Radically Genuine Podcast with Dr. Roger McFillin

Welcome to the Radically Genuine Podcast. I am Dr. Roger McFillin here in the studio on a Saturday morning. Sean and Kelly, welcome. Good morning. Morning. Great to see the two of you. I love my job. Let me tell you, I- Tone it down. Last night I got an email, which I read this morning, from an old client with an update. And I know she's listening because she- said that she's a weekly listener to the Radically Genuine podcast and then sent this amazing email. Haven't seen her in probably about a year. I first saw her when she was 16 years old. Very severe anorexia. Great family, love her parents too, but I'm sure her parents were really scared that they could lose her. She became that ill with anorexia, very low weight. She always had a struggle with her own fear. She had a fear of fear. And I saw her for a number of years in the high school years until when she was, went into community college right after high school. I'm gonna have to protect her privacy through this, but she knows who, she knows I'm talking about her. She went through our DBT program and... It just speaks to the potential of all human beings. Cause at one point you would have thought she would have had a lot of trouble being able to take risks in life. Just because of that fear, going off to college or dating, all those things just appeared and presented as so overwhelming for her. And I look back at our work and first of all, I'm so proud of you. I know you're listening. her willingness to face that fear and to take risks in order to achieve something more in life. Just so admire that in her. She is so brave. She ended up graduating college and moving to a major American city completely on her own. And if you would have known this girl in her younger years, you would have thought that potentially could never happen. And it's just why at any point, if I have a thought, in my head that undermines somebody's capabilities. I observe that thought and do not attach to it because the potential in all human beings to create something in their own lives is beyond what we could ever imagine. And that's why I'm so sensitive to any messages that undermine resilience. This girl is now in a relationship, she seems so happy. I had tears of joy reading the email. She is on her own. She looks like she's met a group of friends. She was just talking in the email about pushing herself outside her comfort zone to do things that are really challenging. And what she has been able to do is develop comfort with being alone. And when you become comfortable with being on your own and you're okay with sitting with yourself and experiencing loneliness or boredom, then your capacity... to be able to tolerate difficult experiences increases. And so then going out and talking to a stranger or taking risks, meeting people, it doesn't become so overwhelming. We live in a culture now that fear is being provoked in my opinion purposely. And we all have to develop the capacities to not only tolerate that emotion, but be able to face it. courageously and be able to distance ourselves from the masses to be very aware of how conformity can influence our own reality. And that's the theme for today's podcast. Kelly inspired this podcast episode because he was speaking about self reliance a couple of podcasts ago. And I thought that's a word I haven't really heard in a while. And it's a word that I need to do some research on because the resilience is obviously part of the psychological literature, resilience being that ability to adapt and bounce back from challenging circumstances. There's books. that are written on resilience and becoming flexible and adaptive and thriving in chaos. But I didn't really understand what self-reliance was. And I flew back from Dallas, was in Dallas recording a podcast looking forward when that comes, when that's released, we'll talk about that. But Red Ralph Waldo Emerson. Yeah, yeah, he's the man. Young author. He has essays on self-reliance and it gave me a different perspective. How old is that? 18... Yeah, mid-1800s. It was written right between... The nation is extremely young and you had the Revolutionary War, obviously, where people came together. And then right after he wrote it, you had, you know, the Civil War where people broke apart. So he's kind of like right in the middle observing how the government is, you know, building in this new nation. And he observed a lot of conformity. And he just decided to go out on his own and develop these thoughts about individualism, trusting within yourself and not necessarily listening to the masses and the ideas that they're spewing to try to take that information in. But you have a responsibility to take that information and then make it your own versus having someone indoctrinate you or tell you how to believe about those things. Yeah, self-reliance. It's a little bit different than what the word would lead you to believe. Because there's this American individualism, kind of pull yourself up by the bootstraps, and sometimes that can become distorted. Yeah, that's what I was thinking. In terms of self-reliance, the opposite is dependence, right? So you're more independent, right? Yeah, but I don't think there is any, I don't think there's a... purely self-made individual. So to say that self-reliance means that you are relying completely only on your own for all things on this earth is just not realistic, obviously. But self-reliance means respecting our own experiences, ideas and traits. It does not mean we don't, we do everything on our own. But it is this attitude shift to be able to pay more attention to your own intuition and have the courageousness to challenge ideas when they're not aligned with your own experiences. It's the dialectical opposite to conformity. So it's like taking responsibility for your own actions. No, it's not, although that could be a byproduct of that attitude shift. It is about making decisions and coming to opinions with primary respect to your own experience. Now this is going to be challenging for you today, Sean, because you have like a little, you, you used to have a little antenna on your head and you just absorb everyone else's, um, energy and thoughts and opinions and it'd be downloaded into your brain and you'd repeat it. Yes. I'm an empath. Very powerful. And so as we've transitioned you from dangerously naive to, you know, having become awakened to how we can become mass conditioned. Thank you for the graduation ceremony. That was really a beautiful moment for, for me and you know, the support from the two of you to say you weren't going to make fun of me any longer. It was really, really powerful. It's not a problem. I mean, Kelly and I've been planning this for a while. We did, wouldn't we say it was going to take about a year to, to de-condition him? I think so. I think that. The plan was a year and then he was on a two year program. We did slow down the expectation. Started the 12 steps at the end of the first year. And I showed you guys. It's funny, like we had to