Freedom From Shame: A Counterintuitive Solution

Most of us unconsciously assume that if we're hard on ourselves, it will motivate us to do better. That logical fallacy drives most negative self-talk. The opposite is actually true; the more we shame ourselves, the more we recreate "shameful" behavior. But how to interrupt that pattern? This talk covers perspectives from Drs. Eric Byrne and Carl Rogers on how to interrupt the self-shaming fallacy.

Transcript

So right now there's eight inches of snow outside. It's actually my first time seeing snow in like nine years. I'm in a cold makeshift studio garage where I could see my frosty breath in front of me. I'm probably not going to publish the video of this episode, But I just wanted to paint a picture for all you guys. Today we're talking about shame. And the reason is, If there is one thing that disconnects a man from his best self, Whether we're talking about mental health, Confidence, Charisma, Well-being, Ability to socialize in a healthy, Confident way, Connect with others, One of the biggest killers is shame. Another way to put this is, If you could free yourself from shame, You are much more likely to be your best self. And specifically when it comes to unwanted behavioral patterns or unwanted feeling patterns, This is the big thing to move. And I want to be clear, This is not about becoming shameless and being some peacock who doesn't care about what other people think or is really over the top because that's actually, I would say, A defense mechanism. That's even a sign of someone who's really shameful and having to be a hyperbolic opposite in order to compensate. We're talking about freedom from shame, Where the internal feeling of I'm not a good man or I'm not good enough or I'm not blank enough, Masculine enough, Disciplined enough, Strong enough, Patient enough, Attractive enough, Social enough. I hear a lot from guys like, Why didn't I know this sooner? The idea of regret, Why didn't I do better back then? Or why didn't someone teach me this better? All of these feelings, Emotions, Only create a worse version of yourself. Or another way to put this is distort you from your authentic self. A couple of weeks ago, I put out an episode on the formula for magnetism, Basically drawing an analogy from literal magnetism in physics to one's personal magnetism or charisma, Animal magnetism. And if you didn't catch that episode, Real briefly, The three factors in the physics formula, And I compared them to three factors that makes a person or a man magnetic. Alignment, Structure, Or your habits, And feeling. The last two, I think, Are pretty easy to understand. Everyone understands what habits are, Having structure in your life. Feeling more is maybe easier said than done, But everyone understands what that means. The alignment piece is the most abstract, But I think the most meaningful as well. The most deep, If you will, The purpose of an individuation. I would define alignment as your outward expression matching what's really going on on the inside for you, Right? So you can, In a social context, You call this being authentic, You could call it congruence, But it goes far beyond how you interact with people, Certainly, Especially when it comes to intimate relationships. The more in alignment you are, The more congruent you can be, The more effective you will be, Or the more connectable you will be, The more attractive you will be, Charismatic, All of those things. But it's also just simply about your own personal well-being. So in this episode, We're going to be talking about freeing yourself from shame from a few different perspectives. As always, Starting with some evolutionary roots. I think it helps to really understand why our social brains tend towards shameful thoughts, Especially the higher standards you have, The higher ideals you strive for, The more likely you will experience shame, Which is counterproductive, As we'll see. We'll also share, It's not exactly a reframe, But I think a re-understanding. I think most people unconsciously follow this fallacy, Or our social brains have this incorrect logic, If you will, Emotional logic, Which is an oxymoron, But we follow this emotional logic thinking that the more shame we feel, The better we'll be, Which is actually the opposite. We actually make ourselves worse of a person when we internalize shame, Even though shame does have an important social function, Which we'll also cover. And then I'll end with some psychological principles that kind of touch on, We can say spiritual principles that I'll leave towards the end, That I find very actionable, Even though I can't prove all of them to be true. It's really the road to mental health. All right, Let's jump in. So first, Evolutionary roots. Now, The experience of shame is a very human experience, And it's in many ways an evolutionary social advancement. We'll get into that in a moment. When it comes to our personal experience, Though, When we're experiencing shame, What is the underlying belief? Some version of I am a bad person, Right? You might say that in your head. You might just feel that. If you're yelling at yourself, You're calling yourself a bad person. Go into the huge semantics, Like how abstract the word bad, The words good and bad are very abstract. I've talked about this in some of my commentaries on culture. Actually, If you're really into that, You can check out my episodes on general semantics on how our words create reality. Or if you're interested in the cultural aspect of that, I go pretty deep into that in my other project, Which is on hiatus, The History of Man podcast. But very briefly, The idea of I am a bad person, The idea of even the word bad, Comes from evolutionarily our tribal ancestors, Paleolithic ancestors, Who had to set some codes of conduct for the tribe to function, Right? If anything that was good for the tribe made you good. Anything that was bad for the tribe made you bad. Morality was very subjective. Actually, Morality is always subjective, But to our social brains, Which evolved to be in these small groups, Less than 150 people, Known as Dunbar's number, Just having