Latest / How to Be an Adult / Your Place in the World (Ep. 3)

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Your Place in the World (Ep. 3) · How to Be an Adult

0:00
We don't recognize
0:02
love, respect,
0:03
esteem
0:05
as
0:06
needs.
0:07
We're always to being told you're not good
0:09
enough. And in fact, they lined us up,
0:12
in rows and the worse you were, the
0:14
further to the back and the left you
0:15
were. What you want to avoid is this
0:18
soul destroying
0:20
apples to oranges comparison.
0:23
Welcome to How to be an Adult.
0:25
We're a new podcast created by the practitioners
0:28
at the Morpheus Clinic For Hypnosis
0:30
in Toronto, Canada.
0:32
It's for people like you who've inadvertently become
0:35
adults and don't know what to do about
0:38
it. So whether you're 18 or 80,
0:41
this is a trail guide to the, life
0:44
that nobody gave you when you got equality
0:46
with your parents.
0:48
And so we are publicly sharing knowledge in
0:51
order to democratize,
0:53
self assurance.
0:54
Now,
0:55
episode 3 continues where episode 2 left off.
0:59
No Man is an Island.
1:01
How do you relate to the people around
1:04
you? Well, the the metaphor that I'm gonna
1:06
share is that you have a permanent seat
1:08
at the grown up table. Mhmm. So when
1:10
I was a kid, if there's a kid's
1:11
table and there's a grown up table and
1:13
the kids talk about, like, you know, the
1:15
kid stuff that kids talk about, you know,
1:17
GI Joe and, like, He Man and stuff.
1:19
This was the eighties for me. And then
1:22
the adults had the grown up table where
1:23
they talked about things that mystified kids like
1:26
me. Mhmm. I imagine they they probably talked
1:28
about things like politics. Mhmm. They talked about
1:31
things like working. They talked about things like
1:33
relationships and sex and who's dating whom.
1:36
And
1:37
as an adult,
1:39
your place is never gonna be at the
1:41
kids' table again. As an adult, you have
1:44
a permanent seat at the grown up table
1:46
where you are an equal
1:48
to the other adults in the room.
1:52
Once you're 18 and you show your ID,
1:54
your opinions count
1:56
so
1:58
highly
1:59
that you get to help set the future
2:01
of the country or the city or the
2:03
province or the state that you're in So
2:06
it's not just
2:07
talking
2:09
where you have a quality. It's actually
2:12
making important
2:14
civic decisions.
2:16
I want to point out that they wouldn't
2:18
ever let a 5 or 6 year old
2:21
foot.
2:22
They wouldn't even let a 10 year old
2:24
vote because with only 5 or 6 or
2:26
10 years of actual life experience,
2:30
you just can't make an informed
2:32
decision.
2:34
Society has basically decided in in in most
2:37
Western democracies that once you have a whole
2:40
18 years
2:42
of life experience,
2:43
that's enough years of life experience
2:46
that
2:47
you can
2:48
cast your vote at election time and have
2:51
your vote counted
2:52
equally. And I suppose the assumption is also
2:55
that maybe you don't know everything about politics,
2:57
maybe you don't know everything about human behavior
3:00
within power structures or hierarchies or any of
3:02
those things,
3:04
but
3:05
there has to be a a date point.
3:07
I mean, when I was
3:08
when I was 10, I was a communist.
3:10
I mean, and which in a way kind
3:12
of make I mean, excuse me. Any communist,
3:14
it it kind of makes sense. Right? I
3:16
mean, in the sense that
3:18
if in a perfect world where everybody was
3:20
nice to each other.
3:22
And we could all share equally. As a
3:24
child that makes a fair amount of sense.
3:26
Because in a sense that's like playing with
3:28
your friends, you know, in the playpen. But,
3:31
you know, come, 18 I was certainly not
3:35
a communist. I didn't know what I was,
3:37
that's for sure. But I suppose there has
3:39
to be a date point at which we
3:40
say, well you have the qualities and skill
3:44
sets that you need in order to make
3:45
a disarming
3:47
choice
3:48
about
3:49
how you as a person
3:51
operate within a greater community.
3:54
Right. It's never gonna be
3:56
perfect decision making. Mhmm.
3:58
It's gonna be good enough decision making. Mhmm.
4:01
A topic that was raised in the prior
4:03
episode
4:04
is when
4:06
should you feel like an adult? Or if
4:08
you don't feel like an adult,
4:10
what's up with that? I would suggest that
4:12
when there's such a clear dividing line
4:16
in pretty much
4:17
every democracy, it's gonna be 18. Mhmm.
4:20
Maybe that's around when our feelings of being
4:23
only a child are no longer truthful. Mhmm.
4:26
And our feelings of actually being at the
4:29
grown up table now are actually an accurate
4:32
representation
4:33
of our current stage in life.
