Latest / The Kathie Owen Perspective Podcast / 303. The Real Reason You Feel Excluded | Daddy Ball, Identity & Belonging

Transcript

303. The Real Reason You Feel Excluded | Daddy Ball, Identity & Belonging · The Kathie Owen Perspective Podcast

• 0:00
  Kathie (2): Have you ever walked into a room and instantly felt like everyone else knew something you didn't?
• 0:06
  Kathie (2): Maybe everyone was laughing about something you weren't invited to.
• 0:10
  Kathie (2): Maybe the meeting happened without you.
• 0:12
  Kathie (2): Maybe everyone had the matching coffee mug.
• 0:15
  Kathie (2): Maybe everyone knew where dinner was except you.
• 0:20
  Kathie (2): It hurts, but today I wanna suggest something that completely changed how I see these moments.
• 0:26
  Kathie (2): I no longer think exclusion is the real story.
• 0:29
  Kathie (2): I think attachment is, and once you see that, you'll start recognizing the same pattern everywhere.
• 0:37
  Kathie (2): Welcome to the Kathie Owen Perspective Podcast.
• 0:39
  Kathie (2): My name is Kathie Owen, and I study what pressure reveals about people.
• 0:45
  Kathie (2): I help leaders, founders, and private equity firms recognize the invisible human patterns that financial statements never show.
• 0:54
  Kathie (2): I call it human diligence.
• 0:56
  Kathie (2): One of the patterns I see over and over again is what happens when people become attached to an identity, because attachment quietly changes behavior.
• 1:06
  Kathie (2): It changes communication.
• 1:08
  Kathie (2): It changes leadership.
• 1:09
  Kathie (2): It changes families.
• 1:11
  Kathie (2): It changes companies.
• 1:12
  Kathie (2): And today, I want to show you one of the first places I ever saw that pattern.
• 1:16
  Kathie (2): It wasn't a boardroom.
• 1:18
  Kathie (2): It was on a Little League baseball field.
• 1:21
  Kathie (2): Today comes from the chapter seven of my book, The Truth Bubbles Up.
• 1:25
  Kathie (2): The chapter is called Daddy Ball.
• 1:28
  Kathie (2): The names have been changed to protect everyone's privacy, but the human patterns are exactly as they happened.
• 1:35
  Kathie (2): If you'd like to read the entire story, I'll put a link to the book in the description and show notes below.
• 1:40
  Kathie (2): But even if you've never watched a baseball game, I think you're gonna recognize yourself somewhere in this story Chapter seven, Daddy Ball.
• 1:52
  Kathie (2): "Baseball is like church.
• 1:54
  Kathie (2): Many attend, few understand," Leo Durocher.
• 2:00
  Kathie (2): I have loved baseball for as long as I can remember.
• 2:04
  Kathie (2): My father loved sports, especially football, but baseball became my game.
• 2:10
  Kathie (2): Some of my earliest memories involve dusty Little League fields, snow cones, long summer evenings, and chasing friends around the ballpark while our brothers played baseball.
• 2:21
  Kathie (2): Most people think baseball is boring.
• 2:23
  Kathie (2): I understand why.
• 2:25
  Kathie (2): If you're only watching the ball, it can be.
• 2:28
  Kathie (2): But baseball was never just about the ball.
• 2:31
  Kathie (2): Every pitch matters.
• 2:32
  Kathie (2): Every decision matters.
• 2:34
  Kathie (2): Every situation matters.
• 2:36
  Kathie (2): The game rewards patience, observation, and understanding patterns.
• 2:41
  Kathie (2): Looking back, that probably explains why I loved it so much.
• 2:45
  Kathie (2): Long before I studied psychology, long before I worked in corporate wellness, long before I advised leaders, I was already studying human behavior from the bleachers.
• 2:56
  Kathie (2): I just didn't know it yet.
• 2:58
  Kathie (2): When Kevin started playing Little League, it quickly became obvious that he had a gift.
• 3:05
  Kathie (2): He was only seven years old, but he looked completely natural on a baseball field, like he had been born with a glove on his hand.
