What's Running Your Life?

Have you ever been in a conflict with someone you love and realized halfway through that you're not actually fighting about what you think you're fighting about? Like the argument on the surface makes no sense - but something underneath it is absolutely real and it is not going away. Here's what nobody tells you: every person in your life is running on a core set of drives that are older than language, older than personality, older than anything therapy has ever tried to fix. And when those drives don't get honored - by the people around you, or by the life you've built - things go sideways. Quietly at first. Then not so quietly.

This Sunday we're going to look at what's actually underneath the tension in your closest relationships - not the symptoms, but the source. I'm going to show you something about yourself that's going to make a lot of things suddenly make sense. And honestly, it's going to make you a lot more patient with some of the people in your life who have been driving you absolutely crazy.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Thanks you guys. Uh we're gonna get to the one after. But if you miss the we're not the same part, there's a consequence. I want to start with a cautionary tale from our tradition. Uh anyone uh anyone grow up first? Prodigal son, anyone know the story? Prodigal son? Yeah, okay. Prodigal son is a story of uh child comes to the parent, says, Screw you, I hate this life. I want out of here, I want to go party. Give me half of all your money. Not sure how the parent responds. The parent did it, so again, this is not a true story, this is a parable. Uh, kid goes away, Vegas. The classic term is hookers and blow. Um blows all the money. Are we allowed to say that in church? Doesn't there rules about that? Y'all know what I'm talking about now, though. So kid comes back, but the kid, well, actually, the kid runs into money and is sitting there going, like, what do I have? Maybe I could go back home. As the child goes back home, the parents watching for them runs out, open arms, big hug. I can't believe you're back. This is so amazing. Let's have a party. What was lost is now found. There's a second child in the thing. Not the same. He's been staying there working in the family business his whole life. He's put everything into his blood, sweat, tears. He's looking at the younger son who just blew all the money, gets welcomed back with open arms, and his answer is WTF. I give everything, and this wastes money, and now you want to party? Traditionally, the story is about there's a bunch of different ones. People have these spiritual connotations to it, and that could be. Today I want to read it through the U2 song. We are not the same. Today I want to show you the story through something that we've been working through. We've been working through a book called The Relationship Cure by John Gottman. We started off by saying, if you are toxic in your relationships, future you will pay for that. Years ago, over a decade ago, I screwed Jeff over one time. I paid for that sucker for our entire working relationship. You see, what happens is if you're toxic, that gets stored in the long-term memory of the people in your life. And they just are constantly their brains going, wait, is it is it that thing? Is it we've been on both sides of this, haven't we? You do events and you pay for that for the rest of your life. Or someone does events to you, and you're never quite settled. You can never let it go. You can feel it stuck. What's the line from the matrix? Like a splinter in your mind. And future you pays for that. Next week we talked about bidding. Remember, I had a bunch of people come up. It's this core relationship way of connecting. Somebody will bid, they will do something. My wife and I will do it whenever I look at her. I'll make a face. Like I'm four. But she'll make a face back. It's a bid. I bid to her, she bids back. If I make a face and she just gives me nothing, it's like, oh, that one hurts. There's this idea that when somebody bids to you, you can turn towards the bid. Oh, hey. You can turn against the bid. That was uh less did the daddy look at me, and I was like, Do you not know how busy I am? How many times do we go? That bid's inconvenient, that bid's not what I want it, that bid's not how I want it, it's not perfectly done, and so we turn against in the attack. And it damages relationship, it gets stored in long-term memory. We deal with that. The most damaging one, though. The one that destroys most marriages, and we can extrapolate that to most relationships.

SPEAKER_00 4:53

You bid or somebody bids to you, and you just ignore it. You know?

