When the Story Falls Apart: How Beliefs and Emotions Interact

Allowing themselves to really move some anger can immediately create clarity in their world, or allowing someone to feel like a deep well of sadness can immediately change their stories about somebody who's died, etc. So that's how that works. That's how that part of it works, is if you allow the emotions to move, your, your stories change, period. Every time.

Welcome to The Art of Accomplishment. Where we explore how deepening connection with ourselves and others leads to creating the life we want with enjoyment and ease. I'm Brett Kistler, here today with my co-host Joe Hudson. All right, good morning, Joe. How are you?

I'm good, I'm good. We just, uh, had a Connection Course session. At the end, they— there we did this cohort thing, and so I got to do some hot seat coaching with some people. It was really fun. It was really fun.

Nice. Yeah. Anything interesting come up from that?

Yeah, actually the thing that we're going to talk about today was present in it in the fact that there was, well, a lot of what I do when I'm hot seat coaching is to see through people's stories or limiting beliefs and to see how the emotional component interacts with that story. And so it, I was noticing it a lot because I knew that's what we were gonna talk about. And so it was really cool and very present for me.

You're talking about see through the story. We've recently done an episode on limiting beliefs.

Yeah.

How does story and emotions link together in the way that you're envisioning talking about right now?

So story is kind of a, it's used often in our work, but it's a good question about what it is. And I would just describe story meaning like any idea that you have. The idea that you put around a situation. So I'm outside and I'm in nature and I'm like, "Oh, this is enjoyable." That's a story, that it's enjoyable. Or, "Nature is beautiful." That's a story. Or, "Wow, I wish they hadn't cut down all these trees." That's a story. Or, "Mankind is destroying the environment." That's a story. It's not that they're true or not true. It's not about that. It's just, it's literally the idea structure that you put around whatever it is that you're experiencing. And to some degree, it separates you from the experience. And in some level, it informs your experience and it can actually make the experience richer.

I'm thinking about how this might interact with emotions is there's some emotion that comes up in us. It's like, wow, I'm angry. That's a story.

Correct.

But also you could use this recognition, oh, I'm angry, that's a story. But that story might point to, there might be something to feel underneath this.

That reminds me of a great, I remember, so when I was like learning to have emotional experiences, 'cause I was very cut off from my emotions in my 20s. And I learned that if I could name the emotion I was having, like I'm angry, it would help me feel it. And then it was some years later, I was with a friend and I was like, "Wow, I'm really sad." And he's like, "No, you're telling me you're sad as a way to not feel it." And he was like dead on. And I recognized that. I was like, "Oh crap." The story can do both. And it does do both at different times, especially different times of development. So yeah, the story is just the idea structure that you put around an experience. That's what it means, yeah.

Okay, yeah. So I'm going back to a couple examples that you just mentioned. I'm looking out the window right now at some trees in nature and I'm like, okay, this, So walking around in nature, wow, this is beautiful, that being a story separates me from just experiencing fully the nature, fully letting the sensory experience in because it's getting funneled into this story.

Yes and no, in the fact that I would say the more you believe the thought to be true, the more that you, it separates you. There's ways in which a thought can actually bring you more deeply into connection with yourself as well. The thought can do either. The thought can make you either more or less connected. What I have noticed is that in deep emotional experiences, the stronger the story, the more stuck the emotional experience typically.

Right, and in more of a personal development context, this might be, I'm angry because my parents did this to me back then and now I'm all fucked up for whatever reason. And now I just keep living in this pattern and this pattern is something I just can't get out of and it defines me now. And I feel so angry and frustrated and disappointed and sad and bereft at all of this. But those feelings are like, to the extent that you buy that story and hold it to be true, those feelings can only circle around inside the story.

And it might be very necessary for somebody at some point in their development and some part of their, their journey on this, in this, is that is to be able to say that, right? So for instance, I work with a lot of people who Like, my parents were perfect. That's the first thing they'll say is, my parents were perfect. And usually if they're coming to me and they're saying that, there's going to be a moment where it's really important to them for them to say, no, my parents, my parents had issues. Like, that story needs to change and they need to say it out loud and believe that story for things to be able to move. And they also have to let go of that story that my parents were you had screwed up in some way to also continue moving through it. So all the stories are very necessary and they definitely interact deeply with the emotional experience and to some degree, almost the same thing in a way. Yeah.