break him down psychologically. Remember, we had to, like, you know, make up names for him like Donald Trump does to his opponent. Right, right. Break him down first. You know, sleepy Sean, dangerously naive. And then there was the one day he left here crying. And we did feel bad because, you know, obviously we're trying to build him up. And so we've transitioned to that new stage where now we are building him up and we are supporting his independence. We want him to, he's a really smart guy. So we want him to trust his own experience and not have to say, you know, well, it must be the authority. They must be taking care of us. Our best interests are always, are always in the forefront of their mind. There has to be a good reason for these masks and these lockdowns because California would just implode on itself. Give up your freedoms, stay in your home. That reason's gonna be okay. But we've transitioned from that point. Have we? But I do think we are in a transition point. I think globally, there is an awakening. certainly post pandemic. And we are just, I think more aware of the propensity for mass conditioning and how media government industry who have a similar agenda can align together and try to shape the experiences of entire groups of people, a global community change the mindset of an entire country in order to fit an agenda. Matthias Desmond. who is the academic who speaks on mass formation psychosis. And we've talked about this, has really done so much work on how systematically conformity can be shaped. And how it is up to really a small percentage of people to kind of develop self-reliance in order to speak out. Immanuel Kant said, anyone who knows the philosopher, Emmanuel Kant, dare to think, have the courage to use your own reason. It's the motto of enlightenment. Matthias Desmond said, the aristocracy under Stalinism, the Jews under Nazism, the virus and later the anti-vaxxers during the coronavirus crisis and the same. and at the same time offers a strategy to deal with the object of anxiety. There is a real chance that all free flowing anxiety will attach itself to that object. And there will be broad social support for the implementation of the strategy to control that object of anxiety. Governments, media, anyone in positions of authority or power, they will use your anxiety against you. your attachment to fear. And fear is a survival mechanism, a survival mechanism to survive this life. This time that we're here in this physical body. We are biologically ingrained to be able to feel fear to try to protect what we have. And in a lot of ways, courage is your willingness to accept that your body on this three-dimensional plane at this very time, it's limited, but you are eternal. And if you are eternal, meaning maybe your soul, right? Then what matters is only your growth and only your evolution. So it is actually almost like a vaccination against fear that your own personal values, your own courage, your desire to do what's right, to be able to go against what the masses are going to say, to be kind of a lone wolf in that flock of sheep and face that fear is more important than being connected just to this time. And so self-reliance is this attitude shift, this idea that we would have to train ourselves. We would have to train ourselves to be fully connected to our own thoughts. our own intuition and our desire to seek out truth and live a life of integrity. Not easy because we are so vulnerable to suggestion. We are so vulnerable to the mass opinions of others to be accepted. To not disappoint those opinions. The fear of being alone. Right. And this is where you know my ex-client, one of my most favorite people had to face that. to go out on her own to achieve her life, she had to face that feeling of being alone, to being abandoned by everything that is close and connected to not have close friends, to face your insecurities, to put yourself out there for an adventure, for an experience. And I think for the collective good, we are now in a battle with fear. And when you see rising mental health related problems, fear is the foundation. and fear drives so much. Fear drives so much of harm and some of the darkest aspects of humanity. And I think that all of that fear then promotes what I'm, you know, as a teacher, I can sit there and say, I see a lot of what I guess psychologists would call, I don't know if it's a psychological term called learned helplessness, where individuals repeatedly see negativity, repeatedly experience failure repeatedly and you're bombarded by with news and media negative, negative, negative, that they they begin to believe that they have no control over their circumstances, which leads to that lack of self reliance. They just give up on their own thoughts, even if they're questioning it, because they're like, there's nothing I can do about this. There's nothing there's nothing good happening. And you see these in my case students, but in all cases, I think there's a huge learned helplessness problem around the globe where people just are not relying on their own thoughts, their own opinions, their own ability to see what's going on, to question, to question authority. Because they have this feeling of cognitive dissonance where they're uncertain as to what's going on, but they refuse to just kind of stand up and say, hey, this doesn't mesh with what I'm thinking. I'm going to actually voice my opinion about this. because they're afraid that if they do, they're going to get backlash from the pop, you know, the, which they will. Yeah. Which they will. That's human nature. I think there's, there's so many lies that were accepted as truth. And that was what is so dangerous and so scary is how something that doesn't meet kind of basic standards for empirical scrutiny and reason can be accepted as truth under, under fear. Booker T. Washington said, a lie doesn't become truth, wrong doesn't become right, and evil doesn't become good just because it's accepted by a majority. We were on social media, I saw, and this speaks to not only the mRNA vaccination trials, but psychiatric drugs and the current standing of science. A gentleman put out a video that kind of went viral. Would you be able to play that? Because I think he makes some really good points. There it is. We accepted so many claims to be truth. This will stop the transmission of a disease. This will decrease the likelihood that I will be in the hospital. And what is that based on? That is based on nothing but accepting what somebody heard. And this is what I see in my field over and over again. They don't do the critical evaluation, the critical analysis. They do not look at the papers. they accept the message. The message now becomes the truth, which is the dialectical opposite of self-reliance. Self-reliance is to not accept blindly a statement unless you've experienced it yourself. And when we look at our medical system and we look at the guidelines that are developed, we're seeing people just repeat the message. without having their own scientific scrutiny of such