Latest / The Karen Kenney Show / YOUR OWN PERSONAL FIGHT CLUB

Transcript

YOUR OWN PERSONAL FIGHT CLUB · The Karen Kenney Show

0:00
Karen Kenney: It's the Karen Kenney show. Hey you guys,
0:04
welcome to the Karen Kenney show, and we're excited to be
0:06
here with you today and talk to you about what's been on my mind
0:12
and in my hat. So let's just start with a little story time.
0:15
Shall we a little a little doubt story time. Okay, so you know
0:22
how it is when you're driving in your car and somebody cuts you
0:26
off, or, you know, almost backs into in the parking lot, or this
0:30
is doing something that you don't like. Okay, let's just
0:35
stop there. I know definitely been hit. You know what I'm
0:37
talking about. So here's the deal. Somebody cut me off the
0:40
other day while I was driving. Was it intentional? Was it a
0:45
mistake? Who knows? I don't know, but here's something that
0:49
I've done. I've kind of trained myself. I've trained my mind to
0:55
after, of course, now let's, we're all human, right? So I'll
0:58
oftentimes, especially if somebody cuts you off in a
1:01
dangerous way, or does something, and you're like,
1:02
Jesus Christ, and you get you the bejesus, get out of you or
1:06
whatever, right? So, of course, you might have an immediate like
1:09
reaction. Doesn't mean you always say something or do
1:12
something, but your body and your brain will usually have an
1:14
immediate response. But once that happens, or even if that
1:19
does, does or doesn't happen what I have trained myself to
1:22
do, because it's really easy to be like, What are you a fucking
1:26
idiot? Like, oh my god. Like, use your blank guy. Like, you
1:31
know, hey, hey, look at I may or may not have thought in my head,
1:36
Hey, fuck face, right? Oh, God, please forgive me. Okay, but
1:44
here's the thing, once that momentary, because it's a
1:48
nervous system reaction, right? You blurt something out, or
1:51
whatever, not to them, just like to yourself inside, you come,
1:55
not flipping the bird like those days are over. I don't do that
1:57
craziness anymore, but I will say this, okay, I'm getting to
2:01
my point. Stay with me. Okay. I have trained my mind to think
2:06
and to consider this that I have no idea what this person's day
2:12
has been like so far. Maybe they got bad news, maybe something
2:16
happened. Maybe they're in a rush because they you know,
2:19
somebody's at the hospital. Wife is in labor. Who knows what's
2:23
going on, right? So number one, I try to remind myself I have no
2:27
idea what their day has been like so far, and I definitely
2:30
have no idea what their life has been like so far. And knowing
2:36
what I know through you know again, through my own work on
2:39
myself, through reading a lot of books, or being curious, working
2:43
with clients, all of it, the thing that I know is we are all
2:46
not just only humans. We also have nervous systems. We also
2:50
have brains that are releasing chemicals. We have reactions
2:53
like, you know, people, people I like, just out in life, getting
2:57
hammered a lot of the time. So one of the reasons why I do
3:02
that, though, is so that I can kind of stir up some empathy in
3:05
myself, some compassion in myself, to kind of lean in with
3:09
a little more curiosity instead of contempt and judgment, right?
3:13
So I've kind of trained my mind to be thinking about like I have
3:16
no idea what has been going on in somebody's day or somebody's
3:21
life. And when I was thinking about that, like I don't have
3:24
any clue what this person has been through or is going
3:27
through, etc, it got me to thinking about that famous
3:31
quote. We have all heard this quote in some shape, way or
3:34
form. It often gets attributed to all kinds of people who
3:38
really weren't the probably the ones who said it, but this is
3:42
the quote we often hear, right? Everyone you meet is fighting a
3:45
battle. You know nothing about be kind. Always, okay, everyone
3:52
you meet is fighting a battle. You know nothing about Be kind,
3:54
always. I've seen it attributed to Robin Williams, the actor, a
3:57
lot, which, yeah, whatever. That's fine. I've heard it
4:00
attributed to a bunch of people, but you know me. You know me.
4:03
I'm wicked curious. So of course, I had to look it up. I
4:07
had to look it up, and this is what I discovered you guys. And
4:11
it makes sense. It's all going to make sense as to what this
4:15
episode is about. So buckle up for Stacy and stay with me.
