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9 Behaviors You Must Never Tolerate (Not Even Family) - Machiavelli · The Mind of a Man

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: There are nine behaviors that are completely unacceptable, and you
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: tolerate every one of them. You already know when it's happening.
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: Someone close to you says something, and your chest tightens.
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: Something lands, and instead of responding, your mind steps in
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: and starts negotiating on their behalf. They didn't mean it
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: like that. They're going through a lot right now. That's
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: just how they are. And just like that, you overruled
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: your own instincts to protect the person who just crossed
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: your line. You do this every week. You've done it
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: for years. And every time you do, the line moves
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: a little further back, until the things you used to
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: refuse become the things you just live with. This video
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: is where that reverses. 9 Behaviors 9 Exact Responses By
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: the end of this, you will know exactly what each
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  Speaker 1: one looks like, exactly why you've been letting it happen,
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: and exactly what to say the next time it does,
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: and the people who've been getting away with it. Some
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: of them, for your entire life, will feel the shift
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: before you explain a thing, and once you see these
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: nine behaviors for what they actually are, something changes that
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: doesn't change back. You'll start hearing them in every conversation.
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: You'll recognize them in rooms you used to feel safe in.
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  Speaker 1: That's the cost of seeing clearly. You lose the ability
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: to pretend it isn't happening. And some of you aren't
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: ready for that. Machiavelli understood that most people are not
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: destroyed by what attacks them. They're destroyed by what they tolerate.
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: The behaviors that ruin your life are rarely the ones
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: that hit you once and leave a mark. They're the
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: ones you absorbed quietly, over and over, because confronting them
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: felt harder than enduring them And every time you tolerated it,
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: you taught the person doing it one thing. That it works.
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: That with you it always works. And the people closest
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: to you learned that lesson before anyone else did. But
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: there's a reason you've been tolerating all of these for years.
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: A single belief running underneath every one of them. And
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: you won't see it until you've seen the first eight.
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: Before we go further, be clear about what this is.
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: This is not about cutting people off. It's not about
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: deciding the people who love you are villains. Refusing to
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: tolerate a behavior is not the same as abandoning a person.
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: You can love someone completely and still refuse to let
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: them do this to you. The goal isn't to lose anyone.
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: It's to stop bleeding for them. Some of these relationships
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: get healthier the moment the behavior stops working. Some of
• 2:23
  Speaker 1: them show you what they always were. Either way, you
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: stop being the one who pays for it. If your
• 2:28
  Speaker 1: standards have a guest list, they're not standards. They're suggestions.
• 2:33
  Speaker 1: And suggestions get ignored. Every time you absorb a behavior
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: without a consequence, you sign off on it again. You
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: teach the person exactly what they can do to you
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  Speaker 1: and get away with. And the people who've known you
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: longest have had the most time to learn. The behavior
• 2:48
  Speaker 1: you let slide the first time is the same one
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: you're still swallowing today, because not once did you let
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: it cost them anything. This is where that ends. For everyone,
• 2:57
  Speaker 1: including them, the first behavior you must never tolerate, from anyone,
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: and you've heard it so many times it stopped sounding
• 3:05
  Speaker 1: like what it is. Someone reaches into the past and
• 3:08
  Speaker 1: pulls out something they once did for you, and they
• 3:11
  Speaker 1: hold it over you. Not once, every time, every time
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: they want something, the favor reappears, like a receipt they
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: kept in a drawer for the exact moment it would
• 3:20
  Speaker 1: be useful. After everything I did for you, I was
• 3:23
  Speaker 1: there when nobody else was. Don't forget who helped you,
• 3:27
  Speaker 1: and it always shows up at the same moment, right
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: before they want something from you. A real favor is given,
• 3:32
  Speaker 1: and let go. This one isn't given. It's lent. At interest.
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: And the interest is your compliance. Paid back over and over,
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: with no balance that ever reaches zero. Now, a friend
• 3:45
  Speaker 1: who billed you for every favor, you'd see it. You'd
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  Speaker 1: feel the manipulation in it. You'd slowly stop asking them
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  Speaker 1: for anything so they'd have nothing left to hold over you.
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  Speaker 1: But when it's family, the favor isn't a ride to
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  Speaker 1: the airport. The favor is your entire existence. I gave
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: you life. I raised you. Do you know what I
• 4:04
  Speaker 1: gave up for you? The debt becomes infinite, and an
• 4:07
  Speaker 1: infinite debt can never be paid down, which means you
• 4:10
  Speaker 1: can be billed for it every day for the rest
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  Speaker 1: of your life. Think about the last time someone reminded
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  Speaker 1: you what they'd done for you, right before they asked
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  Speaker 1: you for something. The timing wasn't an accident. It's never
• 4:21
  Speaker 1: an accident. And every time you've gone along with something
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  Speaker 1: you didn't want to do, part of what moved you
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  Speaker 1: was that invoice. So you stop paying it. You don't
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  Speaker 1: argue the debt. You don't list everything you've done back
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  Speaker 1: for them. You say one thing calm and you mean it.
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  Speaker 1: I'm grateful for that. And I'm still saying no, gratitude
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  Speaker 1: and refusal in the same breath because they were never opposites.
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  Speaker 1: And watch what happens. The person who gave freely says,
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  Speaker 1: of course, that's fine. The person who gave to own
• 4:49
  Speaker 1: you gets angry because you just refused to make a
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  Speaker 1: payment on a debt they thought was permanent. And in
• 4:54
  Speaker 1: that anger, you finally see what the favor really was.
