Latest / Intimate Conversations with Men about Life, Love, and Sex / The Human Scanner: What Your Biology Says About Who You Are with Rodrigo Garcia Platas

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The Human Scanner: What Your Biology Says About Who You Are with Rodrigo Garcia Platas · Intimate Conversations with Men about Life, Love, and Sex

• [00:00:00] Rodrigo: I have it all, and I've destroyed every important relationship. I have it all, and I have no clue who I am, and when people tell me that they love me or they acknowledge me, I feel uncomfortable. I lose respect for them when they tell me that I'm amazing because I don't, I don't think I'm that great. I think something's wrong with me. [00:00:18] And I constantly tell them, "Nothing's wrong with you. You just became who you thought you had to be in order to survive. You became the human being that your ego and your trauma told you that you should be, but that's not you, and that will never make you happy." [00:00:33] Voiceover: Welcome to Intimate Conversations With Men, about life, love and sex. [00:00:38] The conversations you're about to hear don't happen often, not in boardrooms, not in locker rooms, rarely anywhere. Elena Sofia Ruiz has invested 37 years studying how individuals think, operate, connect, and how they are mentally built, and she has a rare gift for creating the kind of space where men actually go there. [00:00:56] Relationships, health, emotional intimacy, personal growth. Real talk from the male perspective. So settle in. This one goes deep. [00:01:04] Elena: Thank you for joining once again to Intimate Conversations With Men. I have a question for you. You. Yes, you, the one who's listening. Have you ever met someone, or have you ever been in a situation where no matter what you do, no matter how much you celebrate your success, no matter how many accomplishes you have, there is still an empty spot in your heart, in your mind, or in your soul? [00:01:33] Maybe you know people like that. If this is something that you have felt, you are in the right place. Today, I have a very special guest, someone who inspires every single red cell in my body, Rodrigo Garcia Platas. He started his career as a transformational coach. He is an educational psychologist with a diploma in sports psychology from Sports Medicine FIFA. [00:02:03] I'm sure all of us heard about that very recently, or every four years, or every year. He is an expert in systemic family psychology. With over 20 years of experience, he created the RGP Method, a diagnostic and treatment methodology, and has supported more than 130,000 individuals to heal their relationships and live with clear self-awareness. [00:02:34] His approach brings together biology, personality, trauma, and systemic family therapy. Let me welcome with every single cell of this body, Rodrigo Garcia Platas. Rodrigo. [00:02:53] Rodrigo: What an introduction. Thank you so much. I'm so happy to be here, and I love you, Elena. I'm so happy that you invited me. [00:02:59] Elena: And the love is mutual, you know that. [00:03:01] Rodrigo: I do. [00:03:02] Elena: I became very curious about you a few months ago, and I start watching every single interview, every single thing that you created just to understand. And I even joined this wonderful event in June of 2026 in Mexican City. I could not believe 500 people in one place all together learning. But Rodrigo, you bring and teach different things. [00:03:31] Rodrigo: I do. [00:03:31] Elena: But being or experiencing your teaching Wow. Just wow. [00:03:38] Rodrigo: We kept telling people, "Wait, wait to see what happens inside the room." That's where I lived for, like, the first decade of my career, in rooms full of people with, like, different coaching techniques, with governments that were asking me to fix certain things. [00:03:53] I, I'm always saying, "I'm the one that comes in to fix the human factor." So it doesn't matter if it has to do with corruption or, or just teams that actually function, uh, in the workplace, et cetera, et cetera. And I really enjoy everything that we do virtually, but being in the room with people is something else. [00:04:10] Elena: You talk about... a lot about biotypes. [00:04:13] Rodrigo: Yes. [00:04:14] Elena: And we want to understand, what is that? What does that mean? I'm sure many, many individuals never heard of this. So please, give us a little bit of direction here. [00:04:24] Rodrigo: I'm pretty sure that most people have never heard of this . In the same way 20-something years ago when I heard it for the first time, it sounded like, "What the hell are you talking about?" [00:04:33] I come from very different schools of thought. I'm not a clinical psychologist. I, I don't do psychoanalysis. I've studied it. I, I find it fascinating, but I, I didn't think that it was the best approach for people to grow. And because I started in coaching, my approach with my, with my students, with my clients is completely different. [00:04:52] Um, I become extremely close. But one of the first problems that I encountered was everything is so interpretational in psychology. Um, the amount of people that walk into my practice saying, um, "I went to seven different therapists, and each one of them has a completely different theory, and I have seven different diagnostics", the first thing that I realized is something that functions does not get to be so interpretational. [00:05:17] Mm-hmm. So for a really long time, I was looking for something fixed. I was looking for something that was not some... that, that was not an idea that I was having or that someone else was having, something that was rigid, fixed, like scientifically valid, that everyone can see, and then I found biotypes. Now, we call them biotypes now, but, but the truth is that what we're using is a temperament theory, and I know that for most people, talking about temperaments at the beginning feels like talking about astrology and feels that, like, talking about human design. [00:05:50] I'm not saying that those things are something that I'm against. I've seen fascinating things come out of those a- those arenas, too. But this is not spiritual. This is not esoteric. [00:05:59] Elena: For me, what is the base of this, Rodrigo? [00:06:01] Rodrigo: It's the base of every ancient medicine in the world. When we didn't have the technology that we have today, when we didn't have MRI machines and X-rays and, and everything that we today have in hospitals, doctors and experts in, in shamanic medicine, in ancient Chinese medicine, in ancient Greek and Islamic medicine, everything had to do with understanding the balance of different biologies. [00:06:24] The Greeks were the first ones who, who started coining terms. But the truth is that every ancient culture has some sort of classification of biologies. Because if I cannot test your blood to know if this is happening or that's happening, then I need to be really good at understanding people just by looking at them. [00:06:42] You're this type of biology, and I understand the balance of that biology. This is why every time you talk to someone that's an expert in any type of ancient medicine, most of them have the same principle. They don't believe in disease, they believe in unbalance. Mm-hmm. You're not sick, you're out of balance, and I understand the balance of, of your biology. [00:07:02] That's what those doctors say. And I've seen many traditional doctors... This was the first thing that blew my mind, honestly. I've seen traditional doctors, I've seen Unani doctors, I've seen Chinese doctors heal things that in our hospitals they tell us that cannot be healed. I'll give you an example. One... [00:07:20] I'm not a doctor, but one of my teachers who's a doctor, one of my nieces had just been born. She, she was probably six months old. And then we started realizing that she was allergic to almost everything By the time she turned one or two years old, we were very careful at parties because she was starting to be al- allergic to silicon. [00:07:39] She couldn't touch the balloons in different parties that she went to. She was allergic to chocolate. She was al- allergic to every dairy product. And telling a two-year-old that they cannot touch the balloon, that they cannot eat that cake- Wow ... that they, they cannot try that because her throat would just shut down. [00:07:56] We took her to hospitals in the States, uh, in Mexico, and everybody was saying like, "You, you guys will just l- have to learn how to live with this. There's people with way more allergies than your niece, so I promise you she's not that bad." "She just needs to figure out how to live." Get over that. I remember a doctor... [00:08:12] I know. I remember a doctor telling us, "I have patients that, that are allergic to sunlight. Like, this is nothing." [00:08:18] Elena: Oh, I was allergic to sunlight, too. [00:08:20] Rodrigo: There you go. Mm-hmm. It exists. I know. Yeah. But