Ep.17 - Archetypal Wisdom: Why Relationships Matter and How to Finally Make Them Better.

In this episode, Rory Kilmartin, a global thought leader and expert in human relationships, demystifies why relationships can feel so confusing — even with people we love most.

Rory has spent over 30 years exploring one of the biggest questions we carry: why we relate to each other the way we do. What started as a childhood curiosity has become a lifelong body of work — bringing clarity to patterns that most of us feel… but can’t quite explain.

Rory has worked with people all over the world, and his work helps you see what’s actually going on underneath the surface of your relationships — in a way that’s straightforward, simple, clear, and to the point.  

What You'll Learn:

• What archetypes are
• The 4 different archetypes and common identifying traits
• Why some people struggle to make relationships work
• How to understand your partner better and strengthen our marriage
• How to communicate with the people we love
• How this wisdom can help you raise your beautiful children
• Sibling rivalry
• How to see yourself better through an archetypal lens
• Why we burn out in certain jobs
• Why things all come to a head in midlife, and
• How this wisdom can help us build better communities and societies.

We talk about marriage, partnership, work/career, and raising amazing, well-developed kids. 

The archetypal task of life is maturation - evolution - and this episode is your guide to understanding yourself and the people you love in the various stages of life.  

So as you listen, you might find pieces of your own story coming into focus.

Connect with Rory

Archetypal Relationships - https://archetypalrelationships.com/

Take the Quiz - https://archetypalrelationships.com/quiz

I wish you and your family all the best.

With love,

Melisa

Coach with Melisa:

Email - 7genproject@gmail.com

Follow the show:

Instagram - @live.differently.podcast

**********************************************

Music attribution: 

"Wallpaper" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
 Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License
 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:05

Hey and welcome to Live Differently. This podcast is about coming back to who you really are and having the courage to build a life that fits with who you are now. If something in your life feels off or you know that you're meant for more than the way that you're currently living, then you're in the right place. We talk about the real stuff health, relationships, purpose, endings, and new beginnings. All the moments that ask you to grow, shift, and choose differently. As you listen, take what feels right and leave the rest. This is your life, your pace, your play. If this episode resonates, then share it with someone that you care about. It might be exactly what they need to hear today. And if you're ready to make changes in your own life or you need help getting clear, aligned, or figuring out how to move forward, please contact me to discuss coaching support. You'll find my details in the show notes. All right, let's get talking. Today's episode is one that I have really been looking forward to sharing with you. If you have ever found yourself wondering why relationships can feel so confusing, even with the people you love, this conversation will land. I'm joined by Rory Kilmartin, who has spent over 30 years exploring one of the biggest questions we carry, why we relate to each other the way that we do. What started as a childhood curiosity has become a lifelong body of work, bringing clarity to patterns that most of us feel but can't quite explain. Rory has worked with people all over the world, and his work helps you see what's actually going on beneath the surface in your relationships in a way that's simple, clear, and deeply human. I've experienced his work for myself, and I can tell you something shifts when you start to see these patterns clearly. So as you listen, notice what clicks for you. You might find pieces of your own story coming into focus. So please join me in welcoming Rory Kilmartin to the Live Differently podcast. So, Rory Kilmartin, thank you for being here and welcome to Live Differently. Now, I have been looking forward to this conversation. I've spent an amount of time looking through your research and coming from where I come from, the perspective that I've taken, I find your research and your work, your framework to be incredibly accessible and incredibly refreshing. And so we're talking today, though, because a friend of mine recommended me to you when I started the podcast. He said, you need to talk to Rory. It took me a little bit, but I did reach out to you and I'm thankful. But before we get started, I actually want to give a little bit of background as to why I want to talk to you. And so the people who have been listening to the podcast know that I have a background in health, but what most people don't know is that I'm also a peace and conflict researcher. And so that means that I've spent the last five years of my life researching conflict, researching violence, and trying to understand why people do not relate to each other and how those things devolve into violent interpersonal relationships and violent relationships between countries, so interstate relationships. And where I landed with that through my research was that much of this is our unconscious patterning. The way that we relate to each other comes from these unconscious conditions that we have that are based in survival. And they're very much conditioned in us or form in us, reinforced in us, in our neural pathways, in a way that people become reactive rather than reflective and intentional in the way that they engage in their life and the way that they engage with other people. So for me, it landed on when we relate in an unhealthy way, it comes from a fear-based survival instinct that is based in habits that are reinforced over and over again that we don't break the cycle of.

SPEAKER_03 6:39

Sometimes I thought of think of it as base camp, you know, your home is base camp from which you can go and climb mountains if that's your desire. For many people, making sure base camp works for the mountaineers is their mission. But whatever your whatever our intuitive missions are in life, base camp needs to be in order. And we need to ensure that we're not destroying other people's lives through our own unconsciousness. On a slightly more deeper level, which is where I think you're going, there is what I believe to be a developmental agenda, an invisible, unwavering, unending demand for us to grow up. It is this invisible agenda that is all around us, and nobody gets a pass. It's from our first breath to our final breath. There is no there to get to. Ultimately, in the final chapters of our lives, in the twilight years, or in our final stages of life, the developmental agenda continues. There is no escaping it. So being a trust fund brat or winning the lottery, or maybe getting sick, or you know, becoming a gym junkie, none of these things are going to avoid the fact that we've ultimately got to grow up. For those that try and try and push that can down the road, the feedback mechanisms of the universe of life just get more and more devastating. So inside our loving relationships is the deepest place that we're likely to grow. We think of love often through the Disney lens. You know, if we find someone who loves us, the pain will stop. Or a version of that. The harsh reality is if you find someone who really loves you, then the love between you will be will be the mechanism to reach into the deepest parts of you that you have avoided and disowned and rejected within yourself, and they will be brought up to the surface in the most uncomfortable ways possible. And this is the mechanism of love. That once we have formed a fair bond with somebody, then we are flooded with oxytocin, which is the one of the myriad of biochemicals that occurs through our relationship experiences, then we want to bond with somebody and we don't want to leave them. And then what's likely and predictable is that the full extent of our wretchedness will be revealed. And that is also part of the developmental agenda. That's why it's so hard. That's why Disney misled everyone. It just doesn't sell to tell the truth, doesn't sell. So why mastering relationships and why understanding the link between this invisible developmental agenda, which is that we should become more aware as we get older? And unfortunately, this developmental agenda is occurs mostly through challenge. We we learn the most through breakdowns and challenge and failures, and this need to grow up, coupled with our yearning to be in partnership, and that in partnership, that's where it is the presence of deep and profound love that is likely to bring up the parts of us that we have to resolve, and the person you love the most is going to suffer the most whilst that happens inside you, and vice versa. And it's sounds really depressing and no fun and and hardly the exciting-inspiring topic of the moment. But if we can accept that this is the invisible mechanism that is driving all of us to become more aware, to grow up, and that it's through the mechanism of love almost more than any other, then we can kind of take a breath and let go of the unrealistic expectations and delusions and recognize that nature has encouraged these extraordinary biochemicals that occur when we fall in love. And that once the infatuation and the you know the fusion of excitement and lust has quietened down a bit, and we're in becoming an adult together, then if we understand these mechanisms, we can at least not be so shocked and offended and feel like grabbing a passport and running for the nearest airport when the predictable reality of the struggle arises. And I could talk about this for a couple of days, but ultimately where we're going to end up, whether we stop talking about it right now or stop talking about it in two hours, we're going to end up with a question is like, well, what can we do about it? What is the path through the forest for kind, well-meaning, benevolent people who love each other, who want to create a happy and loving family home, and who don't want to destroy their union, but want to learn the lessons and do the work? Because that's the great mystery right there. It's one of the many great mysteries. What do we do? Is it two hours a week of expensive one-to-one talk therapy? Is it plant medicine? Is it meditation? Is it what else is there? Like what is it? And I, of course, have my well-proven constantly producing extraordinary results system. That's what I'm known for. Is once we understand that this is the agenda of maturation and the person you love the most and who loves you the most, you're you're going to take each other into a form of therapeutic hell whilst trying to raise kids, pay the mortgage, and stay in shape and try not to feel dreadful about the various social media posts that we keep watching and reading that make us feel certain ways. How do we do that together with grace? How do we do it with grace and curiosity and kindness when every fiber of our being feels like the person we love has become the enemy? And we know deep down they're not the enemy, but they're presenting like the enemy. They're presenting like the very thing we vowed we would never go near again, and suddenly I've married it. It's no wonder people want to leave. It's no wonder so many people that can't leave are so miserable.