4:18
Okay, so when I look it up. The original source of the quote is
4:21
by a Scottish author and theologian. His name is, it's so
4:27
the quote is by Ian McLaren. That's where I should start, and
4:32
that is the pen name of a Scottish author and theologian
4:35
named Reverend John Watson. So I guess this message first
4:39
appeared in like 1897 it was a Christmas message that he wrote
4:44
in the British weekly. And what the quote actually said back in
4:49
the day was this be pitiful for every man is fighting a had
4:55
battle. Now pitiful back then it's intended. To mean be
5:00
compassionate, be empathetic towards other people. Be
5:04
empathetic towards and he says, Every man is fighting, every man
5:08
is fighting a hard battle, so be pitiful, right? Be that's,
5:11
that's where the be kind piece came from, and the more modern
5:14
version of it, right? But be be compassionate or empathetic
5:20
towards others and their hidden struggles. And when I started to
5:25
think about that, right, these hidden struggles, this fight
5:29
that, this battle that everybody is is fighting. So then I
5:34
started to think about that, so I started to break it down. So
5:37
right now you're just kind of getting like a little glimpse, a
5:40
little behind the scenes, sneaky peeky, a little sneak peek at
5:43
how my brain works, right? So I wrote this all down so that I
5:47
could share it with you. I like tried to break it down into
5:49
different parts, okay? So I started to think about this
5:52
quote. Now, right? Be, be everyone you meet is fighting a
5:56
hot battle. You know, nothing about Be kind, always, right? Or
5:59
the original. Be pitiful for every man is fighting a hard
6:02
battle. So I break this down, and the first thing we hear is
6:05
every man, every man so, aka, every single person is fighting
6:12
a hard battle. So we may not know what the battle is, right?
6:18
We're all going through some shit. Let's just put this being
6:23
human, this whole being human experience, yes, yes, there are
6:28
some amazing and beautiful and incredible parts, but, man, a
6:32
lot of it is hard. So we're all going through some shit, and
6:36
whatever our personalized, customized, you know, shit might
6:40
be, whatever. The personal thing is that the stuff that
6:43
everybody's going through, you know, we're all going through
6:47
it, okay, check Got it, okay, I'm breaking down this quote.
6:50
Okay, so we all got, we all got some shit going on, right, some
6:53
battle that we're fighting. Okay? And then this is the pot
6:57
that really though caught my eye, in my ear from this quote,
7:00
this pot, the whole quote, We know nothing about the whole. We
7:05
know nothing about it pot, because then I had to ask
7:08
myself, like, Okay, interesting, so why don't we know about it?
7:12
Because if everybody's going through it, everybody's going
7:17
through something, why don't we know about it? Now, sometimes
7:21
caveat, we might know about it because somebody is posting
7:25
like, hashtag, hashtag, vulnerable post, and they're
7:30
just airing it all. They're just airing it all on social media,
7:34
right? So sometimes we do know about it, but a lot of times we
7:38
do not know about it. And I'm thinking to myself, why don't we
7:40
know about it? And when I started to think about it, like,
7:43
why don't we know about it, then the first thing that popped into
7:47
my head was the movie Fight Club, and that, that famous
7:52
line, right? The first rule of fight club is, you do not talk
7:57
about fight club, first rule. And then the second rule of
8:01
fight club, you do not talk about fight club. And I'm like,
8:06
Oh my God. And as I'm thinking about that, I'm like, Okay, it's
8:11
like, in my brain, like, the Jenga piece is like, right? Or
8:15
what is it? Connect for the Connect Four pieces. You know,
8:19
when you would do like, connect the numbers. You would draw the
8:21
numbers connect the dots when we were little kids. So it's all
8:24
sat in the like, chink, chink, chink, in my head, right? So
8:28
this is when it so I think about the movie, right? The first rule
8:32
of fight club is you do not talk about fight club. And then it
8:34
also got me to think about the book that I'm writing, my
8:36
memoir. Some of you know that I'm a writer. I've been working
8:39
on this book, and I originally had a chapter that I titled, and
8:43
this is when the silence begins. This is when the silence begins.