the craz- the crazy thing is we, we couldn't settle with that. Just people have been worse than us. It, it's not an excuse to just give up and, and go like, "Okay, we failed." [00:08:32] And then when I started studying all of this information, one of my teachers, an unani doctor that studied in India and Pakistan, uh, sat in front of us and said, "There's this phlegmatic kid." I was already learning the biotype, so I knew a little bit of what he was talking about. Mm-hmm. And I know, like, okay, huge eyes, rounder face, huge cheekbones, longer limbs. [00:08:53] I, I already have a little bit of the information. And I looked at her and I said, "Yeah, I, I think she is." And he said, "We just need to reset her whole digestive tract and she'll be healed." I'm not telling... Uh, this is not medical advice. This is just our story. He was probably paying attention to many more factors. [00:09:09] Elena: Of course. [00:09:10] Rodrigo: But... Yes. I, I don't want everybody to go like, "Oh, we will follow this path and then our allergies go away." But what we did is that for three months she couldn't touch dairy or carbs. No bread, no carb- Yeah ... no nothing. No Mexican tortillas, nothing. And absolutely no dairy. And we did it for three months. [00:09:30] That niece is 20 years old today, and she's not allergic to anything. [00:09:34] Elena: Wow. [00:09:35] Rodrigo: So it's all about looking for the balance, and this blew my mind so much- Okay ... that given that mental health is my arena, I said there needs to be a way to do this mentally. Like, there has to be a pathway in understanding the human biology and the typical psyche that it creates and, and be able to heal it and teach people how to use themselves in the right way. [00:09:58] It took me a while. I had to study for a long time and study formally and informally because most of this information doesn't even exist in our, in our side of the world. Of course. Even today you can go into the National Library of Medicine in the US, and if you type unani tibb... I, I'm gonna spell in English. [00:10:14] This is gonna be interesting. U-N-A-N-I, unani, and then tibb, which is T-I-B-B. And if you Google that, you'll find that there's articles about this type of medicine even in the National Library of Medicine in the States explaining the four biologies that the Greeks created, what their bodies look like, their body temperature, what type of humidity they can be exposed to, and what type of humidity or dryness can completely destroy their system. [00:10:43] So I started studying a lot and realized that there was no one paying attention, not seriously except for a couple of my teachers, trying to understand not only the physical structure, not, not only the health that, that every biology needs to stay in balance with, but the type of psyche that they create, what they value, the types of relationships that they create, who they end up being in love with, even the relationship that they have to their own sexuality, their ability to make things happen, to control the world, to create relationships- [00:11:12] to have achievements, et cetera, et cetera. So it took me a while, but I had a secret weapon that completely transformed my ability to learn this, which is given that I was already a transformational coach traveling the world, having 200, 250 people in a classroom for five days sometimes every week in a different city of the world. [00:11:32] I, I would be flying to South America and then in Mexico and then the US leading workshops everywhere, so I could test the theories. I wasn't just learning this in books. I, I was looking at bodies in books and looking at shapes and then giving it a go the next weekend that I had someone that looked exactly like that structure and paying attention to the types of psyches that everyone creates. [00:11:54] So after a few years and after tens of thousands of people going through different journeys , I became really good at learning what every biology looks like. Um, I even took all the information that my teachers gave me and pushed it way farther, uh, learning about their muscle structure. I ended up presenting my methodology to doctors from some of the best universities in the States. [00:12:17] They were mind-blown by it. Uh, many of them still have a relationship with us. Many of them became patients and, and started improving their own lives. N- uh, th- they didn't even wanna test it more. They were like, "No, no, no. Do it on me. Do it on me." It started growing and growing and growing. Uh, we started doing it in English with- in c- in California. [00:12:35] We started leading workshops in 2022. We won the prize for one of the best workshops in the US. They started promoting our work even more, and then someone said, "Dude, you're Mexican. I mean, your English is quite good, but your Spanish is way better. Why, why are you not doing this in Spanish?" And I couldn't stop remembering my grandfather saying that, "En casa del herrero, cuchillo de palo, de cuchillo de palo." [00:12:59] Yeah. Which in English would mean something like in the house of the blacksmith, even the knife is made of wood. Mm-hmm. Um, like no one's profit in their own land. I've, I probably felt a little bit of, a little bit of that, but I decided to start doing it in Spanish, too, and we blew out of the water in a crazy way. [00:13:16] We've, we've only been doing social media and being public about what we can do for probably two and a half years, three years in Spanish, and we have almost four million followers. I was just all over Spain doing a podcast tour because now, like we have certified coaches all over the world. We have certified coaches in Europe and Asia and Latin America and the US. [00:13:39] It's crazy. People are waking up to a completely new approach to mental health and human beings. [00:13:44] Elena: Rodrigo, I, I met, uh, people during the class that Came from countries that don't speak Spanish [00:13:52] Rodrigo: Yes. Yes. In our event, we had people from Denmark. We had people from Andorra. We, we had people from all over Europe, Asia. [00:14:00] Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. It was mind-blowing. We had people from Africa. [00:14:02] Elena: In the United States, they call you the human scanner. Tell me a little bit about that. [00:14:09] Rodrigo: It's a little bit of a running joke. Here's the thing. I started developing my whole methodology, but not really sharing it. I never thought I was gonna share this. [00:14:18] I always thought this was gonna be the ace under my sleeve. I knew that this was hard to understand for a lot of people. I come from an engineering background. I'm the only non-engineer man in my family. Wow. Uh, my wife is a financial engineer. I love engineering. I'm a therapist who knows how to set up cameras and, and can, like, build a- Of course [00:14:38] little yeah, like a little piece of furniture because I grew up around very handy men that loved engineering and loved electronics. If, if a phone broke down in my house, my dad would be like, "No, we're not buying a new one. We're opening it up, and we're figuring out- Oh, wow ... what's wrong with it." So that's how I grew, and becoming someone that was gonna tell people, "I know who you are just by looking at you," didn't feel appropriate given my upbringing. [00:15:02] So I never really told anyone why I knew what I knew about them, but then I became really famous in the States for being someone that could be just walking down the street... We do this in our Instagrams account, both in English and Spanish. And just walking down the street, and suddenly I look at someone and I tell them, "So your relationships work like this. [00:15:19] You always feel like this with your partner. You're always complaining about this with human beings, and c- you cannot eat dairy. And when you do, you feel like you're dying. And, and this weather is terrible for you. And when you don't sleep this much time, you, you feel like you're dying the next day." And people were looking at me like, "How the hell do you know this?" [00:15:36] And I wouldn't tell them how I knew it. I would just say, like, "I know certain things about people just by looking at them." I was also validating my own, my own theory, all, all the principles- Right ... that I was creating. I didn't want to expose people to things that I was not absolutely certain about. Of course. [00:15:51] But then while trying, I was very precise with what I was telling people. There is videos in my English Instagram, RGP Development, where you can see me just walk into a store and talk to the clerk and go like, "I can tell you how your relationships function." And people just were mind-blown by it, and, and they started calling me the human scanner. [00:16:10] Until I told them, "I'm not scanning people. I can teach you how to do this. This, this is, this is a precise methodology that you can use." And the first