The Antidote To Pain - Weekly Energy Boost

When faced with any kind of pain, our typical reaction is to run, avoid or numb ourselves. Even when things can seem hard, going outside of ourselves to give to others in those moments is what also helps heal us. This week learn how to use the power of sharing to overcome life's challenges. Original airdate: 11/7/22

Transcript

Good morning,

Everyone.

Good evening.

Good afternoon,

Wherever you are.

And welcome to this week's weekly energy boost.

My name is David.

David,

Would you like to cough?

I'll wait.

Okay.

David and I are here this morning to share with you the antidote to pain.

And the weekly energy boost is a seven day spiritual weather forecast where on every episode David and I,

And sometimes our guests,

Aim to provide everyone who's listening with the most powerful and practical tools to navigate the coming week.

We do that by gleaning through the wisdom of Kabbalah and inevitably every week we end up sharing powerful life lessons and tools that you can use any day of the year.

And this week specifically,

We're talking about the the issue.

Well,

I should back up a little bit last week,

If you haven't listened to last week's episode,

I highly recommend it regardless of the fact that it's not last week anymore.

We talked about soulmates.

And whenever we hit it out of the park,

Let's say whenever we we do good work,

We also push buttons.

There we go.

Now we can't really start an episode without David coughing.

I went all the way to the other side of the room for that one.

Maybe they didn't hear it.

Maybe we need you need to have your own mute button so you can mute yourself.

That would be great.

So people loved last week's episode.

And it also pushed a lot of buttons.

And I think one of the the things we didn't touch on,

Which is a really great segue into what we want to talk about today,

Is that relationships are one of the greatest sources of pain for people.

And a lot of the conflict that stems a lot of the conflict that exists in relationships stems from this fact that people feel lack.

Right?

I think that that's anytime you lash out at your partner or act passive aggressive or dump any kind of garbage on them.

It's because that we've because we feel some kind of lack.

And I know that you said we were gonna last week was going to spill into this week.

I think this week deserves its own spotlights.

But it is connected.

It is connected because anyway,

We're in the month of Scorpio.

And the month of Scorpio seems to also heighten our sensitivity.

It's easier to take things personally.

It's also easy to be venomous in this month.

And so I think that that's a great place to start is the the lack and pain connection to our relationships.

That's really the story.

That's really the source.

The the root of chaos in our relationships is feeling lack and pain.

And what do we do to get out of it?

What's the antidote?

Are we going to address a little bit about last week?

I made a somewhat tongue in cheek remark about finding a soulmate,

Finding a relationship.

I think when I said something about,

And I hope it didn't take offense to anybody,

But I said sometimes I'll tell somebody,

Well,

We have to just start with taking care of yourself,

But even taking care of yourself physically.

I've noticed how important it is just because I love data.

I'm a data geek.

And I'll always ask people,

Well,

Why didn't that relationship work out?

Or why aren't you interested in even going out on a date?

Or what do you think of that person across the room?

Do you feel there's an energy or vibration or whatnot?

And,

You know,

There's so much of it goes into chemistry,

And the energy between people and a lot of that comes from when you take care of yourself.

So I said the comment about,

Sometimes I just tell somebody,

You know,

Taking care of yourself just means like,

Fix your teeth,

Do something,

You know,

Something like that.

And then someone made a comment that,

You know,

It's not all about looks.

But that's usually the knee-jerk reaction of a mindset of,

I can skip,

Or I can pretend this whole other world of work doesn't exist,

And it's all about,

You know,

The spiritual,

The soul.

But then we made the point that look,

When you start taking care of yourself,

Your hygiene,

Your body,

Your health,

You talked about sweating.

I want to tell you something,

Taking care of yourself to me is also about learning and learning new things,

Learning new skills,

Learning,

You push the whole thing about going out to lunch with people who do something that you want to do better and learning from them.

That's also taking care of yourself.

Well,

Yeah,

So we actually have,

You're bringing up a point that we talked about in the Zohar,

Which are the three levels,

There's three levels,

There's something called Nefesh,

Ruach,

Neshama.

These are three levels of the soul.

But really what we're talking about is the body,

The mind,

And the soul.

And Kabbalah mainly deals with the correction of the soul.

And that's why people love Kabbalah.

People from all different spiritualities,

All different religions,

All different walks of life,

Kind of end up in many ways to learn Kabbalah.

