Pleasure Warrior with Steve Chandler

Welcome to Mama Goddess. I'm your host, Alexandra J. Johnson. This podcast is all about rocking your goddess life, creating vibrant health and celebrating motherhood and family life. It's about living an authentically awesome life. Let's have some fun.

Welcome to the Plot Pleasure Map. Today I have the pleasure chatting with Steve Chandler. And Steve is a best selling author. He's a corporate trainer. He is also a personal success coach and he is awesome. He is my husband's coach. And my husband and I, Brian, just love Steve. We love all of his books, his CDs, everything about Steve. He is just like perfect. He's got spirituality, he's got personal fulfillment, business, money, time. He's awesome. So welcome Steve.

Thank you. Wow. I love that introduction. I'm going to play it for myself every morning.

That's awesome. Well, it's true. I am getting so much. I just read your book recently, the Time Warrior, and I. I think it's amazing. You're a genius.

Thank you.

So I'd love to start off with that time on the topic of pleasure, because so many people when you talk about pleasure, they say, I don't have time to have fun. I don't have time for pleasure. How do I play? There's not enough time. So could you address that for us?

Well, yes. One of the things I think is really important for my clients and myself is to find ways to integrate pleasure into what I'm going to do anyway. And I always like to use the quote by the great friend Tarpenton, who was a quarterback, but it doesn't matter what he was, but he would say, if it's not fun, you're not doing it right. And the way I change that quote is that I like to say, if it's not fun, how can I do it differently until it is? Because I like it. And I know children do this. They demand of things that they be fun. That's their standard. And if it's not fun, they kind of throw up their hands like something's not quite right yet. This needs to be fun for me to participate in it. And I think that's a great standard and I like to use that. What, what is it about this activity that I could make more fun and build more pleasure into? So I'm not thinking of pleasure as separate from the rest of my life or things I need to leave my life behind and go do a little bit of pleasure and then come running back to the real world, but rather, how can I integrate infuse a little love and pleasure into whatever this activity is.

That's great. So we could be having fun in everything we're doing, Is that what you're saying?

Well, I don't want to stress myself out having that be my standard. I just, I could be having a little more fun with anything. And it doesn't have to be everything. Sometimes it's fun not to have fun. I like to sometimes pout and feel like a victim and a martyr. And that's a kind of reverse form of fun. As long as I see it that way and not take it seriously.

Right. So it's kind of over dramatic.

That can be fun.

Right. So kind of like a theatrical. We can have fun with our victim mentality and our victim stories.

As long as we see it as an act. Yes. And a brief act, hopefully.

Right.

Go on too long.

Right.

Then it tends to depress our loved ones.

Yeah, I can see that. So what about that? On taking things so seriously?

Well, for a large part of my life, I did take things very seriously. And I found after experimenting that didn't serve me. It wasn't having things happen better or faster. In fact, it made them slower and more dreary, made life more of a grind. So as I began to integrate, how about if I didn't take this so seriously and I introduced a little bit of the game element into what I'm doing then, or the plethalone, and I found I was actually more efficient. I got things done faster and I had more fun. I had more creativity and intuitive ideas on how to do this better. If I introduced the game element and then later I would teach companies to do that and individuals to experiment with it, not trust it ahead of time, but to be willing to experiment with it to see what kind of result they would get.

So on the game element, can you just talk about that? Maybe give us an example of how we can start creating some games in our life to lighten up.

Well, a lot of times, for example, if I have a goal and it's an outcome goal, the outcome goal can cause stress. If I want to make an X amount of money, like I want to earn $10,000 in a certain amount of time, I wake up in the morning and I can look at my outcome goal and it can be stressful, like, oh, I'm not even close to it yet, I don't know if I'll ever hit it. But if I reduce that now to a process goal, then it can be a lot of fun because I can put squares on my whiteboard and I can say, I'm going to make five sales calls today. And that's something I can actually do. And that'll be a big W. That will be a win. So I want to look for things that I can actually do and win at. And that introduces the game element. And anytime I can do that, play a game with something, there's more energy. So you notice that people at a family gathering and they're all lying around, like, tired, and they've had their dinner and they're all bloated and grumpy, and someone says, volleyball in the backyard in ten minutes. Oh, okay. And everybody drags themselves out, but then 10 minutes later, yelling and jumping. Where did all the energy come from? Well, it's because we introduced a game into what we're doing. And you can do that watching the dictions or driving in traffic. You can do all the things that you label as stressful, the grind, the stuff I have to do. We can introduce the game element into anything.

I love that. I personally, when I do that, if I'm doing the dishes or in the car or whatever, I put some music on and I kind of jam out. But I do notice, and I don't think I'm alone in this, that I have resistance to, to actually creating a game like, I'm lazy. I just want to be grumpy about it. What do we do about that?