SPEAKER_01 5:07

That feeling destroys more relationships than anything else. This is Gottman's work, this is his gene, this is the thing he brought to relationship understanding. We bid and we respond in one of three ways. You can turn towards, you can turn against, or you can turn away. And what we choose will last with us for a very long time. That was the second week. Last week, Emily did an incredible message. This idea that says, if somebody bids to you and you don't align with them emotionally, it will create a disconnect. I'm thinking there's all these sporting things. You walk into somebody and you're like, ah, my team won! And they give you one of these. Like, why are you excited? Can you tone it down a little bit? Can you feel how that is this turning away from someone's bidding with this energy, like, yay, I'm so excited, and you get an eye roll. You come to somebody and you're sad, and they give you a response that's flat or angry. She said, If if you want skillful communication, if you want communication that feels connecting, turn towards the bid in like emotion. If they're sad, feel sad with them. If they're angry, feel angry. It's my favorite one. We have this thing in our family. It's like this, it's like a snake that's like it's when we're angry at something, we're both looking at like this. There's something unifying. Like we're both against that thing. That computer is the devil. I hate that thing. If you align emotion with somebody, it's hard for people like me because my emotions aren't big. I have very little emotions. But if I can find the emotion, if I can read it, in fact, she talked about Ekman's work. I took the course from Ekman. I had to learn to read facial expressions so I could figure out what people were feeling, so I knew how to turn towards them with the right emotion. All of this, so that this toxic behavior, whenever we're doing this wrong, doesn't get stored in the long-term memory of the people in our lives. So that future us doesn't have to deal with the same hurts, the same wounds. Now, today I want to show you something that is absolutely impactful in terms of how you connect with people, because we are not the same. I don't often get to say absolute statements, but that one I feel like I can say. We are not the same. But it's one thing to say that, and it's another thing to give you some way of realizing how am I not the same? How am I different? Because once I know the how, then we can actually engage with this thing. So let me go back to the prodigal son story, and I want to tell it to you differently. The first son is what Gottman calls the explorer. Can you throw up the explorer for me? The explorer is a kind of person who loves novelty, seeking new things, they're curious. I might have a little explorer in me. You go on holidays to different places. You don't like to do the same things over and over again. You get bored very easily. You actually have a saying in your head that says you can die from boredom. Because it's true, you can actually die from boredom. This is what explorers feel like. If you're not an explorer, this doesn't make sense to you. But the younger son is an explorer, so he's looking at the day in and day out of his family business, and he's like, kill me now. This is boring. I need to explore the world. Suddenly that feels different, doesn't it? He's not some petulant kid. He's somebody who needs newness. So let me just ask. Any explorers in the room if you hear that? Yeah. You like to do new things, like new challenges. If I do a message one one way, someone's like, it worked. We should do the next one the same way. And I'm like, oh, I can't do that. I could die. That was my coach laughing right there. Because he's always talking to me like, you could just do it the way that works. I'm like, but I could die because I would get bored. Explorers like novelty. Okay. The son is an explorer. The father, they call them a nest builder. Can you throw up nest builder for me? They bull they value connection, belonging, being needed. The father, when the son comes back, the father's like, finally, my life is complete again. Nest builders are the ones who bring people together. They create spaces for people to connect. They're the ones who's like, if it's Easter coming up, they're calling saying, hey, when are we getting together? How do we do this? They're creating spaces, like, oh well, if we have a seating chart like this, then everyone will feel comfortable. So everyone belongs. Any nest builders in the room? Can't put my hand up on that one. Now it makes sense though, doesn't it? The sun has blown half the inheritance, but as the sun comes home, the nest builder is like, finally, life is the way it should be again. Which is why the older son's reaction makes no sense to the nest builder. You can see it in their action. They're like, I don't understand. You've always been in the nest. Whatever is mine is yours. Why are you so upset? And the older son isn't an explorer. He stayed there the whole time. He's not a nest builder. He's what they call a commander-in-chief. These are people who like control, who like fairness, they're confident. These are people who do incredible things in the world. But there's things that they need to do it. The story that I'm telling isn't the prodigal son. The story is how do three people who are so different become one family. If you don't see this in them, all you see is people misbehaving. Why would the parent give half their inheritance to the kid? That makes no sense. He's just gonna blow it. But a nest builder values connection more than anything, more than money. The commander in chief, you're looking at like, why are you being a jackass and not coming to the party? He's going, but this isn't fair. And fairness matters. The parent?