4:36
That dovetails very neatly into the subject of
4:38
today's episode. Right. Which is
4:41
your place in the world.
4:43
In the few cases
4:45
where
4:46
we've kind of found feral children Mhmm. Basically
4:50
raised by wolves.
4:51
They never
4:53
quite learn how to integrate into society. So,
4:57
you know, when it comes to nature versus
4:59
nurture,
5:00
it seems to be
5:02
nurture
5:03
that causes one to be well integrated
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into society.
5:07
That dovetails quite neatly into the next principle,
5:11
which is to approach others with a cup
5:13
that is full. Right. So so here's the
5:15
metaphor.
5:17
When you're a small child,
5:19
you can't get your own cup. You can't
5:21
reach the faucet. You can't
5:23
turn it on and fill up your own
5:25
cup. So
5:26
you had to either be thirsty inside your
5:29
own home
5:31
or wait for an older sibling or a
5:34
parent to come along and fill up your
5:35
cup so you wouldn't be thirsty any longer.
5:38
And then one day you reach
5:40
a size where
5:42
you don't have to depend on anyone else
5:44
to fill up your cup. And then you
5:46
never, ever, ever have to be thirsty inside
5:49
your own home again. And that was a
5:51
good day. As we
5:54
become increasingly adults,
5:56
there are more and more of these kinds
5:58
of milestones
5:59
where we fill up our own cups.
6:01
So at some point we learn to cook
6:04
our own fry. I hope
6:06
we all at some point learn to cook
6:08
our own. At least at least pop tarts
6:09
and, and. Yeah. So at least operate a
6:12
microwave.
6:13
While we all recognize that water
6:16
and food
6:18
are needs Mhmm.
6:20
That we have to give ourselves these things
6:23
if we're lacking in them.
6:25
For some reason, even though it's on Maslow's
6:28
hierarchy,
6:28
we don't recognize
6:30
love, respect,
6:31
esteem
6:33
as
6:34
needs.
6:36
So often we just kind of make do
6:38
without
6:39
and our cups are empty
6:41
in that regard.
6:43
Somehow no one tells us that, well, about
6:46
the time we're adults, we we have a
6:49
mature enough mind, heart, psyche, whatever you wanna
6:52
call it, that we can use our self
6:55
reflection
6:56
to be self loving and self accepting and
6:59
self respecting and self esteeming, which are verbs,
7:02
not nouns.
7:04
And
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in doing so, we fill up our own
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cups
7:09
ideally to the point where
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our cup runneth over.
7:14
And then we can
7:15
be generous toward others
7:18
because we have enough for ourselves.
7:22
When people walk around and it's like sure
7:25
they have enough water and they have enough
7:26
food and they have enough air to breathe,
7:28
but they don't have enough loving
7:31
or risk or being respected,
7:33
being esteemed.
7:34
It it could go one of 2 ways.
7:36
Either they become a jerk Or a narcissist.
7:39
Or a narcissist
7:40
and they try to feel good by putting
7:42
others down. Mhmm. Or if they won't
7:46
hurt other people,
7:48
then they end up hurting
7:50
themselves.
7:51
And and and you know that this is
7:53
a very persistent
7:54
attitude or mental map to get caught in
7:57
because if you I mean,
7:59
I went to a ballet school, right? So
8:00
I went to the Royal Ballet School at
8:01
the age of 10. The audition to get
8:03
in is a big deal.
8:04
I hated it
8:06
there. One of the things that was,
8:09
that defines training as a ballet dancer is
8:12
that you are always told what you're doing
8:13
wrong.
8:14
You're always taught being told you're not good
8:16
enough and in fact they lined us up,
8:19
in rows and the worse you were the
8:21
further to the back and the left you
8:23
were.
8:24
So you were very, very clear
8:26
and if you if you moved one along
8:28
that was a good day, but that was
8:29
at the expense of the other person. Right?
8:32
It's a terrible way to teach children.
8:34
Right. So it's not just that your cups
8:36
empty. Yeah. It's that whenever it starts to
8:38
get full, someone comes along and Right. Empties
8:40
it out. Right. Yeah. So Or even you
8:43
do it yourself. Yep. Right. Now one of
8:46
the cool things
8:47
about being self validating, self accepting, self respecting,
8:51
self esteeming, self self loving,
8:53
etcetera,
8:54
is that then your happiness
8:57
and your inner peace
8:59
are independent
9:00
of what others think. So if I imagine
9:03
that there's a kid in that ballet class
9:05
and they can't really be broken
9:07
and they remain self validated and self accepting,
9:11
then they are keeping their cup relatively full.
9:14
And such a kid can help to lift
9:16
up the other kids.
