Ep. 170- Creating Your Personal Rulebook with Christopher Michael

This is the You Winning Life Podcast, your number one source for mastering a positive existence. Each episode, we'll be interviewing exceptional people, giving you empowering insights, and guiding you to extraordinary outcomes. Learn from specialists in the worlds of integrative and natural wellness, spirituality, psychology, and entrepreneurship so you too can be winning life. Now here's your host, licensed marriage and family therapist, certified neuro-emotional technique practitioner, trainer and certified entrepreneur coach Jason Wasser.

All right, y'all, welcome back. Another wonderful, exciting deep dive into how our thoughts, our beliefs, our assumptions limit us from all the things that we want to truly allow ourselves to get, if we actually believe that we're allowing us to get, if we believe that we can allow ourselves to get there. And, you know, I'm really looking forward, as Christopher and I have been talking pregame about all wonderful stuff and the deep stuff already that I know that what you're gonna get ahead of you as you're listening to this is gonna be quite powerful. So Christopher, thank you so much for spending some time.

Yeah, you're welcome. Thank you. Thank you so much for having me. Yeah, that pregame was fun.

That's the game plan. And it's always funny, do I debate just recording the pregame and not telling anybody that it's like, not you, but the people, just let them get insight into that and see how natural a lot of these interviews get to be. When you find like-minded people to spend time with. And I know you and I, just based on what I've read about you already and learned about you, is we talk the same game, which is already exciting. So I'm looking forward to that. So right off the bat, let's just start with letting people know your background, what you've been doing and how that kind of facilitated a transition into what you're doing now. Because you organically come from a world where people are just opening up and talking to you the second they sit down with you. So let's— so yeah, so let's, let's start there.

Yeah.

Well, yeah, thank you. So yeah, I've been doing— so I guess the biggest thing on the table is I've been doing hair for the last 22 years and I love it. I've always loved being— I've always been a creative person. So people come to me and they just want like a complete overhaul or they just want like, you know, Jennifer Aniston, girl next door, classic beauty. And that's really where my jam is. I want I want your hair to be you, right? Like, there's a saying, like, if your hair isn't becoming to you, you should be coming to me. And I love that saying. But so fast forward many, many years, right? I went through that whole arc of getting to know people and learning how to be a chameleon with everybody that sits in your chair because they just tell you everything. And how do you be with things that people who may disagree with you bring up in your chair. And I found that I had a natural gift for that because I'm just naturally curious. So when the pandemic hit and the salons closed down, I found myself kind of like I needed the rest. I just needed the rest. But once I had my rest, the thing that I missed was not hair. The thing that I missed was people. So when I was coming out of that restful state, I sent a message to my clients and said, look, you don't have to be sitting in my chair for us to connect and have a meaningful conversation. We could still do that. I I didn't go anywhere. I'm locked in just like you are. And we have this amazing technology. We can still connect. And then that sort of snowballed into like, oh, yeah, this is really what I love. So how can I have more conversations with people that isn't around vanity, around an external sort of perception of who we are? How can I have these conversations that really get to the core of who we think we are and help people along that path? Because that's, I think, what we're all dealing with, right? Like, who am I? What is my purpose? Why am I here? What's the meaning life, all this stuff. And so I became certified as a coach, and now I work with people trying to help them break down those social conditioning rules that we inherit, like you should or shouldn't do this, or you have to be this way, or you can't be this way. And personally, like, growing up, I'm gay, I identify as gay, and I've watched the progression of my community go from LGBT to LGBTQ to LGBTQ+, LGBTQ+, to IA. Like, and now I'm— now I'm 43 years old wondering like, how many, how many letters of this acronym do we need before we actually understand who we are? And once we choose a letter of that acronym, does that mean now we're locked into that identity or do we get to be flexible? Or is the letter really not who we are? Just now we're looking for a place to fit in because ultimately people feel like they don't belong anywhere. Yeah.