this simple idea of what's wanted versus not wanted for the tribe, What is quote good versus bad, Was a very useful mechanism for policing people. Because as I get into very deeply in the History of Man podcast, The purpose of culture and morals and social norms, First and foremost, Before anything else, Is to get everybody in a given culture on the same page. Now, What does this have to do with shame? Because if you think of, Say, Training a dog, And dogs can experience something resembling human shame. I mean, Dogs evolved alongside humans to respond to human emotions. Dogs seem to experience something like shame, But it's not the same way that humans do, Right? Like, If you're training a dog, If you ever owned a dog, You can yell at it for peeing on the carpet. You have a puppy that's your house training, Yell at it for peeing on the carpet. It will know that's a bad thing. It'll know its master is disapproving of its peeing on the carpet. That will effectively encourage it. It will guide its behavior to pee on the carpet less. Most dog trainers will say you have to follow it up with praise for doing the right thing also, So that the dog doesn't turn on you, Which we're actually going to get into that, On how that relates to how we speak to ourselves in a moment. But in short term, Yelling at a dog works, But it has to be kind of in the moment. A dog can't pee on the carpet, And then half an hour later, You yell at it, Because there's no way the dog is going to connect the action, The behavior you don't want with your punishment, Right? Humans are different, Though. We have the ability to feel shame for a long time. Someone can yell at us or express disapproval, Especially our parents when we're a young child, And it will make us continuously feel bad for a long time. Now, As human society evolved, This was a really useful thing. And you could think of, Perhaps, Like, You know, Stereotypically, There are certain subcultures where shaming and guilting is really implanted into people, Like Catholic guilt, Which I'm familiar with, Or Jewish guilt, I've heard from Jewish people, Or, Like, Your mother, You know, Whatever. There's many subcultures where, Or cultures where, Like, Guilt and shame is, Like, A big part of the mechanism, Usually the more conservative and traditional cultures, Because evolutionarily, It was a very useful function to be able to get each generation of children to feel shame, Because, As opposed to what you have to do with a dog, Where you have to catch them in the act of doing something wrong to guide their behavior away from an unwanted thing, If you can get kids to feel shame, If you can get a population or a tribe to feel shame over certain things, They will feel bad about doing a thing that the tribe doesn't want, Even when there's no one around to tell them. And this is a key thing for our adult psychology, When we think that we feel bad, Or feel less than, Or feel like not a good person, Or feel unworthy, Or undeserving, Even when there's no one telling us this, Even when there's, Like, No real reason, Even though we know there's nothing bad about getting rejected by someone that you speak to, Or asking out someone they say no, Or doing something a little socially awkward, Or even doing something that's, Like, You know, Maybe not your best behavior in a relationship, Or, You know, I notice this as a father, Like, There are definitely moments where I don't behave the way I want to as a father. There's no one punishing me for, Like, You know, Losing my patience as a dad, But I do, It's an automated reaction to feel shame, Like, Oh, I'm a bad dad, Or I'm a bad person for such and such. We're going to go into why this is a bad thing, And maybe you already have your ideas of, Like, Oh, Why do I still have this shame? But I'm sharing this evolutionary side to understand there is a reason why humans have this, Because it allows you to guide your behavior even when there's no one there watching you. This was a good thing for, Let's say, Our Stone Age ancestors as they expanded their tribes beyond 150 people, As they developed cultures and civilizations and ideologies, Religious or not, That wanted to guide people in a certain way. Shame was a very useful mechanism, And you can see this, Again, Like, In certain religions, Like Catholicism and Judaism are kind of known for, You know, In a humorous way sometimes for instilling shame in their constituents, If you will. But it's good to understand that the reason why we feel this way, The reason why we evolved to, Let's say, Shame ourselves or internalize shame when we do something or something happens that is not what we ideally wanted or what our society or our reference group or our culture wants or our perceived morality wants is that it's the same idea of punishing a dog. Like, There's this emotional logic, Oxymoron, But emotional logic of our social brain that if I yell at myself for doing something unwanted, It'll make me not do it again. That is actually not true. It's true in the moment with a dog. It's true in the moment if you have to deter some behavior, Like actually even as a parent, Right? Like, There are times where it's, You know, It's a good thing to raise your voice because the kids are doing something dangerous and they need to stop right away. But when it's internalized as shame, Over a long period of time, If I raise my voice at my kids for doing something dangerous and they continuously feel bad into adulthood subconsciously from it, That's actually not serving them. It's not helping them be a better person or not. Arguably, And this is just me, You know, Theorizing and speculating now, Perhaps the reason why we internalize these emotions for a long time is that for our Stone Age ancestors, Life expectancy was very short. There was, You know, All that mattered was survival. So if you got shamed as a young person, If you started to remold your expression to be in a certain way that isn't necessarily authentic, It was fine because you're probably going to be dead by 30 anyway. And especially for our Paleolithic ancestors, It was better to just know your place in the tribe. It's