Making the Choice to Heal with Rebeccah Silence

This is Xane Anderson. Welcome to The Principle Podcast today. Today, I am thrilled to have Rebeccah Silence with us. Rebeccah is a self-healing and relationship expert, and she's not just changing lives, she's redefining family happiness for audiences around the world. She's an author, she's a coach, she's a media personality, and her message is clear. She wants to make sure that children can grow up in good environments, healed, have good parents. Rebeccah, thank you for being on the show with us today.

I'm so excited, X. Let's make some magic happen.

Okay, so, so tell us about a little bit about your story and how you're so passionate about helping families and children heal.

Well, without meaning to be, I have become a generational trauma healing expert. And when we're talking about trauma, what I mean is heartbreak. And my big, big, big message is that healing really is possible. It's not promised, but it's possible. And when I'm talking about healing, I'm talking about freedom. So my story is wild, and it's It's real. I grew up in domestic violence and then started to learn about trauma and behavior, got a master's degree in counseling, 4.0 GPA, understood so much, and then I still ended up in a domestic violence marriage myself. And it was only because I had my 2-year-old daughter that I ended up getting out. I really believe that I didn't have the self-worth yet, and it was so normal to me that abuse and love went together like peanut butter and jelly, that I don't even know if I recognized how seriously at risk and in danger I was keeping myself in that environment. And it took me recognizing one night, if I don't get us out of here, I am perpetuating patterns and putting my daughter in the same situation of not being protected that I was in growing up. And what I know is we inherit pain patterns, and we are meant to experience joy and bliss, especially at home. But what almost nobody experiences is a fulfilling, dream come true, magically delicious experience of family. And my mission is for kids to have healed parents, and for everyone out there that wants it, to have their comeback love story that isn't about resenting our parents or how we grew up, but it is about breaking the cycle and letting yourself have an experience what you deserve. So there's a little bit of my story. But after getting out of the domestic violence marriage, I had married a guy with the last name Silence. This really is my last name, and I kept it because I love who I became. And I think we don't wake up one day and know who we are. We wake up one day and go, enough. Playing out other people's pain that I inherited, and me just living this survival life, even if I'm high achieving and high functioning. If I'm not feeling fully alive, then I'm not free.

So one of the things that I remember we spoke about, we, we chatted about what's the balance here between self-responsibility and being able to overcome these things. So, you know, we talk about inheriting One of the things that, uh, a thought that is disempowering to people is, well, because somebody did it to me, somebody did something that was wrong, somebody did something that was really painful, and now for the rest of forever, I'm a victim because somebody did it to me. And I, I tell me about how people can heal and get past that thought pattern possibly where they say, you know what? Yes, bad things happen and things are situ— situations are, are not ideal in many, in many ways. How can we heal and get to a point where we're not— I guess what I'm saying is, for lack of a better term, playing the victim, because there really are victims. But we want to get to a point where we're not in that situation. How does that work?

Yeah, absolutely. I love this question. And let me just teach briefly the anatomy of a trauma cycle, just so everybody understands a little bit of where I'm coming from. Because when you're saying the word victim, what I know is I don't care what happened to you, it doesn't mean less of a life for you, and it doesn't have to be disempowering. But what happens in an abuse cycle and in a trauma cycle is there's a perpetrator and there's a victim, and the perpetrator was abused. There's no ifs, ands, or buts about it. They are powerlessly taking their power back in a way where they never have to be the victim again. And then the victim decided they're never going to be the perp, so they're powerlessly taking their power back by never being the one to do harm. But what no one else will tell you is there's a third option called healed. It doesn't have to be you stay the victim so you don't do harm, or you're doing harm and hating yourself for it so that you never have to be a victim. And this is insidious and it's not easy, but if you want to be healed and free, it's about making a decision first and foremost that nothing that happened means you don't get to be the fullest expression and the most powerful version of who you are. We dim our light and we dumb it down because we're a vibrational match for what we've known. And it's really scary to go, I'm unwilling to be a vibrational match participating in these patterns. I'm going to be a me I don't recognize yet. So it's a decision to go, enough. There's victim consciousness. And this is the thing: adults can't be victimized. We just are a vibrational match for patterns that we haven't healed yet. And I know I'm making this sound super simple. It isn't easy, but it is this simple. So what we have to identify is, wait a minute, this survival me isn't me. I'll never forget my first class in grad school. It was personality theories, and I took this inventory and it said I was fun. And I almost fell out of my chair. I was like, I'm not fun at all. I wasn't having fun. And I was very buttoned up and responsible. And this, it's telling me I'm fun. I really am. And I just remember it went from I'm not fun to holy shit, I think I am fun, you know? So in essence, we're all bipolar. We all have a who we are when fear has taken over and we're surviving and being who we've become that we think is the truth of who we are, but it doesn't feel good. And then there's the highest you, and you know it's aligned when you feel more alive and more energy. But we don't wake up one day and know who we are. We wake up one day and go, enough with survival. And then we have to do the work to recreate, redesign, and reinvent ourselves. So I just want you to know what's happened. If it wasn't you, this person would've played their pain out powerlessly with anybody else. So it's not personal. You're a vibrational match for patterns that you've likely outgrown if you're here with us in this conversation today. And the good news is you get to become someone you don't recognize yet, but that you love and that you're proud of no matter what you faced or are facing now. And that's how you break the cycle.