Yeah. So it sounds like there's maybe even like a hopscotching from story to story on the journey until eventually like the stories become more and more diffuse and further and further apart. And eventually you just land in the full experience of yourself with all of its complexity. And stories come up maybe as something that's useful in the moment. You know, a thought is a story.

Yes, that's right.

You know, every sentence that I say is a story in some sense, but it's partially true, partially false. Not my entire thought process, not my entire being.

Yeah, that's exactly right. Yeah, there is no thought that, I can't find any thought that I have that's 100% true. And I can't find any thought that I have that's 100% false. And, and I'd say the same thing with my identity, the same thing with everything, is that thoughts by their nature are, are limited and they cannot describe reality. It's like I couldn't— I could not paint an accurate portrait of the world with one color, and I cannot describe the world accurately with only one function being intellect. I also— to be able to have a full experience, to describe a full experience of something, I need something besides the intellect. As well.

So how do we see through stories when we start to identify the stories that we're in, identify things that we might not have previously identified as stories, such as for some listeners, it might be surprising to think, oh, those trees are beautiful is a story that separates me from them. What?

Or all of your thoughts are a story that you don't have to look, you don't have to figure out, like, unlike a limiting belief, which is like a story that's actually limiting you. Every single thought you have is a story. There's none that isn't, yeah.

Or even the story that humanity is destroying nature could be the story that is making you feel constriction and blame, which separates you from the heartbreak and the personal responsibility of being a part of this morass of humanity.

Right, yeah. Or you could tell the story humanity is taming nature. You could tell the story that humanity is destroying nature. You could tell the story that nature— humans are part of nature and we're like the forest fire which helps reseed the forest. Or there's like infinite stories you can tell about the situation, and there's beautiful truth to all of them, and there's a lack of truth to all of them.

Yeah, I have a favorite story there where humans are something that trees sent to go dig oil back up from the ground and put carbon back in the air for them.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I've heard the same thing. Yeah. It's mind-breaking. I think George Carlin had something where he's like, the Earth invented humans to make plastic. I think is what he said. Yeah. So, right. So there's a thousand stories that you can tell around it. And the thing about them is that You know, we have an emotional experience all the time. We have stories that are just like about nature and we have stories about ourselves. We call the stories about ourselves and identity. And all of them will have an emotional component to them. And some of them are, you know, somewhat benign emotional components. And some of them are not, like my dad loves me, my dad hates me, my dad's critical of me, often say would have a much deeper emotional component. You have the thought or you identify in a specific way, like I am, I'm lazy, or I'm no good, or I'm worthless, it's gonna come with an emotional component to it. And so they're deeply tied together that our belief systems and our identity, belief systems about our identity, all have a lot of, you know, they have like an emotional correlation.

Yeah, there's almost a way that the story comes up as a description of the emotion. We have the emotional experience and then we try to understand it and come up with a story. And then the story is something that we want to be something that's internally consistent that we can then use to predict and act upon.

Yeah. Never is internally. It's never consistent.

Yeah.

But it's, it's, we all think it is, but it isn't.

Yeah. There's this attempt to make it somewhat logically consistent. And that's, that's the intellect coming in.

Yes. That's right.

But then you can also use those stories as a, as a path down to what the actual fully fluid emotional movement underneath it is, what is trying to happen there.

And in my experience is that using the stories to do that eventually means taking the stories all apart with other stories. It's like, it's deconstruction. And then the emotions move most fluidly when there's no story. You know, if you look at animals, their emotions move very fluidly and there's, you know, less stories.

Yeah, so it sounds like something you're pointing to here is that there's always emotions If there's a story, there's emotions behind it, 'cause stories are constructed of emotion. And there's not always a story with emotions. It's possible to move an emotion.

Correct. The other thing that happens is we can tell ourselves new stories that change our emotions, which is a really interesting thing, right? Like if I listen to somebody talking on a podcast and I see myself differently because of that, then that new identity will have a new emotional. And so maybe I feel relief because I'm like, oh wow, I see myself differently. I don't have to be constrained by that anymore. So what's interesting is like, like if you look at this as far as like non-dual teachers or a lot of spiritual teachers, they're just sitting there telling stories, but they're telling stories that change the emotional component of people, the emotional components of people. So it's interesting, like they, they do interact in this. There's a dance. It's, it's not so much causal as it's one or the other. And, and One's not greater than the other. They do interact.

So tell me a little bit more about the way that they interact and what makes that really important for this work and for this journey.