SPEAKER_00 12:59

Who cares about fairness? We're together again. We are one, but not the same.

SPEAKER_01 13:12

Today I want to explore what the ways of a let me say it this differently. Gottman came up with seven ways that we are unique. Seven biological traits, he calls them. He's taken work from another researcher. They're not things like, you know, I have white hair and you have brown hair. It's not that stuff. It's core pieces that he says are biologically unique. His thesis is the father can't stop being a nest builder. He can't just be like, I don't want to be a nest builder anymore. It's like there's a biological imperative inside of him that says, I will bring my family together. Now you can tell the different people in the story, it's like they don't get it. The father doesn't get the son, the son doesn't get the other son. If you can see this in yourself, if you can align your life with this inside of you. And then we'll do the relational work. I'm gonna get you to turn and look at somebody metaphorically in your mind who's in your life. And ask yourself, what core traits do they have? Okay, so the first three explorer, loves novelty, nest builder, actually. Funny story. Not funny story, but kind of funny story. Um, when I first met my wife, I'm, you know, horror, like huge crush on her, like just like all dumb in my head, right? But I have this moment of awareness. I'm I'm doing, I think I was doing triathons or ultramarathons, some dumb long thing where I have to train all the time because I wanted to try something new. Because that explore inside of me is strong. And I sat her down and I said, Okay, I didn't call her babe back then, but like Ellie. I really like you. I really want this relationship to work. I can have this feeling like, please, but I just gotta tell you something. I will always need a tremendous amount of adventure in my life. Even when I finish this part, I will just come up with something new. I have a list of things I want to try and explore that is a mile long. I will never get to them all. So please, I'm hoping that you can accept that part of me. And thank God she said yes. Because I can't feel alive without a tremendous amount of adventure. I can suppress it for a little bit, but it comes out in these awkward ways, and I'm cranky and I'm I'm short with people. If you don't honor this part of you, there will be a cost. Okay, so first three, explorer, nest builder, my mom, commander in chief, control, fairness, confidence. I might have a bit of that one. Next one up. Centralists. This is people, and this is a this is the part where you're asking. Am I gonna make me put my hand for this one? I won't make you. I wish in our culture we could do feel like as comfortable saying I'm a centralist as I'm a nest builder, but we can't. So let's put that aside. Centralists, these are people who are very connected to sexual gratification and pleasure and arousal, they think about sex a lot, they think about pleasure a lot. There's nothing wrong with that. Unless, of course, you put yourself in a place where you can't honor that. So again, the rest of my, I told you, put up your hand, but don't put up your hand. But if eating some good food is like you can get more pleasure out of eating something that tastes delicious, if your brain is like you, you're like sex, okay, focus, sex, okay, focus. There's nothing wrong with you. This is a biological part, according to Gottman. Next one. Energy czar. Oh, my mom. My mom, God bless her. She's dead for 10 years, but she had a napping schedule that was more honored than like religion. She had two napping schedules. She had her day or weekday napping schedule and then her weekend napping schedule. And you knew, do not come into the house during the nap time. For her, wasting energy, being tired, it made no sense to her. Why would you do that? She would be like, Vince, why do you keep running? Have you not run enough? Like, just stop. You know you don't have to keep running, right? You can just stop. Then she'd be like, Do you have snacks? The energy czars are people who are very mindful of the energy in their bodies. They tend to take good care of themselves. When their bodies don't feel right, they're aware of that. And they have a feel, they have a value of bringing themselves back into alignment. They don't like to overextend themselves. That makes no sense to them. These are the people who are going to survive the zombie apocalypse, just so you know. The rest of us, explorers, we're getting eaten first because we're out in the middle of nowhere. Zombies got us, we're done. Energy czars, fantastic. Any energy czars in the room? No one wants to admit it. Anyone like a good nap now and again? Oh, yeah. Anyone think of like running an ultra marathon as kind of like possibly the dumbest thing you could possibly do to just waste energy? Put up your hand. Okay, so we got some energy czars in the room. Fran, not quite as exuberant, please. Okay, next one. Oh, Jester. Record Jeff and Carmen, when they worked in the office together, they like to laugh so much. I swear there were some accidents. Because they would like hide. One time I'm walking down the hall, Carmen's sitting behind a door. He's been there for 20 minutes giggling because he's waiting for Jeff to walk up in the dark and he's gonna scare the crap out of him. 20 minutes he sits there giggling. A gesture. My sister's like, you know what? As long as I can laugh, I can deal with anything. I swear you could cut that girl's leg off without anesthetic. As long as she can laugh about it, she'll be fine. Anyone who loves a good laugh, that just like if when life's just going crazy, just a good laugh. Yeah. The gestures. And again, remember, this is a biological piece of us. This isn't something you can change. This isn't something that you decide to do or not decide to do. Okay, last one. Oh, sentry. I don't have a whole lot of sentry. Uh, I'll be honest. I think that you know, I put myself into dangerous positions all the time. But I told you a couple a while ago, I got caught in an avalanche a long time ago. I lived, of course, I'm here, but my life flashed before my eyes as I was getting buried underneath the avalanche. From that moment forward, I can't be in the backcountry in avalanche train the same way I used to. My brain is constantly looking at danger, danger, danger, danger. That's the sentry. Your brain is attuned to danger on the opposite side, safety. If you go to bed and the doors haven't been chucked twice, you're not sleeping. If you're in a position where you have no control over something, even if somebody walks up behind you, a sentry will freak. Come on, any sentries in the room? Just be honest. It's yeah. You guys are incredible. If you if ever you're in a position, a friend of mine's a sentry, he's in um IT security. He is the best bloody IT security person in the history of the world. He takes his sentry and he makes a superpower out of it. Okay, so I want you to do this. Is the exercise we're gonna do? We're gonna leave this up. Just pick one of the top ones in your mind, one of the top ones that is part of you. Do you got one? Here's the next question I have How well is your life aligned to that?