SPEAKER_00 13:51

Are they presenting like the enemy, or are we perceiving them as the enemy?

SPEAKER_03 13:56

I think it's both. I think the other way of looking at it that's interesting is are they presenting like this because of their own stuff, or are they presenting like this because of my stuff?

SPEAKER_02 14:10

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 14:10

Am I the reason why this person is showing up in a way that I can't stand, that I never I vowed I'd never experience again.

SPEAKER_00 14:18

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 14:18

You know, well, it's a really simple example is a a gentle person is raised in a home that has anger and raised voices, sharpness, and they vow they're gonna marry someone who doesn't shout, and then that that person doesn't shout for about five years, and then they start shouting. Who, you know, chicken and the egg, right?

SPEAKER_00 14:37

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 14:38

But the person who believes that shouting is evil cannot perceive that they might have anything to do with the reason that their husband or wife has begun to start raising their voice. It would never occur to them that they might be partly involved because shouting is evil, and everybody knows that shouting is evil, according to that person.

SPEAKER_02 15:04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 15:05

Because it's so real for them that shouting and raising voices is such a violation of the soul. Everybody must know this. Therefore, if anybody's raising their voice, they must also know that this is a deep violation of the soul, and therefore they're doing it willingly, and therefore they're bad, wrong, and evil. Yeah, there's no evidence to suggest the person who does not like shouting is doing anything wrong, but they are. Not in every instance, just in case someone's listening that has been in a situation where there is no explanation other than cruelty. But for the most part, the way I'm referring to it, they have a part to play.

SPEAKER_00 15:50

So it's almost as if over time we bring forward those aspects of other people that represent the thing that is trying to develop and grow in us.

SPEAKER_03 16:01

Exactly. Part of the invisible mess. So I've spent the last 19, nearly I started 20 years ago this year. Let's just call it like I've been saying 19 years for a year. 20 years, 20 years, I have been totally obsessed with uncovering the mechanisms and machinery that drives maturation and power dynamics that ultimately are to move through the forest floor of relationships and long-term committed relationships. Essentially, we are going to attract the circumstances that we need to deal with and process the parts of the human psyche that we have rejected in the world, in the person that in the primary caregiver or parent or sibling that mistreated us in some way, and the world, and in ourselves. So, whatever part of ourselves, therefore, that we have rejected, let me let me try and put it into some slightly simpler language. If there's a carefree child and they're raised by a very controlling dictatorial parent, which is very normal for parents, right? They will reject that sense of being told what to do, that sense of tyranny, that sense of authoritarianism in the parent, or rejected in the world, and they're rejected in themselves. And that person will then survive. So they're trying to survive that energy because a carefree child who wants to live in the moment finds being told what to do very difficult. But then they go through adolescence into early adulthood, and the strategies they've created to survive their life, they unconsciously assume, all humans unconsciously assume, the strategies you created to survive your childhood is how you survive life, period. And that's fine, kind of in your 20s, but then the wheels fall off in midlife when essentially the strategies we created to survive our life fail to take our life further than they're capable of taking us. So then in our long-term committed relationships, we're likely to find someone that we are often very attracted to, someone who ends up presenting the same archetypal patterns or nature that the most imbalanced parent had when we're a child. I'll try and say that in different ways. People often say we end up marrying a version of our parent. But what people are really saying is the behavior that we found very challenging as a child, we reject in our parent, we reject in the world, and we reject in ourselves. And then later in life, we have uncontrollable urges to pair bond, get married, raise children, share finances with somebody that has exactly the same archetypal nature or operating system or expression of the psyche. There's a number of ways you can say. Now, that's bloody fascinating. And the only explanation for this that really works is the developmental agenda that I spoke about earlier. But it's a very observable phenomenon, which is people have often have relationships in their adolescence and early 20s that is like the perfect relationship for them. But it ends for any myriad of reasons, and then they end up marrying someone that's the opposite to them, and they get married and have kids, et cetera, et cetera. And they look back wistfully about this past relationship. And that past relationship was typically somebody with the same archetypal nature as them. That's why it felt so good. But it's not ideal for long-term child rearing and pair bonding. And then it ends for whatever reason. The universe is like, hey, I don't really want you to carry on. This is not going to provide you what you need. Now, we've prepared this person for you. They're pretty much like your dad, um, but you're not going to know about it for another five years. But you're going to want to marry them and make babies with them. So attraction is very interesting. But we we become attracted to someone that represents the same expression of the psyche as the parent we struggled with the most. And the mechanism inside of that is that we are, because we reject that expression in our parent, then we reject it in the world. So other teachers, other adults. And then we but we reject it in within ourselves. In other words, the part of us that can be organized, make a plan, tell somebody what to do, and arrange the future. We reject that. The carefree people reject that part of themselves. So they don't like to commit, they don't like to read their bank statements, they don't like to say yes to a future invitation. They say, yeah, yeah, it sounds great. Yeah, yeah, I'll I'll let you know. I'll let you know. Yeah, yeah, no, no, no. Just I'm a maybe, I'm a maybe, right? And they struggle to organize their lives, plan for their retirement, make future plans because they've rejected that part of them. So then they're very attracted to someone that's gonna do all of that for them. So I'm just giving you one example of the four main areas of the human psyche that I've discovered. So then we'll end up attracted to the carefree person, we'll end up attracted to someone who will do all the organizing, but as long as they don't tell me what to do. Okay, well, then that's gonna work for a little while, but then the wheels are going to fall off in that marriage because one person is gonna do all the organizing, all the planning, all the assigning of tasks. We're gonna be in partnership together, but you're telling me I can't tell you what to do. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 21:41

