10 Things You're NOT Responsible For in Healthy Relationships

Do you feel responsible for keeping everyone happy?

Are you carrying the emotional weight of your relationships while everyone else seems to get a free ride?

Do you find yourself fixing, rescuing, over-giving, or sacrificing your own needs just to keep the peace?

If you answered yes to any of these questions, this episode is for you.

Many of us were taught that being loving means being responsible for everyone else. Their emotions. Their happiness. Their comfort. Their problems. Their reactions. But that's not love. That's self-abandonment.

In this episode, we're diving into ten things that are NOT your responsibility in healthy relationships. We'll explore the difference between support and rescuing, kindness and people pleasing, empathy and emotional enmeshment. You'll learn how to stop carrying burdens that were never yours and start reclaiming your energy, peace, and personal power.

 In this episode you'll learn:

💡 The difference between healthy support and unhealthy rescuing

🧠 Why managing other people's emotions creates anxiety, resentment, and codependent patterns

🚫 How to stop sacrificing your needs, boundaries, and well-being to keep the peace

❤️ Why you don't need to convince anyone of your worth, value, or lovability

🌱 The key signs of codependency and enmeshment and how to begin untangling yourself from both

Remember, healthy relationships require two adults carrying their own emotional backpacks. You can care deeply about someone without carrying what belongs to them.

Let's goooooo!!

For FREE Resources, 📖 Book Link, 📝 Quizzes, 👚 Self-Love Merch Shop, 🗣️ 1:1 Mentoring and more: https://www.linktr.ee/kristenbrownauthor