• 3:13
  Kathie (2): I was amazed and excited.
• 3:18
  Kathie (2): I thought I was entering the world of youth baseball.
• 3:21
  Kathie (2): Instead, I entered a world I would later call Daddy Ball.
• 3:26
  Kathie (2): Daddy Ball has very little to do with baseball.
• 3:30
  Kathie (2): Daddy Ball happens when adults become more invested in what the game means about them than it means for the child playing it.
• 3:39
  Kathie (2): The stated purpose is baseball.
• 3:42
  Kathie (2): The real game is identity, status, recognition, belonging, control.
• 3:49
  Kathie (2): I didn't understand that at first.
• 3:51
  Kathie (2): I learned quickly.
• 3:53
  Kathie (2): This particular league was legendary.
• 3:56
  Kathie (2): Several teams had advanced all the way to the Little League World Series.
• 4:02
  Kathie (2): Many parents treated youth baseball as a pathway to something bigger, scholarships, recognition, success, pride.
• 4:10
  Kathie (2): Some lived through their children so completely that it became difficult to tell where the child ended and the parent began.
• 4:18
  Kathie (2): Kendall fit perfectly into that environment.
• 4:21
  Kathie (2): Ironically, he had always hated baseball.
• 4:24
  Kathie (2): When my brothers invited him to Astros games, he complained constantly about how boring it was.
• 4:31
  Kathie (2): Suddenly, however, he loved the sport, or maybe he loved what the sport represented.
• 4:39
  Kathie (2): He became a coach, his wife became the team mom, and before long, I started seeing familiar patterns emerge.
• 4:46
  Kathie (2): The first clue appeared when Kevin's first game of the season.
• 4:50
  Kathie (2): Every mother on the team carried a matching canvas bag embroidered with baseball mom.
• 4:57
  Kathie (2): They had all been given as gifts.
• 4:59
  Kathie (2): Every mother except one, me.
• 5:03
  Kathie (2): At the time, I felt excluded.
• 5:05
  Kathie (2): Today, I see something else.
• 5:07
  Kathie (2): Systems reveal themselves quickly.
• 5:10
  Kathie (2): The bags weren't really bags, they were signals.
• 5:13
  Kathie (2): Who belongs?
• 5:14
  Kathie (2): Who doesn't?
• 5:15
  Kathie (2): Who is included?
• 5:16
  Kathie (2): Who isn't?
• 5:17
  Kathie (2): Every group has them.
• 5:20
  Kathie (2): Corporate cultures, families, friend groups, leadership teams.
• 5:24
  Kathie (2): Little League was no different.
• 5:27
  Kathie (2): What fascinated me wasn't the exclusion, it was how normal everyone acted.
• 5:33
  Kathie (2): That's another pattern I've noticed throughout my life.
• 5:36
  Kathie (2): The longer people live inside a system, the less they notice its rules.
• 5:41
  Kathie (2): One Easter weekend, I arrived at one of Kobe's games, ready to watch him play.
• 5:46
  Kathie (2): I couldn't find him.
• 5:47
  Kathie (2): A mother I barely knew approached me.
• 5:50
  Kathie (2): "Are you looking for Kobe?" she asked.
• 5:53
  Kathie (2): I nodded.
• 5:54
  Kathie (2): "He's not here.
• 5:55
  Kathie (2): They're out of town for Easter." I stood there stunned, not because he was out of town, because no one had told me.
• 6:04
  Kathie (2): A stranger knew more about my son's whereabouts than I did.
• 6:08
  Kathie (2): At the time, I left in tears.
• 6:11
  Kathie (2): Today, I see something different.
• 6:13
  Kathie (2): Communication failures reveal a great deal about a system.
• 6:18
  Kathie (2): The people closest to the situation weren't communicating.
• 6:22
  Kathie (2): A stranger became the bridge.
• 6:24
  Kathie (2): The pattern would show up repeatedly throughout my life, at baseball fields, in families, and eventually in workplaces.
• 6:33
  Kathie (2): One season ended with a large awards ceremony.
• 6:37
  Kathie (2): Hundreds of children crowded the field.