thing that started gaining us the trust of people, uh, like around Latin America, is the fact that you can go to- One of my certified coaches using my methodology, and then you can come to a session with me, and we'll tell you 90% the exact same thing. [00:16:34] We'll diagnose the same biology. We'll diagnose, we'll diagnose the same personality. We'll ask the same questions about how that biology becomes this type of personality because it's all statistics. We know what needs to happen to every one of the biologies for them to start creating a personality that's completely opposed to their biology. [00:16:52] And I know this can sound confusing at the beginning. [00:16:55] Elena: It does. [00:16:57] Rodrigo: It does until you realize that we have that information, too. [00:17:00] Mm-hmm. [00:17:01] Biologists became the temperament theory when, when the information created by the Greeks- Mm-hmm ... let's tackle this. [00:17:08] Elena: Let's do. [00:17:08] Rodrigo: The information created by the Greeks. Mm-hmm. It was originally Hippocrates and then Galeno who took all this information to medical standards, but the postulate was very simple. [00:17:19] Have you realized that people that look the same tend to act the same? They usually get the same type of disease and usually end up in the same type of relationship and trouble. The temperament theory was created. Then it was taken to a medical level by Galeno. Then it was taken by Islamic medicine. And when Islamic medicine encountered Ayurveda medicine and ancient Chinese medicine, the modern Unani Tibb as we know it today was born. [00:17:46] In fact, Unani, even though this is something that's still taught today in India and Pakistan- Mm-hmm ... Unani means Greek in Arab. It was the Arabs telling them, "We learned this from the Greeks." So that's like the pathway that this information took when it c- when it became medicine. But that information also came to the West, but for us it became psychology. [00:18:08] Elena: Mm. [00:18:08] Rodrigo: The four temperaments are the exact four personalities in the matrix that we all learn in the DiSC study of personality, and that's why most personality studies in the West tend to be multiples of four. We had the DiSC study of personality that has- Mm-hmm ... the four personalities- Yes ... which are literally the four personalities of the four biologies. [00:18:28] And then now we have the gold standard in personalities, which is the Myers-Briggs, which has 16- Mm-hmm ... possibilities. Mm-hmm. Which is, again, it's another four. Yeah. And it's the exact same thing that we created. My- the methodology that we use and that the grid that we have and that we show people to start diagnosing has exactly 16 possibilities because there's four biologies and four types of personalities within every biology. [00:18:53] It's nothing but you're this type of biology, but you're acting like that other one. So you have the personality of another biology that's completely different from yours. [00:19:02] Elena: How can you box the world, how many billions of people, in four biologies? How is it possible? Because this is not by ethnicity. This is not by country. [00:19:13] This is not by gender. This is biology. [00:19:16] Rodrigo: Yes. [00:19:17] Elena: Let's talk about it. [00:19:19] Rodrigo: Let's talk about it. Because it was funny because that's, that's actually why they started looking for me- Mm-hmm ... in, in different podcasts in Spanish. Because in the middle in- of this battle, which is not my battle, but in the middle of this battle between men and women and transgender people, they started looking for a therapist that could talk about the biological behavior of people. [00:19:39] So they found me, and they were telling me... They were asking me things in, in interviews like, "So are men and women different?" And I would look at them and I would say, "Forget about are men and women different. Women who are melancholic and women who are phlegmatic are completely different." There you go. [00:19:55] "And women who are sanguine are completely different." Mm-hmm. In fact, a woman who's sanguine acts more like other men who are sanguine than other women. So our biology defines a lot of who we are, what we value, how we experience life. I always tell people, like, like, the, the easiest way to start tackling this, especially if this sounds like extremely foreign information to you, is the following. [00:20:18] Even if you're not spiritual, you might understand this concept, which is we're all souls. We're spiritual beings having a physical experience. Yeah. So if you're this spiritual being within a biological body, well, guess what? That's like driving a car. Your soul is the driver, but the vehicle that you're driving can be completely different. [00:20:40] It's not the same thing- Correct ... to have been born in a motorcycle, uh, or being born in a convertible or being born in a semi-truck or being born in a pickup truck. Mm-hmm. None of them are better than the other one. They were built with very different- Yeah ... talents and purposes. [00:20:56] Elena: Different purposes. Mm-hmm. [00:20:57] Rodrigo: Exactly. Each and every one of them was built in a completely different, uh, in, with a completely different purpose in mind. And each one of the four biologies evolved in a completely different place with a different climate, with different structures, with different things that allowed them to survive or not survive. [00:21:15] To give you a very basic example- Sure ... if people like philosophy, when you read Greek philosophy, old Greek philosophy, one of the things that you keep finding... I've encountered this, like, 5, 10 times reading Greeks that would say something like, "There's obviously no human beings on the other side of the, of the sea. [00:21:34] You can find some of them, little pockets of people, but the truth is that it's almost impossible to live on the other side because it's too hot. There's no way for anyone to survive there." Because the Greeks used to be choleric, and we know because we can see all the sculptures that they did of themselves. [00:21:51] We can see the size of the hands, the shapes of the heads. They, they created so much art that they allowed us to see all the proportions that people usually had in that culture. And if you take cholerics and put them in the desert, they start dying. But the truth is that the type of people that were living on those places were perfectly adapted to those spaces. [00:22:08] They were phlegmatic. [00:22:10] Elena: Tell us a little bit more about the actual biotypes, and start with cholerics. I'm curious. [00:22:16] Rodrigo: Just before opening that up, I do wanna answer what you asked before, which is I had the exact same question. At the beginning when I became really good at reading biologies, I became really good at reading Mexican biologies. [00:22:27] Like, with, with the people that I had around me and, and the, the typical biologies of the country, and I had the exact same question Is this something that's going to apply no matter where I go? Mm-hmm. So I started going to the States and trying the exact same thing, and going to Europe and trying the exact same thing. [00:22:44] This is literally what made me start working with different cultures and different religions. I work with Jewish couples, I work with Muslim couples- Mm ... I work with people from all over the world because I was trying to find people from everywhere to make sure that the same rules that applied to the biologies that I was learning applied to everyone everywhere. [00:23:01] Yes, I had to learn certain adjustments, especially racial adjustments. Mm-hmm. Uh, the amount of- Okay ... muscle that certain races can create is not exactly the same to others. And we know that phlegmatics do not build that much muscle. But if a phlegmatic doesn't build muscle but the phlegmatic is from a specific race that actually has a very pronounced physical strength, then you can see phlegmatics following all the rules of phlegmatics. [00:23:26] They still cannot eat the same things, they still get sick if they do- if they expose themselves to certain foods, certain climates, et cetera, et cetera. But you start paying attention to, okay, this race works a little bit like this. There's races with arms that are a little bit longer, that are a l- a little bit shorter. [00:23:43] Mm-hmm. But, but what blew up my mind was realizing that the same rules applied no matter where I go. No matter, no matter where I went, choleric men were always the same, were always the leaders, were always the ones in charge of the, the economy, the politics, the culture, et cetera, et cetera. So yes, this, this seems to be like the four possibilities of what human biology consolidates in. [00:24:07] Now, at the same time, this is something that we inherit. Like, you, you cannot have a biology that didn't exist in your family two, three