These are my personal opinions, always seek a professional when you're making choices about your mental health and well -being.
I think for the last maybe 15 years I've gone through the biggest transformations in my life.
No wait a minute, 2009?
Yeah 15 years. So starting around 2009 I started going through some pretty big transformations and it's amazing, you You go through these personal development, evolutions where you change something changes in your life or you change and you see things differently and you approach things differently.
I don't know if it's because you get wiser when you get older or things just happened, or you are constantly seeking improvement.
and I like to see that maybe all of the above applies.
When you're constantly seeking improvement, then challenges will arise that help you gain that improvement, help you improve yourself.
When I broke down in the desert, back in, that was probably 2009, I was a 1 ,000 miles from home and I had my first ever and my last ever panic attack, and I lost my car and all my possessions.
I told that story in another episode.
I won't get into it now, but when I was going through it, it was one of the the scariest things in my life.
I did not want to do it, I did not want to experience that, but after the event occurred, I looked back and just kind of on what happened, and I remember a day or two prior to that, I talked to this guy who had a really strong belief in God and religious experiences, and he called them mystical experiences.
And I said, well I want a mystical experience.
Boy was that a huge manifestation there because that's what happened.
And that was an improvement in my life.
That was what changed my life.
That happened. That...
breaking down in the desert.
That was my mystical experience.
That if it hadn't happened, I wouldn't be the same person today.
I became more minimalistic.
I was able to let go of attachment to things, and even people, and And I think I let go of some of my ego, and so that really set me on a new direction.
And then I got divorced later on, that was one of the worst things that I didn't think I'd ever experience, at least in personal relationships.
I thought marriage was supposed to last for the rest of your life.
And then it happened.
And when it happened, of course, I was devastated, but at the same time, upon reflection again, I realized it needed to.
If I wanted to improve who I am, if I wanted to evolve in personal development wise, if I wanted to become wiser and learn what I needed to know to get closer to happiness, more happiness, a general satisfaction in life, fulfillment, joy.
If I wanted to get closer to that, I had to experience those challenges.
My marriage ending was a way for me to alter my behavior, well not alter but heal my behaviors because I caused it.
I caused a lot of probably most of the problems, all of the problems in my marriage.
I caused them all and everyone says there's two sides but no I really did I caused them all because everything would have been fine if I hadn't done most or all of the things I did so I look back you know I was emotionally abusive I talked about that as well I look back at all my relationships and see how they vended and I remember my first relationship ending when I was a teenager and the person I was didn't change.
So the next relationship I got into which was a very long -term relationship a very good relationship for the most part except for who I was because I didn't change that relationship ended as well and then another relationship ended and you know my marriage ended and I thought after my marriage that's when I started really reflecting and on trying to understand, what the hell was going on?
Why am I losing these relationships?
And that was the day I decided to, uh, stay single until I figured it out.
I got to stay single because I can't keep getting into relationships and breaking up.
They would always leave me.
There's, there's something wrong.
I have to look at it.
I have to improve myself.
I have to evolve out of this pattern.
That's what I did. I reflected and learned what I needed to learn, so that I didn't make the same mistakes and that does require, sometimes it does require a huge life change, being somebody that you're not or becoming somebody that you're not or altering your behaviors and figuring out what you need to heal inside yourself, old traumas that happened in your past that created maybe some coping mechanisms that caused you to act in ways that others find harmful or toxic, or just unpleasant.
Maybe you're not toxic at all.
Maybe just some of the behaviors that cause these problems in your life, they seem normal to you but to others, they're just unpleasant to be around.
And maybe that's not you at all.
Maybe how you show up in the world is fine.
and other people need to work on their stuff.
That's a whole other aspect of the equation is that we'll meet other people that have their stuff.
I brought my stuff into my relationships and I finally said that's enough.
I can't keep bringing my stuff into relationships.
And so we meet others who have their stuff and hopefully they're working on their stuff just like you're probably working on your stuff because you're listening to a show like this.
I imagine you are. You meet someone with their stuff, you come in with your stuff if you are in a relationship or you want to get into a relationship or even if you just want to talk to another person who has stuff.
Emotional stuff, psychological stuff things that we need to work on.
That's why when big life changes come your way there's an opportunity to reflect and learn.
I mean That's basic, right?
We know that when something happens, we can learn from it.
We can gain some wisdom so that we show up differently next time.
The breakdown in the desert that I had, huge life change.
The divorce that I went through and all the growth in learning through my relationships and my marriage, they changed my life.
These things changed my life and sometimes we have to have these challenges come along to change our life in a good way, in a better way.
