Latest / The Daily Reset Podcast / Stop drifting. Start living on Purpose - the audiobook. Chapter 3

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Stop drifting. Start living on Purpose - the audiobook. Chapter 3 · The Daily Reset Podcast

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Chapter 3 What was really running the show?
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  SPEAKER_00: For most of my life, I thought I was making conscious decisions.
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  SPEAKER_00: I thought I was choosing my career,
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  SPEAKER_00: choosing my relationships,
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  SPEAKER_00: choosing how I responded to stress, choosing how hard I worked.
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  SPEAKER_00: But I wasn't.
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  SPEAKER_00: Much of my life was being run by a collection of invisible patterns that I'd never questioned.
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  SPEAKER_00: I didn't see them because they'd been with me for so long
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  SPEAKER_00: that they simply felt like my personality.
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  SPEAKER_00: I've always been like this, except I hadn't.
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  SPEAKER_00: they were survival strategies protective behaviours ways
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  SPEAKER_00: of keeping myself emotionally safe that I'd learned over decades
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  SPEAKER_00: at some point they had served me they had helped me achieve cope avoid pain
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  SPEAKER_00: or gain approval the problem was that they were now running my life long
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  SPEAKER_00: after I needed them I thought I was ambitious sometimes I was terrified
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  SPEAKER_00: of not being enough I thought I was independent sometimes I simply didn't know how
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  SPEAKER_00: to ask for help I thought I was productive
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  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes I was just avoiding sitting quietly
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_00: with myself I thought I was decisive Sometimes I was desperately trying
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  SPEAKER_00: to control uncertainty The hardest part wasn't changing these patterns
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  SPEAKER_00: The hardest part was seeing them Balance is built on a simple idea Every one
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  SPEAKER_00: of us has an operating system Most people never install it consciously
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  SPEAKER_00: it gets built for us
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  SPEAKER_00: by our childhood our family our culture our relationships our successes our failures
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  SPEAKER_00: our trauma our fears eventually those patterns become automatic someone criticizes
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  SPEAKER_00: us we become defensive someone disappoints us we withdraw
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  SPEAKER_00: things become uncertain we try
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  SPEAKER_00: to control everything someone asks how we're doing i'm fine the reaction arrives
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  SPEAKER_00: before we've even realized there was a choice that's autopilot not
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  SPEAKER_00: the scheduled kind we talked about two chapters ago the deeper kind the kind
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  SPEAKER_00: that decides who you become in a difficult conversation
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  SPEAKER_00: before you've opened your mouth one of the biggest insights i ever had was
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  SPEAKER_00: that very few behaviors are actually
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  SPEAKER_00: the problem most are protection anger often protects hurt control protects fear
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  SPEAKER_00: perfectionism protects shame people pleasing protects
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  SPEAKER_00: against rejection procrastination protects us
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  SPEAKER_00: from failing overworking protects our sense of worth avoidance protects us
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  SPEAKER_00: from conflict judgment protects our own insecurity resentment often protects grief
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  SPEAKER_00: we haven't acknowledged when you stop asking what's wrong with me
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  SPEAKER_00: and start asking what am i trying to protect
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  SPEAKER_00: everything changes the behavior suddenly makes sense
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  SPEAKER_00: that doesn't mean it's helpful it simply means it isn't random and
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  SPEAKER_00: if you go one layer further down underneath every protective pattern you find
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  SPEAKER_00: a belief a sentence usually installed so early you'd swear it was a fact about
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  SPEAKER_00: the universe i can tell you mine
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  SPEAKER_00: because i've spent years excavating them i'm not enough and
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  SPEAKER_00: so i overworked perfected achieved
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  SPEAKER_00: i have to prove myself and so i said yes to everything until burnout did
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  SPEAKER_00: the saying no for me people will reject me and so i pleased avoided masked i'm
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  SPEAKER_00: a failure and so shame spiraled and i couldn't sell myself
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  SPEAKER_00: or my work i need certainty before i can act and
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  SPEAKER_00: so i controlled overthought procrastinated more will make me happy and
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  SPEAKER_00: so i shocked worked and chased the next thing
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  SPEAKER_00: you know that one already it has its own chapter in my life every pattern