generations above you. This is why countries stay the same and stay valuing the same types of things. Mexico is 80% phlegmatic. This is the real reason why Mexico and the US will never be able to blend together the way we want, the way we would- Yeah [00:24:28] love them to. It'll never happen because the people running the culture over there are choleric, and the people running the culture down here are phlegmatic. And we're extremely different and value very different things. Now, having said that- Different ... we can take a little go around, uh, to talk about every biology. [00:24:47] Elena: And we value different things. [00:24:49] Rodrigo: Yes, and we value very different things. So let's start with choleric. If people want to start understanding this a little bit in a more visual way, imagine a compass. Mm-hmm. And every one of the biologies, this is the, the simple unani diagram. And if you imagine a compass- [00:25:06] Elena: Okay [00:25:06] Rodrigo: on the north you would have cholerics. [00:25:08] Elena: All right. [00:25:09] Rodrigo: On the south- [00:25:10] Elena: Mm-hmm ... [00:25:11] Rodrigo: you would have phlegmatics. [00:25:11] Elena: Yes. [00:25:11] Rodrigo: On the east you would have sanguines, and on the west you would have phlegmatics Having said that, the first thing that I always explain for people to start making sense of this is it- within this compass, we actually have two axises. [00:25:28] Elena: Okay. Thank you. [00:25:28] Rodrigo: So cholerics to the north- Mm-hmm ... phlegmatics to the south, sanguines to the east, melancholics to the west. [00:25:34] Elena: Okay. Okay. [00:25:35] Rodrigo: Now, having said that, it almost feels, and this, this has not been scientifically proven, but we do have a lot of information that's pointing in this direction, especially in the last 10, 20 years. [00:25:46] Elena: Okay. [00:25:47] Rodrigo: It seems like we actually have two axis, like two extremes of every biology. So it's probably not four, but, but just the two poles of every biology. And everything has to do with the extremes. It's hot and cold. It's, it's wet and it's dry. Poles. So we live in a world that everything... where everything has to do with poles and the extremes of every concept. [00:26:10] It seems like our biology works exactly the same. Now, why do we say this? Because there is many things that opposites have in common. [00:26:18] Elena: Like the globe, right? [00:26:19] Rodrigo: Exactly. So for example, cholerics and phlegmatics are the biologies with long limbs and short torsos. So their arms are really long, their legs are really long, and their torsos are really short. [00:26:33] This is something that we see a lot on teenagers as they're growing up little by little. What we usually see is as they're starting to hit puberty and our bodies get out of shape as, as we start evolving, that's where you can see- Mm-hmm ... the arms and the legs becoming massively long with the torso being- Yeah [00:26:50] really short. In some teenagers, it almost seems like it almost seems like their butt is literally at the same level as their elbows as they're growing up. Yeah. This is not something that happens to everyone. This is something that happens to cholerics and [00:27:04] phlegmatics. [00:27:04] Elena: Okay. Both men and women cholerics and men and women phlegmatics. [00:27:08] Rodrigo: Yes, phlegmatics, not cholerics. Now why not cholerics? Because, and this is the only biology where we make this distinction, for some unknown reason, even though- [00:27:19] Elena: Got it ... [00:27:19] Rodrigo: it makes a l- even though it makes a lot of sense. Uh, for some unknown reason, it seems like God decided that we only got to have choleric men. [00:27:27] There's no choleric women. And once we describe the behavior of cholerics, it's, it becomes apparent that for this world to function, there could only be one one type of choleric human being out there in the world. Because if not, we would have killed each other a really long time ago. [00:27:43] Elena: See, and I hear a lot of men complaining about women. [00:27:46] Now, here we go. See? We have, we have the cholerics to make up for that, right? [00:27:51] Rodrigo: That's exactly right. [00:27:52] Elena: I'm kidding. I'm kidding. [00:27:53] Rodrigo: There is one type of, of woman that's, we call them phlegmatic fire water. [00:27:58] Elena: Okay. Phlegmatic. [00:27:59] Rodrigo: Why do we call them phlegmatic fire water? Because the Greeks gave- Mm-hmm ... every biology a different element So cholerics were fire. [00:28:07] Phlegmatics were water. So there's this one type of biology, which is women who are phlegmatic. Their health follows the rules of the phlegmatics. Their bodies have the proportions of typical phlegmatic women, but they're very intense. We tend to attribute this to yellow bile, to sapphire, the ancients would call it. [00:28:29] Elena: To have a little more guidance and visuals since, uh, some of our, uh- ... even though a lot of individuals are listening, to have an idea how these individuals look, do you have an actor that is choleric, that is very clear on the, on the long, you know, how you describe, and the long arms and, and, and all their proportions in the body? [00:28:48] Rodrigo: Yes, we do. Well, all you need to do is watch American movies from the '50s and '60s. You guys were in love with your choleric men. And every guy in every movie, like Charlton Heston could have not been any more choleric. Charlton Heston. Clint Eastwood is- Clint Eastwood ... massively choleric. Yes. And when you look at them- [00:29:05] Elena: I can see him [00:29:06] Rodrigo: yeah, they tend to be a little bit more compact. Mm-hmm. We usually say that their face looks like an inverted triangle. Mm-hmm. Like, if anyone's looking at the screen right now and looking at me, I have a very clear tendency of a square head. What I mean is- ... my forehead measures the exact same as my jaw. [00:29:24] Okay. And if I gain weight, because I have in the past- ... if I gain weight, my head, like I have rulers on both sides of my head, grows and shrinks. But it's always the same size forehead and jaw- [00:29:38] Elena: Okay ... [00:29:38] Rodrigo: because I'm sanguine. But when you're looking at choleric men, the forehead is usually way wider than, than the jaw because they don't have this square jaw that pops out with the masseter muscle. [00:29:50] Elena: You know who come to mind? Larry King. [00:29:52] Rodrigo: La- Larry King is massively choleric. Yes. Mm-hmm. Yes, yes, yes. He's, he's choleric with subdominant melancholic. That's why he's so headsy. But yes, that's a perfect example. And Dave Letterman is also choleric. Mm-hmm. You guys love them. You have them everywhere. Yeah. Like, half of your politicians are choleric, and half of the people on, on late night TV are choleric. [00:30:11] Elena: Oh, okay. [00:30:12] Rodrigo: But they have triangular faces- Mm-hmm ... with very sharp, pointy jaws. Mm-hmm. With penetrating eyes. Like, they look at you, and they mean business. They usually have a little bit extra bone right under the, the eyebrows. [00:30:26] Elena: Clint Eastwood. [00:30:27] Rodrigo: Clint Eastwood, yes. We, we call it la visera or la visagra. Mm-hmm. Like, like there's a little bit of extra bone right here, which is where- Yeah [00:30:34] choleric boxers usually hide their eyes. Oh, yeah. Because they can take a hit exactly there without you being able to hit their eyes. [00:30:40] Elena: Wow. This information is useful everywhere [00:30:45] Rodrigo: Well, when I was start- when I was studying sports, uh, sports psychology, I became addicted to boxing and UFC fighting because there is very few sports where men are, are half-naked and I can see their whole bodies And I can look at their whole biology. [00:31:00] Elena: Yeah. [00:31:00] Rodrigo: And that's where I started understanding that every biology needs a different strategy in every sport because every biology has a different tendency. So I'll give you an example. [00:31:10] Elena: Yes. [00:31:10] Rodrigo: McGregor, the fighter. [00:31:12] Elena: Okay. Mm-hmm. [00:31:13] Rodrigo: He's choleric. He has really long arms, and he has really big hands. Mm-hmm. So usually fighters who are choleric become kings in one punch. [00:31:24] They're amazing knockard out... kno- knockout artists because they're very strong, but their arms are longer. This is usually what happens in fighting when you're looking at two fighters and they're saying, "This is how tall they are, and this is their reach." And something that's really confusing is usually the wider the h- the fighter is, which would mean sanguine, the shorter their arms are and the shorter their, their reach, even if they're taller than the other fighter. [00:31:50] Because if the other fighter is either choleric or phlegmatic, they can be as tall as you, but their arms will be longer. So if your arms are long, you become amazing at hitting people