9:18
But then if everyone continually has their their
9:21
cups emptied of positive
9:24
regard and and esteem,
9:26
I can't imagine
9:28
that being a supportive,
9:30
collegial
9:32
kind of environment even among the students. Well,
9:34
it was and it also I think it
9:36
also affected the adults in the school as
9:38
well. I mean, bullying was rife, and even
9:41
amongst the I think amongst the teachers as
9:43
well between them. And the the teachers bullied
9:45
the children, the children bullied the children. I
9:47
mean, it was I could tell you stories
9:48
that make your hair curl.
9:50
So no one's cup is full. Yeah. And
9:52
yet every human being, the adults and the
9:54
children, have the capacity.
9:56
I I guess that the children less so
9:58
than the adults, but the adults definitely have
10:00
the capacity
10:02
to have their their hearts full of esteeming
10:05
and respecting and caring and then to operate
10:08
from that place. If the teachers were in
10:10
a position where their cuts were because they've
10:11
been taught in their turn by, you know,
10:14
tyrannical
10:15
blood drawing
10:17
teachers themselves, you know, in a in a
10:19
profession that is notoriously same
10:25
stuff
10:29
same stuff to their students. I mean It's
10:31
a cycle of abuse. Yeah. I mean, here
10:33
it's in a school, elsewhere it's in a
10:35
household. Yeah. Yes, exactly, yeah. So then as
10:38
an adult you might say, well, if that
10:40
is your unfortunate heritage,
10:43
then
10:44
it is incumbent on you as an adult
10:46
to be able to transcend that.
10:48
Yes. And by being self loving and self
10:51
expecting and self respecting to
10:53
have
10:54
a cup that's full when you approach others,
10:56
ideally even one that runneth over. Mhmm. I
10:59
wanna point out that
11:01
this is not antisocial.
11:04
To have enough self loving, then then, you
11:06
know, you you've got plenty of love to
11:08
give to others.
11:10
This
11:11
is not
11:13
selfish to the detriment of other people. Mhmm.
11:15
It's also a prosocial thing to do. Mhmm.
11:18
So in contrast to that school,
11:21
if we imagine another school
11:23
where everyone is filling up their heads and
11:26
hearts
11:27
with self esteeming, self caring, self respecting, self
11:31
loving thoughts,
11:32
then we can imagine how easily
11:35
the teachers are patient with the children, how
11:38
easily the students can support each other,
11:41
how the bullies are the unusual ones who
11:45
stand out and are ostracized.
11:47
If we just kind of imagine as a
11:49
thought experiment
11:50
this this other school. Yeah. Right? And
11:53
in sports psychology
11:56
telling yourself that you can,
11:59
not that you can't
12:01
is I believe a fairly well established principle.
12:04
But there's also with that, there's got to
12:06
be a certain
12:07
a certain honesty with yourself and with those
12:10
around you because you could say, listen, I'm
12:12
awesome.
12:13
I am great. You're gonna dress me as
12:15
the great Pascal. That's it. We're done. So
12:17
it's in a sense, it's a different kind
12:19
of
12:20
what is it? It's a kind of quiet
12:23
and I don't know, a deep sense of
12:25
self esteem which is not, when you say
12:27
it's prosocial, it's prosocial as a result of
12:29
this deep sense of self esteem rather than
12:31
something which is
12:33
demanded that the rest of the world give
12:35
you. So that's the difference between self esteem
12:38
and esteem from others. Right.
12:40
Esteem from others is is not guaranteed. Yeah.
12:43
Right? But self esteeming
12:46
as a verb, as an internal process,
12:50
produces then the feeling we call self esteem.
12:53
Mhmm.
12:55
And that is much more dependable
12:58
than esteem from others
13:00
that the person who demands that others must
13:03
esteem them
13:05
is never gonna be secure. Yeah. Whereas the
13:08
person who
13:10
holds self esteeming thoughts
13:13
and then achieves that feeling we call self
13:16
esteem,
13:18
he or she has a much more stable,
13:21
secure
13:22
feeling. Mhmm. I mean, for what it's worth,
13:25
I think that that's kinda like a a
13:26
superpower.
13:27
To to me that self that sort
13:30
of strong self esteem and
13:32
importantly an ability
13:35
to still have
13:37
self esteem as well as accepting
13:39
responsibility
13:40
for errors, for feeling shame and guilt, and
13:43
still
13:44
feeling that you're
13:46
a learning worthwhile human being, you know, but
13:49
without that flipping out into to being well,
13:51
in which case I'm not guilty. Do you
13:53
see what I mean? I would say that
13:55
self esteeming, and I'll I'll keep phrasing it
13:58
as per As a process. Yeah.
14:00
Self esteeming is what allows you to feel
14:03
guilt or shame, to acknowledge mistakes,
14:07
to acknowledge you're not perfect.