And they bring Kabbalah back to whatever their practice is because we're learning about all of the unseen forces,

All the unseen rules,

Which people find very fascinating.

What we like to do on our podcast is say,

Hey,

Guys,

We are not going to just talk high level,

Even though we study high level content like that.

We want to bring it down to,

Yes,

You should be exercising your brain.

And yes,

You should be exercising your body because all three are spiritually related.

And what I've noticed so powerfully is when I give somebody an assignment on the body level,

Okay,

Take care of yourself.

All right,

When was the last time you got a physical?

When was the last time,

Do you know what your family's history of cancer is?

Anything like that.

You see this deer in headlight look from people.

Like,

I don't want to know.

It's the same kind of people who don't know how much money they spend.

It's the same kind of people who don't know how much money they make.

It's the same kind of people who have never even looked at their credit card statement for fear of what they're going to see on it.

This avoidance is indicative of a correction that actually goes to a soul level.

So what I love to do is give people exercises that on the surface might seem superficial,

But often you pop that pimple.

And I'm sorry for the analogy.

You pop that pimple and then the spiritual pus comes out.

You pop that pimple and the spiritual pus comes out.

And that's what's powerful about it.

Simple exercises.

And for me,

It's kind of if you've ever seen me live in a class,

I'll ask questions that often have nothing to do with the person's problem.

But these questions will kind of lead us to the path of avoidance.

What are you avoiding?

How do you even answer the question?

One of my favorite questions to ask is,

You know,

How old are you?

And it's a deeply personal question for some people.

And just seeing how they react to it,

Seeing how their response is,

Seeing what their body language is at,

Is indicative of the type of life they're trying to live.

Maybe a double persona that they're putting out there,

Which is causing them not to find their soulmate.

So all of these things are very like in poker.

They're all tells of when you're bluffing or when you're real and you're authentic.

So going back to last week,

I just wanted to clarify that and really double down on it.

Being in a relationship means you're constantly adding value.

And to constantly add value,

You have to ask yourself,

What will bring pleasure to my customer?

What will bring pleasure to my staff?

What will bring pleasure to my friends?

And what will bring pleasure to my romantic partner?

And I can tell you,

Taking care of yourself is on the list of things that bring pleasure to a potential partner.

Not saying it's the most important thing,

But I am saying it's totally tied up,

Wrapped up in your mind and your soul.

And it's all related.

So important.

So important.

Now,

We talked a little bit about I saw the image of the lonely man on the screen.

That was our image,

Right?

The lonely man.

Do we have the lonely man image again?

Do you have that?

The way we up?

There it is.

Yeah.

And it reminded me of an article I read recently,

But it was a clickbait article.

It says,

Why men are more lonely in this generation than ever before.

I found that to be fascinating.

And I think one of the points that it talked about is just this whole idea that for men,

There's a lot of things that said,

But one of the things that said that that men have digressed from finding self-confidence through pursuing risk,

Pursuing risk,

Finding good friends.

I think it was a part of the article was how invaluable it is for a man to be surrounded by good friends,

Other men.

There's a camaraderie on energy that is emerging that's very healthy when men are with other men.

And for whatever reason,

This generation has less of that.

I'm not sure why exactly.

I didn't read the whole article.

But I think there's something to that,

This pain that we all kind of carry.

And one of the things that is practical,

Practical advice for both men and women is,

Do you spend time with friends just connecting?

Good friends connecting,

Playing sports,

Connecting about something you love,

Spending quality time.

It's a very valuable thing.

I know for myself personally,

If I play sports,

If I do something with a group of other guys,

What I love to do is I love to what I call mastermind,

Try to get four other guys in a specific niche that we're all connected together.

It could be work.

It could be anything.

It could be Kalala.

And get together,

Just talk about what's working for each of us.

And that bonding,

That camaraderie is so powerful,

So powerful.

And I just want to throw that out there,

Just practical advice that both men and women should be doing.

I don't know.

Do you do that?

Do you spend time with a group?

Well,

Sisterhood is a big thing.

Sisterhood,

Yeah.

It's not a thing that I don't think that's lacking in modern times.

Our generation is all about women supporting women.

No,

Again,

That's true.

I'm not saying put up a LinkedIn post that you hope goes viral.

I support you.

I'm not talking about that.