There's the intellect and the emotional way. So if you can deconstruct all of your— this is the way I did it because I was very head-based. I just deconstructed all the stories until I couldn't believe any stories anymore, which allowed for a lot greater emotional fluidity. And then I found out it works in reverse too, meaning that if I'm really stuck on something, I'm like, "Agh!" And my head's like doing that thing that most people's heads do, which is cycling over the problem over and over again. "What did I do? How do I fix it? What did I do? How do I fix it? I can't believe I did that." You know, that kind of thing. You can release an emotion and then boom, the story gets clarified. Like you can see things differently. And you've seen this all the time where somebody has a big anger release or sadness release and all of a sudden they feel so much more clear about a problem that they were having. And oftentimes when I'm working with people, I try to work on both, both the emotional and the intellectual, the story side of it. We have attempted to give an emotional developmental model in one of our podcasts, but most of the developmental models that are cognitive, they talk about getting to a place where you can't believe your own story, where you're using stories that are useful for you, not stories because you believe them. And so those are the ways, intellectually or emotionally, to see through the stories. To see that they're not true if you believe them. So how do they interact? It's like, um, like you said, I think you said it perfectly, that there's always an emotional experience happening. As long as you're awake, there's an emotional— I would assume when you're asleep, but when you're awake, there's always an emotional experience happening. And sometimes there's story happening, and sometimes you're in a space of no thought, right? And there's no story happening, but the emotions are still occurring.

Yeah, I think a lot of people are not very familiar with that place of not having thought, or at least maybe they don't recognize that they are. There's times, but a lot of us really identify with always thinking. And the first time we have that kind of experience where thought drops and we're just in the emotional experience, it's very disorienting because without a story, there's, what do I know about myself? What do I know about the world right now? What do I have to, is everything gonna fall apart? Am I just going to dissolve into a puff of smoke right now? What's going on?

Totally. And yet we have experiences of it that people don't even know they're having. Like you in a wingsuit, I'm sure you had moments of full non-thought, right? It's just like presence.

That was one of the draws of it.

Exactly right.

Yeah. It was like, this is a moment that I'm not thinking about my taxes or the laundry or whatever I did wrong last week. Yeah. It's just presence with my environment and myself and my body is doing the flying.

Yeah. Or for some people, it's like they look at a vista and they have this moment, maybe it's 5 seconds or something where they just like, you know, and so—

When you're awestruck.

Yeah, we have them. Awestruck is a way that it happens. And you're like, hey, where'd you go? I just spaced out. You know, like we have them. But what's interesting is because we're not thinking during those times, The mind that is thinking has a hard time identifying them. I asked my daughter when she was like 9 years old, I said, "Hey, have you ever had that moment when you're looking out behind your eyes and you know that there's something greater than you looking out behind your eyes? Like it's vastness?" And she's like, "Oh yeah, all the time." I was like, "Really?" I was so surprised, you know? And so I think it's something that's very natural that we lose track of, or we get into our neurotic thoughts, into our churn, and we forget that it's happening or that it's there, it's possible.

Yeah, I recall sometimes when I was younger having sort of like a stare, and I would just kind of zone out, and my consciousness would mix with the space, and I would just kind of be this not-identity, and then I'd pop out of it for some reason. Somebody would say my name and I'd just be like, okay, I just zoned out. And I even had like a story that developed around it of like, okay, I'm a little bit of a space cadet. And then, you know, I get into doing like meditation retreats and things and it's like, oh wow, all this work to get back to something that eventually just feels like that place.

Exactly.

That's right.

That's right. Right. And that's the interesting thing. The story gets so thick that even when you talk about people who have had what they would call awakening experiences, which I'll just say it's a shift of identity, meaning that when you're a little kid, you're like, you say to a little kid, like, "Hey, what does mom want for Christmas?" And it's like, "I want G.I. Joe with a kung fu grip." "What does dad want?" "Dad wants a G.I. Joe with a kung fu grip." You know, like, 'cause you see the world as you are the world in this like very personal way. And then as you get older, you can see it differently. You can see that I am different than my mom and I'm different than my dad. And then when the identity shifts to the universal, that's what I— let's just call that awakening for whatever purpose, right? And what happens is that there are people out there who have that shift of identity, and then they have a story that says, "This is bad, I don't like this." And then there's another group of people where they're like, "I've been working for this for like 20 years, and finally I got it. This is like a huge relief." So even that has a story to it, right? And so if you look at the readings of monks who have woken up and have this like great sense of freedom and you just, and you read their stories and then you go online and you read the stories of depersonalization disorder, about 70% of the stories of depersonalization disorder are almost identical to the monks waking up So it's an amazing thing, right? We can even have stories around that.