14:09
At the same time, you don't crumple up
14:12
Yeah. Into a ball. Because you don't need
14:14
to hide, I suppose. You don't need to
14:15
hide because you have this it's not you
14:18
don't run away from shame with the presentation
14:20
of esteem.
14:21
Yep. Right. Okay. Okay. Yeah. At the risk
14:24
of sounding moralistic, the the next principle I
14:26
want to share is is that
14:29
as adults
14:30
people will generally take you at your word
14:33
and
14:35
because they value your word
14:38
you
14:39
also
14:40
valuing your word, speaking with integrity, using your
14:44
word to uplift others not to cut them
14:47
down, I'm gonna say make you more of
14:49
an adult. Yeah. Well, because you don't hold
14:52
some you don't hold a child as accountable
14:55
for their promises of what they're going to
14:56
do in the same way that you do
14:58
an adult. And also, I suppose that integrity,
15:00
that sense of
15:03
honest commitment, I suppose. That's gonna spring from
15:05
self esteem as well because
15:07
if if you're afraid or if you're filled
15:10
with shame, you might
15:12
be fearful of achievement. There's all these other
15:14
things that come spring from that, right? You
15:15
might even be afraid to speak what you
15:17
believe to be truthful. Right. If you feel
15:19
ashamed, you might even be afraid to say
15:22
no, thank you. Yeah.
15:24
If you feel ashamed,
15:26
or if you think you'll be exposed as
15:27
a bad person just because you tell the
15:29
sales clerk, oh, oh, thank you very much.
15:31
And you walk away. Yeah. Yeah. I am
15:33
much more pleased
15:34
when people are honest
15:36
and straightforward with me. And if I've said
15:39
something that could cause them offense, or if
15:41
I've asked for too much, if they just
15:43
straight up tell me that pleases me quite
15:46
a lot. Yeah. What what doesn't please me
15:49
is when people lie thinking I can't handle
15:51
whatever honest answer
15:53
that they have inside their hearts. And it
15:56
reaffirms your view of yourself
15:58
as very much a mature adult who speaks
16:01
the truth when you say no,
16:04
when you may know. Mhmm. One other point
16:06
that I'm gonna put under this topic is
16:09
that a lot of people think it's cool
16:12
to be cynical. It's sophisticated
16:15
to be negative
16:16
and to to cut down others who are
16:18
sincerely trying to have a good time or
16:20
sincerely self expressed. Even dresses itself up as
16:23
a certain kind of honesty as well, which
16:25
is not It it You know, it looks
16:26
like it, but it's not. No. Because if
16:29
if we imagine an art critic Mhmm. They're
16:33
not going to be that negative
16:36
and cynical.
16:38
They're going to be quite open and they're
16:40
going to have appreciation for the piece that's
16:42
in front of them, even if they end
16:44
up tearing apart that piece in their criticism.
16:48
It is with appreciation for the art form.
16:51
Yeah. And and also,
16:54
the best critics understand that the things that
16:56
they're looking at most of the time
16:58
are the result of an enormous amount of
17:00
time or effort or dedication or
17:03
life choices,
17:05
collaboration between multiple skill sets. It's not a
17:08
negligent thing that somebody's just, you know,
17:11
put up that needs a negligent response.
17:14
No. Well, we could look at Marcia Duchamp's,
17:17
what's I hope you swap the sorry. That's
17:19
that's the the urine urinal.
17:21
Where, you know, we we could go two
17:23
ways with that.
17:24
We could be like, oh, well, I just
17:26
paid into 1 when I went to the
17:27
sports bar. Mhmm. Or we could spend,
17:31
you know, a few hours we wanted to
17:33
Mhmm. Questioning what constitutes art.
17:36
Mhmm. So the person who spends a few
17:38
hours questioning Mhmm. What constitutes art,
17:42
Right?
17:43
Mhmm. Is I'm gonna say more sophisticated.
17:46
They're cooler
17:47
Right.
17:48
Than the person who just says, oh, I
17:50
just peed into one of the sports bar.
17:51
Yeah. You're not gonna get any, disagreement from
17:53
me on that, but that's probably because that's
17:55
my domain. But I'd also argue it's not
17:57
just the arts. You can dismiss the sciences
17:59
in the same way. And in fact,
18:02
you don't need to think about French urinals.
18:05
You can almost anything that you can be
18:07
curious about and think more deeply about. And
18:10
if your knee jerk reaction is to be
18:11
dismissed and be cynical about it, whether it's
18:13
a pop tart or whether it's I've mentioned
18:15
that twice, I should sponsor
18:16
us.
18:18
And there's no way it is because I
18:19
had a pop tart for the first time
18:21
or a piece of a pop tart Oh,
18:22
yeah? Today, in fact.
18:25
What do you think of it? Well, it's
18:26
pretty good. I mean,
18:28
they're tasty. It's you know, they don't pretend
18:30
to be anything else. Yeah. I used to
18:32
love those, but like raw.