That's all show.

I'm talking about call three other girls or call three other guys,

Say,

Hey,

Can I take you guys to lunch?

Let's just talk.

It's very popular.

I've been joining a lot of different groups.

And each of these groups are kind of based on the same fundamental concept,

Which is supporting each other,

Being there for each other,

And sharing the failures and the successes of that specific topic of that group.

And it's a powerful thing.

It's a spiritual thing.

What would you say is the purpose of pain?

That we're here to talk about pain today.

But I think that if you look at not only society,

It's not only the United States in 2020,

Which is our frame of reference,

But also generations.

The last whatever,

How many,

Three generations at least have been pretty bent on avoiding pain.

Right?

Medicines,

Legal and not.

It's very easy for us to escape our pain,

Whether it's through social media,

Binge watching something,

Finding some other way to self medicate or self soothe so that we don't have to feel that pain.

But according to the wisdom of Kabbalah,

Pain has a valuable purpose.

And I think it's important that we bring that out to the,

We expose it,

Have a little expose on the purpose of pain,

Because I think we'd run,

Even if we still want to run from it,

We'd walk away from it instead of running from it.

Or we would learn to sit with it.

It's not a coincidence,

By the way,

One of the concepts that we do teach in Kabbalah one is being able to embrace the process,

Being able to sit with difficult feelings,

Difficult situations to embrace pain,

Because it is such a powerful catalyst for spiritual growth.

But I think it's the mechanism behind it is really important.

And I know that you like to break that down for people in classes and stuff.

Pretend I'm in one of your classes,

Ask me how old I am and see what we can uncover.

What specifically do you want to focus on?

Well,

Convince me,

Why should I sit with pain?

Why shouldn't I run from it?

What I find fascinating about,

I was thinking about this even more this year.

A person can take some kind of medication or a drug and the pain goes away,

Which is really interesting concept.

To be clear,

We're not only talking about like sinus pain or knee pain,

You're also talking about emotional pain.

Yeah,

Of course.

Yeah.

You can take a pharmaceutical drug or even a recreational drug.

Or you could get like a compliment or a piece of news you've been waiting for for a long time.

Nothing actually is changing.

But what's happening is the pain goes away,

Which means that pain is really just something that's happening inside of me.

It's not happening outside of me.

If you really think about it,

It's a very powerful concept.

I can drink alcohol and for a couple hours,

I don't feel or I don't take seriously my situation.

So I'm not in pain.

And the reason I find that to be powerful is we are always looking for the spiritual superpower to rise to fulfillment.

I think this is something that excites me about Kabbalah.

When I found Kabbalah,

I found here are the answers of how to rise above pain and connect to fulfillment on levels that are impossible to reach with really any other tool.

And so when you're going through a difficult time and you're feeling sadness,

Boredom,

You're having some kind of a crisis,

You're feeling doubts and anxiety,

Pressure,

Worry.

You have to remind yourself that these are just feelings you're having inside of you that don't actually have anything to do with the outside.

And in the same way you could take heroin and in 15 seconds not feel pain,

You could also,

Through spiritual tools,

Recreate the effects of heroin in your body.

You could rearrange the molecules in your body.

You can rearrange the atoms.

And you have to know you have that power.

And that's what's really been fascinating me because where do we get in trouble?

When we have pain,

We react to it.

And by being reactive to the pain and looking for some form of instant gratification,

We're saying we're disconnecting from the light of the Creator.

We're shrinking our vessel.

We're not receiving the light.

And so we have more darkness and chaos in our lives.

But why is that really a problem?

The problem is because what were we meant to do when we had pain?

What we're meant to do is actually go look inside of ourselves and rewire ourselves through prayer,

Through transforming our behavior,

Our thoughts and our words.

And what that does is it expands your vessel to receive the light of the Creator.

And that brings you long-term fulfillment.

So that's the purpose of pain.

The purpose of pain is to force you to go inside yourself and realize you have heroin,

Spiritual heroin,

At your disposal if you choose to access that.

Because it's so much easier to just look for something on the outside,

We have billions of people who will always take the less resistant path.

But you have it inside of you.

Imagine if somebody told you,

Just meditate and pray for 10 minutes and you will feel the same feelings you have.

All your pain will go away.

We would do it,

But we don't believe it.

It's not as easy as if I just took a pill.