It's really interesting. So, so let's recount that for people who are joining us. I like what you said. So the first thing is to say, look, it's just a decision. You said it's a decision that we're not going to— I'm not going to do the stuff that happened to me in the past. I'm going to make a new decision. And it takes some work, as you said. We're going to have to actually work at it and change something and become a person who we don't recognize yet because we're so used to maybe being in that trauma cycle. Is that what I'm hearing?

That is what you're hearing. And we're so used to being the version of ourselves that we became in childhood to survive our family of origin. And if you're unhappy at home as an adult, there is a direct correlation to be between how unhappy and dissatisfied you were growing up and how unhappy and dissatisfied you are now. We create family the way we experienced it and intimacy and leadership and love.

And unless we decide otherwise, unless we make that decision to choose otherwise, correct? Like, which we can. Like, we're not— it's— if something bad happened to us, and I'm guessing that many who are listening to this had trauma, many, many.

In fact, no, many are immune to it.

But there is, for people who've undergone it, the danger is to say, oh, because I had trauma, now for the rest of forever, my whole life is going to be just bad because that person did it to me or that person did it to me and I have no choice. And you're saying, actually, you do, right? And that's the good news. It's not to not acknowledge it. We need to acknowledge that something bad happened. We don't pretend it didn't happen. But I can— there's some things I can do. What do you tell people who are trying to get out of this pattern?

What—

you kind of already recapped it, but if people say, you know, I do want to break the chain, I don't want to be— like the person who caused me trauma? What do you do?

Okay, so what I want you to know is you get to feel how you want to feel no matter what. And what you always have control over is who you're being. And if we just use heartbreak as our metric to understand trauma more, when we are in avoidance to heartbreak mode, we are perpetuating our own trauma cycle and creating evidence to support, see why I need to guard myself, see why I need to protect my heart. So truly, you're the most healed you when your heart's wide freaking open and you've become someone who's emotionally unshakable. And emotionally, I can't be threatened because I know who I am and I know how to be the best of me No matter what. And the truth of the matter is, it's so cliché, but there's nothing we haven't survived. But there's so much more to your life than survival. And the person that hurt you and broke your heart was heartbroken. Hurt people hurt people. And this isn't just in families with our kids and with our spouses. This happens at work. There are so many unhealed leaders that are causing harm the way they're leading. And there are so many people that aren't able to stand up to that boss because of how they've experienced trauma in their childhoods. So I just want us to know, listen, it's never gonna be safe enough for you to be real and you and the best of you with the volume turned all the way up on the truth of who you are. No one's ever gonna make you feel safe enough and no one's ever gonna give you permission. But that doesn't mean it's not the correct choice. So when you can look at people through a lens of this isn't about me at all, they're just giving me information about them. And then ask yourself, how do I wanna feel? And who am I committed to being no matter how they showed up? That's it. That's the rinse, wash, repeat process. They are doing nothing to you. They are being who they are. And that's information. And then you get to go, how do I wanna feel? And who am I committed to being? And so many of us are innocently picking and choosing who we are our best with and when we are our best. And we're looking for permission to be our best instead of going, nope, I'm just me. Take it, leave it. I'm happy to bless you from a distance if we're not a vibe. But I am staying me. And that's really what has saved and healed my life, is knowing no abuser in my past has the power to have me less me.

