you know, one needs to go into deep hypnosis to start working on this stuff. I think it's just a recognition of where it might where it might be stemming from and starting the process of like uh on you know, unraveling those layers and looking at each layer, and not with judgment or condemnation of parents or what have you, um, even yourself. Yeah, I think it's about just tons of self-love, but then we get to well, how do we how do we have self-love? How do we have that permission to have self-love?

SPEAKER_01 16:14

I think that the problem is almost fleshed out, but I think there's one more point I think we need to acknowledge.

Why Self-Love Turns Conditional

SPEAKER_00 16:20

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 16:21

And that is this is almost an inherent problem in the human condition.

SPEAKER_00 16:28

Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 16:29

So what it means is everybody, everybody has to resolve this. Everybody, it's it's like a core issue, right? A core issue where we we have we've been dropped into a world of duality, completely reliant on somebody else, and we have to move from that reliance and dependence, not just physically, but also emotionally and mentally, so that the idea becomes every human being has to make a shift. And the problem we've been talking about when we talk about rules and honoring rules and getting approval and being worthy, right? All this self-worth stuff. The problem really with all of it is in these early years, it is conditional. Yeah, it is from someone else. Someone else determines this, right? And that it's changeable. That right now I might be good enough and worthy of love, but in 15 minutes, you know, something might happen and I won't be entitled to love. And then I have to behave, and I have to behave in a certain way. And if I meet those conditions, then those conditions will allow me to be loved, will allow me to be approved of, will allow me to be part of the group, will allow me to be accepted, right? And now I've got those myths in my head about my own worth being a variable that's contingent on external approval, right? Following rules and behaviors, it's about what I do, not who I am. And then we've got to overcome all of that. And yeah, for me, I think this is a core issue. And there isn't a whole lot that we work with that I don't find that there's some element of self-love involved.

SPEAKER_00 18:26

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 18:26

And so for me, if you want to simplify it, self-love can be like any other kind of love that we experience on this planet. It can be conditional or it can be unconditional. And we've really learned to keep our self-love conditional. If we follow the rules and we get approval, and people compliment us and praise us, yeah, and we stick to the system, we follow the script that's written for us, the sequence of events, we go to school and we do well, we do better than others. It's such a comparative thing. And then we go and get a job, we get a role where we live the same kind of learning and approval process that we did in school until we reach a point where we can look in the mirror and say, I've succeeded, whatever that means. And I look around me and I see my stuff, and that's a symbol of my success. It's the only real meaningful symbol of my success because I haven't learned any others. Because I'm still striving. Because in my mind, I'm never good enough. In my mind, I'm always striving for something more. In my mind, I'm always wanting someone else's approval. In my mind, there's always more symbols of me being good enough to attain.

SPEAKER_00 19:53

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 19:54

So it remains conditional.

SPEAKER_00 19:56

Yeah. Sorry, I'm just like lost in thought here. But they're not, they're not, uh it's not coming out as a stream of consciousness, it's just random.

SPEAKER_01 20:08

But if we embrace that, like let's just pause and embrace that. That every one of us is subject to that. Every one of us has received extensive training in that way. And what I mean by extensive training is I mean like as as little as a little baby lying on a bed and mom's gone for 30 seconds longer than she should be. I have been abandoned. Right. I need her approval to survive, right? I need others' approval to survive. I need to be a good boy, I need to be a good girl, I need to follow the rules, I need to succeed at this and this and this and this. Some of which, for some people, they can never succeed at because they're not built that way. It's not their inherent abilities, it's not their inherent talents, right? Some kids are born to learn math, and some kids just don't like it, but they're wonderful at geometry, right? They can make shapes, they can draw, they can create, but they just don't want to figure out the numbers part of it. You know, there's there's all these comparisons we make to each other. We're constantly looking outside ourselves for a measurement of ourselves and our good enoughness. Yeah. And it remains in question the whole of our lives. It's never a resolved question. When in fact, when you reach some place of openness and you see this whole external approval thing is a never ending, unresolvable cycle. So it must be in error. My worth was never determined by my mother. My worth was never determined by my friends and my playmates, or the teachers, or the priests and ministers and rabbis. It was never determined. Determined by these people that were in positions of authority over us. My worth had been established by my very existence. And it's really convenient for us to be able to say these are good people and these are bad people. I think a better way to look at it is these are healed people and these are unhealed people. These are hurt people and these are healed people. And hurt people struggle because they live in this cycle that they're never good enough. And all they can do is find little moments where they are safe, right? Because safety is so attached to our sense of our worth.

