The Secret to Being Strong When You're Feeling Weak (Matthew Hussey, Get The Guy)

Hi everyone, it's Matthew Hussey here from Love Life. I wanted to do something a little different today in talking about a book, a book that many of you, if you're listening to this in the United States, will have read very young. I didn't, it wasn't on my school texts, but I did read it later in life and that's Catcher in the Rye. And I wanted to talk about this book today because I think it teaches us actually a very valuable lesson that I'm often mentioning in my coaching And for those of you that have read it, you'll, I think, get a kick out of this. And for those of you that haven't, I would suggest that you do read it, because even though this feels sometimes like it's about an angsty teenager, by the end of the book, actually, you find that there is an incredible amount to relate to in this person. And sometimes part of the reason we don't like a character is that they reflect too much of ourselves. Now, I'm gonna jump straight to the end of the book. We've been through this whole journey with Holden. where he has dropped out of school, he's traveling around New York, visiting various venues, bars, hotel rooms, and having very little luck in being able to get anybody to talk to him or socialize with him. He has an incredibly difficult time, and through all of this, he's inside his own head telling himself all of the reasons that he just wants to leave it all, that he wants to leave school, that he just wants to go far away, And we get to the end of the book where in his mind he's resolute, he's going to leave. There's this beautiful moment where his sister, who he wants to say goodbye to before he leaves, his sister is kind of this icon of someone that he wants to protect, someone he cares about, someone he loves, even though he's not quite comfortable with love or feelings of affection, he does feel them towards his sister Phoebe. And just as he's leaving, he goes to her school to pass a message to say, you know, have Phoebe meet me. And so that I, you know, he comes up with an excuse, but he really wants to say goodbye because he's leaving. And she comes out with a suitcase. And it turns out that she's packed her stuff and she's telling him that she's gonna go with him. And he tells her that she can't come. And she gets very angry and stroppy and upset and won't talk to him. And they go for a walk down the street. They walk on opposite sides of the street. She won't walk with him because she's so upset with him. and she feels like he's going to abandon her. And they walk until they get to this carousel in the park, in Central Park, and she makes him promise that he's not going to leave, that he's going to stay. And in this moment, he initially thinks, no, I have to leave. But at the same time, he has this precious soul in front of him that he doesn't feel like he can abandon. And even though he wants to leave himself, which I would argue is a life that he knows underneath it all isn't going to be a good one if he leaves, he knows it's not going to be something that's pleasant for her. He knows that he couldn't do that to her. So he needs her to stay. But she needs him to stay. And because she needs him to stay and he feels needed by somebody else, he finds himself staying. And it creates this very beautiful moment that I think is an extremely important learning point for life. Very often in my seminars, and if you've been on my tour, if you've been on any of my live events or my retreats, you will have seen this. Sometimes people feel so low, so weak, so abandoned or depressed that they want to give it all up. You know, for the extreme, there are people that decide that they want to end their lives. And at the more lukewarm level, there are people that feel like they just want to quit, quit their job, give it all up. They want to leave their family. They want to go somewhere else. They, in a sense, want to travel far, far away. They don't know where they're going, but they know they want to go away from where they are now. One of the greatest, and I'm going to give you a little secret to coaching right now, something that you can both use on yourself and the people that you care about. One of the secrets is to find someone else who you know needs you. Find someone else you know you need to be strong for. Very often when you're feeling weak, the key is to put yourself around someone who's in more need than you are, someone who's got a bigger problem than you are, or someone who needs you to be strong for them. 'Cause when you do that, it's incredible the strength you find. When you find strength out of necessity for somebody else, you'll do things for them that you would never do for yourself. And in doing things for them, very often you can end up liking yourself and respecting yourself more for getting strong again. Holden Caulfield found the strength because his sister required it of him. And this guy who was lost, this guy who needed to leave it all, finally found strength in this moment when he realized it was for someone that he cared about. Now, you may be listening to this and think of someone that you care about who needs you, that you need to get strong for in those moments where you're weak. Or you might find that there is no one that comes to mind. But I'll say this to you, the world's a big place and there are many people in need. Some of them aren't people you know. Some of them people are people you're yet to meet. But there are many people who need your charity or your love or your kindness or your strength or your lessons that you've learned in life. There are many people who need what you have. and as long as you stay weak and want to abandon it all and want to leave it all and want to travel far, far away, you're abandoning those people too and the people that you could actually serve. So I'll say this. One of the great recipes for overcoming weakness is find out who you need to serve and who you need to be strong for. That's it for today. Maybe sometime soon we'll come back with another book and a little life lesson from that book. We need the name for this, like life lessons from literature or something like that. We'll think about it. But thank you for listening. I hope you've enjoyed this. Leave a comment. I'd I love to know what you thought of this episode. Something a little different, but you know, I continuously challenge my audience and give them things that I think so many people on so many shows would think are too highbrow for people, but I don't think this is. I think people will appreciate it. Prove me right. I'll see you soon, guys. Take care.