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This One Emotional Mistake Is Quietly Ruining Your Self-Worth · Deep Thoughts

• 0:02
  Speaker 1: I want to start today by pinpointing a very specific,
• 0:05
  Speaker 1: and I think, very uncomfortable feeling. It's a sensation that
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: a lot of us carry around, maybe without ever actually
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: looking at in the eye.
• 0:14
  Speaker 2: It's kind of background noise, it is.
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: It's this vague, background heaviness. You could be having a
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: perfectly fine tuesday. You haven't made a catastrophic mistake, you
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: haven't heard anyone. Your life on paper looks well, it
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: looks completely functional. And yet yet there's this silent discomfort,
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: a constant internal critic whispering that you're somehow in debt.
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: I don't mean financial debt, but a sort of existential debt.
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: You feel like you owe something to life, or you're
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: running a deficit you can never quite pay off.
• 0:44
  Speaker 2: The unnamed weight. That's a perfect description of it. Yeah,
• 0:47
  Speaker 2: And because the human brain, you know, it hates ambiguity,
• 0:50
  Speaker 2: we try to label it. We feel bad, so we
• 0:52
  Speaker 2: reach for the closest available moral category, which is usually guilt.
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: We jump straight to guilt.
• 0:57
  Speaker 2: We tell ourselves, I feel guilty. Maybe I feel guilty
• 1:01
  Speaker 2: for relaxing, Maybe I feel guilty for not calling my
• 1:03
  Speaker 2: mother enough. But the research we're looking at today suggests
• 1:07
  Speaker 2: that in the vast majority of these cases, guilt is
• 1:11
  Speaker 2: a misdiagnosis.
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: So we're treating the wrong problem.
• 1:14
  Speaker 2: We're treating a symptom with the wrong medicine, because we're
• 1:17
  Speaker 2: confusing guilt with its much darker, much more corrosive cousin, shame.
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: And that confusion is exactly what we're going to unpack today.
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: We have a stack of psychological literature and analysis here
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: that draws a very hard line between these two experiences.
• 1:31
  Speaker 2: It's not a subtle difference.
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: No, It turns out that the difference between guilt and
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: shame isn't just semantics, It isn't just wordplay. Understanding the
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: distance between these two concepts is actually the mechanism for
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: emotional maturity. So let's start with that misdiagnosis. Why do
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: we confuse them?
• 1:47
  Speaker 2: We confuse them because, well, they both feel bad. They're
• 1:50
  Speaker 2: both members of the self conscious emotions family, but their
• 1:53
  Speaker 2: functions are diametrically opposed. To understand the error, we first
• 1:57
  Speaker 2: have to defend guilt.
• 1:59
  Speaker 1: Defend guilt.
• 2:00
  Speaker 2: We tend to think of guilt as a negative emotion,
• 2:03
  Speaker 2: something to be avoided at all costs, but in psychological terms,
• 2:08
  Speaker 2: healthy guilt is actually a vital constructive tool.
• 2:11
  Speaker 1: It's necessary machinery.
• 2:12
  Speaker 2: Precisely. Think of healthy guilt like the pain you feel
• 2:15
  Speaker 2: when you touch a hot stove. It's unpleasant, certainly, but
• 2:19
  Speaker 2: that pain has a very specific function. It tells you
• 2:22
  Speaker 2: to pull your hand away. It protects you.
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: So it's a signal.
• 2:26
  Speaker 2: Healthy guilt works the same way for our social and
• 2:29
  Speaker 2: moral selves. It's a signal that alerts us when an
• 2:33
  Speaker 2: action we've taken is not aligned with the person we
• 2:35
  Speaker 2: want to be.
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: So it's behavior focused. It's a feedback loop.
• 2:38
  Speaker 2: It is entirely focused on the what. Let's use a
• 2:41
  Speaker 2: concrete example. Let's say you completely forget a close friend's
• 2:44
  Speaker 2: birth that you realize it two days later. Yeah, that
• 2:46
  Speaker 2: sinking feeling in your stomach, that is healthy guilt.
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: What's the internal monologue there?
• 2:51
  Speaker 2: The internal monologue is very rational. It says, I did
• 2:53
  Speaker 2: a specific thing forgetting the date that was bad. I
• 2:56
  Speaker 2: value this friend, I should fix this.