8:49
But then I realized that I took that that title down, because
8:55
the silence was kind of always there, and that's like a running
8:59
theme that I see in a lot of New England kids, right? Definitely,
9:03
a lot of mass hole kids. That's the one, you know, group of
9:06
people I can really speak to with some authority. But you
9:11
know, the silence is often there. And in fact, I just got a
9:16
message from a family member, a much younger family matter
9:19
member on the step side of my family asking me if I can
9:23
enlighten him about some shit in my family, because nobody talks
9:27
about it. There's no answers to things. And I was like, kid, get
9:30
in line, right? That's why I'm writing a book. I started
9:33
laughing, okay, but here's my point. So we're all in our own
9:37
personal fight club. That's the thing we're like all in our own
9:44
personal fight club,
9:49
and you don't realize that you're in your own personal
9:53
fight club because of the number one rule of fight club, which is
9:58
we don't talk about. Fight Club, so we're all totally unaware of
10:04
what everybody around us is going through, because we don't
10:07
talk about jack shit around here, right? I mean, that's been
10:10
one of my things, just as a person, as a coach and as a
10:13
mentor, is that people end up usually sharing with me things
10:18
that they don't tell anybody else, like I hear all kinds of
10:21
things that their deepest dreams, their desires, their
10:24
fears, what's going on, like, in their lives, like, I often end
10:27
up hearing a lot about it and but in order for that to happen,
10:32
there has to be like, a safe place for, like, for that kind
10:35
of stuff to go on, usually. So when I'm thinking about this, so
10:39
if you're in your own personal fight club, and I'm in my own
10:43
personal fight club, and we don't talk about fight club.
10:46
We're all just kind of walking around, like bumping into shit,
10:51
you know, like cutting people off on the highway and in
10:53
traffic, because we are unawares, as I jokingly like to
10:56
say, we are unawares, and we're totally unaware of what everyone
11:00
is going through around us because nobody's talking about
11:03
it. So then I asked myself, well, why don't we talk about
11:06
these things? So I just know that for especially a lot of
11:09
kids growing up that I grew up with, you know how things were
11:13
in their house might have been different in my house, lot of
11:16
people like you don't air your parents, your grandparents, that
11:19
generation was you don't air your dirty laundry outside of
11:24
this house. We don't talk about what goes on inside of this
11:27
house, outside of this house. This is how so much dysfunction
11:31
and generational trauma and physical, mental, verbal, sexual
11:34
abuse goes undetected or unknown about because people didn't talk
11:39
about shit, right? That is classic, suck it up and stuff it
11:44
down, as I've coined that term, right? Suck it up and stuff it
11:47
down behavior. So you might have grown up in a house where you
11:50
weren't allowed to talk about those things, and it was like
11:52
this kind of code where we don't talk about stuff, sometimes we
11:57
don't talk about things and what we're going through, because we
12:00
don't want to be a burden to other people, you know, and we
12:04
feel like other people are so busy they got a lot on their
12:07
plate. Nobody has any time. I don't want to, I don't want to,
12:12
like, trauma. Some people call it trauma dumping, right? Like,
12:14
I don't want to just, like, dump all my stuff onto them. And
12:17
sometimes it's about being how we're perceived, right, like
12:21
people are afraid to be perceived as weak, like this
12:24
thing is weighing heaven heavy on me, and I need help, and I
12:26
don't want to be perceived a certain way. I mean, there's
12:29
1000 reasons why we don't talk about stuff. We have shame,
12:32
we're embarrassed, we feel guilty, we don't want to be
12:35
judged. I mean, on and on and on, you can just fill in your
12:38
own personal reason maybe why you don't talk about things. So
12:41
what happens, though, is when we don't talk about things, and we
12:44
all don't know that we're all in our own personal friggin fight
12:48
clubs, what ends up happening is we often feel like we're the
12:51
only ones going through the slog, right? We're the only ones
12:54
going who are like struggling or suffering. And James Baldwin has
12:59
a really beautiful quote. I wish I had had written it down, but
13:02
I'm going to paraphrase, if I can off the top of my head and
13:06
apologize in advance if I'm kind of getting the heartbeat of this
13:08
wrong. But it's kind of like he says, when you read books, you
13:12
start to realize that you're not the only one who is going
13:15
through this particular struggle, or that you are not
13:18
the only one that is suffering. In fact, everybody is suffering
13:21
in some way. I was going to look up the quote, but I forgot to do
13:26
it before I hit record. So here we are. But the thing is, is
13:29
like we can end up feeling like we're the only ones experiencing
13:32
this situation or this pain or this loss or this grief, you
13:35
know, because we don't talk about shit with each other, and
13:38
it might lead us to also believe that we're the only ones going
13:43
through it, which means that everyone else isn't going
13:46
through it, because we have this fantasy or this idea that
13:50
somehow miraculously, they're the ones that just always have
13:53
their shit together. And a lot of us do have our shit together,
13:57
but life is happening all the time to everybody. You know what
14:00
I mean. So a lot of times it feels like, Oh, everybody but me
14:04
has their shit together or whatever, which only feels more
14:06
isolating. And then we're like, well, and I'm just showing you
14:11
how the brain can work, right? For some people, it can feel
14:15
like, well, if they do have it all together, and they still did
14:19
something to me, did they do it on purpose then so it wasn't an
14:23
accident, like they did that shit on purpose, right? Which
14:26
can totally just send us into like a tailspin of judgment and
14:30
and whatever. And the thing is, is that we start to see the
14:35
dangers of being in Fight Club and never talking about it,
14:39
okay, but this gets us to the pot three at the end of the day.