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  SPEAKER_00: in my repertoire was one of those sentences wearing a behavior as a disguise none
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  SPEAKER_00: of this made me a bad person it made me a human being who had learned to survive
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  SPEAKER_00: but survival and living aren't the same thing as i began paying attention i realized
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  SPEAKER_00: the same patterns appeared over and
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  SPEAKER_00: over fear control perfectionism avoidance people pleasing
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  SPEAKER_00: resentment wanting certainty wanting approval working too much believing achievement
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  SPEAKER_00: would finally make me feel enough and here's the shift that changed everything
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  SPEAKER_00: the biggest one in this whole book so i'll say it carefully
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  SPEAKER_00: the patterns didn't disappear i began recognizing them
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  SPEAKER_00: while they were happening i could almost hear them introducing themselves hello fear
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  SPEAKER_00: there's perfectionism again that's resentment that's my need to control
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  SPEAKER_00: instead of becoming the feeling i could observe it and that tiny gap between
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  SPEAKER_00: the pattern arriving and me acting on it changed everything because inside
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  SPEAKER_00: that gap sits freedom not freedom from difficult emotions freedom
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  SPEAKER_00: to choose what happens next so today i try to interrupt the pattern
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  SPEAKER_00: before it becomes behavior not perfectly just more often i pause i notice what's
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  SPEAKER_00: happening inside me i ask myself what i'm feeling beneath
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  SPEAKER_00: the reaction what am i trying to protect
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  SPEAKER_00: what story am i believing then i ask
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  SPEAKER_00: a different question what would love do here what would kindness do what would
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  SPEAKER_00: compassion look like how would the person i'm becoming respond rather than
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  SPEAKER_00: the person who's frightened sometimes the answer is to speak honestly sometimes it's
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  SPEAKER_00: to stay instead of running away sometimes it's to apologize sometimes it's to set
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  SPEAKER_00: a boundary sometimes it's simply to say nothing until the emotional storm has passed
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  SPEAKER_00: the response changes because the place i'm responding from changes
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  SPEAKER_00: for years i thought personal growth meant fixing myself now i think it's mostly
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  SPEAKER_00: remembering who you are underneath the protection
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  SPEAKER_00: the fear doesn't disappear overnight neither does perfectionism or people pleasing
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  SPEAKER_00: or control they still show up some of them showed up
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  SPEAKER_00: while i was writing this chapter but showing up is not the same
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  SPEAKER_00: as steering every pause strengthens
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  SPEAKER_00: a different pathway every conscious choice weakens the old pattern
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  SPEAKER_00: eventually the person you want to become begins showing up more often than
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  SPEAKER_00: the person your past taught you to be that isn't perfection it's practice so here is
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  SPEAKER_00: the practice and i'd love you to try it this week
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  SPEAKER_00: the next time you notice yourself reacting automatically don't judge yourself become
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  SPEAKER_00: curious ask yourself three questions one what am i feeling two what am i trying
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  SPEAKER_00: to protect and three which pattern is showing up then ask one final question
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  SPEAKER_00: if i wasn't reacting from fear shame resentment or the need
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  SPEAKER_00: to control what would i choose instead that question has changed my life not
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  SPEAKER_00: because i always get it right but because it reminds me that i have a choice
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  SPEAKER_00: and perhaps that's what living consciously really is not never falling back
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  SPEAKER_00: into old patterns but noticing sooner pausing longer choosing again again and again
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  SPEAKER_00: until one day the life you're living is no longer being run by the past but by
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  SPEAKER_00: the person you've decided to become there's one more thing you need to know
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  SPEAKER_00: about these patterns though and it's the part nobody warned me
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  SPEAKER_00: about they don't just run your reactions they write your interpretations
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  SPEAKER_00: when something in your life genuinely goes wrong a company a job a body a brain
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  SPEAKER_00: the patterns are the ones holding the pen when the story
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  SPEAKER_00: of what it means gets written
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  SPEAKER_00: and they are terrible historians i know because the biggest failures
• 7:01
  SPEAKER_00: of my life were all misreported to me by my own operating system and it took
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  SPEAKER_00: a diagnosis in my 50s to finally get the corrections published let me tell you
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  SPEAKER_00: about sustainably