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: And because it's focused on the action, the thing you did,
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: it implies that you have the agency to fix it.
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: You can call them, you can apologize, you can send
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: a late gift.
• 3:08
  Speaker 2: Correct Healthy guilt invites responsibility. It mobilizes you. It pushes
• 3:14
  Speaker 2: you toward repair. Once you make the repair, the feeling
• 3:17
  Speaker 2: generally subsides. It's done its job. The signal turns off.
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: But now let's look at that same scenario through the
• 3:24
  Speaker 1: lens of shame.
• 3:25
  Speaker 2: The same situation. You forget the birthday, but instead of
• 3:28
  Speaker 2: saying I made a mistake, the internal monologue says, I
• 3:30
  Speaker 2: am a mistake.
• 3:32
  Speaker 1: That is the shift. It goes from I did something
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: bad to I am bad.
• 3:36
  Speaker 2: That is the critical distinction. Guilt focuses on behavior, shame
• 3:41
  Speaker 2: focuses on identity. If you're in a shame spiral about
• 3:44
  Speaker 2: that birthday, you aren't thinking about sending a gift.
• 3:46
  Speaker 1: No, you're thinking.
• 3:47
  Speaker 2: You're thinking, I am a terrible friend. I am selfish.
• 3:49
  Speaker 2: I always let people down. If I call them, now,
• 3:51
  Speaker 2: just remind them of how inadequate I am.
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: So I just won't call, which is fascinating because while
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: guilt mobilizes you to fix the problem, shame to paralyze you.
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: You actually stop functioning.
• 4:03
  Speaker 2: It creates a freeze response. Guilt is the compass that
• 4:07
  Speaker 2: points you back to the path. Shame is just a
• 4:10
  Speaker 2: heavy coat that weighs you down so you can't walk
• 4:12
  Speaker 2: at all.
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  Speaker 1: So it makes you want to hide.
• 4:14
  Speaker 2: Shame compels us to hide. We don't hide because we
• 4:17
  Speaker 2: hurt someone. We hide because we believe we are fundamentally insufficient.
• 4:21
  Speaker 2: We believe that if we were truly seen, we would
• 4:23
  Speaker 2: be rejected.
• 4:24
  Speaker 1: This is where it gets really interesting. For the high
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: performers listening to this. We often picture shame as someone
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: curled up in a ball, unable to get out of bed,
• 4:33
  Speaker 1: but the sources point out a much more common and
• 4:35
  Speaker 1: perhaps more dangerous manifestation high functioning shame. Shame disguised as
• 4:40
  Speaker 1: extreme productivity.
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  Speaker 2: It's insidious because our culture rewards it. If you have
• 4:45
  Speaker 2: that deep seated belief that I am not enough or
• 4:48
  Speaker 2: I am fundamentally flawed, you might try to solve that
• 4:51
  Speaker 2: internal problem with external achievement. You work harder, you stay later.
• 4:55
  Speaker 2: You become the perfectionist.
• 4:56
  Speaker 1: You become the person who never says no.
• 4:58
  Speaker 2: You are trying to outrun the feeling of inadequacy. You're
• 5:02
  Speaker 2: trying to build a resume so impressive that it acts
• 5:04
  Speaker 2: as a shield. You think, if I am perfect, if
• 5:07
  Speaker 2: I am productive, if I am helpful, then no one
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  Speaker 2: will notice that I'm actually broken.
• 5:12
  Speaker 1: But the problem, of course, is that you can never
• 5:14
  Speaker 1: do enough to satisfy shame.
• 5:16
  Speaker 2: Never. This connects directly to the concept of fatigue we
• 5:20
  Speaker 2: saw in the research. And we aren't talking about being
• 5:22
  Speaker 2: tired because you ran a marathon or moved furniture all day.
• 5:26
  Speaker 1: No, this is a bone deep weariness that sleep doesn't touch.
• 5:29
  Speaker 2: It's an existential fatigue. Think about the energy cost of
• 5:33
  Speaker 2: that defense mechanism. If you are living in shame, you
• 5:36
  Speaker 2: are essentially on trial every single day of your life.
• 5:40
  Speaker 2: You wake up and you are the defendant, the judge,
• 5:42
  Speaker 2: and the jury.
• 5:43
  Speaker 1: So you have to prove your own work.