14:45
We are really just over all in our own personal fight club, and
14:48
none of us realize what the other person is going through,
14:51
because, as we just discussed, rule number one of Fight Club
14:54
prohibits it. So here's the thing, maybe like, maybe like.
15:00
Just maybe we can try approaching like the whole human
15:06
experience, being with each other, being in relationship,
15:09
bumping into each other, trying to figure stuff out, getting
15:12
married, having babies, getting divorced, like the whole thing,
15:15
being born into a family, not feeling like you fit in or you
15:18
belong, like just the whole thing. If you can just think
15:21
about what it's like, maybe to be in other people's shoes and
15:24
to maybe try on their experiences, and you know what
15:27
they're going through. And you know, if we just take a look
15:30
around in the world right now, there's plenty, plenty, plenty
15:34
of suffering. So if we can just kind of keep in mind, as we
15:39
navigate life, that everybody is in their own personal fight
15:43
club, maybe we can just be a little bit more kind and
15:47
compassionate. So when a person cuts you off on the highway, you
15:51
can maybe just think to yourself, rather than going
15:53
ballistic and losing your mind and flipping them off and then
15:56
road rage and chasing them down the street, and then people are
15:59
recording each other with their phones and like, just the
16:02
insanity, right? Maybe we could just pause and say to ourselves,
16:07
hmm, maybe something horrible just happened in their life.
16:10
Maybe they just got really bad news. Maybe they're late for
16:13
work, and if they're late to work one more time, they're
16:15
going to lose their job. Maybe they just found out their kid
16:17
was sick, like, who knows? Maybe we could just write a story in
16:21
their favor, like that. They're not a total, complete asshole,
16:24
and they weren't trying to ruin your day. They just happened to
16:26
make a mistake like what if we just allowed some mercy and
16:30
compassion and possibility that you don't know the whole story
16:34
and try to write something in their favor and practice maybe a
16:38
little mini forgiveness, write a little boop, just a little, a
16:41
little teeny, tiny sprinkle, you know, of forgiveness. And here's
16:47
the other thing I want to say, if we're all in our own personal
16:49
fight club, if you're finding yourself in your fight club,
16:53
like swimming upstream without any help, right? What do they
16:57
say? Paddling upstream? You know, shit out of luck, because
16:59
you don't have a paddle. You're trying to paddle upstream.
17:01
Here's the thing, if you're finding yourself feeling anxious
17:04
or scared or alone or upset or lonely or whatever, there's 1000
17:09
ways we can feel when we feel like I'm having to do this all
17:12
on my own. Nobody cares about me, whatever. But if we're
17:16
starting to feel that way, maybe you can reach out to a friend or
17:20
a family member, or somebody you trust, and you can tell them,
17:24
like, Hey, I'm having a tough time. Or hey, this is the way
17:27
I'm looking at this. Can you maybe help me have a different
17:29
perspective? Or, Hey, can you just listen for a little bit? Or
17:32
like, hey, I need some help, right? I'm encouraging you break
17:36
the first rule of fight club. Talk about it with somebody.