• 6:39
  Kathie (2): Parents lined the sidelines.
• 6:40
  Kathie (2): I searched for Kevin among the sea of uniforms.
• 6:43
  Kathie (2): One father approached me.
• 6:45
  Kathie (2): "Are you looking for Kevin?" he asked.
• 6:48
  Kathie (2): I nodded.
• 6:49
  Kathie (2): "He's at the Astros game with Kendall, watching Roger Clemens pitch." Again, no one had told me.
• 6:57
  Kathie (2): Again, a stranger knew more than I did.
• 7:00
  Kathie (2): Again, I drove home in tears.
• 7:04
  Kathie (2): For years, I thought those moments were about exclusion.
• 7:08
  Kathie (2): Now, I think they were about ownership.
• 7:11
  Kathie (2): Who gets to claim the experience?
• 7:13
  Kathie (2): Who gets proximity to success?
• 7:16
  Kathie (2): Who gets the photograph?
• 7:17
  Kathie (2): Who gets the story?
• 7:19
  Kathie (2): The pattern is far bigger than baseball.
• 7:22
  Kathie (2): It shows up everywhere human beings attach their identity to achievement, and nowhere was that more obvious than with Kevin.
• 7:31
  Kathie (2): By twelve years old, he had become one of the best players in the state.
• 7:36
  Kathie (2): The baseball world revolved around tournaments, travel, private coaching, summer leagues, all-star teams, endless practices.
• 7:44
  Kathie (2): Kendall invested heavily in his development.
• 7:47
  Kathie (2): The best coaches, the best opportunities, the best exposure, and Kevin thrived.
• 7:52
  Kathie (2): He genuinely loved the game.
• 7:54
  Kathie (2): That mattered because many children trapped in daddy ball don't.
• 8:00
  Kathie (2): Kevin did.
• 8:01
  Kathie (2): Baseball lived inside of him the way psychology lived inside of me, the way kindness lived inside of Kobe, the way teaching lived inside my father.
• 8:12
  Kathie (2): Some passions are simply part of a person's nature.
• 8:16
  Kathie (2): One summer, Kevin's team advanced to the state championship in Waco.
• 8:21
  Kathie (2): The winner would move to the Little League World Series.
• 8:26
  Kathie (2): The game was televised on ESPN.
• 8:29
  Kathie (2): My parents came to watch.
• 8:30
  Kathie (2): We sat down the left field line because I was never able to sit in the parent section.
• 8:37
  Kathie (2): Not with the other families, not with the crowd, just together, watching baseball, watching Kevin.
• 8:44
  Kathie (2): During the game, Kevin hit not one, but two home runs.
• 8:49
  Kathie (2): It was one of the proudest moments of my life for Kevin.
• 8:53
  Kathie (2): Then something happened that I still remember.
• 8:56
  Kathie (2): The television cameras focused on the family section.
• 9:00
  Kathie (2): The announcer began identifying everyone.
• 9:02
  Kathie (2): "There's Kendall, his dad, Kobe, his brother, and Kathie, his mom." Yet it was not me sitting next to Kendall.
• 9:10
  Kathie (2): It was Jenny.
• 9:12
  Kathie (2): The announcers also noticed something else.
• 9:14
  Kathie (2): We were all K.O.
• 9:16
  Kathie (2): Kendall, Kathie, Kevin, Kobe.
• 9:19
  Kathie (2): They joked about whether that had been intentional.
• 9:22
  Kathie (2): It had.
• 9:23
  Kathie (2): For years, K.O.
• 9:24
  Kathie (2): had been more than initials.
• 9:26
  Kathie (2): It was part of our family identity.
• 9:30
  Kathie (2): Sitting there on that hillside listening to strangers describe my family, I realized something.
• 9:36
  Kathie (2): Families can change.
• 9:37
  Kathie (2): Marriages can end.
• 9:39
  Kathie (2): Narratives can be rewritten, but some truths remain stubbornly intact.
• 9:46
  Kathie (2): I was still Kevin's mother.
• 9:48
  Kathie (2): I was still Kobe's mother, and no amount of conflict could change that.