• 5:44
  Speaker 2: You have to prove every hour that you have a
• 5:47
  Speaker 2: right to exist, that you are valuable. That is the
• 5:50
  Speaker 2: courtroom analogy. If you are constantly litigating your own worth.
• 5:54
  Speaker 2: Of course you're exhausted.
• 5:55
  Speaker 1: You're never off a clock, and sleep cannot fix that
• 5:58
  Speaker 1: because sleep restores the body, but it doesn't settle the
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: court case.
• 6:01
  Speaker 2: You wake up the next morning and the trial starts
• 6:03
  Speaker 2: all over again. This is why people experience burnout even
• 6:07
  Speaker 2: when they're technically resting on the weekends. Their bodies are static,
• 6:11
  Speaker 2: but their minds are still defending against the verdict of
• 6:15
  Speaker 2: not enough.
• 6:16
  Speaker 1: I think so many people will recognize themselves in that description.
• 6:19
  Speaker 1: The drive to be better isn't always about growth. Sometimes
• 6:22
  Speaker 1: it's just a frantic attempt to cover up a perceived defect.
• 6:26
  Speaker 2: But where does this come from?
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: We aren't born feeling like we are on trial. Babies
• 6:30
  Speaker 1: don't feel shame.
• 6:31
  Speaker 2: No, they don't. Shame is a learned adaptation. It's almost
• 6:35
  Speaker 2: always a story of origin. The material points to the
• 6:38
  Speaker 2: environments where we developed. As children, we are entirely dependent
• 6:42
  Speaker 2: on our caregivers for survival. We have needs, physical needs,
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  Speaker 2: emotional needs, the need to be seen.
• 6:48
  Speaker 1: A child screams when they're hungry, they cry when they're scared.
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  Speaker 1: There's no filter exactly.
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  Speaker 2: Now, imagine a scenario where those needs are met with
• 6:55
  Speaker 2: annoyance or dismissal, or even hostility, or perhaps the environment
• 7:00
  Speaker 2: is just chaotic and dangerous. The child is faced with
• 7:03
  Speaker 2: a terrifying dilemma.
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  Speaker 1: How do they interpret that?
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  Speaker 2: They have to interpret why their needs are not being met,
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  Speaker 2: and they have two options. Option A is to believe
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  Speaker 2: my parents are wrong. My caregivers are failing. They're incapable
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  Speaker 2: of taking care of me.
• 7:17
  Speaker 1: For a five year old, that's a death sentence. If
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  Speaker 1: your caregivers are incompetent, You're not safe.
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  Speaker 2: It's too terrifying to comprehend. So if the child's brain
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  Speaker 2: instinctively chooses option B, and option B is my parents
• 7:29
  Speaker 2: are good, they are powerful, and they are right. Therefore,
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  Speaker 2: the reason I am not getting what I need is
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  Speaker 2: because I am wrong. I am too much. I am bad.
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  Speaker 1: That is heartbreaking logic that a child sacrifices their own
• 7:41
  Speaker 1: self worth to preserve their trust and the caregiver.
• 7:43
  Speaker 2: It is a brilliant survival strategy for a child. It
• 7:46
  Speaker 2: gives them a sense of control. If I am the problem,
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  Speaker 2: then maybe I can fix myself. Maybe if I'm quieter,
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  Speaker 2: or smarter or more helpful, then I'll be safe. It
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  Speaker 2: preserves the attachment.
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  Speaker 1: Bond, but we carry that logic with.
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  Speaker 2: Us the problems that we grow up. We leave that environment,
• 8:02
  Speaker 2: but we keep the logic. We carry that I am
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  Speaker 2: the problem software into our adult relationships, into our careers.
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  Speaker 1: So that unnamed way we talked about at the beginning,
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  Speaker 1: that is the echo of option B. It's the lingering
• 8:14
  Speaker 1: belief that we are somehow defective, even decades after the
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  Speaker 1: threat has passed.
• 8:19
  Speaker 2: That is exactly what it is. And this brings us
• 8:21
  Speaker 2: back to the danger of misdiagnosis. If you are feeling
• 8:25
  Speaker 2: the weight of that old shame, but you label it guilt,
• 8:28
  Speaker 2: You're going to try to fix it with the wrong tools.
• 8:30
  Speaker 1: You start looking for what you did wrong today?
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  Speaker 2: You'll ask did I work enough? Was I applied enough?
