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Dec. 29, 2010 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
01:10:39
1815 Flourishing Through Self Attack - A Mecosystem Listener Conversation

My Bad Dad is Sad.

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Good evening. Oh, hey, it's Steph.
Sorry about that. So, I'm all ears.
Let's get to work. What can I do for you?
Wonderful. Well, I've never heard a listener try and force small talk with you for a really long time, so I thought I'd try that tonight.
No. I mean, basically, I defood, and I'm not in counseling.
Naughty boy. But I know that I will be.
And I know that my mother will help pay for counseling.
It's just been a matter of...
Sorry, you've separated. Let me just make sure I understand that.
So you've separated from your family, but your mom is helping you with the cost of counseling?
Yes. Yeah.
We had a big, long talk over the summer.
And basically...
My mother apologized for, it's funny this is the first place I go, but I figured it would be easier to just go straight for the parent portion of this.
My mother apologized.
She said that she knew better than to be abusive when I was a child.
She was very physical until I outgrew her physically and then she stopped being physically abusive.
She at first said that she was ignorant and she didn't know better, but she capitulated and said that, you know, a parent knows that when they're hitting their child, regardless of what they've been told, they know that they're doing that wrong, that what they're doing is wrong.
She said she would do anything to help me, even if that meant not talking to me.
And That I had her full support with what I'm undertaking.
And my father apologized for hurting my feelings.
So, I'm kind of done with my father.
Oh yes, sorry.
He apologized for hurting my feelings, but he was physically and verbally abusive.
Even physically abusive until I was 20.
I'm almost 25 now.
I'm so sorry. Yeah, yeah.
Thank you. And he apologized for hurting my feelings.
So I'd say I'm done wanting a relationship with him.
And sorry, are your parents still together?
My parents are still together.
Yeah. So that's...
That's where I'm at with the DFU. I have a sister, I have a kid sister, and that's it.
Well, I mean, just to give credit where credit is due, I mean, that's about the best mom story I've ever heard.
Yeah, it was pretty incredible.
I mean, I hesitate to say that's fantastic, because it's not like you want to be in that situation.
But given that you are in that situation, That's about as good a response as I can.
Sure. And I just wanted to sort of pause to, I guess, acknowledge that.
But anyway, go on. Thank you.
Yeah, I have lingering parts, alter egos, whatever you want to call them.
I consider them guests from my father, especially from my father.
I endured the most abuse from him, physical beatings, fights.
It's culminating in a fight where I made sure I was never touched again, and it was pretty ugly.
How do you make sure of that?
How do I make sure?
Oh, I'm sorry.
I just hurt him as hard as I could, I guess, and he never touched me again.
And that caused a lot of ugliness in my psyche for a while.
I think that was when I was 18, 19.
Sorry, you said that caused a lot of what?
A lot of self-doubt, a lot of wondering if I was the abuser that my father was.
Right, so that self-defense thing was tough, right?
It was tough. I had counseling for a time when I was 21.
I had six months of counseling where I feel like I worked out the physical abuse, worked out as in came to terms with it, understood it, and understood how that could affect me in the future and what I would need to be aware of within myself.
To ensure that I didn't go down the same path.
No, I appreciate you, man.
Thank you. And I feel like I haven't gone down the same path.
However, the verbal abuse, I didn't totally parse.
So that's what I've been doing.
I got into IFS this summer, psychotherapy, and then I bought a book and I've been working through that.
And unfortunately, there's not an IFS therapist within three hours of me.
I live next to a mountain in Oregon, and I live in a city of 190,000, so I'm sure there are tons of therapists, and I'm definitely going to go into that, but there's no IFS therapist within three hours, and that was what I was really hoping to find with an IFS therapist.
So I guess that that won't happen, but now I'm on a tangent.
So what I was saying was that I feel like these parts that my parents put in me are still lingering and I've identified them and I learned a lot from your Playing Cards with the Dead podcast because it really rang true to me and you were describing this is what I got from it.
You said that you have these periods of happiness and then you feel You feel pulled into something.
You feel kind of a tug in your mind toward, I would say, maybe more upset parts within yourself.
And you say those are the voices of your past.
Yeah, I mean, I think that's not a bad way of putting it for sure.
I think that, for me, happiness can be a little bit like an elastic band.
Like I'm straying too far from my original destination if I'm too happy and it causes some tension.
So yeah, I think that's a good way of putting it.
Yes, yes. And I would say that that is true in myself.
I mean, it really struck a chord in me.
You were crying at one point and I was crying and I just felt like this experience was so close to mind that I put a lot of thought into it.
And I have a cycle where I have a huge triumph.
I'm really capable, I'm really intelligent, I'm creative, and I'm well-spoken, and I'm confident, just confident to the core, and I just have this great wave that I ride out.
And in the past, it's been a longer wave.
More recently, it's been shorter.
And so I called you.
But I'll have this wave of happiness and success and so on and so forth.
Then I'll start to backslide a little and then I'll bottom out.
It doesn't necessarily mean that this is the lowest I've ever gone, but I reach a point where I say, ah, enough backsliding.
And then I rewrite the ship, is what I wrote.
I kind of rework things and I I look at what I'm doing wrong, and I take my goals back into account, and I take my principles back into account, and then I go on another wave.
I'm tired of living in this cycle.
I'm tired of living this way, and I feel like I've made incredible gains in the past It's been three years since I turned myself on to philosophy, and I'm ready to move past this.
