WEBVTT
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This program is designed to provide general information with regards
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to the subject matters covered. This information is given with
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the understanding that neither the hosts, guests, sponsors, or station
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are engaged in rendering any specific and personal medical, financial,
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legal counseling, professional service, or any advice. You should seek
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the services of competent professionals before applying or trying any
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suggested ideas.
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At the end of the day, it's not about what
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you have or even what you've accomplished. It's about what
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you've done with those accomplishments. It's about who you've lifted up,
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who you've made better. It's about what you've given back.
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Denzel Washington, Welcome to Inspire Vision. Our sole purpose is
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to elevate the lives of others and to inspire you
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to do the same.
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Ery, Welcome to the show.
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Hello, doctor Doug. Such a pleasure to be here with you.
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Oh, it's great to have you here. Just share with
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the audience. I know it. But where are you living?
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You can't tell of my background, but I'm actually based
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in Bali, Indonesia. And it is a beautiful sunny day here.
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Oh that's wonderful, and it's a beautiful hot sunny day here.
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We're so close Thailand and Bali, so close.
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I know, it's amazing. So anyway, I'm really looking forward
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to this. I think it's going to be a fun
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conversation for the folks. I'd love for you to kind
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of share your journey because you've written a book, You've
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obviously done a lot of things, but I always find
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it interesting to find out what brought you to this
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point in doing what you're doing.
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Yeah, I mean, we could spend all day telling that story,
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but I'll give the summary memories. I'm actually from the US,
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originally from Michigan and was raised there, lived all over
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the world, all of the United States. I would say,
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just in generally been really fascinated by personal development my
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whole life. I got my first COATR mental or when
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I was sixteen years old and just have continued on
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that path for a long time. I had a lot
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of interesting life experiences that took me all over, including
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joining the Air Force ROTC on a dare and then
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deciding to run a youth hostel in Boston and ended
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up getting my MBA from the world's number one international
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business school, and then being hired by Amazon dot Com
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to do leadership development, and so it was my path
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was kind of all over the place, and at the
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same time it made sense to me at the time.
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And throughout this whole process, I've just continued to really
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peek out on love and relationships and how do these
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things work and why are they so hard? And I've
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worked with therapists and coaches all the world just trying
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to figure out my own like what is this thing?
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And my parents taught marriage classes in their church they
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still do to this day. Yeah, so it's been a
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big part, a big theme of my life. And when
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I was at Amazon, I just, you know, it's like
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I just started noticing that as time and trust was
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established with my executives, that they would start opening up
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to me about more things going on in their personal lives.
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And my undergraduate degrees in sexual psychology. They started asking consent, hey,
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would you be okay with me talking to you about
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what's happening at home too, because I think they're connected,
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and many said yes. What I noticed was that when
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we put more attention on what's happening at home and
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matters of the heart, there's a really big shift. It
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was like these really successful people who would climb the
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corporate ladder and done amazing things academically, they didn't learn
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I would say, we didn't learn. We most humans didn't
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learn how to really love in a way that's that's
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going to get us the love that we desire. We
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didn't learn great communication skills. We didn't learn great active
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listening skills. They didn't learn how to be with our
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emotions or how to handle conflict. And these are what
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it takes to really have amazing, juicy, peaceful, enlivening relationships.
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So when I started focusing on these matters of the heart,
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whether they were single or in partnership, I'd watched these
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leaders come back to work with more drive and focus
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and inspiration and happiness. It would just ripple out into
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their teams, and I watched entire organizations change. You're focusing
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more on the bedroom than the boardroom. A lot an
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impact in the boardroom. And I was like, this is amazing,
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this is so fun, and it is so interesting.
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I know that when I was working with some small businesses,
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it was fascinating to see how and as you say,
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you know, I would say, look the principles we're going
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to talk about here, Because I got a lot into
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the human behavior part of it. You know, whatever it
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is here, it's going to be at home, or whatever
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it's at home, it's going to be here. And as
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you start to change it, it's amazing to see the results.
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So I love that. What brought you to writing your book? Yeah?
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So, so here I am at Amazon doing this thing.
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Find it way more rewarding to talk about the whole
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person instead of just the org. And what I discovered
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was that soon I started getting referred. So next thing
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I know, I'm working at Amazon doing leadership development by day,
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and by nights and weekends, I'm coaching executives that Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Relativity, SpaceX, Boeing,
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doing Hollywood actors. I'm like, Wow, what is going on?
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This is a real area of need, Like people's hearts
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really want to learn these things, and they want to
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feel supported and feel safe in the vulnerability and keeping
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the professionalism. So like, this is awesome. How can I
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keep doing this? I decided to quit my job at
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Amazon and start touring the world speaking and in one
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year I've spoken six different continents. And what I found
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was that there's just such a hunger for this globally.
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So I decided to continue to stay out of Amazon
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and start my own company, which is called Reader and Love.
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And I wrote my best selling book called Relationship Agreements.
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And then from there, I'm like you, I have a
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copy right here. So this is my book, Relationship Agreements,
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and now it's on audible. My husband and I recorded
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it about a year and a half ago together, and
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then from there just things kept on blossoming, and I
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just thought, this is my this is my purpose, this
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is my path, like running really in love and helping
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people learn how to love differently and being a mom.