So first thing is I don't have to fix everything. So one of the things, I don't have to be happy all the time and I don't have to correct everything going on in my life and keep. I need to perfect myself. I'm not there yet. I want to let go of all that. And so if I'm grumpy, I'll let grumpy pass. Because the human system is really resilient. It really has a lot of psychological immunity in it. And if we don't try too hard to fix a bad mood, it will pass faster, actually than if we think, oh, I'm grumpy. That's not right. I should be upbeat. I write high energy books. I'm a hypocrite for being grumpy. No, grumpy is part of the human. It's just what humans do. And I'm okay with it. It's no big deal. Doesn't mean anything. And the minute I realize it doesn't mean anything, it lifts. But when I attach meaning to it like this must mean I didn't get enough sleep. Or this must mean I haven't worked through my unresolved issues with My ex wife. This must mean. And then the more stories I add to a simple passing feeling, the worse it gets. Now I'm trapped in that rut or that groove. Now I'm grumpy for days.

Hmm, interesting. I like that. So we just let it go and let it pass and not make stories. Because that's where the suffering comes when we start making stories.

All suffering comes from stories. Sure.

And then so on the grumpy. I love this in your books and you talk about this a lot of taking action. Because I know a lot of times we'll feel grumpy or we feel miserable or upset or frustrated, whatever it is, and then we don't take action. So can you talk about. Because usually that goes together for me. If I'm feeling grumpy and miserable, I don't want to do anything.

So 1. I was training a group of doctors once in California and we were going over various communication training. We were talking about mild depression, not really deep clinical depression, but feeling mildly depressed. And they said that the patients they have who are suffering from depression, that if they could get them to get up and walk around the grounds and say, I know you're feeling depressed, but you need to do this for physical reasons. I want you to go around the grounds and just do five cycles and then come back and we'll talk. It would always lift the mood for them to do it. They'd come back with a higher. Their mood would be high for this long. So. But what they said was, the problem is, it's just what you said, people who are in the low mood, they don't feel like taking the action. That's part of it comes with the mood. Like I just don't feel like doing anything right now. So I have to. If I want to counter that, I want to practice saying, I know you don't feel like. Like doing it, but just do it anyway for a little while and then go back to being grumpy if you want, but just do one minute of dance. Put on one song. Don't even dance for the whole song. Just one minute. The thing is, there's just something that happens chemically and biologically. You just can't dance and still feel better. And the beautiful thing about that is it shows that our feelings are not that sacred. They're not that final. They're fleeting. Everything is fleeting and somewhat arbitrary. They're not based on a lot of important things. That's beautiful.

Yeah, I love that. So somebody watching this might think, oh, that's great. Steve's a personal Coach. He coaches Fortune 500 companies and, you know, he's got it going on. But I would love to hear just a little bit on your personal story and how you've gotten to the point where you are that you can have this mindset because you have such a miraculous story.

Yeah. And it's funny how a total loser who failed it so many things can now be described as miraculous, which is a beautiful example of really, we can add meaning to anything. And through the miracle of language, you can take someone who had made a disaster of things and make him look like a miraculous hero of some kind, which of course serves me and my book sales. So I'm all for it. But my life is miraculous. If you say so. I'm into that. But really I just. In my life, I failed at everything. And I really. It ended up in addiction and alcoholism and bankruptcy and divorce. It was just really everything that you. Everything we watch the Jerry Springer show for or things like that. People just feeding off all the defeat in my story. And so step one for me to turn that around was getting free of addiction. Because without that, really, you can't put anything on top of that. Sometimes I get clients. Well, I'm an alcoholic. I'm still drinking. But will you coach me? It won't do anything. It won't be. It won't help you until you can get yourself clean and sober. So that was first for me. And in that process, I learned a lot. I learned a lot about spirit, spiritual progress, and a lot of things I didn't know existed about life. And then after that, I found coaches and mentors and I just had to learn to love. So it was almost like someone who had amnesia and needed to learn all over again how to live. Because I never. I never got it growing up. Somehow I avoided everything. In fact, the first book I ever wanted to write when I got sober was that it was going to be a how to book. And it was called this is really true. People think this is a joke. It was called how to get out of anything. And that was my. And that's the one. That's the one talent that I emerged with from my dysfunctional failure of life was I was good at getting out of doing things. So anyway, that's obviously not really full engagement. So I left that book behind.

Nice. And so then how did you become so action oriented from getting out of anything to, like, now you.