with one specific punch, and you become unbeatable. This is how McGregor became the first fighter to have two belts in two different categories, and everybody would say the same thing. [00:32:10] He just throws one straight left down the pipe and, and he destroys everyone because his arms are longer, and his hands are bigger because cholerics have bigger hands. In the other side, we have fighters like Canelo, the boxers like Canelo- Yeah ... who's an amazing boxer, but he's sanguine. Okay. So he, he's not an expert in one punch. [00:32:30] He's a counter puncher. Because his arms are shorter, he knows how strong he is, but he also knows that he cannot touch you at the beginning because his arms are shorter. Okay. So he's always making tricks and, and putting his f- his right foot way closer to the other fighter to invite them to try and hit him. [00:32:48] Mm. And then when they try and hit him, now they're in the right space for him to punch him with his sanguine strength. Oh. But if he tried throwing the first punch, he would lose every fight. He would lose every battle because he wouldn't be able to hit you at the distance that you can hit him. So yes, in sports psychology, this matters, and this matters a lot. [00:33:05] We also know things that, like, in specific sports you need a specific biology. I'll give you an example. The US has been kings of gymnastics for a really long time. Yeah. Gymnastics are really important in my family. My sister owns one of the best gyms in the country. She used to be an extremely competitive gymnast growing up. [00:33:24] And The problem that we have is that most gymnasts in Mexico are phlegmatic, which makes them extremely elastic and very graceful when they move, but not physically strong, not explosive. And most American, most, most American gymnasts are sanguine. In fact, we have Simone Biles. I know that she retired already, but she made... [00:33:46] She did exercises, she, she came up with exercises that nobody else can do because she's sanguine. So she has explosive strength, and the, it's gonna be years before anyone can do it. There's many men that cannot do the exercises that Simone Biles did. [00:34:02] Elena: Does that means, uh, Rodrigo, that we have different abilities according with our biology? [00:34:07] And this is, I mean, we can have surgery in our faces and our bodies. [00:34:12] Rodrigo: You can change the way you look, but that doesn't change how your ligaments function, how your muscles function, how your bones function. And we know which biologies are elastic, and we know which biologies are strong, and therefore not so elastic. [00:34:26] Yeah, we know how they function, and you can change everything about how you look on the outside. Your body's still the same biology. [00:34:32] Elena: Which means if employers get to this information, or coaches for sports, or government, they will be able to manage a better team, I guess? [00:34:45] Rodrigo: We've done it. We've done it in the past with amazing results. [00:34:48] I'll give you an example. Cuajimalpa, which is a very important borough in Mexico City, like the mayor of that city back then, uh, was, was Mayor Rubalcava, which to this day I believe is one of the most amazing politicians I've ever met, one of the few ones that I like working with. Um, and I've seen the amount of investment that he does in making sure that he understands the people that he works with and, and that he's getting the best out of the people around him. [00:35:14] And Cuajimalpa is an extremely conflicted borough of Mexico City because it has both, like many parts of Mexico, it has both some of the most abundant, rich, and wealthy people in Latin America, while at the same time, their neighbors like just across the little barranca, are some of the lowest levels of income in Latin America. [00:35:34] So it's a borough that needs to pay attention both to some of the most powerful entrepreneurs of the country, uh, and has high-tech industry within the, within the borough, et cetera, et cetera, and extremely conflicted areas where poverty is still rampant and security was becoming a huge problem. And he told me, "This is very complex. [00:35:52] I need to make sure that I understand the tools that I have, like the people that I have in my team." And they had a ridiculous perception of, of corruption right before he came into power. And even before they, he, they, before they took office, he brought his whole team to my offices and we worked with 600 people, and literally all we did was teach them how they functioned, give them a lot of humane tools to understand themselves and become a team, but then we took the biologies that we know would- very hardly corrupt themselves because we know how they think. [00:36:26] So we took melancholics Which are the ones that live in their head, that very rarely gain weight, that become ripped very easily. We all had a melancholic friend growing up that just started doing sit-ups and push-ups, and suddenly they looked like they had spent their half, half of their life at the gym. [00:36:41] Elena: I met them before you. [00:36:41] Rodrigo: And it's like, what the hell? [00:36:41] Elena: We all have that kind of friend that we hate. You know, the ones who are not melancholics, right? [00:36:51] Rodrigo: And you see them eating all day long- Yep ... and they don't gain a pound. Yep. And they're melancholic. Like, where does it all going? And they pay high prices. [00:36:57] Yes. [00:36:58] But they also pay really high prices because of it. They live in their heads. They overanalyze everything. [00:37:03] They feel dramatically misunderstood. They, they- Mm ... they're very skeptical. It's very hard for them to trust people. And that, that's why if I tell you ... Th- this is a good exercise for, for anyone who's just listening about this for the first time. Mm-hmm. If I tell you, "I have a friend who's a scientist. He's the most brilliant person I've ever met, but he's highly anti- antisocial. [00:37:27] He doesn't have friends. He lives in a basement while he's finding the secrets of the universe. Uh, but he doesn't like people. He lives on his own." If you're listening, chances are you're imagining someone who's extremely thin and long, probably wearing a, a white robe. Why? Because even if you lever- never learned biologies, you've been paying attention to people your whole life, and your brain is a data analytics computer that looks at people and says, "I've met people like this. [00:37:54] I know more or less how they function." Uh, that's why we imagine people like that. So we took melancholics, and we put them in every position in the government that had to do with handling money. Because we know that if a melancholic does something wrong with someone else's money, it's hard for them to sleep. [00:38:10] They're, they're gonna constantly think how they're gonna get caught and, and how they, they weren't careful enough, and I didn't pay attention to that little part, and they're gonna look at that bill, and it looks exactly like the one from over there. They start imagining everything that could go wrong. [00:38:24] That's why they're the least corrupt biology in the world. They have a huge tendency to mental health in- issues because they isolate themselves from relationships so much. Uh, Japan, which is an extremely melancholic country, now has a national health problem with the hikikomori. And if you Google hikikomori, uh, you're gonna, you're gonna find that in melancholic countries, people are severing their relationships with the world. [00:38:47] There's people that just don't exit their apartments anymore. This is something that's happening in, in certain parts of France, definitely in Japan, in countries that are very melancholic, where people are very skinny- [00:38:58] Elena: I can see the French also, yeah. Mm-hmm. Yes. Looking like that. [00:39:00] Rodrigo: Well, the France is the most melancholic country in Europe. [00:39:03] Yeah. Uh, but what's, what's fascinating about this is we just took melancholics and put them in every position that has nothing to do with dealing with people but everything to do with handling money. And then we took all the phlegmatics ... And phlegmatics are very prone to corruption because phlegmatics are not corrupt for their own benefit. [00:39:21] Phlegmatics can be corrupt in order to save the people that they love Phlegmatics think that rules should be broken depending on the case that you have in front of you. This is why in a, in a country that was created by choleric men, which is the United States of America, where rules were clear and intentions had to be clean-cut and, and everything that's built needs to work because choleric men created this country. [00:39:48] Now how are they destroying them? By saying everything is relative, nothing is a fact. Emotions are as important as f- as, as facts. That's the truth that phlegmatics live in. That's why Latin