better to accept low status in the tribe or, You know, See yourself as an inferior person in the tribe to be part of the tribe rather than continuously try to work on yourself and improve yourself the way that most modern humans can and typically want to do. And just one quick thing about the good and bad thing. I'm not going to go into a whole bit on semantics. I have two very long episodes on the words good and bad and, You know, The fallacy in our mind about these very abstract terms. It is something I should know, Because this relates specifically to men. Obviously, Women experience shame too, But specifically men, As I mentioned, Who have a high standard of ideals, Who have a sense of honor, Which we could describe as, You know, Caring about what other people think or what your reference group thinks, You know, Holding yourself to a standard of behavior or conduct or character. When such a man feels shame and he feels, I'm a bad person, It's often not about, Like, The modern day, You know, I'm not trying to talk about politics necessarily, But the modern day liberal view of good and bad in terms of morality or what is nice to people. Very often for men, It's, I'm a bad person, Meaning I'm not good enough in terms of competence. I'm not masculine enough. I'm not disciplined enough. I'm not strong enough. I'm not sexy enough. I'm not socially attuned enough. I'm not patient enough. These kinds of things are common in men who are really striving to be a better person and want to be patient and masculine and confident and grounded in all the positive things. But we have to understand that we're following a very old primitive mechanism of our social brain, Thinking that if you punish yourself the way that your mother or your father or your tribal chief might have punished you for doing something wrong, We think, I mean, Unconsciously, We believe that if we punish ourselves, It'll correct our behavior. But this is not true. And we're going to get into this more here. And actually, One more thing with men specifically. I hear with a lot of men, I should have done that thing better, Right? Like shame and regret is often wrapped up in men. And I've experienced this myself, I think, Especially men who are ambitious and expected or wanted the best for themselves at certain age markers in life, Which is obviously a terrible thing to do for your mental health, Being like, I should have this amount of money and I should have had this many adventures or this many girlfriends, Or I should have a family by this age, Right? That's setting yourself up for disappointment no matter what your life performance is like. I hear from a lot of guys like, Why didn't I know this sooner? Why didn't I behave better? You know, In a way, This is kind of a silly or crazy idea logically because, Well, We only know what we know. And this is actually, I think, Why the self-help cliche, I did the best I could with what I knew at the time, Which is true, Is a very helpful reframe. We're going to go a lot deeper into this than just this kind of simple reframe. But that's one of the reasons why this is useful in that men who strive for a lot have a tendency to create regret feeling like, I should have been better. I should have known better. I should have known, You know, I should have been stronger. And obviously you are who you are. And we're going to get into a more actionable version of that towards the end of this episode. But anyway, The backfire of this emotional logic. So a little, I think, An anecdote that will frame us up really well for understanding this. This is something that I've had to learn and relearn. And I think only now entering, I just passed five years of marriage. I'm entering four years of fatherhood, Which I'm still a beginner with both ultimately, But with my wife and my daughter, I've had to learn and relearn that expressing my disapproval, Which we can say is a version of shaming or that it can lead to shaming if it's internalized by my wife or my daughter, Disciplining them would be another way to put it, Like maybe harshly, Or trying to guide their behavior through negative reinforcement is probably the most neutral way. It never works in the long run. Just like with, You know, Policing a child who might be doing something dangerous or like you have to have that backbone, Of course. But I noticed that a lot of people, Especially guys who are particularly Red Pill influenced or maybe former nice guys who, And I would even say, I would put myself in this category at some point in my life. You become a little bit too harsh with negative reinforcement. In Red Pill, They have this thing called dread game where if your wife or your girlfriend is not acting the way you want, Threatening that you're going to leave, Which I think in some very acute cases, It's okay. If like the really hard line has to go in the sand, It's fine, But it can never be a common thing because you're causing long-term harm to relationship for short-term directional change. This is all to say, I've had to learn with my wife and my daughter that the more feminine or feeling a being is, Which is most women or children, The less negative reinforcement benefits and the more it recreates the shame cycle. I bring all of this up because even within ourselves, This is an analogy many people use, That the relationship of your conscious mind to your subconscious, Your thinking mind, Or to your feeling self, If you will, Is very similar to the relationship between a man and a woman. Spiritual metaphor a lot of people use. I see this though with my wife and daughter. I'll just use my wife because not everybody has kids, But if you listen to this podcast, Chances are you're a guy who dates women or is attracted to women, So this should be relatable. As much as it's important to have a backbone and put boundaries around certain behaviors from your woman, Girlfriend, Wife, Whatever, Expressing negative reinforcement almost always recreates the behavior that you didn't want. And this is kind of hard for, I think, A very logical guy to wrap his head around, But it's just the truth. And aside from the relationship aspect, I'll