And sometimes these things need to happen in order for us to have a new perspective and approach life differently and show up for others and for ourselves differently so that we can get more fulfillment and more satisfaction in life.
And I also know there's a flip side to this.
I also know that there's real pain and there's real hurt and there's real challenge that comes along that puts us down and keeps us there.
Somebody dies that we love, it puts us down and keeps us there.
Grieving is important.
Grieving of any loss in your life.
The loss of a person, the loss of a job, the loss of an animal, the loss of your favourite place to live.
You can't have that anymore and now your life is changing.
Have you grieved? Have you allowed yourself to feel the intensity of what happened?
Have you allowed yourself to feel the pain, the loss, so that you can get it out of your system?
Not that it goes away and disappears forever, but you get all that stored, suppressed, or repressed energy out of your system so that it doesn't weigh you down?
And again, it doesn't mean you'll suddenly be happy.
It just means you let go of some stuff.
And letting go doesn't mean you let go of what was, you're just releasing the negative pent -up emotional energy that might be in there.
That's why grieving is so important.
Grieving also helps you reach a new level inside yourself so you can get past some things.
And I'm not here to say that you can get past everything.
Some things you, I'll be honest, you can't get past. Sometimes you can't get past certain things that have happened in your life.
And when you have something that you can't get past, you may have to adapt.
You may have to almost mutate who you are and how you think in order to fit what you can't get past into your life, into your thought processes just so that you can not only survive but move past survival.
Get past that point.
Maybe not thrive but you get to the point where you're moving in that direction.
You have some forward momentum because staying in grief mode isn't forward momentum.
It's stagnation. So grieving involves accepting what has happened fully, like my divorce.
I had to accept what happened fully and that she would never ever want to be with me again.
Just like the death of people that I love.
They will never ever be back, not here, not in this plane, not in this reality, but they'll never be back and I have to accept that.
I have to accept that to move on, not only for myself, but so I can give energy to others, my energy, my spirit, my life to others and you work what you've lost into your next steps.
What does that mean?
That means something different to everyone.
It's a, like I said, a mutation sometimes.
You mutate who you are, you're not the same person.
I know it's a terrible word for this, what I'm talking about, but if you change who you are in certain ways and you don't change who you are in other ways, it's sort of like a mutation.
I'm gonna mutate into this new person because I can't be who I really want to be because I have this loss that I'm carrying with me.
Then I'm taking with me in every step forward of my life.
And it's hard to take those steps forward because I have this loss I'm carrying it with me.
That's why it's important to grieve it to get the energy out of your system.
You're not losing the person.
You're not losing the thing, the place.
You're not losing those things.
You're just working past how you feel about that loss because yeah, sometimes loss does stay with us, but we can carry that and find happiness.
we can carry that and move forward, we can carry that and find more to love and bring that love into our life without discounting what we've lost that's how I view things and I know it's hard for some people listening right now they're saying I'll never be able to get to that point I hope that's not true and I do hope that you can see that when you are able to process what has happened and move forward that you can find new ways to reach some sort of sense of meaning and purpose and fulfillment in your life because what happens when you don't grieve and you don't let it out and you don't have that full
acceptance of what you lost, if you don't accept that fully that that is lost then it is hard to move forward in any way you do feel stagnant that's why like even when like my dad died.
I knew that I would never have another chance to say the things I wanted to say to him or do the things that I wanted to do.
Share some of the experiences in my life.
Like he used to play harmonica all the time.
And I picked up the harmonica when I was 16.
But I never played it for him.
It's so strange because I've known him all my life and I never played it for him or with him.
I don't even think he knew I played.
I just did it on my own, you know, my dad and mom were separated ever since I was one.
so I would go back and forth in between them when I was a kid but after I was an older teenager I would see him every now and then but I never talked about the harmonica so he had this interest this hobby and I picked up that interest in hobby and we never shared that together and so I I never really thought about it until after he died and I realized, wow, I never played harmonica with my dad.
That's so Strange. It's it's kind of sad that I never got to do that with him.
Maybe it would have helped us bond a little more I mean, I had a pretty good bond with my dad up until a point and then we had a separation for quite a while But the next time I saw him he had cancer and he was practically on his death bed So a lot of time passed and And I had to learn to grieve his passing.
And if you've heard me say this before, I grieved his passing before he died because I wasn't sure if I was ever gonna see him again anyway, so I walked myself through a process of what would happen if I got a phone call from one of my relatives and they said, he has passed.
How would that feel?
And I cried. And I really went through the process of thinking and feeling what it would be like if he died.
What would I think?