Americans in the States are listening to all this progressive ideas and going like, "Yes, this sounds like my abuelita. [00:40:07] This sounds exactly as how I grew up." "My abuelita would treat everybody different depending on who they were and how much she loved them, and she would break the rules because this is her favorita nieta, and this is my favorite grandson," et cetera, et cetera. We know how that feels. We grew up in phlegmatic cultures. [00:40:22] Yeah. So having said that, we took phlegmatics and we put them in every position that has to do with dealing with people. So how do you calm down society? How do you talk to their leaders? How do you create relationship with the people from that borough that had amount of the, like, important amounts of power in the c- in the community? [00:40:41] So we took phlegmatics and we put them in those positions that have to do with handling, handling society and making sure that everybody feels seen and making sure that everybody feels seen and loved and connected, et cetera, et cetera. And I can show you the clippings from the papers. The sensation of corruption in the whole community went down 80%. [00:41:01] People started- [00:41:02] Elena: Wow ... [00:41:03] Rodrigo: trusting their government. [00:41:03] Elena: That's huge. [00:41:04] Rodrigo: It was crazy. It was crazy. [00:41:06] Elena: That's huge [00:41:07] Rodrigo: What, what we've been able to achieve is mind-blowing because you don't need to change people. You just need to support them in understanding who they are. Because when people don't know what their biology is, they can be hurting themselves without even realizing what they're doing. [00:41:20] Elena: But you also said that, at the beginning, you said that you can have a biotype but b- act like a different biotype, and maybe that's- Yes ... perhaps why you got a different, uh, the, uh, position that you thought it was for you according to your mind, not to- [00:41:36] Rodrigo: Correct ... [00:41:36] Elena: your biology, right? So how do you connect and how this works, the biology with the mind? [00:41:43] Because that's your golden nugget. [00:41:45] Rodrigo: Let's put it like this. This is fascinating, and it takes, like, six hours to explain. But- [00:41:49] Elena: I have time. I have time. [00:41:53] Rodrigo: But we can give it a go in 10 minutes. But the first thing that I realized is that I had been studying the DiSC study of personality because it's something that we use dramatically in coaching. [00:42:04] We use different terms, but it's the exact same study. We don't call it the DiSC. We- because we don't use dominating, influencing, steady, and compliant. Mm-hmm. We, we use the terms instead of dominant, we would say controlling. In- instead of influencing, we would say promoting. Mm-hmm. We wanted to make the terms more accessible. [00:42:21] Instead of, instead of steady, we would say analyzer. Instead of compliant, we would say supporter Now- Mm-hmm ... the first thing I realized was when we're talking about a, a controlling personality, you're literally defining the natural behavior of cholerics. [00:42:39] Elena: Okay. [00:42:40] Rodrigo: Which are formal and dominant. Mm-hmm. By formal, we mean they care about structure, they care about the rules, and they're dominant. [00:42:48] They're not gonna stay quiet when someone says something that they don't agree with. When you're telling something to a choleric and they think that you just said something stupid, 99% of the times they will let you know that they think you just- ... you just said something dramatically stupid. And, and many times they don't even care about how they make you feel. [00:43:05] They care about structure. They care about formality. Then we go to the personality of sanguines. We call it promoting. Mm-hmm. It's also the other dominant personality, but the huge difference with a controlling personality is that it's an informal personality. Formal personalities care about structure, and they're rigid. [00:43:24] They care about the rules. They want everything to be clear. [00:43:27] Elena: Yeah. [00:43:27] Rodrigo: Promises to be kept. [00:43:29] Elena: Organization. Mm-hmm. [00:43:30] Rodrigo: Exactly. Informal personalities- Mm-hmm ... care more about people than structure. They care more about relationships than, than structure. We tend to think that informal personalities are just more free and creative. [00:43:43] Yes, that's true. They're more flexible, and they're more creative. But the truth is that they're more flexible and creative because they care more about the experience that they're creating with people than rules and structure themselves. Informal personalities will always change the rules depending on the case that they have in front of them. [00:43:59] When I started studying sanguines, which I am, I, I am myself- Um, and you have a lot of that too. [00:44:06] Elena: Guilty. [00:44:07] Rodrigo: Yes, we are, both of us. But when I started studying that, I was like, "That's exactly me." And that's literally all the problems that I had in my life growing up. All the problems I have. I grew up... Yeah. Like, I grew up in Mexico City, being one of the few sanguine childrens. [00:44:22] My mom's from Spain, where I got a lot of my biology, and being in a c- in a city where most people are phlegmatic, I was too wide. I was too hairy. I had a full beard in middle school. My voice was too deep. When I was 11, I would pick up the phone, and they would think it was my dad, et cetera, et cetera. And- All the problems that I got myself into had to do with how dominating I, I was. [00:44:47] Like, I would ask questions and interrupt the class because I really wanted to figure something out or because I felt that someone in the class wasn't getting it. And my interruptions were constant, and I was getting on teachers' nerves. And then when a teacher started telling me off or trying to punish me in front of the class, I would defend myself. [00:45:04] And I was really good at defending myself. I, I would leave teachers crying and going like, "I don't think this is for me. You're talking to a, an 11-year-old. You, you probably need to talk to your wife about this or to your husband about this." And yeah, traditional Mexican schools were not having that. But imagine how mind-blowing it was when I realized that everything that seemed to be a problem with me growing up are just typical features of the sanguine biology and the promoting personality that the sanguine biology usually creates. [00:45:35] Elena: For what you just said, it's so relevant and so important, and especially now in schools. There are so many times that a kid is just not... doesn't fit into the regular rules that every other kid has. Or many times we are in a relationship, in a group, in a company where we feel different from the rules or the regulations that have been created for us, and everybody else seems to be okay with that, but we don't fit in- Yeah [00:46:04] sometimes. [00:46:05] Rodrigo: We have it completely mapped out. Uh, I've... I say this in my lives in Spanish all the time. If you have a choleric child in a country where there's no choleric men, they're gonna start telling you in school that your kid is extremely selfish and has narcissistic tendencies. [00:46:18] Elena: Oh. [00:46:19] Rodrigo: If you have a sanguine kid in a country where there's not a lot of sanguine human beings, they're gonna start telling you that your kid has ADD and ADHD, which is literally just the way the sanguine brain functions, which is the first thing I started realizing. [00:46:31] Everything that they told me was wrong about me in Mexico when my mom took me to Spain to meet my, my aunts and uncles and cousins, I would look at them and go like Whatever's wrong with me is wrong with all of them too. Like, they all act exactly like me. [00:46:47] Elena: Yeah. [00:46:49] Rodrigo: At the same time, if you have a phlegmatic kid in a country that doesn't have a lot of phlegmatic people, I ha- I've had this with a lot of patients that move from Latin America to Germany, who moved to La- from Latin America to Scandinavian countries. [00:47:02] They constantly start telling them that their children are hypersensitive and have a, a very low tolerance to emotions. [00:47:10] Elena: Mm-hmm. [00:47:10] Rodrigo: And no, they're just phlegmatic, and phlegmatic people are dramatic. Th- that, that's just how they function. Have you walked around Latin America? [00:47:18] Elena: So Rodrigo, many of those things that you're mentioning right now, instead of being perceived as a strength for the, for humans, people look at them as, as, uh- [00:47:27] Rodrigo: As weaknesses, as problems, yes [00:47:29] Elena: correct. Let's say there's somebody who's hypersensitive and is aware of that, and obviously doesn't wanna be like that. What can you tell to an individual like that who's saying, "You know what? I'm super sensitive, and this is, this