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And so those are the two big things I focus
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my life on. And then this passed but a month ago,
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now almost a month ago. When this comes out, I'll
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be many many months old. But when about a month
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ago I got a chance to walk onto the ted
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X stage and it was such an amazing experience and
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to share my heart and some tools that I really
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believe in for changing the world and how we turn
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conflict into connection. So it's been a ride and I
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love it. I'm so blessed. And here we are not
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going to talk great.
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Here we are well, and you know what's interesting, and
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it sounds like you are extremely fortunate because of your parents.
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You know, when I look at and you know, we
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talk about divorce rates all over and I'm not sure
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how it is worldwide, but I think it's at least equal,
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if not worse, if not worse, at least what I
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see here in Thailand. But the thing that's interesting is
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that there's children, and as we grow up into teenagers
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and so forth, we're never taught really how to develop
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that relationship, even how to choose the right person that's
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going to be in a relationship with us and with
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us with them, and so often we see all of
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these choices being made that ultimately don't last for more
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than a year to five years or whatever that happens
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to be. What's your thoughts on how can we as
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parents help our children to start to learn more effectively
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number one, how to choose a partner, and number two,
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how to be able to maintain that relationship in a
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healthy way.
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I love these questions. I love that we're looking at
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intergenerational and not just right now, and it's all connected. Right,
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So first of all, let me let me back up
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to the moment and just say this question that I
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asked almost every class I teach which is I asked,
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We'll just pause, and I want you to count how
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many happy, healthy, long term cups you actually know, and
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you can define that however you want. What is happy
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to you, it is healthy to you, is long term
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to you. And what I find is that in over
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ninety percent of all my classes I've taught everywhere in
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the world, ninety percent of people are somewhere between zero
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and three couples total. Right, we just don't have the models.
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We don't know people who are actually doing this Disney thing, right,
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and yet we're supposed to be good at it, and
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we didn't learn how These are skills that we really
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they were being developed at an early age, but we
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didn't learn the skills. We learned these things that don't work,
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and then we believe that we know them, and then
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we're socially shamed if we try to get support, Like
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if you go see a therapist or a coach, people
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think there's something wrong with you. It's not like being
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proactive learning how to play tennis or learn how to
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start a business a business coach. It's like if you
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go to a coach or a therapist, you're broken in somehow.
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So we have to start shifting our mindset of we
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didn't learn this, it's time to learn it. And then
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there's this amazing, amazing organization that I love and I've
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done with a little bit of work with called the
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Gotman Institute. And the Gotman Institute are the world's leading
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researchers on couples. And they've taken all this research now
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and said, what do we do to influence the next
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generation so they can have healthy, happy, long term relationships.
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And the number one factor is teaching children how to
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be with their emotions, like really how to be with
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their emotions. And I say that as somebody who you know.
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I even when I was going through my coaching certification.
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I don't think I've admitted this too many times. But
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when I was going through my coaching certification, I got
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to the final exam, I took it, all of my
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class passed, and I was put on probation for six
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months because I was told that I'm trying to get
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people to be happy too quickly. I'm not allowing people
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to be seen in their pain and I and their
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vulnerability and really go into it. And I was like, oh,
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And I spent six months working on this and going
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really deep in my own journey and noticing, wow, my
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feelings as a child. My parents are amazing. I love
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them so much. I'm so grateful to them. They didn't
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have the tools that we now have access to around
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like just validating experiences as a child and validing our
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experience is now so much the time we're distracted or
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we're shamed, or we're told it's okay, and it's not okay.
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It's or to shut up, right, And so for me,
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I just learned the strategy of if there's big pain,
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if there's loneliness or sadness, all I gotta do is
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jump over it, get to the happiness, just find it,
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like you can just ignore it, right, And that invalidation
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carries out in life. And if the how do we
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show up and really allow ourselves to be with the
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pain and the sadness and the joy and the ecstasy
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and the anger whatever's there, not being afraid of the emotions,
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but learning how to be with them and then get
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the messages out of them, because I really believe emotions
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are just messengers trying to tell us something really cool.
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Well, and you know that that is so fascinating and
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it's so true that you know, don't cry. Quit crying.
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You know, as a child, you're really not allowed, for
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the most part, to show your emotions, and to a
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large degree is because as parents we were never taught
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our emotions right. And so you know, if we could
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help the adults to understand that, you know, what is
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time to go through that transformative program whatever it is,
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and learn to show your emotions and then from there
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be able to allow your children to have their emotions
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and to be able to discuss that. As I was
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going through one of my certifications on coaching and talking
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about relationships, one of the funny things that I always
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remember about emotions was, you know, the fellow said, hey,
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so here's something I never want you to do because
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you may get a divorce, but it's something that you
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really need to do. He says, when you get into
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a situation where an event happens and all of a sudden,
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your partner or your spouse is just for you asked
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the question, all right, my dear, what emotion came up
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to cause you to react this way? And you know,
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it's like, okay, you're in trouble. But the reality is
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and I have actually done that now, you know, but
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first started Okay, here's the emotion that came up for me,
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because I reacted too. But the reality is is to
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be able to identify the emotion suddenly. Number one puts
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the personal responsibility on the individual that's experiencing the emotion,
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because for the most part, events do not have emotion,
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they're non emotional. But then we apply based on our