It's not gonna work.

SPEAKER_03 21:43

Oh dear. Yes, that's not gonna work. And and again, this is just the agony inside of that is archetypal, predictable, observable. It's happening all over the world, what I just described. And everybody in their marriage thinks it's unique. They think they've just got the wrong partner. If they just had the right partner, then all of this would go away. I work with people that are in their third marriage with exactly the same dynamic that I'm talking about. They've married three people that represent their mother. Three in a row. They're in their 70s or 60s. They've tried three times, they're on their third. Divorce often is not the cessation of the problem. It's just the delaying of what needs to happen. So if anyone's listening to this and you're struggling in any way, and feel like there are some patterns that you're either experiencing or you're experiencing again, depending on your age. These patterns, alas, as frustrating as they are, they're the signposts, they are the messaging to take a look within and find out why this is happening. And again, that's what I help people do very quickly. You said something before you began about or when we began about how accessible this is. Um, I think part of the reason why I'm so successful with my clients is because I don't have any desire to be compete on an academic level with anyone. My only real desire is to compete on the level of results. Because if you I was speaking to someone the other day, like if you set up a TV game show where we got let's say the top six or ten relationship teachers and workers in the world, and I could volunteer, or not vol I could apply to be in this competition, I'd instantly sign up, test myself against the best. Because I it is accessible. I don't use any jargon, there's nothing complex about what I say, and I help people make sense of the confusion and the mystery really quickly using really simple language, and um it's nearly instant revelation for people.

SPEAKER_00 24:07

So, can we get into those archetypes a little bit more? So, would you mind explaining the four archetypes a little bit so that people understand where we're coming from? So we're all starting from the same page.

SPEAKER_03 24:19

Yeah, sure. Be my honor. So before I begin, I just want to let everybody know like this is from my my belief, is this is about the most important knowledge you can take time to understand if you want to understand relationships. Like it's at the absolute top of my tree. I've been searching for answers for 40 years. I started when I was 12, I'm 52. This is the most important information that I could share with anybody right now. So the human psyche has evolved, or the mammalian mammals have been evolving for 200 to 250 million years. So the human psyche has been evolving through a lineal path for 200 plus million years. The human psyche has evolved into four observably different types of humans. What do I mean by that? What I mean is we all look like humans, but we're not all the same humans. Like we all look like humans as opposed to a donkey or a sloth or an alligator, correct? And we all look like this humans, therefore we think we're the same, but we're not the same. So there are four aspects of the human psyche that have evolved, and in a similar way we're born left-handed or right-handed, which is pure luck of chance. 10% of humans are left-handed. Evolution recognizes that 10% of our species should be left-handed. We're roughly 50-50 biological male and female for the purpose of reproduction. Approximately 1% of humans have traits and capacities of psychopathy. The evolutionary stable ratio understands that these aspects need to develop and evolve. Two of these archetypes. So, to quickly then, what does archetype mean? The technical answer is an evolved cognitive structure. That's all very dry for me. I just simply like to call it the operating system. It's the operating system of human beings, like we have an operating system in phones. Imagine there's four different smartphones running four different operating systems. They can all make phone calls, they can all access the web, they can all send text messages, but they're running different operating systems. That's what humans are. So we're born with a very strong leaning in one direction of these four operating systems. That's the simple way to understand it. First, I call the gorilla. I use animal names just like Aesop, Aesop's fables from 600 BC. I read them as a child, they always stuck with me. Animal names makes it so much easier than technical names. So the immature aspect of one of the realms I call the gorilla. They're the ones that like to organize, plan, look into the future. They like details, planning, signing tasks. They're the people that understand the 64 things that need to happen before we can leave for the holiday for the weekend with the family. And they know all of those 64 things. They go to bed at night thinking about the plan, they wake up in the morning thinking about the plan. And all they really want is people to join forces with them, be in partnership with them, and help them execute the plan by following the tasks that they've been assigned. That's really what they want in life. So the gorillas are the first of an external view. They care about the gorillas care about the external world and they specifically care about the future. They live very much in the future because they want to take care of the future for everyone. Gorillas are very good at saving, for example, reading bank statements, planning for retirement, things like that. The second one I call the wolves. That is the immature expression of what is some people know as the warrior energy. The wolves are the second external focus archetype. Wolves care about the integrity of people. Gorillas care about the integrity of systems. Wolves take uh care about the integrity of people. They have been the bouncers of human history. They've stood at the gate, they've walked the perimeter of the village and the kingdoms, and they have been on the lookout for bad faith actors, for Vikings and barbarians and snakes and bears and con men, snake oil salesmen. So they're very good judges of character. They don't like being lied to. And wolves have an instant access to heat. If you imagine, you know, Dave and Maybe Sarah just hanging out at the gate, uh, just having a chat, having a cigarette, and suddenly a couple of barbarians come running around the corner. Dave and Sarah have an instant access to violence. They can go from having a chat to taking on Vikings in a fraction of a second. And that's what they have. They have an access to heat. They like to get things done. They like being on missions. They don't like having nothing to do. The third one I call the foxes. They're the carefree ones I was talking about before. They want to live in the moment. So they are they're the first of the remaining two are in both internal worlds focused. The foxes care about freedom more than anything. Freedom is the most important thing to foxes. But in the fox realm is also comedy, creativity, arts, the pursuit of beauty, the pursuit of wonder, the internal experience. Gorillas like to create external experiences. When you arrive at the airport, the luggage belts are clear, the path is clear, everything's working. That's what they like. And a positive external world experience. Foxes want you to have a positive and profound internal experience. Remember that music concert you went to when you were younger that you've never forgotten. It was the sound, the lights, the music, the smoke, the atmosphere. That's what the foxes want. They want you to have something that you never ever forget them for, that changed you forever. Foxes like transformation, rites of passage, ceremony, things like that. Foxes are have an access to the infinite knowledge. So they're the ones where all the innovation and invention comes from. All the new technologies come from the fox world because they they can spend hours in another dimension thinking about problems and solutions and inventing light bulbs and new technology. But they like to live in the moment. They don't like to live in the future or the past. They want to be in the moment because that's where they get to have wonder. And the fourth then is the sheep, that is the immature version of the lover. And the sheep care about connection. Love, connection. That's it. There's pretty much nothing else on life that matters to sheep. So sheep like consideration, kindness, thoughtfulness, physical touch, holding hands, lying in bed in the morning, being sent messages, emojis. They just need to feel connected, which is why they really struggle with anybody getting cross with them, anybody getting slightly irritated with them, anything like that just sends the sheep nervous system into an absolute tears. Because their entire purpose of being is to exist in the center of the village, taking care of the interconnectivity of everybody in the village. So the sheep will know when the female teenager has come back from time with a family member and they're they've forlorn. They know when the toddler is becoming hungry. They know when someone's come when they're someone has come back from the gate, come back from the industrial estate, come back from the from overseas, and it's not gone well. Because they sense, they are the empathic ones. They can feel and sense everybody. And I forgot to mention the wolves have a very strong desire to maintain physical safety, external world safety for everyone. They don't want anyone to get harmed. They do not want a bad faith actor to come into the village and harm any of the innocent ones. And the sheep want people want to take care of the emotional safety, the internal safety of everyone. So whilst this is just a very brief summary of these four aspects of the psyche, what I'll add is that the more you understand the roles, the agenda, the purpose, the instinct, the values, you aren't you understand the communication preferences, the listening preferences. Are they like to be reassured? What they're ultimately seeking. And the more you understand this, as simple as it might seem right now, the more profound it becomes, and the more potent you become as a partner and a parent. For anyone listening that is managing and running a family home with children, the more you understand this, the better your life will be. Almost overnight, that's how quickly knowing this improves our lives.