information, not thinking critically about it, and not understanding the totality of all that science, which doesn't then allow for people to make informed decisions. So the question is, God, who do we trust? This is very challenging now for me as a father and as a social scientist and psychologist, who do I trust? I ultimately come to the conclusion that you trust but verify. You trust people who have earned a certain status based on their education or their achievements, but then you verify yourself that is self-reliance. You don't automatically assume what somebody is telling us. There's the trappings of this time. When you think about the US government. this idea of like a free market or with the idea of democracy, the trappings of going to Washington, because they might say I'm going to take on the swamp or I'm going to take on the lobbyist. I'm going to take on everything that is happening in Washington and you get there and you've got your dinners and your parties and you get your money and then you meet those who are of influence and to keep that status and to keep that position. You have to go right along with everything that is happening there. Well, that's if what they were saying was truthful in the first place. I'm going to take down the swamp. I'm going to drain it and I'm going to fix the system. Sometimes just saying those words is what people want to hear in order to get elected. They don't really necessarily believe they're going to achieve that, but they know it's going to, it's going to motivate enough people to vote for them. And then they just become part of the system. You know, the idea of theory and fact is what I took away from that video. Often a theory is promoted, but a theory is just a theory. It's based on some evidence that indicates a certain thing could happen, but people take theory as fact and repeat it as, as if it's the Bible, that it's the truth. And that's where critical thought has to come in, right? The idea of critical thought is, is weighing the facts that exist. and coming to your own conclusion about what the future outcome may be. And nobody really knows, right? The only way you know is through time and science has a way of unfolding and revealing the truth, but that does take time. Yeah, it does. But when you're, when you're watching and bombarded again with news, if let's just say we are sitting there watching something and a politician gets on and starts speaking, they're going to be using rhetoric, they're going to be using manipulation. All those things should be taught by the way, to every single person or American education system, it used to be, and understanding what a red herring is, understanding what an ad hominem is, understanding the appeals to emotion, pathos, ethos, or pathos, I'm sorry. But the fact of the matter is they'll spew ideas. Like he said about Al Gore, he gave that example. I remember that. I remember him utilizing that climate change platform to make, and he made a lot of money on that. And he traveled, he was a very popular guy because he was saying the right messages. And he was saying these. things that he claimed to be facts, but the other thing he was doing in his speeches and his Ted talks and all of these things that, you know, people became enamored in his movie. He was basically telling people how they should be feeling about the facts that, hey, New York's going to be underwater in 2012. You should all be scared about that. And people just the self reliance part of this comes in when you say Don't tell me how I should be feeling about what you're saying. Let me take a look at what you're looking at so I can make my own informed decision. That just doesn't come easy for people to do. It's much easier to just listen to an authoritative figure and just blindly and obediently cater to them. The advances that we're experiencing in technology, in my opinion, seems to have a negative influence on self-reliance. But it shouldn't. We had this conversation yesterday. It shouldn't though. You and I differ here, I think. Yeah. You're talking about like AI, all these new things. Not even AI, but let's look at the 1950s and 1960s generation. There was just, number one, like a respect for authority was instilled in you. you know, respect your elders, respect your teachers, respect people in positions of power, like that, that authority was something that you were grown up that respect, the access to information was extremely limited. You know, you learned what you were taught unless you went to a library, picked up a book, read that book, and then maybe found another point of view. Like right now, we have we're definitely more of a individual individualistic culture, maybe. Um, people are have their own social media profiles. They have their own ideas. They're sharing their own thoughts. Um, then the access to information through the internet, you have ways of searching and uncovering and identifying different points of views on so many things. You would think the idea of self-reliance would be more promoted now, but I have a tendency to agree with your statement. It's almost. Like. the work isn't being put in, that there's two groups, right? We're being separated into people that actually are curious, want to learn and put some effort into individual thoughts. And those that take the path of least resistance see a TikTok video and then go, oh, that's so true. And then it becomes fact for them. But I also think that... the internet has caused a lot more individuals not to necessarily, you would hope that they would use it to find facts and to research. I'm seeing less research and more posts just to validate their own beliefs. And that's where that's not self-reliance. Yeah. Yeah. And yeah, so the counterpoint to this and Ralph Waldo Emerson discussed this is that self-reliance is based on your own experience. So doing is more valuable than reading somebody else describe their own thoughts. That's where we are vulnerable to suggestion because how do you know what's your thought versus somebody else's thought? And when you have such wide access to information at the drop of a hat instantaneously on social media or Google search, a lot of that information is also filtered to you. in ways that I don't even think we continue to grasp. And that is technology. And self-reliance is more about experiencing it yourself. You can Google on how to fix the plumbing in your home or do electrical work, right? And try to get that information. You can learn a skill that way, and I think that's valuable. But then there is being able to learn it through experience by working with a master tradesman, for example. Right. So like what is more valuable? And then there's this idea of creativity. Creativity actually comes from within. It might be the absence of thought, right? And I've been experimenting with this in my own personal life. I told you about the book of miracles, right? Roger's been doing sand art. It's beautiful. Wonderful. And finger painting. Oh, you watched a video of my son, didn't you? Is that why you said finger