I feel like I've plateaued at this, and I'm ready to move past this.
The reason I say this is because I feel as though perhaps the part that my parents put in me are preventing me from this because I have withdrawn myself from the relationship with them and so these parts are no longer showing the positive aspects.
They're not getting refueled, so to speak, right?
Yeah, so they show their negative intentions and I'm to the point where I can talk to them and I can negotiate and I can say, okay, well, we have these short-term goals.
Let's go for them. And I get their support.
But then the self-attack and the self-sabotage happens later on and so I have to do this again.
Alright, so I want to make sure that I get sort of specifics because the language is very descriptive but I'm not sure what it is.
So can you give me an example of a self-sabotage that's like empirical?
I know it's tough on the spot, but if you could, that'd be great.
Oh, yeah. I have some examples.
Self-censure in social situations.
Okay. Can you give me an example of that?
Yeah. It's been a long time since I've done that.
Okay. We'll go with a more recent example.
When I was a teenager, I discovered pornography.
This has been something that's still in my life, though greatly reduced from its high point when I was 20, 21.
This is like a vice that will come in.
Sorry, you mean you masturbate to pornography?
No, I don't actually.
I watch it, but I don't masturbate to it.
I have masturbated to it.
You consider it advice to look at pornography?
In a UPB sense, but for me, knowing who I am and knowing my goals for myself and knowing the attention, the kind of attention that I want to give to women, I don't think that it's the most productive thing for me to do.
Alright, this doesn't strike me as self-sabotage.
I guess Catholics would call it self-abuse, though I certainly wouldn't.
Can you give me an example of...
Well, I was raised Catholic. Oh, right, right.
Okay. Yeah, I mean, look, I wouldn't put pornography on your list of self-sabotaging behaviors, in my opinion, but let's see if we can come up with another one.
Okay. Well, I guess it's part of...
Pornography is part of It could be flash games.
It could be flash games on the computer.
I guess the underlying thing there is not so much pornography.
It's wasting time on the computer.
Just doing mindless things and, you know, I would rather play guitar.
I'd rather go exercise.
I'd rather journal. Well, empirically, sorry, empirically that's not true, because if you'd rather do those things, then that's what you'd be doing.
But you feel like you're...
So I'm still trying to figure out self-sabotage.
I'm still waiting for some big thing, you know, like I did coke off my boss's wife's boobs or something, you know, that to me would be self-sabotage, like I'm trying to figure out what we're talking about here.
Like I just want to make, when you talk about self-sabotage, I want to make sure that I understand what it is you're saying, and the word probably means two different things.
I'm sure it does for both of us, so I just want to make sure that I know what it is you're talking about.
Okay, okay. Well, I guess I don't Self-sabotage, then?
I don't want to just leave that, but what happens is that I lose confidence.
You lose confidence.
Okay. For example, I play basketball a lot.
Normally, I'm a great jump shooter.
I'm a knockdown jump shooter.
I have a lot of confidence. When I go through this kind of backsliding time, my jumper is totally off.
My confidence is not there.
I stew about it after basketball rather than enjoying the two hours that I had running up and down the court.
And... Okay, look, I mean, as far as life's problems go, not making the jump shot, I gotta tell you, I think that your self-sabotage is using the word self-sabotage, but I could be wrong.
Yeah. No, you could very well be right.
You know, like I waste time on the computer.
Well, that's called having a computer.
I mean, having a computer is wasting time on the computer.
You can't have a computer without that, unless you have a TRS-80, I guess.
I don't know, right? And yes, it is certainly true that when we're down and distracted, we're not quite as good at sports, but I'm still looking for the big volcano of self-sabotage here.
We're not getting much, right?
Yeah, I can't say that there's...
And this is good, right? So we're already doing some work because, you know, you've got this thing called I self-sabotage.
And what I always ask myself, if I have an adjective or a descriptor towards myself, I say, okay, well, what's the evidence, right?
Yeah. So if somebody says to me, I believe in God, it's like, okay, well, what's the evidence?
And if I say to myself, I self-sabotage, I say, okay, well, what's the evidence?
Is this just a description or is this actually a thing that I'm describing?
And so this is why I sort of asked, what does that mean?
You've got to be as skeptical of your own stories as you are of other people's superstitions.
Always look for the evidence, not the language, not the language, and that's what we're doing here.
So I'm happy to hear more of these tragic self-sacrifices because I feel we're already halfway through a rewriting of Hamlet in the modern world.
Oh man, I didn't think that I would be complaining to you about my jump shot.
No, no, listen, this is very important.
I mean, don't underestimate what it is you're communicating to me and to you.
I think, you know, keep going with what you're doing.
I mean, so far it's been, I think, quite helpful.
Okay. Let's see here.
If you want to take a break from the self-sabotage, I would like to know what you experience in the low times, the down times.
Yes, okay. I see things that would serve my parents.
I say that I don't know.
It's obviously not the self.
But there's a voice in me that says, I'm not good.
I'm just not a good guy.
I'm not going to be able to sustain virtue.
I'm not going to be able to sustain this confidence.
I'm not going to be able to sustain my creativity.
And I've become lethargic.
And And I just don't feel like talking to anyone.
I become moody. I become unapproachable.
Do you suffer from irritability in that stage?
Yes, absolutely.
What else did I write?
I have it written here.
I journaled for like six pages.
I'm quick to blame.
I'm quick to blame if I'm driving fast and I'm doing something that I shouldn't be doing as per the traffic laws.