• 4:58
  Speaker 1: Machiavelli wrote that a benefit held over a man's head
• 5:01
  Speaker 1: stops being a benefit and becomes a chain. What he
• 5:05
  Speaker 1: understood is that the favor that arrives with a permanent
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  Speaker 1: invoice was never generosity in the first place. It was
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  Speaker 1: a purchase, and you were what they believed they were buying.
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  Speaker 1: That's the first behavior, the weaponized favor. But the second
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  Speaker 1: one doesn't reach into the past to control you with
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  Speaker 1: what they gave you. It reaches into the past to
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  Speaker 1: control you with who you used to be. Think about
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  Speaker 1: the last time you walked into a room full of
• 5:29
  Speaker 1: people who've known you a long time, and within 10 minutes,
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  Speaker 1: you felt yourself getting smaller. talking quieter, slipping back into
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  Speaker 1: a version of yourself you thought you'd left behind years ago.
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  Speaker 1: That's the second behavior you must never tolerate. Someone who
• 5:44
  Speaker 1: knew you years ago decided who you were back then
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  Speaker 1: and never let you become anyone else. They reach into
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  Speaker 1: your past and pull out the worst version of you,
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  Speaker 1: the mistake, the phase, the person you've spent years trying
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  Speaker 1: to outgrow. And every time you're around them, they hand
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: it back to you. Because the old version is easier
• 6:03
  Speaker 1: to control than the person you actually became. You changed.
• 6:07
  Speaker 1: You grew. You became someone. But in their version of you,
• 6:11
  Speaker 1: you're frozen. And the worst part is that around them,
• 6:14
  Speaker 1: you actually become the frozen version. Because it's impossible to
• 6:18
  Speaker 1: stand in who you are now while someone treats you
• 6:21
  Speaker 1: like who you were then. A co-worker who kept bringing
• 6:23
  Speaker 1: up your old failure. You'd handle it. You'd put distance there.
• 6:28
  Speaker 1: You'd stop handing them material. You'd never let them be
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  Speaker 1: the narrator of who you are today. But family has
• 6:34
  Speaker 1: footage no one else has. They knew you before you
• 6:37
  Speaker 1: became yourself. And some of them use that, not to
• 6:40
  Speaker 1: remember you, to contain you. Because if you're still the
• 6:43
  Speaker 1: screw-up you were at 16, then nothing you've built since
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  Speaker 1: actually counts. And they never have to look at you
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  Speaker 1: as an equal. So you keep shrinking at the dinner table.
• 6:52
  Speaker 1: You keep becoming small in the exact place you should
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  Speaker 1: be most free to be who you've become. You don't
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  Speaker 1: defend who you are now. Defending it admits it's up
• 7:00
  Speaker 1: for debate. You just declined the old role. That was
• 7:03
  Speaker 1: a long time ago. I'm not going to keep talking
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  Speaker 1: about it. And then you stay exactly as you are now,
• 7:09
  Speaker 1: in front of them, until the old version stops fitting
• 7:11
  Speaker 1: in their hands. Here's what Machiavelli understood about reputation. A
• 7:16
  Speaker 1: man is judged by who he is now. But the
• 7:18
  Speaker 1: ones who want to keep him down will always try
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  Speaker 1: to bind him to who he was, because the past
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  Speaker 1: is the one thing he can never go back and change.
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  Speaker 1: Keep a man chained to his worst moment, and you
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  Speaker 1: keep him from ever rising above you. That's the second behavior,
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  Speaker 1: the frozen version. The third one doesn't keep you stuck
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  Speaker 1: in your past. It keeps you losing a race you
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  Speaker 1: never agreed to run. What is it? There was always
• 7:42
  Speaker 1: someone you were measured against. A sibling. A cousin. The
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  Speaker 1: kid down the street who did everything right. You grew
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  Speaker 1: up next to a scoreboard you never asked for. And somehow,
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  Speaker 1: you were always behind on it. That's the third behavior
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  Speaker 1: you must never tolerate. And it's not just them. Someone
• 7:59
  Speaker 1: is always holding another person up next to you and
• 8:02
  Speaker 1: making sure you come up short. Someone measuring you against
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  Speaker 1: a standard you never agreed to. Pointing at someone who's
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: doing it better, earning more, achieving faster. There is always
• 8:13
  Speaker 1: someone you're being compared to. And somehow you're always the
• 8:16
  Speaker 1: one who comes up behind. Because here's what the comparison
• 8:19
  Speaker 1: actually is. It isn't motivation. It's control. The standard is
• 8:24
  Speaker 1: built to move. The moment you finally match it, they
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  Speaker 1: raise it. You can't win a race where the finish
• 8:30
  Speaker 1: line jumps forward every time you get close to it.
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  Speaker 1: And that's the design. The race was never meant to
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  Speaker 1: be won. It was meant to keep you running. A
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  Speaker 1: boss who only ever measured you against someone better, you'd
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  Speaker 1: eventually see the game. You'd stop sprinting. You'd realize the
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  Speaker 1: approval was never coming because the approval was never the point.
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  Speaker 1: But the family scoreboard started before you could talk. You
• 8:54
  Speaker 1: didn't enter that race. You were entered into it at birth,
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  Speaker 1: and you've spent your whole life chasing a finish line
• 9:00
  Speaker 1: held by the very people who benefit from you, never
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  Speaker 1: reaching it. Think about the part of you that still,
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  Speaker 1: even now, even as a grown adult, wants them to
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  Speaker 1: finally just say that you turned out okay. That part
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  Speaker 1: has been running for decades. So you step off the track,
• 9:15
  Speaker 1: out loud. I'm not competing with my brother. I never
• 9:19
  Speaker 1: agreed to. You refuse to treat the comparison as real.