That's so powerful because even identifiably as a therapist where I remember in graduate school when we went to our internship on campus, and I remember that we had the clinic. And that was like the prestige if you do the in-house student clinic on campus. And I remember that when they said, "If you go for the interview with the professor, don't say you do eclectic models." Right, I know, like, in different, like, helping, right, there's different, like, styles, right? Even the hairstyle, right? There's different, you know, styles of training. And, um, and they said, do whatever you do, don't say that you do eclectic. Pick a model, even if you're not great at it. Show up and say, this is what I'm going to do. And really, at the end of the day, it's— it was like, that was such an interesting paradigm of even if you don't know how to do it great, you still gotta pick something. Now, their intentionality wasn't you have to be this, but the opposite was we don't want you to be a jack of ' trades master of none' either because there is usefulness with at least starting to start somewhere, with identifying somewhere. But I love hearing what you're saying about the duality of that. And I wonder, because I've seen this at— I'm a little bit older than you, I'm 45 now— that where I started and where I wanted to define myself as a professional has now evolved and is without outside the boundaries of what I originally started off at when I came into this field to say, okay, now this is how this is limiting me. These are how these trainings are limiting me. This is how my approaches are limiting me. As you and I were talking about, you know, some stuff that I would jokingly say with clients, right? So, um, so I'm wondering, like, as people are looking at it, like, when you are even doing that for yourself in that process, where was that— I mean, besides the fact that it was right the pandemic and there was isolation, Underneath it all, people are looking to connect. Yeah, right. And yet at the meantime, that environment that you were coming from of having to be isolated in a world around us that was isolating us or making up people different another— you were searching for the connection. And it sounds like the people you were working with, you highlighted that with that. No, you're really looking for something else. How did you, how did you start noticing that one for yourself? That like, I started here But really, when you're obviously great at what you do and then saying, well, maybe that's not enough anymore. Maybe that limitation is not enough for me anymore.

Well, yes, many— that was probably 8 years ago, 8, 9 years ago. I started to wonder if this is all that there was for me. Am I going to retire as a hairstylist? How long can I stand behind a chair on my feet all day with my arms up and all this stress in my neck that I'm carrying and laughing with clients? Fun and all, but the physical toll it takes on my body. So I was already looking at, can I see myself doing hair when I'm 55, 60 years old? And what kind of hair would I do? Am I going to be that irrelevant hairstylist that's like, you got to have a perm? Although I don't do perms. But I started like, something wasn't working in my relationship. And so like most people, I set out on a course to fix it. And so I started, like, leaning into personal development and learning a lot about myself. But I realized that the first 3 years of doing that, I was learning about mechanisms that I could use to fix him, not realizing that the issue in my relationship, although he contributes as well, is the fact that I'm still showing up as the me that I thought I should be. Given the upbringing that I had. Right. And so that just naturally progressioned into trying to chip away at all the stuff that wasn't really me. And I heard this really great— and it was a razor cutting class and it wasn't even in the realm of personal development, but he told us a story about how, like the angel in the marble. Are you familiar with it? Yeah. That you just stare into the piece of marble and you chisel and you chisel until you set the angel free. I got it on a whole different level that we all have social rules and expectations that are placed on us that kind of automatically become who we are, even though they're not who we are. And we do that as a function of like operating within a society of people that are different than we are. And then over time, that mechanism becomes a cage in which your self-expression becomes silenced. And so I really was looking for a way to— how do I show up and how do I shift something for me that would have my relationship occur to me differently? What am I bringing into this that is contributing to the situation and how do I understand it? What beliefs do I have about it and what choices am I making that contribute to this? So there was a resistance that I had. That I needed to let go of. And people are like, just let it go, let it go. And I found more so than letting it go, once I learned to embrace these are the parts of who I am, I didn't have to let it go because then it just became, this is who I am. This is how I process emotions. And I get to now be responsible for that. And when I started to become responsible for the way that I showed up with other people, everything started to change.

It's so— it's literally like you were sitting in my last session with my client an hour ago, where the dynamic was the duality around that emotional reality, where on one side, in that moment of wherever we're at, we're making the best decision we can with the data that informed us to get us here where we are right now. And on the other side of the coin is the full ownership and accountability that if it does work out, great. And if it doesn't work out, we still have to take that full ownership of accountability of what got us there for it to also not work out. So the duality is really like, it's such a— it's— and it has to be a loving nuance. It can't be, I can't believe you're— I'm such an idiot, I can't believe I did that. It's like, no, no, no, with what you knew and everything that you allowed up to that point, that was of course the best decision we can make in that moment. And if it doesn't work out to your advantage, how do you take full accountability of allowing that to be the data set and the point where you made that decision so you can move forward and do something differently from there if it's not getting you closer to the desired outcome? And I think that that dance of, of really, it's that razor-thin difference. And it has to come from my perspective with not beating yourself up, but also at the same time, again, like you— we've been talking about, we're going to get more into that full ownership and accountability, but lovingly and gently and compassionately. And I think that's one of the biggest difficulties. I'm sure you've had it. Like, I'm sure that there's been a— like, back in the day when you were, when you were still working and when you're still doing hair, right? But if it's still the idea of like, that haircut came out good, and Client is really happy with it, but I could have done better.

Yes.

Right. And even though they might be happy about it and— but they don't even know how much better you could have done. Or you're like, oh my God, I screwed up this little 1 millimeter, right? It could be that, like, small— this one little micro millimeter is off and I see it because it's my vantage point and they'll never see it and they'll grow out in a week. But for that week, I'm going to be thinking about how I screwed that up and therefore I screwed up everything. And hopefully, right?

