Latest / The Karen Kenney Show / DON'T BE A PARROT

Transcript

DON'T BE A PARROT · The Karen Kenney Show

0:01
Karen Kenney: Hi, welcome to the Karen Kenney show. I'm so happy
0:05
that you're here, and thank you for being here and spending a
0:09
little time with me. So I think I'm going to call this sucka.
0:12
Don't be a parrot. Like, don't be a parrot. Like, first of all,
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I love parrots. I love the birds, right? But we're gonna
0:20
dive into what I mean when I say, don't be a parrot. And like
0:23
so many of my other shows, these ideas that I get like or when
0:27
something pops up into my consciousness, or it's on my
0:30
mind and in my heart, and I want to talk about it a lot of times,
0:33
it's inspiration from a couple of different places. As you all
0:36
know, I'm a wicked, big animal lover, and throughout my life, I
0:40
have had exposure to actually, different kinds of parrots, like
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actual physical parrots. You know, I had parakeets when I was
0:49
a little kid, my aunt and uncle, who my sister and I went to go
0:52
live with after my mother was killed. They had a cockatiel
0:56
named Bird. Bird, so original, right? So and bird would like,
1:01
sing and cat call and whistle at you and repeat little things. My
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best friend KT, has two beautiful little parrots, and my
1:10
sweeties, um, stepdad, who he kind of considers his dad, also
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has a beautiful parrot. And those parrots, like, can last
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for like you can live for like up to like 70 years. It's
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incredible. And one of the things I noticed, though about
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birds and parrots, that while they do make their own unique
1:28
sounds, they have their own unique voice. When it comes to
1:32
like speaking or saying phrases or whatever, what they're really
1:36
just doing is they're parroting. They're repeating, right?
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They're just repeating things that they heard in their
1:44
environment, or they're repeating phrases and and songs
1:49
or whatever sounds that people in their environment are
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teaching them. So it's not like it's a unique thing. They're
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just kind of, again, using that phrase, parroting back what has
2:02
been told to them. And the reason why this is on my mind,
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I'm going to come at this from a couple of different angles, but
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so often what I see is that people will people will just
2:15
regurgitate and repeat shit that they hear in their environment,
2:21
rather than finding their own voice. Now, one of the things
2:26
where this can get a little tricky, and I see it a lot, and
2:29
I've experienced this throughout my lifetime, is dealing with or
2:33
talking with or trying to have relationships with, people who
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all they're doing is regurgitating from their own
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childhood. They're regurgitating what their parents told them,
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what school told them, what the teachers told them, what the
2:47
priest told them, what whatever told them. And they never got
2:50
curious enough to find out for themselves what they think about
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what they were told, what they believe about the things they
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were told how they feel about the things they were told. A lot
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of times we just end up taking on, you know, the the stories,
3:09
the beliefs, the identities, the whatever from our childhood, and
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then you don't question it. And I see so many people, you know,
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I've, I've had these conversations, you know, one in
3:20
one in particular, with a with a guy I dated. I remember the
3:23
story, and I'm like, you don't even know what you believe faith
3:27
wise and religion wise. You just basically drank the Kool Aid of
3:30
your parents, and now you're just regurgitating it. But if I
3:33
ask you to explain to me what that even means, you can't tell
3:37
me. And so often people are just parroting, like I said, Back
3:44
shit that's on the news, shit that's on, you know, something
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that they saw online, saw on social media, some quote or
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whatever, and they haven't found out for themselves what they
3:56
think about it, what they feel about it, what their unique
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perspective or spin might be on that thing because they've spent
4:04
a little time thinking about it, right, and being with it and
4:07
sitting with it and going like, hey, yeah. Like, I know. I know
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my grandparents always said this money doesn't grow on trees,
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right? But how do I feel about these things? And we have to be
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paying close enough attention to catch ourselves when we're just
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kind of regurgitating and parroting shit from again,
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whether it's our childhood, our parents, our churches, our
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school teachers, right, our siblings, whatever, it's really
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important that we take time in this lifetime to figure out what
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the Fuck we think, what we feel, what we believe, what we know to
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be true, right for us. And I want to talk about this in a
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particular way too, because when we end up just kind of
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parroting, the world misses out. And I've told this story before,
4:58
but I'm just going to tell it really quick. I'm. There was a
5:00
period of time you all know, well, you all know, I don't
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know. Some of you might not know, but if you've been around
5:05
for a while, you know that I lived and worked with Marianne
5:08
Williamson. You know, the writer the spiritual right. She wrote a
5:11
return to love, 1000 other you know, she was written so many
5:14
books, New York Times, best selling books. She's a spiritual
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thought leader. She's a teacher. She's a lecturer. She ran for
5:19
president a couple of times. Okay, so I used to live and work
5:22
with Mary Ann in California. And at the time, like I was in my
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20s, I was so impressionable. I was so like, oh my god, like she
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was, she was a mentor of mine. She was a teacher of mine. She
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was a woman, you know, an older woman that I, that I looked up
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to, and, you know, read all her books, etc, and during my time
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of working with her, I went to go see, you know, a woman who
5:48
did, she was an intuitive. She did readings, tarot readings.