Yeah, something you pointed to there is this idea of awakening not being a particular thing that happens once and it's complete. It's like the process of growing an identity as a child, you have these micro identities that come up for just a period of time and then you grow out of them like you do a pair of shoes. And the moment of growing out of it is like the moment where you're in the unknown of, What if mom and dad don't want a GI Joe with a kung fu grip? What is real?

Yeah.

And then you sit in that and then it consolidates into a new story. And somewhere in there, there's emotions that are moving. There's the subconscious reshifting. How do emotions then, when we move emotions, how does that change our story? You were alluding to this a little bit earlier.

Yeah. So sometimes emotions, moving the emotions change the story. Sometimes moving the emotions help us discover the deeper story. Like the next level of story that creates some freedom. And like I said, a lack of story often makes the emotions move much more fluidly. If you're not willing to feel the emotion, then there's a story in there that you haven't found. And so sometimes people can walk around feeling like, "Oh, I don't have a story," but they're not moving emotions. That actually seems to be like a very particular time of development. Where you see that happen.

Yeah, there might be some, there might be a subconscious shame that you're not even logically aware of to the point where you have a story around it, but that, that makes certain emotions when they start to come up, just be somatically suppressed before you realize that they're there.

That's right.

And to find those emotions, you might go through a series of stories, you know, starting, starting in some form of therapy or coaching or something that brings you into contact with what it is in your life that first of all is being affected by this suppression.

Yes.

There's gonna be some kind of frustration going on or some kind of, you know, depression or sadness or—

Some dis-ease.

Dampening. Yeah. Some dis-ease, yeah. And then you could, you know, find your hopscotch of stories that get down to what emotion is not being able to move.

Yeah, so I'll give you like a practical example here. So Tara and I, We're looking for a place to live. This was like kind of during the crash and I didn't want to buy a house because I knew that the crash was coming and I knew that basically had done the math and it was like 2011 is like when all these short-term loans were coming up. So that was going to be the down part of the market. And so we rented, it took us a long time to find this rental. We were about a year from away from where we wanted to buy and We were friends with the neighbors who owned the property, and one day the neighbor yelled at our daughter, and Tara was not accepting that, and so they kicked us out. And every time I drove past this house, I just got this kick in the stomach. I just got this kick, like, bam. And I would just drive quicker, just try to push it down, try not to feel that experience. And one day I was like, you know what, no, no, no, no, no, I am going to feel this experience. So every time I drove by the house, when I felt that kick, I would just stop the car and I would feel it and I would invite it. And I just like, yeah, okay, I want to, I want to like milk this thing for everything. Like, I'm not going to avoid this, I'm going to run right into it. And it took a little while, I can't remember, like 2 or 3 weeks, because I drove past it every day. And then all of a sudden it was like I could drive past that house with nothing but love. I had felt through all the pain of it, and there was nothing that I was trying to avoid. There was no more resistance to it. And in that, um, the emotion— my story changed from these people are assholes who screwed us to I could see their pain, I could see their anger, I could see, I could see all of them. It wasn't just one aspect of them anymore that I was looking at. And so That's how feeling your emotions can change your stories. Or, you know, somebody getting— allowing themselves to really move some anger can immediately create clarity in their world. Or allowing someone to feel like a deep well of sadness can immediately change their stories about somebody who's died, etc. So that's how that works. That's how that part of it works, is if you allow the emotions to move, your stories change, period. Every time.

Yeah, I can imagine how this could show up in interpersonal conflict as well. If someone has a story and you're really disagreeing with their story and you're trying to like deconstruct it and fight it, and then they're holding on to the story even tighter, then—

yes, they would—

they're less likely to move the emotion and come to a deeper story that includes more of both of your shared experience.

Yeah, I look at two people are having a conflict, it's like both of them don't feel seen and both of them don't feel like they're understood. Like, so, and so they can't soften, they can't move the emotions. If you allow both of them to feel seen and understood, then everything can move and change. So yeah, so a lot of times what people will do is they'll say, oh, I shouldn't have that, I shouldn't think that they're assholes, because they're trying to avoid the emotion. And so they'll tell themselves they shouldn't think this, they shouldn't think that, you know, this story is bad. Et cetera, instead of going, oh, this is a story, it is what it is, and there's an emotion, let's feel the emotion.