SPEAKER_00 22:01

Are you an energy czar?

SPEAKER_01 22:05

And your company just came to you with a promotion, we're going to pay you a lot more money and give you this prestige position. But we need you to work 50 hours a week or 60 hours. Does your energy czar want to do that? Will you Gottman's thesis is this if you don't live in alignment to this, what will happen is your life will be higher stress than you can imagine? If you have high sentry and you're living in a van down by the river because you're like, hey, I'm a free spirit, but you can't control your environment, you can't create a safe space, you will not sleep. How well is your life in alignment with your top?

SPEAKER_00 22:58

He calls them emotional command system?

SPEAKER_01 23:05

If you're a couple newly together and you're starting to talk about kids and you have high explorer, have you asked the question? Do will having kids allow me to explore and do new things as much as I like? Will having three kids allow that? Can we go to five? Can you see how when you're not in alignment with your core emotional command system, the energy it takes from you? And not even in an energy czar way, just in terms of the stress it puts in your life. So here's the first call to action today. What's one thing you could do to bring your life more in alignment? 20-year cores? Is it book a monthly date to the comedy cave? Go watch stand-up comedians and just laugh your butt off? Is it connect to your sexuality? Honor that part of you. Is it if you're working in a job that, you know, you have commander in chief and you're like the third person down the totem pole, but you're getting paid a ton of money, is that working for you? Or do you need to seriously think about going, no, no, no? I need to get in a position where I have autonomy, I have control. That's where I'll thrive. Commander in chiefs, they get so much done as long as they have control. Are you a nest builder? Someone calls and says, Hey, I have this great position. It's away from your family and friends. Do you make the move? Trevor told me they travel a bunch, that lovely life. But he's like, I hope I can say this. Thank you. Didn't ask him. Normally I ask ahead of time. He just gave me the thumbs up. But he says, I don't want to be traveling for too long because I'm disconnected from my community and my family. I don't like that. I'd rather like go for a cruise for a couple weeks than come home for a month, and then I'll go do something else, and then I'll come home for a month. He's balancing his explorer and his nest builder.