And this is what we need to understand.

Pain is just something you're in control of and that you're going through.

It's just your mindset.

It's a situation that's brushing up against your own limited thoughts and limited belief systems.

And expectations that you have that are wrong or false or short-sighted or small.

You change that.

There's no more pain.

So you're in control of your pain.

Again,

As opposed to manipulating the outside to numb you and you don't really change.

So what was the point of the pain in the first place?

Just to push you to numb it by manipulating the outside world?

What we talk about,

And when I say we,

I mean you,

You are famous.

No,

We all talk about it.

And we've talked about it many times on the Weekly Energy Boost,

But I think it's important to bring it in to frame it in terms of pain,

Is pausing.

That if you don't pause,

You will not even recognize that what made you move toward whatever numbing device is actually pain,

Is actually lack,

Is actually some discomfort within emotional,

Spiritual,

Mental,

Sometimes even physical.

We don't even think about it.

Right?

Like that's,

To me,

The first step to removing the pain is learning to pause and to be able to say,

Wait a second,

This is the universe telling me I have this superpower to choose what I want to experience now.

I can just give up that power and just go to automatic pilot or I can choose a different reality.

That's powerful.

If David mentioned before,

Prayer,

Meditation,

Whatever it is to get us to recognize,

Well,

Wait a second,

I don't know,

Maybe we can choose.

We don't talk about that enough.

Obviously,

We guide people.

You should take Kabbalah 1 if you want to learn deeper about that.

We don't go into that in the podcast.

We drop it here and there,

But we've never gotten very deep with it.

We've never gotten deep into it and for reasons because the podcast is for a broader audience who just needs a boost.

That's what it's called.

It's a boost.

Pausing is a very unnatural thing for human beings.

We are go,

Go,

Go,

Go,

Go,

Go,

Go,

Go,

Go,

Sleep,

Sleep,

Sleep,

Sleep,

Sleep,

Sleep,

Go,

Go,

Go,

Go,

Go,

Go,

Go.

I always say what was the most powerful thing you learned?

Almost everyone says that first class of learning how to pause and realizing that we've been reactive our whole lives and because we've been reactive,

We've been drained.

And we're not accessing our superpowers.

I love that you said that.

When you're in pain,

What you need to remember is there is a superpower inside of you that is dormant that can remove your pain.

If you choose to go find it,

It's a little bit harder to find than doing something externally to remove your pain.

Well,

I think that's also what prompts a lot of people to embark on a spiritual journey is the recognition that there is a pain that they can't dissolve like all of the natural,

Normal mechanisms we use to alleviate our pain.

Sometimes it's even watching,

You know,

Other people suffering.

There's a degree of playcation that takes place.

The truth is the Kabbalists teach that the moment that you have that pain or you feel lack,

You see somebody,

I don't know,

Sometimes you're driving and you see,

I don't know,

A couple at a cafe having an intimate conversation and it awakens that,

Oh,

I wish I was in a relationship going back to last week.

Oh,

I wish someone would look into my eyes that way.

Oh,

I wish I had someone to have coffee with in the morning,

Whatever it awakens.

We don't realize that those thoughts,

Which aren't necessarily true,

Even sometimes what ends up happening is we get taken down this storyboard of things that aren't actually true.

I'm not lovable.

I've been alone for too long.

I'm damaged goods,

Blah,

Blah,

Blah,

That it creates kind of like a vacuum,

You become like a black hole.

So that even any of the opportunities,

You know,

Let's say somebody,

You know,

You leave,

You get to your destination,

And you're kind of swimming in your own worthless thoughts,

Not that the thoughts are worthless,

Worthless,

But they're thoughts of worthlessness.

And somebody is trying to get your attention and you're so self consumed at that moment that you can't even notice the person who's trying to get your attention,

Or you won't even you'll someone will give you a compliment and you'll brush it off or reject it because you've become this imploding black hole of self focus.

I won't say selfishness,

But it'll be you're so focused on the self that you can't even see the opportunities to rewrite that story that are coming at you at any given moment.

So the capitalists talk about this idea that if you even catch yourself if you're if you're able not only to stop yourself from the numbing,

But even to be able to recognize,

Okay,

I'm going down that rabbit hole again,

What can I do to get out of it?

The truth is the capitalists tell you to take to be interested in someone else for a minute.