SPEAKER_00 33:08

I love the way that you explain that. And you know, how you said we're all human, but we're all different. Um, because that's exactly what this speaks to. It speaks to we're all part of the same um, you know, collective human history, etc. The same evolution to get to where we are, but we developed and evolved in different ways. And that's not wrong. Each one of those people are important for different reasons, but we have to understand who we are and who each other are. Um, and I really like you know the idea of um recognizing that we're coming from different places. And in language, we have phrases that we use, you know, like throwaways that we say, or um, you know, it's just like that person's from a different planet or something like that, or we're we're not looking at the world the same way. And I think what that actually says is that I'm not really relating to where this person is coming from. It's it doesn't resonate with me. It's not who I am, yeah. But it's also important to recognize who you are, but but also who they are.

SPEAKER_03 34:14

Exactly.

SPEAKER_00 34:15

And and not not understanding this is like um tying your legs together and one arm behind your back and then trying to be married for 50 years, but yeah, it's like you don't have the tools to be able to even engage with the other person, let alone feel yourself in your own body and your own life. Rory, is this fundamentally who we are as people, or can we have other aspects in our personal? So you talked about um the immature, and and to me, that gives a sense of there's an imbalance there that kind of um have the opportunity to bring other parts of ourselves forward, or perhaps we haven't necessarily developed that part of ourselves in a way. Um, and I asked this because I did your quiz, and when I was doing your quiz, I arrived at some questions where I thought to myself, well, I could go two different ways in answering this question. And so what I did was I paused and I just said to myself, okay, if I wasn't wearing the various hats of the various roles that I play in my life, if I took all of those hats off and I imagined myself just, you know, sitting on my um chair with my book, what would I answer in that scenario? And so I went with those answers, but I could very easily see that as I've gone through my life and as different scenarios have come up and I've developed skills, you know, to navigate various aspects of my life that those uh that I've developed uh skills within a particular domain that aren't necessarily my natural way of being, um, but they're ways that I engage with different aspects of my life. So can we have, I guess that's a very long way of asking the question, are we fundamentally one archetype, or can we have more than one archetype playing out in various domains in our life?

SPEAKER_03 36:20

Yes, to the second part, but here's the thing that's super interesting. So we can think about it like this. First of all, like I'm English, I was born in England and I'm English, but I'm currently living in Australia, and the other day I visited New Zealand. In a similar way, we're all of my research says we're born with an archetypal nature. And then due to the various roles of our lives, we can learn the skills or traits of other aspects of the psyche. But if we end up, for example, doing a job that is not consistent with our natural archetypal nature, it will exhaust us and we'll burn out. Don't know when. Could be short, could be long. If we do a job that's consistent with our archetypal nature, then we could do it almost forever. In a really simple example, gorillas are the best accountants. They like spreadsheets, they like details, they like precision, they like accuracy, they like forecasting. If you ask a Fox to do their annual accounts, they're gonna spend nine months to 11 months thinking about it all year. Then they're gonna muster going into downloading the bank statements and reconciling bank accounts and filling in spreadsheets, and they're gonna do this, it's gonna take them like two weeks. Everything else in their life is gonna fall apart and they're gonna come out the other side of it absolutely exhausted. Some people do this for a living Monday to Friday, nine till six, they love it. Some people love nurturing, they love taking care of other people. Some people, so for example, sheep care very much about others. That's the way they're designed. They're supposed to be designed that way. What gives them being is taking care of other people. They make great parents, great family members, great managers that care about everybody. Some people are designed to care about themselves so they can go and win the gold medal, win the battle, build the business. They are able to prior to prioritize themselves and their own victory, which may then ripple effect into the benefit of the village and the family often, but they can prioritize themselves. That's easy for them. People who are natural, their natural affinity is to prioritize others, find it almost impossible to prioritize themselves. Find it very difficult. And in a similar way, people that are designed to prioritize themselves, they find it very difficult to spend the weekend at home caring about everybody else and finding out how college is and finding out how this is, and what can I do for you, because their natural orientation is go and win. No one's right or wrong. So, for example, the gorillas care about the group, they care about the whole village. That's why they're best at running the council offices, making sure the bin recycling, garbage, you know, schedules, making sure the plumbing schedules, the like they love to take care of the details where the whole village. I currently live in a small to medium-sized town in Australia, and you know, someone's got to make sure this everything works. You know, like the grass here grows in the summer months, like faster than any grass on earth. It's the most ridiculous thing. If someone doesn't the grass, you're not going to be able to see the traffic around the corner. People are going to die, like literally. Literally. And some people want to be in the industrial estate. The foxes want to be in the industrial estate. They want to be in the gap in the garage, in the in the studio, in the um laboratory, creating things, fixing things, creating new technologies. And they want to be doing that at 3 a.m. They can't do that next to a sleeping baby. That's why they have got their workshops and galleries and spaces to be creative. So, yes, we do learn traits mostly from necessity. Sometimes somebody I'll work with somebody who is a totally different archetypal expression at work because they've had some vocational training. But when they come home, they come, they resort to their natural nature. And you can't fake it for long.