Interesting. Thank you for sharing that, Rebeccah Silence. You know, and it reminds me of a story just really quick. You know, my one time my daughter got off the bus and she was, she was sad because somebody had called her a mean name. On the bus and we talked about it a little bit, you know, so let's, you know, if somebody said you're a dumb or you're an idiot. And I said, well, you know, do you think you're dumb or an idiot? And she goes, no. I go, well, how do you know? And she goes, well, cuz I, some things, she named some things. And I said, you know, one of the things that you said, Rebeccah Silence, that was so powerful is you said hurt people hurt people. I said, you know, one of the reasons that people probably were calling you names is cuz they're not feeling very good about themselves. Does that make sense? And so when somebody calls you a name on the bus, if you can think in your mind, it's really not about me. It's probably they're not feeling that good about themselves. And deep down, you already know who you are. You don't have to take it personally. And she goes, oh yeah, you're right. We talked about it. So we could kind of put that in a place where we could say, really, the person's calling you a name because they're not feeling that great about themselves. And as parents, to be able to help our children recognize and see that that they can say, you know what, people can do whatever they want out there, but I can still feel emotionally safe. I love how you said it. There was another thing that I really loved, Rebeccah Silence, when we were chatting before this and you said, you know, if you don't heal, then you have these same situations pop up like whack-a-mole. I remember you said the word whack-a-mole.

Yeah.

Like it just keeps popping up until you heal. So in other words, if I'm in a relationship that's not healthy and until I kind of figure out how to to heal and, and think about things differently, sometimes that same situation pops up again and again.

Well, not sometimes, right? Inevitably, right? And even Elizabeth Gilbert, the beautiful author of Eat, Pray, Love, I met her and she, in front of a whole seminar, proclaimed that she's going to be celibate the rest of her life because she doesn't know how to not be codependent in romantic relationships. And you can't tell me she's not gonna experience the same patterns whether she has romance or not. It does pop up like whack-a-mole. And the thing is, it's even deeper than, oh, this person doesn't feel good about themselves. That's why they're behaving this way. It's happening to them. They're saying to your daughter what someone's saying to them, and then that's how they're talking to themselves too. Cuz we parent ourselves the way we were parented and we play out our pain until it's healed. And you can replace the characters. And you can change the external scenery. But what I want us to master is our emotion underneath it all. That is the gateway and the access point to the healing. So we don't wanna feel the heartbreak again. So many of us are avoiding heartbreak, but that means you're avoiding intimacy and bliss too. So what if we got really excited? And this might sound nuts, but just hang with me for a second. What if we got really excited about becoming aware of our triggers and our patterns and our pain? What if we got excited about finding our own emotional weak spots so we could superproof them, kill the pattern, preserve our relationships, especially with ourselves, and move forward more confident than ever before and more fully expressed than ever before? I have a 3-step process to make your triggers your bitch. Do you want me to teach that?

Yeah. Let's tell us the, tell us the 3-step process.

Okay. Because seriously, the trigger is the medicine and the magic, and we are avoiding it instead of getting closer to it. So 3 simple steps, not easy, but think of it like this. There's a big difference between the feelings you're having about what's going on and the emotion underneath it that you need to feel so you can heal. I want us to just understand betrayal isn't an emotion. Abandonment, rejection, disappointment, anxiety, depression. These are how we feel about what's going on and how we're coping that we learned. Okay, so with that context, step 1 of the Make Your Triggers Your Bitch process is you do nothing except sit with the awareness that you're triggered. And how do you know? It feels off, and it starts at a very subtle whisper level. If you ignore it, it gets louder and louder and louder. And I just want you to hear me say, you don't need a breakdown to break through. You don't need to wait for a crisis. Just start paying attention to knowing the difference between when you feel clear and fully alive and when something feels off. And when something feels off, you're in a pain pattern. So what's the experience you're having? Let's just use betrayal as an example. I am feeling betrayed. That's a trigger. That's a wound. Step 1, I just sit with it. I just sit with the awareness.