17:41
Talk about your own personal fight club with somebody,
17:44
whether it's a therapist or a coach or a mentor or a trusted
17:49
friend, or in a safe community like the nest or something like
17:52
that. And again, I always say I can't tell people that I say
17:56
safe community, because the people in the nest tell me that
17:59
they feel like it's a safe community, but I can't, I can't
18:02
make everybody's nervous system think that or believe it. So I
18:05
say that I try to create a community that feels welcoming
18:09
and inclusive and safe with people, but it's only people in
18:13
their nervous systems that can decide that, right? So talk
18:16
about it with somebody, though, so that you can receive some
18:19
support. That's the whole thing. Okay? And then I want to kind of
18:23
wrap it up with this final thought about our own personal
18:26
Fight Club, which is this, when we are looking right well, so
18:32
when we look at the movie Fight Club, and we look at just double
18:37
checking my notes, I want to make sure I didn't forget
18:39
something here. Oh, interesting. Okay, so when you look at, when
18:43
we look at our own personal fight clubs, and we put it in
18:46
the context of the movie, and you look at the movie, and if
18:50
you've never seen the movie, maybe some of this won't make
18:53
sense to you, but go watch it, because it's a kill a movie
18:55
Fight Club. But if you look at the characters, right, what's
19:00
really interesting is that the the main character is actually
19:06
an unnamed narrator. So we just know him as the narrator, even
19:10
though we see Edward Norton, the actor on screen like acting, we
19:14
never learn his name. He's just the unnamed narrator. And I
19:16
thought this was such a brilliant choice, because to me
19:19
and I could be wrong, but to me, what it's pointing to is that
19:22
this is everybody. This is the this is the everyday person, the
19:26
everyday man, right? This is all of us, right? And any, any one
19:31
of us, right? I always say it's the unnamed narrator, because it
19:34
could be any one of us. And what's happening
19:36
is, is that Tyler Durden, who is the alter ego is causing so much
19:44
trouble, but Tyler Durden, we come to find out only exist in
19:49
the narrator's head. So the unnamed narrator and Tyler
19:55
Durden, who is the unhinged alter ego, the. Unhinged Alter
20:00
Ego only exists in his head. He's not actually real. So it's
20:06
like, this violent, aggressive, right? Like, character, this,
20:10
this personality aspect, this ego aspect. I always think about
20:14
Tyler Durden, and I'm like, Yeah, Brad Pitt, he's lean. He's
20:17
fighting machine. He looks good in the movie. Like, yeah. But,
20:21
you know, I'm like, yeah, he's charismatic, but he's also,
20:24
like, totally chaotic, you know, he's kind of, like devilish.
20:28
It's almost like this devil role, right? This taunting, kind
20:32
of temptation kind of role. And when I thought about that, like
20:36
the devil, the devil existing in his head, it brings me right
20:40
back to something that Marianne Williamson, she has said it like
20:46
a bunch of times in different ways, you know, on stage and
20:50
whatever, but I'll never forget when I heard her say it and she
20:53
said, she said this, she goes. I told myself, she said. I told
20:58
myself not to worry about the devil, because all that is in
21:02
your head, she goes, and then I realized, oh my God, that's the
21:06
worst place it could be. So it's like, oh my god. So we all have
21:15
this battle that's going on, but so often what we're battling and
21:19
what we're fighting right that that internal battle, what we're
21:23
fighting is ourselves. What we're fighting is our old fears
21:28
and our old thinking and our old patterns and our old beliefs and
21:31
our old stories, and we don't talk about it with other people
21:36
we're afraid of, like, again, being labeled or being called
21:39
something, or it's just scary to talk about sometimes, people you
21:44
know, their mental health, or their, excuse me, their mental
21:49
health, or their well being, or just the quality of their
21:51
thoughts and stuff like that, it can be scary sometimes. And I
21:55
think it's an AA or a 12 step program. I know it's in one of
21:59
the recovery programs. Is this concept that, you know, secrets
22:02
equal sickness. It's our secrets that make us sick when we don't
22:07
talk about things. And I've always kind of said to people,
22:10
you know, we sometimes look at I said we got to sometimes look at