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She like, you know, would basically just, you know, do it
5:53
like a reading for you. And I remember going in, and I sat
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down, and I was all like, you know, just like, if you can't
6:00
see me, I have my hands in my face now. I'm all just, like,
6:03
wide eyed, and I was just like, Oh, I was so excited to be
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there. I had heard wonderful things about this woman, just
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how like, spot on she was, and just how caring and kind she
6:11
was. So I was kind of like an open book, you know, like, I
6:14
just, like, sat down in her room at her house, and so she
6:18
obviously knew my name, and she's like, so, you know, tell
6:22
me about yourself. And I'm like, I'm Karen Kenney and blah, blah,
6:25
blah, blah. And she's like, so tell me. She's like, you know,
6:29
who are you? Like, what do you want to do? And, you know, to
6:32
kind of, like, kick off the session. And I said to her, I
6:36
want to be the next Marianne Williamson. And I was so
6:40
sincere, I was so earnest, like I really meant it, and not that
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I wanted to be Marianne. Like, looking back, I can look and see
6:50
I understood now, like what I really meant. But she said the
6:53
most profound and powerful thing to me and I and she looked me
6:56
right in the eyes, and she said to me, why don't you try being
7:00
the first. Karen Kenney, and she knew something then that my
7:05
brain had not like realized yet, right? Like my lived experience
7:09
had not caught up to yet, which is this, like I needed to be the
7:13
first. KK, because the world doesn't need another copy of
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somebody else. What the world needs is you, and the world
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needs your particular take, your particular voice, your
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particular point of view, your lived experience, your own
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unique and creative and brilliant and wonderful and
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whatever you know point of view. The world just doesn't need us.
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You know, remember how, like, when you would like, I don't
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know if you ever worked at a place where there was a copy
7:45
machines, like nowadays we all have, a lot of us have copies at
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home built into our printers. But back in the day, when you
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worked at a place and there was, like, a Xerox machine, right?
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And you would just get up to all kinds of shenanigans, as you can
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imagine, right? I'm just having some memories flash through my
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head here.
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But if you take a carbon copy, if you take a copy of something,
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even if you did carbon copies, remember back in the days with
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the credit card things, and you'd have to go, chunk chunk,
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right? I'm just sliding my hand back and forth like chunk chunk,
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to get an impression. This is the thing. When we're making a
8:19
copy, we're only getting an impression of something, but
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we're not getting to the root source of where that impulse,
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that creative energy, and that creative impulse, comes from.
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And if you just make a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy, it
8:32
gets it gets weaker, it gets lighter, it gets blander, you
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can't even read it. It's like, where did this even come from?
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And so I'm really a champion of people owning their own unique
8:46
experience and their perspectives and their stories
8:49
and their special, you know, characteristics that that,
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because when you show up in the world and you're like, hey,
8:57
here's what I think about this, you now give all of us a new,
9:02
unique point of view, and it might be a way of looking at a
9:05
thing, or thinking about a thing or experiencing a thing that
9:09
we've never had before. And so if we're just so concerned about
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sounding like everybody else, looking like everybody else,
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being like everybody else, regurgitating what's already out
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there, then we kind of like Rob ourselves, the experience of
9:24
really coming to know ourselves. And I think of it like the
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Divine is expressing itself through us. We've all been given
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in A Course in Miracles. It says like our own individual
9:34
assignment. You have your own individual curriculum, your own
9:38
divine assignment, and so only you came here to express through
9:42
you in your own unique way. So why do we want to just repeat
9:46
what we hear other people saying and doing and being like the joy
9:53
and the thrill of this is figuring out, what do I think?