SPEAKER_00 40:48

You can't fake it for long. I've got an example of how this kind of played out in my life. So I've got four kids, they're now adults, so I've got to get used to saying I've got four adults. But I went on vacation in 2019. And traveling with four kids takes a lot of planning, even though two of them at that time were, you know, legally adults, you know, that we're still traveling together as a group. So I had planned it for months. We went to four different countries and we went from summer in Australia to Northern Hemisphere at Christmas. And so that required a lot of planning, right down to how much space each person got in a suitcase, winter gear for snow, which takes up a lot of room in the suitcase versus what we were going to need for other parts of the adventure, which didn't require, you know, boots and you know, all the other stuff. And so everything was played into the detail. I had, you know, everything you know listed out in the little sleeve and you know, in the case and all the rest of it. We knew where we were going at what time, everybody had their stuff. Things are color-coded, so everybody knew what was theirs and stuff like that. So it was very well organized. Once we're there, I relax. We get to Paris, and this is maybe halfway through this month-long trip. And we had been walking through Paris for three hours, and we are on this bridge, and I'm on the bridge with all four of my children. And one of my daughters turns to me and she says, Mom, where are we going? And I said, We're going that way. Like I had no plan. I was just walking through the streets of Paris with my children, loving taking it all in, going wherever I went next, exploring, you know, down this alley, into this little market, into this little gallery. I was loving the moment. And I said, I don't know, we got we're going that way. And she said, Yeah, but where are we going? I said, we're going over the bridge and we're going that way. And she's like, Mom, you can't just wing it. And I looked at her and I'm like, what the hell is she talking about? But that's a perfect example to her. Like we were living in two different worlds. We were on the same bridge, but experiencing two different paraces. Because to her, once we got off the bridge, we were going into a space that she didn't know, and all of us were with her. So she was very much in that protector mode. Like, you're taking us, you know. Obviously, I'm not going to put my kids in danger, but she's like, You're taking us down this bridge. We've been wandering around, we're going nowhere. And now you're going to take us into a place, and I can't even see the bottom of that. So, this to me is a it shows you in moments where people feel stressed, how this stuff comes up and comes out, where she couldn't move forward. But to me, it was a very safe space to proceed. So, I find that really incredibly interesting. Like these little triggers that kind of come up.

SPEAKER_03 43:54

And again, for all parents out there, the more you understand this, the better. I've been Working recently with a couple who have six children of various ages. And this has just transformed their family home. Everything's better. Because they're speaking to their children the way so each of each of these operating systems wants to be spoken to a certain way. They are reassured differently. They need different things to feel safe. You know the phrase psychological safety.

SPEAKER_00 44:25

Yes.

SPEAKER_03 44:26

It's all very interesting. And I spoke with somebody recently that's been studying psychological safety for five years. And respectfully, not to brag, I completely blew his mind. Because psychological safety to most people is only the psychological safety from one group, which is the sheep. But all four archetypes have a different need for psychological safety. Your story just made that point. Your daughter didn't need psychological safety because she knew that her emotions were going to be respected, no one's going to shout at her, and her ideas weren't going to be ridiculed in the workplace, which is the classic example. She wanted to know where we were going.

SPEAKER_02 45:02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 45:03

Like little, actually, specifically. That's what her psychological safety required. So it's different. I was going to quickly say that I re I read this meme the other day, and it's kind of a humorous one from a parent. And it was something like this, and I'm paraphrasing. How is it I have two children that are basically the same age? And one of them I would trust with my house and the keys and the and the pets for the entire weekend. And one of them I can't trust to hold an umbrella. You know, like how is that a thing?

SPEAKER_02 45:30

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 45:31

And basically they're two different humans.

SPEAKER_00 45:34

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 45:35

One, when given something like an umbrella, wants to test its limits and see how much fun they can have with it, twirling it around in the hallway next to the clock. And the other person couldn't possibly conceive of not following the instructions and making sure the house is locked and the bridge is closed and the gas is off. Yeah. There's no way they could possibly relax unless they addressed everything about the house. That's why they can be left alone for the weekend.

SPEAKER_00 46:01

Yeah, it's fascinating. All four of my children are all completely different. And I've gone through life thinking, how is this possible? Like, you know, obviously I understand from a psychological perspective and all the rest of that. But they've gone through the same experiences in life. They've been raised in the same way, and yet they are so completely different. And it's such a challenge, like, you know, to your point, such a challenge, like switching your brain to they're not all the same. They're not, you know, like they're all of my kids, but they're not all the same person. So how do I talk to this kid? How do I talk to this person? How do I talk to this person and this person in a way that lets them express themselves, but also in a way in a language that they understand? So it's you're constantly like switching back and forth to try to connect with this person in a way that makes sense with them.