Step 2, which means really just be aware of it. Can, can I compare? Let me just for a second on this one. Can I stop back for a second? Does this have a little bit to do with mindfulness? You talk about people who are saying, okay, I could be in the river and be pummeled by this water, but when I step out of the river, I can actually see the water go by. And so I'm actually watching my own thoughts or watching my feelings go by, and I can see them without having to be ran over by them. Is that what I'm hearing?

Yeah, but it's so much deeper than mindfulness. So it starts with mindfulness, right? You're correct that step 1 is mindfulness because I'm aware, but then I immediately drop in and sit with it. So now I'm out of my mind because what we want is to connect your mind to your body so we can connect to your emotions, so we can connect to your highest self, your spirit. So we are aware and then we drop into our body and we sit with it. Now the next step is to feel it. So I get closer and it seems counterintuitive and nobody will tell you that when you're starting to break up with survival mode, it'll feel like you're dying. You're not. You're in this huge opportunity to let go and rebirth yourself. So the feel it process is where most people stop, and the mindfulness process is where most people stop. But back to the beginning of the show, I said it isn't enough to understand trauma. You'll still repeat it. I knew so much, I was so educated, and I still found myself in a domestic violence marriage. So step 2 is about getting closer than it feels safe to get to this feeling of betrayal. So I breathe it in, I breathe it out, I start to move the energy, and then I connect to the emotion underneath it. And I teach there's only 5. Brené Brown's Atlas of the Heart, I think she teaches 80 emotions. Love, but remember that here are the emotions of babies born with that are naturally occurring, that have nothing to do with anything that happened. And until you have a healed relationship with these 5 emotions, you're just not gonna be free. Anger, fear, grief, joy, excitement. Anger, fear, grief, joy, excitement. So under the betrayal, maybe it's really grief that you have going on. So I breathe in the betrayal, I breathe out the betrayal, I connect to the grief. I don't need you to have a full-on emotional release. I just need you Connecting to the real emotion underneath it all, cuz now you just diffused all the charge and completely took your power back. When someone's calling your daughter a name and she gives them the power to be right about who she is in a way that's disempowering, she didn't have to do that. We never have to give our power away like that. So connect to the feeling, connect to the emotion underneath it. And then the third step, is the new experience that you're committing to. So I can be someone who has someone call me a name or has someone on paper disappointing and betraying me, but not experience it as meanness, betrayal, or disappointment. I can experience it as someone who's committed to trusting herself or being confident or being someone who respects myself. So if, for example, in this example from betrayal, now I commit to self-love, self-grace, in the moments where I used to feel betrayed and then I would need this person to prove that I'm worth loving or I can't be okay, now I can go, okay, this person is showing me who they are, so I better believe them. And my job is self-love and self-grace. I don't want us thinking that we can't be okay until everything external until this person gives us what we think they need. I want us okay no matter what. So you sit with it, you feel it, you commit to a new experience. And the emotions underneath it all— I teach the practice of emotional healing, and I wrote a whole book about it. These are all the steps. There's literally a roadmap to heal from pain, to create the life you want. I wrote it, and it's about sitting with it, feeling it, committing to a new experience, and knowing that what you always have control over is your thoughts. Is how you want to feel, who you're going to be, and where you give your power.

Now, this right here is a really, really good thing to talk about, that we're responsible. At some point, we become responsible for our own feelings, for how we feel, how we act. And the fact that you're walking through us a thought process right now where we can actually— we're actually thinking about how we could do this now. You're saying, hey, let's— we need to sit with the feeling and actually experience it so we can risk it. But what we don't want to do is, you know, sometimes people go a different direction and they say, well, I was, you know, 11 years ago or 20 years ago or 40 years ago, something happened to me and it's completely ruined me. And that's what you're saying your process can help with is to say, okay, we're going to, we're going to get there. We're going to relive the emotion if we need to, but we're not doing it so we can live there. We're doing it so we can get rid of it.

We're not reactivating your trauma to have you re-experience it in this way that you're being wounded all over again. We're going into—

because here's what also happens, and I think the thought process is important though, because you have to start saying, okay, I'm, I'm, I'm acknowledging something happened, but I'm actually now going to get to a point where I can say, you know what, it really wasn't them, it wasn't me being something happened that they were showing who they were, and now I'm choosing to live my life in a different way.