I'm terrible.

That's it. I should just quit. Right? And we have that. So what was that? Yeah. What's that nuance for you where you start? What's that tool or that trick that you've learned to lean into that to find that recalibration for yourself and how you're helping that with others?

Oh, that's a really intense question. I'll acknowledge that I feel a little bit pressured like there's this one thing that happened.

Yeah. Well, it's not, right? It's not a one sudden transformation.

In the world of duality, right? I was giving even the name of your podcast, I was giving it a lot of thought coming into this conversation about like you winning life. What does winning mean? And we have this duality, the understanding of the opposite of winning is losing. Yeah, but what if it wasn't losing? What if the opposite of winning was learning? What if you either fucking crushed it, or you learned something from it so that you can crush it next time. So you didn't really lose. And so I think just naturally, I'm always devil's advocate, silver lining, whatever you want to call it, but I'm always looking for, like, there's another way to see this. And so the practice of reframing is really powerful. So when I started to understand that the way that we use language actually creates the world as we experience it and the way not just like how we describe what it looks like, but how we describe how we interact with it. Those words that we choose to describe the world out there are clues to your inner world, right? Like, is the world happening to you or is it happening for you? Is it co-created?

Right.

Co-created. Yeah. And then I bump up against people all the time who are like, I could never create a world like that. And I'm like, but you don't understand that you have been creating your world this entire time. It's like the artist never knew he was an artist, right? But yeah, all the while creating art along the way. So when people say something to me that sounds particularly disempowering, I want to immediately reframe it so that we can think about— we can set our mind in that context, right? We want a positive context to move this conversation forward. But if if the way that you're talking about your circumstance is that you're disempowered and the world is out there somewhere and that you have no say in the matter, then we can't move forward. I could tell you what to do, but then you're going to be doing it in that mindset. So I need to shift you out of that to this. And when I started to hear how I was referring to things, right? I want to make more money implies that I'm not making enough money. Or I want my life to be better implies that my life is not that great. Right? And so instead of speaking in relational terms, I started speaking in creative terms. And I want my relationship to be loving, deep, accepting, trusting. And then that's creative, that's generative language. So that's when it started to really open up for me that I had constantly been relating to my environment based on the data set that I had inherited from the people who raised me. And not to say that they did that to me, right?

They did the best— it's inherited. It's inherited.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And I think that's one— every conversation I have starts off with those assumptions that you're sharing. So those who are, you know, used to hearing me in that context, right, you and I are complete alignment about that. And, and then just going back to the last conversation I had previous to our call was I asked them like, if you were getting exactly what you were saying. If you were to get that positive version out of that, and you would see that you're leaning into it, and that what you've already been practicing— if you realize that you've already been practicing and doing a lot of that, and it continued, and it evolved, and it expanded even more, what would we call that, right? If we were to give that a new nickname, right, just as a reference point, what would we positively call that? And the person said a term and then said, I'm not sure. And I'm like, oh, so we're calling it this positive term, I'm not sure. And they're like, right, that even the definitiveness of wanting it and calling it in and identifying it still came with the I'm not right. Like, they didn't realize that that I'm not sure even came out of their mouth. So my phrasing of that was, oh, so we're calling it happy and joyous life, I'm not sure.

Yeah, with a question mark, right? Right. I want a happy and joyous life.

Yeah. So that's— so I very much— and I want people who are listening to this, that when you're— what Christopher and I are talking about is the languaging and the emo— the languaging expresses your emotional reality. And your emotional reality is that programming, right? It's intergenerational themes and culture and gender and the hierarchy stuff and all the, you know, all those things that trickle down and get trickled onto us. But whether we realize that we're accepting it or that we're not accepting it is part of the nuance, right? So Christopher, what you were alluding to before of this dataset that just keeps moving the train forward, and then we start getting this ill-at-ease feeling that you've been describing, that something doesn't feel right, but we can't yet put our finger on it until it builds up and builds up and builds up and becomes so uncomfortable that we either just keep shoving it down or we finally deal with it. What I want everybody to hear from that is that we are each organically predisposed to our own threshold of when we're gonna make the change around that based on our personal context of all those different arenas in life. And what I hear I think you're offering is how do you get ahead of that? How do you offer looking at it and deciding upfront what you want that to be versus waiting for it to really be uncomfortable for you and then reclaiming all that?

Yeah, yeah. Wouldn't it be great if you could just interrupt it immediately and just say, I recognize where I am— awareness— and I know that the beliefs that I hold right now are contributing to everything that had been going on. So what is it about what I believe that I'm now aware of that is going to inform the next choice that I make?