painting? Yeah. And so this book of miracles is fascinating because it gives you a one year training process. Every day is a new lesson. And the first part of it is to almost break down your process of thinking. And today's lesson was everything you know is based on past. And that's I'm only like days seven in the lessons leading up to this work be completely detaching and diffusing from your ideas of thoughts. We have no meaning of anything other than what we attach to it. So Sean, what is this? That is your morning whiskey. It's a thermos. That's only based on your past learning. So what it really is, it's a cylinder with a rubber grip. Yeah, gray. So you're insulated. So this therefore thermos. So really there in this way, you learn to detach any meaning and then create a new meaning for it based on your own experience. This is part of self reliance. But to understand that fear has to be created in your mind. That there it is the absence of fear. would be the absence of attachment. And this is very Buddhist, I understand that. The absolute attachment to anything. So the only way you can actually feel fear is if you're attached to the ego. The ego being the trappings or everything of this physical world. And so creativity, for example, where does creativity come from? It almost comes from within. And I don't know, I think... exposing ourselves to others, opinions, thoughts or ideas can then impact creativity. Are we creating anything new? Or we just influenced by what someone else has already? But isn't creativity just a component of ego? Because you want to create something that is yours that others could then see and it's attaching you added that I did you added so that others can so where I'm saying where does it come from? You can create create for yourself. Does that inflate your ego because you've created something that could live on? You're adding on something, right? The starving artist. But anyway, I think creation is innate. I think it's part of our soul. I think it's part of our purpose. Who's innate? Is it innate? No, it's innate. I think creation, because everything what we're doing is we are constantly creating. Right. If anything, if we wanted to break down the purpose of life. we might say it is to create. Right now we are creating. And we have choice in that. And that is the power of our experience is that we can create. And this is down to beliefs. Do you believe you can create anything? Do you believe that you're that powerful? Well, that's part of self-reliance. He talks about conformity stifling creativity. L. Emerson? Yeah. He talks about how so Let's take it back over to education for a second. And remember, I had a conversation. We don't need no education. I don't always want to attack my. You don't need no thought control. There you go. But, you know, a simple example, if I'm sitting and I don't want to name I'm sitting in a class in the class is assignment asked me to create something. OK, because I don't want to like pinpoint different classes. So I go home. And, and a thought comes to my head and I'm like, I'm really excited about it. It's way out of way out of whack of what the assignment was, but it goes along with certain things, but I'm really excited about it, right? It motivates me. I get it done. I turn it in. Excited, proud. I developed it, my own thoughts. Guess what happens when I turn it in? There's a rubric that an individual created that then sits there and they check Mark, you got a two out of this, three out of this, you didn't follow these directions based on what? Based on what? Based on what? So now this kid that was excited that actually was self-reliant, that is the practice of self-reliant is creating and developing one's own original thinking, using the things around them, now suddenly gets a negative emotion because of a grade that was subpar based off of what he thought was going to be amazing. So now we have a system that stifles creativity. You have to conform to what that particular educator wants you to do. And if you don't do it, you are going to be good. Now that's for creative projects. You are stifling creativity through conformity. If you want to elevate that process, then the next step should be, as an evaluator, you gave your first response or your first review of the work that and the grade. The next step should be, you don't agree with that grade, defend your work. Defend your work and tell me why I'm gives someone the ability to believe and truly believe in what they've created. Now, if they don't believe they'll back down. They'll say, you're right. I did this half-assed. Sure. And they'll get called out for it. And maybe then you can change the grade and make it even lower. Right. Like you need to try and encourage people to defend their work. My wife's been watching, watching the, um, what's that show? Uh, uh, fashion, uh, runway, uh, with a Heidi Klum show. It was a project. Project run it there. You just walked right in there. And. And that's the one thing that I've been taking away from the show is that you need to defend your work. You don't have to just the judges may say something and if you stand and you like back down, they'll throw you off the show because you don't believe in your work. But if you defend yourself and you have a point of view on stuff, like that's where things get interesting. And I think that's what creativity is. Creativity isn't for everyone. You know, art is in the eye of the beholder. Somebody is going to see value in your work and maybe eventually everybody will see value in your work. But the only way for it to get out there is for you to defend it, believe in it, model it, shape it, promote it. Yeah, true. But that whole system, again, I'm going to go back. That system doesn't, if you're a teacher and you're listening, that's a great way of, of, of assessing, because now you're getting the child to, to defend, right. And that that's communication. They have to develop a thought on the spot to do it. That is absolutely valuable, but that's not what the system is. That's not what the system is. The system is it has teachers in fear, you know, state standards, national standards, and that if you don't follow through with all of these that you're not going to be a good teacher. It's telling it's sending the wrong message. We are sending teachers the wrong message. And then the teachers are certainly, you know, teaching through fear. And we're losing self reliance at a young generation because of that. Another quote. You're full of quotes. Ralph Waldo Emerson. This is the quote episode. What I must do is all that concerns me. Not what the people think. The great man is he who he is in the midst of the crowd keeps with the perfect sweetness, the independence of solitude. So the person who scores personal intuition and instead chooses to rely on others opinions lacks the creative power necessary for robust, bold individualism. The absence of conviction results not in different ideas as the person expects, but the acceptance of the same ideas. So what happens, Kelly, in this classroom