just put a pin on this one, A period on this one, I should say, I've realized that every time I've expressed displeasure in something my wife has done, Right? I mean, She's great, But we all, You know, We all do things that, You know, Maybe the other person doesn't like at some point, Right? If I ever express it like that, It almost rarely gets the desired effect. Like she might hear me, She might be like, Oh, Okay, I shouldn't, I don't want to get into too many details, But like, Oh, I shouldn't do this thing. But it doesn't actually encourage her. And I think the word encourage is a key word. It doesn't encourage her to actually behave the more positive way. If anything I've seen with my wife and with my daughter, And I would even say for with my own subconscious, Which is the analogy I'm drawing here, The more you have negative reinforcement verbally, Negative feedback, The more it tells the person, The feeling person, The more empathic person, That you are this way. And it encourages them in a subconscious way to continue behaving that way. Now, What does this have to do with your own mental health and wellbeing? Is that if you're following this false logic of if I yell at myself enough, If I shame myself enough, If I tell myself you should have done better, You should have been this, Why wasn't it like this, Blah, Blah, Blah, It actually recreates or encourages you to do more things that make you feel bad. It's actually kind of a truth about impactful emotions, That the more you feel a certain emotion, The more you're going to find ways to justify that emotion. This can get into kind of a spiritual territory, You know, Law of attraction-ish stuff. Like if you feel jealousy, You're going to find more things to be envious of. If you feel envy, You're going to find more things to be envious of. If you feel low self-worth, You're going to create things in your life that justify that you're low self-worth. Self-fulfilling prophecy, Law of attraction, Doesn't matter like where this, You know, How literal it is. But actually to turn this to a more psychological lens, There's a psychologist, There was a psychologist, Dr. Eric Byrne, Who was very popular in the 70s. He put out a few books. I've mentioned him in past podcast episodes, Where he came up with this whole field of psychology called transactional analysis, Where this was the key idea. The idea being that within each of us, We have an inner child and an inner parent. And a lot of our emotional behaviors, So behaviors that are driven by feelings, Come from this interplay of our inner parent, In quotes, And our inner child. And essentially, He said that when we're a child, We learn certain emotional patterns. And when it comes to, You know, Typical negative emotions, Right? Like we do something bad, Our literal parents shames us or instills like, Oh, This is wrong. Our inner child recreates this. And as we grow up, We develop an inner parent, Which is basically a reflection of our real parent or our real environment, Or even our cultural standards. And every time we do something that we don't consciously want to do, Right? We follow some negative pattern, An addictive pattern, An emotional reaction, A self-sabotaging behavior that we don't want. It's usually because, And I'm going to slow this down because this might be hard for some people to grasp. The reason why we do the things we don't want to do or we follow patterns that we don't want to do is because our inner child wants to feel the criticism of our inner parent. I'm going to give some examples because this might, It might seem so counterintuitive to me the first time I heard this, But real life has shown me this to be true, Both within myself and within external relationships. Basically, All right, So one of the examples that Eric Byrne uses, And it's kind of an extreme example, Is that he says, If you're married to an alcoholic who's constantly doing hurtful things due to his alcoholic habit, And he actually said this to wives of alcoholic husbands, The last thing you should do is get angry at him or shame him because deep down within his unconscious, He's actually trying to feel shame. He's, This is Eric Byrne's belief that, It's maybe a bit of a controversial idea, But I think there's a lot of truth to it in that the alcoholic drinks and then does harmful things to his loved ones because deep down he wants to feel that payoff, That emotional payoff of shame again. There's something in his inner child that feels safe when getting yelled at, And a lot of, I know a lot of people in recovery, There is, Certainly there's a great tie of addictive behavior to shame. And I would even say in a non-substance level, A lot of people are dopamine screen addicts nowadays. There's still something there. It's actually something we've been discussing in the Instincts coaching group of like, What are the negative feelings you're trying to avoid or self-medicate by scrolling on Instagram or watching other people's lives or mindlessly consuming things or playing stupid games on your phone? Anyway, Byrne says that if you're, Just as an example, If you're married to an alcoholic, If you want him to stop doing the same behaviors over and over again, And actually Byrne would call these games. Anytime we repeat an emotional behavior over and over again, It's like our inner child is playing a game on us. You have to take away the emotional payoff. So if you take away the shaming, If you stop shaming the person and take away their emotional reward, If you will, Even though it feels bad, They'll have less of an incentive to actually do the thing again. I know it's kind of a far out idea and to say this about alcoholism, Which, You know, Is, I don't know how to put it. It's a more serious subject in our culture nowadays than, You know, 40 years ago, People, You know, Would be shamed for being a drunk. Culture was different around addiction a generation ago. I do believe this is true in a lot of sense. And I think this is certainly true when it comes to our internal well-being. But one more example on the outside because my parents told me and my wife this funny story about myself