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What do I believe? Or why do I think that? Do I believe it? And
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a lot of times, we can trace the breadcrumbs right back. We can
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trace that thread back to something from our past,
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something that was said to us in childhood, and in the work that
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I do as a spiritual mentor and a coach, and, you know, as a
10:15
hypnotist, and all the ways that you know, you know that I work
10:18
with people, one of the things that I often see is that people
10:23
are repeating stories. That's why, you know my work, I talk
10:28
about your story to your glory. And so often I'm tracing this
10:32
thread, this belief that people have this thing where they're
10:35
getting in their own way of not believing that they're lovable,
10:38
or not believing that they're good enough or smart enough, or
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they're too much, or whatever the thing is, I'm too dumb, I'm
10:44
too lazy, I'm too this, I'm not good with money. A lot of times,
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there are these beliefs that are like, put in place. And when we
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trace the thread back, when we trace the trail of bread crumbs
10:54
back, it's something that was said when they were a little
10:57
kid, you know, they had a teacher that, with their red
11:00
pen, like, you know, mark their paper, and they thought they
11:02
were stupid, because maybe their spelling wasn't that great, you
11:06
know. And there's a great thing that I, you know, I was just
11:09
listening on the radio the other day, and somebody used this
11:12
phrase, and I wish I could remember what it was, but it was
11:16
something about, like, the way that I reiterated it in my head
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is that story of, like, don't judge a fish by its ability to
11:24
climb a tree. We all have our own unique gifts and talents,
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and I'm not going to expect a fish to be able to climb a tree,
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right, but that fish can swim like a mofo, like in the ocean,
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like, you know what I'm saying. So it's like, I want to, I want
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to, like, hear and see where people are shining a light on
11:47
their own brilliance. And that's another thing. Like, we're often
11:50
really willing to talk about our traumas, our dramas, our
11:55
bullshit, the places where, like, Oh, you don't know how
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bad, blah, blah, blah. And I'm like, Yeah, okay, we gotta own
12:02
that stuff too. But let, like, let's also own our brilliance in
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the places where you're wicked smart, or you get you're really
12:08
creative, or you have a really unique perspective in your art
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or your podcast, or the way that you create meals, or, like,
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whatever the thing is, and I don't want to get robbed of not
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seeing your beauty and your creativity in your genius
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because you're so worried about looking or sounding like
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everybody else and just wanting to fit in. And I understand that
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we are pack creatures, you know? I understand that we feel safety
12:39
in groups because it's easier to survive when we're like, pad up
12:43
and stuff like that, you know. But the people who have really
12:47
changed the world are the ones who are willing to, like, go
12:50
outside the framework and do something totally new, and not
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just take the well worn path, right? It's to do something
12:58
different. So I just want to encourage you, like, if you find
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yourself, like, just kind of, you know, repeating shit that
13:06
other people have already done or already said, or, like,
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whatever, like, you know, some people will say there's no
13:13
unique ideas out there. Like, all the songs are just kind of
13:16
using the same chords. All the stories have been told, all the
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songs have been written, and it's like, I understand where
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they're coming from, but nobody is you, even if you're an
13:27
identical twin, your identical twin is not having the same
13:30
exact experience as you are. And there is something right. I
13:34
believe, again, I believe that it. Call it. You can call it
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whatever word you want to call it. You can call it God, you can
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call it source. You can call it creative intelligence. You can
13:43
call it the universe. You can call whatever you want to call
13:46
it. But I believe that there is something really, really
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powerful, call it love, that is trying to move through you and
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express itself in its own way. And this is another reason why,
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like, I think like, I'm going to shift gears now a little bit
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like about not just parroting what you hear out there what you
14:07
see out there. Right now. It's a very, very, very, very dangerous
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time to just be repeating stuff and not getting your sources in
14:18
check, not knowing what the true meaning of a thing is not
14:21
knowing if it's actually true what you're sharing or saying.
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So you know how I told you I worked with Mary Ann when I
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worked in live with her, one of the things that I did, because
14:32
she has this famous quote, right? Most people know it. A
14:35
lot of people know it. You know it's, it's, in her book, a
14:38
return to love. I you know, it begins like, Our deepest fear is
14:42
not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are
14:44
powerful beyond measure. We ask ourselves, like, who am I to be?
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Brilliant, talented, gorgeous, blah, blah, okay, that quote
14:51
back in the day, right? So this, this was in, let's see, this is
14:55
in the 90s, so, like, probably, like, around 9697
14:59
and the. That quote was getting attributed to, like a Fauci
15:02
like, mostly Nelson Mandela, also to coach kada in the movie.