Adult Approval Seeking And Social Norms

SPEAKER_00 22:40

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 22:41

And our ability to fit in.

SPEAKER_00 22:43

We talk about this idea of survival, you know, coming from baby womb, childhood, our survival in the formative years, like being dependent on somebody else. So what comes through my mind is, you know, most of us adults are not walking around thinking, well, I have to survive, right? I have, I mean, sometimes, but so what does it look like as an adult as that translates into adulthood? What you know, I think trying to think about like, what kinds of things do people go through so that you know the listener can be like, oh yeah, maybe I don't think about survival all the time in terms of worth or self-love, but what what is that for them? I'm asking. So I can recognize it when it's said to me from somebody, but sometimes it's hard to dive into it.

SPEAKER_01 23:40

That's when we go around seeking approval all the time. It's become so embedded in the way we think. We we might be aware that we can survive without approval, but we need it because it was so significant to our survival during a period of time. And it has become such a habit. And people thinking, you know, I need someone to love me, I need a partner. I think there's something beautiful about the way partners complement each other. There's similarities, or they can't get along, but there's differences in the way that they complement each other. And but there's also a world filled with expectations. And if you don't meet the norm, it's really easy to be living your life seeking, constantly seeking approval. So I think I think of people who are physically different, right? People who are people like our buddy Tom, who was born with spinal bifida and club feet. And that was that was an added challenge to his life that some people don't get, which people then, you know, kids are cruel. People are are then pushing people away that don't fit in the norm. It's hard to meet the expectations of a larger society, right? When you physically don't meet the norm. You're born and you need a wheelchair, you're born and you need crutches, right? You're born and you have something physically about you that is noticeable and outside the norm so that so that people react to it. You know, just a just a simple example. Simple example. And uh, you know, people who are find themselves with gender ambiguity, people who find themselves with attractions to the same sex that is so outside the normal, and they find themselves excluded. They don't fit in in what people think is the norm. And now they have to find a way to get approval within a world that's predisposed not to approve of them. And, you know, these people bring to us, you know, I think of people with uh developmental handicaps, you know, people who do not have the same kind of brain and mind as others. And they're predisposed to be reliant on others. That rel that reliance continues on into their life. I think of these as particular kinds of challenges, and there's many more, but the point is when you fall outside what this social environment might call the norm, and you are completely reliant on others for your survival, and you're seeking approval, being someone who doesn't really have the opportunity to succeed within the narrow parameters of society, these people are forced, I think, very early to take on an understanding of conditional and unconditional self-love. Self-love that is conditional is how most of us live. And if we fit into the norm and we we're you know strong and healthy as society might demand, then we have the chance to rise up the corporate ladder and we can be the thing and we can have the money and we can have the house. And if we fall in any way outside the parameters of those kinds of people, then we find ourselves with an added challenge for self-approval, for self-love. And in some ways, I think we see people who succeed at that. I mean, uh he's not with us anymore, but I don't think Tom would mind me saying it. Tom learned self-appreciation very young. He was not afraid to stand up for himself. He was not afraid to go after what he wanted, regardless of his physical differences. He took on the challenge, and you when you talked to him, you could tell he approved of himself. Right. And I think there are those who face those challenges that that rise to the occasion very easily. And in many respects, you know, I have to think that the instrumental people in their lives were helpful with that. But as some people who actually fit in for all intents and purposes, the norm or they appear to, the challenge might be more than they can bear. They've become so programmed and waiting for other people's approval, so committed to following the rules and doing what? Being a good boy and being a good girl, and in spite of that commitment, don't find themselves thriving in our world, then I think this is this is the message to them. You know, if your love for yourself is conditional, you need to move past that. If the if your love for yourself depends on external forces, that you can see yourself on some days being a really good person and other days not being a good person, that though that means your love for yourself is conditional.

SPEAKER_00 29:22

I think of one of the biggest ones that I see in society and that I work with, I suppose, is that you know if I lose that 30 pounds, then I'll be lovable, right? Then I'll love myself. Yeah. I think that's uh probably the one that the the one that stands out to me. I don't know if that's because I work with it a lot, I sometimes suffer from it. You know, oh I can't wear that because of this, and all the stuff.