is the person that ends up becoming successful is the one who realizes what the authority in this position, the teacher, the grader, the assessor, wants from them, and they are now just pleasing them. Now the rubric that is developed is I think the intention was for some objectivity, but it pretty much clearly states already what is expected of them. And so that does not allow to think outside the bounds of what is already known. That is about learning what someone else already knows. And that has become the American education system. In fact, I think it's gone way beyond that now. Now there's an indoctrination that occurs in the American public school system. the indoctrination into an idea, a belief of human nature and capability. When we start talking about the victimization culture and identity politics, something that should clearly stay within, in my opinion, within the homes and within families, so families can live out their own values and raise their kids in the manner in which they believe is the right path for their future, schools have taken on pseudo-parenting. They've become pseudo everything. They have become now the authority. We've heard a psychologist recently, school psychologists tell a client that they should consider mood stabilizers. Or now teachers have opinions based on what is racism. Or what beliefs that you should adopt in order to be open-minded and flexible. it's part of the conditioning process, but yet that teacher doesn't understand that they are a victim of that same conditioning. Absolutely. Yeah. So that goes back to what we said last week, people think they are doing what's right, or they think they're doing what's good, but in action, but it is harming people. Because if a teacher thinks that they're teaching what's important, then then they think they're actually helping people, but in turn, they could be hurting people because they're following this curriculum that's been, I don't know, not not vetted, but it serves a purpose in terms of funding for educational resources. Right. And then that if they're practicing that system, and they're following every rule, but remember, they are getting rewarded, they're getting affirmation, they're being told that they're good teachers. Virtue signaling has been thrust into our lexicon when I didn't understand I never heard that word before the pandemic. Because that's when virtue signaling was, hey, I am with you, I am good as you are good. See me I wear my mask. That means I'm a better human. And that spread that spread like wildfire. And that's the tribal nature that exists in human beings like, oh, someone in my tribe tells you that masks are going to stop the transmission of this disease. That means I care more about you see look at me I wear my mask, I'm even gonna put it in my social media profile. It doesn't matter what the evidence states. It doesn't matter the fact that there is no scientific data to support that. It's just that I was told to do so now I'm part of the tribe. I traveled this week. People are still double masking. That's conditioned mental illness. That's fear conditioning. And now people are scared of getting sick. What do they know about biology? What do they actually know about why people get sick and they don't get sick? They don't understand. that whether you're going to get sick is going to be based on your own immune system. And are they doing things to create a robust immunity or are they going through life with double masking? And that's the insanity because truth doesn't matter anymore. It doesn't become that search for truth and fact. It becomes just an acceptance. And that's driven by fear. That's not driven by the search for what is right and what is true. I shift this a little bit to parents because I had a good Socratic the other day on, we actually did a podcast topic on this lawnmower parenting and helicopter parenting. And then this idea of self-efficacy, which I think, correct me if I'm wrong, is defined as one's ability to believe in their confidence in their, you know. And one of the students was basically talking about how, you know... sometimes when you talk about helicopter parenting, parents are what doing what they think is best, right? It's love. So that's a good intention. And how a good intention can sometimes lead down to a very negative, you know, result. I'm wondering, you know, how much of parenting also because we just got out, you know, kind of attacking that system of education. What about parents can't in self reliance, helicopter parenting, over parenting. Doesn't that also attribute to a negative outcome of self-reliance for kids growing up? I would say, yeah, I mean, isn't self-reliance, isn't just on the government or society looking out for you. You could be relying upon your parents or, um, a family member. And it could become so unhealthy that you never truly do become independent to take care of yourself because someone's always doing something for you. That's a big thing with, with toddlers. Is. trying to foster that independence, getting them to do things on their own. And then also teaching them how to ask questions. I want to stop you there because I think kids are naturally inclined. I don't think the parents foster independence. The parents just get it. They're getting in the way or they're not getting in the way. The parents that are getting in the way that's about them. Kids are naturally inclined to explore, to learn, to grow, to adapt. They haven't learned yet. the limitations of this world. It is the parents' fear that gets in the way. The parents need to learn how to be independent. It's their fear. We have parents that live in fear, and it's part of the greater society, to your point, Kelly, is that you are protecting your children from experience. And that is based out of fear that they would feel pain, or they would fail, or they would struggle. communicates a lack of confidence in their self-efficacy, their ability to learn and grow from the experience and develop self-reliance, which is absolutely necessary. Parents have to learn when to back off and let their kids experience life as it occurs to trust that they are separate than us and they have to take their own path and they have to struggle and that there's value in that struggle. The belief, and this is I think the most protective belief system against mental illness is this. Anything that happens to me in life is to benefit me. Do you know how hard it is to adopt that belief? Anything that happens is here to serve me in some way. Now people are going to listen to this and say, you're insane. You're going to tell me war, rape. abuse, all the harmful things that happen in life can benefit you. Yes, I am. I on the plane ride, I watch this incredible story of a man who fell asleep on a car ride, long car trip, fell asleep at the wheel. His wife was next to him. He had an infant. baby in the back and like a four year old. And wife died, baby died. His son, who might've been maybe four at the time, survived without a scratch. And he had a near death experience. So