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  Speaker 1: When they hold up the other person, you don't defend
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  Speaker 1: yourself against them, you just decline to enter. A race
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  Speaker 1: needs two runners. You stop being the second one. Machiavelli
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  Speaker 1: saw this in every court he studied. A ruler keeps
• 9:35
  Speaker 1: the people beneath him weak by keeping them measured against
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  Speaker 1: each other. As long as they're busy competing with the
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  Speaker 1: next man, they never join forces, and they never lift
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  Speaker 1: their eyes to the one holding all the rankings. That's
• 9:47
  Speaker 1: the third behavior, the endless rankings. The next one costs
• 9:51
  Speaker 1: you something you can never earn back. And most people
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  Speaker 1: hand it over without ever being asked. You would never
• 9:58
  Speaker 1: let a stranger sign your name to a contract. You'd
• 10:01
  Speaker 1: never let a co-worker promise your entire weekend to someone
• 10:04
  Speaker 1: you've never met. So why is it so hard to
• 10:07
  Speaker 1: stop the people who do exactly that? Who commit your time,
• 10:10
  Speaker 1: your money, your help, and only tell you after it's
• 10:14
  Speaker 1: already done? That's the fourth behavior you must never tolerate.
• 10:18
  Speaker 1: Someone decides what you're going to do and tells you
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  Speaker 1: only after it's already promised. They commit your time, your energy,
• 10:25
  Speaker 1: your money, your entire weekend to something you never agreed to.
• 10:29
  Speaker 1: And by the time you hear about it, saying no
• 10:32
  Speaker 1: would mean breaking a promise you never made. They didn't
• 10:35
  Speaker 1: ask you. They spoke for you. And then they handed
• 10:38
  Speaker 1: you the bill. Your time is the one thing you
• 10:41
  Speaker 1: never get back. And every time someone spends it without asking,
• 10:45
  Speaker 1: they're treating your life as a resource they have the
• 10:47
  Speaker 1: right to hand out. You didn't get consulted, you got assigned.
• 10:51
  Speaker 1: With family it sounds like my son will help you move,
• 10:54
  Speaker 1: she'll watch the kids this weekend, he's good with computers,
• 10:57
  Speaker 1: he'll fix it, said to someone else. About you, while
• 11:00
  Speaker 1: you're standing right there, because you're family, your time gets
• 11:04
  Speaker 1: treated like shared property, and saying no doesn't get a shrug.
• 11:08
  Speaker 1: It gets you called selfish, for refusing to hand over
• 11:11
  Speaker 1: something that was never theirs to give away. Think about
• 11:13
  Speaker 1: the last time you found out you had offered to
• 11:16
  Speaker 1: do something you never offered to do. Now think about
• 11:18
  Speaker 1: how many of your weekends this year went to things
• 11:21
  Speaker 1: you never actually agreed to. So you stop honoring commitments
• 11:24
  Speaker 1: you didn't make. Calm. No apology. I wasn't asked about
• 11:29
  Speaker 1: that so I'm not able to do it. And you
• 11:31
  Speaker 1: hand the obligation right back to the person who created it.
• 11:34
  Speaker 1: The discomfort of having over-promised is theirs to sit in.
• 11:38
  Speaker 1: It was never yours to absorb. Machiavelli understood that authority
• 11:42
  Speaker 1: begins with control of your own resources. The man who
• 11:45
  Speaker 1: lets others spend what's his, his time, his money, his labor,
• 11:49
  Speaker 1: without his word, has admitted he doesn't really own any
• 11:53
  Speaker 1: of it. And what you don't control, you don't own,
• 11:56
  Speaker 1: including your own life. That's the fourth behavior, the unasked volunteering.
• 12:01
  Speaker 1: And that's the halfway point. But everything you've seen so
• 12:04
  Speaker 1: far is the easier half. These are the behaviors people
• 12:08
  Speaker 1: can almost name on their own. What comes next is
• 12:11
  Speaker 1: harder to see and harder to stop. The next four
• 12:14
  Speaker 1: hide better. They do their damage in the places you
• 12:17
  Speaker 1: won't think to look. And underneath all of them is
• 12:20
  Speaker 1: the ninth, the one quietly running the whole machine. The
• 12:24
  Speaker 1: list isn't getting longer from here. It's getting deeper. Stop
• 12:27
  Speaker 1: for a second. Four behaviors in, and by now more
• 12:30
  Speaker 1: than one face has come to mind. A friend, a partner,
• 12:34
  Speaker 1: maybe a boss. And probably, if you're being honest, someone
• 12:38
  Speaker 1: you didn't expect to think of. Someone you wouldn't want
• 12:40
  Speaker 1: to name out loud. The fact that you immediately pictured
• 12:43
  Speaker 1: someone you love is not a problem with you. It's
• 12:46
  Speaker 1: the entire reason this is so hard. The behaviors that
• 12:49
  Speaker 1: cost you the most always come from the people you
• 12:52
  Speaker 1: defend to anyone else. And this isn't new. In 1478
• 12:55
  Speaker 1: in Florence, the most dangerous attack on the Medici family
• 12:59
  Speaker 1: didn't come from a foreign army. It came during mass,
• 13:02
  Speaker 1: inside a cathedral. From a rival family they knew the Pazzi,
• 13:06
  Speaker 1: and men they trusted, standing close enough to touch them.