Is that what I'm choosing to take my power back and not give it to you? Because that's what it is, right? So in a trauma situation, heartbreak, I stay stuck at the age I was at when this happened with all my emotions around it being stuck. and I gotta go, wait a minute, here's the pattern. Let me be with little me, honor them so that the adult can be in the same situation now, in charge now, and let's release the emotion. We gotta heal through the stuck age, heal the stuck emotion, and be the highest, most healed version of you. So something we haven't even talked about yet, X, is I had gotten outta that marriage, started my company, got on the radio, blew up the business overnight. It was wild. I got married again. All of on paper, everything I ever imagined for myself was happening. And then I got pregnant again and I got a cancer diagnosis with a 5% chance to live. And that's where all this really locked in for me because I could be in hell and be the best of me and stay an emotionally clear channel so I can hear my own guidance. And what occurred to me was wild. This wasn't me feeling all this trauma all over again from my childhood, which would've been very easy cuz I had a lot of sexual abuse in a bed and I was stuck in a bed for a year. I was the healed adult in charge of the mission called my life when cancer came, thank God. And I stayed the best of me through it all and I beat it with a 5% chance. And what I want everybody to hear is there is nothing outside of you more powerful than you. And what you always have control over is going into the trigger so you can take your power back so the healed you can be in charge, and then people are going to show up how they show up. Life is going to keep being life, but you can be emotionally clear. It's so much more than mindfulness. I want you emotionally mastering your emotions so you can have whatever experience you want, no matter what. And people ask me all the time, how can you be so peaceful with this going on? How can— like, is this the real you? It really is, because nobody deserves any power to have me be less me.

And we do that, I'm guessing. Would you, would you agree? By, by being conscious of the way we're— obviously we can experience the feeling, but I'm saying working even right now, I can tell your thought process is different, which in my view, thoughts lead to feelings, feelings lead to actions. And so it starts a lot of times with thoughts. Now, if our thoughts about, hey, this trauma happened to me, and so because of that I messed up and I'm victimized and I'll never be enough, and I, and I'm, I'm, you know, whatever, whatever, whatever. If we can get to a point where we're saying, wait a second, that was their issue. I'm going to go back and try to heal this, step in it, sit in it, do what I need to, but then choose thoughts that are more empowering. Like, you know what? Even if I had a tough spot in the past, I now can choose otherwise. And I can think other— and those thoughts lead to feelings. Thoughts on that?

100%. I mean, your mind gives you access to what you're thinking and believing. And that's really important because from there you can decide which thoughts are worth following and which thoughts are taking you in the right direction and which thoughts are not useful that you can turn the volume all the way down on. Your heart gives you all the information about how you feel. Your body gives you all the information about what you need. And when people are behaving badly, it's because of an unmet need. When you're showing up in a way that you're not proud of, there's a need that's not being met. And from there you can connect to your spirit, which tells you what you want. And I really think it's about action from beingness, not to make it too complex, but I don't— you can do all the right things and still feel unfulfilled. So I don't want us just thinking and doing. I want us thinking and getting clarity on the right action and then being the person who's in alignment with their own soul as they take action. Action is everything, but if it comes from beingness, and from you at your most empowered, that is living, and that is a life where you're free. And then from there, all you get is information about who's aligned and who isn't. But if they're triggering you, it's not about they just need to go. They're a spiritual teacher. They're triggering you because they're showing you you have a pattern that has nothing to do with them. So the time to end relationships is when the pattern's clear.

I appreciate this. Let me ask you this. Tell us about the role of forgiveness.