What would I feel? What would I do?
And I had a lot of emotions and I did a lot of grieving.
I experienced grieving to its fullest, or at least as full as I can get it, because I was imagining him gone.
So when he really did die, years later, I was able to handle that better.
And I was able to console others.
I was able to help others, like my mom.
She hasn't seen him for many, many years.
And they got divorced when I was a baby, but she was still married to him for many years.
And when he died, it really affected her.
There was somebody she was with for that long and she cried.
And I said, Oh, wow, you know why i didn't expect her to cry i mean i guess i should've but she she cried and i said you know i've i've had to process this process myself so i'm here if you need me i was consoling my mom about my father and uh it was really helpful to go through that process myself you know grieving his death before it happened because i was able to process it better i'm not saying that's my advice for you or anything like that but it helped me to go through that grieving process before it actually happened.
But yeah, I think about those times that I missed out on and that I cannot get back.
And that's not closure, is it?
That's like an open loop.
It's unfinished business.
So what do we do with unfinished business?
We either ruminate and pine over things or you stay in the rut of thinking about what could be.
Darn, I wish I could have I wish I could have done this, I wish I could have done that.
I could be in that state constantly, or I could grieve the loss, and accept the loss, and say to myself, this is true.
He's gone. There's nothing I can do.
I have to accept this, and I have to move on, because I need my energy.
I need to heal myself.
I need to reflect on what I missed and what I got.
The time I had with him.
And I have to look into the future so I make sure that something like that doesn't happen again.
Which leads me right into the thought I was having right before I pressed record today.
And that is defining the relationship that you want with somebody versus defining the relationship based on avoiding what you don't want.
If that doesn't make sense.
so I'm gonna try to explain it.
Because these thoughts were in my head right before I pressed record and also for, I'd say a few weeks now.
Doesn't really matter, but, I've been thinking about this because the relationship I had with my dad was one that I tried to avoid.
I tried to avoid the relationship I didn't want with my dad, so I would avoid him.
He wasn't a bad guy, he was a nice guy, He was a nice, supportive guy, but he wasn't always exactly what I was looking for in a relationship.
I don't wanna talk badly about him.
There were things that he did that I didn't like.
And so I backed off and I backed off for a good decade.
And again, after I backed off for a decade, the next time I heard about him was from my brother telling me, he's in the hospital.
So for 10 years I avoided the relationship that I didn't want to have with him.
I don't want to go the rest of my life avoiding relationships I don't want to have. I would rather define the relationship that I want to have with the people of my life.
Do I want to have this kind of relationship, whatever this This means honest, connecting, emotionally connecting, real.
Do we talk about the mundane every time we get together?
Do we talk about the weather?
Which is fine, but does it get any deeper than that?
Or does it become me avoiding talking about certain things, or me avoiding talking to them at all because I don't want to deal with what my relationship has been with them for so long avoiding the relationship I don't want to have. As you can tell I have really enjoyed developing more authentic relationships by getting to know the people I care about at a deeper level.
It goes beyond the superficial to having real conversations about life's struggles and triumphs.
That's exactly what the Constant Wonder podcast provides.
It's a chance to explore the awe -inspiring world around us through fascinating discussions on science, art, history, and more.
It'll reawaken the curiosity you had as a child by tuning you into our phenomenal world.
each episode offers a peaceful respite from hectic routines while keeping you learning and feeling.
you'll experience transformative encounters with the good true and beautiful with stories like harnessing the Sun's power to cool the planet to sprouting an ancient seed that survived the Roman siege and science tells us that cultivating awe and wonder reduces stress increases life satisfaction and amplifies creativity the ability to feel awe is a skill that can be developed.
So listen to Constant Wonder wherever you get your podcasts, leave feeling rejuvenated with eyes wide open to the wonder all around us, and a deeper conviction that we can accomplish the extraordinary.
That's the Constant Wonder podcast. Instead of avoiding the relationship I don't want to have How about I define the relationship I want to have with them and what that means is telling the person, I really want this with you.
This is what I want and this is how I have been with you.
This is how I have shown up with you and it makes me sad because I don't want to be that way I want to be able to connect with you at a deeper level.
I want to have the experiences that we should have instead of the experiences we're having now, which I'll take responsibility for because I have not been able to connect with you and I want to.
This is taking responsibility for my role in the relationship, even if you look at the other person and you know it's all them and they're hard to talk to and they're difficult to be around.
It's all them and I don't want to deal with them.
That's when we avoid the relationship we don't want.
But how about we define it and see what happens.
This is the relationship I want with you.
I want this, I want this with you.