Right. And I think that level of empowerment is— so I don't like what showed up for me. How did I choose? Not how did I, right? How did I choose to allow that, right? In other words, it's that a little bit of that ownership without beating yourself up. And I think that that's the clarity, right? I know one of the things that you and I both agree really powerfully is the clarity on making those proactive decisions. And like you said, calling it out, putting it in. This is what I want my relationship to be— loving and joyous and connective and all the wonderful verbs. And what are all of the different ways, you know, the way that I love that you phrase that, how, what are all the different ways that can show up? Wouldn't it be great if I can look at— if I'm able to give myself the ability to see that differently, or in a way that I wouldn't expect it to show up?

Yeah, instead of coming at it like it's a problem that needs to be fixed, because it just is what it is. And it's not a problem. I see what it is right now. And I know that it's not what I am choosing right now. What am I actually choosing? And then how can I use language to set my sight to where I'm going rather than tether myself to the way that it's been?

Yeah. So the idea of dropping resistance, you used that phrase a second ago, and I'm a huge fan of that and big Esther Hicks Law of Attraction person. So if that's anywhere in your world as well, right? So the language sounds very familiar to me. So I'm sitting over here for people who are only listening and not seeing, I'm sitting here with a big grin and kind of giggling to myself because when we're talking about dropping resistance, it's no surprise to me that the words that Christopher is using is exactly the words that I've been using specifically today with my earlier sessions before my lunchtime interview with him. Nothing about that surprises me. And that's what we're talking about when we're talking about dropping resistance, so that like-minded things that are proof that you're on the right path with the right people and the right things showing up in your life can consciously and unconsciously be allowed in.

Yeah, you just have to choose it. So I guess the question is, where are you willing to let it in? And where are you resisting allowing it to be part of your life? Because the resistance, the more we lean into resistance, and we see this everywhere in the world, right? You keep sort of pointing to it, but everywhere. I mean, we have— there's this duality is another way to look at it, right? Like it's me or them. Why can't it be me and them? Why does it have to be Republican or Democrat? Why can't it be Republicans and Democrats? Why? Why does that have to be gay or straight? Why can't it be gay and straight? Right. Why can't we? We all do exist. But the conversation sort of presumes that one of us shouldn't at any given point. Right. And so now we have this resistance and the resistance, the more you resist it. And then I'm resisting your resistance. And now we're just like, Yeah, yeah.

I love the example of what do you call a person who's never smoked before?

A person who has never smoked before, I guess, right?

But we have the people who smoke and people who are smokers—

non-smokers.

But think about dominant discourse, because until 20 years ago, the normative socially accepted thing, at least here in America, was You got on a plane in the '50s and '60s, you smoked, you went into the office, right? Mad Men, think of that whole area.

I was just gonna say Mad Men.

Yeah, so, right, so, right, that was the dominant, right, baseline normative. So to not smoke was not normative. So when you— if you didn't do it or you stopped doing it, you became not that. And therefore, when someone is quitting deciding to no longer be a lung polluter, right? They're not going from, you know, from lung polluter to clean air breather, they're going from a smoker to a nonsmoker. So there's still their relationship of their own identity, which I think makes it much more difficult to quit, is because they still have an identity in relationship to the thing that they no longer want to be in their life. And they're always calling up the relationship to that. And the theme about that and the word, right? Smoking is still a constant dominant word, non-smoking, non-smoking, smoker, right? So non-drinker, non-user, non— right? Whatever this possible substance can be, right? I no longer eat sugar. Oh, okay. So what about— right? Oh, no, no, I'm avoiding— right? Like, I'm gluten-free, right? Okay, well, then what's a better— again, like, the positive version of a term for that maybe might be more strategic for that, right? Whatever. We've got to come up with a good, cool terminology for that instead of being gluten-free, dairy-free.

Yeah, pro-meat.

Right, right, right, right, right. Plant-based, right? Whatever it might be, right? As opposed to vegan or vegetarian, I'm plant-based, right? That's the new terminology, right? And even when you were talking about climate change before, climate change was even co-opted from— that term actually came out of the Republican Party, not when it was the idea of global warming, but climate change came up and then the Democratic Party readopted climate change as the bare minimum baseline because it was the least resistance to the people that came up with the term that was against the word that they originally came up for, which was global warming, which is a scientific fact of global warming. But the term climate change became a spin by the non-Democrats to, "No, of course climate's changing. Climate always changes." But then we on the other side of the coin said, "Oh, well, we're gonna use that word now." But then it becomes disadvantageous to the essence of what you're trying to accomplish in the first place. Very interesting when you learn the history, those who are listening, if you learn why, especially now with politics and everything going on, why certain buzzwords are so advantageous and so strategic. Because it takes away from the original goal itself and that becomes a new thing to fight over versus the actual thing that needs to get handled.