18:34
Right. Because I was like 20 at the
18:35
time when I loved Pop Tarts or Toaster
18:37
Strudos. And you know, it was easier just
18:39
to open it up and eat it. It
18:40
wasn't gonna kill me. But this is the
18:42
point is that there's there's also the reverse
18:44
cynicism, which sort of goes, you know, things
18:46
that are a Pop Tart. Oh, God. I've
18:47
never eat a Pop tart. You know what
18:49
I mean? There's a snobbishness which is Yeah.
18:50
Equally enforced as far as that cynicism is
18:53
concerned. Even the topic of this podcast Yeah.
18:56
How to be an adult. Well, we have
18:58
people who are listening
19:00
because they actually wanna do a deep dive
19:03
Yeah. Into this topic. They're not thinking, oh,
19:06
well, I'm bigger than the children are. I'm
19:08
definitely an adult. That they're actually interested in
19:11
exploring this subject. Yeah. They're
19:14
gonna be engaged in this discourse at least
19:16
in their own minds as they hear us
19:17
speak. Mhmm. What's next?
19:20
Disagree with others Yeah. When you believe they're
19:23
wrong. Yeah. Even
19:25
if you love and respect them. Yeah. This
19:28
is a this is a lifelong
19:30
endeavor, I think. So this is the problem,
19:33
as soon as you have a relationship with
19:35
somebody and you care about the relationship, in
19:37
words you're in a community or even just
19:39
interpersonally,
19:41
then they're going to say things and do
19:42
things and reveal things
19:44
that are uncomfortable,
19:46
unpleasant, that reveal your weaknesses, your less attractive
19:48
activities and so on. Right? It's inevitable. And
19:51
in fact, I say that's actually a good
19:53
thing. It's important to have
19:55
somebody else to sort of go,
19:57
yeah.
19:58
That's not so cool. So therefore,
20:00
to,
20:02
to say that
20:03
you have to be honest is also to
20:05
say
20:07
even in the situation where you fear the
20:10
most,
20:12
you have to be able to say what
20:14
you believe is being true and the stakes
20:16
may be very, very, very high.
20:19
And
20:20
that's what makes
20:21
it one of the most difficult rules, I
20:23
think, for
20:25
many of us. Is that because we care
20:27
so much about an an interpersonal relationship,
20:30
we might just
20:32
not say that thing.
20:33
Being surrounded by sycophants.
20:35
Yeah. Right?
20:37
Having no one around you who's willing
20:40
to challenge you, that's like going
20:43
about life
20:44
never
20:45
looking in the mirror. Mhmm. So let's say
20:47
you're eating a hot dog and you've got
20:49
like
20:50
mustard on one cheek and you've got like
20:52
ketchup around the other.
20:54
Now, if you're in a world with no
20:57
mirrors,
20:58
then you're just blithely
20:59
walking around
21:01
with mustard and ketchup on your face. And
21:03
if you're surrounded by by sycophants, no one's
21:05
even telling you that. And I never wanna
21:08
be the person walking around with condiments on
21:10
my face.
21:12
And I hope our listeners don't want to
21:14
be the person walking around with condiments on
21:16
their face. So having friends who are willing
21:18
to call you out on your behalf,
21:20
having friends who value
21:23
truth and truthful speech above just merely agreeable
21:26
speech or not rocking the boat. This is
21:28
extremely valuable even just for purely selfish reasons.
21:31
Yeah. So that you're not the person walking
21:32
around with mustard on one cheek and ketchup
21:34
on the other. Yeah. That dovetails very neatly
21:37
into the next point that I wanna share,
21:39
which is that as an adult,
21:41
you have to set and enforce your own
21:44
boundaries.
21:46
You can't just let other people around you
21:49
set and enforce their boundaries for you.
21:53
If you are gonna treat yourself as an
21:54
equal, if you are gonna count your opinions
21:57
as adult opinions that matter,
22:00
then you have to
22:02
determine and then set and enforce your own
22:04
boundaries. And Absolutely
22:09
not.
22:13
Go away. And absolutely
22:16
not, go away
22:17
and even the ruder variants,
22:20
which in some extreme situations
22:22
would be the correct thing to say Yeah.
22:24
And anything less would not quite capture the
22:27
sentiment Mhmm. Truthfully.
22:29
So
22:30
boundaries I see is
22:32
coming from one's moral center because often boundaries
22:35
feel like you're doing something bad to someone
22:37
or saying no feels like you're wronging
22:40
a friend
22:41
but when you feel like
22:43
setting a boundary or saying no
22:46
is coming
22:47
from a moral principle. Mhmm. Then you can
22:50
do it much more easily. Mhmm. Say you're
22:52
you're establishing boundaries with your parents for example.