• 13:09
  Speaker 1: They chose that moment exactly because it was the moment
• 13:12
  Speaker 1: the guard was lowest. You don't bring weapons into a church,
• 13:15
  Speaker 1: you don't watch the people kneeling beside you. Machiavelli studied
• 13:19
  Speaker 1: this his entire life, and he drew one conclusion from it.
• 13:22
  Speaker 1: The guard drops where the trust is highest. Not because
• 13:25
  Speaker 1: trust is foolish, but because trust is the exact thing
• 13:28
  Speaker 1: that makes you stop checking, stop watching, stop holding the line.
• 13:32
  Speaker 1: The people who get the most from you are never
• 13:34
  Speaker 1: the ones you're guarding against. They're the ones you decided,
• 13:37
  Speaker 1: a long time ago, that you'd never need to. You
• 13:40
  Speaker 1: have probably lost people you were never actually in conflict with.
• 13:44
  Speaker 1: Relationships that went cold. Friends who drifted. Family members you
• 13:48
  Speaker 1: stopped talking to. And if you traced it all the
• 13:50
  Speaker 1: way back, you'd find there was someone standing in the middle,
• 13:54
  Speaker 1: carrying the messages, editing what each side heard, quietly keeping
• 13:58
  Speaker 1: the conflict they created alive. That's the fifth behavior you
• 14:02
  Speaker 1: must never tolerate. Someone plants themselves in the middle of
• 14:05
  Speaker 1: your relationships and controls what travels between them. They tell
• 14:09
  Speaker 1: you what another person really said about you. They carry
• 14:12
  Speaker 1: the words back and forth, editing as they go. And
• 14:15
  Speaker 1: every message that reaches you has already passed through their
• 14:18
  Speaker 1: hands first, shaped into whatever serves them. It's called triangulation.
• 14:23
  Speaker 1: Instead of two people talking directly, a third person inserts
• 14:27
  Speaker 1: themselves and roots everything through their own hands. She said
• 14:31
  Speaker 1: this about you. Don't tell him I told you but.
• 14:34
  Speaker 1: And because they control the information, they control the relationship.
• 14:38
  Speaker 1: They can warm it or poison it whenever it serves them.
• 14:41
  Speaker 1: Think about a relationship that went cold, a friend you
• 14:44
  Speaker 1: drifted from, a sibling you stopped being close to, and
• 14:47
  Speaker 1: ask yourself a hard question. Did you ever actually hear
• 14:50
  Speaker 1: what they said about you? Or did you only ever
• 14:53
  Speaker 1: hear what someone in the middle told you they said?
• 14:55
  Speaker 1: A co-worker doing this between you and a colleague, you'd
• 14:58
  Speaker 1: eventually go straight to the colleague. You'd cut out the middle.
• 15:02
  Speaker 1: You'd kill the triangle by talking to the person directly.
• 15:05
  Speaker 1: But in a family, the one in the middle can
• 15:07
  Speaker 1: shape every relationship you have with every other person in it.
• 15:11
  Speaker 1: A parent who tells you what your sibling really thinks
• 15:13
  Speaker 1: of you. A relative who runs every message through themselves.
• 15:17
  Speaker 1: You are distant from people in your own family right
• 15:19
  Speaker 1: now over things that were never said the way they
• 15:22
  Speaker 1: reached you. The version of them you've been angry at
• 15:24
  Speaker 1: was written by someone else. So you go around the triangle.
• 15:28
  Speaker 1: I'll talk to her about it myself. You refuse to
• 15:31
  Speaker 1: accept secondhand reports of what people think. You take it
• 15:34
  Speaker 1: straight to the source. Every time. The one in the
• 15:37
  Speaker 1: middle only has power as long as everyone keeps talking
• 15:41
  Speaker 1: through them. The moment you talk directly, the triangle falls apart.
• 15:46
  Speaker 1: Machiavelli wrote that the man who controls the flow of
• 15:49
  Speaker 1: information controls everyone who depends on it. The one who
• 15:52
  Speaker 1: stands between two people, carrying their messages, is never neutral.
• 15:57
  Speaker 1: He shapes every word he passes along, and the people
• 16:00
  Speaker 1: who let him carry their messages have handed him the
• 16:02
  Speaker 1: power to decide what they believe about each other. That's
• 16:06
  Speaker 1: the fifth behavior. The triangulation. The sixth one confuses people
• 16:10
  Speaker 1: more than any other, because it punishes you for the
• 16:13
  Speaker 1: one thing you thought would finally earn their love. Think
• 16:16
  Speaker 1: about the last time something good happened to you. A win.
• 16:20
  Speaker 1: A promotion. A new relationship. Something you were genuinely proud of.
• 16:25
  Speaker 1: And think about the person you instinctively did not want
• 16:27
  Speaker 1: to tell. Not because they'd be sad for you, because
• 16:30
  Speaker 1: some part of you already knew they wouldn't be happy.
• 16:33
  Speaker 1: That's the sixth behavior you must never tolerate. Someone in
• 16:37
  Speaker 1: your life gets a little colder every time your life
• 16:40
  Speaker 1: gets a little better. When you win, they go quiet.