Yeah. And we saw it most recently with defund the police, right? The resistance to like, why would we take money away from the police departments? I mean, there's many reasons why we could reallocate funds. And now the conversation has shifted to reallocating funds.

Right, that only these people want to go to college. Right, exactly. Right, it wasn't about, well, what about the mental health stuff and the community engagement and the relationships? Right, because it then goes to extremes. And I think that goes back to what you were saying about the LGBTQIA+ community, where is there going to be another thing or is there going to be any type of new branch in any type of— we need to find our community, we need to find our group of people that we align with that makes us other. And that, you know, I think that allied the idea of we're living in a world of in order for us to be healthy and happy, we need to end the other. Yeah.

Yeah, because none of us really exist in a vacuum, right? I mean, whether we like it or not, we are all on this ball of Earth spinning through space. I don't know how fast it's going, right? But we are here. What are we going to do with it? I mean, are we going to spend our time constantly at odds with each other? And what do we really hope to change? People talk about we're destroying the planet. And I Let's get the planet's been here for way longer than we've been here. We are not destroying the planet. If anything, the planet is reclaiming itself, right? We will be gone. The planet will still be here. It will just balance. What we need is balance. I think that's what we need. We need to find some, somehow, somehow to create more balance socially, politically, globally. But it's never going to exist out there unless it exists in here first. So how then do we find balance within ourselves.

Well, I think what you and I are kind of offering everybody in our worlds, and what we're offering the listeners today, is that we don't have to play by the rules of the construct that's been given to us, right? It's not Democrat or Republican. It's not this or that. It's not vegan or meat eater. It's not, right, these polarity— you're either this or that paradigm. We don't have to willingly agree to play by that. And it sounds like from the beginning of our conversation and now is that that's the level that you want the people that you're partnering with to realize and to play at.

Yeah, to deconstruct all of that which has already been constructed. And if you reconstruct it in the same way, that's great. But knowing that you did it with intention, your own autonomy, like you're making these choices for you, it's perfectly fine if you recreate it, but continuing to operate within this sort of inherited paradigm that might not work for you is kind of mad. It seems like madness to me, right? And you were talking about it with that conversation with your couple before. It's like, is it this model or is it this model or is it this model? Like, can we just like get rid of models altogether and just say, what is it you want? And then not worry about whether it fits here or fits here or fits here. Same thing with our acronym, right? Like, why do I have to identify as as a G? Like, why can't— why does it even matter to you what my identity is? I get that it matters to you, but am I seeking to put it on so that I feel that other people understand me or that I feel like I fit in? Because then it's no longer about the identity. It's about the experience of who I am in a certain location or environment or whatever.

And I think that struggle of duality is, you know, it's even the idea of like what, you know, what type of therapy and what's therapy and what's coaching and what's that, right? And what's personal development and where do I get right? The fact that you can get a life-changing personal development insight from, like you said, from an experience that had nothing— that was more of a clinical, so to speak, right? A practical clinical training in your world that is not about personal development, but you were able to find that metaphor so powerful that it does transform. I, I think that's what I want to challenge people who are listening to do, like, to really figure out, like, where did things become more universal? In particular, that we might be creating the inability to one, receive it, but even more so to even hear it before we even don't receive it, and, and to allow our lives to be transformed. Because, you know, I playfully have so many clients that have different beliefs than me on everything, and yet I can still find a way to say— so my job is not only to create an amazing space, forget even talking about a safe space, but even, even say for people who believe radically differently than how they want the world to be. And yet I can still be like, really love them. And, and I know they really like me. And they're like, and if they, right, were in their normal world, they would never want to talk to someone per se like me that has the certain beliefs that maybe. And yet we can like create like, but I'm here to create more connectivity and more joy in your life and more love in your life and more. And, and if I can't offer you that directly from me to you, then how can we get there, you know, anywhere, right? And how can I even reflect that or model that for you? And I, I hear that with, with all that. And that's, you know, I I guess that leads to this idea of, you know, the personal rule book. And my understanding of just the little bit that I know, as you're going to explain, is, you know, anybody who's listened to this show or has seen me speak in person knows that I'm obsessed with values-based decision making. And I just gave a class to a bunch of young professionals the other day on this where, you know, I said like, if you don't know what you're asking for, kind of like putting that out there right first, how can you know if it aligns or doesn't align versus letting things just show up and happen to you and you're kind of like It's kind of like driving on the road and you're like, "Well, I'll see what turn I'm gonna make in the next mile," and you're reacting to it versus you know exactly where you want to go, you know what roads you don't want to take, you know what roads you do want to take. You do know from this place to this place you do want to take the toll road, and this place you don't. This road you might want to take the side road, but you know as proactively, as discerningly as possible. So that would be a lot of my perspective of where I'm coming from. So when you're saying the idea of a personal rulebook, what do you mean and imply by that?