Well, it was just trial and error and it's just willing to experiment and discovering that there wasn't anything wrong with me. And all these thoughts about, I'm not good at this, I'm weak at that. I have a pattern. I have a pattern of, you know, I'll get a client who says, I have a pattern of not finishing what I start. I have a pattern of. And so all that stuff, all those stories and patterns, everything I found, those are just absolutely not necessary to my present moment life. And I really can create my future from the future instead of dragging this past and putting it in front of me and having my life based on my past. When people believe that who they are is a. An accumulation of past hurts and disappointments and triumphs and all that, and it has nothing to do with that. That's what I found out. So finding that out gave me the freedom to take as much action as I wanted and not believe I wasn't good in action. I don't have much energy. I didn't have to believe any of that anymore. I could be whoever I needed to be at any given moment. And I used to think that's inauthentic. You know, you need to find a personality and stick to it. Otherwise you'll be a phony or you'll be a chameleon. And I realized the most authentic thing was to be who I needed to be, given what I was up to.

So that's great. We can essentially change, transform our personality and things that we don't.

It's fake to begin with, right? And we make it up as a way to get along and not be embarrassed. So we find one that fits. Usually starts to really happen in junior high school and then high school. We sort of borrow from people. And I would go to movies and borrow some of mine from Marlon Brando because he was so cool, nice, nothing affected him. But the problem was, you know, I'd go through the hallway and someone would say, steve, how are you doing? And they couldn't even understand me. So I had to back off that a little bit. And then after a while, I started to borrow part of personalities. And everybody does this. They won't admit it. Some friends of mine that I admire, I want to be like him and a little bit like him, a little bit like my father. So we put all this together as a way to be an individual, because that's the game. So again, we've all agreed to. We're all separate. We'll be individuals. And it's fake to begin with, but that's okay. By fake I mean creative. And creation is beautiful. And so if it's creative to Begin with it can continue continuously be creative for what would serve the person I'm with the most.

And that's like the sign of a true master, right? To be that aware of what is needed in any given situation, in any given game, to really be able to shapeshift.

Well, I believe this is a sign of an average person who has not been contaminated with conditioning and programming and attempts to win the approval of others. So what a true master is, is really just someone who goes back to being an average person as people were set up to be. This is just average. That's where we are when we're not cluttered with something else. That's its natural state.

Right. But we just hold on to our stories. Right.

We add stories where they're not needed and we add beliefs where they're not needed. And pretty soon it becomes pretty hard to dance.

Literally.

Yeah.

Interesting. So for us to. I want to talk a little bit about the people pleasing, because as you were just saying that I could feel I'm a very playful, fun person like that. I have that story about myself and I really like it. But there are moments where I just feel like I need to be serious now or I can't be skipping on the street or just doing whatever playful or things that really give me play. And a lot of that comes from people pleasing. I don't want to look like an idiot. So can you talk about that? People pleasing?

Well, it's not necessarily a bad thing as long as I see it for what it is. There's a lot of survival in it. So I don't necessarily want to be singled out and criticized and attacked and called out. And so I'll get along to go along in many cases. But it's good if I know that I'm doing that and not unconsciously just trying to please everyone. Because if the misperception is I need their love and approval, I just so badly need their approval to be okay, then I'm even without even thinking about it, just doing whatever to please people. And that's where time management, you mentioned Time Warrior. That's where time management becomes impossible because I'm saying yes to everybody and trying not to disappoint anyone who please them. And I have clients who their children come in and their children have 24. 7 access to them and any little thing they want, they want to, and they think it's being there for my child, but really it's just surrendering all judgment, boundaries, discipline, and it's giving up. So people pleasing is okay if I'M doing it consciously and it serves a higher purpose. But if I'm doing it automatically or habitually, then it leads me to where I never have much of a life of my own.

And how do we know? Is there like a feeling, tone or something that we know that we're people pleasing? Because sometimes it just, like, creeps in there, right? It's like, subtle.

It can. And it is so common, you know, we're programmed to do it. So if you're taught a language growing up, you're going to think and speak in that language until you learn another one. And so we're programmed to people, please. When we're children, we're told, you are so good today. You were good in the grocery store. You were so good at grandma's house. And what good means wasn't. You were brave and creative. It means you didn't embarrass mother, you didn't embarrass father. That's what being good means. So we learn from an early age that that's the skill I need to learn, is to make sure everybody's okay with me. I don't embarrass anybody. I don't cross anybody. The problem is, when you go into adulthood, if that's all you know how to do, it starts to feel really creepy. Like this doesn't feel like you're great lights. And so somehow that programming needs to be dropped away. There's so many ways to do it. But for a person to be happy, that has to go away. That insane desire to please. Now, I had a mentor. His name is Lyndon Duke. And he said, what I want to teach my people to do is to say no. And he would actually have him say the word no a certain amount of times every day, just because a lot of people can't even say the word without feeling bad. He'd say, I want you to say your nose there. You gotta say it 200 times. And it's just say it in the shower. Say it when you're walking down the street. So that when someone says, hey, can you come to the picnic? We're having a picnic. And you actually wanted time with your daughter, you can say no. But for most people, they can't. They just. They wanted to be with their daughter, but they didn't want to hurt the neighbor's feelings. So they said yes.