I'm quick to blame someone else if they get in my way or if I hate some rage.
How's your sleep in that state of mind?
It's okay. It's definitely not sound sleep.
But you're not tossing and turning?
I'm not tossing an intern anymore.
I've come a long way in a lot of things.
Do your eating habits change when you're in that state of mind?
Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.
How do they change? My meals become more sparse and I scrounge rather than cook.
Right, right. So it's like what's in a bag rather than what's in the freezer, right?
Yes. And I know that a lot of this serves my parents because these were the behaviors that I exited when I lived with them and when I was a teenager and when I was enjoying their cruelest abuses.
So in this sense, This is what happens when I feel that I'm backsliding or I'm going into a dark place.
Right, right. And the songs I write are dark.
They're all in minor keys and they're all decrying one thing or another rather than kind of having a rush closer to the heart kind of, let's go get them kind of feeling.
Everything's more fractured and nonsensical.
Right, right, right.
Okay. And so your question, if I understand it rightly, is, well, are there any particular tips to avoid that kind of slide?
Yeah, any tips?
You know, how I can work with the voices that are there, telling me that I'm not good, telling me that I'm ugly, you're telling me that, and I mean, I know this is just, you know, this is residue from being in the public schooling system and everything there.
And the church, right?
And the church, yeah.
I got out of the church when I was 11 or 12.
Right. You know, I knew it was a lie, but But yeah, there's some residue, and I want to maintain my happiness.
I'm tired of feeling this way.
And I will say that I identified that when I'm feeding these voices by interacting with my parents, some of the voices of my father say,
Say these things that I've been telling you, but when I am giving myself to my father, I'm giving him my attention, my affection, and when I have in the past, I've gotten some really positive benefits from these voices.
They'll tell me, you're strong as a rock, you have the mental fortitude of a gorilla, you're strong, you're a good-looking man, and And the same thing with the voices of my mother.
They tell me, you know, you are compassionate toward women, you're very understanding, you're sweet, and you're a gentle man.
And those voices are kind of gone now because I'm completely away from my parents and separated from them.
I'm sorry, so was it these things that your actual parents were saying or your inner parents were saying?
My inner parents were saying when I was interacting with my actual parents.
And is that something that your actual parents would say?
The things that my inner parent, as far as my mother, yes, she would tell me these things.
And as far as my father, I don't know that he's expressed a positive opinion about anything in his life.
I mean, not since I was a little boy.
I can't remember him holding a positive opinion, saying something positive about something.
Right. I guess it's self-attack.
It's not self-sabotage.
Right, yeah. Self-sabotage is usually when you look up from the smoking crater of something important and you don't know what the hell happened, right?
Yeah. So self-attack is when you're aware of it and conscious of it.
Okay. Yeah.
Alright, so I have a few things to say, if you don't mind.
Yeah, I'm all ears. Okay, the first thing is, you have to be as careful of the praising voices as you are of the damning voices.
Okay. Because they're two sides of the same coin.
Yeah. Yeah.
An abuser will, very often, after the attack, will bring flowers and praise and beg and plead and, you know, this kind of thing, right?
So you have to be careful of the praising voices.
So when I was doing this debate on agnosticism at the Porcupine Freedom Festival on the radio, this woman came up and said, you know, well, you know, I know you're an atheist, but my God loves you and thinks that you're great, right?
Oh boy. And it's like, well, I can't accept that as praise.
Yeah. I mean, because, I mean, if I did, then the next guy who comes up and says, well, my God says that you're an evil sinner who's going to burn in hell.
If I feel good because someone's God praises me, then I'm automatically accepting that I'm going to feel bad if someone's God attacks me.
Okay. So if a voice tells you, You're strong and smart and sexy and good-looking, and you're like, hey, that makes me feel good.
Well, that's kind of like the heroin followed by the withdrawal, right?
Yeah. Okay.
So you have to watch out for the voices of praise.
Look, I mean, my inbox is filled with praise.
You know, people think that I'm the greatest thing since sliced bread, which I think is nice.
I like the sentiment, but I can't be dependent upon that good opinion.
No, no, that makes total sense.
Right, because then if, you know, if I do something that people don't like, then I'm going to crash, right?
So I can't hang my, I can't sort of set my sail according to the prevailing winds of opinion.
I have to set it according to principles.
So that's the one thing that I would say that, it doesn't sound to me like it's exactly like a roller coaster, but it sounds more like a pendulum, like it's a bit more gentle.
It's not, you know, you're not screaming going into a tunnel, but I think that it's important not to hang your self-esteem On the positive praise of inner voices?
Yeah. If that makes sense.
Now, I mean, this is not to say don't accept praise.
I mean, there's nothing, I don't mean anything like that.
But the way that I try to approach it, the way that I try to approach it is that if I get negative self-talk, and you can't be alive and not get negative self-talk, so it's just something every human being has to deal with.
Okay, I can accept that.
What I really try to focus on is one word.
One word.
So let's just say, I don't know, I'm trying to think what negative self-talk.
I'm trying to remember the last one.
Let me think of one, just so I'll talk about myself, and it might be then more clear to you.
So something like You need to do more work on Freedom Aid Radio.
You need to be more assertive.
You need to make people do things.
You need to get people to vote for the podcast.
You need to get people to donate.
Because I know that I have the emotional intelligence and will to make that stuff happen, but it's kind of counter to what it is.
But I get these urges to do something.
Stop pushing string and go and make something happen.
Totally what I experienced.
Right, right. Yeah, I experienced that, yeah.