SPEAKER_00 25:38

Do you see how it can work?

SPEAKER_01 25:42

Okay, this relation or this whole series wasn't a series about how do we make ourselves feel better. It's important. But we can do something else with it. We can use these categories to understand the people in our lives. So pick an important relationship in your life right now. Maybe it's one that's been a bit tricky lately. Picture that person in your head. Now ask yourself, what do you think is their top emotional command system? Are you a commander-in-chief? Trying to plan a holiday with a jester? You're trying to lock everything down, they're cracking jokes, and you're like, what are you doing? Can you see how understanding we oh they're, oh, that's right. They're in energies are. We have to plan when we're gonna eat, and we don't want to go too hard because there's no value there for them. Leaving at six in the morning to go to the mountains and figuring it out as we go, that's not gonna work for them. Do you have a kid who's a sentry and you're trying to get them to be like, no, no, no, just start like it'll be fine. You know, we'll turn off all the lights in the house so they can't see what's coming towards them. I won't go through this ritual of checking doors with you so we can't know that they're safe. You'll just grow out of it. Meanwhile, their inner sentries freaking out. Can you throw up the relational model for me, friend? We have this belief that spirituality is the process of moving up this model. I think it's the same when you start to learn that we are not the same. I have high century. My wife is more of a nest builder than I am. We've learned when we go on holidays, we can't go to a hotel, every new hotel every night. It's too hard on her. So we started to do holidays where we we spend about three nights in a hotel or in a room. She's like, I can come in, I can unpack, I can get it settled, feels comfortable. We'll do day trips off of that so I get to do something new. But that creates this nest, right? If you don't know that, what you do is you say, Why are you being so difficult? We're gonna be here, then we'll be there, then we'll be there. We'll just book a new hotel every night. It makes no sense. That is living an eye against them. We do this all the time. Sentry is right. If you don't handle the world through sentry the way I value it, you're misbehaving. Anyone ever had those feelings inside? Don't put up your hand now. You can feel it though, can't you? You're misbehaving, you're not doing it right. That's the bottom level I against them. We constantly try and inspire us up to we where it's win-win. How do you create connection with the people who are different from you, not the same? But create a system of one where you can both be different together in a way that works. That's the core of this. The prodigal son story could have been a story about three people in a family trying to navigate difference while being one. Instead, we get a story of I against them. Screw that younger brother. He's misbehaving. How dare he do that? Meanwhile, the the fathers look at the older, going, How are you not getting? We're together. That's all that matters. You're doing it wrong. Come to the party, celebrate your brother who wasted half of our inheritance. Meanwhile, the older son's looking at it going, this makes no sense. You guys are you're all doing it wrong. Fairness is what matters the most. I can just stop the sentence there and just say my challenge, but also say my challenge for you. But our challenge is this. How do we live in alignment and create a life in alignment with our top values, with our top emotional command systems? How do we say no to the things that the world might say, oh, you should be different than this? You it's not like that. No, no. How do we get in alignment and say, no, this is who I am? I need a tremendous amount of adventure. When I ruptured my PCL the other day, I um ruptured my knee. My first thought was not, you know, I got injured, I have to go and surgery and all that. My first thought was, what am I gonna do? How am I gonna get adventure? That's how high it is in me. I have a list of things that if I ever get injured, if I can't dirt bike, what will I do? If I can't do that, then what will I do? If I can't do that, then what will I do? If you can't laugh at work, where can you laugh? Who can you laugh with? Who are your friends that love to laugh with you? Can you see that? But then the relational work is looking beside us and seeing the people around us and going, oh wait, you're not the same.

SPEAKER_00 31:47

But we can be one.

SPEAKER_01 31:53

Maybe we be a community. Profoundly in alignment with who we are. And then have the creativity and the spiritual maturity to be in balance with people who are not the same. May we be one. Amen. As I always say, hell yes. Have a great week, everybody. Let's be one. Appreciate it.