• 16:43
  Speaker 1: When you share good news, something in them tightens before
• 16:46
  Speaker 1: they remember to smile. Their warmth toward you is always
• 16:50
  Speaker 1: quietly conditional on you never rising above the place they're
• 16:53
  Speaker 1: stuck in. So you learn to hide your wins. You
• 16:56
  Speaker 1: shrink your good news. You start editing your own life
• 16:59
  Speaker 1: down to a size that won't threaten the people around you.
• 17:03
  Speaker 1: and a life you constantly have to make smaller is
• 17:05
  Speaker 1: a life you're not actually allowed to live. A friend
• 17:08
  Speaker 1: who turned cold every time you succeeded, you'd feel it.
• 17:12
  Speaker 1: You'd slowly stop sharing, then slowly stop calling. You'd go
• 17:16
  Speaker 1: find people who could be happy for you, but when
• 17:18
  Speaker 1: it's family, you can't just go find new ones. You
• 17:22
  Speaker 1: moved away. You earned more. You changed. You grew. You
• 17:26
  Speaker 1: outgrew the life they stayed in. And instead of pride,
• 17:29
  Speaker 1: you got you think you're better than us now. You've changed.
• 17:32
  Speaker 1: You forgot where you came from. Your growth got treated
• 17:35
  Speaker 1: like a betrayal. So you've spent years performing smallness at
• 17:38
  Speaker 1: the table, hiding the life you built, so the people
• 17:41
  Speaker 1: who should be proudest of you don't punish you for rising.
• 17:44
  Speaker 1: Think about the wins you've kept quiet, the good news
• 17:47
  Speaker 1: you've downplayed, to keep people comfortable who were never once
• 17:50
  Speaker 1: comfortable with you getting ahead. So you stop shrinking. You
• 17:54
  Speaker 1: don't brag. You don't rub it in. You just stop hiding.
• 17:58
  Speaker 1: You let your life be its actual size in front
• 18:00
  Speaker 1: of them. Things are going well. I'm happy. And you
• 18:04
  Speaker 1: let them have whatever reaction they're going to have. Their
• 18:07
  Speaker 1: discomfort with your growth belongs to them now. You're done
• 18:10
  Speaker 1: managing it by staying small. Machiavelli understood envy better than
• 18:14
  Speaker 1: almost anyone who ever wrote. The people around you can
• 18:17
  Speaker 1: forgive your failures. Your failures make them feel safe. What
• 18:21
  Speaker 1: they cannot forgive is your rise, because your rise forces
• 18:25
  Speaker 1: them to look at what they never did with their
• 18:26
  Speaker 1: own life. Expect the resentment when you climb. It is
• 18:30
  Speaker 1: simply the tax on becoming more than the people around
• 18:32
  Speaker 1: you were willing to become. That's the sixth behavior, the
• 18:36
  Speaker 1: punished growth. The seventh one is the heaviest on this
• 18:39
  Speaker 1: entire list. Because it doesn't take your time or your comfort.
• 18:43
  Speaker 1: It takes your grip on what's real. What is it?
• 18:46
  Speaker 1: There's a specific kind of crazy that comes from being told,
• 18:50
  Speaker 1: over and over, that things you clearly remember never happened.
• 18:54
  Speaker 1: That the event you lived through went a completely different way.
• 18:57
  Speaker 1: That the childhood you survived was actually a happy one.
• 19:00
  Speaker 1: And being told all of it by the very people
• 19:02
  Speaker 1: who were there. The people whose version is supposed to
• 19:05
  Speaker 1: be the truth. That's the seventh behavior you must never tolerate.
• 19:09
  Speaker 1: and it's the most expensive one on this list someone
• 19:12
  Speaker 1: tells you with complete confidence that something you lived through
• 19:15
  Speaker 1: never happened that you're remembering it wrong that the thing
• 19:19
  Speaker 1: you saw with your own eyes went a completely different
• 19:21
  Speaker 1: way they build a version of events that protects them
• 19:25
  Speaker 1: and they require you to agree to it and the
• 19:27
  Speaker 1: moment you don't You become the problem, too sensitive, too dramatic, crazy.
• 19:33
  Speaker 1: Because when someone forces their version of reality onto yours
• 19:36
  Speaker 1: and punishes you for disagreeing, they're not just lying to you.
• 19:40
  Speaker 1: They're making you choose between your own memory and the
• 19:43
  Speaker 1: peace of the relationship. And to keep the peace, most
• 19:46
  Speaker 1: people slowly give up the memory. You stop trusting what
• 19:49
  Speaker 1: you saw. what you felt, what you know happened. That's
• 19:52
  Speaker 1: the real cost, not the argument. Your grip on reality itself.
• 19:57
  Speaker 1: Researchers at the University of Utah, led by Bert Uccino,
• 20:01
  Speaker 1: spent years studying what they called ambivalent relationships. The people
• 20:05
  Speaker 1: who are sometimes loving and sometimes harmful. and they found
• 20:09
  Speaker 1: something disturbing. These relationships put more physical stress on your
• 20:13
  Speaker 1: body than purely negative ones do, more than open enemies,
• 20:17
  Speaker 1: because with an enemy, you brace yourself. With someone who's
• 20:21
  Speaker 1: warm one minute and rewriting your reality the next, you
• 20:24
  Speaker 1: can never brace because you never know which version is
• 20:27
  Speaker 1: about to walk in the door. The people who make
• 20:29
  Speaker 1: you doubt yourself while telling you they love you are, measurably,
• 20:33
  Speaker 1: the hardest on your body. Not in spite of the love,
• 20:36
  Speaker 1: because of it. A boss gaslighting you about a meeting.