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But then people were also like sharing it and not giving credit
15:10
or attribution. So one of the things that I did in my work and
15:14
my job is I would find this, I would find where it was being
15:18
misattributed or whatever, and then I would send an email or
15:20
write a note, or I'd make a correction, and I'd say, Hey,
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this is actually from, you know, Marion Williamson's book, a
15:26
return to love, like on page 90 and 91 whatever. And I would
15:29
like tell people, and I'd make the correction. And that that
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doing that again and again and again is probably also part of
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what, why giving credit is, like, so important to me, like,
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why I'm like, please don't steal other people's shit. Please
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don't plagiarize. Please have a fucking original thought in your
15:46
own head and and if you are going to take take something
15:49
that somebody else taught you, or that you read or you heard or
15:52
you learned right like, Please give credit or attribution, but
15:56
even take it one step father, one step further, because
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there's another thing that I see happening a lot, and it happens
16:05
like, again, I tend to catch it with things that I have spent a
16:10
lot of time with, right? Like, there's a quote from A Course in
16:13
Miracles that basically says, Your task is not to seek for
16:15
love. Your task is to seek and to find the barriers that you
16:18
have built against your own awareness of love's presence or
16:21
whatever, right? I cannot tell you how many people attribute
16:24
that to Rumi, and I just like want to bang my face off the
16:28
desk, and I'm not being mean about those people, but what it
16:31
tells me is they saw it somewhere else, and then they
16:34
just attributed it to Rumi, but they didn't do their homework.
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They didn't bother to see if it was true. And in this day and
16:42
age of everybody screaming like fake news and, oh, you're just
16:46
saying that. And this one's that I'm always like, hey, check your
16:50
facts, check your sources, check your resources, check the
16:54
studies, check the science, check where you're getting this
16:57
thing from. If you're please don't be lazy. Please don't be a
17:01
lazy parrot and just regurgitate something when you don't know if
17:05
it's true at all. I see people, especially as a vegan, too.
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Again, I can only speak on the areas that I've spent a lot of
17:13
time in, right learning, studying, living in my own
17:16
evidence, living it. And people just say the most ridiculous
17:21
shit, the most ridiculous propaganda about like, Oh, it's
17:25
so hard to grow muscles on a vegan diet. Oh, being plant
17:28
based, you need to eat animals. No, you don't. No, you don't.
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No, you don't. I cannot stress this enough. Read some fucking
17:37
books. Do some do just do the math. Read some books, find some
17:42
studies, you will find out it's all a lie. It's all propaganda.
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Oh, my God, but we see this happening a lot, especially in
17:50
politics, and it's so dangerous and so like, if you're going to,
17:54
like, please just don't regurgitate shit you hear on Fox
17:57
News or, like, any news outlet, like, do your homework. You
18:01
know, there's a woman named Heather, Heather Richardson Cox,
18:05
and why I like to read what she has to say. First of all, she's
18:09
a historian. She's a professor. I don't care what kind of like,
18:13
I mean, whatever side of the aisle, you know, but she kind of
18:16
looks at things from a historical perspective. But you
18:18
know what she does when she writes a piece at the bottom.
18:23
She cites like any, like everything that she talks about,
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whether she's mentioning a social media post, whether she's
18:29
mentioning like something from history, she will cite exactly
18:36
where the with a link, where you can see it for yourself, where
18:39
you can go read it and think for yourself where you can go find
18:42
out for yourself, like blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So she's
18:44
not just regurgitating stuff. She's basically taking these
18:48
things in watching what's going on in the world, talking about
18:51
it from her perspective, and then backing it up with like
18:53
facts and science and like links and stuff like that. And these
18:57
days, you just have so many people who were just chugging
19:01
the Kool Aid and regurgitating stuff and parroting stuff, and
19:05
they're not checking things out. So I'm looking at this from two
19:09
perspectives. I'm looking at it from what you're putting out
19:12
into the world, right? Do your homework if you're going to
19:16
quote something, do a little digging before you give
19:19
attribution to somebody, because it's probably it might not be
19:22
them, because the frigging internet is like the wild wild
19:25
west, and nobody's really checking. You know what I'm
19:28
saying, any idiot can say anything at any time, and people
19:31
just go like, Oh, well, so and so said it on his blog, and
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we're back. I'm just taking him. I'm rubbing my eyes like, Holy
19:43
Jesus on a crack up. Okay? But mostly, what I wanted to say is
19:47
this, I'm not trying to, like, wag my finger at you, like,
19:51
don't be a parrot. Because, like, I'm saying it because the
19:54
world needs you. It doesn't need you being a cat, like a. Cheap
20:00
copy of somebody else, right? So again, find out for yourself, do
20:05
your research. Read, gather your own experience, gather your own
20:10
empirical evidence, and then make your report to the world,
20:13
right? Then go out and make your report. And you know, I read
20:17
this book once. It was called stay and fight by Madeline
20:20
Fitch. It's a fantastic book. Book. It was a novel. And there
20:25
was a character in this book named Pearlie, and he was the
20:27
son of these two women who lived in the Appalachians and life was
20:31
hard. They had to stay and fight right? They had to stay and
20:33
fight for their life. And I, I'm paraphrasing, but the kid was
20:38
taught by his mothers, and he would say, like, to be
20:42
steadfast, to be resolute, and to make his report right. And so
20:46
I started saying that like to my friends, like, Hey, be
20:49
steadfast, be resolute. And then then go out, go out and
20:52
experience things, and then come back and make your full report.