SPEAKER_03 46:55

I wish I could click my fingers and all parents understood what I know. Because, like, for example, I've worked with about a half a dozen identical twins as adults, and I've worked with a lady that had identical triplet boys in their early 20s when I started working with her. They're not the same. So we're supposed to believe that we're, you know, genetically the same, but our archetypal nature is not expressed through the genetic similarities. So maybe this is deeper than our DNA. We're talking about the operating system. A couple of things about operating systems. So, first of all, operating systems, there's no code in an operating system that is designed to A, reveal itself or B, explain itself. Operating systems are just supposed to run the system in the background invisibly with no language. So our operating system, what we're talking about, has evolved over millions of years. And it existed, obviously, when you think about it, long before language. So we're talking about the invisible mechanisms and machinery that drive human beings, drive our communication, our behavior, our reactions, our triggers, our survival that drive ultimately the process of maturation that we are ultimately supposed to engage in with our long-term committed partner. When basically both people just want to be happy, the way they want to be happy. So here's the thing I have not yet said. Two of these archetypes are oppositional to the other two. Gorillas and foxes are oppositional, they have opposing agendas. Gorillas want to take care of the future, foxes want to live in the moment. Really simple example. So let's talk about money. Arguments over money is one of the top two reasons why relationships end, according to the data, forever. Infidelity and arguments over money. Foxes fundamentally believe that money, when you make money, the purpose of money is to make the now better. You have better experiences, richer experiences, to have better life experiences. The purpose of money for gorillas is to save money to have a better future. To make money work for you. Gorillas and foxes marry all the time. There is a huge attraction between gorillas and foxes. And I can explain it. Gorillas essentially meet foxes and think, wow, you're so disorganized. You don't even read your past names, you feral creature. So they think to themselves, wow, you're you're like a I will be able to express my archetypal agenda through you, and you will be so grateful of me for my whole life. I will feel appreciated, respected, recognized, and adored by you. I will make your whole life better. That's the unconscious belief. And Fox is me gorilla, wow, you take yourself way too seriously. I will bring the fun and the play and the adventure and the spontaneity, and we'll go on adventures, and I'm gonna make your life rich, and you will appreciate me and adore me and respect me and recognize me for my gift and my contribution in your life. And this is gonna be amazing. And they end up in hell, like like agonizing hell, more often than not, because they do not understand their opposing operating systems' agendas. But the miracle of this is once you take some time to discover them, massive amounts of stress, confusion, uncertainty, sense of disrespect just plummets. I'll give you a really simple example. So, yes, for those of you paying attention, wolves and sheep are oppositional, they oppose each other in many ways, and wolves and sheep marry all the time. Simple example. Sheep totally believe that raised voices and expressions of cross, irritated, frustrated energy is bad, wrong, and evil, devastating. And it kind of is to the center of the village. Nobody would you don't want to come home and walk into the house that's peaceful and calm and just bark frustration at one of the children and disrupt a perfectly balanced, harmonious environment. So it does make sense. Wolves often express heat, volume, you know, correctness because something's important to them. That's all. It's like that box is fragile. It's got fragile tape, you know, they're packing up a house. It's a fragile tape. Okay. Now that sounds like shouting, but they're just saying, hey, there's really important crystal glasses in that box. Please pay attention. Please pay attention. It's important to me. They're my grandmother's, my late grandmother's glasswork. Pay attention. That's all they're saying. Is this important to me? And if they're saying something direct, like, don't be late for work, so your boss doesn't get upset with you. What they're saying is, I love you. I love you so much. I can't bear the thought of me going to work and you going to work and you being late and your boss shouting at you, and there's nothing, I can I'm not there to defend you because I love you so much. It's unbearable for my soul. I love you. But that's not what they're saying. So please don't be late. So when we understand deeply, understand these opposing complementary, archetypal natures and how they attract each other, why they attract each other, and the relationship between this attraction and this developmental agenda of maturation, you can become very quickly supremely competent at making sense of your life, yourself, your partner, your children, and how we let ourselves down and what to do about it, because each archetype has a gift, a contribution, a role, a way that benefits the village. Each archetype also has like an Achilles heel. It has a way that it lets itself down and is just basically annoying to everybody else.

SPEAKER_00 53:18

Do they see that in themselves? No. No, they don't see it, but it's annoying to everybody around them.

SPEAKER_03 53:24

Yes, yes. Yeah, exactly. This is the madness of it. No one's walking around thinking, oh, the way I express myself this way is wrong. I'll give you a really simple example. When a gorilla says to a wolf, hey, look, we really need to do this. Can you do this by four o'clock? And the fox says, Oh, yeah, yeah, no, no, yeah, mate, I'll I'll get to it. The fox thinks I am resisting tyranny. I am making sure that domination and tyranny and authoritarianism is being kept at bay. I'm doing my job. But really, they're just being really annoying. Say, no problem, I'll get that to you by three. And then get it to them by three and send them a text message saying, subject done or email completed and sent. Love you. No Fox thinks they're being annoying when they resist being told what to do. And no gorilla thinks they're being wrong telling somebody what to do because they fell asleep last night thinking about the plan. They woke up in the morning thinking about the plan. And they want to execute a plan. So the whole family has a fabulous weekend away. We've got to do these tasks. No one, the gorilla isn't thinking, wow, I've really got to offer choice in every conversation with my partner. That doesn't make any sense to a gorilla, but the the fox is thinking, wow, you didn't give me choice. Now I'm gonna refuse. Now I'm gonna protest and rebel. Because I didn't experience freedom. All of this is hugely annoying in both directions, but until we understand it, we're blind and the people that we love the most suffer the most. So it's kind of like you know, sometimes people say to me, like, who do you work with? It's really simple. I work with kind, well-meaning, benevolent people who want to do right by themselves and other people. I don't work with unpleasant people who don't have time for it. I don't work with people who have personality disorders, no time for it. They probably wouldn't want to work with me because we're, you know, we deal with the truth, right? And if you're a kind, well-meaning, decent person and you want to very quickly become way more competent in every relationship in your life, this is what I do day in, day out.

SPEAKER_00 55:36

When you were speaking, that makes perfect sense to me because you were talking about the operating system that's invisible when I I was talking about it in terms of like that that pre-cognitive habitual stuff. But when you just said we're blind to it, that's the light bulb moment for me because these are things that we do unconsciously.

SPEAKER_03 55:55

Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 55:56

Right? We're not aware of what we're doing, we're not doing it intentionally. We're not trying, you know, the fox is not trying to irritate the gorilla, and the gorilla is not trying to make life terrible for the fox. We're not aware of the things that we're doing, and so it's bringing that awareness, bringing that consciousness to our behaviors and our expressions and understanding what others are doing that shifts the needle for us, that it takes away the blinders and helps us to see what's going on. And so I'm really curious from your perspective in relationship dynamics, how does this play out in terms of power and control?