And the one word that I use is, I put it at the end of this, right?
Which is because, that's the word, because.
Right, so somebody sends me an email and says, you're an asshole, right?
I mean, I don't get a lot of those anymore, but you know, so somebody sends me an email like that, and I don't reply to it, but in my mind, I say, well, Because...
I'm an asshole because...
Right? And then they have to actually come up with a reason.
Yeah. Right?
And it's the same thing that's...
With everything that occurs.
Right? So if...
Somebody writes me an email and says...
Well, you just don't understand philosophy at all.
Yeah. Right?
And I mean, I get this, right?
Wow. And... My question then is always, because why?
Why don't I understand philosophy?
And this is how you can tell somebody who's being a tool, frankly, whether it's an inner voice or an outer voice.
I got one today, so let's deal with a specific example.
I think that would make some sense.
Oh yeah, here we go.
This guy wrote on proofs for God destroyed by a philosophical atheist, which is one of my videos.
He says, I was enjoying it up until about 1 minute 30 when he, I guess that's me, said that a proof requires empirical evidence.
Steph should try studying philosophy.
I find it slightly worrying that the apparently most popular philosophy podcast on the web is run by someone who, at least according to what I've Heard from Steph, after listening to Everyday Anarchy and Practical Anarchy, plus some podcasts and this video, knows nothing about philosophy.
That's a really empty statement.
Yeah, because there's no argument there, right?
Yeah, there's no argument there.
And of course Everyday Anarchy and Practical Anarchy aren't even philosophy books, so I don't know what he's talking about.
If he'd gone through UPB, which is a philosophy book, or even On Truth, which is a philosophy book, But those are not books on philosophy.
Anyway, it's not particularly interesting, this random post, except that what I always ask myself, and I used to engage in this with people directly, and I sometimes still do on the board, is I say, okay, because, I don't understand philosophy, because what?
Like a guy just posted on the board, and he said, I thought, Steph made tons of logical errors in his review of Zeitgeist Addendum, right?
And so I said, well, because I did what?
Like, because I did...
What errors did I make?
Tell me what errors I made.
Because it's real easy to say, yeah, he made lots of errors.
He doesn't understand philosophy, right?
Yeah. But this is the kind of self-talk...
That you experience when you're going down.
I mean, it's probably harsher than that, but that's the kind of thing, right?
Yeah, I experience it.
I don't take that.
I don't ask because.
Yeah, because. Because why?
Give me the evidence. Show me the money.
Give me the evidence, right?
I mean, the number of times, I mean, it's completely ridiculous, but absolutely inevitable, right?
The number of times people say, well, Steph's just wrong.
Because I'm wrong because why?
And it's tragic because it simply shows that they live in a fog of language.
They have no connection to reality.
And all they're doing is moving words around because they can't touch things in the real world.
It's a terrifying state of mind to be in.
It's essentially manipulative, second-hander in the Randian sense.
I mean, it is just a chilling, empty, horrifying existence.
It's like people say, God exists.
Why? Because I believe that God exists, right?
And people say, well, Steph's wrong.
Why? Because I just believe that Steph is wrong.
And what they're doing is they're sending out radar to other people who live in this lost limbo world of empty fog, saying, well, do you accept that Steph is wrong because I say it?
Now, again, you don't care about these emails for me, but what I'm sort of trying to get at, I guess, through the side door, is these voices are going to come at you, and they're going to say, you're X, right?
You're stupid, you're lazy, you're wasting time, right?
You're wasting your potential.
And you get that criticism, all of that sort of stuff, right?
And so you can either accept that, Or you can say, because, or prove to me, or give me some evidence, which is exactly what I did to you when you started talking about I self-sabotage.
It's like, well, what does it mean? I look at porn.
Oh, come on.
Give me more than porn.
And that's not something I've often said in my life, but give me more than porn, right?
Give me more than jump shots.
Give me the evidence. The label is sticking to something rather than just hanging in air and pretending to be something.
Yeah, when I look at one, it gives me kind of a new pair of glasses to look at.
Because the evidence isn't there.
Alright, let's try this in action.
So why don't you do some of your voices and I'll give you sort of the response, like they were my inner voices or something.
I'll give you sort of what I would...
So give me your nastiest self-criticism.
So about three weeks ago, I was a substitute for teaching.
And I don't like substitute teaching.
I'm moving away from government money.
As far as being a government worker, I now teach private lessons, but I do sometimes public school substitute teach.
And so the voice was saying, because I substitute taught at the time in my hometown where my parents live and I was staying with my parents, and so this voice was saying, you're going to fail.
You are just taking this money and you're not thinking that it's blood money.
Sorry, you're going to fail at what?
Sorry, I just missed that. You're going to fail at...
Oh, you're going to fail at reaching your goal of being free of government money for your income.
You're going to get sucked back into your hometown and you're going to stay here.
And you're going to take this easy money and you're going to waste all your potential to make money in the free market and hustle because you're going to get complacent here.
And while I thought, yeah, if I do stay and take this easy money, I will get complacent and I will just take the easy money.
But this voice is not saying this is a danger.
This is voice saying this is going to happen, right?
Yeah, exactly. All right.
Okay, so you play the voice, right?
And so I would say, okay.
Well, first of all, I appreciate the concern.
And I share the concern.
I don't want to become complacent.
I recognize that Lots of people have this thing where they say, I'm going to do X, but I'm just going to do ABC for a little bit first, just to get to X. And then you end up doing ABC for the rest of your life and never getting to X and coming up with excuses.