• 9:53
  Kathie (2): And for one brief moment, reality matched reality.
• 9:57
  Kathie (2): No politics, no narratives, no competition, just truth.
• 10:04
  Kathie (2): Kathie, his mom.
• 10:06
  Kathie (2): I didn't realize how much I needed to hear that until I heard it.
• 10:10
  Kathie (2): We lost the game.
• 10:12
  Kathie (2): Oddly enough, I was relieved.
• 10:14
  Kathie (2): Had we won, the entire circus would've moved to Pennsylvania, and by then, I was exhausted by everything surrounded the game that wasn't baseball.
• 10:24
  Kathie (2): Because the longer I watched youth baseball, the less interested I became in the game itself.
• 10:30
  Kathie (2): I was fascinated by the adults.
• 10:32
  Kathie (2): The children were playing baseball.
• 10:34
  Kathie (2): The adults were playing something else entirely.
• 10:38
  Kathie (2): One evening after practice, another lesson arrived.
• 10:42
  Kathie (2): A parent invited the boys and me to dinner after the game.
• 10:46
  Kathie (2): I was excited, not because of the food, because I thought maybe I might finally have a chance to connect with some of the other families.
• 10:55
  Kathie (2): After practice ended, we waited in the parking lot.
• 10:58
  Kathie (2): No one arrived.
• 11:00
  Kathie (2): Eventually, hungry and confused, we left, and we pulled into another restaurant nearby.
• 11:06
  Kathie (2): Immediately, the boys recognized all their teammates' cars.
• 11:10
  Kathie (2): Everyone was already inside.
• 11:12
  Kathie (2): The location had changed.
• 11:15
  Kathie (2): No one told us.
• 11:17
  Kathie (2): Kevin started crying.
• 11:18
  Kathie (2): I felt the tears coming, too.
• 11:20
  Kathie (2): Not because of dinner, because exclusion hurts.
• 11:24
  Kathie (2): Whether you're eight years old or 40- I eventually pulled the truck over to calm down.
• 11:30
  Kathie (2): The boys sat quietly, then we drove home.
• 11:32
  Kathie (2): As I parked in the garage, Kevin stormed into the house.
• 11:36
  Kathie (2): Koby stayed behind.
• 11:38
  Kathie (2): The sweet boy looked at me and said something I will never forget.
• 11:42
  Kathie (2): Don't cry, Mama.
• 11:44
  Kathie (2): When I grow up, I'm gonna be a lawyer and fix all of this." I smiled through the tears.
• 11:50
  Kathie (2): Then I told him the truth.
• 11:53
  Kathie (2): "Koby, by the time you're grown up, all of this will be over." At the time, I thought I was comforting him.
• 12:00
  Kathie (2): Today, I hear something else, a child trying to repair a system he did not create.
• 12:07
  Kathie (2): Children do that all the time.
• 12:09
  Kathie (2): They carry burdens that don't belong to them.
• 12:11
  Kathie (2): They try to heal conflicts they didn't cause.
• 12:14
  Kathie (2): They become peacemakers, protectors, fixers, not because they should, because they love the people involved.
• 12:22
  Kathie (2): Looking back, Daddy Ball taught me something profound.
• 12:25
  Kathie (2): Adults often attach their identity to things that were never meant to carry that weight.
• 12:32
  Kathie (2): Children, titles, teams, roles, success, status, and when they do, everyone around them feels the pressure, especially the children.
• 12:43
  Kathie (2): The baseball field taught me far more than baseball.
• 12:47
  Kathie (2): It taught me to watch human behavior.
• 12:49
  Kathie (2): It taught me to notice systems.
• 12:51
  Kathie (2): It taught me to recognize belonging, exclusion, status, and attachment.
• 12:57
  Kathie (2): Most importantly, it taught me that the real game is almost never the one happening on the field.
• 13:03
  Kathie (2): The real game is the one people are playing inside themselves.
• 13:08
  Kathie (2): All right, that's chapter seven, Daddy Ball, from The Truth Bubbles Up by Kathie Owen, and there are several lessons I wanna unpack from this episode with you today.