Mm. That's the chapter in my book, Coming Back to Life, I get the most feedback on. Forgiveness about— is about loving as much as you did before you got hurt. Forgiveness is about you open-hearted, the best of you. It is not about accepting the unacceptable. And I used to be someone who, because I understood people's pain, I thought, well, I'll be a space for you to play this bad behavior out with me, because where else are you going to be able to do it? I can take it. I had to do forgiveness work with myself because no, you can go play it out somewhere else, right? And you did the best you could. This show, we went really deep today. It is not here to give you more ammunition to use against yourself. I want you more loving, more graceful with yourself, and more forgiving. And that process I taught you— sit with it, feel it, commit to a new experience— it's also a forgiveness process. But stop thinking the other person or the situation is the problem. It's not causing you to feel how you feel. It's helping you see where the whack-a-mole game is still alive and well in your life. And what we want is to go stop, like they taught us in elementary school, stop, drop, and roll. Let's stop, pause, sit with, feel, and commit to a new experience. Diffuse the energy and be the best of you. And in a lot of cases from there, the trash takes itself out. But usually the forgiveness work is actually forgiving ourselves for not knowing better. At the time and for actively participating in patterns and dysfunction and trauma. That's not good for us. And then yes, there's forgiveness work to do with the people that were also doing the best they could. And the thing is, I don't want you falsely loyal to people just because of longevity. They've been in your life for decades. If they're not treating you well, give them the opportunity to grow with you. And maybe they will and maybe they won't. If they don't, let them go. But be forgiving in terms of you loving as much as you did before you got hurt instead of guarding your heart against more heartbreak.

Well, let me take this one step further and then we'll just one quick thought. Stephen Covey was at a conference once. I'm going to paraphrase this story. Someone came up to him after the conference and he said, He said, I don't love my wife anymore. Stephen Covey kind of looked at the guy and said, well, then love her. He goes, I don't think you heard me. He goes, I've fallen out of love with her. I don't feel like I love her. She's fallen out of me. I don't feel like she loves me. We have 3 kids. We're probably heading for a divorce. Stephen Covey looked at the guy and said something like this: if you're not feeling it, that would be a good reason to love her. The guy goes, how do you love someone you don't love? I just told you, I don't feel like loving her. She doesn't— she doesn't love me. We fall out of love. And Stephen Covey looked at the guy and said, you know what, my friend, you're— you're talking like love is a feeling. Love isn't a feeling. Love is a verb. It's an action word. It's something that you do. But here's the kicker. If you do it, you can have the fruit of the feeling later. Like, it actually catches up. Let me give you one more example. So he's saying, look, if you— if you're falling out of love with your wife, Maybe one of the things you could do is go do the dishes, give her a foot rub, take her on a hot date, do something, get her out, get her a vacation where she can go without, you know, go on the kids. And you can actually lead those feelings with actions before you feel like it. Now, here's the next kicker I have. Let me tell you another story. It's on the same lines. I'd love to get your opinion on this, Rebeccah Silence. I have a friend named Brody. Brody did this, I think it was called the Spartacus Workout. And this workout, he said, was very intense. He goes, it was about, I think it was about an hour long. You do all kinds of things where it's muscle confusion, and by the time you're done, your, your, your body's really sore. He goes, I did this so long, I hated it. I hated this workout. Didn't like it. He goes, but I, I committed to do it. So I did it again the next day. Still hated it. So sore I could barely walk. Did it again. Still so sore I could barely walk. Did it again. Hated it. Did it again. He goes, I didn't like this workout at all, but I told myself I would do it. Now he goes, I got to the end of the workout one day. He goes, sometime, he goes, I don't remember exactly what time it was, but about 2.5 or 3 weeks later, I got to the end of this workout and something interesting happened. Instead of feeling like I hated it and it was sore, he goes, for the first time I felt like I was just getting started. He goes, that day I wanted to work out twice because I, so I did, I did the same workout that I'd hated these last 2 or 2 or 2.5 weeks or so. I did it twice and I felt great. He goes, I did it again the next day. And I felt great. And so what had happened here is he had actually, through his actions, led his feelings. In other words, I hated working out, but I kept doing it, and I got to the point where I actually liked working out. My wife and I aren't really feeling it, so what's my idea? I can go show love to her. Now, this is something I think that we get backwards in our society. I think in our society, people say, well, you should just do whatever you feel. And the bad news is, is your feelings, in my view, I mean, they're kind of like the weather. Sometimes you can be angry, you can be— then you're embarrassed, then you're— then you're good again. And if you make all of your decisions based on your feelings, in my view, you get kind of fickle results. And sometimes you have to base it off stuff that's bigger than you. Like, I'm going to work out even though I don't feel like it. Can you imagine someone saying, I'm not going to exercise, I'm just going to sit here on the couch and eat potato chips until the feeling from somewhere out there just kind of wafts by. Really, the truth is you have to get out there and work out for 2.5 or 3 weeks before your body catches up and then says, wow, I really like working out and I'm going to do it. I'm not feeling love for this person. I'm going to lead my feelings by acting loving, even though at the moment I'm not feeling like it. And so in my view, One of the things that we've done too much in our society, I'm just going to tell you frankly, is sometimes people are taking their temperature so often. They're saying, well, I've got to feel exactly perfect. And if I don't feel perfect, then everything's wrong. You know what I mean? Let's take our temperature every single day. I mean, do you come home every day from work and say, put the thermometer and take my temperature? Sometimes it's okay to feel uncomfortable. Sometimes it's okay to feel not perfect. Sometimes you can say, you know, I'm really tired. And to be honest with you, I'm not really feeling that much love for my child or for my spouse, but I'm going to act loving anyway. Because I know if I do that, that I can lead my feelings. Thoughts on that, Rebeccah Silence?