Transcript

Kristen 0:01

I spent decades abandoning myself to be what others wanted me to be, only to attract multitudes of lopsided and painful relationships. And today I'm on a mission to help people reconnect with their true selves, heal their self-worth, and create the mutually loving and respectful relationships they deserve because everyone deserves to be fully respected and loved well. As recovering people pleasers, we don't often know the line between what's ours in an adult relationship and what is someone else's. And I've had to learn this line through so much trial and error. But as I healed, as I learned to love myself, the lens of my life shifted. And I started to see where I was doing too much, or I was taking on too much responsibility in a relationship. And I was trying to do things for others that they could be doing for themselves, or I was trying to manage somebody else's emotions, or I was trying to make their life better. All things that actually weren't my responsibility. So in today's episode, we're going to be talking about the line between what's yours and what is somebody else's to manage. Now, I want to be specific here and very clear that I'm talking about adults. Okay, I'm not talking about little kids. I'm not talking about the youth. And to me, somebody is a youth until 25 years old, until their brain has fully formed. Okay. A lot of people think it's 18, but to me, it's 25. Just for clarity purposes, I'm talking about anybody who's over the age of 25. And mostly I'm talking about romantic relationships, but this can also be true when it comes to adult children and parent relationships. It could be with our friends. So often the line is blurred because we are stuck in people pleasing and we don't really know what's ours and what isn't ours. And if we start to think or believe that this is wrong, maybe we shouldn't be doing this, that old people pleasing kicks back in again and we start to question ourselves. We start to feel guilty. We start to feel like there's something bad or wrong about us, or shame slips in, and then we go right back into the old behavior. So I have learned that my freedom, my liberation came when I began to understand what was mine and what was somebody else's. And I will tell you that this was not a quick journey. It's still in process. It's something I think about all the time when something is happening, and I believe that I need to swoop in and I need to handle or take care of or manage a particular situation for somebody else. And I want to be clear that it's there's nothing wrong with assisting people, being there, being supportive. But when we tend to take everything on as our sole responsibility, we have abandoned ourselves and we're not being kind to ourselves because we're trying to manage things in the world, in the relationships that are truly not ours to manage. And although we think, or maybe we're even great at it, maybe you think you're even great at something because I did. Oh, I'm really great at this. Let me take over this for you, or let me help you, let me show you, or let me do for you. What I realized is that it's just kind of like frosting on dog poop. Yes, it might get us by to the next step or the next thing, but it doesn't really change or heal anything. Because unless a person truly does that work for themselves, then they're not going to get the valuable messages and wisdom that comes from doing the thing. So oftentimes, what we're doing, believe it or not, ironically, shockingly, is that we are inhibiting somebody else's growth. I know. And enabling truly means when we're doing for someone something that they can or should be doing for themselves. And what we're doing is we're keeping them stuck, we're keeping them right in the space that they are because they have gotten used to us doing for them or other people doing for them. And so they just keep outsourcing and finding somebody else to handle it for them. But they are missing their own growth opportunity. This was a big one for me. I really had to sit with this because I've grown so much. I'm still growing. And it wasn't because anybody did something for me at all. It was because I did those things for myself. And being, thank you, I think that was Michelle, and being someone who's really involved with my children and my husband and my friends. I don't know how to word this, but I'm good at things. I thought, well, this is the right thing to do. And then I realized sometimes my help wasn't wanted, and that would cause a problem. Sometimes my help, like I said, was like frosting on dog poop. It just kind of covered it up for a little bit. And sometimes I noticed that things were never changing, and now I was being relied upon to be the person to manage the thing. And I wasn't having the time to manage and take care of things that I needed to take care of for myself. I see you, Michelle. You must be completely relating to what I'm talking about here. So let's also dive into real quickly what codependency is. Codependency is another one of those words that has really been watered down through social media and everything, and people throw it around willy-nilly, just like they throw around the word narcissist. But codependency simply is losing yourself in the process of trying to take care of, to fix, to please, to rescue another person or to gain approval. It is a relationship pattern in which a person becomes overly focused on another person's needs, emotions, or problems while neglecting their own needs, their boundaries, and their sense of self. An enmeshment is a lack of healthy emotional boundaries where people become overly involved in each other's lives, emotions, and decisions. So it is a relationship dynamic in which personal boundaries become blurred, making it difficult for people to separate their thoughts, their feelings, their needs, and their identities from each other. So when it comes to people pleasing, oftentimes there can be enmeshments sort of under there in a subcategory. There can be codependency in there, you know, there can be enabling in there. All those things can be in there. And we're not trying to break down all those things or to change your entire life in one day. This is merely a conversation to help us get clear about where is where's the line between us and another individual? Where does our responsibility relationship end? And where does that responsibility start with someone else? So I've compiled a list as talking points, but it's not a comprehensive list. There might be other things that I have not mentioned here. Self-healing is largely about clarity, and clarity comes through many different ways. It comes through