Yeah. And I love that you have Brian practicing that right now, which both of us are practicing it, because it's so huge to say no. I definitely wanted people, please. I don't want to make anybody feel bad. And. And I've compromised myself for years to say, oh, of course I'll go to the party. Which every part of me did not want to go to the party. So it's like, so I love this and I love this in your work that we say no so that we can say yes to the pleasure and yes to our higher self. But yeah, it's uncomfortable. It is uncomfortable for me to say no and to say no. I don't want to see you to.

And not because you're really hurting people, but because you've been so conditioned to say yes to everything. Now what really helped me was to not see no as negative. And so I began to see it as the ultimate in creativity. And that is, for example, like Michelangelo when he saw a big slab of marble, his creativity was to take away, carve away the marble until he got the beautiful statue. In our best lives come when we have a not to do list. Not a to do list. But I won't do this, I won't do that. And that's a creative taking away of all the distractions and the trivial stuff that gets in the way of living my true life.

So what are some of the distractions that you find that people, I mean, people probably know they're distractions. But I'd be curious. You work with so many people. What are some of our common distractions that we might not be aware of?

Well, one is giving too many people too much instant access to me. Yeah. So let's say I'm working on something important to me, and then my phone makes a little noise that tells me I have a text. And so I look and before I look at the text, and all of a sudden my focused, relaxed mind becomes a revved up, interrupted, stressed mind. And now I'm returning to my work and I don't have the same relaxed focus on my work as I did before I got this text. Now imagine that happening all day long. One of the forms of torture in the old days in military prisons was to continually interrupt and distract and change the focus of the person. And it's torture. Literally torture. Wow. Yeah. We do it so anybody can email me, there's a beat, and any child can walk in at any moment. I want them. I've had clients. I had a client who was the CEO and he thought he absolutely had to have an open door policy or else he was being not empathetic and not a good leader. But he was being interrupted 50 times a day and he wasn't doing quality work. And his communications were very low quality, edgy communications with everybody. He had no idea that he could say no to that. And if he could have certain times of the day where no one had access to him and that, that was fine. Once people understood that it was for the good of the company, they were fine with it.

Yeah, that's so important. It's so freeing too, you know, because I definitely have felt, and I know other people do, like they feel bad saying no. And as you were talking about the boundaries and I, as a new parent, totally can see the boundary issue. Like you're just always on call and there's, you know, you never have one creative time or creative thought because you're always in reactive. And I love that in your books, talking about the reactive versus creative. Can you talk a little bit about that?

Yeah. I mean, really, the brain, my brain, when it drops to a lower level of functioning, starts reacting to everything. It reacts to what's on the radio and it gets upset about current affairs and it reacts to traffic and it reacts to an email that is. That's hurtful and reacts on it. Now if I relax and I come up to a higher state of mind, then I can start creating. Really Biologically, this occurs when I'm using my whole brain and now I'm creating instead of reacting. And when I'm creating, the difference is, if I'm in a high state of mind and I get an angry email from my client, I can ask myself, given what he has written, what would I like to create? What kind of response would I like to create? What kind of relationship do I want to create with this person and what kind of response would create that relationship? Now that's a very creative set of questions. When I'm in reactive mindset, I get the nasty email and I say, well, I could. He's wrong and I can prove him wrong and I'm going to set him straight and I'm justified in doing so. And I said something nasty. And I think, oh, that's insane. That'll teach him. That's the singer. He'll know now not to send me that kind of email. And then I'm amazed that he was really hurt by that. And I can't believe he was hurt by that. My logic was perfect. And so it gets worse and worse and worse. That comes from reacting.

And we waste so much time, don't we? Yeah, I mean, just in bs.

Well, that would have to be compared to somebody else to be true.

Yeah, yeah, for sure. But okay, so I'll say I can wait somewhere to die.

There you go. We're getting somewhere, so stop it.

Yes. So what do we do when we are in the reactive, you know, we're. Because my whole practice right now is to not compare and not criticize and just not gossip and just not get in other people's business. Like, whatever they're doing is what they're doing. I don't need to police it. I don't, you know, whether what my son's doing, what my husband's doing, what anyone's doing, it doesn't matter. So how do we. When we get, let's say I get into it, a story and I'm being reactive. What are your. Do you have some ways that we can get out of it?