20:55
And I'd be like, come tell me your stories. Come tell me what
20:57
you learned. Come like, using your own voice, break it down
21:01
for me, so I can see how you process things, so I can see the
21:04
world through your eyes. Because that's what makes it all a
21:07
kaleidoscope, having all these kind of different voices and
21:11
points of view. And, you know, I remember there was a period of
21:15
time like in the in the 90s, maybe the early 2000s and it
21:19
just sounded like there were all these bands. They weren't really
21:23
rock bands. They were weren't really grungy, they were like,
21:26
whatever this new kind of like thing was. And I remember I
21:30
would flip through the stations on the radio and I'd be like, I
21:33
can't fucking tell these guys, one from another, they all sound
21:37
the same. And I'm like, I don't know if they're trying to sound
21:39
the same. I don't know if one just thought, Oh, this is how
21:43
you like, you know, sell records is like, you copy the other guy.
21:48
And there was also this thing that was happening in country
21:52
music where they had basically gotten this formula. And, I
21:57
mean, you can look it up, you can Google it, right. There was
21:59
like, this formula where it was like, insert this here. Insert
22:03
this here. Do this, do this. And all the country songs. And I'm
22:06
not a country fan, in fairness, in fairness, not a fan. But a
22:11
lot of, a lot of the songs were just like, red truck, red solo
22:15
cup, Red Dog, red something, right? I was just like, what?
22:19
Like, what is happening right now? And I was like, please, for
22:23
the love of God, can people get original? Can you stop going for
22:27
the cheap and the easy sell? Can you stop going for the click
22:29
bait? Can you stop trying to just like, repeat and
22:32
regurgitate and parrot the crap that's already out there? And I
22:36
think this is part of the assignment right for us to go
22:41
out there and for us to not be parrots, to not be parakeets,
22:46
right to be persons, to be people with your your own unique
22:52
voice, your own unique point of view, your own unique
22:54
experience, and your own unique stories, and to question the
22:59
ones that were given to you, those identities, those stories,
23:02
all those things that you were told about yourself as a kid.
23:06
Keep the ones that are good and loving. Keep the ones that are
23:09
good and true. Question all the other shit question, don't
23:13
parrot. Don't parrot these stories. You know, from what
23:17
your, what your, your your maybe your emotionally unintelligent
23:22
parents may be said to you right their own scarcity and fear and
23:27
lack of knowing that generational trauma that just
23:30
kind of like rolled downhill and like landed on you. We gotta, we
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gotta. We gotta, like, I'm brushing my body right now. We
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gotta, like, dust ourselves off and brush ourselves off and
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shake off the cobwebs and shake off the dust and shake off those
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old stories and really step into the glory of who you really are,
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because the world doesn't need another watered down version of
23:51
a bunch of other people. What the world needs is you.
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Okay, that's what I had to say. That was what was on my heart,
24:00
in my mind. I hope it was helpful to you in some way, and
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just know that I celebrate you. I can't always see you right,
24:07
because I you know I'm the one on the video, but when I say I
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see you and I hear you, what I mean is like I understand,
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right? I my compassion and my empathy, like I understand that
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we're all out here, and we're we're hopefully doing our best,
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and we're trying to learn, and we're trying to grow, and we're
24:24
trying to, you know, just kind of shed, shed the old skins,
24:27
shed the old shed, the old feathers, the things that you
24:30
know aren't helping us to fly anymore. And just know that I
24:34
that I do see you, I do hear you, especially when you write
24:36
to me. And I appreciate you, and I have a lot of gratitude for
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you for being here in my world, listening to the show. So just
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thank you so so so much. You know the drill. If you ever want
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to work with me, if you ever want to join the nest or do one
24:48
to one mentoring, join a yoga class, whatever, you can just
24:51
find me. I'm easy to find online. Just spell my last name
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right, and I'm pretty easy to find. It's k, e, n, n, e, y.
24:59
Karen Kenney. Kenney, go to Karen. Kenney.com, Vaness, the
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quest all that stuff is there. Thank you so much wherever you
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go. May you leave yourself and leave the animals and leave the
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environment and the other people in the planet better than how
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you first found it. Wherever you go, may you and your love and
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your presence and your energy and your unique point of view
25:24
your Eunice, right? May your Eunice be a blessing. Bye. You.