when we love ourselves, we the lens through which we see ourselves in life begins to change. It also comes through gaining information and changing our perception. One of my favorite things in life is a perception shift because we are going to see things through the same lens that we always see things through because we have the same brain, and this brain is wired, it has learned a particular set of things, so it's always going to process through that same lens. And this is why learning and information and education and listening to powerful talks and writing things down and journaling, all this makes sense because we start to see things differently. And when we see things differently, the world changes. There's a quote by you guys know me, this real-time thinking. Wayne Dyer, how does it go? It's something to the effect of when you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change. I am so happy that I pulled that out of thin air. When you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change. So the first thing on the list is that it's not our job to manage other people's emotions. This was big for me. I was a huge managing people, other people's emotions. And it's important for us to understand that empathy is healthy, but emotional responsibility is not. Like I said, we can show up as support, we can talk to people through things. But after that, that's where the line is, you guys. That's where we have to move on and let them and their connection to source energy work through this. That's their job, and this is where growth happens. You guys know I talk about emotions a lot on here because emotions are huge. And for anybody that's new, a quick recap would be that emotions are guideposts for us. Emotions come from the thoughts we think. And the thoughts we think could be a direct response to something that's happening in our life, like there could be an injustice. So we're thinking about the injustice, and now we're angry. So it's up to us to process that anger and ask ourselves what this anger is telling us. And then if we circle back to, well, there's been an injustice, and this probably means that I need to set a boundary or I need to speak up or what have you. That's other people's job to do. When we insert ourselves in that for them, they don't get to grow. And I've mentioned that in the top of this talk, that a lot of the things that we're doing for other people, we're actually inhibiting them. I don't want to say we're harming or hurting them because that sounds really aggressive, but you get what I'm saying. It's it's we're stopping them. We're we're we're prohibiting them from doing what they need to do for themselves. The second thing is it is not our job to tiptoe around other people's sensitivities. I'm someone who talks a lot about sensitivities and I haven't done it recently, but there are some people that are just sensitive. Okay, we're HSPs and we feel things deeply. Okay, even our skin sometimes is sensitive. Like we're just sensitive in many, many different ways. But then there are people that are calling themselves sensitive, but what really they're saying is they take everything personally. All right. Well, there's there's a distinct difference between the two of these. So a lot of times people will not be honest or authentic with others because they're afraid of what's going to happen. So we withhold vital information that can really shift a relationship or open someone's eyes or help you in the way that you're actually now being honest and sharing the way you feel. All of this can happen, but it can't if we're tiptoeing around other people's sensitivities. Now, of course, kindness always matters. Kindness should be the number one thing we do all day, every day. Period with a T on the end. Period. Because kindness moves the needle in life and relationships. Yes, we might be angry with somebody, but kindness matters. We can still share that. We can still talk about the betrayal or the thing that it did, but kindness matters. It's going to move the needle more than anything else. So, again, with honesty, authenticity, all of these things, it matters to be kind. You know, there was this wave that came through social media probably 10 years ago where people were just being jackasses and they're like, well, this isn't my authentic self. It's like, well, yeah, but that's not the highest version of you. That's just you using authenticity as an excuse to be a jerk. Let's not do that, guys. Let's not do that. All right, number three, it's not our job to fix or rescue people from the consequences of their choices. Ah, support is loving, enabling is not. Oh, this was a big one for me because I am, what's the word, an efficient, productive person. And I can swoop in and save the day with a with a superhero cape on. I really can. I probably have an invisible jet, just to be honest. And it wasn't helpful. Oh, it was so hard because it just to me it was just checking another box, just checking another box. Okay, so-and-so forgot their lunch. Here it is. Someone forgot this, I gotta do that. Someone did it a oh, so-and-so's running late. Let me swoop in and blah, blah, blah, blah. And what I learned was that it was enabling. Just straight up, guys, enabling. And I know enough about enabling, and it was like, degone it. So, what did I have to do? I had to do the hard thing. And the hard thing was saying no. Ah, but I did it. And I did it out of love. I did it out of capital L love for my people. Because I knew that I was rescuing and I kept doing it. And it was hurting them. They couldn't grow in that area if I kept doing this. So I had to, I had to say no. I had to root my you you guys hear me now, like after the fact, talking about these things. And it's like, oh, Kristen's got this all figured out. She's so great at this, rah-rah. No, this was struggle bus for me for years and years, and still occasionally. I'm so much better at things now because I've practiced them for long enough. My brain got used to them. And I taught people in my environment how things are now. But it was difficult. I had to sit there in my own space, in my own head, and say, Kristen, this is rooted in love. You can say no, Kristen, this is love. This is love for them. They need you to stop doing for them, Kristen. I had tears up my eyes just saying that out loud because it was hard. It was hard, but I did it. And I did it because of love. And it was helpful. It actually worked. They got to learn the things that they needed to learn and to become sovereign themselves. And that's a really groovy thing when you start seeing that in your people. And it's the payoff for not being an enabler.