Or they could have the story of, I don't want this person to have a story about me. I don't like this story that I'm being, you know, held to. And then that's also a story and that locks your own emotions into place and interacts with the other.

That's exactly right. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. So how can you use the emotions to help find the deeper story? What is, I say use like they're a tool to use, not some deep part of us.

Yeah, so the story I have there is that I was in this party once and I was noticing a trend of mine. And the trend was that anytime people were having superficial conversations, I would just be like pissed. I'd just be like judgmental and shitty. Oh yeah, so I went shopping and, you know, I really liked the green, but the chartreuse was a little bit better. And I'd just be like wanting to throttle them. And I was like, what is it? Like, what?

What?

I like, this doesn't make any sense. And it's been ruling me for decades. And so I started to really feel into that. I would start finding people having what I would at that time would've called shallow conversations. And I would just go and be in it. And it got awkward. I gotta tell you, there's some awkward moments, like two people talking about shopping and I'm just like tearing up, I'm crying, you know, weeping over this. And so I didn't know why this was happening, but as I felt the emotions all the way through, it became clear. And the story that became clear was that when I was a kid, I was the guy shouting that there's an elephant in the living room, right? Like I would talk about the pink elephant. We had an alcoholic household My job in the house was to be like, "There's a problem, there's a problem." And everybody else's job in the house was to be like, "What problem? I don't know what you're talking about. That's not an issue." And to keep it superficial. And that's where the anger actually was. The anger was that. And once I felt the hurt underneath the anger of like, oh, of not being seen for all those years and not being respected for the role that I was playing and being made the problem child or whatever it was, then there was just tears. And so I, you know, I'm like, I can't remember exactly how old I was then. It was like maybe 35 or something. And I'm just like weeping while people are talking about driving to Santa Barbara. It was awkward, but it was great. And so it, just by going into the emotional experience, it like, it brought out the story that was hidden in there that was holding me back. And I think that happens a lot, especially people who, you know, have like, they, they can see through their own identity, but their emotions aren't moving. I think that's often the trick is to like, like really look for everything that's uncomfortable and dig in and feel all the way will like bring out the subconscious stories about who we are and what we've been through.

Yeah, it sounds like there's a sort of a trap or a kind of a dodge that can occur where you, you see a story that you're in and then you, you see through that story, but then you see past feeling the emotion and you're just like, oh yeah, nothing is real. What is free will?

Yes, yes, yes, yes. Yeah. That's what I'm talking about. And you can do that and you will still be bothered the next time somebody is, by the next time that somebody is having that superficial conversation, or the next time that somebody cuts you off or whatever it is. You can overcome it in the moment. You can mentally kind of sidestep it, but it doesn't get you out of the pattern. If you want to get out of the pattern, you got to feel the emotion all the way through.

Yeah. So diving a little bit deeper into this paradox, it's like the story is the pointer to the emotion, but the story also slows down the movement of the emotion if you cling to it.

Yeah. So this is something that I discovered when when Case died. So Case, who I think I've mentioned here before, he passed during his first silent retreat. I remember at that time, one of his close friends said to me, "I told you the silence would kill him." This guy talked all the time, was always with people. Anyway, so he passed and I, you know, engineered a situation where his closest friends, a lot of people who'd done deep work with him, all sat in a circle and we all just kind of had our, had a session together where it was just like, hey, let's have this, let's all express what's going on for us. And what I noticed at that point is that this, not at that point, but over the next months, is that the stronger the story, the longer the grief cycle took for them. There was lots of stories, right? He was happy, it was a perfect time for him to go. Or, um, he died too soon, he was only 54, or, um, you know, he was like the light of my life, I can't live without him. Like, the stronger the story, the more personal the story was, just the slower the grief process was for people. And I remember my time, I was like, none of those stories existed for me. It was interesting because when everybody was kind of doing their thing, and when it got to me, I like just wailed and got really angry. I got really pissed, and I couldn't describe why. There didn't make any sense to be pissed, and it just like moved right through me. And, and like, my grief cycle was very short with Case. And so I've just noticed that generally. And in fact, I had a client the other day saying, you just finished, um, one of the things I'll do for like my I do with my L10 clients, the clients who are executives, is if they want to do a silent retreat, I will guide them through a silent retreat and we'll talk to them for 15 minutes a day and just help them negotiate their experience. And that's not the right word for it. I will help them see what they might be avoiding and then give them some sort of instruction to put themselves right in that spot. And after this retreat, this woman was just— she was crying and she's like, I don't know why I'm crying. And I was like, great. And she was disturbed by it and I thought it was wonderful. I'm like, oh, this is great because that means it's going to move very quickly. And like, it's great. Like, you don't need to have a reason to have an emotional experience and it will present itself to you most likely afterwards. Um, whereas she was like, wait, I'm crying for no reason, something must be wrong. Like, what's wrong with me?