So I appreciate and I share your concern.
But if you say that it's inevitable that I'm going to waste my resources and do these stupid jobs in a small town and stay with government money, if you say it's inevitable, then you must have some proof, right?
So share with me how you know this is true.
What's the evidence?
Well, when you were in high school, you had that sub, Matt, and he was in his mid-twenties, and he was a keyboardist, but he couldn't make money as a keyboardist to support himself, and so he stayed substituting.
Okay, so this is a guy that you knew in high school, right?
Yeah, this is a sub that I knew.
Sorry, let's just stop there for a sec, and we'll do these one at a time, right?
So, O Voice, you're saying to me that because some guy named Matt did this, that this is proof that I'm going to do this?
Because you didn't say Matt, you said me, right?
Yes. So do you think that's really good evidence?
I mean, you understand that you're a voice in my head, not in Matt's head, right?
You do know which head you're in, right?
I mean, that's an important thing, if you're going to be a voice of mine, to know whose head you're actually in, because if you don't know, then I'm not sure I want to take any advice from you.
Yeah. Right, so this isn't great evidence, right?
It's a weird...
You know who I feel like right now?
I feel like my dad. Go on.
It's crazy. The way you were...
The way you were reasoning, you were using reason and evidence to invalidate, to take down this argument.
I felt like I was my dad in that moment because I've done this.
I've spoken to my father that way before.
Well, okay, let's go back to the language, right?
I think that's important. We'll stay with your dad here for a sec, but let's go back to the language you just used because it's really important.
I did not take down an argument.
I did not bring down an argument.
Yeah, because an argument wasn't made, right?
Yeah, there was no argument made.
Because there was no because.
Yeah, I didn't tear down a house with my bare hands.
I simply turned a big light on and said, hey, there's no house here.
Yeah. Right now, to the other person...
the false accusation, the destructive and abusive accusation, whether it's outside your head or inside your head, to the person who is making the false accusation, it feels like they're being torn down and attacked, right?
Which is why you felt like your dad.
Because they're trying to use words as weapons while pretending to be looking out for your best interest.
And when their malevolent intent and empty assertions are exposed, they feel attacked and humiliated, right?
Yeah. And that's why you switched into the language, which was anti-philosophical, of saying, I tore something down.
When there was nothing there at all.
And I actually didn't even switch the light on.
I just said, hey, you switch the light on and show me the house that you're describing, because I can't see it.
Yeah. I can't fight the light switch, but trust me, it's...
No, no, no, no. Right?
So the moment...
So this is interesting, right?
So this is why it is hard to challenge the inner voices that are abusive.
Because when you challenge...
The inner voices, they tend to escalate.
Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.
So you said you felt like your dad.
What's that feeling like?
Rage. Tunnel vision.
Tunnel vision, right, right.
Complete disregard for others.
Right. I feel like a...
A wrecking ball. I feel like a gorilla just tearing through the brush.
That's what it feels like.
And that's the tone of voice that the voice has when I talk, when I have an ecosystem conversation and it's involved.
It's deep. It's a deep voice.
And my brows furrow and I look down Yeah, that's what happens there.
Right. Okay, so if we can go back to talking to the voice, then I think I've got a bit clearer of the lay of the land, if that helps.
Sure. Okay, so I'm happy to hear other evidence, or if you feel that that's too unpleasant or difficult or painful to do, I don't want to back you into a corner, oh critical voice.
So I'm happy to talk about where you think these criticisms may be coming from, because I think that we can see that the first piece of evidence that you put forward wasn't evidence, though I agree that it's a danger.
It wasn't evidence that I was going to end up that way.
So I'm happy to talk about why this is so important to you, why you get so upset about this possibility.
Because I did it.
Right, right. I wanted to be a pharmacist.
I wanted to have a ranch.
Instead, I ended up being a government worker.
I'm miserable. I want you to be with me.
You want me to be miserable?
I want you to share this with me.
Share. And so if I don't stay in the town, if this is just a means to an end and I take this money and then I move on to something else, how are you going to feel?
I'm going to feel abandoned.
I'm going to feel alone, even more alone, because you're the only person that ever told me the truth of how I acted.
You were the only person to ever tell me I was wrong.
Because everyone else stays away from these topics with you, right?
Yeah. I mean, they may know it at some level, but I mean, a lot of the world that we live in is kind of set up to not talk about anything real, right?
And that's where you feel there's a lot around you, right?
I feel like I could have been the way that you are, son.
I could have been I could have had my mind running full steam all the time like I see you, but I just wasted away in obscurity.
And what is the biggest lesson that I can take?
Look, I can't make your life different, obviously, but there can still be value in your example.
There can be value in what it is That you've done or what it is that you haven't done.
And what's the biggest single lesson that I can get from your regrets so that it doesn't turn them into gold but it means that there's gold in there somewhere?
Do what you truly want to do.
Don't back down from it.
Don't let it be taken away from you.
Don't let someone lie to you out of What you want to do in your life, then don't be afraid to be happy.
Don't be afraid to let yourself be happy.
Right. And I appreciate this advice.
I know that you're going to have the impulse tomorrow to make me afraid of being happy and to try and talk me out of my potential.
And I know that that's going to be a conversation we're going to have probably for the rest of my life.
Because I know, I really, really appreciate what you're saying to me here, Dad, and I really value what it is that you're saying.
And I know that it's going to be, it's almost impossible for you to stay in that place because the feelings are so strong of regret and anger and so on.