Imani 16:15

Oh man, I'm in here with my palm palms in the back. Like, yes, that's exactly the way it is. Yes. Someone understands. Woo! I love it. I love the visual. Oh, yes. I'm everyone's biggest tree leader. I like to tell people that. And I had to learn too the same way is you can't cheer harder for someone than they cheer for themselves. Big time. Because you're expending so much energy, and you feel like you gotta fill up the void and the space, and they're kind of just looking at you sideways, like, oh, it's really that important. Yes, you are. Yeah. And I know for me too, I had to learn how to back off relationships when people would get to the point that they were saying, I only listen to anything you have to say. And Molly, no, please don't. Do not put me on a pedestal. And I think we do that with people as well, is that we put people on pedestals they never asked to be on. So then when they fall, make a mistake, we're like, oh, how could you have done that? They're a human. Just like you know, you know, we do that with celebrities and athletes and musicians. We we put them on a certain level that they didn't ask us to put them on. They're just like us. It's just their job puts them more in the limelight. That's the only difference. And I had to learn too when I would see someone's name come.

Kristen 17:44

Oops, I'm gonna get a call. She'll be back. I know she will. There she is.

Imani 17:48

I would look at the caller ID and I would see the name, and I'd have to assess how much energy am I going to expend if I have this conversation with them. Am I still gonna have energy or am I gonna be completely drained? Is that serving for either one of us? And so we have to remember that when we honor our first relationship with ourselves, it helps us to honor our relationship with everybody else. That's it, right there. Because we're the bunch pen. People are gonna look at you that way, like, oh, you are the source of everything. No, I'm not. Me and the flesh could make up the words I say out of my mouth. That is someone else's role. Thank you, God. Fleshly, me, I could not be as, you know, have the same diction without him. But I had to put up those boundaries. And I know the hardest one for me too is I had to stop holding on to relationships that had already expired. But because I was comfortable and it was what was safe, and I thought, and at the time I didn't know what I was actually settling because I was still trying to fit in, I was holding myself up and that person to their next level in life. I was putting us both in a holding pattern. And until I let go, my hands and their hands could not be open to receive their new blessings because we're tied up. And so that was hard for me too, because I was so used to always being with someone. I was always used to being in the circle, even though it was to my demise, because I couldn't be myself in those circles. But I settled thinking, well, this is the best I'm ever gonna get, so let me just take it. But in my time of growth, these last couple years, the age of reinvention, I like to call it, is I had to learn, do you love you first? Do you value you, Amani? Do you appreciate all of your strengths as well as your weaknesses? Are you truly showing up as you need to because someone needs to hear what they need to hear from you? But if you keep silent, they're not gonna get their breakthrough like you. I think she got another call. Sorry, I put myself first, and that was hard because I was used to being self, you know, being told, Oh, that's selfish. You can't do that. Put everybody first. But you can't help anybody while you're dying trying to put them first. You are first. Make sure your cup is filled every day, so then you can give fully from the overflow because you deserve to thrive.