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  Speaker 2: You start apologizing for existing you do. You try to
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  Speaker 2: pay off a debt that isn't real.
• 8:40
  Speaker 1: You can't apologize your way out of it.
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  Speaker 2: You cannot apologize your way out of shame. You cannot
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  Speaker 2: work your way out of shame. You cannot work your
• 8:46
  Speaker 2: way out of shame. You cannot fix a flaw that
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  Speaker 2: doesn't exist. This is why the distinction is the key
• 8:53
  Speaker 2: to maturation. The sources define a motion maturity not as
• 8:57
  Speaker 2: the absence of negative feelings, but as the ability to
• 9:00
  Speaker 2: differentiate between them.
• 9:01
  Speaker 1: It's about asking the right question. When that heavy feeling hits,
• 9:04
  Speaker 1: you have to pause and ask yourself, am I dealing
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  Speaker 1: with something I did or something I believe I am.
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  Speaker 2: If the answer is something you did I snapped at
• 9:12
  Speaker 2: my spouse, then that's manageable, that's guilt, apologize, repair, move on.
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  Speaker 1: But if the answer is I feel like a failure
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  Speaker 1: of a human.
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  Speaker 2: Being, that is shame, and the remedy for shame is
• 9:23
  Speaker 2: completely different.
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  Speaker 1: This is the hard part, isn't it. If the remedy
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  Speaker 1: for guilt is action, what is the remedy for shame?
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  Speaker 1: Because instinct says hide it.
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  Speaker 2: The remedy for shame is exposure. It's connection. Shame cannot
• 9:36
  Speaker 2: survive being seen. It thrives in secrecy, in silence. It
• 9:40
  Speaker 2: relies on the belief that if they knew the truth
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  Speaker 2: about me, they would leave.
• 9:45
  Speaker 1: So you have to break that belief.
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  Speaker 2: The only way to break that belief is to show
• 9:48
  Speaker 2: the truth, to show the vulnerability, the fear, the imperfection,
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  Speaker 2: and have it be met with empathy.
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  Speaker 1: That feels incredibly risky. It goes against every defense mechanism
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  Speaker 1: we've built.
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  Speaker 2: It feels like jumping off a cliff, but it's the
• 9:59
  Speaker 2: only way to land. When you share that part of
• 10:01
  Speaker 2: yourself with a safe person and sace is the keyword there,
• 10:05
  Speaker 2: and they don't run away, the logic of shame begins
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  Speaker 2: to crumble. You realize the defect was imaginary.
• 10:11
  Speaker 1: This reframes the entire concept of fixing ourselves. We are
• 10:14
  Speaker 1: so obsessed with self improvement, with hacking our way to happiness,
• 10:18
  Speaker 1: But what you're saying, is that for shame. The fix
• 10:21
  Speaker 1: isn't doing more. It's about stopping.
• 10:24
  Speaker 2: It's about integration. We have to stop treating our feelings
• 10:28
  Speaker 2: of inadequacy as enemies to be destroyed. We have to
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  Speaker 2: view them as younger parts of ourselves that were left behind.
• 10:34
  Speaker 1: So maturation isn't about becoming a perfect teflon coded superhuman
• 10:39
  Speaker 1: who never feels bad.
• 10:40
  Speaker 2: It's about becoming a person who can sit with their
• 10:42
  Speaker 2: own history. It is witnessing rather than prosecuting.
• 10:46
  Speaker 1: That is a beautiful way to put it.
• 10:47
  Speaker 2: Instead of the courtroom prosecutor trying to convict you, you
• 10:51
  Speaker 2: become the witness who says, I see that you are hurting.
• 10:54
  Speaker 2: I see you are carrying a heavy load. It makes
• 10:56
  Speaker 2: sense that you feel this way. That shift from judgment
• 10:59
  Speaker 2: to cakes curiosity is the antidote.
• 11:01
  Speaker 1: I want to circle back to the debt metaphor because
• 11:04
  Speaker 1: I think it's the most tangible takeaway for the listeners.
• 11:07
  Speaker 1: If you're walking around feeling like you are in debt
• 11:09
  Speaker 1: to the universe, how do you declare bankruptcy on that
• 11:12
  Speaker 1: emotional debt?
• 11:13
  Speaker 2: You have to realize the loan was fraudulent to begin with.