Well, if you can see it, you're already out of it. So whoever it is in you that sees it like this is reactive thinking. This is how when I think that way, I feel this way. When I think this shouldn't be happening, even though it is, then I get a bad feeling because that thought is not in harmony with reality. And so I'm getting a bad feeling. And if I can just take a breath and notice, then I'm no longer it. I don't identify with it anymore, and the feeling's not so serious anymore. And I don't have to act like I'm a feeling. What happens is when I get trapped in the feeling, I think I need to fix the thing outside of me that I believe caused the feeling. What I can't see is that it was my own thinking that caused the feeling. And no matter what I do to my husband, my son, or anybody outside of me, my wife, I'm still feeling down. Even when I fix the thing outside of me, I get confused by that. But because what I'm not seeing is it's my own thinking that's having me feel this way. And if I can see that, then I don't have to do anything to fix it. And that's the mistake a lot of people in the personal development field make is they want to make bad feelings and bad thinking. They want to make that wrong. They want to fix it and correct it and perfect themselves somehow. And if they would just let it return to its natural state. And if you watch little Emerson walking around, there's a natural state of love, of life, happiness, curiosity. He didn't have to learn that or didn't have to earn that by taking some seminars on how to get there. That's just there. And that's just there for all of us, but we've had so many stories through it that it feels hard to access when it's not.

So on the fixing, because I definitely can be a fixer, and I also feel like the fixer has helped me, you know, like part of that fixing, part of me that sees a problem. It's helped me grow and evolve and just become a better human being. So can you talk about. Yeah, just maybe share a little bit more on the fixing?

Yeah. You know, and if it's helped you, it's helped you, and that's great. So whatever helps, you keep doing it. Right. And there's a lot of fixing that can help me. I might have a disorganized system for something and I fix that and it helps. Or I might have something where I'm habitually seeing a person in a certain way and I go take a long walk and I finally find a place for compassion for that person. So in a way, I've fixed it. Okay. So that form of fixing is fine.

It's good.

And I don't have to fix everything.

Right.

Just find what I do.

And then the energy too, as you're just sharing that. It's important to have the energy because sometimes I fix it from I'm deficient. Like, I need to fix it. Like, if I don't fix it, then I'm not okay. But then when I really love fixing was when it feels like it's a natural expression of my divine essence. Like, it's like, oh, this is the next version of myself. So that I like that. What you're just saying it made me realize the two different times that I'm trying to fix. When I feel like I need to, I'm inadequate.

I love what you've identified as so important. So hard for me to see if I'm fixing something from a high place, from a place of pleasure and fun and exuberance, like, wow, what if I fix this? That would be so placed to not have this drag me down that then the process of fixing is graceful and elegant and creative and efficient. But if I'm fixing from a low place, like, I hate it that I do this. This is so wrong. This is a real problem of mine. The problem is my attempt to fix it is low quality thinking. And it's deepens the rut and I get frustrated and I think, I'll never fix this. Well, not from that place you won't. That's why coaches are so effective. Because when a client comes to the coach, the client has some frustrating challenge. But the Coach doesn't have that challenge. So the coach is like, oh, good, I'm up. Clients with this challenge. I love helping them with this. So the coach now actually goes, is feeling better because of the client's challenge than he did before hearing about the challenge. So the coach is helping from a really high place, whereas the client, trying to fix his own problem, keeps going lower. Like, I shouldn't have this. This is ruining my life way. Why do I do this? Why didn't my mother teach me how not to do this? And it just gets lower and lower. And you can't fix things from that place. It just deepens the rut of that habit.

So we need to learn how to.

I love that.

And the coaches and I had that experience with coaching, and I know that Brian's had that experience with you of just really? Because even when you're talking like Brian and I talking, your spouse or your friend, if they're somehow affected by that, it's more challenging than just random, you know, your coach who's like, I don't have that issue, so I have zero emotional trigger to it. So I love that of being. Having people around you that can really lift you up to the creative mindset.

And you also, if you don't have a coach, you. There is an inner counselor in you that if you could get relaxed enough, it will speak to you. It will show you where. And I used to have a fancy. I was a single father with full custody of four children. And I had women in seminar who didn't know that I raised my four kids. And they would say, you don't know what it's like to be a mother. I would say, actually, I do. In fact, my children would often call me a mother. So this is something very intimate with. And so I raised these kids for 12 years. And I used to have this fantasy. In fact, it was a product, an entrepreneurial product that I dreamed of. And it was a Valium mister. You know, in Arizona, we have misters and this mist. I thought, what if this house had misters that I could throw a switch and this Valium mist would come over these kids and they would just relax. But really. So I realized I could never get away with using such a garment. And my children learned early to threaten to call child protective services anytime I tried to impose any discipline on them. So I knew I couldn't get away with actually putting this in. But it had me realize something, a metaphor, that there's really that kind of thing inside us. A kind of. If you don't like the drug reference, just a kind of relaxation. Mr. That if I get peaceful enough, I would find solutions to my problems. But it feels like I need to think faster and think harder and work harder at it just to solve and fix this thing.