Kristen 20:48

Thank you, Mani. Yes, excellent share. And I want to circle back to what she said. When you honor the relationship with yourself, it helps you honor our relationships with everybody else. No truer words have ever been spoken. Everything stems from the relationship with ourselves. And as I've been on this journey and all the twists and turns and ups and downs and nonlinear, you know, roller coaster things that went on, really, that was what I always landed on because I'd done the work and I cared about myself and I loved myself. And there were indicators that there were ways that I was feeling that was helping me, not great ways, negative ways that I was feeling that was helping me realize where I was doing for others, where I had way too much responsibility in the relationship that I needed to have. Remember, again, we're talking about adults here. All right. All right. The next one is it is not our job to make everybody like us, y'all. Is no such thing as universal approval. It is a losing battle. If a person has universal approval, they are not being authentic. Period. Put your pen down and walk out of the room. Period. Because when we are truly ourselves, a third of the people are going to like us, a third of the people are not, and a third of the people aren't going to care either way. It is a losing battle. It is not our responsibility to, now let's break this down even more into the micro. In a relationship to be sure and to secure that this person likes us. Do you know how many times my kids have been mad at me and even said they hated me? Well, my two girls have said they hated me once. My son never did. He might have thought it, I don't know. But yeah, just once, just both of them. And it came out of their mouth. They were both like, oh my God, that was the worst thing I've ever said. And they never said it again. And I think I did the same thing with my mom. But that's beside the point. The point is that sometimes doing the right thing is gonna make someone dislike you for a minute or forever. And are you willing to compromise your sacred self to keep doing the thing that is not your responsibility? I'm not anymore. I still don't like the idea of somebody not liking me as a recovering people pleaser. That was a big thing for me. I was trying to be liked. Shifting, morphing, chameleoning, wearing hats, taking that off, doing this, changing that. Nope. I had to get comfortable with the idea that someone may not like me, that I might piss someone off, that I might ruffle some feathers. And I'm okay with that. It still doesn't feel great if someone does, which I really haven't experienced that recently. But I'm thinking ahead, if that ever happened, I'm like, well, you know, that's just the way it is. I can't please all the people all the time. Here's another big one. It is not our job to sacrifice our needs to keep the peace. Can I get a hallelujah? It is not our job to sacrifice our needs to keep the peace. Peace that is, oh, I'm getting the hallelujah. Yeah. Peace that is built on self-abandonment is simply conflict avoidance. The end. We are sacrificing our sacred self, our needs, what makes us thrive, what makes us come alive, what makes us light up, what makes us be in our highest self just because we're gonna keep peace. No. Sometimes we gotta, again, we gotta ruffle a few feathers. Sometimes we have to say, you know what? This is not okay. I don't want to do this thing. And I've done that because I knew, again, my my family is a work in progress, our relationships are work in progress. And there are times when I had to say, yeah, no, not gonna do that thing when I knew, I knew I was gonna get pushed back. But I couldn't sacrifice me anymore. I gave though, I gave that up years ago. I was like, no, Kristen is not on the sacrificial altar. She's not a goat, she's not a lamb. No. My peace is not up for negotiation anymore. What I need, my needs, my true legit needs, I'm not talking about selfishness, you guys. I'm talking about my true legit needs, are not up for sacrifice anymore. And one more it is not our job, y'all, to read minds or anticipate unspoken expectations. Have you ever been in a relationship with someone who has had expectations that they don't tell you about? And then they're pissed, or they're mad at you, or they're telling you what you should have done, or how this particular event should have gone, blah, blah, blah. And you're over here going, I had no idea. And so, what do we do when we're still in our unaware stage, our not healing stage, and maybe even leading into our healing stage? We start to try to anticipate all those expectations. Remember, this is how we're built. We gotta override so many systems, you guys. The healing journey is not for the faint of heart, I will tell you. We have to override systems that are put into place by the brain for us to survive. So I have this on me. I'll use a personal example. Was somebody always had some type of expectation on me, and I'm just doing me. Do do do, doing me, doing what's good, letting them do them. Life is well, but then all of a sudden I'm just hit upside the head, not literally, figuratively, with some expectation that they had. And I'm like, well, who gave you that idea? Where did this come from? And I could feel my mind trying to go there after the fact because it happened so many times. I was starting to get trained to look for expectations. And you know, I said, oh no, nah nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah. Healthy relationships require clear communication, honest and authentic communication. And if somebody has an expectation of me, I would prefer if they tell me what that is, so that I can say, yay, I can meet that, or nay, I cannot meet that. We are not mind readers, and that is not your job, and that is your your responsibility ends there. No, you do not need to figure it out. Back in the day when, you know, you've asked someone, like, what's wrong? And they go, or something wrong, and they go, I'm fine. And then they're mad at you because you didn't figure it out. It's not your job. I almost titled this talk and I looked for, I went to ChatGPT. I'm like, give me a better title than what I'm about to do. And the title of this talk was, It's not your job. That's what I was thinking. I'm so simple, you guys, you know me, straight to the point, KB. But there's so many things in relationships, y'all, that aren't our job. We think they are because somebody else is telling us that it is. No, no, no, this is what you need to do. As my wife, as my sister, as my friend, as my mom, as my dad, as my brother, as my husband, as my whatever, we've got people telling us that this is what the expectation is. No. We can't read minds. We need others to communicate clearly. So, with the