• 13:20
  Kathie (2): Lesson number one, the bags were not about the bags.
• 13:24
  Kathie (2): They were membership badges.
• 13:26
  Kathie (2): Every system creates symbols.
• 13:28
  Kathie (2): Some are intentional, and some are not.
• 13:31
  Kathie (2): Companies have them.
• 13:33
  Kathie (2): Families have them.
• 13:34
  Kathie (2): Leadership teams have them.
• 13:36
  Kathie (2): Friend groups have them.
• 13:38
  Kathie (2): They answer one silent question: Who belongs?
• 13:42
  Kathie (2): Lesson number two, people rarely wake up trying to exclude someone.
• 13:48
  Kathie (2): Instead, they're protecting something.
• 13:51
  Kathie (2): Maybe it's status, maybe it's certainty, maybe it's their role, maybe their identity.
• 13:56
  Kathie (2): That's a very different way to look at human behavior Lesson number three: communication reveals the health of the system.
• 14:05
  Kathie (2): One of my favorite lines in this chapter is,"A stranger knew more about my son than I did." That isn't simply poor communication, that's diagnostic information.
• 14:16
  Kathie (2): That is human diligence.
• 14:18
  Kathie (2): Whenever outsiders know more than insiders, pay attention, because something underneath the surface is not functioning well Lesson number four: pressure makes attachment visible.
• 14:34
  Kathie (2): Nobody notices attachment until pressure arrives.
• 14:38
  Kathie (2): Competition, promotion, inheritance, mergers, divorce, sports, leadership succession.
• 14:45
  Kathie (2): That's when identity starts protecting itself.
• 14:48
  Kathie (2): That's why pressure is such an incredible teacher Lesson number five, children often become emotional caretakers My youngest son saying, I'm gonna grow up and become a lawyer and fix all of this," that wasn't just a sweet moment.
• 15:06
  Kathie (2): That was a child trying to repair a system.
• 15:09
  Kathie (2): Children do this constantly.
• 15:11
  Kathie (2): Some become peacemakers, some become comedians, some become perfectionists, some become invisible.
• 15:18
  Kathie (2): They aren't choosing personalities, they are adapting Lesson number six.
• 15:25
  Kathie (2): This is why I teach human diligence.
• 15:29
  Kathie (2): Financial diligence finds numbers.
• 15:31
  Kathie (2): Legal diligence finds contracts.
• 15:33
  Kathie (2): Human diligence finds invisible attachments.
• 15:37
  Kathie (2): Those attachments eventually become conflict, communication breakdown, leadership struggles, culture problems, and enterprise risk.
• 15:48
  Kathie (2): Long before the numbers change, the people already have You know what's interesting is I've experienced versions of this pattern many, many, many different times in my life.
• 16:00
  Kathie (2): I've seen it in corporate leadership.
• 16:02
  Kathie (2): I've seen it in relationships.
• 16:04
  Kathie (2): I've seen it in business.
• 16:05
  Kathie (2): I've seen it in mergers and acquisitions.
• 16:08
  Kathie (2): I've seen it in volunteer organizations.
• 16:10
  Kathie (2): Different people, different settings, same human pattern.
• 16:14
  Kathie (2): That's one of the reasons why I wrote this book The stories aren't the point, the patterns are So here's what I hope you take away today.
• 16:24
  Kathie (2): If you've ever been excluded, I know how much that hurts.
• 16:28
  Kathie (2): But what if you become curious instead of defensive?
• 16:32
  Kathie (2): What identity might someone else be protecting?
• 16:36
  Kathie (2): What attachment might they be carrying?
• 16:39
  Kathie (2): That doesn't excuse hurtful behavior, but it changes the way we understand it, and understanding human behavior gives us choices.
• 16:47
  Kathie (2): The moment we stop making everything personal, we begin seeing patterns, and once you see the pattern, you are no longer trapped inside of it.
• 16:55
  Kathie (2): You are observing it, and that's where freedom begins.
• 17:01
  Kathie (2): All right, I'll see you in the next episode.