when I was a baby potty training that really exemplifies this idea. It's a great example for this. So I guess I was around two. I was able to do the potty training thing outside of the house pretty quickly. But for some reason, Whenever we went back to our apartment, I would always pee on the carpet in the living room in the same way. And my mom would yell. She would get upset at me. She would show all this emotional anguish, But I would constantly do this over and over again. And one day my parents, I don't remember this. My parents told me one day I was like pushing my buttons, Pushing my mom's button so much that she was just fed up. She was exhausted. My dad was at work. She just put her head down on the couch and like went to sleep. It's like, I can't, I can't clean up Ruan's pee again. And apparently I got really curious and upset. Like how come my mom's not yelling at me? So I one-upped it and I took a shit on the carpet and I was like potty trained with number two already. I just did this on purpose. And then I went to my mom. I was like, What? You're not mad. I just pooped on the carpet. Like, How come you're not angry? And my mom said, I just don't care anymore. And from then on, I never had an accident in the house again. There was something in my two-year-old's social brain. I guess I was around two because I could talk. That wanted to push my mom's buttons. That wanted my mom to yell at me. There's something in me that felt good about it or entertained or maybe felt safe or maybe felt love in a way that doesn't make sense to an adult's rational consciousness. But this is the thing. And I have a lot of other examples where I've seen things like this with my own daughter and even my son who's younger. And if you're a parent, You've probably seen like kids play games. And actually Dr. Eric Byrne's book, His most famous book was called The Games People Play. And it gives examples of all these different relational patterns between parents and children and husbands and wives and lovers and whatever the thing is, Right? We enter these repeating patterns to get a familiar emotional result. To some part of our inner child, To use Byrne's language, We'd prefer to get a repeatable, Familiar emotional result than even a desired emotion. Familiar is even more important than what we want. Which is why the big takeaway here is anytime you let yourself feel shame, And I know it seems like maybe shameful thoughts or negative thinking or internal dialogue is out of your control. I'm going to share some things in a moment that I hope will change that. But anytime you let yourself feel shame, You are only encouraging yourself to do things again that would cause that shameful behavior. So an example with guys I've been coaching recently, If you are, I mean, I'll just give a bunch of rapid fire examples because I think this will relate to most people. Guys who regret or guys who ruminate over social faux pas. I'm sure all of us experience this at some point, Especially for teenagers. But when you're an adult and you're still beating yourself up about saying something awkward at a party or awkward in a professional setting or on a date or something, To keep beating yourself up about it, To feel bad, To in some way communicate yourself to yourself, I'm a bad person because of this or I'm a bad person because I was rejected or I let this relationship go or I failed my girlfriend or I wasn't good enough for my wife or whatever the thing is. Anytime you feel those emotions, You are setting yourself up to do another behavior that will allow you to feel that emotion again. I just gave a guy an exercise recently that to go through all his regrets in his romantic life to see if we can let them go and stop thinking about them because the more he feels I'm a bad person because I messed things up on this many potential dates or I messed things up all the time, The more he's going to recreate that. This is how our emotions work. We will recreate whatever will justify our dominant emotions. And I would say this is especially true for anything that feels a lot. So again, I think it's especially true for women. So I think there's a lot of takeaways here for being in a relationship with a woman, Especially a woman who's in her feminine feeling more. I would say there's some parenting lessons in here that I've taken and how I try to behave with my kids but also your own subconscious, Your soul if you will, Your anima to use Jung's term is a feminine feeling being. This is why Jung said that a man's soul is feminine or his quote Habet Mulier Animium which is Latin for woman carries soul. Actually one quick side note on that. So I know a lot of people joined my sub stack recently because I was going to, I'm intending on releasing chapters for my next book, Anima, Which is like my unified guide for relating to women from an archetypal or deeply authentic Jungian perspective even. I've slowed down that. I do plan on publishing it this year but the deeper I've gotten into it, The more or I should say the less it's been directly about relating to women although there's still that big part of it. Successful relationships, Successful dating, Successful sex lives is all part of the book but I've gotten a lot deeper into the soul aspect of it. I mean this is kind of my pattern with every project. I ended up having a simple idea and then make it very complex. So anyway, This is just to say if you've subscribed to my sub stack recently, I will still be publishing chapters or previews from my Anima book. It's just a little bit slower because I'm taking a slightly different approach to it than simply a book about relating to women. Anyway, Alright. Moving on to our final part of this episode. So we covered the evolutionary roots, Why you have this kind of emotional fallacy of why you beat yourself up thinking it's going to make you a better person which is not true. We spoke about transactional analysis, This kind of reverse principle or this ultimate truth I'd say that we end up using behaviors to justify our feelings. What's next? What do you do with this? You have to take away the negative payoff and give