Right. Do you feel. Because I know you're kind of an expert. Well, you are an expert on addictions. And do you feel like this is an addiction?

Yeah, it's like, you know, it used to be. I know you're a former drunk, but now it's an expert on addiction. Yes. I'm not. I'm an expert. But she is mastering that thing.

That's really funny, Steve.

Miraculous master of understanding addiction. And so I'm also a unlicensed bankruptcy attorney. So. Yeah. Addiction. What would you question on addiction?

No, I just. As you were just saying that I feel like we have an addiction to kind of ruminating and like being in that stuck place. Like it's. It's a powerful addiction.

Yeah, you're right. Yes.

So I feel like as you're just talking about it, we need to take it as serious as an addiction, like to not allow ourselves to do that. Right.

Yeah. Give it some respect because it's got a lot of power. So in recovery from addiction, one of the phrases they use in the spiritual programs is cunning, baffling, and powerful. So that addiction to that substance is coming. Baffling and powerful. So you don't want to play with it, you don't want to tempt it. You don't want to say, well, maybe one drink something. And the same is true with other addictions. They have a lot of power. I want to give them a lot of respect and give them a lot of step back and do them a lot of space and notice what they can do to me if I let them sweep me away.

Yep. And it goes back to what you're saying too, that having a not to do list, so having things in our life that we know just are not serving us.

Yeah. The beautiful thing is if you know ahead of time that I'm not going to do this because it's on my not to do this, then when someone asks you, you're already ready. You don't have to think of some wild justification. And you know, my child is receiving a lung transplant that afternoon, making stuff up. You can actually just say, you know what? That's not something I do. And I'm so glad you asked me. And you've got something that's very graceful and honoring of the person and you're ready. So part of the not to do list is really being ready. So if I'm not going to let my kids invade my space when I'm working, I want to talk to them. Not when I'm upset by it because they won't hear it, they'll just hear the upset. I want to talk when we're both in good moods. And I can really explain ahead of time why that no is going to occur.

That's so powerful. And just as you're saying that, it sounds like a simple idea, but this literally can transform our lives to be able to have that strong no so that we can really say yes to life.

Yeah. And you know what I love about your work is the budget principle. And you can have these notes be a very pleasant conversation. They don't have to be hurting people's feelings and me trying to justify myself. And that's actually the best way to have it is when we're both in good moods and we can talk from a good sense and the conversation can be pleasant.

That's great. And I love just a quote flashed from one of your books that I think it was on parenting. For us to be like the best parent maybe that goes into relationship or partner is to have our life work so that we can. If our life works, then we're in an ability, we're in a place to actually have these conversations. Right.

It's the best gift you can give your child is the example of your life work. We don't think that. We think the best gift is to become a servant to my child and to just cave to everything my child wants and run around and drive them everywhere and do everything and really hope they're deeply grateful and hope that they see that I am sacrificing myself for them. But they don't see that. They see a pathetic figure.

Yeah.

And if you could really ask them, they would say, I don't want you to sacrifice yourself. I don't want that. I want you to be happy. Because the self sacrificing you is not fun to be around.

This is true. I have been learning this lesson. I've been a mother, a mother for nine months and I'm like, wow. You can see as you know, you've had the experience of parenting four children. But yeah, it's. I'm not happy. And we had a period of time with Brian and I where early on where I just was totally sacrificing and there's like a level of a newborn and it's a new child. And then I just realized I was a little irritable and I was waking up crabby. And it was a disservice to Emerson and it was a disservice to Brian. So then I created some structures so that I could stay plugged in. Because like you said, nobody wants to be around somebody who's sacrificing and crabby.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And at that young an age, of course, there's a lot you have to do for them. You can't just say, make your own bottle, Emerson. You can't do that yet. But at the same time, I hear you. Emerson would rather be around happy mom than stressed out mom. That's a great gift you can give him. It's your happiness.

And I think that's a great idea for all of us too. Just on the pleasure topic, to really enjoy our lives. That. That is the biggest gift to give.