But in this moment, in this space, I just wanted to say thank you for the warning, however clumsy and over-aggressive it may have been, the warning That you gave me in the initial criticism and the more genuine cautions and encouragements that you're giving me now.
And I feel a lot of sadness when you talk about what could have been for you and what didn't come to pass.
Do you think it was impossible?
I mean, it was a different time, different circumstances.
You had kids.
Or do you think it was possible, but it was too hard or at least felt that way at the time?
It's too hard because my old man yelled at me and he hit me and I never dealt with it.
Why not? So it chased me because I was afraid to go there.
Well, we're all afraid to go there.
I don't mean this in a critical way.
I mean, I genuinely, this is like something I really, really want to know.
What was the impossibility?
Or the difficulty or the barrier that seemed too high of going there?
So I wasn't meant to...
I wasn't meant to do that.
No, I wasn't. I wasn't meant to rise above it.
By who? Who didn't want you to do that?
I don't know. Can I ask you something else since I have you here?
Yeah. Why is mom staying with you?
I'm sorry?
Why is mom staying with you?
She's afraid of me.
Go on.
She ...
I provided for her when she moved from Colombia.
I gave her a home to stay in and I helped her and I taught her English.
And she wants to hold on to the happiness so when You two were kids.
She wants to think that we're still a happy, close-knit family.
And she won't leave me because she thinks that that's where, by staying with me, we can keep that.
The illusion? Yeah.
Even though she's told me that she disapproves of a lot of the stuff that she did when I was a kid.
Yeah, that's something I'm thinking about.
Do you think that she may have held you back from this possible life?
Yeah, I don't think she was the woman I was supposed to marry.
Why not? I had in my mind that I just wasn't any good with American women.
And I wanted a woman who would depend on me more.
But that's not what I wanted.
I wanted a woman that I dated in college.
And what was the difference?
She was She didn't take any shit from me.
And that was the kind of life I wanted.
I wanted to be a rancher.
But I just didn't think I was good with American women and I just moved away from them and stopped dating them.
Because it was too challenging?
Yeah. Right.
Right. How...
Look, there's part of you that wants me to not succeed, right?
Obviously. Because that's a challenge to the choices you've made.
Is there a part of you that...
You know how you can...
You can push a boat away from a burning beach even if you can't leave yourself.
There's still some comfort in knowing that somebody else got away.
Is there any part of you that does want me to avoid your fate?
Oh yeah. I feel it when I see you play music.
I see how happy you are.
And I see how good you are at it.
I just can't bear myself to watch.
Sometimes I can't bear myself to come.
It's too loud.
What's too loud? Oh, the music or something else?
The music is too loud. Right.
So look, we're in here together, right?
You can't leave and I think that though you Sort of hate and fear that I'm going to succeed.
I think that if you succeed and we both fail, I think you're going to feel even worse.
Does that make any sense at all?
Yeah. Because there's like an angel and a devil right on your shoulder and the angel is saying, help him succeed.
And the devil is saying, make him fail.
Now, you didn't, I mean, you learned a lot about the devil from your own life, but you can learn a lot about the angel from my life, from your encouragement and support of my life.
And you can give me, I mean, you gave me my first life, and you can give me a kind of second life, and you can help me to open these gates to real success, and you can come with me, right?
Like the guy you came from, He's going to die and he's going to go in the ground and he's going to be dead and buried and gone.
But you, who's the guy inside me, you can come along and you can see the life that he didn't live, right?
So it's like his ghost passes into me and his ghost can come and relive, like reincarnation can relive a life and make the choices through me or help me make the choices that the dead guy wishes he had made.
As his spirit within me, you can actually live that life that you really wanted, if we can work together.
It's like redemption.
It's not like redemption.
It is redemption. It's a do-over.
It's a mulligan. If we can work together.
If not, then you just live the same damn life again.
You don't want that, do you?
No, you have a good point.
So, you tell me, if you don't mind or if you like, you tell me what you think we can do to get some happy shit into our veins.
You gotta keep talking to me.
You can't. You shouldn't leave me alone.
So you need to be on board on the committee of me to help us make the better decisions.
Because you can see a lot of shit that I can't see.
You've got a radar that I don't have because you've already run aground on these rocks before, so you know where they are.
So in a way, you're trying to tell me through the story of Matt and the keyboardist.
So you're trying to say, listen, don't do this shit, but you come off really harsh.
So if you have a seat at the table, if your hand is counted on every vote...
And if your counsel is listened to as the sailor who went over this waterfall telling us to stay away, wouldn't that help?
Yeah, it would help. I think I can bring a lot of experience and knowledge to what you're trying to do.
Well, I would say to what we're trying to do, because it's not me and you.
It's a we here, right?
So what else would you like?
What else would... Would make you, you know, pry some of that ash off your heart and douse it with some good old gasoline fires of enthusiasm.
What else would you like that would make it easier for you to remain positive about what we're going to do?
I'm going to stop being distracted.
Okay.
When you waste time, you waste You waste time on what you're trying to do, what you really want to do.
You're wasting all this time.
Look, I appreciate that.
And you're right.
You're absolutely right. And what I want to do is to try and solve that by giving you what you want.
Now, is there anything...
And I do want to listen to your advice.
I really do. But I don't want to go back into you telling me what to do and what not to do when we're talking about What you need to be a more positive participant?
Like, I already know that I'm wasting time sometimes, and telling me that is not the same as encouraging me.