Can we do this? That's a risk because you might lose what you have but if you define what you want, the risk is that you might get that.
If you define this this is the relationship that I want with you.
Can we have that? I mean, you don't necessarily use those words.
You might have to say, I don't like that we don't get along.
I don't like that we disagree.
I just wanna connect with you because I love you or I miss you.
I wanna be there with you.
I wanna know what your life is like.
I don't wanna talk about all this other stuff.
I wanna know you. Some people are afraid to show you themselves and you may be afraid to show yourself to them.
I mean, unless they're very toxic or dangerous, sometimes there's a hidden person underneath the real person underneath that they don't show the world, and if they don't show the world, it might be because they were afraid how the world will respond, or they don't trust people, and which can be also part of fear they're insecure or this is how they have shown up all their lives because that's how they learn to do it since childhood don't be a real person don't cry you know some boys are told not to cry.
Some girls don't cry and it changes your life and so you go through life with these beliefs of how you're supposed to show up.
I started telling you about the changes that I've gone through myself since, like, 2009.
I've gone through changes, just like most of us.
I've gone through changes all of our lives, but some of the major changes that I've gone through have happened in the last 15 years or so.
I mean, huge, life changing.
I don't even recognize my old self anymore kind of changes.
And one of them I'm talking about right now.
I don't want to avoid relationships I don't want to have. I would rather create relationships or define relationships that I want to have and see what happens.
And that involves being real, that involves being honest, and sitting down with a person and saying, this is the kind of relationship I want with you.
This is what I would love to experience with you.
and then see if they can connect with you at that level and if they can maybe the relationship will improve maybe it will get better but this is what I'm talking about is defining what relationship you want instead of avoiding the relationship you don't want and I know I've repeated that many times but I'm still trying to drill it into my own head because when I look at the relationships I've had, there were many that I avoided.
And there are some that we need to avoid.
I totally agree. There's one relationship I will always avoid.
I don't want a relationship with that person, and I never will.
I don't care to have a relationship with that person.
But this other person...
I absolutely want a relationship with this person, why can't I have that?
And so I'm going to present it, I'm going to define it, I'm going to express it.
and hopefully they'll connect with me at that level and maybe they won't and that's the risk but what are you really risking?
If it's somebody that you have been having a very superficial relationship with or barely one at all then what are you trying to protect?
What are you salvaging?
What do you want to keep about that relationship?
Is it so important that you continue this superficiality in this topic avoiding conversations that you have. Do you want to continue doing that or do you want to risk something so much deeper and so much more fulfilling, something that could be just by expressing, this is the kind of relationship I want, just by defining what you want instead of avoiding what you don't want.
And that's what I've learned.
I've learned that throughout these years and maybe it's because of my age.
Maybe I'm getting to that age where I don't really place too much value on pointlessness or superficiality.
I don't want to place my value and spend my energy or invest my energy into pointlessness and superficiality because life is too short.
And as I get older, I'm 54 now, that's not old to some of you, but for me, it's the first time I've ever experienced it.
And as I get older in my fifties, I look at life as something that I, I don't want to just kind of waste away.
I don't want to sit in a rut and pine and ruminate and think about what I've lost. I want to grieve and get past that.
I want to move forward. and if that loss has to stay with me it can stay with me in a different way as I move forward. And I want to define the relationships I want instead of avoiding the relationships I don't want because I want more authentic relationships.
I want to communicate with people in a way that feels good instead of looking at somebody and saying, oh I don't want to talk to that person.
And maybe I can talk to that person and say hey you know when you say that it doesn't feel very good maybe I can just be that real.
And if I can be that real maybe they will be real with me or maybe they'll reject me maybe they'll be angry with me.
But I'm getting older, again it probably is my age, I'm getting older and getting to the point where I would rather have quality in my relationships.
I want quality. So in order to get it I'm going to ask for it.
It's just something I've picked up throughout the years.
I want to ask for what I want and maybe you already knew this, I don't know, but it has been on my mind for a while because of the dysfunction that I grew up in and the toxicity that I grew up in, all of the very difficult relationships that I've created that were based on more superficial things, and trying to especially avoid the topics of discussion that we need to talk about in order to get past them.
I don't like avoiding those things anymore.
I want to move forward, and sometimes in order to do so, I have to tell somebody what relationship I would like to have with them, and if they don't want that relationship with me then I don't really know what there is to salvage because what we have isn't high quality and I'm not saying every relationship has to be perfect and high quality at all but what is it now if I'm defining it as oh it's ten percent quality that's not enough for me it's ten percent authentic that's not enough that's not enough for me so I'll try to raise that number I'll try to raise the quality how can we increase the quality,
how can we make this more authentic?
