How to stop people pleasing (REPLAY) - Live Saturday Reset with Jerry S Lin

Hey, good morning everyone.

Before we get into today, I wanted to take a second to thank Shane for holding this room last week while I was away.

Thanks Shane, did an awesome job.

Let's give him a hand actually. Thank you Shane, let's give some appreciation.

I just got back from China. I got in around, um, 2 AM this morning or yesterday.

And I forgot how a 14-hour flight feels when you're on the other side of 50 years old.

See, you land and your body doesn't know what time it is.

It doesn't know what day it is. It doesn't know what's real. And yet somehow you keep moving. You keep answering the questions people ask. You smile when you're supposed to smile. You do what the situation calls for before you've had a single second to check in with yourself. Which actually brings me to exactly what we're working with today. See, today we're talking about people pleasing. Mm. Not the concept, not the definition. The reflex. The one that flies before you even know you had a choice. And specifically, do you know the difference between respect and people pleasing? Because from the outside they look identical, but from the inside they feel identical. See, until you slow down enough to check. See, something happened to me in China that I haven't been able to stop thinking about. And what I want to tell you about is because I think of— think most of you have had a version of this at some moment. You just might not have named it yet. See, during this trip to China, we went to see my girlfriend's grandmother, 82 years old, recently diagnosed with cancer that that spread everywhere already. See, the first time I met her, we gave her a lucky red envelope and she handed us both a red envelope as well. She wanted to talk about her life, the singing she used to do, the dancing with her group of friends just a few months back when her body used to be capable of. And where the pain is now in her leg, where it was difficult to walk, let alone dance. And she talked about feeling a little bit of grief of, "Why did this happen to me?" Feeling like a victim. Yet she was still grateful for the life she had. She had a good life. See, you sit with someone like that and you realize she's not complaining. She's doing inventory, kind of accounting for what she's used and how much time she still has left. See, now the second visit was after a big family dinner. We drove her home and we walked her up 5 flights of stairs. And she asked to speak to me directly. Yeah. She sat us down in her living room. As I was talking to her and looking at her, she said she was really happy her granddaughter was very happy. And she was happy that we were together, that I seemed like a good man, that I treated her granddaughter very well. And that about her father and her mother were both engineers, both respected. Her granddaughter was well-educated and well-raised, and that they had good "senfen," which means good family standing, right? Good family name. They're well-respected in the area, in the neighborhood, running very successful businesses. And then she said she had one request from me. "I know you already have 3 children, but you need to give us one too. You can just send the baby here to China. We'll raise it. The grandparents will take care of them." I was in a little bit of shock. And then she said the sentence that changed the weight of the entire room: "The generation ends with her." Hmm. I kept smiling. And inside, something landed that I wasn't even prepared for. Because she wasn't just talking about her family. Somewhere in my head, quietly, without warning, a thought appeared. The Lin legacy. Ends with me too. I have no son, no one carrying the name forward. And I thought, I thought it, I thought I thought it through already over this last year of craziness, and I thought I was okay with it already. But in that room with that woman at 82 with cancer asking the last thing she still had the power to ask, it landed. And yet my girlfriend and I had talked about this clearly before we ever started dating. Kids were not and are not part of this equation.

I first smiled, shook my head, and said, "No." And so I started to explain myself. You know, my age, I'm not young anymore. It's not fair to the child, not fair to her, my girlfriend.

Then I stopped and I thought to myself, why am I even explaining this to her? This is our business. I realized and I remembered that us Asians have no boundaries. So what'd I do? I smiled and I said, "It's getting late." You should probably get some rest. You know, you need to please take care of yourself. Make sure you eat well and get plenty of water. Drink a lot of water and stay healthy so that we can come back next year to visit you again. And she was playing hardball, man. And she waited for a yes to her question.

I can tell ya, she would have done great in sales.