Yeah, it really is. It sounds weird. It sounds self serving and narcissistic and it sounds. We're taught the opposite, by the way, don't be selfish, take care of others. But really you count as a person, count as a person to serve and take care of. And it has to come first because I can exercise with a class of. There was a public speaking class that I was teaching and I asked every student to give a three minute talk on the person who influenced you the most growing up that you admired the most in your immediate life. I was really surprised at how many people named one of their grandparents instead of their parents. And one of the reasons why was they were always so upbeat, they were always so positive, they were always so supportive and my parents. And they didn't have that same experience as their parents. And another thing was how when it was one of their parents, it was never because of what their parents. It was because of the example, the parents. My mom was such an example to him. She, at a later age she took dance lessons. And I remember as a little girl just being thrilled with that. And it was never what my mother taught me or all this stuff. It was the example that really made a difference for people.

Right. So it's in like the kind of who we're being as we're parenting and living our life rather than we can run around and do all these great things for our children. But if we're stressed out, that's not gonna work.

Yeah.

Yeah. I've had to learn that lesson many times and I imagine we will be a continual process.

Yeah, you'll have fun.

So then on the. I'm curious, I'm very curious about this Boundaries. I think this is so important for so many of us. What about our to do list? You know we have. I know everybody watching this is like I have so many things that need to get done that I don't have time to do the important stuff, let alone whether that's creating or whether that's pleasure or things that really fill us up. So what do we do about. I know it's a time management question, but I'm just curious on how we navigate that.

One thing I want to realize is I don't need to do anything. And I tell myself these stressful truths and I've got so much I have to do today. I don't have to do anything today and neither do you. And if you heard your husband was in the hospital or something happened, you'd be perfectly alright dropping everything on your computer and being there at his bedside for two days. And you'd make whatever calls. Handle this for me. So you don't have to do anything but to tell yourself over and over every day. There's so much I need to do today. That's like I'm depressing myself. That's like the cases in prisons of self mutilation. Whereas prisoners are mutilating their own bodies just in some wild attempt to steal something. So I'm depressing myself in some backward attempt to really dramatize the martyrdom and the self sacrifice. I think I'm having to live for others. If I dramatize enough, it becomes like a huge cry for help. Someone is going to come along and rescue me for this. It's in the culture. When I was growing up, little girls would watch Snow White. Someday my friends will come and they were just talk. If you ever get in a really big gym, your only hope is for a prince to count. And to get there, you are. And this societal conditioning that we have to be in distress before someone will say and this to do list is one we've created. We made it up. So that's step one. I don't have to do anything today. I want to realize that now. Of course there could be consequences to that, but I want to start there and then start choosing what do I really want to do. What's most important, what's something someone else could do. If my best friend were living this life, what would I tell him? What would I tell him to do? Stop doing this. Why do you have to do that? You don't have to go to every softball game. You could go to every other game and it would have the same effect for your child being off the, oh, if I missed even one game, she'd be broken hearted. That's a story I add to my life to make it more dramatic and not necessary.

But then even if I was just thinking because my parents went to all my games and if they didn't go to a game, I was upset. But as you were saying that I think it's important for me and I think for all of us to be comfortable with people being upset. Like we don't always get everything that we want. Now, me being upset was probably a good thing for me to learn how to deal with, right?

And if I were coaching your parents at the time and they said we missed the game and Alexander was upset, I would say you need to miss more games, Then that's an easy solution to that. You need to miss more games. And then when you do go to a game, she'll be delighted.

It's very cool. I love that too. And the choice that you're saying like that we have a choice every day. What we do, what we don't. We have that powerful choice.

Everybody has free will, but we, we.

Sometimes think we don't, right?

We talk, we pretend we don't because the victim position. I'm a victim. I have to go to work. Now, notice children know we're lying. We don't know we're lying. But a little child will overhear me say to her mother a week earlier that, you're sick today. I'm going to stay home with you and I'm going to look after the kids. And then the mother said to me, no, you have to go to work. I'll be okay. And then I said to the mother, I don't have to go to work. I've got a lot of sick days built up. I've worked extra for them. I don't have to go to work. And then the child hears me say this. Now, a week later, the child says, daddy, will you stay home and play with me today? And I say, I have to go to work. The child knows that I don't have to go to work. I'm lying to the child. The child knows I'm not telling her the truth. And I'm lying to myself because I've talked myself into thinking I have to go to work and I don't have to go to work. So I might as well say, you know what, I'm going to go to work. Instead of playing with when I go to work, they give me the money that has me able to pay for this house that we get to live in. I want you to have a house. And I want to go to work today, and we'll play when I get home. I want you to play with me now. I know you do. Thank you for that. I love it that you like to play with me. Bye. Bye.

What you just demonstrated takes, like, as you said, such a high level of being in that whole brain. Right. You can't be in reactive and have that conversation.

You're right. Because when I'm reactive, I'm trying to take care of the child's feelings. I'll do anything to make her feel better. Oh, I'm sorry, sweetheart. I have to go to work. I wish I did.

And.

And that's ridiculous.

Yeah.

Tell the child the truth.