• 20:40
  Speaker 1: You'd start putting everything in writing. You'd protect your own record.
• 20:44
  Speaker 1: You'd never let them be the only version that survives.
• 20:47
  Speaker 1: But the family version started in childhood. about the events
• 20:51
  Speaker 1: that shaped who you became. That never happened. We were
• 20:54
  Speaker 1: a happy family. You always exaggerate. And because you were
• 20:58
  Speaker 1: a child when it started, you never built the certainty
• 21:01
  Speaker 1: to push back on it. Think about a moment you
• 21:03
  Speaker 1: remember clearly, something that happened, something you saw, something you felt,
• 21:08
  Speaker 1: that someone later told you didn't happen that way. Think
• 21:11
  Speaker 1: about how many times you heard their version before you
• 21:14
  Speaker 1: started doubting your own. So you stop trying to win
• 21:17
  Speaker 1: the argument. You won't. they won't admit it. You simply
• 21:21
  Speaker 1: stop cosigning the lie. That's not how I remember it.
• 21:24
  Speaker 1: And then you leave it there. You don't need them
• 21:27
  Speaker 1: to agree with you. You only need to stop abandoning
• 21:29
  Speaker 1: your own memory, just to keep them comfortable. Holding your
• 21:33
  Speaker 1: version quietly, without needing their permission for it to be true,
• 21:36
  Speaker 1: is how you get your reality back. Machiavelli understood that
• 21:40
  Speaker 1: history belongs to whoever survives to tell it. A prince
• 21:43
  Speaker 1: who lets others write the record of his reign surrenders
• 21:47
  Speaker 1: something more dangerous than any single battle. He surrenders the
• 21:50
  Speaker 1: truth of what actually happened. And once the record belongs
• 21:54
  Speaker 1: to them, they can make him the villain or the
• 21:56
  Speaker 1: fool in his own story. The person who lets someone
• 21:59
  Speaker 1: else narrate their past has handed over the one thing
• 22:01
  Speaker 1: no one should ever give away, the authority to say
• 22:04
  Speaker 1: what was real. That's the seventh behavior, the rewritten story.
• 22:09
  Speaker 1: The eighth one is the trap that springs the moment
• 22:11
  Speaker 1: you finally try to step back. Have you ever noticed
• 22:15
  Speaker 1: that the emergencies always seem to arrive at a very
• 22:17
  Speaker 1: specific moment? Not randomly. Right when you've started to pull back.
• 22:23
  Speaker 1: Right when you've created a little distance. Right when you've
• 22:26
  Speaker 1: finally said no to something. And suddenly there's a crisis
• 22:29
  Speaker 1: that needs you to drop everything and come running. That's
• 22:33
  Speaker 1: the eighth behavior you must never tolerate. Someone's emergency always
• 22:37
  Speaker 1: seems to land at the exact moment you start to
• 22:39
  Speaker 1: pull away. The week you finally get busy, their life
• 22:43
  Speaker 1: falls apart. The moment you set a limit, there's suddenly
• 22:46
  Speaker 1: a crisis that needs all of you, right now. Their
• 22:49
  Speaker 1: emergencies are timed, whether they know it or not, to
• 22:52
  Speaker 1: collapse any distance you try to create. Some emergencies are real.
• 22:56
  Speaker 1: That's exactly what makes this one so hard to see.
• 22:59
  Speaker 1: But when every boundary you set gets met, immediately... With
• 23:03
  Speaker 1: a crisis that demands you abandon it, the boundary never
• 23:06
  Speaker 1: actually gets to exist. You're never really allowed to step back.
• 23:09
  Speaker 1: The exit keeps getting blocked by a brand new fire.
• 23:12
  Speaker 1: A friend whose crises always landed the moment you got
• 23:15
  Speaker 1: some distance. Eventually, you'd catch the pattern. You'd notice the
• 23:19
  Speaker 1: timing was just a little too perfect. You'd answer the
• 23:22
  Speaker 1: real emergencies and stop rearranging your whole life around the
• 23:26
  Speaker 1: convenient ones. But family emergencies carry the most weight and
• 23:30
  Speaker 1: the most guilt of all. Health scares. money trouble drama
• 23:34
  Speaker 1: that demands you drop everything or be the person who
• 23:37
  Speaker 1: abandoned your own family in its hour of need and
• 23:40
  Speaker 1: the timing somehow always the moment you tried to step
• 23:43
  Speaker 1: away think about the last real boundary you set with
• 23:47
  Speaker 1: someone close to you the last time you said not
• 23:49
  Speaker 1: anymore and meant it now think about how long it
• 23:52
  Speaker 1: lasted before something happened a crisis an emergency a sudden
• 23:56
  Speaker 1: need that required you to break it count the days
• 24:00
  Speaker 1: for most people it isn't many So you learn the
• 24:02
  Speaker 1: difference between a real emergency and a manufactured one, and
• 24:06
  Speaker 1: you answer the real ones without letting them erase the
• 24:09
  Speaker 1: line you drew. I can help with this. And once
• 24:12
  Speaker 1: it's handled, the thing we talked about still stands. You
• 24:15
  Speaker 1: separate the crisis from the control. You can show up
• 24:18
  Speaker 1: fully for a genuine emergency without surrendering every boundary you
• 24:22
  Speaker 1: set the second it's over. Machiavelli understood the use of
• 24:26
  Speaker 1: the manufactured crisis. A ruler who wants power he isn't
• 24:30
  Speaker 1: entitled to, will manufacture a threat that seems to require it.