people that had an expectation of me, I would say, you know, hey, next time, because we just don't throw people out when they make these type of mistakes because they're human. That's the other thing. They're human. People are just doing people, they're just doing what they were wired to do. Maybe they haven't woken up yet. Maybe they haven't figured things out yet. Maybe they haven't self-inquired yet. Maybe they have a history of not taking responsibility. Maybe they're running in survival mode. Maybe they're stuck in fear and anxiety all the time. We don't know. But we can approach them calmly and kindly, and we can say, hey, rather than having that unspoken expectation, it would be so helpful if you told me what's on your mind or when that thing comes up, how you want it to go. Because perhaps I can help you meet that. And if I can't, I can't, but at least I know. And you're giving us a fighting chance. You're giving us an opportunity to navigate our relationship with peace rather than with upset and discord. It doesn't need to happen that way. All right, so let's move on to the next one. We have three more. And the wait one, yeah. Okay, the next one is it is not our job to carry the entire emotional load of a relationship. This is a big deal because a lot of times, if you're the only person who's initiating the difficult conversations, or you're checking in after conflicts, or you're apologizing first, or you're the only one that's working on the communication or trying to understand feelings, basically, you're the only one fighting for the relationship. That's extremely difficult. Relationships are partnerships. Even if it's a friendship, a siblingship, a romantic, they are partnerships and they go both ways. Now, will both people all the time know what to do? No. People are all over the place in their journeys and their healings, what they've learned, what was uh modeled to them through their families of origin, all of these types of things. Okay. People are going to be all over the place. So it does require, again, conversations if you feel like you are the one who is holding all the emotional load in your relationship. Because sometimes you'll have someone over there who's avoiding the hard conversations, or they're shutting down, or they're running, and they're leaving everything to you. And this can be extremely daunting and very, very difficult. It is not your responsibility to carry the whole emotional load of the relationship. I needed to hear that at some point in my journey. I needed to read that or hear it. I forgot where I heard it from or got it from. And I remember sitting there and pondering it because guess what, folks? I didn't realize I was holding the whole emotional load in all of my past romantic relationships. Oh, yeah, it was all me. And I didn't realize it. And sometimes you're going to call people to task. You're going to say, hey, I need you to up your game in this particular area. This is what healthy looks like. And right now we're we're dabbling on unhealthy, and I'm extremely exhausted, and I'm starting to get resentful. And hey, could you? And they either will or they won't. And that's really the key with all of this is that we don't always know how another person is going to react or respond to our words or our boundaries or to our requests. We don't, they might step up or maybe they might back up. But the key here is to always honor self. That is the most important job. Next one is it's not our job to convince someone of our worth or our value. The right people in our lives, everyone, do not require us to sell them or for us to audition for them or to try to convince them of our goodness. Again, as recovered people pleaser, something that I was doing all the time. Not even not always necessarily verbally trying to convince somebody, but I do remember dating this one guy briefly, and he said to me, something to the effect of, why don't you just let me learn you or get to know you? Or basically, I'm paraphrasing, but unpack you. Like allow yourself to be a mystery. And I was like, What? I'm just over here telling stories and being communicative. No, I wasn't. No, I wasn't when I was honest with myself. I was trying to sell myself. I was trying to say, look how great I am, look how amazing I am, look how cool I am. You definitely want to be in a relationship with me because I'm amazing. Well, guess what? All of that reeked of lack of self-worth, lack of self-respect, um, insecurity. Yeah, isn't that fascinating? I wouldn't have thought about it. I would have thought they're just places that I'm pleased about myself or what have you. And I would have probably continued to convince myself that that was true until this lovely soul had the audacity or the cojones to actually say that to me. Boy, did I take a step back. I was like, oh my God, that's exactly what I'm doing. Ew, cringe. That's exactly what I was doing. But I'm honest with myself. So as soon as I learned that, I thought, Kristen, you don't need to, you don't need to tell your convince anybody of anything. Even when it comes to what I do for a living, speaking on apps and doing stuff like this, I don't have to convince anybody of anything. This is me, and that's all there is to it. And like it, lump it, throw it out, embrace it, whatever. Because it is not our job. The right people do not require a sales pitch. They do not require us to continually try to convince somebody of who we are. And if you're in a romantic relationship and you're trying to do that, let me tell you something. Either they see you or they don't see you. Sad reality, but it's true. Either they see you or they don't see you. And there's been times when I've had to leave relationships because they quite literally did not see me. I said, you do not see me. You see me through the lens of your pain and your traumas, and you're not seeing this little bright and shiny bunny that's standing right in front of you. You don't see me at all. Because I saw me. Now, before I saw me, I wouldn't have that they didn't see me or that they weren't seeing me. I would have processed it through some other filter. But once I truly saw me, loved me, embraced me, respected me, all the things of self-love, I could tell when someone wasn't. I was like, yeah, you're seeing me through some messy little lens there, and this isn't working for me. Oh, yeah, it's not our job to abandon ourselves to keep somebody else comfortable. I wrote about this in my first book. And this is in the respect that your opinions, your dreams, your values, and your boundaries, all of those things matter. But sometimes your dreams, opinions, values, boundaries, things like that make somebody else uncomfortable. They don't like it. And they kick up a little fuss, they throw a little dirt