22:55
And they
22:56
they don't want to sign on. Your choice
22:58
is right, I'm gonna cut this parent out
23:00
of my life forever. Well, maybe that's necessary.
23:02
I don't know. In some circumstances no doubt.
23:05
But in most cases
23:07
it's better to go: Okay, here's my boundary.
23:09
It's a shock to you and it might
23:11
need some explaining.
23:13
Do you see what I mean? It's that
23:14
boundaries themselves coming from moral center does not
23:16
mean that it's gonna lead to conflict but
23:18
it might need negotiation.
23:21
Because people won't people often don't understand. If
23:23
you start suddenly saying no when you've normally
23:24
said yes,
23:26
then some people might find that offensive, might
23:29
find it unkind, might misinterpret why it is
23:31
that you're doing. All those things. Yep. Right?
23:32
So
23:33
boundaries and negotiating boundaries, if they're coming from
23:36
a good moral standpoint, you can actually explain
23:38
that. You can actually
23:40
Whereas a boundary for its own sake, if
23:42
it's unexamined,
23:43
is gonna be much much flimsier as a
23:45
result. Well, it's like the difference between elevating
23:48
truth above agreeableness
23:50
Right. Versus playing devil's advocate and being disagreeable
23:53
just to be a jerk. Yeah. If your
23:55
words, if your actions
23:57
come from a well reasoned moral place
24:01
then
24:02
it's not just that you can explain it
24:04
to others, it's that others will comprehend why
24:06
Exactly. You're doing things differently much more easily.
24:09
And if and if they don't understand, well,
24:10
that's not on you, which comes up to
24:12
another point. You can give yourself credit for
24:14
explaining it and setting the boundary and enforcing
24:16
it, without blaming yourself if someone else's moral
24:20
reasoning
24:20
is less
24:22
deeply thought out than yours
24:25
This ties into an idea that I often
24:28
have to convince people of which is that
24:32
it's never that they're automatically wrong and others
24:35
are automatically right. As a kid, as a
24:38
young child,
24:40
if there's disagreement
24:42
probably the adults right,
24:44
probably you're wrong.
24:46
And then as you gain more knowledge and
24:48
life experience, then sometimes you'll be right and
24:51
sometimes the adults will be wrong. And you
24:53
need adults to be honest about that too.
24:55
Yes.
24:56
And by the time you are an adult,
24:58
right, then, you know, let's say it's roughly
25:00
5050.
25:01
Yeah. So where there's disagreement,
25:03
sometimes you're wrong.
25:05
Sometimes
25:06
the other person's wrong and you're right.
25:09
And that's why you've got to have the
25:11
conversation about, you know, what's right, what's truthful
25:14
to try to figure out, you know,
25:17
an outcome where both people can be right.
25:20
Well, all of this kind of ties together.
25:23
And
25:24
the next principle that I wanna share is
25:26
that you as an adult
25:29
are not responsible for the decisions of other
25:32
adults. So let's say that you set a
25:34
boundary and they walk off in a huff
25:36
because now they can't take advantage of you.
25:39
You're not responsible
25:41
for them walking away just like you're not
25:43
responsible for them having taken advantage of you
25:45
in the first place. You are not responsible
25:48
for the decisions of other adults. Mhmm. You
25:49
are responsible for your own decisions, so you
25:52
can give yourself credit for setting a boundary
25:54
and refusing to let that other person do
25:57
things to you.
25:58
So when other people make mistakes,
26:00
if they're not like your child,
26:03
child, if they're a colleague, if they're a
26:04
partner, if they're a parent,
26:07
that's a burden for their conscience.
26:09
That's for them to lose sleep over. That's
26:12
for them to mull over and figure out.
26:15
It's actually not a burden for your conscience
26:18
nor is it for you to lose
26:20
sleep over the mistakes
26:21
of other adults.
26:23
Mhmm. You also can't,
26:25
use that as an excuse not to look
26:26
at your own role if it's there, but
26:28
also be honest when it isn't. Yep.
26:31
Most people who I, you know, see in
26:33
my hypnotherapy practice,
26:35
they're there because they can't sleep. Yep. They
26:37
think too much. Yeah. They plan themselves. Yeah.
26:39
You are right. There there are people who
26:41
would benefit from more self reflection. Mhmm. So,
26:43
you know, most of what I'm sharing in
26:45
this podcast
26:46
comes from my work with individuals who've gone
26:49
out of their way Yeah.
26:50
To seek guidance or clarity. Yeah. For for
26:54
and for many people, if you again, if
26:55
you don't have the self esteem, that's going
26:57
to be the default is the I must
26:58
be wrong. Yep. Yep. And it's never that
27:02
you're always in the wrong or that you're
27:05
automatically in the wrong. Or entirely in the
27:07
wrong, at the very least. Exactly. There's always
27:09
2 people involved normally in that.