SPEAKER_01 29:50

Anyway, people will react, people will think badly of me.

SPEAKER_00 29:54

Yeah, uh, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 29:56

And then all of our life becomes conditional. When I finally get that job, I'll be happy. When I finally make this amount of money, I'll be happy.

SPEAKER_00 30:04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 30:04

When I finally have a house, I'll be happy, right? And bing bang boom, because you have always lived with conditions for your self-love, you get the house and you go, oh, it didn't mean what I thought it would mean. You get the job and you think, oh, it doesn't mean what I thought it would mean. You get the income, you go, oh, it doesn't mean what I hoped it would mean. Yeah. You know, I'm not, I am caught in this cycle. And that to me is the that's the very human, common problem we all face.

SPEAKER_00 30:38

Yeah.

The Happiness Trap Of Future Conditions

SPEAKER_01 30:39

And when we feed into that for each other, when we tell each other, you know, things like, you know, you shouldn't wear that, or you know, you're looking a bit big, or you know, you're you're getting passed over because somebody's better than you, or no, we can't approve you for the mortgage. You don't make enough money yet. Or you didn't get accepted into that school that you wanted to go to. You didn't get accepted into the program that you really wanted. When all of this negative feedback comes, because we're we're trying to drive our way through a very comparative, very competitive world, we take that on.

SPEAKER_00 31:23

Yeah. Yeah. In the chat, we've got, yeah, societal permission is big. If we don't meet this, if we don't meet the societal norm, it's challenging to approve of ourselves. And if I am not meeting the societal norm, can I give myself permission to be okay with myself or even love myself?

SPEAKER_01 31:44

Well, I think when you take the time, again, that so you're shifting from conditional to unconditional. When you take the time to realize that you're an eternal child of the universe, there is nothing wrong with you. Your worth was established at birth. I am entitled to be here because the universe put me here. And if the universe didn't want me here, it would have removed me long before now. I am meant to be here. I'm meant to be me. When you can start to embrace that, that's when people start to do the this world is nuts. This is craziness. What does it matter, right? What does it matter whether or not I own a home? What does it matter whether or not I have children? What does it matter whether or not I get married? What does it matter whether or not somebody gives me their approval? What does it matter that I have or don't have a career, right? What does all that stuff matter except somebody else's attempt to control me? Somebody else's fear of my individuality. Somebody else's need to control me, like a mom needs to control her kids, because you just can't at all survive that kind of chaos without having some rules, without having some conditions to the approval, without creating in your child's mind a need to follow the rules, please. Because otherwise, as a mom, I'm losing my mind. I can't function. And in today's world, on top of all of that, moms, guess what? You get to have a job too outside the house. You get to have a career if you want to try to make that happen. But again, if you can build up that self-esteem, that incredible self-love, that self-acceptance that there's nothing wrong with me, and there never was. And maybe I don't fit into this crazy system, and maybe I don't want to. And if life gives me opportunities not to, then maybe what I'm actually here to do is just be an example that helps everybody with that very human difficulty, right? If I can live outside all the norms and all the rules, if I can live outside the need of others' approval and love myself and care for myself and succeed at moving through this world, then maybe my role here is to show others that they don't have to buy into a system and they don't have to be controlled, and that their worth is not contingent on other people's approval. And that's kind of a meaningful role in a crazy world like today, because the world's pretty crazy.

SPEAKER_00 34:49

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 34:50

And our systems are showing themselves not to work so well.