he died and then returned. And to hear him tell his story. and how he coped and responded to those events just tells you a lot about the capacity of human nature and the wisdom and sophistication of the universe. We are so limited as humans, but you do have your own power, your own control in your thought. We can't really expect anything else. to have control over anything else that really happens to us in our lives. But we do have control on how we think about it, right? Man's search for meaning, which was Holocaust survivor, talked about how he determined meaning from that event. And that's the Holocaust. We have the capacity for greatness, absolute greatness, but the messages, everyone that is being sent to us through popular culture, media, especially mainstream, is that you are weak, you are dependent, you are sick, there's fear, you need to protect yourself, you're not capable, you are a victim to oppressors. And I don't know if people are understanding how that's mass conditioning, because you're being undermined. You're being undermined in what you're capable of being able to handle on this earth, but this is driving you to seek out others for safety. It could be the doctor, could be the mental health therapist. It could be the, the politician, the, the authoritarian that comes on that screen and very subtly provokes fear and says, you have to do this in order to stay safe. To be okay. Come with me. Do what I do, take my idea, buy my product, do this therapy, do this treatment, and it's constantly being bombarded. You know, getting those messages constantly all the time. The idea of immigrant mentality is something that has been sticking with me. And it actually happened during like that 2019, 2020 timeframe when I was in Los Angeles, because there was definitely a culture of people that went into their apartments and they hid and maybe they're still the ones doing the double masking on airplanes, but there was also a culture of people that were just kind of like shrugging their shoulders and they went about and they worked and they did their jobs and they live with. you know, 15 people in the house where that idea of like risk taking and resourcefulness is something that is ingrained in them because it is almost like a survival skill. And you become more self reliant when you have that immigrant mentality. And maybe that's what's happened here in the United States over the last 150 years, is the generations that have been in this country that have become more safe, little more when it comes to financial stability have lost that almost that not that drive, but that that risk taking mentality in terms of pursuing things independently on their own, because there has been the safety net that they can fall back on. And it's safe, and it's comfortable. And someone's been looking out for you in terms of a family member. And maybe now that family member, they know the grandparents, the generations before you has now migrated over towards government. So it really does, in a lot of ways, it empties out your natural spirit or drive for creation. So if everything is provided to you, and this is kind of the problem, the advances of technology, which kind of result in a loss of our own independence, our own drive, because whether it's just putting on a video game or watching Netflix, we can be constantly con... distracted by what's really important. And that takes away that kind of connection to what is inside you, that drive for something more to create something, for this life to have meaning and value. And so when Kelly talks about learned helplessness, in a lot of ways, it's the idea that there's nothing I can really do that's going to matter. And so then your life becomes a seeking of pleasure. It's a lack of motivation. Well, why does the lack of motivation exist? Because what you need to be motivated for? Yeah, what's the end role? What's what's in it for me? So creating something and survival is pretty strong, you know, motivation, you know, if you're going to, you know, take wagons across the United States across the plains to as the pioneers did to create a new life, like, imagine what that drive was. But that drive can only be experienced if you faced poverty or violence or you had to flee your home country. So you had to completely count on yourself because you know if you stayed, your life was going to be worse. And that's why I think we have an innate drive for freedom. We have an innate drive for freedom and you have to be very, very careful to give up any semblance of freedom. It is only fear that is going to give up your rights, your freedom. That's why a lot of people out there believe that if the government strips the entire United States of their ability to protect themselves with firearms, that somehow they're safer. And that is the fear. You'll give up your Second Amendment right. You'll strip the people of their ability to defend themselves. But it's on this idea that I already trust my government. So the government's always going to look out for me. So the United States isn't going to fall. We're not going to fall into a totalitarian regime like it has in every other place in history throughout the history of the world. They don't recognize that this is just an experiment. And what human nature has always been was the drive for people to achieve great power and control over other people. And those people tend to be sociopaths. That's not gonna happen here because I got Netflix and I've got a warm house and I've got food and I can go to the grocery store. And soon I'm gonna have the meta, metaverse. And my goodness, like the only threat to me is if someone's going to randomly walk into my child's school and shoot up the school because that's what I've watched on the news, now that could happen. That threatens suburbia. I live in suburbia. I have a certain life. What's the answer to that? The answer to that is let's strip everybody of their ability to be able to achieve any form of protection or self-reliance to hunt, to develop farming. Because even if you have a farm, you know, you have to keep out rabbits and other things. Like people don't understand how many people live across this country under self-reliance because all the information comes from the East Coast, New York, liberal capitals, Los Angeles, the media centers. But there's this whole open cultural center throughout the United States of self-reliance. And it will provoke the fear in those who've had to for their own survival. And listen, we all do, right? Like if our food source, our ability to get food at the grocery store breaks down, we're all in trouble. We're gonna have to find some way to survive. But we've done these experiments, right? Like the drugs are illegal in the United States, a lot of drugs. Does that stop the flow of a drug trade, right? Most guns are, when there's violence, they're obtained illegally. No, but most of the violence occurs in our streets in poverty, in some of the worst areas. of the United States. So you're gonna, people are gonna find a way to protect