27:11
So I'm gonna make a huge
27:14
bold
27:14
claim Oh, God. Here we go. Which is
27:17
that
27:20
morality, human morality,
27:22
in one
27:23
sentence
27:25
is to prefer
27:27
the prosocial
27:29
over the antisocial.
27:31
Right.
27:32
And that if you are indeed
27:35
embracing the prosocial
27:37
and doing your best to act in a
27:39
prosocial way and to avoid actions or words
27:42
that are antisocial,
27:44
then
27:46
you're almost obligated to adopt a pluralistic
27:51
live and let live attitude
27:54
toward the other
27:56
adults.
27:57
And there are so many fine grain details
28:01
as to, you know, what counts as prosocial.
28:03
Yeah. Yeah. But as a rule,
28:07
if
28:08
the the action
28:09
or the words
28:11
are prosocial
28:14
as opposed to antisocial,
28:16
you're probably not making an egregious
28:18
mistake
28:19
It's when the actions or words
28:22
are
28:23
detrimental
28:24
to others
28:26
That's where you could be making an egregious
28:28
mistake that could lose you a friend or
28:30
that could, you know, cause harm to others.
28:33
So
28:36
a really cool thing that happens
28:38
when you approach others with a cup that's
28:41
full
28:43
is that
28:44
people who approach you in the same spirit
28:46
will vibe with you.
28:48
And then if you're in any kind of
28:50
relationship with that person, so not just romantic,
28:52
but a friendship, a working relationship,
28:55
then there is twice as much esteeming and
28:58
twice as much respecting and twice as much
29:00
loving and twice as much caring
29:03
because 2 people with full cups
29:05
have gotten together
29:07
to form some kind of relationship. I I
29:10
heard something recently,
29:12
probably on podcast,
29:13
where the comment was, if you spend time
29:16
with somebody and when you walk away you
29:17
feel a little bit taller,
29:19
pursue pursue that friendship.
29:21
Yes. Often people pursue relationships
29:24
where only one person does the loving.
29:26
It's not even worth the the pursuit
29:30
And even worse,
29:32
some people are in relationships where 0 people
29:36
do
29:36
any loving.
29:38
Or even if a relationship kinda starts with
29:40
2 people loving each other, if it devolves
29:43
to the point where 0 people
29:44
do the loving, then each person
29:47
in that relationship is literally better off being
29:49
alone, being single. It reminds me of a
29:52
a metaphor for,
29:54
I suppose, you know, relationships,
29:56
which was that you're both rowing.
29:58
And you've both got an oar. Right?
30:01
The idea is to be rowing together in
30:03
a direction,
30:05
your joint captain in this case, of of
30:07
your ship. But then sometimes one person might
30:10
not need not be able to row. They're
30:13
sick, they're tired, whatever it is. And so
30:14
the other person might wanna take over for
30:16
a bit. If that's persistent and continues, then
30:18
you end up going in circles because only
30:20
one person is rowing. And if nobody rows,
30:21
nobody's going anywhere. And in fact, you shouldn't
30:23
be sharing a boat with
30:25
them. The final principle for this episode
30:28
is that if you must compare yourself to
30:31
others at all, if you must engage in
30:34
this game of keeping up with the Joneses,
30:38
only make apples to apples comparisons.
30:41
I'll give you an example.
30:42
If you
30:43
use
30:44
a visual based social media platform,
30:50
then
30:51
what you want to avoid is this
30:54
soul destroying
30:55
apples to oranges comparison
30:58
between the complexity
31:00
and the rawness and genuineness
31:03
of your very human life
31:05
versus someone's plasticized
31:08
photos
31:09
on social media
31:11
or someone else's 1 page CV or resume
31:14
Mhmm. Or someone else's linked in profile.
31:18
None of which are really all that authentic.
31:20
Mhmm. The people go to social media to
31:23
put their best foot forward.
31:25
Yeah. But I but I'd also say, all
31:27
media has a tendency to,
31:30
so at TV shows, like, you've got teams
31:33
of people doing costume and makeup, you know,
31:35
movies and theater.
31:37
You could say it's advertising obviously, you know,
31:39
it's all over the place. The
31:42
fantasy sort of spell weaving of an ideal,
31:45
right? This is where I tell you the
31:47
story about Christian Bale.
31:49
Okay. I was friends with Christian Bale at
31:51
the age of
31:52
9, 10.
31:54
Cool. And this is before he did Empire
31:55
of the Sun.
31:56
And, I won't tell too too much the
31:59
story because obviously you know this is, I
32:01
have no idea.
32:03
He became an adult. We became an adult.
32:05
Yes. True. He became an adult with, his
32:07
his his pathway and I had my pathway
32:09
and he had his. In an alternate universe,
32:12
we would have had a very similar pathway.