Awesome. That's so great. I get, like, nervous, just, you know, really telling the truth, like, saying, no, creating boundaries. And I've come a long way, but this is very inspiring for me personally. Just like.

But have all your boundaries be creative and positive. You don't have to be negative to keep the tigers away. So all works of art are a matter of boundaries. So if I have a canvas and whatever I'm putting on the canvas, those are beautiful boundaries. So it's not a negative thing.

Yep. Awesome. So I have one more question for you on. So we went through the to do list, the not to do list. What about this? And I'm sure it's going to be the same thing, but this story that a lot of us have in this way of being that we're always in a hurry to get things done. Like, you know, I've got to hurry here. I've got to hurry here. I've got to rush. I've got to force. Like, there's this always moving forward, like in the future. Can you just share a little bit on that?

Yeah. The people that I work with and in my own life, I just find that makes me less efficient. And if what I really want is effectiveness and efficiency, then I want to be willing to practice slowing down, slow down. And if I'm rushing to do something, I want to look for a way to slow that down. And just as an experiment, just testing. So I know what it's like to rush, rush, rush, and always be trying to get into my own future. Trying to get into the future. And now I. Because that's just what we're set up to do. That's the mind when it's all caught up in its own thinking. Now I want to practice. If I'm doing the dishes, I Can get these dishes down. And then I break one and somebody. Then the next night at dinner, somebody holds up a plate like, Alexandra, did you wash these? Oh, my God, I'm so embarrassed while I wash it again. And so I want to practice. I'm doing the dishes. I want to have slowly. I can do these dishes.

Now.

I used to do this in the army, when I was in the army, and we had put us on what they called kp, which was. I got a lot of piano stuff when I was in the army because of my magnificence in life. And so I experimented with how slowly I could watch a ditch. It was kind of the Zen thing, but the sergeants didn't like that. They had a lot of reaction to that. But you can do it in your own house. And it's an amazing experiment. How slowly could I do these things and just see what happens? And a lot of times, amazingly, if you were to put a clock on it, you finished them in the exact same amount of time, and they were much cleaner, and it was a much more fun experience for you.

I love that. And it feels so, like, counterintuitive.

Yeah, right. You're like, that's why you need to experiment with it in practice, because it's not what you normally do.

Yep. Yeah. Back to what you're saying, too, as we're doing it, to let go of our stories and just have it be an experiment again to see what happens.

Yeah.

I love it. Very cool. How slowly can I do this? I've never experimented with that question ever. That is an awesome question.

It's amazing how it brings you back to the. To the actual speed of life, to now where I'm back in harmony of life instead of racing out ahead of life. You know, some singers, like Willie Nelson will. Will often get out ahead of the rhythm of his own song. He thinks he's being a jazz singer or something, but it doesn't. It just sounds awful. And he's out ahead of himself, and most of us are way out ahead of the normal rhythm of life. We're trying to get into our own future. We think somehow the future has to be better than how I feel right now. If I can finish these dishes, I know I'll feel better.

Hmm. Fascinating. So being present and enjoying the present moment. Very cool. Fantastic. Well, I have one other question. The Mighty Mouse in the back is that Mighty Mouse?

Wow. I never noticed that.

That looks like a fun thing. Can you tell us what the Mighty Mouse represents? You, if you want to.

So as a child Growing up, Mighty Mouse was like, I grew up really feeling like I had no power at all. I kind of got the message that I was fearful, I was coward. I didn't and all that. And so. And I watched these Mighty Mouse cartoons when I was a little boy, real little boy. And it was just like, oh, if I could be Mighty Mask. And it was in one of my books, I think, fearless. And so Kathy, my wife, made this for me as kind of a, you know, just kind of attribute to that part of the book. And so now I look at that and it's. It. It gives me a good one theme.

That's sweet. That's awesome. Go, Kathy.

Yeah.

Very cool. Well, thank you so much. Could you also share where people can learn more about you and your work and buy your books and check out your goodness?

Well, why would they want to do that?

Because you're awesome, of course.

No, they've got. They can just keep watching this. I mean, they can go to stevechandler.com and that's all my stuff is there, and a lot of stuff I give away is there. If they want to. I have no idea why anyone would ever want to do that, but if they want to, they could go there.

Because they would love to be a time warrior, a wealth warrior. It's very cool. It's amazing. It's amazing wisdom. It's practical, but it's so. Yeah. Yeah, it's awesome.

So thank you.

Thank you so much for sharing all of your wisdom today. It was so great to chat with you.

My. My pleasure.

We hope you enjoyed this episode of Mama Goddess. Sending you lots of love and blessings. If you'd like to connect more, go to mamagoddess.com until next time, keep rocking it and have an awesome day.