So personal rules are like when I talk about a personal rule book, what it is, is all the ways that you think you should be or that you have to be. It's the shoulds and the have-tos and the musts and all of those become rules. Like, I eat only gluten-free, right? But that's not necessarily the case, right? Because lettuce doesn't really have gluten in it, so it's not necessarily gluten-free lettuce.

Although some company is going to market it as such.

Totally. It's everywhere, right? Because that's how we think. They know this. And so, like, I should never— like, here's a ridiculous one. I should never wear white after Labor Day.

Labor Day.

Yeah. Right. Ridiculous rule. And yet so many people just will not because it's just how it has always been. Like, what's going to happen? Are you going to catch on fire? Or what difference is it? I love wearing white after Labor Day. I love mixing my browns and my blues and my blacks and all like, like I'm kind of a rebel. I want to be a rebel because it is an interesting conversation starter. But like other rules is I could never do that. I'm like, I'm, I'm always late right now. You've got this rule that you as a person, as an identity, is just always late. But then what happens to that identity if you show up on time? Yeah. Yeah. Or is it even a possibility? It squashes possibility. So I encourage people to listen for those triggers, right? Like, oh, well, you should really call them right now. You should pick up the phone right now and call your mom. Why should I call my mom? You don't know my mom, right? Like, why should I? Why should I have to do anything at all just because it makes you comfortable? And that's really what it gets down to, is if you feel like you should do something and you also feel like there's pressure around the thing that you should be doing, Check in with yourself. Does this feel like positive pressure or does this feel like I cannot be bothered to do that? And in which case, then why are you beating yourself up about not doing it instead of just honoring the fact that that's just not something you want to do? It's okay. It's okay.

Completely agree. And I even talk about that once in a while with my clients. I'm like, listen, so I know we discussed X, Y, and Z a week ago, 2 weeks ago, whatever. I want to make sure that when you go out there and doing it, you're not doing it because consciously or unconsciously you're doing it just to get me off your back or to make happy. And even, right, even us, yeah, help, right? We got to be mindful of that. Because, right, if you're working with people, and that's part of the contract, right, of they have to— right, we want them to meet certain growth thresholds. And but we want to make sure that that unconscious process isn't just— is really fully for them, and about them seeing and having that 100% buy-in, and that they would probably do it even if it wasn't in relationship to us you know, poking and prodding them, them a little bit. And, and yeah, the wording and the expression with the emotional reality and the, the context and, and, and all of these different things of creating our construct, you know, that whole idea of like, you know, social constructionism and, and our reality is based on our beliefs and our beliefs, right, just get re-informed or, or not. That's the only— it's interesting, as a therapist, that's how I was trained. And it's not about the pathology or the diagnosis or any of those things. It's how to— what does that mean to you? And right, where has it helped you? Where has it been? Right, where's this thing that you think is so awful has actually been actually a tool? Or what are the— what are the roles that you're playing, right? By you carrying that label, who are you honoring or dishonoring, right? This— or the way you were talking about the woulda, coulda, shouldas. I remember years ago someone said like, oh, so you're— stop shoulding on yourself, right? So, right, the woulda, coulda, shouldas. Like, oh, you're putting all over yourself again, right?

Yeah.

And it's— if everybody today, like, even if there was so much, right, so much good stuff so far, right? But if you— if everybody listening today, if you do— if you should do this now, so, right, if you allow yourself, if this is something that fits for you and sounds— listen to your woulda, coulda, shouldas. Just catch it. Don't even do anything differently yet. Just notice if that phraseology comes out of your mouth or in your thoughts in your head. I should have done this. I could have done If only I would have. Just hear those, just hear those things and just notice what that's about. And maybe I would even ask you, what other questions could someone ask that they can allow themselves to ask if they're just noticing to recalibrate? What would you offer from that vantage point if you were sitting with someone in that place?