22:13
our minds like a house. And a lot of times we have stuff down
22:20
in the basement, like some it's down in the dark, the lights on,
22:24
on, excuse me, and there's some critters down there, and there's
22:28
some weird noise and some funny smells, right? And it's like,
22:31
we're a little afraid to go down into the basement, but we got to
22:34
take that stuff out of the darkness and bring it up into
22:37
the light, up into our awareness, up into sometimes
22:41
into the therapist room, or in the CO on the coaching call, or
22:44
with the mentor, you know what I mean, or with a close friend, or
22:48
somebody you trust in your family, you know? And that's the
22:51
thing. We got to get it out of the basement, and we got to put
22:54
that shit on the front lawn. And I always think about this. Now
22:58
I'm not saying go and post all your most front lawn, meaning
23:01
online, internet, social media. I'm not saying that, you know,
23:05
put it on your sub stack, whatever you might. Put it in
23:08
your newsletter. I don't know. That's not necessarily what I'm
23:10
talking about. I'm just saying we got to get stuff out of the
23:13
basement. We got to put it on our front lawn. Because here's
23:16
the funny thing, nobody's gonna mention the shit in your
23:19
basement, the stuff that's going on inside of you. Nobody's going
23:22
to bring it up and mention it because they don't know it's
23:25
there. If you are not willing to communicate your feelings, your
23:29
emotions, your thoughts, your fears, your dreams, all of it,
23:33
right? People aren't going to know what's going on if they
23:36
don't know that it's there that you never give them a clue. You
23:39
never mention it. You don't talk about things, but you put your
23:43
stuff out on the lawn, and people are probably going to
23:46
stop by your yard sale. You know what I mean. You put some of
23:49
your wares on the lawn, and people are probably going to
23:52
come and check it out. At the very least, they'll be curious,
23:55
and they'll start asking you questions. You know what I mean.
23:58
So we have to help people. Why do we all want to stay isolated
24:04
in our own little like, you know, fight clubs. If we're all
24:08
in Fight Club, and that's the thing, you're already in Fight
24:10
Club, we're all in it, and we could all do a better job about
24:14
talking about it, about letting ourselves be seen as vulnerable.
24:18
Letting ourselves be seen is not perfect, or always having it
24:21
together, as being clumsy is fucking up, is falling down, you
24:25
know. And you know, when you have good help and good friends
24:29
and good support, you know, you can fall down a bunch of times
24:32
and still get back up. You know, I was just listening to a
24:35
podcast, and the guy, he was rich roll, and he was talking
24:39
about recovery and relapses. And I was really fascinated by the
24:45
way he was talking about relapses. And the thing is, is
24:47
that, you know, relapses happen to a huge percentage of people
24:52
who are in recovery programs. I'm not going to say it's
24:55
inevitable. It's not my place to say that, but it happens to a
24:58
lot of people. I'm. But if you have some things in place, it
25:02
makes getting back up a lot easier, getting your mind right,
25:05
getting some structure, getting back into whether it's that
25:08
program or a program that you're running with yourself, where you
25:12
have know your own ideas of like or your own systems in place of
25:17
helping you to keep your mind right, you know, and I think
25:21
it's really important that we try to find, if we're in our own
25:25
we're in our own personal fight club, that we find the right
25:28
time and the right place and the right person to talk about it,
25:32
somebody who's going to be an unshaming Witness, but somebody
25:35
who's going to be able to really deeply listen to Listen really
25:40
well, and who knows how to ask good questions. And one of the
25:44
first questions being, do you want me to just listen? Do you
25:46
just want my supportive ear? Or do you want help with solutions?
25:51
Right? That's a really big thing. So having an unshaming
25:54
Witness, somebody who will, you know, be there with you as you
25:58
kind of work out, flesh out, or just share what's going on with
26:01
you is a really, really, really big deal, and you know, that's
26:04
one of the great gifts of the nest, my little mentoring group.
26:08
And it's small, it's intimate. The people in there are lovely.