Does that make any sense? Yeah, it makes sense.
I know what we can do.
Go spend more time outdoors.
You'd like to go spend more time outdoors?
Well, you wanted to be a rancher, right?
So you got stuck in an office your whole damn life, so you want to be outdoors, right?
You're spending all this time on the computer.
Why don't we go out?
You're real happy when you just went out in the woods all the time.
You just thought about philosophy and you read it and you go two hours into a single thought.
You've got so much growth out of that and now you turn your back on it.
That's what I'd like to do because I think that would help us go farther.
Right. I think that's great advice.
What else would you like?
Take her into the wilderness.
Take her out to the lake.
Take her out to the river. There's such beauty here.
There's a mountain here. Go with her.
She wants the same thing.
She wants the same thing.
You know that'll make her happy.
That'll make me happy.
Good, good.
Okay, and what else can we do to make you happy?
Keep that TV shut off.
Well, I hear that.
I hear that. I spend my whole life watching the TV. You're sick of the box, right?
Everything I say is from the TV. Right.
Right. Anything else?
I would prefer we shut the TV off and we wouldn't go for a drive.
Go for a drive. Sorry, are you still there?
Are you cutting out quite a bit? We've been Spend our time out there, you'll learn from me.
That's what I feel.
Spend time out in the wilderness?
Right, right.
Yeah. Right, so you're feeling like all kinds of cooped up, right?
Because we're inside, we're on the TV, we're watching TV, we're on the computer, and we're not out stretching our legs, right?
Yeah. And you're worried, you're terrified, if I understand this rightly, that this is going to Put us on that conveyor belt towards the life that you didn't want, right?
Yeah, it was a life of mind control.
I knew what was happening to me, but I'd let it happen.
Right, right, right.
I knew I was being lied to.
I know I'm still being lied to, but I prefer it.
Being lied to by who or by what?
All the news that I watch.
All the sports that I watch.
Right. Right.
I'd like to maybe hand the controls back over to Stephen.
Alright. Well, and just before you go, and listen, I really do appreciate what you're telling me.
The only thing that I want is that I want your wisdom.
I want all your mistakes in a big bag on my desk, right?
Blocking my view of the TV and the computer screen.
I want those mistakes. We need those mistakes.
So that we can work well.
The only thing that I'm going to ask is that if you talk to me like my dad did, it is really, really, really hard for me to listen to you because of my history, in the same way that it was hard for you to listen to advice from your dad.
So if you can just, you know, and I'll work to try and, you know, bridge this, but if you can find a way to talk to me in a way that doesn't immediately give me like DEFCON 5 shields up, Captain, then I think that we'll save a lot of time.
Look, we're going to get... To the promised land.
We're going to get to the life that we want.
And we can get there either in comfort and style or kind of dragged behind a truck on our knees.
And I think that if you can just find a way to say, I'm worried about X or I'm fearful about X or you need to look out for Y or something like that without like, you're a failure and you're just going to waste your life and blah, blah, blah.
That to me just short-stircuits my brain.
And it's going to waste us a lot of time and we're not going to get too happy.
Any faster it's going to be slower.
If you can find a way, I know it's tough, to come to me with all of your sternness and all of your certainty and all of your wisdom, but just try and find some way that we can have conversations or that you can tell me what I need to know.
Without making it as hard as humanly possible for me to hear, which is kind of the way that it's coming across now, I think you'll be happier.
I know we'll all be happier and we'll just get there sooner, which is I know what you really want.
Correct.
I'll make sure that I work on my approach.
Oh man, I hugely appreciate that and thank you so much for the conversation.
It's been great. Thank you.
All right, Mr. Steven.
All right, I'm back.
Man, that's great.
Yeah. Yeah, you know what?
Man's got some brains, I tell you.
Yeah, yeah.
Dave, I mean, I just, I never, I more placated that voice in the past.
I placated him. Oh, you mean like stop watching TV? Okay, I'll stop watching TV kind of thing.
Okay, okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
It was more like that.
Right. And that for me, that's made it hard for me and for the other, I don't know, man, I have so many damn voices in my head.
Hey, we all do, man.
Yeah, that's the strongest one.
I would say the strongest one, yeah.
I would say the strongest one. I mean, my father was a brilliant man.
I called him a human calculator forever.
And I know that I placated him in the past, and so I was not able to get through to kind of the positive...
The positive, you know, hey, let's go out into the wilderness.
Let's go. I knew that was always something I wanted to do.
That was always something that I was compelled to do.
Just to go five hours and stare at a pond and just shut my senses off and just go into thinking land, you know, and just explore and explore.
I mean, this is where I have had most of my growth is when I've been able to just shut off the distractions and just Just explore the landscape.
But I didn't know that that was that voice's positive intention for me, because I was always placating them, so I never reached that point of finding out what the good intentions were.
Right, right, right, right.
Right, because that comes off so harsh that you just want to shut it out, right?
Oh, yeah, yeah. I just want to shut it out.
And then I just wrote a song.
It's called Listen Up, and it's basically saying, you know, listen to parts of yourself before they start yelling at you.
Well, yeah, and that's easy, except that they start yelling at you.
It's tougher, right? Yeah.
Oh, yeah. And this is the challenging thing about self-knowledge as opposed to human relations, is that I don't enter into big, complex negotiations with people who email me and call me a jerk, right?
Because I don't have to associate with those people.
But the people in my head, I can't separate from them, right?