They would be millionaires. My girlfriend's mother stepped in and said, "They'll think about it." Right? Let the young people think about it to smooth things over. And the room moved on. It got kind of tense there for a minute. Yeah. But on the flight home, 14 hours, it wasn't over for me. Part of me was almost angry. How is this your business? And at the exact same time, another part of me understood something I hadn't expected to feel. See, that's filial piety or xiaosut, the deep cultural wiring that says you don't say no to your elders, especially not a dying one, especially not about legacy, especially not when, if I'm honest, part of me felt the weight of it. See the Lin name, the 22 generations of bloodline, The thing that wasn't supposed to end with me. I realized something on that plane ride. The yes that almost came out of my mouth in that room wasn't coming from one place. It was coming from three places at once. Guilt about saying no to a dying woman. Cultural wiring about what a good man owes his elders, and something personal, something I hadn't looked at in a long time, about what it means to be the last one. Three old rooms firing at the same time. And none of them were wrong. They just weren't mine to act from in that moment. So here's what I learned about people pleasing after 50 years of being a human being. It almost never comes from weakness. It comes from love that got wired before we were old enough to choose it. In one room, it's called phileo-païety. In another room, it's called respect. In another room, it's called love. And in another, it's called being a team player. The gut brain doesn't care what you call it. It just files the lesson, "Yes is safe." And here's the thing about that. It doesn't only show up between cultures. It doesn't only show up between dying grandmothers. It doesn't only show up in China. It shows up at work. In your family, in your closest relationships. And most of us have been saying yes in rooms where, if we're honest, we genuinely don't know whether we meant it or whether we learned a long time ago that yes just kept things smooth. And the body knows the difference, even when the mind has convinced itself it doesn't. My name is Jerry S. Lin, and people know me as the Architect of Choice, and this is the Saturday Reset. Every Saturday we work with one reflex, not talk about it, work with it. Today's reflex is the one that turns love that got wired too early into an automatic yes before you've made a choice. And we're not just going to name it, we're gonna feel it today in your body, in this room right now, which means I need you to turn on your cameras. So go ahead, please turn on your camera.

This is the only way your body knows you're serious about changing this. Alright, so go ahead and turn on your cameras right now. Let me get a sip of water before you do this. Alright, so for those of you who are still in witness protection watch your body anyway. It doesn't know you're hiding. All right, so for those of you who haven't turned on your camera, I don't know what to say. Anyway, here's what we're going to do. I'm going to ask you something, and I want you to say yes or okay out loud. Okay, don't worry, you're muted, so nobody else will hear you, but I want you to say it out loud even if every part of you means no. All right. You understand? So when I ask you the question, just answer with yes or okay. Ready? Yeah, ready? All right, so your mom just called and she wants the whole family over this Sunday. You've had that Sunday blocked already for months. You're coming, or your friend is asking to borrow your car. All right, say yes out loud, or okay. Say it out loud right now. Okay. All right, now, rrr, erase that real quick. All right, think about this. Your partner just looked at you. It's been a hard week. They just want to feel you there, just for some together time to reconnect, hold hands, hug, just relax together. And your partner says, "Can I count on you tonight?" For those of you who are single, if you have a great buddy wanting to grab a nacho and a beer— anyway, whatever the scenario is for you, say yes or okay out loud. Right now. Really say it out loud. Alright? Did you feel it? Not in your head, in your body.

That difference between the two yeses?

Did you feel the difference? Type 2 words in the chat. Round 1 felt like what? Round 2 felt like what? Just the words, nothing else. So maybe it was tight and warm, hollow and full, flat and real, heavy, easy, any of it. Go ahead, type it in there. See that difference you just felt? Your body has been registering that every single time someone asked you for something. You've just been moving too fast to catch it, or the yes came out before the signal had a chance to surface. See, that's not a personality flaw, that's a trained reflex, and trained reflexes can be retrained. That's exactly what we're doing next. All right, let me tell you why that just happened. We don't run on one brain, we run on three. The head brain, which is the logic brain, the planning, the part that knows better. And then you have your heart brain for connection, love, the part that cares what people think of us. And then we have the gut brain, right? The gut brain is the oldest, the fastest and the one that runs the yes reflex. And at some point in your life, probably before you were 10 years old, your gut brain learned a lesson in a specific room with the specific people who made it clear without ever saying it out loud that your no had a cost. Maybe the cost was disappointing someone. Maybe it was conflict. Maybe it was just being too much. Whatever it was, the gut brain filed it away. Yes is safe. No is the cost. That room doesn't exist anymore, but here's the thing about the gut brain: it doesn't update automatically when the room changes. It needs more new information, new data, new reps, and in a new room, which is exactly what we're building right now. Let's do something together. So stop, put both hands on the back of your neck, go ahead and weave your fingers together. Right now.

Good.

Feel the weight of your hands, the warmth or coolness at the back of your neck.

Now stand straight through the spine, not rigid, Jespho.

If you're sitting in a chair or standing with your hands behind your neck and you can feel the contact, the pressure of your hands. They are nodding internally. That's the yes set building. And as you feel that contact, you begin to let your shoulders soften. That's right. That's right. And you might notice as you hold that position that your breath is already slowing down. You don't have to do anything with that. You can just Let it slow.