SPEAKER_00 34:53

No, and I think I think as I I was thinking earlier, the systems are in their own way breaking down. And what I've noticed is in the breaking down, there's been this sort of inner sight for people of looking at themselves and thinking, well, is that what I want? You know, what what do I want? That question that we keep coming back to. And people are are pushing back a little bit and they're breaking the so-called norms. Uh they're starting to do things that make them happy. They're starting to test the waters of, you know, well, maybe I don't want to do this, maybe I don't want to have that that so-called normal life of of, you know, graduating from university, getting a job, buying a house, having kids, getting married, whatever. Because it doesn't even make sense now, right? The people graduating university, many of them aren't even getting jobs. Not because they don't want jobs, but because they can't get them. So there's this like breaking down of of what's happening in society. And I think it's pushing people to limits where they're they're they're choosing something else. They're looking outside of of you know what what they're what they've been told all their life they should be. But there's also they're finding in their mind the society saying, Oh, you should be this, you should be that. But on the other hand, there's there's this pushback, right? There's this pushback of, well, maybe I don't want that. And what does that look like? It might look kind of scary, right? But if you're able to move through it, I think, and from what I see, people are inspired by people that do that. It's kind of funny because you would think that many would be inspired by, oh, you got a job and a house, and but there's like this extra inspiration. I don't know how to explain that any other way. There's this like inquisitive inspiration when you see somebody that's just being, that's just living, that's being who they want to be. And you wonder, how are they getting by in the world? How are they how are they doing this? But anyway, I think it's worth not that you have to sell everything and live in a van down by the river, but like I think it's worth asking yourself, like, well, what do I want in this world? And I think, you know, we always seem to come back to the that phrase now, but challenging those norms of especially the norms of, well, who says? Who says I need to do this? Who says I need to own a house? Who says I need to have kids at by this age and be married at this age and all that stuff?

SPEAKER_01 38:07

I think that you hit the nail on the head. I mean, it's one of those you you you sort of inverted it. I I I try to teach a reframe, you know. The reframe is says who.

SPEAKER_00 38:19

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 38:20

If I'm putting the should monster on myself, I should this, I should that, says who.

SPEAKER_00 38:27

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 38:28

And then why? Why do they say that? Who is served by these rules? Who is who is not served by these rules? We talked about that weeks ago.

SPEAKER_00 38:38

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 38:39

We are in the bad habit of looking outside ourselves in comparison, in compliance, to determine our worth. And our worth was established by our birth. And society has acknowledged that in many, many subtle ways. And society is pulling back from those positions, you know, fundamentally, the idea of rights. I have the right to be able to speak what's on my mind. How else can I learn except by speaking what's in my mind and letting others speak what's on their mind? Right? Free speech is the way we grow. That's the value of it. I am free to move around, right? I'm free not to be held back and detained because of what you perceive as my bad behavior. We we took the time to say that to build a great society is to understand that people are entitled to certain things in their life just by virtue of their birth. And society, global society has considered that, international human rights. We've moved to towards that edge, and now the fearful controlling parts of us, the parts that we're afraid of, the way people have come out and shown themselves to be different and have different desires and have different goals.

Says Who, Human Rights, Daily Practice

SPEAKER_01 40:07

In fact, it it stimulates fear in the side in inside those who have worked really hard at complying, who've worked really hard at getting good approval from others because of their behavior, because of their attitudes, because of their points of view. Right? These these people are scared of people showing that life can be different and everybody can still be safe. You know, we are, I love this analogy that fundamentally the thing that we do, the thing that we are, is we're beings who are constantly learning. And we are beings that are constantly teaching because people are watching. And to see yourself as a student and a teacher all the time, as a student, you have constant permission to make mistakes as you're trying to find your way through and you're trying to learn and you're trying to get better and you're trying to understand. And as a teacher, by putting forth that effort to try to constantly get better and never dig in your heels and never tell yourself, oh, I've attained it. I'm there, right? Never go around telling others, oh, look at me. Acknowledging that you are offering an example constantly to others, and to embrace that role, student and teacher, all the time. That's that's a mindset that is best served by acknowledging that my worth is never in question. My abilities are always expanding. I am not what I do, I am not what I think, I'm not what others think of me. I am, from the instant I was born, worthy of a place on this planet, playing the role of student and teacher. I think in there is the encouragement of self-love, seeing yourself as just part of creation. I think more and more I'm learning that love is that appreciation of everything as part of the whole.

SPEAKER_00 42:14

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 42:15

If everything is part of the whole, then everything deserves acceptance and allowance. From the sounds of the birds to the sounds of the lawnmower, from the view of nature to the view of the city, all the contrast. It's all allowed. My job is just to continue to love myself and learn from it all. Express myself. I need to learn.

SPEAKER_00 42:39

We all need to learn that. We're certainly no gurus here. Right. Well, thank you for joining us today. If you have any questions, visit our website, drop it in the anonymous question box.

SPEAKER_01 42:51

Can I just add this?

SPEAKER_00 42:52

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 42:53

See if you can spend the day saying to yourself, I love and approve of myself. Say it a million times today. See how that feels.

SPEAKER_00 43:02

One million. I love and approve myself. All right. We will see you later. Have a good day.