32:14
Let's put it that way. So as an
32:16
actor, of course, you might think,
32:18
well, that must be galling to see
32:20
somebody that you started off with.
32:23
Beginning of the apples to apples comparison here,
32:25
you know, somebody you started off
32:26
with being so successful and being a great
32:28
actor. And I really think he is. I
32:30
have a huge respect for for his acting.
32:33
The funny thing is that
32:34
in some curious way because
32:37
I knew him when we were just kids,
32:39
is that I see the human in him.
32:41
And I think I have no way of
32:43
knowing, nor should I ever assume that he's
32:44
either happier or more miserable than me.
32:47
In fact, the majority of what there is,
32:50
if you say how much is different between
32:51
us, it wouldn't be that much, ultimately.
32:54
And in some ways
32:56
that's much how I look at a lot
32:58
of social media is that,
33:00
I know that I post up stuff which
33:02
is pitched to a particular
33:04
audience. I don't show my worst aspects, my
33:07
worst times on social media. I do much
33:09
my friends and in certain
33:11
close communities should we say,
33:14
there'll be more range. But I know that
33:16
that's what I'm doing, I know what that's
33:17
what everybody else is doing. Even the fake
33:19
like waking up, oh, I'm so tired, look
33:21
at me. It's all it's all nonsense and
33:23
smoke and mirrors. And I look at that
33:25
kind of thing, there's just a bunch of
33:27
humans there who are just as miserable or
33:29
happy as anybody else
33:31
and there's and this is no evidence of
33:33
it being either one way or the other.
33:35
Absolutely.
33:36
And as a hypnotherapist,
33:38
I get to see people
33:40
behind closed doors.
33:43
Some of them have well known names
33:45
some of them are quite successful
33:48
in the you know traditionally
33:50
socially approved of sets
33:53
and I know that some of them you
33:55
know being let's say a dad or a
33:57
mom and in their 50s with like books
33:59
they've written or you know a very high
34:01
flying career they're listening to me
34:04
talk about
34:05
how to be
34:07
a happy, peaceful
34:09
adult
34:11
because we're all human
34:13
because no one is their social media feed,
34:16
no one is their IMDb profile, no one
34:18
is their LinkedIn profile.
34:21
And, you know, once we we kind of
34:24
look behind the scenes,
34:25
this sounds so cliched, but but no one
34:28
is perfect.
34:30
No one has a perfect life,
34:33
but everyone has a human life because everyone
34:36
is a human being.
34:38
And all the emotions that you go through,
34:40
all the emotions I go through
34:43
are human emotions.
34:46
The fact that we sometimes can't get proper
34:48
sleep and then we feel grumpy the next
34:51
morning
34:51
every single person on the planet comes through
34:55
this
34:56
This kind of neatly wraps up the episode
35:00
with the point that we all have a
35:03
seat at the grown up table
35:06
We don't have to be perfect
35:08
before being granted our seat at the grown
35:10
up table. You don't have to wait for
35:12
a magical day
35:14
when you are just like
35:16
you know the popular kids
35:19
social media feed.
35:21
If you cross the line of 18, congratulations.
35:23
Mhmm. You're an adult. Exactly. And then of
35:26
course that also means that the skills that
35:29
you need and the perspectives
35:31
that will work better for you as an
35:33
adult, you may not have got those in
35:35
your childhood and adolescence.
35:38
So that's when,
35:40
learning these new perspectives
35:42
and really integrating them into your everyday life
35:43
becomes,
35:44
pretty important.
35:46
Thank you so much for listening to another
35:47
episode.
35:48
If you want us to
35:51
think about
35:52
your specific challenges
35:54
in doing adult life
35:56
as well as you can and being as
35:58
happy and peaceful of an adult as you
36:00
can be. We're both available for hire through
36:02
the Morphis Clinic for hypnosis.
36:05
We're based in Toronto, Canada, but we do
36:07
see clients worldwide.
36:08
The website is www.morphisclinic.com.
36:12
You can reach out to our team through
36:15
there, and we'll write you a treatment plan
36:16
if we think we can help.
36:18
In case you're not quite familiar with the
36:21
h word,
36:22
I wouldn't be too concerned about it. It's
36:25
it's a way to suspend disbelief. It is
36:27
a way to set aside your prior beliefs
36:30
in order to accept and adopt new ones.
36:32
We're very careful
36:34
to suggest ideas that you have approved of
36:37
in advance.
36:38
And that's what the consultation process is about.
36:41
And so if you like, what we're talking
36:43
about and you haven't yet, please follow us
36:45
on YouTube,
36:47
at Morpheus Hypnosis.
36:49
You can also find us on Spotify,
36:50
on Apple podcasts
36:52
and,
36:54
make sure that you get notified for next
36:56
week's episode which is
36:58
lessons from childhood you need to unlearn
37:02
to become an adult.