themselves. They're gonna find a way a market is going to develop in order to purchase guns. But we've become, we've become so suggestible that there are people out there who are virtual signaling, who believe that the path to ending violence is taking away the ability to be violent. That's an insane argument. that lacks critical thought, in my opinion. That doesn't mean a sound society, of one of reasonable people, doesn't try to determine are there some protective measures that can take place in society in order to not allow such an easy access to a gun if for somebody who's going to use it to hurt other people, or is going to use it in illegal means, or might not have the mental capacity to be able to handle that firearm. That doesn't mean that reasonable people can have that argument. It's just you go to the extremes. Fear drives people to the extremes. And it is an extreme to take away freedom and right. My point being is that we all have inside of us an innate desire to be free. And it is not until that is taken away will that become awakened. I want to go back to children. So knowing the risks that exist, how do you instill more of that self-reliance? I mean you can model that behavior but... You don't instill. I have a bit of a theory that, and this comes from watching individuals that were diagnosed with say ADHD and all these, the same students that have been diagnosed when given a screen. They're perfectly calm. They're just sitting there and perfectly for hours. They'll play for hours. And it's not an attack on that. But I think what I'm seeing is self-reliance in children is pretty messy and active. If you allow a kid to be self-reliant or you're teaching them to be an individual, it's going to be very active. They're going to be experimenting. They're going to be playing. They're going to be, they're going to be hyperactive. And we, as a culture, are kind of dismissing those actions, those activities as being that's too much for me to handle as a parent. There must be something wrong. And I'm going to posit that you got to let kids play. You got to let them take some good risks when they're kids. You got to let them get into a little trouble. Because that's the only way they're going to learn to be self-reliant is learning on their own. Yeah, you can monitor them. And yes, you can, you know, give them the ideas and They're going to come to you as a parent or a teacher and they're going to, Hey, what do you suggest I do? No problem. But I just have this theory that it's because self-reliance at a young age, it's messy, right? And I think they just want to not allow that to occur. Just kind of silence the kid. Cause as long as you're, Hey, you go out to a restaurant now, how often do you see the parents just sitting there and the kid is just staring at an iPad or a phone. Yeah. Far too often. Yeah. Now, if you take that iPad or phone away, what is that kid going to do if they're three? They're probably going to crawl under the table, they're going to grab a meatball, they might throw it, they're going to crawl under the table to be around. That's my point. But the interesting part about that is that's not really bad behavior. That's the kid trying to figure things out. Right? Yeah. And that's where we're at as a society. Yeah. And obviously, the counter argument to this is that young children do not have the ability to be self reliant because their brains haven't developed. And so you need parents to protect them. And it goes back to that walking the dog metaphor. Yeah. You let them explore, but if they're going to run into traffic, you got to kind of pull the leash back. And I think there's just such value in creating experiences. It's so simple and so easy to get stuck into only that small little box of what you know. I did it. If I raised my, if I had the wisdom I have now, that I had when I. that I didn't have when I was younger and Sean, if I was in your position as an older father, is just expose them to as many different experiences as possible. Don't limit their experiences to the experiences that you were provided. And embrace the process, embrace actual struggle and failure as a creation of a new experience to learn and to grow, they'll be better for it. But fear controls us. Like Kelly was in here last week, we were talking about his challenges as being a head baseball coach in travel league, right? And that was such great examples of fear. They have this idea in their minds of who their kid should be. And once they start deviating off that path, then fear is provoked and they look to control. And so sometimes that path is... Well, they're going to be an athlete and they're going to get a scholarship and they're going to go to college and we're going to give them the easiest path in life as possible because that's what we know. That's what we know here in suburbia. We know if you're connected and you are in an organization, if you're sports, for example, and then if you are successful, well, then you maintain that status there and then we maintain our status too within our community, our friendships and everything. We travel, we go to the games, right? It's crying. It's trying to create a lifestyle. to be truly self-reliant would be to just buck that system, you know, and say, I'm just going for experience. You know, my kid wants to do martial arts, we're gonna do that. My kid wants to do art, let's do that. My kid wants to, like, and that for a lot of people who are, you know, have bought into part of the conformity that exists, that would be scary for them, right? And you'll get a lot of negative kind of feedback or for that, because you're stepping outside what is known. But if you can just embrace experiences and love that process and love the process of failing, but always bring it back to what can be learned. Because here's the skill, our minds create stories and there's no such thing as the future. We all agree on that. There's only the now. So anything about the future, our mind created. And so we have this idea of who our kids should be, the lives they should have. All of us. What if we just took a step back from it? And instead of attaching to it as true, we just noticed, huh, that's funny. My mind just made up a story of who my kids should be. And we give them a little bit more independence. We push them, right? We have, we certainly have philosophies and we certainly have values, but the philosophy and values don't let fear stop you. You're going to, you're going to engage in life. You're going to meet people who are different than you. You're going to. do things that are challenging to your body and to your mind. Imagine what you could create under that idea. You still have a social responsibility to guide your children in a certain direction. I mean, maybe you're not saying who they should be, but you definitely should know who they should not be, the type of person that they are, the way they treat others, the way they act, the way they respect themselves. Those are the things that you need to model, right? That's how you need to shape