You can close your eyes now, and with every breath you take, you go a little deeper. Not asleep, not checked out. More present than you've been all day. The sounds around you, whatever is in the room with you, they don't pull you out, they send you deeper. Your face can relax. Your jaw, the muscles around your eyes, letting go of any effort to hold your expression in place. And the deeper you go, the more clearly you can hear what your body already knows. Keeping your hands where they are, I want you to let one person come to mind. Someone in your life that asks things of you. Not the hardest one, a medium one. You have them, and now let yourself imagine them asking you for something, something specific, something where your honest answer, if no one was watching Is no. Notice what just moved in your body. Chest, stomach. Throat, shoulders, jaw. That signal is your answer. It was always there. You just needed to be still enough and deep enough to hear it. One question, and this question you don't have to answer out loud. Your body will answer it for you. Is this yes coming from what I actually want? Or from fear of what happens if I say no? Your body already answered.

You didn't need me to find it. It was always there.

Now, hands still at the back of your neck, we're gonna take one breath together, the deepest breath you've taken all day.

In through the nose. Hold it.

And out.

That's it.

That answer is now locked in your body, in your gut brain, not as an idea, as a felt truth. And in a moment, I'm going to count from 5 to 1. With each number, you come back a little more awake. A little more here.

5.

Awareness returning to the room around you, the sounds, the light.

4.

Feeling your body in the chair or on the floor, weight, contact, solid.

3.

Bringing in a full breath Hands still at the back of your neck if they're still there. And 2, almost fully back, eyes beginning to brighten, that anchor still there, still yours. And 1, eyes open, fully here. Bring your hands down and wait till they open. That sequence is your interrupt. Anytime, any room, any person, even invisibly. And here's how you stack this into your week.

Every time someone asks you for something, Before you answer, hands on the back of your neck, spine straight, one breath.

You don't have to change the answer yet. You just have to notice what your body says before the word comes out of your mouth. That noticing is the first step And Rep 1 is all that matters this week.

So grab a piece of paper and pen real quick, and I'm about to give you your homework. So go ahead and write the name of the person whose asks you most dread.

So you have somebody like this, right?

Write the name of the person. When they ask you for something makes you feel the most dread?

Just the name.

Okay, you got that written down? I know you thought of them already. Write down the name. Now write down the dread it's actually protecting. What is that dread actually protecting? Okay, write it down. Not what you're afraid they'll think of you, what you are protecting yourself from feeling. All right, so that's it. One name, one honest sentence on paper. Okay, that's it. Don't share it yet, not yet. Just name it, because you cannot change what you haven't What you just did, slowing down enough to feel the difference between the two yeses, between the one that costs you and the one that comes from you— see, most people go through their whole lives without being still enough for that. See, and that matters. And before I let you go today, what just happened in that room— the breath, the clap, the question— that wasn't a demonstration. That was rep one for this reflex. And rep one is the only one that matters because now your gut brain knows the sequence. Every rep after this, it just gets faster, quieter, more automatic. For those of you who felt something shift today and want to do the full work, Breakthrough Intensive is where you get the reps, 4 to 5 hours in a small room, real triggers, not understanding it, installing it. Check out what the 30 Seconds of Breakthrough is all about. Hang on one second, let me play this video for you real quick.

Before the training, I was running my life semi-autopilot, my habitual patterns making decisions for me. The old car with a lot of check engine lights and warning signs that maybe I don't even understand. That's what was going in my life, the facade and the mask that I've been wearing and just be shed away and honest with the group and felt fully supported. After the training, I woke up unlike many of my mornings filled with anxieties, things I have to tackle, and I measured my blood pressure this morning It was significantly lower than last year that I had been measuring. I was really surprised, and I highly recommend for anybody who wants to live a more intentional life, give it a shot. Come on!

Bombo!

Oh!

All right, guys. Thank you, guys. I'm proud of you. Thank you, Jerry.

Thank you, Jerry.

All right, good night, guys.

So yeah, Breakthrough is pretty awesome, but if today was the first time you've slowed down enough to feel any of this, I actually run a free 90-minute live training. It's called React. It walks you through the full framework, how the reflex works, where it came from, and what the interrupt looks like, step by step, 90 minutes. The link will be in the description, or Shane can email that to you. And one more thing, you wrote down a name today, someone whose asks you dread. See, there's a good chance that person is carrying the same reflex you just felt. They just don't have the language for it yet. So if someone in your life is carrying something they can't name Send them this. No explanation needed. No, I think you should watch this. Just send it. Just forward the replay on this. Shane, can we get a link of the, the replay for them to forward this?

That'll help you. Let's help them.

Help pay this forward. Send it to the person whose name you wrote down. That's the most generous thing you can do with what just happened in this room. So same time next Saturday, we're working with why you shut down in conflict. Bring something real.

See you then.

Kick the door, break the chain, burn the doubt, lose the pain, step outside, find the flow.