Just noticing the shoulds, noticing how you feel is a way to calibrate as well.. And so somebody— I didn't realize this, but I've always known it because my experience has been that I've been a very emotional person my entire life. And I'm like, oh, I'm an empath. Oh, I'm a highly sensitive person. Or like all these labels, right? Still. And I'm just like, yeah, I am. And I'm like, yeah, I do. I experience emotion kind of intensely, and it's a lot for people to be with. And believe me, I get it. It's a lot for me to be with. Thank you for sitting with it. But also, what now do I do with it? Right? Noticing how I feel, checking in, like, does this feel right to me? Is this mine? Was a big question. Because as somebody— and this is all out of noticing my conditioning, growing up in an Irish Catholic family, in a Catholic religion, where there's a lot of guilt and shame and all the rules rules and the commandments and the this and thou shalt and thou shalt not. Starting to deconstruct that, I realized that really what they were creating was me becoming a people pleaser. And so I struggled with being a people pleaser for so long. And when I wanted to stop being a people pleaser, I realized that it started to piss people off because I was no longer pleasing them. And that was confronting to me. Now I'm a bad person because I'm upsetting them. When in reality they're upset because I'm not conforming to the person they think I should be. Right. And I had to learn to be okay with that. And so taking in their frustration and their anger when I would show up as myself or resist or make a choice for myself, right? Noticing how I felt, I would notice how they felt, and then I would feel that too. And then I was like, I'm a bad person because they felt bad, right?

And I'm responsible for them feeling—

Yeah, yeah, it's not my circus, not my monkeys anymore.

No.

So, where are you willing to take responsibility for what you want to feel? Do I want to feel this way? No. What am I willing to do differently? These are, these are important questions. I think when you look at your rulebook, why am I doing this? Like, interrogate your reality, get really curious about about the way things are and see if there's anything that you're willing to do differently that would change it for you. It doesn't even have to be about other people.

And I think that I would just want to remind, like, I know my predisposition is— what am I— I guess a year and a half ago, height of the— whatever was height of the pandemic, and I'm working from home and, um, I'm sitting at this desk and I go, at the end of the day, I had a great day. It was a Monday. It was definitely— I even knew it was a Monday that just, it was session after session. It was just, it was just a good day. And I was present, and I was, I, I was, I was, you know, really on a good, on an A-game to be able to be, you know, serving powerfully. And I remember going to the bathroom, and this voice, I don't know where it came from, was like, ah, you just ripped everybody off, you should quit, you need to refund them, what the hell are you, all right? And I'm and the old me would be like, let that pattern continue. And I remember, as it was, because I was walking into the bathroom, I remember, look, pulling over and open my shower curtain and looking for where that voice was coming from to externalize it, knowing, right? I even opened up the toilet seat. I'm like, is it coming from the— is it coming from inside the toilet? Let me flush that down. That, like, I literally dramaticized this externalization of that moment of discernment between I know these are me on Jason's negative self-talk. But if I want to practice doing something different, I need to playfully and ridiculously make it this thing outside of me that I can either shower it down, hose it down, or flush it down the toilet because it's not really what I truly believe about what I've done today.

I love that. Yes. So you literally were looking for the shitty voice in the toilet.

Exactly. Exactly. I was literally looking for where that shit was coming from. And, but, right, but, but that took 43 years to get to that place, right? And so I want people to hear that, that this is not going to be an overnight fix. You're going to have overnight— you're going to find things where it really surprises you and you could have that miracle. Absolutely expect and look for a miracle. I always look for the grain of rice difference, right? So it doesn't have to be this massive, massive, massive, huge, everything is different. Like, I'm really happy when I really remind my clients, "No, no, no, no. But what was the grain of rice difference between last week and this week?" Yeah, like The Gap and the Gain. The Gap and the Gain. That's a really great book because we're so used to seeing the big, like, oh well, our marriage isn't better, or, or work isn't better, or my boss isn't treating me any better. Okay, I didn't expect all that. What's the one little tiny thing that you notice differently that may not be yet received or may not be consistently over a longitude be done up, but you're, you know, that you're doing? You put one new step forward that over time will take you, right? Have you heard this? And this is something that like I always love, like where it's like, oh, how did your week go? Oh, it was the same as last, or nothing was— nothing's better. And then you start drilling in, same old shit, same old shit, right? And then you're like, okay, but what about this, this, and this? And you drill down into nuance and like, yeah, this thing, you know, I actually did— I went out with my friends and that was fun. Oh, So it was something better last week? Wow, you know, but, but you had fun when you were out with your friends? Oh yeah, it was a great time. But your week was horrible, right? Do you ever get that? Yeah, like that, like they just don't all the time.

Yeah, yeah, I think because we're conditioned, I think that's just how the brain works, right? Like, I wish more people would understand that, like, we are literally hardwired to survive, right? And so as a function of that, we're constantly scanning our environments for threats. Threats, things that could possibly take us out, kill us at any given time. But we have to survive. But now, like, we've come so far. We're not like that. Sticks and stones, they might break my bones, but they're not gonna kill me. So they're like, I'm— you're not attacking me. A verbal attack is like— that's an expression, right? Like, do you have lacerations? No, you just— it was just a lot of words coming out. Yeah, swear words, for example. How dare It's just 4 letters strung together, and what you make it mean is your experience for you to sort out.