• 11:16
  Speaker 2: You never signed for it. That sense of owing, of
• 11:19
  Speaker 2: having to earn your space was placed on you before
• 11:22
  Speaker 2: you had the cognitive ability to reject it. Declaring bankruptcy
• 11:26
  Speaker 2: on that debt means accepting a radical idea you are
• 11:30
  Speaker 2: not required to justify your existence.
• 11:32
  Speaker 1: That's a terrifying thought for the high achiever. If I
• 11:35
  Speaker 1: don't have to justify my existence, will I ever get
• 11:38
  Speaker 1: off the couch? Well, I stop achieving?
• 11:41
  Speaker 2: That is the common fear. We think our shame is
• 11:43
  Speaker 2: the fuel in our engine. We worry that without the
• 11:46
  Speaker 2: whip of I'm not good enough, will become lazy. But
• 11:48
  Speaker 2: the psychological reality is the opposite. A so, shame is
• 11:52
  Speaker 2: a dirty fuel. It burns hot, but it destroys the
• 11:55
  Speaker 2: engine eventually. That's the burnout. When you switch to the
• 11:58
  Speaker 2: fuel of curiosity or passion or genuine desire to contribute,
• 12:02
  Speaker 2: you actually become more effective. You have more energy because
• 12:04
  Speaker 2: you weren't wasting fifty percent of it on defense.
• 12:06
  Speaker 1: You're working to build something, not to hide something.
• 12:09
  Speaker 2: Exactly. The action might look the same from the outside.
• 12:11
  Speaker 2: You might still work hard, you might still be ambitious,
• 12:14
  Speaker 2: but the internal texture is completely different. It's light, not heavy.
• 12:19
  Speaker 2: It's a choice, not a compulsion.
• 12:22
  Speaker 1: We have covered a lot of ground here, from that
• 12:24
  Speaker 1: unnamed weight to childhood survival strategies. But I think the
• 12:28
  Speaker 1: core mission of this deep dive was to simply name
• 12:32
  Speaker 1: the ghost, to give people the vocabulary to say, oh,
• 12:35
  Speaker 1: that isn't guilt, I didn't do anything wrong. That is shame.
• 12:37
  Speaker 2: Naming it is the first step in taming it. Once
• 12:40
  Speaker 2: you identify it as shame, you can stop fighting it
• 12:43
  Speaker 2: on its own terms. You can stop trying to outperform it.
• 12:47
  Speaker 2: You can just acknowledge it. Here is that feeling of
• 12:49
  Speaker 2: unworthiness again. I know where this comes from. It's an old.
• 12:52
  Speaker 1: Story, and you can choose not to believe the story.
• 12:55
  Speaker 2: You can treat it like a spam email. You see
• 12:56
  Speaker 2: it in your inbox, you recognize the sender, but you
• 12:59
  Speaker 2: don't have to click. You don't have to buy what
• 13:01
  Speaker 2: it's selling.
• 13:02
  Speaker 1: That is a powerful image, the spam folder of the soul.
• 13:06
  Speaker 1: Before we sign off, I want to leave a listener
• 13:07
  Speaker 1: with a specific provocation for the week ahead. We all
• 13:10
  Speaker 1: have that list of things we think we should be doing, improving, optimizing, fixing.
• 13:15
  Speaker 2: The challenge is to look at that list and ask
• 13:17
  Speaker 2: the difficult question.
• 13:18
  Speaker 1: Look at your drive, look at your exhaustion and ask yourself,
• 13:23
  Speaker 1: is this the exhaustion of good work or is this
• 13:26
  Speaker 1: the exhaustion of hiding? Are you trying to repair a
• 13:28
  Speaker 1: specific action or are you trying to repair your identity?
• 13:32
  Speaker 2: And if you find that you're trying to repair your identity,
• 13:34
  Speaker 2: give yourself permission to stop. You cannot fix what isn't broken.
• 13:39
  Speaker 2: You are not a problem to.
• 13:40
  Speaker 1: Be solved, a profound place to leave it. Thank you
• 13:43
  Speaker 1: for diving deep with us today. We will see you
• 13:45
  Speaker 1: next time. Thank you for tuning in to this episode
• 13:50
  Speaker 1: of the Deep Thoughts podcast.
• 13:51
  Speaker 2: I hope you found insights and inspiration to take with.
• 13:54
  Speaker 1: You on your journey of self growth.
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