in our face, they don't like it at all. And we might think, well, it's my job, it's my responsibility to keep the peace here or to keep them happy. No, that I'm going to put this down for now. Uh-uh. It's not our job to abandon ourselves to keep somebody else comfortable or happy. It's our job to be true to ourselves. First and foremost, we must be true to ourselves. It is a strange thing to do, but the payoff is gold. When we continue to do this, we start to see that by making ourselves matter, A, we're more grounded, we're stronger, we're more empowered, we are willing to take care of ourselves, but also the people around you who are going to cheer for you and who truly wants what's best for you, they're going to support that. If anybody else wants to take you off of your dream or talk you out of your values or make you feel bad about a boundary, I'm sorry to say they're all about themselves. I'm not calling them bad or wrong or horrible. That's just where they're at in their journey. But they're all about themselves. They're seeing life only through the lens of how does this serve me. And the last one is it is not our job to protect people from healthy disappointment. This is a biggie. Oh my gosh. Still to this day, I don't like disappointing people. I don't. But it's now like a one or a two on a scale of one to ten when it used to be like a 14. I hated disappointing people so bad that it just ran my life. But now I've learned that if I don't disappoint them, I am sacrificing me. Oftentimes, I will have to sacrifice something of myself when I'm trying so desperately not to disappoint somebody else. And that stopped feeling good to me. I realized that you know what? Disappointment is okay. I get disappointed sometimes. We're gonna disappoint people sometimes, you guys. By let allowing people to be disappointed, they're going to get stronger in that area. They're gonna become more resilient in that area. I remember somebody I was coaching recently through dating, and I said, you know what, you need to go get rejection therapy. And what I meant by that is go throw yourself out there, get rejected, get comfortable with being rejected so that you don't take it so personally. You understand that it's not about you because the person had such a massive fear of getting rejected, rejected, that they never wanted to do it, they didn't even want to put themselves out there at all, but they desperately wanted to find a partner. Well, the same thing is true here. If we are protecting everybody from just being disappointed all the time, they can't build the emotional resiliency to disappointment. Disappointment is a normal, natural way of life. We're not always going to get our way, you guys. We know that. Hopefully, we know that as adults. And you know what? Yeah, I might be a little disappointed that didn't work out. But let me tell you, now, disappointment to me feels it's it's it's like almost barely registers on the emotional scale for me. I'm just, oh yeah, that sucks. And I moved on. Where before it'd be like, oh, I'm so disappointed. And I would roll around in that slop like a little pig outside in the mud. And now it's just like, yeah, that sucked. I have developed so much resiliency to it because does it really matter? Also, because everything is always working out for me. Everything is always for me, not to me. It's happening for me, not to me. So if I'm not getting my way with this particular thing, what better thing is coming down the pike? So, no, it is not our job to abandon ourselves to keep others comfortable. Okay, we have our opinions, we have our dreams, we have our values. And sometimes within even family structures, if we dip into political for just a second, not too deep, you might have members of the same family who are left, and there's members of the same family that are our right. Some are some are Democrats, some are Republicans. Okay, but then one or the other is trying to tell you not to be the other. No. It might make the other person uncomfortable. There's been times when this family, it's really interesting. There we were split at some point. I've always been an independent, just so for anybody who knows, from Go, from Go registration, independent. And but there are sides of my family, my personal family, where people are right and there's people that are left. And there was people that were far right and there's people that were far left. And what's interesting over time, what I've noticed based on healthy communication, I kid you not, you guys, do you know what everybody's circles now are in near the middle? Everybody's circles near the middle because we never tried to change anybody. We just had conversations open-heartedly. And circling back to perspectives and perception shifts, it changed people's perceptions on things. And so everybody kind of, if we're all kind of swirling right near the middle now, it's really wild. I did not expect that to happen, but that's what happened. So, no, don't change who you are just to keep somebody else comfortable. It's not your job. Like I said, this list is not comprehensive. It is not limited to this. There are many, many, many things we could talk about that are not your job in relationships. And it is so incredibly empowering to know where your responsibility and your responsibility in the relationship ends. Know where your line is, know where the line starts about what's healthy and what's not healthy, what is actually hurting yourself or what is actually helping yourself. One of the coolest things that I have found about this life is that when we function from capital L love anywhere in our in our life, it is always for the highest good of all concerned, including when you're functioning from capital L love of you. Like I said, when we are starting to feel a certain way, we're getting irritable, we're getting resentful, we're getting anxious, we're getting exhausted, we're getting overwhelmed, whatever it might be. And we discover you know what? I'm doing too much for too many people. I don't know where they end and where I begin. I am maybe codependent, or I'm enmeshed, or I'm just people pleasing, or whatever it might be, but this doesn't feel good to me anymore. And I'm gonna learn to love capital L myself. Guess what? Everybody benefits. Everybody benefits when we apply capital L love, even when initially we don't see it. That's what's wild because people like what they're familiar with, so we get pushback, we get all kinds of things that can happen. But when we hold that line, everybody benefits. I love you guys. Thank you for being here. You are absolutely amazing. You fill my heart with joy. I'm so glad I get to commune with you guys on the regular, and I look forward to speaking with you again tomorrow. Much love, everyone.