Oh, it's so good. So the difference between Brody and the Stephen Covey participant is Brody stayed committed, and the Stephen Covey participant was conditionally committed. So it's really about knowing how to stay committed whether you feel like it or not, because you want to be someone who showed up this way. And breaking the cycles is about being better, in most cases, than anybody you know. So either you're lowering your own standard to fit in where everybody else is and creating a life where you're just focused on fitting in, or you're not focused on fitting in and you want a life that fits in with you. And you want to be this leader who unconditionally serves their team this way, this parent who unconditionally loves and supports my 19-year-old.

The verb love, not just— I don't— because the truth is, people who are married, sometimes they feel really, really twitterpated and in love, and sometimes they're like, you know, we're just doing love, right? I can be loving and Even if I'm not feeling like it though, like my friend Wayne, but I can still be committed.

But it will get to the point, X, where it's like Brody with the workouts. I don't feel like it. This doesn't feel safe. But let me tell you, almost two decades doing family healing and couples healing. If you're unhappy with your spouse, you don't like you in the marriage, and then you're blaming it on them. I see it all the time where I changed who I was for you. That's not on your partner. So you have all this resentment not because of them. You fell out of love with them because you fell out of love with you. So you being somebody more committed, more intentional, more deliberate than anybody else you know is the gateway to happiness. And you being somebody you like you love, you're proud of, will allow you to be unconditionally loving and supporting and encouraging of the people at home that you live with, of the people you serve, because you're already doing this with you. And either we're looking for reasons to avoid more heartbreak and to lower our own standards of excellence, or we're unwilling to close our hearts and we're unwilling to lower our standards of excellence. And for me, it took a 5% chance to live It doesn't have to be some mortality motivation crisis for all of you. And I'm just thinking about a client who I had that came to me. She'd been a stay-at-home mom for 25 years, and her husband was in medical sales, made bank. She didn't have to work. They had 3 kids, and she was like, I'm leaving him. I wanna start a business. A lot of the time too, we don't know we can have independence and freedom. And relationship. So then we get all resentful of the relationship. And what I ended up—

she said she was making a false choice of I either have to choose my business or my relationship. And maybe that wasn't the actual only choice.

No, it wasn't. And she was ready to light a match and blow it all up. And we kept that family together. And she has one of the top gyms in the country today. And she had a high school education. She didn't even have a college education. And she thought, if I stay with you, I don't get to be the me I can imagine myself becoming. She didn't know she could have both. So I just want everyone to hear me saying, you can reinvent yourself and you can reinvent your life and you can heal through what I call high-functioning unhappiness without threatening the high-functioning part of your life. Let's have it all and let people rise to meet you versus you lowering to meet societal norms that feel Awwful.

Rebeccah, this has been very, uh, interesting, and thank you for taking the time to chat with us today. Is there any— how can people get a hold of you if they want to get a hold of you?

Yes, I hope you will find me at rebeccahsilence.com. Rebeccah has an H. Rebeccahsilence.com. I hope you'll get your hands as soon as possible on my book coming back to life. And you can find me at any social channel @RebeccahSilence. YouTube channel has almost 800 videos. I mean, there, there's so much here for you if you want more with me. I'd love to meet you. Shoot me a DM. Let me know your biggest takeaways from this episode. But hopefully we planted some seeds in your soul to give you permission to really make your life yours and to not be afraid of your power.

Thank you, Rebeccah Silence, for being on the show. Appreciate it so much.

My pleasure. Thank you.