And then blocking the emotion for that, waiting till it's figured out.

Yes, exactly. Exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. So that's exactly, it became the way to block the emotion. And so I cry weekly, usually, get angry regularly. And almost all the time, I don't know why. I don't have a reason, I don't have a story. I don't have like, oh, this happened and therefore this happened. It's just stuff moving. It's just the emotional experience moving. And probably before we had thoughts, we had emotional experiences. I mean, man, who knows what kind of thoughts all mammals have, but all mammals have these emotions. And so, yeah, that's the— and they move so much quicker that way, so much nicer.

Something else that comes up here around emotions that came from the story of Case and the funeral. I recently had a good friend die a couple months ago. And I went through the stages where, you know, everybody was posting things like some thoughts, some, and all these thoughts are some form of story. And you could see people in different stages of their process, different stages of story. And I wanted to write something for him too and like post it to Facebook too so that our community could see it. And I recall just going from story to story. I'd write something and I'd like see that it was story and I'd feel the emotion underneath it and I'd write. And I did this process for a couple of weeks. And then eventually it just dissolved and I didn't have anything to say.

Yeah.

And then I had this story that I'm like, I should have something to say. Like, my fucking friend died. What the fuck? I should have something to say on Facebook. Like a couple of paragraphs of words about this human that I loved. And it just dissolved. And I was just like, the story that I have to write something is gone too. Yeah. But there's also a weird paradox there, which is, well, You know, here we are in a podcast and we're talking about a lot of our experience, but sitting down and writing something, sometimes we want to have a story.

Of course, yeah.

And like a story is a way that we can convey, you know, we can convey our life and our experience for others to consume. And if you develop this habit of just deconstructing story the moment it comes to your mind, well, how do you stabilize any story to ever write, say, a description for one of our recent podcasts that I've been stumbling over for the past several days.

The way we're doing it right now is what my experience is. Yeah, I mean, we're sitting here, I told 3 stories, you just told me a story, and there's a way in which they all dissolve as soon as you tell them. And imagine the freedom of that. Like, if that's— not you in particular, but the people listening to the podcast— imagine the freedom of like watching the stories about your parents dissolve, the stories about yourself dissolve, that each one of them is like moved through, and then there's the relief and the freedom of them on the other side. And it is a strange phenomenon that I don't entirely understand, which is everything that I've just told you, like, I'm not attached to it, and yet I can talk to— talk about it, and I can talk about it even with an air of certainty to it. And at the same time, it's It's completely illusional to me, right? There's nothing in me that buys into it. And for a while, I was like that. Like, I just couldn't tell stories. Like, there was a good year and a half where I was just like, I don't even know what— and now I realize how important they are. Like, they're what make us humans. It's like, stories are so important. And I love them. I love— Watching them. I love seeing them. It's— yeah.

Yeah. Well, that leaves me with my exercise after we complete this podcast, which is to— Alexa actually suggested this to me yesterday while we were struggling with the description for the last episode. I'm going to free write on what we just talked about and see what comes of it. Maybe it's a description for the episode.

Yeah. Yeah, exactly. See what happens.

Awesome.

Yeah, I think the reason, just to close it off, the reason I thought it was really important to share this is that if there's people who are listening to the podcast and they're starting, and the emotions are starting to move and the story is starting to dissipate, that's not a problem. That's progress. And it can be disorienting and you can be like, wait, who am I? And I wanna point to the fact that that is great. Like that is a wonderful, wonderful step that's happening. And it's not to be chased after. It just happens naturally.

Yeah. It's a moment of growing past an identity.

Yeah.

Into something larger.

Exactly. Yeah. Awesome. Yeah.

Beautiful. Thank you, Joe.

Yeah. Pleasure.

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