• 24:34
  Speaker 1: Because in an emergency, people surrender freedoms they would never
• 24:37
  Speaker 1: give up in calm. The crisis isn't always real, but
• 24:41
  Speaker 1: the power it hands over always is. That's the eighth behavior.
• 24:46
  Speaker 1: The override emergency. And now you've seen all eight. The
• 24:50
  Speaker 1: weaponized favor. The frozen version. The endless ranking. The unasked volunteering.
• 24:55
  Speaker 1: The triangulation. The punished growth. the rewritten story, the override emergency.
• 25:01
  Speaker 1: But I told you at the start, there was a
• 25:03
  Speaker 1: reason you've been tolerating all of these, a single belief
• 25:06
  Speaker 1: underneath every one of them. Here it is, the ninth
• 25:10
  Speaker 1: behavior you must never tolerate, the master, the one underneath
• 25:14
  Speaker 1: all the others. Every behavior in this video comes from
• 25:17
  Speaker 1: a single belief that they have a claim on you,
• 25:20
  Speaker 1: that some part of you, your time, Your choices, your story,
• 25:24
  Speaker 1: your loyalty, your truth belongs to them and they have
• 25:28
  Speaker 1: the right to direct it. They weaponize the favor because
• 25:31
  Speaker 1: they believe they own your gratitude. They freeze you in
• 25:34
  Speaker 1: your old self because they believe they own your story.
• 25:37
  Speaker 1: They rank you against others because they believe they own
• 25:40
  Speaker 1: the right to judge you. They volunteer your time because
• 25:43
  Speaker 1: they believe they own your hours. They triangulate because they
• 25:47
  Speaker 1: believe they own your other relationships. They punish your growth
• 25:50
  Speaker 1: because they believe they own your direction. They rewrite the
• 25:53
  Speaker 1: past because they believe they own the truth. They override
• 25:56
  Speaker 1: your boundaries with crisis because they believe they own your availability.
• 26:00
  Speaker 1: Eight behaviors. One route. They do not see you as
• 26:04
  Speaker 1: a separate person. They see you as something that belongs
• 26:07
  Speaker 1: to them. Anyone can do this. A controlling partner. A
• 26:11
  Speaker 1: possessive friend. A boss who thinks paying you means owning you.
• 26:15
  Speaker 1: But here's why it lives longest and runs deepest in family.
• 26:19
  Speaker 1: Every other claim on you has an exit. You can
• 26:22
  Speaker 1: quit the boss. You can leave the partner. You can
• 26:25
  Speaker 1: walk away from the friend. But the family claim was
• 26:28
  Speaker 1: installed before you could agree to it, before you could consent.
• 26:32
  Speaker 1: It was there before you even had the words to
• 26:34
  Speaker 1: question it. And most people never formally cancel it. so
• 26:38
  Speaker 1: it just keeps running, quietly in the background of their
• 26:41
  Speaker 1: entire adult life, steering them, and they never once stop
• 26:44
  Speaker 1: to ask whether it should still be there at all.
• 26:46
  Speaker 1: You've seen the grown adult who still can't make a
• 26:49
  Speaker 1: decision without calling a parent first, who goes quiet and
• 26:53
  Speaker 1: tense the second a certain name, lights up their phone,
• 26:56
  Speaker 1: who arranges an entire life around one person's approval. From
• 27:00
  Speaker 1: the outside, everyone can see it. A capable grown adult,
• 27:04
  Speaker 1: still being operated by remote, Still in every way that matters, owned,
• 27:09
  Speaker 1: that's what this claim looks like 30 years in. So
• 27:12
  Speaker 1: you revoke it, not with a speech, with a stance.
• 27:15
  Speaker 1: You start making your choices without asking permission for them.
• 27:19
  Speaker 1: You stop reporting your life for approval. You let someone
• 27:22
  Speaker 1: be unhappy with a decision, and you make it anyway.
• 27:25
  Speaker 1: Every single time you act like a separate person, the
• 27:28
  Speaker 1: claim gets weaker, and the people who only ever knew
• 27:31
  Speaker 1: how to relate to you through ownership are going to
• 27:34
  Speaker 1: feel it. They'll either learn to meet you as an equal,
• 27:37
  Speaker 1: or they'll show you that ownership was the only relationship
• 27:40
  Speaker 1: they were ever interested in. Either way, you finally find
• 27:43
  Speaker 1: out the truth, and either way you stop being owned.