And it's really cool as a lens. I love doing this because I've done some integrative medicine training and seeing things through the emotionality of the 5 elements in Chinese medicine, and that people will show up with a predisposition of a particular set of emotions that range within that set that's connected to that meridian, which is a disposition. Right? So that, so that, like, who do you think you are? That's Galt, right? So that would be along the line, right? The Galt and the stubborn and the holding in your emotions, and I'm just gonna be here and I'm gonna be upset and you better figure it out, right? That's all along the same Wood Meridian in Chinese medicine. So you're going to start to see certain dispositions within those pathlines of how they're predisposed to handling proactively or reactively certain things. And it's a cool lens to be like, oh, okay, so you handled this this way and you handled this this way. You think that those are two totally different experiences, but I see it as the correlation between, no, this is your predispositional lens and all these emotions fit within this little bubble. How do we practice the more expansive version of that? How do we get beyond that? And it's really, really, really an empowering way of seeing our predisposition, our programming. And it's not like none of these things— this is what I want people to hear from what you're saying also. None of these things are death sentences. These are all, like you said, these are all opportunities.

Yeah, they certainly, they certainly are, should you choose to see it as an opportunity.

Yeah.

And that's really like, I never come back to personal responsibility, right? It is enough. Anything is an opportunity if you choose to look for the opportunity in the thing. But if you're conditioned, if you understand that you're conditioned to look for the threat, then you have a choice to make. Do I want I want to keep scanning my environment for threats, or do I want to start noticing which opportunities I want to take advantage of?

Yeah. So then I want to, you know, as we, as we wrap up just with our time and give people the opportunity to just find out where they can connect with you, where they can find out more, where would they go for all of that?

I think Instagram is probably the, the first place you can go to Instagram. You could check out my website too. There's a link on that, my Linktree on Instagram. And of course I'm on LinkedIn, I'm on Facebook, I'm all over the place. But I would, if there's something that you heard in this conversation that like sparked interest and you want to talk about it more, I would love to just dive down that rabbit hole with you. And maybe more importantly, if there's something in this conversation that had you go, uh, yeah, but I don't think so, definitely drop into my DMs because that's a conversation I am willing and want to have, not to change your mind, but to understand where you're coming from. Yeah. So that maybe we can find that connection where we both get to exist.

Love it. Just to wrap up there, when you just said the 'yeah, but,' it reminds me of when I really started delving down the Jason healing rabbit hole, and I was already a therapist for a few years. I remember working with someone and she got up, she was a professor. I don't think I've ever met someone who had more degrees after their name. It was amazing. I was so impressed with this person. And she was at the time involved in the integrative medicine department at University of Miami. Um, she— I did a few sessions with her, and she would get up in the middle of session. She had this really kick-ass whiteboard. It was like a home office, but it was like this, like 20— I mean, it seemed to me like it was 20 feet long, like a whiteboard. Like, that's— all right, as I see your whiteboard there, I'm like, imagine like literally from your door all— but imagine from your door all the way to the wall in front of you, right?

Like, maybe by next week, right?

So it was glorious. And she would get up and she would like just put a hash work every few minutes in the session. And at the end she goes, so do you know what that was? I'm like, I have no clue. She's like, that's every time you said yes, but in the last hour. And it was 23 times.

Wow.

Wow. That rattled me at my core. And as people are listening to what you just said, which is why I'm so— of course, of course it was the perfect thing for you to end, right, for us to end our conversation with, is realize again, these are just alone to take the insight of the languaging and the scripting that we use that you and I know, as people who are helping people get unstuck from that, that we don't even realize all the ways we're not allowing ourselves to get to overcome, to, to connect even with our own selves, because of those words, including the yes, but.

Yeah. Yeah, that's subtle. All covert resistance that shows up in language. Yes, but. Yes, and.

And yes, and, right? The both/and reality, which is really what we're all hoping for with everything in this conversation and the world is how can both of us, how can all of these worlds really, the rising tide raise all ships? And with that, I really do want to thank you for one, for our time, two, for the insights and doing the journey, doing the work where it's not only obviously affected you, but it's obviously had a massive impact on the people that you've been working with and will continue to work with. And I really am happy and excited to see and meet more people who are on that journey as well. So thank you.

Yeah, thank you. Thank you. It's been so fun being here, and I'm excited that I'm not on this journey alone. And I'm sure I will see you out there in that rising tide.

Awesome.

Thanks for listening to the You Winning Life podcast. If you are ready to minimize your personal and professional struggles and maximize your potential, we would love it if you subscribed so you don't miss an episode. You can follow us on Instagram and Facebook @JasonWasserLMFT 🎗️