SPEAKER_03 56:30

I'm not very keen on absolutes, but I believe that within the family home, all power dynamics can be explained through archetypal wisdom. So there are power dynamics that arise from people who just naturally want to be in charge. So gorillas want to be in charge. Gorillas almost never marry each other because then one person will have to rescind control. Wolves want to be the strongest and the most dominant because that's their job. They can't. Wolves naturally cannot submit, it's not in their nature. But the imbalanced sheep, and they're they are the ones that deal with passive aggression, which is a different kind of power dynamic. And foxes are the manipulators, so they will be more clever, and they it's a it's it's sometimes it can be passive, but it's just more clever than passive, if that makes sense. A good fox where you won't even know you've been dominated. You've just you don't even realize that you've just been played, right? Whereas sheep, you know that they're disconnecting from you and sulking, they're not responding to your messages, et cetera, et cetera. So all power dynamics arise from an from our archetypal differences and the way we survive life and what our what our imbalanced, immature expressions are. And again, once you understand them, you do it a lot less. If you're a good person, you just do it a lot less. Because just to be clear, when I say archetypal wisdom, what I mean is it's this astonishing, life-changing, transformational body of knowledge that essentially exists inside everybody, but we can't find it because the operating system has no language and it's not trying to reveal itself. It takes someone like me who's obsessive, to work tirelessly to make sense of it all and then explain it simply. But the beauty of it is once it's explained, it's like I see it everywhere, I see it everywhere. Wow.

SPEAKER_00 58:45

Well, I mean, a perfect example is I had not heard of these explanations and these particular types before, but instantly having you know gone through just a little bit of your content, I was immediately able to see this scenario on the bridge with my daughter for what it was through the lens of this archetype archetypal language. So yeah, it's very accessible in that way.

SPEAKER_03 59:11

Just a really simple example of how this works as a parent. You're describing, and I'm not saying I'm correct, but what you're describing is like a gorilla child, she likes to know the details, she likes to know where she's going. She wants to know that the future is taken care of, that helps her nervous system relax. Now, it might not be accurate, but that's what you've described. When you raise a gorilla cub, their natural propensity for having a tidy room, laying the table a certain way, being ready. Like, for example, a gorilla child, when the household is leaving at 20 past eight for school, the gorilla child will be there with their shoes on and their bag and their water and their glasses, just getting very frustrated with the foxy child who's just getting out of bed. And this is agony for a gorilla child. But you get to say, like, being organized and knowing where you're going is really important. But there's this other thing which is also beautiful, which is going with the flow and not knowing. This is one of those moments where, as uncomfortable as it might be, like it might take a while throughout your daughter's childhood or a daughter's childhood to begin to learn. Oh, that's what mommy was saying. Like, this is one of those moments where I can just enjoy the moment. I had a participant who is a gorilla mom, and she came and she reported, she said, I just had the best family vacation ever. I'm going to tell you what happened. I did everything the same as normal. I planned it, I organized the travel, I selected the location, the accommodation, got everybody there. But this time I handed over, we did for five days, to my husband and the kids. And I just relaxed. And they came up with the adventures, they decided where we were going to go, they decided where we were going to eat. And normally I would plan every moment of the five days and let it go with them. It was magical. That's the word that the foxes want to create. They want to create magical experiences. It's very difficult to experience magic when everything is halved down to 15-minute chunks. So raising our children to recognize, like the opposite for a fox, is when it's okay to go with the flow, but when it's important to be organized. We get to sort of educate our child. You know, for a sheep, it's like a sheep child always wants cuddles. They're going to want cuddles, they're going to scrunch their face up and start crying if you express any frustration with them. It's just going to be overwhelming for their nervous system because their nervous system is trained to collapse if they upset you. And that child is going to find it difficult to speak up and ask for what they want because somebody might not like it. So the benevolent parent recognizes they have a gentle child and helps them find ways to speak up. And it could just start with asking to pass the salt. But training the gentle child to find their voice, to speak up, ask for what they want, and to make it safe to ask for what they want. Because the risk is they'll never ask for what they want. They'll never, therefore, be able to express a boundary as an adult in a future relationship. The benevolent parent says, it's okay to say, I really don't want another potato. I really, you know, thank you. But I'd rather not have another slice of turkey or whatever. And encouraging that. From before they can even speak, they're going to start telling you what they want and what they don't want, and they're going to test the boundaries that they can get away with with you. Total opposite of a gentle child. So people who are excellent at parenting have a sense of this, or they know what I know, and they are able to speak to the nervous system of each child. Because they're not the same. You said it yourself, you have four. They're not the same.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:08

But it's beautiful to watch, and it's also heartbreaking to see the way that they can engage in each other when they don't see the other person.

SPEAKER_03 1:03:17

What is sibling rivalry? What is the black sheep of the family? Why do some children just leave and never come back? All of this is explained in this work because black sheep of the family is essentially a child. So most families ultimately go with a predominant archetypal nature. Some families are very gentle families. It's all about connection and kindness and love and sensitivity. Some families are very loud, very wolfy. It's all about winning, powering up, getting things done, getting stronger. Some families are all about art and creativity, right? So they're very foxy families. They live in the moment, but it's a bit chaotic. Because some families they go with the gorilla paths. Everything's didactic, mapped out, laid out. Not a lot of space for create self-expression, etc. So our families, just like nations, back to your research, nations have an archetypal expression. I sort of make this joke, you know, about the you heard you heard about the German comedy scene.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:18

No.

SPEAKER_03 1:04:18

Me, me neither. That's the joke, right? So you heard about the American comedy scene because the best comedians are wolf foxes, the creative wolves, right? They're the best comedians. So families are have their own archetypal expression often. That's where they get in. And then you have a child that's the opposite. You might have a child that fits your archetypal family nature, and they fit in, and it's great. But then you might have a child that's the opposite. And it's supposed to be that way. The developmental agenda insists. You can't. The developmental agenda does not really want you to have Shangri La. It's not really designed for utopia. This human experience is not designed for utopia, it's designed for challenge. So I often see it, people have this really solid relationship. They have a really fabulous child that fits in with them. And then they have a child that's just not joining in. And unless you understand this, that's a risk.

SPEAKER_00 1:05:19

So, how do we bring this into our lives in a practical way? Because the interpersonal relationships are really important. And I'm also really curious about how this affects the social relationship, so the broader social structure. So our relationships with ourselves are important. Our relationship with our children and our partners is really important. But as individuals, we're part of society and part of a family, which is part of a society, which is part of a nation. So I see very clear connection between the way that we relate with each other on a personal level and the way that we relate to each other on a social level. And to me, it really seems Speaks to like I was saying earlier, and like you had mentioned um numerous times, that conscious versus unconscious way of engaging. So, how do we make this practical in our lives? How do we integrate it?