a different payoff. And you know, The flip side of not shaming yourself would be, There's a lot of terms for this but I really like Dr. Carl Rogers' term unconditional positive regard. If you don't know who Carl Rogers is, You should. Most people haven't heard of him because unlike Freud, Jung, Adler, Many other people who made huge contributions to the theory of psychology, Carl Rogers, Who was an American psychologist and many consider him to be the father of American therapy or the father of modern therapy even, He didn't have so much in terms of intellectual theory. It was more on like how does a therapist help a client? And a lot of his ideas, I mean his main idea was that the best thing a therapist can do for a patient is not necessarily the ideas or the exercises or the assignments or the questions he asks but simply, If the therapist can hold the most positive vision of the client, Of the patient, The patient then is most likely to live up to it. So he calls this the unconditional positive regard that no matter how messed up a patient, And he wrote mostly for therapists which is why most people haven't heard of Carl Rogers, The best thing a therapist can do for a patient is to hold true the best version of that patient. The version of like, Just see the patient as a version of him or herself that doesn't have the neuroses or bad behaviors or ego triggers or psychological wounds and like hold that in mind. And I've tried to remind myself this a lot in coaching men of can I see the guy in front of me as the version of himself that he wants to see himself as. Right? The dominant or not, You know, Dominance is usually a thing most men want to work on. The masculine, Grounded, Confident, Happy, Authentic, Creatively expressed, Abundant, Magnetic version. Can I hold true that version of himself in my mind especially when he's getting hard on himself or caught up in old patterns or ego triggers or shames or regrets or pains, Heartbreaks. Can I hold onto that version of him in my mind? Can I do my best to see himself that way so that he can conform to that? Can I reflect the best version of self to him? And then I let my exercises and questions and inquiry try to be guided by that. Now even though probably most of you guys listening are not coaches or therapists, I think this is a very useful idea for how you deal with yourself. Can you have an unconditional positive regard for yourself? Unconditional, Meaning no matter what you've done, No matter what you've fucked up in the past or your shortcomings or your bad behaviors or whatever, Can you love yourself essentially to use the self-help cliche? And I know for a lot of men, I mean the term self-love is kind of a feminine self-help term. A lot of men are kind of allergic to it. I am kind of myself, Like what? Like love myself? And I know there's like a part of masculine brain logic of like, Well, If I'm acting like a loser, If I'm doing all these things that I don't want to do, If I'm falling short of myself, If I'm failing myself and other people, I'm just supposed to love myself and just regard myself positively? No, I should shame myself. I should yell myself. I should do the David Goggins thing and like, You know, Get in my own face. That is useful for times and obviously for I think a lot of masculine men or masculine people, There's an appeal to that, But it does not work in the long run, Right? If going all David Goggins and yelling at yourself in the mirror gets you out of bed in the morning, That's great. But yelling at yourself the whole run, I mean, I don't know what's in David Goggins' head. I like David Goggins as a cultural figure, As a figure in the male collective consciousness or our modern culture nowadays. I don't know how happy the guy is. I do not strive to be such a person. I don't know how much of it's an act or how much of, You know, Again, I like the guy. I don't think that mindset is healthy for most people. Especially men. But here's a way I've framed it to myself that does appeal to my masculine mind. It's this idea, A bit of a side. So I've been prone to depression in my life. I make this episode for myself as well, Right? I've definitely had all the shame, All the things of shame that you could imagine, I've had them, Right? Depression, Negative self-talk, All of that stuff. One of the things, And this is just an anecdote by the way, I'm not, This, What I'm about to say, I'm not saying that other people should do this, But this is just what has worked for me. When I imagine an enemy, When I imagine people wanting to harm me or my family, And I imagine that somehow they would delight in seeing me be hard on myself, That flips me right out of it. I'm like, Fuck you. You know, There's no way I'm going to love myself so that the bad guys don't win or that my enemies can't win. And this is like, You know, This is not an enlightened way to do things. Like honestly, The times I've been so depressed, Like really, Really down on myself, But I imagine some sort of enemy. Or I imagine, Just as a quick aside, Like, You know, I was in a cult. I've been very, I've spoken about the cult. I've heard from people that members of the cults have done like black magic, Occult rituals to try to like ruin my life. I'm not saying I even believe in that stuff. It is what it is, Whenever I can laugh about it. But when I imagine like there's people who are trying to harm me and my family doing like evil rituals to make me depressed, That idea, As silly as it might sound to some people, Has totally snapped me out of negative thinking. Be like, There is no way I'm letting some black magic make me depressed, Right? I'm going to love myself no matter what. Like I kind of go into kind of a war mode or like, You know, Maybe egoic masculine mode of like, There is no way you're gonna, You're gonna get me down. I share this, Not to say that people should, You know, Should do this necessarily because it is driven by ego. It's not like exactly an enlightened way to go about. Getting into a positive mental state. But honestly, It works for me. And I think if you're, If you're someone like me who's like neurotypically masculine, This