is my biology. And what can I do? I'm just gonna hire- hide from the world and, and, and disappear because I, I suffer every time that somebody tells me, 'You're too sensitive.'" [00:47:54] What can you tell someone like that? [00:47:56] Rodrigo: You can tell them that this is the reason why in so many philosophies in history we keep listening to the exact same concept. It doesn't matter if it's a battle concept like it's easy to conquer a city, the hard thing is to conquer yourself. Or Confucius saying, "You are your own worst enemy." [00:48:15] The thing is, when you're confused and you're trying to please the world, you're not conquering you And in order to realize why you're so broken and why your relationships are not functioning and why you're the best person in the office but not the person that they wanna give the raise to, not the person that they want to give leadership to. [00:48:33] You can complain about the world and think that you need to change a million things about yourself for the rest of your life, and you'll just become one of the powerful people that I have in my practice that are all amazing entrepreneurs, extremely wealthy politicians, extremely powerful people all over the world who have completely transformed who they are, created amazing results. [00:48:54] Everybody thinks that they're happy. Everybody thinks that they have the life that everybody would dream of, and then they end up in therapy with me saying, "I have it all, and I hate my life. I have it all, and I've destroyed every important relationship. I have it all, and I have no clue who I am, and when people tell me that they love me or they acknowledge me, I feel uncomfortable. [00:49:14] I lose respect for them when they tell me that I'm amazing because I don't, I don't think I'm that great. I think something's wrong with me." And I constantly tell them, "Nothing's wrong with you. You just became who you thought you had to be in order to survive. You became the human being that your ego and your trauma told you that you should be, but that's not you, and that will never make you happy." [00:49:36] This is why I was so obsessed with having something fixed in psychology, something rigid that, that, that, that is no one's opinion. This is fixed. And when I can look at someone and say, "Yeah, I know. You're the CEO of this extremely powerful company. You can change the economical structure of countries with a couple of calls. [00:49:56] I know how powerful you are. You're phlegmatic You came to this world to create amazing, profound relationships. This doesn't mean that you need to ta-take all of your success and throw it away. It means that now it's time to keep that success going while actually trying to conquer yourself and understanding why you moved away from your heart and from relationships so long ago. [00:50:18] And it's usually something that happened between 5 and 11. [00:50:21] Elena: Isn't that scary? Uh, knowing that you have been wearing a mask and a suit your entire life that didn't belong to you, but it make you successful, and suddenly you have to go back and remove it, and feels like nothing is covering you from the world. [00:50:42] Rodrigo: It's only scary because you convinced yourself that if you remove those layers, they'll destroy you. That if you des- that if you remove those layers, they'll hurt you, and no one will love you. So that's why it becomes scary. Not because it's unknown, uh, but because you feel like it's known. You feel like you know that what's underneath that is just not good enough, for example. [00:51:04] Elena: What happens in our mind? Why- what makes us create this, this beautiful story that serve us but also give us disservice simultaneously? [00:51:15] Rodrigo: Our dramatic inability to process our own pain. [00:51:19] Elena: Pain. [00:51:19] Rodrigo: Our dramatic inability to actually be willing to face our own pain. Because we don't like pain. And the reason why the world seems to be upside down and people now have theories that want to justify absolutely everything without taking an ounce of personal responsibility is because in the past, and I've... [00:51:40] In educational psychology, we, we talk about this a lot in different structures of t- of, of thought, like how, how we used to teach things and how we teach them today, and the amount of things that were important in the transmission of information and that have completely been removed from ed- educational systems. [00:51:56] Like, for example It's way more important to teach children who are younger than 12 before they hit their teenage years. Everything they're learning in school should have to do with very basic skills and emotional intelligence, their ability to face the emotions that are happening. In all, in all the workshops that we do for parenting that we've been doing for a really long time, the first thing that we teach parents is stop trying to make them geniuses. [00:52:24] Stop thinking about what instrument is your five-year-old gonna play. Yes, you can have them start classes, but you're not really helping them in who they're going to become as adults. You need to become an expert in dealing with their emotions. And most, most parents cry when we start talking about this, but I tell them, "Have you ever had a panic attack? [00:52:47] Have you ever had an anxiety attack?" And a lot of people say yes, because a lot of people have experienced this. They shouldn't be this normal, but most people have at least experienced a little bit of this. And they say yes, and I tell them, "How did it feel?" And they tell me, "Like I was gonna die. Like it was over. [00:53:05] Like I was completely out of control. Like my body wasn't mine, and like the world was over. My life was over." And I tell them, "If you've had more than once, by the second or third time, if you have the right information, and you know what's really happening, and you know how to control it, and you know how to breathe, and you have a little bit of a technique of where to take your mind in order to, to shove yourself out of it, to pull yourself from your bootstraps out of it," which is literally what anyone needs to learn if they're dealing with that. [00:53:34] Well, when your child got scared for the first time, it felt like a panic attack. [00:53:40] Elena: Oh. [00:53:41] Rodrigo: They had never experienced this. They feel like they're dying. They have no clue what's happening. The first time my five-year-old got scared, my children almost, like, never watch TV. But we were at a friend's house, and they were watching Monsters, Inc., [00:53:56] and because everybody's kids watch TV and they all have iPads, my children don't. They were watching Monsters, Inc., and my, my kid just started moving over to be close to the TV, and the movie started, and the first scene is extremely scary in that movie. I didn't remember. I, I would have taken him away from the screen had I remembered. [00:54:15] And the way he jumped on top of me, the way his body was shivering, the, the way he was holding onto my shirt with every fiber of his being I know we're used to fear. Your children are not. And the first time they experience it, it feels like the world is gonna end, and you better know exactly how to deal with it. [00:54:40] Because if all you do is shut it down, then your child is gonna start creating meaning in his head to try and avoid this feeling for the rest of his life. If you don't tell them what's happening, they just learn that there's danger out there, and now they're gonna start getting ready to survive that danger. [00:54:57] You get to have the ability to look at your child, know what they're experie- know, know that what they're experiencing is massively important for them. It feels like life or death in that instant. And then you get to become a space. They don't need an explanation. They don't need a why. I know that your head is gonna start looking for a why, but your children do not need a why. [00:55:16] They need to understand what the hell is happening. So there's even this whole psychiatric technique, that's what we call it, and you go down at their eyesight at the same level, eye to eye. [00:55:27] Elena: Mm-hmm. [00:55:28] Rodrigo: You look at them. You open your a- arms, like you welcome them. As soon as they stand close to you, you take a deep breath. [00:55:36] Everything is fine over here. Come here. They come to you. Hold them, and the first thing that you become is a space. Now you get to understand this. Your children speak like they know what they're talking about. They don't. And let's be honest, most of us at age 20, at age 30- 40 ... have had breakthroughs... [00:56:00] sometimes at 50. We've- we have these breakthroughs of understanding that we've been using a term wrong for our whole lives. Mm-hmm. I always use this stupid example, like that moment where you realize that both in English and Spanish, when you say, "I'm gonna have breakfast," and