I know that it sounds sort of cliche to say,

Okay,

Stop thinking about yourself,

Think about someone else.

But really,

To me,

I imagine almost like a vacuum.

You know,

When you're consumed with yourself,

You're like sucking all of the energy and air out of the room.

And if you can pause and say,

Okay,

Wait a second,

I'm going there again.

By the way,

To your point about friends,

I just saw it suddenly dawned on me,

I went through a situation like that.

I know a few weeks ago,

We talked about my divorce,

And I had a very good friend.

Let's be clear,

You're divorced,

And now you're remarried.

Yes,

I divorced in the early 2000s.

So I had a good friend at the time,

Who I kind of,

Not kind of really committed to expose my darkness to my insecurity,

My negative belief systems,

And we really held each other accountable.

And by the way,

It started in a Kabbalah 1 course,

We decided to take Kabbalah 1 again,

And then we kind of joined this partnership together.

It was really powerful.

By the way,

That just so you understand,

That was me,

I went on a powerful Kabbalah 1 journey myself,

As a Kabbalah teacher,

Already almost 20 years in the Kabbalah Center.

So it's not something that you do once and you know,

It lasts you forever.

It's a reboot.

It's something that I recommend people do all the time.

And I remember,

Basically,

What we decided is that whenever we find ourselves going down that route,

We're going to call each other.

I could call her at three o'clock in the morning,

If that's where my thoughts were taking me,

And she was going to help me dig myself out of that hole and vice versa.

And it was very,

It was a really crazy time,

But it was a really great time.

And maybe that's part of the recipe is having that close,

You know,

Someone to back you up when you find yourself going down that spiral.

But what it also did now in hindsight that I'm seeing is the most,

It's like I paused and I trained myself to think of someone else for a minute.

And maybe that's part of the recipe too.

Well,

According to Kabbalah,

It is part of the recipe.

I didn't realize that that's what I was doing back then.

I thought,

Okay,

I'm going to have somebody to help me get out of myself.

But that's really what it was.

It was I was able to somehow train myself to think about talking to someone else when I go there.

And so part of what we have the opportunity to do with this to do this week is to train ourselves to think about others when we start to think about ourselves.

And I know we say we you kind of call me on this stuff.

Sometimes I get a little bit too esoteric or too spiritual when we talk about these things.

But it is really literally that simple.

That,

Yes,

There is a time for you to think and take stock and and check,

You know,

What am I missing in my life?

And what are the steps I need to take to get to it?

That's something that we do with our students when we do the one on one work is we do that kind of taking stock and and auditing what's where am I lacking certainty?

Where do I need to be more flexible?

Where do I need to be more sharing?

And here is a perfect example.

If you know and pay attention this week,

Because that's one of the gifts of this week,

If there is a trigger that causes you to step into that place of pain or to be reminded of the wound,

Or to go into yourself in such a way that it's hard for you to pay attention to anybody or anything else around you.

Make a plan this week on how you're going to get outside of yourself in those moments.

Sometimes it might be like David said,

Praying for someone else,

Praying for yourself to not be into yourself,

But coming up with an escape plan and evacuation route for when you get to be triggered and to feel that pain that you know how not only to pause,

But also how to what's the route you need to take in order to get to leave it behind you completely.

And the question is also why.

So instead of just dropping that and saying that this works,

Which is often what we do here,

Sometimes to back it up spiritually,

Why?

Kabbalistically,

Why?

The simple concept we've learned in Kabbalah one when you turn on the light,

Darkness goes away.

So people overthink how to get out of their problems.

They think there's 100 things they need to do to solve something,

When in reality,

You just need to do the one thing to turn on the light,

The darkness goes away.

How it goes away,

Where it goes,

Why it goes away.

Don't overthink it.

Don't overthink it.

So when Elisheva says,

Get outside,

You know,

You're going through a tough time,

Go through pain,

Do something outside of yourself.

It sounds like almost like a cliche thing to say,

But it's such a powerful tool.

And if you know why it works,

It's even more powerful.

It works because the moment you stop thinking about yourself and you think about somebody else,

That moment you become like God,

And that moment the light fills the darkness.

So the moment,

Maybe it's five minutes that you're thinking about somebody else,

The light turns on and starts to solve your other problem.

And you don't know that that's happening.

That's what's happening.