• 27:46
  Speaker 1: Machiavelli's deepest lesson was about the difference between a subject
• 27:50
  Speaker 1: and a free man. A subject is governed, his choices
• 27:54
  Speaker 1: get made for him. A free man governs himself, he
• 27:57
  Speaker 1: takes counsel, he loves, he honors the people who matter
• 28:00
  Speaker 1: to him. but the final authority over his own life
• 28:03
  Speaker 1: is his, and no one else's. The day you stop
• 28:06
  Speaker 1: letting anyone hold a claim on you that you never
• 28:09
  Speaker 1: agreed to is the day you stop being a subject
• 28:11
  Speaker 1: in your own life. Nine Behaviors. The Weaponized Favor. The
• 28:16
  Speaker 1: Frozen Version. the endless ranking, the unasked volunteering, the triangulation,
• 28:21
  Speaker 1: the punished growth, the rewritten story, the override emergency, and
• 28:25
  Speaker 1: underneath all eight, the one that makes them possible, the
• 28:28
  Speaker 1: belief that they own you. Now go through your life
• 28:30
  Speaker 1: with these nine in mind, who hands you an invoice
• 28:33
  Speaker 1: for something they did years ago, right before they ask
• 28:36
  Speaker 1: for something, who still talks to you like the worst
• 28:39
  Speaker 1: version of yourself. who measures you against someone you never
• 28:42
  Speaker 1: agreed to compete with, who spends your time without asking,
• 28:46
  Speaker 1: who carries the messages that start the fights, who got
• 28:48
  Speaker 1: a little colder every time your life got a little better,
• 28:52
  Speaker 1: who insists on a version of the past you know
• 28:54
  Speaker 1: didn't happen, whose emergencies always arrive the exact moment you
• 28:58
  Speaker 1: try to step back, and underneath all of it, who
• 29:00
  Speaker 1: has never once treated you like a separate person with
• 29:03
  Speaker 1: a life of your own. Some of those questions put
• 29:06
  Speaker 1: a stranger in your mind. some put a friend a
• 29:09
  Speaker 1: partner a boss but at least one of them maybe
• 29:12
  Speaker 1: more than one put the face of someone you love
• 29:15
  Speaker 1: someone you defend to anyone that isn't a betrayal of
• 29:18
  Speaker 1: them that's the whole point the people closest to you
• 29:22
  Speaker 1: are the ones you've never held to the standard you
• 29:24
  Speaker 1: hold everyone else to and that is exactly why they're
• 29:27
  Speaker 1: the ones who've gotten away with it the longest here's
• 29:29
  Speaker 1: what changes now the next time someone reaches for what
• 29:33
  Speaker 1: they did for you right before they ask for something
• 29:36
  Speaker 1: you'll hear the invoice underneath the words. The next time
• 29:39
  Speaker 1: you walk into a a room full of people who
• 29:41
  Speaker 1: knew the old you, you won't shrink to fit their memory.
• 29:44
  Speaker 1: The next time someone measures you against your brother, your co-worker,
• 29:48
  Speaker 1: their ex, you'll decline to enter a race you never
• 29:51
  Speaker 1: agreed to run. The next time you're volunteered for something
• 29:54
  Speaker 1: you never offered, you'll hand the obligation back to the
• 29:57
  Speaker 1: person who created it. The next time a message reaches
• 30:00
  Speaker 1: you through someone in the middle, you'll go straight to
• 30:02
  Speaker 1: the source. The next time something good happens, you won't
• 30:05
  Speaker 1: hide it to keep someone comfortable. The next time someone
• 30:08
  Speaker 1: rewrites a moment you lived through, you'll hold your version
• 30:11
  Speaker 1: without needing them to agree. And the next time a
• 30:14
  Speaker 1: crisis lands at the exact moment you set a boundary,
• 30:17
  Speaker 1: you'll handle what's real and keep the line standing. And
• 30:20
  Speaker 1: that's the part you need to understand. This isn't something
• 30:23
  Speaker 1: you apply later. Something already changed while you were watching.
• 30:28
  Speaker 1: You can't unhear what these behaviors actually are. You'll be
• 30:31
  Speaker 1: in the middle of a conversation tomorrow, and you'll catch
• 30:34
  Speaker 1: one of them happening in real time, and the part
• 30:36
  Speaker 1: of you that used to call it normal will go
• 30:38
  Speaker 1: quiet because it can't call it that anymore. You'll never
• 30:41
  Speaker 1: hear after everything I did for you the same way again.
• 30:44
  Speaker 1: You'll never sit through the comparison the same way again.
• 30:48
  Speaker 1: You'll never accept the rewritten story the same way again.
• 30:51
  Speaker 1: Not because you decided to be different, because you can't
• 30:54
  Speaker 1: go back to not seeing it. The recognition already happened,
• 30:57
  Speaker 1: it happened a few minutes ago, and recognition doesn't reverse.
• 31:01
  Speaker 1: Machiavelli spent his life studying how people are controlled, and
• 31:05
  Speaker 1: the clearest pattern he ever found was this. People are
• 31:08
  Speaker 1: rarely controlled by force, they're controlled by what they're willing
• 31:11
  Speaker 1: to put up with. Every freedom you lose, you don't
• 31:14
  Speaker 1: lose in a single moment. You give it away slowly,
• 31:18
  Speaker 1: one tolerated thing at a time, each one small enough
• 31:20
  Speaker 1: to ignore, until one day you look up and realize
• 31:23
  Speaker 1: you've been living by terms you never agreed to. The
• 31:26
  Speaker 1: people who run your life are simply the ones who
• 31:28
  Speaker 1: learned what you'd tolerate and then never stopped taking exactly
• 31:32
  Speaker 1: that much. Loving someone and refusing to be eroded by
• 31:35
  Speaker 1: them were never opposites. The strongest thing you will ever
• 31:38
  Speaker 1: do is keep your heart open to someone and your
• 31:41
  Speaker 1: standards intact at the same time. Love fully. Tolerate nothing
• 31:45
  Speaker 1: that costs you yourself. If something in this hit a nerve,
• 31:48
  Speaker 1: if a face came to mind you weren't expecting, tell
• 31:51
  Speaker 1: me in the comments. Right, my tolerance ends today. Let
• 31:55
  Speaker 1: me see how many of you just decided to stop
• 31:57
  Speaker 1: paying a debt you never owed. And keep watching the
• 32:00
  Speaker 1: next video. It is important. Much more than you imagine.
• 32:04
  Speaker 1: See you there.