then one day you stop and you say, "Breakfast. [00:56:18] Break fast" I'm breaking the fast. I didn't eat anything last night, so I was fasting all night, and this is where I break the fast. Break fast, breakfast, which is the exact same thing in Spanish. Fasting in Spanish is ayuno, and how do we say breakfast? Desayuno. It's un-fasting. Oh my God. And suddenly at age 40, you realize a lot of people listening are gonna figure this out for the first time right now. [00:56:45] Elena: Yeah. [00:56:47] Rodrigo: But in that instant you go like, "I've been using this term, and I had no clue what it meant." Well, your children have been repeating terms without really knowing what the hell they're talking about. So explaining things with terms, with, with proper language at the beginning of their lives will give them nothing but a- Mm [00:57:05] a sound to repeat because it seems to create something. The language that children have are their emotions, and you need to understand something about the human experience for this to make sense. There's nothing more contagious in the human experience than human emotions. This is why sometimes we end up saying, "I don't feel like hanging out with this person w- because when I hang out with them, I end up feeling kind of depressed." [00:57:32] D- yeah. [00:57:33] So, some, some colleagues of mine keep saying, "The emotion jumped on top of me." Mm-hmm. Like, I allowed this emotion that was coming from this person to jump on top of me. We've all experienced this. If, if you've been in a relationship- Yeah ... with someone, you had an amazing day, and you're walking into your apartment, and as soon as you walk in, your partner, your spouse, whoever the person inside the, the apartment is, is having a really bad day. [00:57:59] If you're not careful, their emotion is gonna jump on top of you because there's one thing that's more contagious than COVID, and it's human emotion. It's the language that we talk to each other through, and it's way more important than language. This is why so many people in, in human communication say, "It's the tone. [00:58:17] It's, it's the body language." No, it's the emotion. It's the emotion that you said this with. It's who you were being emotionally when you said it. That's why people can get away with murder and say whatever they want, and they never get in trouble, and there's people that just say one swear word, and they get fired. [00:58:35] It's, it's not what you did. It's not the action. It's the emotion that you're transmitting. It's who you're being. Yeah. Now, having said that, your children don't need a profound philosophical talk when they felt fear for the first time. They need to understand what they're experiencing. So hold the kid. [00:58:54] Mm-hmm. Breathe. Say, "You're okay. You're okay. You're here with me. You're okay "What are you experiencing?" And they go, "Uh, I saw something on the screen and..." And then you hold them again, and you say, "Baby, what you're experiencing is called fear, and it's absolutely natural. You'll experience it many times. You saw something that looked scary. [00:59:20] Your body thought that you were in danger, so your body reacts like you need to protect yourself." I told my kid, "This is the reason we don't watch screens so much, baby, because they want to introduce you to realities that maybe you're not used to or maybe you don't want." My... When they ask my five-year-old, "Why don't you watch TV?" [00:59:41] He's just repeating the phrase that I told him, but he says, "Because I d- I like thinking what I wanna think, not thinking what the screen wants me to think." [00:59:50] Elena: Wow. Five-year-old, huh? [00:59:52] Rodrigo: Well, he's just repeating Daddy, but, but that's the concept that I'm, I'm trying to sell to him. Now, he won't get it for another 10, 15 years. [00:59:59] What I do is I explain to my kid that this is fear. I explain what this response is, and then I, I immediately explain what I usually do when I'm in fear. When I'm in fear- Mm ... I like going to Mom and, and hugging her. I like going out and watching the sunset. I, I love spending time- Mm ... with my siblings, and that usually removes the fear from me. [01:00:22] Do you want us to find how you think this is handled the best way, what works for you? Now I'm giving my children tools. I'm not giving them an explanation. This is not theory. I'm teaching them how to use their biology. I'm saying, "Your body reacts like this. This is normal. When you experience it, it's called like this, and this is how we handle it." [01:00:41] Elena: I love that you said, "What you experienced is this, and this is something that you will be experienced," because most of us, "Okay, I don't like this. I don't wanna experie- which I don't like pain. This is painful. I don't wanna- Yes ... experience it again. I will try to avoid it." [01:00:58] Rodrigo: Yes, because the truth is that if I don't have the tools to understand the emotion that I'm going through, then I'm gonna do the other human thing that we do. [01:01:05] We either process and experience things, or we explain it, or we explain them in our heads. Mm-hmm. We justify them intellectually in order to understand what's happening because I feel that if I understand what the hell just happened, then I can control it. Mm-hmm. And if I can control it, then this will never happen to me again. [01:01:25] Guess what? To everyone listening, you just understood where your trauma comes from. [01:01:29] Elena: Oh. Fabulous. If you're listening right now, the moment that you had an experience that you had to explain yourself because you didn't understand as a child, perhaps that's where your trauma started. Whatever experience was, right? [01:01:48] We have different things. [01:01:49] Rodrigo: Like, one of the most typical ones is if I have siblings, and in Christmas they don't give me the toy that I've been asking for, and I was a really good kid all year. But my sister, who's a brat and never pays attention to anyone- ... and who's always complaining and being a victim about everything, gets exactly what she wanted. [01:02:08] For a lot of people, that's a neutral event that means nothing But for some people, that could be one of the most painful moments in their lives, and they've never experienced pain like this. Yeah. This feels like rejection. This feels like, uh, being unseen. This feels like I don't matter. If I have the ability to say, "Oh, this is pain, and I know how pain works, and I know what's happening to me, and I know how to process this," then my kid will create no meaning about it. [01:02:34] He'll cry- Mm ... he'll know what's happening, and, and he'll know how to walk through it. But if he grew up in a house where no one taught him how to have emotional intelligence, how to process their emotions, what's the name of it, how you release it, it, it's, that it's not wrong to cry or yell in your pillow if you're too s- if you're too angry. [01:02:52] That's fine, just don't bother anyone, don't hurt anyone, and know that this doesn't mean anything. It's just an emotion. That's it. It's like a cloud. You allow it and it goes away. It doesn't change anything in where you are, in who you are. But if I don't have those tools, then I'm gonna go to my bedroom and try and understand why. [01:03:11] Because I don't like this feeling. I don't like this emotion. So how do I avoid this? Why the hell is this happening? And then my head comes up with an answer like, "Maybe I'm not that important. Maybe I'm not the person they care about in my house. M- I mean, the rules are very clear. They care about my sister, they don't care about me. [01:03:31] Uh, like life is not about me. This makes sense. Okay." From that point on, from that specific point on, I am going to adapt who I am to a world in which I already decided that no one cares about me, no one sees my worth, no one will ever value me. So I will have to become someone that makes themselves be seen somehow, because who I am is just not good enough, and I realize this at age eight. [01:03:59] Then this, this person is gonna be in therapy with me at 78 years old saying, "I have no clue what I did with my life." Oh, you created the life of that eight-year-old who never received a gift and ha- thought he had to become someone in order to be loved. Now you are that someone, and you still cannot feel the love. [01:04:16] Elena: Wow. [01:04:16] Rodrigo: That's what happens to people. [01:04:18] Elena: As simple as that. [01:04:20] Voiceover: And that's a wrap on today's conversation. These are the kinds of exchanges that don't happen by accident. They happen because Elena Sofia Ruiz creates the space for them. If something landed for you today, don't keep it to yourself. Share this episode with someone who's ready for a real conversation. [01:04:38] You'll find everything you need in the show notes. We'll see you next time on Intimate Conversations With Men.