26:11
And you know, it's not, it's not a group for, like, bitching and
26:14
moaning and whining, I would say hashtag. It's not therapy. It is
26:17
a group of people who, you know, we talk about how when you want
26:21
to make change in your life, you want to be around a group of
26:24
people where those changes, those structures, those beliefs,
26:28
those resources, are already in place, where it's already the
26:30
norm. You want to go to a place where the desired change or
26:34
behavior is already normalized. It's already happening. It's
26:37
already in progress. You know what I mean. So if you've been
26:41
in your own little personal fight club and you want to get
26:43
out of it, you know, we got to break the first rule. We got to
26:46
be willing to talk about it. And I think it's one of the most
26:49
helpful things that we can do. I have seen people be completely
26:53
unburdened, or at least the very beginning of the healing process
26:57
of becoming unburdened by talking about things that have
27:00
been weighing heavy on their heart and their mind. So look,
27:02
we all might have an alter ego. It's just causing chaos. It
27:06
might be charismatic. You might like that part of your
27:09
personality, but we often find that like chaos ensues
27:12
afterwards. So you guys, I hope this has been helpful in some
27:16
way, right? Just coming back to the main points here, which is,
27:20
right, everybody's going through something and that we know
27:23
nothing about it. We often know nothing about it because we
27:25
don't talk about it. So we got to break that rule. And maybe
27:29
those rules are hard to break or scary to break because of how
27:32
things were in your family growing up, and you weren't
27:34
allowed to talk about those things. Okay, but you're not
27:39
being a burden to people who truly love you if you're trying
27:41
to share what's on your heart and your heart and your mind,
27:43
you're not going to seem weak. In fact, to me, we forget that
27:46
what our vulnerability really is is our strength, allowing people
27:51
to see each other as human. There is universal suffering,
27:56
even in personal details. We think, well, nobody knows.
27:59
Nobody gets it. Nobody knows what it's like to be me. The ego
28:02
wants to make you very special. But trust me, like James Baldwin
28:05
said, you start to get out there, and you meet some people,
28:07
and you read some books, and you start to realize we're all going
28:10
through it. We're all in a slog. We're all in a struggle. You
28:12
know what I mean. And then here's the thing, let's try to
28:18
try to extend, like, go back to the quote itself, and just try
28:21
to extend that, that, that that quote, I'll give it to him. Give
28:25
them both to you. Again. Everyone you meet is fighting a
28:28
battle. You know nothing about Be kind, always, and then the
28:32
original, be pitiful, or slash, be kind, be compassionate. For
28:37
every man is fighting a hard battle. We're all in it, you
28:41
guys, and we need each other. And kindness goes a long way.
28:44
Compassion goes a long way. A good listening ear goes a long
28:48
way. And just extending love to each other, right? And that's,
28:52
that's one of the things about this podcast that I really try
28:55
to do, is to just spread a little more love in the world.
28:58
You know, sometimes it's not always easy, because people are
29:01
acting crazy out there, but we got to do our best to be, I
29:04
would say, be the living example, like be the example
29:08
God, the whole, you know, Gandhi quote, be the change you you
29:11
wish to see in the world. So we have to start, and we have to be
29:14
brave, and we have to be encouraged. We have to show up
29:17
with a little more courage and maybe start the conversation and
29:21
say, Hey, I don't know about you, but I've been struggling
29:23
with some things and and so that way we can talk about fight club
29:26
together. Which makes me think you guys, it's so funny. You may
29:30
not know this. I wanted to start like, and I do, I do, do writing
29:34
salons. I have
29:35
had many writing workshops and retreats and things over the
29:37
years, but I really wanted to start a little group called
29:40
right club instead of Fight Club. And I wanted to say, like,
29:44
and one of the things I was telling, when I was telling my
29:46
friends about it, I was like, Oh, my God, you guys. I just had
29:48
this idea. I want to call it right club. And I was like, but
29:52
the difference is, is that the first fool, the first rule of
29:55
right club is, I want you to tell everybody about right club.
29:59
And. It. But unfortunately, so many people, once I Googled
30:04
dicks, I was like, oh my god, I'm gonna Google it, but, and a
30:07
lot of people are using it in different ways, but I love the
30:11
idea of right club, and we're all gonna talk about it. But
30:14
here's the thing, guys, thank you for being here. I super
30:16
duper appreciate you. Wherever you go out into the world, may
30:20
you leave the animals and the people and the planet and the
30:25
environment and yourself better than how you found it wherever
30:29
you go, may you and your presence and your love and your
30:34
energy be a blessing. Bye. Hey. Thanks so much for listening to
30:39
the show. I really love spending some time together. Now, if you
30:43
dig the show or know someone that could benefit from this
30:46
episode, please share it with them and help me to spread the
30:50
good word and the love. And if you want to be in the know about
30:54
all of my upcoming shenanigans, head on over to Karen
30:57
kenney.com/sign up and join my list. It'll be wicked fun to
31:03
stay in touch. Bye. You.