them. Yeah, agree, but that's also gonna allow you to be effective in the world, right? So we do know human nature. And if you're going to be effective in this world, you have to adopt certain social skills and mindsets. And so no doubt that we are kind of shaping that and it's usually around, um, you know, the golden rule, you know, treat others as you'd want to be treated. And there's this, that goes back to that values conversation, right? Um, so yeah, you have to have an idea of what your values are. Yeah, but if everything kind of comes back to critical thinking and problem solving skills as a core, especially if you can instill it at a young age, not everything, a lot of things though, I because I, I'm gonna say there needs to be a balance with intuition. Sometimes I think we try to solve thinking problems with more thinking. And that's that's part curiosity. That's part is I mean, if we if we go back to what how we started this conversation in terms of like theory and fact, there needs to be some degree of investigating and asking questions and asking the right questions. I'm just trying to bring the balance back, right? So I think there's a lot of things that we've learned through our experiences, through our senses. I also think there might be a collective unconscious that exists and has been written about. And this goes back to, you know, if we lived in a different culture at a different time, you know, like in Eastern philosophy where there was meditation, they would be saying you need to quiet your mind. Here you are in the United States in 2023 and like, let's think more. Let's investigate more, let's evaluate, let's problem solve, right? That's part of Western society thinking, but again, we don't realize that what we're actually investigating is more information that is fed to us. What if we learned to quiet our minds? What if you sat in silence for an hour and learned to shut down your mind? What comes up then? Are you saying the absence of knowledge, the absence of experience? So things are changing for me when I have... have worked to stop thinking. I'm at my worst thinking. So coming into this podcast, you do your research, you read, you learn, but then you quiet your mind right before it and you just allow yourself to talk because it's already innately within you. And there's a balance to that, right? So there is critical thinking and analysis and then there's the balance of being able to sit with yourself and to be able to observe and understand what comes up. Intuition does exist. And creativity within us does exist. And innate drive for freedom does exist. Right. And so that's the dialectical balance. Intuition is just our gut bacteria speaking to our enteric nervous system from our gut to our brain, influencing us to continue our path forward so they can live. It's not even, it's not your intuition, Raj. It's the gut. It's your bacteria telling you what to do. It's a way to look at it. Maybe. Interesting. Um. in terms of in life skills. So I'm with this idea of self reliance. Are you adjusting your, your, your parenting dbta to incorporate more of this type of thinking? Or is it is it the core principles of dbt? Driving, you know, some of those parenting skills that you're you're working on? I think it's a dialectical balance. Yeah, right. And so There is certainly problem solving and analysis and thinking through what to do. And then there's also this incorporation of mindfulness and acceptance and seeking that dialectical balance in order to regulate emotions, knowing that it's our mind that can create danger and fear. And then we have to develop the ability to do that. I did come up with just maybe seven kind of steps, I think in a process to try to... learn how to trust yourself and develop self-reliance. I can go through them quick. Yeah, let's do that. Number one, I said, let go of the past. So remember, we all have a past. Everything we know is just from what we've observed through the senses. But if you are a human being, guess what? You've failed. You've made mistakes. And that fear of making mistakes can influence somebody's willingness to venture out again on their own because they just want to avoid the aversive kind of consequence. So in a lot of ways, we have to let go of the past to be fully connected into the moment. The next thing is accept certain things to be true, one of them that there is no future. Anything that is of the future has only been created in your mind. So you have to connect fully with this present moment and embrace it fully. So if you have this idea of self-protection and then the future creates this idea that if I can kind of agree with this or I go along with that, then I'm gonna be safe and I'm gonna be okay, or whatever that means, the mind's going to do that. Courage is gonna say, I've gotta be connected to right now. And that's the only way we're gonna be able to access our intuition and to be able to kind of observe our own unique independent thinking. Because remember, this comes back to trusting your experience. Third is understand that your emotions are gifts, use them. That's part of intuition. Part of what you feel is this complex absorption of everything that's coming externally and internally. If in your gut you don't feel right about something, observe it, understand it. If you're feeling angry or irritable or down, have the ability to understand it. Use it to your advantage. Help it to drive you to make decisions. Number four, understand that perfection is the enemy of progress. There's a lot of procrastination that can happen. You can stop taking risk because you're afraid of making a mistake. You have to give up that idea. You're afraid of, if you're afraid of saying the wrong thing, if you're afraid of having an opinion that's going to offend somebody else, you are being controlled by fear. You are not self-reliant. So you're not gonna be able to be perfect. Give it up. It's the enemy of any progress. So be willing and courageous enough to... Say the wrong thing, do the wrong thing, make a mistake, fail, because then you're going to move in the right direction. The mental mori, remember that, that your life is time limited. Don't cling to the trappings of this material world. It's going to be over faster than you know it. Understand what your soul, what your heart is driving you to do and embrace it fully, knowing that one day you will be on your death bed and you will reflect back on your life. That means live a life of integrity. and a search for truth and honesty, not to achieve security or safety. Number six, be curious. Allow that natural search for freedom and truth to drive curiosity and creativity, to learn new things, to experience new things. And then number seven, adopt this. The opinions of others hold little, if any, value. The opinions of others hold little, if any value. It is your opinion that matters. It doesn't stop us from hearing others, from listening to others, from even learning about various perspectives, but value your opinion above everything else, and then you are free.