If I all of a sudden would get bad news about something or some kind of problem I'm trying to solve,

And I'm in the thick of it,

Sometimes what I'll do is I'll just stop.

I'll just call somebody that I know that was expecting my phone call,

But I've been busy all day.

Technically,

I should be making that phone call because I got a problem that I got to solve.

It's waiting on me.

Logic dictates that you should be focused on until it's fixed.

And sometimes yes.

And sometimes there are people who don't want to deal with the problem and it's too much for them.

So they go and share that.

That's different.

It only counts when it's against your nature.

Right.

That's that's what's powerful.

Some people like to put their head in the sand when problems happen.

And so they'll run away and do what's comfortable for them.

And for them,

Comfort could be being with other people.

You have to be careful.

You have to know you have to have the emotional intelligence of which one you are.

What kind of a person are you?

And do the opposite of what you're trying to avoid in tough times.

How do you,

If you're the one of those people that likes to avoid put their head in the sand,

Get busy being a nice guy with someone else.

And I mean,

I've told people you have to stop sharing till you figure this out.

But that's not not everybody gets to have me call them and tell them that.

What's a practical tool for those people who it's easier for them to escape than I mean,

It's easy that their transformation will happen on the focusing of the problem.

The answer I was going to say was actually you answered it,

Which is,

No,

But I've learned that change doesn't happen until somebody who is of a higher consciousness than you is helping you stay accountable.

And I've seen this.

I've seen our teachers have taught us.

When you teach a class,

A hundred people,

Five hundred people,

A thousand people,

You're actually not doing much.

You're sharing the overall consciousness of kind of like how a person needs to be.

But when that person goes back to their lives,

That when that person goes back to their life,

It's almost impossible to overcome the negative force.

That angel is the evil inclination.

It's an angel and you're human.

Humans don't have the strength to overcome angels,

According to Kabbalah.

So how are you going to win when you align yourself with a mentor,

A teacher?

No one's perfect,

So don't look for the perfect person.

That's a problem also.

You align yourself with someone with a higher consciousness than you to help keep you accountable,

To care about you.

This is how you change.

This is how you will have constantly pointed out to you when you're coloring outside of the lines.

And this is how you correct.

It's just kind of like children.

With children,

If you just let them try to figure it out on their own,

They're not going to understand the behavior.

You have to constantly remind them,

Hey,

Don't scream,

Say please and thank you.

Just obviously within the right way,

But you have to constantly remind them of what the structure should look like.

And eventually it sinks in.

So it's the same for us to grow into change.

Are you doing this by yourself?

Because if you are,

It's going to take you decades.

And pain is going to be your mentor,

Which is the topic of today.

Pain and suffering will be your teacher.

It will be your mentor.

Pick a mentor.

Pick someone.

Who cares if they're not perfect?

Maybe they're horrible at business,

But they're a great father.

Learn fatherhood from them.

Maybe they're a horrible,

Horrible human being in their relationships,

Like god-awful.

But they're good in business.

You can't learn from someone like that.

So they have a gate,

A portal open in business.

I personally don't like to discriminate and put people in baskets.

If I see someone's really good at something,

I don't look at the rest of it.

I mean,

Obviously there's a red line that you don't cross.

But I think sometimes we overjudge.

We become too righteous and we miss out on wisdom.

We miss out on people who can really give us value and teach us something.

Mentor me.

I remember once picking a mentor who was helping me with something,

And then he would always steer the conversation to another area that he's very reactive in.

And I'd be like,

No,

No,

No,

No,

No,

I don't want to hear any of that.

Go back to this thing you are very good at.

I'm here for that.

Don't tell me about that.

Don't go into that.

The other thing,

You're not good at that.

I'm not here for that.

I don't want to hear it.

Set some boundaries with your mentor,

Too.

All right.

I think we're at the end of something else,

But I can't remember what it was.

And I'm just going to leave it like that because that was gold.

We will scratch the surface again next week.

We could change the title of the podcast.

Scratching the surface.

Never going deep.

Seriously,

Folks,

Thank you for joining us.

And please continue to like,

Rate,

Review and share.

Your work is most powerful when it's in sharing mode,

As we learned today as well.

And we'll see you next week on the Weekly Energy Boost.

Reviews

Excellent and good advice! I loved the idea of aligning yourself with someone to learn from or more experienced, elevated…to grow.