Because I really want to connect with you.
When you care about someone, when you love someone, don't you want the most emotionally connected, most authentic relationship you can get?
You might have to define it, you might have to say, this is what I want in the relationship.
And then you'll find out if it's what they want to.
Again, that's the risk that sometimes we have to take these risks to improve our lives, to evolve out of who we've been because that can be a life change.
It's been life changing for me to look at someone and say, this is the kind of relationship I want with you because when it happens, when you get that kind of relationship you realize I could have been doing this all along.
I could have had these amazing relationships, but I never asked for them.
I never told the person this is the kind of relationship I want because maybe I was a afraid of losing that person from my life.
I get that. I was afraid of abandonment and I had a fear of rejection and the fear of being alone I'd let that run my life for so long that I never asked for what I want because I never wanted to lose what I had.
But now I ask for what I want and I might lose what I have but I have to evaluate what I have. Wow if I can't be more authentic and more real and have an emotionally connected conversation and relationship with you, then what do I have?
What is real after that?
If I know that that's not what you want, if you don't want to be closer in any way, then what do we have?
And I'm not saying it can't be good enough, some relationships are good enough and you just have to deal with them, but maybe that changes as you get older, maybe that changes as you realize how valuable time is to you and maybe as you evaluate all your relationships you realize just how much energy you want to put into certain ones and how much energy you don't want to put into others because they're just not worth your time because after you define the relationship they didn't want to have that kind of relationship with you and that's really good to know it's really good to know who wants the kind
of relationship that you want and I'm not talking about just romantic relationships don't talk about any relationship a familial relationship somebody in your family what kind of relationship do you want with them and when you tell them how do they respond sometimes you just have to hit the ball into their court and see what happens that's how I do apologies to you like I am so sorry I did that to you I I'm awful and I absolutely will never do that again, I'm so sorry, and I just wanted to let you know.
Notice how I didn't say forgive me.
I see that as a strings attached apology.
Some people believe in that and that's fine if you do, but I look at an apology as no strings attached.
It is me hitting the ball into your court, saying, this is how I feel, this is how badly I feel, this is how sorry I am and I will never do it again I just wanted to let you know and then you leave it that's how I do it I leave it I leave it there the balls in their court they can choose to hit it back or not or they can walk away and not want to hit it back not want to talk to you again but you did your part in the apology you apologized and now they get to do with it whatever they want I don't like to say please forgive me because now it's an obligation on their part and it's not my intention to
make them feel bad for not forgiving and I don't get into that I just like to say here's my heart crush it if you want or walk away whatever you want but this is me showing you that I am sorry and they can choose to do it that whatever they want that's how I see defining the relationship you are putting it out there saying, this is what I want.
And they can choose to say, wow, I don't care about that, or that's ridiculous, or I don't want that kind of relationship with you.
They might say that and they might walk away.
But I like the risk.
I prefer the risk because I would rather have genuine authentic relationships than anything superficial, anything toxic, anything where I can't to somebody because it's just too hard to relate to them.
And I'm pretty sure when that happens, they feel something too.
Like when you feel like the relationship could be deeper, but it's so superficial or whatever, they probably feel it too at some level.
That's why you say your peace and you hope things work out.
And this isn't my advice to you.
I'm not saying that you should do this.
I'm just saying that if you have a relationship or more than one relationship in your life that you'd like to improve that might be a direction to take.
Thanks so much for joining me today.
I appreciate you. I wanna thank the patrons and the donors to this program.
You are so generous and some of you give monthly and I see all your names and I am very grateful.
Thank you, patrons.
If you value this show like these patrons do, head over to mooretob .com and there are options to give back and it helps to keep the lights on.
I'm not saying you have to do that, but the ball's in your court, whatever you want to do with it.
Again, thank you patrons.
And for a show on how to navigate the difficult relationship, listen to my other podcast called Love and Abuse over at loveandabuse .com.
We get into the deeper weeds there and talk about very specific behaviors and communication styles that some people have that make others feel bad.
So if you are dealing with anything like that, head over to loveandabuse .com.
And if you know you're the difficult one in the relationship, maybe you're doing some emotionally abusive behavior, join the program that has helped thousands of people heal over at healedbeing .com.
And with that, always keep your mind open because that's how you make the best decisions.
Be firm in your decisions and actions so that you can create the life you want.
Always take steps to grow and evolve.
You are powerful beyond measure and above all and this is something I absolutely know to be true about you.
You are amazing. you