So we have to get along. Yeah, and you can't allow them to speak to you in an abusive manner.
No, no, you really have to.
That's not going to make anybody happy in the long run, for sure.
So, yeah, you can't.
But it's a challenge, because it's like they lack the tools to It's sort of like, you know, my daughter, sometimes when she wants to give you a hug, she'll just run full tilt into you, and it's like painful.
Her arm's flailing. She's so enthusiastic.
It's a kind of hysteria that they think they're never going to be listened to, so they yell, which means that they're never going to get listened to, and the cycle continues and so on.
And so if you just try and slow them down and say you're going to listen, and now you have to follow up though, because if you make a commitment to an inner voice and you don't follow up, they will fuck you up big time, right?
Because you make that commitment, right?
So, you know, you have to go out and you have to say, are you enjoying the walk and, you know, whatever, right?
Is there any place you'd like to go?
You have to get that kind of participation.
At least I found that to be hugely valuable.
But great job.
I mean, holy crap, your self-work is paying off in spades.
I mean, you sounded like a different dude, I'm telling you.
Yeah, the first time I did it, I felt a little self-conscious because I felt like I was maybe Jack Nicholson from The Shining.
Yeah, he has all these voices, but it's so groovy, man.
It's so groovy to channel these voices and let them speak through you.
You get to know all different aspects of yourself.
I've got a blues musician inside me.
I've got this woman inside me, like Dennis Rodman or something.
I've got this woman inside me and she's bound and she has this fear of hot sauce.
There's all these voices and that one I was having a lot of trouble with.
Oh yeah, when you pull that genie out, like a lot of genies come out when you pull that cork off the bottle, right?
Yeah, you activate. You know, having five voices going on at once is just a lot to handle.
It is, and it feels like it's crazy, but it's not.
I mean, it's actually crazy to pretend otherwise.
And I think the one thing that you're, this character, this dad character, what I think he really gets, I didn't think we had time to go into it, but I just wanted to mention this for topics of future conversation between you guys, is that I think he really gets the degree to which there's a society around you that doesn't want you to rise.
Like it wasn't just his wife and it wasn't just his dad, but it's a whole society of people.
Who are pretty much relieved when you don't achieve your goals because it means they're off the hook and are pretty much not relieved when you do achieve your goals because then they feel shorter.
So I think he's going to be able to tell you who's going to be enthusiastic about what you're doing and who's not going to come along for the ride and who's going to actually oppose what it is that you're doing in very subtle ways.
He's going to have a really good radar for people like that and he's going to really help you keep those people out of it.
What you just said just blew me away because I decided this last week to end a friendship with a man who I considered my best friend because I came to him open and honest about some things and he attacked me.
He just attacked me and dumped all this blame on me.
I approached him philosophically and I owed up to my shortcomings in the relationship.
And the guy just, he threw his girlfriend under the bus.
Then he threw me under the bus.
And then he gave me these, well, Steven, in the future, if I give you my word, I'll make sure to add a disclaimer in there, you know, in case something huge comes up, because his reoccurring patterning in the friendship had been to give me his word.
And then some lifeboat scenario comes up where he, you know, tosses me inside.
Yeah, and I don't want that, man.
I want a friend who won't lie to me, won't try and enlist me in his lies, and will keep his word with me.
And so this guy who I consider my best friend, he was gone in Australia for 10 months, and he's just recently gone back.
So this is why this didn't happen a whole lot sooner, honestly.
Had he been around...
Right. Yeah, so your dad will...
And look, I mean, it was a...
It was a big thing for me, like in doing this philosophy show and all of the work that I've been doing.
I mean, not one of my friends crossed over from the old me.
Not one of them. And so, I mean, it became important.
You can't do, you can't at least try to do significant, important or great things with a bunch of skeptics and doom and glovers and naysayers and or people who just ignore everything.
That you're doing. You need people who are going to be committed to what you're doing, just as you need to be committed to what they're doing.
It can't work without other people's enthusiasm cross-energizing with you.
I think that your inner dad's going to be really good at spotting the people who we're going to get in the way, either explicitly or implicitly, of what it is you want to do in your life.
You need him for that, I think.
I can't say that I have a relationship With anyone like that anymore.
This guy was kind of the last guy.
And we'll see. I mean, we'll see with the friendships I have left.
There's still exploration there and there's still me reaching out to them, but I won't stop.
Nothing will stop me. I'm going all the way.
And I'm doing it while I'm young.
I've got to do it while I'm young.
Oh, yeah. Do it while you're young.
It's a lot easier. I stand my vitality.
Yeah. For sure.
All right, dude. Well, listen, I'm going to pack it in because I'm Mr.
Early Morning Parent guy, but this worked for you?
This was helpful? Yeah, this was incredible.
This was the next step that I was just plateaued at this, and it felt like a cycle of I'm not going anywhere.
I feel like I need to give myself more credit because I've done a lot of things in the last month and a half.
This really helps.
I hope to talk to you again at some point in the future.
If you could let me know how much it was to Skype me, I would definitely like to...
You don't owe me a penny.
I mean, if you want to donate, donate.
I don't charge for what it is I do if you find it worthwhile.
I think this would be very helpful for other people because so many people have issues with self-criticism.
So I'll send you a copy of this if you feel it's okay to release.
I think other people could use it, but obviously have a listen first and let me know what you think.
Yeah, sure. I'm an open book, definitely.
Definitely want you to release it, but I will listen to it and give you final word.
All right. Thanks, man. Take care and have a great night.
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