might work for you, Having an enemy. This is probably not what Dr. Carl Rogers thought when he coined the term unconditional positive regard. But one thing that has really helped me and it helped a lot of my clients in moments that they would get down on themselves is this idea of I will have my back no matter what. No matter what other people think and you can imagine the enemy if you want. No matter what other people do or the rejection I might experience from women or friends or society or the public or the marketplace. I will always have my back. That is the most important, Like almost like warrior's devotion to being on the same page as myself. Whereas shame, You could look at shame as, I mean, One way I've defined shame in many ways is shame disconnects you from yourself, Right? Like you are criticizing yourself. Your inner parent is yelling at your inner child per Dr. Burns terminology. Unconditionally regarding yourself, Committing to an unconditional positive regard for yourself encourages, I mean, One just connects you to yourself, Right? You are on your own team again. And while logically it doesn't necessarily make sense and I know actually another analogy with relationships because there is a takeaway here as I mentioned earlier, Right? Like as a man who is in a relationship with a woman seeing your wife or your girlfriend as the best version of yourself or are unconditionally loving her, Which is what most women are craving. Well, If my wife or girlfriend is acting in a way I don't want, If I just love her, That's rewarding her for bad behavior, Right? Like that's like, And there are contexts where something like this is true. Most nice guy syndrome dynamics. You know, In situations where a woman is mistreating her husband or boyfriend over a long period of time, Very often there is something the man was doing to enable that behavior. This is not what we're talking about, Right? This is not rewarding someone or making someone feel good for mistreating you, But seeing them as the best version of themselves and recognizing that whatever behavior they're doing that is undesirable, Whether it's in your adult romantic partner or in your child or in your employee or collaborator, You know, This can go for any close relationship. If you hold fast to the fact that they are doing the best they can, That's that self-help cliche again, And I'm going to try to bring out the best version of them. I'm going to see the best version of them. I'm going to regard them positively, Even though their behavior might not be what I want, Is the best way to guide someone into the desirable behavior. It seems counterintuitive because it seems like you're rewarding bad behavior in some settings, But this is the truth, Right? And I see this very acutely with my daughter because we have an obvious asymmetrical relationship, Literal parent and child. Like the more praise, The more love. It's also true with dog training, But it's a separate thing. The more love I can give her, Even if I have to discipline her sometimes, We have to always end on a praising note. We always have to end on celebration, And I've seen this behaviorally. The more I show my daughter I unconditionally love her, The more likely she is to do the behaviors or live the behaviors that I want. And I have an example of this that I think directly relates to our subconscious that I'll end with probably. But I also notice this with my wife. And I'll actually say with my clients where I've been trying to reinforce this idea of letting go of the past, Right? Not allowing yourself to feel shame because that's only going to make you fail again in the future or do the thing that you don't want to do that seems to be causing your shame, Right? Basically, The causality is flipped when it comes to our emotions. One sign that things are different is that you can have the same external thing happen that in the past has triggered shame and you don't feel bad about it. So I'll just give a little example from one of the guys who's in my group Crochet Program because he had an early win, Right? Here's a guy who historically has struck out with women or historically has missed signals. Basically, His love life has not been what it wanted and he had a bunch of so-called missed connections or what he might even call failures. And we've been working on letting go of that feeling of failure. And one of the ways that this would show or one of the ways this would cycle in his life is that because he felt like a social failure or romantic failure when he would interact with a woman he would always find a way to create kind of a rejection in her and then take it really bad and then obviously the connection would not continue whether it's on a date or in a so-called approach if you will. But he recently had an experience where he met a woman in a regular social event. She basically rejected him, Right? She like paid him no mind and because he had really been working on letting go of shame and we didn't necessarily use the term unconditional positive regard but employing that about himself seeing himself as a likable person rather than reinforcing the shame that he's unworthy he shrugged it off, Right? And that already was a win. The fact that he shrugged it off you know this technical rejection he didn't go into self-shaming and go home and wallow in pity self-pity that already was a win. But what's really funny is that later you know I think maybe half an hour later he ran into the same woman and she was super eager to talk to them and they exchanged contact information in an effortless way like she was clearly into him like in a way that was not normal for him and you know you could call this a fluke or coincidence or whatever I would say this is very clear evidence that when you stop internalizing shame when you can free yourself from this shame which only causes you to repeat unwanted behavior not only does it change your well-being right? His reaction was positive not only did it prevent future self-sabotaging behavior where in the past he might have gone home and beaten himself up he stayed at the events and funny enough the same exact woman came to him and they ended up having a great conversation just a small anecdote about when you change your inner world you change your outer world okay I'm going to leave us with a final thing it's a I'm going to leave us with a final idea that I think brings home or helps visualize the unconditional positive regard idea that I hope will extra appeal to men especially if you if you grew up watching Dragon Ball Z or playing playing RPGs or anything where like you're trying to get your stats up it's actually something that came up in you know spontaneously with my daughter because well maybe you don't know if you don't have kids but there's like an ongoing debate in the conscious parenting world if you will on do you teach your kids to say thank you or not obviously the more conservative traditional people say of course you got to teach your kids to say thank you because you want them to be a nice person and know to say thank you but then there's the more like you know individualistic you know you can sort of say liberal or more progressive parents who say well if you force your kids to say thank you they're not really feeling gratitude they're just kind of going along with a you know a social norm and they're not really feeling it anyway like you're teaching them to be inauthentic as opposed to feel the thank you themselves and I see both sides because I want my kids to say thank you but I also want them to genuinely feel it and I created this it's one of the things I'm proud of as a dad I created this kind of mythology for my daughter where we imagine that her heart is this magnet and the stronger her heart is the bigger her heart is the more she gets the things she wants and the smaller her heart is the more she repels the things that she wants so I'm actually using you know the analogy a version of the analogy from my previous podcast episode and I just told her like listen if you say things like thank you if you feel grateful if you're happy when you receive things if you accept the answers that people give you whether it's yes or no and you basically maintain this positive demeanor your heart gets bigger and it makes people want to pay attention to you give you things give you gifts and there's a literal sense to this right if you're ungrateful when you get gifts from people people are going to want to give you gifts if you're really grateful they want to give you more gifts it's just fun right it's a good social life skill but I think also a spiritual or internal psychological skill of like for her four year old mind three almost four year old mind we just frame things as does this make my heart bigger or stronger or weaker sorry does this make my heart stronger or weaker and we everything like every kind of social behavior we just relate it to that and my daughter has this mental framework of if I'm grateful if I'm nice to people if I'm accepting if I'm calm my heart gets bigger and people treat me better and this is the truth obviously right and that's the reason why and then she starts saying and now without me ever having to say to her you should say thank you she's very eager to say thank you she's very eager to be appreciative of things which is the real thing that I care about as opposed to complaining about things and it makes her a happier person I presume it's going to be a life skill that will benefit her in the future because nobody wants to be around a whiny brat but everyone likes to be around a grateful person now what does this have to do with you? I would say that for the masculine minded for you know the person who wants to go super saiyan for the man who wants the most enlightened version to get all his stats up in the RPG of life if you just imagine that shame is a bad spell that makes your heart magnet weaker or makes you less magnetic whereas having your own back loving yourself no matter what as corny as it sounds having an unconditional positive regard not only deters you from self-sabotaging behaviors but encourages you to find your best alignment then the best thing you could do the the best thing you could do to strengthen yourself just like you would to strengthen your muscles in the gym is to free yourself from shame and continuously encourage yourself with a positive unconditional positive regard see continuously see yourself as the best version of yourself and the word encourage which I've used a few times in that episode is great is like the most perfect word because you are giving yourself courage you are strengthening your ability to do things and I hope I've made my argument well for this like fairly unprovable we can say even spiritual idea but I do believe from recent events in my life in my relationships but also within my own mind that the more you regard something positively and this goes for yourself but you know also external things the more it finds it's perfect alignment yelling at things shaming it giving negative feedback yourself as well always causes the distortion and you can kind of look at this as like a cancer cell what defines a cancer cell is that it's growing separately from the body it's not connected to the rest of the body whereas healthy cells are in synergy with the rest of the human body the more you positively regard yourself the more you enter into connection with your unconscious the more likely your natural charisma confidence authentic expression comes out when I work with guys on flirting I never go over lines right I'm trying to get them to get in touch with their instincts get in touch with their natural genius of the human mating ritual which will come out of them and that can only happen when they are free of shame because guys who say the wrong thing or do the wrong thing in social settings or romantic settings or even in a relationship it's almost always driven by shame or it's driven by some sort of distortion some sort of disconnect from their inner knowing or inner wisdom and shame is always disconnecting and positively regarding yourself is always going to connect anyway I think I made that case I can repeat myself in different forms that's it see you in the next episode goodbye