SPEAKER_03 1:06:12

I mean, on a really practical level, is that's what I'm devoting my life to. So there's a really obvious answer, which is come and do my quiz, come and learn more, come and take part in some of my introductory programs so that you can come and decide if it's for you or not. Like that's the really obvious way, because that's what I'm literally devoting my life to is making this really accessible, really simple to grasp, and really fast improvement in your life. And um, that's my obvious answer. On a slightly wider answer, I don't know if on a societal level there's any obvious answer bothering people like you and I sharing this and having more people understand it. Because we've noticed if you haven't noticed in society, throughout times, truth attracts the harshest response. The bad faith actors are all benefiting because they're operating in a world without oversight and without truth. All the bad faith actors want the absence of truth. Archetypal wisdom is a truth serum. It's only for benevolent people that want to become great people, to become a truly good person in your marriage, in your family home, in your congregation, in your community. The unpleasant people don't want any of this because it shines a big light on their unpleasantness in a similar way in society in general. The degree to which humans are corruptible and democracy is corrupted, and there are you know, the bad faith actors control everything, sadly. And really, it's on as many people as possible to become more aware. And that's a personal choice, and it's not necessarily for everyone, you know. Like I'd I try not to speak outside my lane, you know. Like, I just my job is to help people improve their marriages, transform their family homes, often reunite family homes. I've worked with a number of people who have were living in separate dwellings from their wives and children, and they've reunited their family homes just very quickly through this work. That's how potent it is. So it's very much a personal thing. You know, we're we're we're so connected now, we're less connected. When I was a child, we used to have conversations all the time. Everyone would speak, we'd have conversations. Now it's almost like vast swathes of young people don't know how to communicate without having some kind of mental health crisis, you know, don't know how to have a job interview, don't know how to turn up for work and go through the challenge of first day at work. Now, I'm obviously grossly exaggerating, but we live in strange times and I try not to comment on them.

SPEAKER_00 1:09:23

I don't think you you are grossly over exaggerating, and I hear it all the time. Employers are struggling because younger generations come out of university and they're technically trained, but they can't have a telephone conversation. It's because they struggle with how to respond when they're not just having a one-way communication, and so that raising awareness of ourselves and who we are in relation to others, as you're talking to me, is about creating balance in our relationships, which is naturally going to filter through to society and create a more balanced society that we live in.

SPEAKER_03 1:10:03

Yeah. Here's what I know spending a little bit of time understanding archetypal wisdom, understanding these different aspects of the human psyche and how they interrelate with each other, is one of the most valuable things anyone can ever do in their lives. I work with people from 18 to 80. And everybody over the age of 30, which is the majority of the people I work with, are over between 40 and 70. Almost everybody says, I wish I'd known this sooner. I wish I'd known this sooner. And not a single person, I've never worked with a single person has ever said, Oh, I didn't, I didn't really get much from that. It's the total opposite. It's the total opposite. It's it's like the keys to the kingdom. It's like once you understand the operating system, you have a fighting chance.

SPEAKER_00 1:11:00

Yeah, you can see things differently, see yourself differently and see each other differently. So, Rory, what's the main message that you want the person listening to take away from today's conversation?

SPEAKER_03 1:11:11

What I want to say is that you really matter, that your relationships matter, that if you're a good person, which I believe you are, and you want to do right by people, and the sooner you discover this, and very quickly discover how how we all let ourselves down a certain way, and it's archetypal in nature. And when we address how we let ourselves down, we become less frustrating, less annoying, and we become a better partner, better parent, better husband, better wife. And this is what we all want. We all want to be the good people want to be pleasant to be around. You know, we don't want our survival reactions to be the bane of our partners' lives. I sort of liken it sometimes to a lot of marriages, it's like the perfect hike, perfect shoes, perfect weather, the perfect clothes, you've got the perfect person, you're holding hands. It's this beautiful hike, like through the dolomites, it's just stunning. But this little piece of grit gets in your shoe. And you keep walking and you keep walking, you keep walking. And there's a little piece of grit in your partner's shoe, and you keep walking, you keep walking, and slowly it just becomes unbearably painful. You can't walk any longer. You're with the right person in the right place, trying to live the right life. But this little piece of grit is enough to derail the whole thing. And the work I do with my team and I do is I help people identify what that piece of grit is, and I help people remove it from their shoe so they can actually carry on with the grand hype of your lives without that pain that makes you want to stop and give up. So if you want to become really competent in relationships, this is the best body of knowledge I found in 40 years. And it works, and it's simple.

SPEAKER_00 1:13:20

I love that. Because it's something that from what I've heard you say is people can take away quickly and they can implement it in their life, and they can see a measurable difference in the most important things in life. Rapidly. So, how can people connect with this work?

SPEAKER_03 1:13:42

Um, the simple, fastest way would just be to go to archetypal relationships.com forward slash quiz. Just go to the quiz and or just go to archetypalrelationships.com, you'll find the quiz. If you do the quiz, you'll end up finding out more about what we do. And like I said, we've got a couple of introductory style programs that you can come and find that perfectly reasonable price. Just come and find out what we do and how we do it. You'll get to come and have some live Zoom calls with me if you've enjoyed what I've said. I lead Zoom calls on most of these introductory call uh programs, and ultimately you can come and decide if this is a body of work that you'd like to invest a little bit of time and money in to improve everything, you know.

SPEAKER_00 1:14:26

I just want to touch on that a little bit because you you mentioned invest time and money in. But I think to me, it's really about investing in you and investing in your future and your life, because at the beginning of this conversation, you were talking about working with nurses at end of life, and I've got a background in nursing, I have been in that situation, I can't even tell you how many times, where I've been in the room with somebody at the last stages of their life, and I can tell you hand on heart, the only thing anybody in that room cares about, whether it's the person who's experiencing the end of their life or the people around them, is the relationship that they have had with each other and the things they didn't say and the things that they wish they had said differently. And all they want is a moment where they can correct that and heal that regardless of however long it's gone on, for it does not matter. And so can we not wait and bring that forward earlier in our lives so that we don't have to live with that suffering? Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:15:44

I can't say it better than that.

SPEAKER_00 1:15:47

Yeah. Well, I absolutely encourage people to reach out, to connect with your resources, to go at their pace if they feel like you know they need to sit and integrate, um, but to have the courage to be able to reach in and to uh to invest in themselves in that way.

SPEAKER_03 1:16:04

If you're listening to this and you you take that action, it's likely to be one of the best things you'll ever do is come and find out more about this. I can't overstate how impactful this is. I just can't. It's impossible. I mean, a quick example just to finish is I often ask people, like, if I could offer you a billion dollars with a B, you'd take a pill and you'd but you'd forget all of this and you'd never discover it, would you take it? And most people, no chance. And there's no way they take it. Because living a life not knowing this isn't worth a billion dollars. That's how valuable this is for the people that discover it. So I hope I've made my point and I've thoroughly enjoyed this conversation.

SPEAKER_00 1:16:50

I have as well, Rory. Thank you so much for being here. And I will link all of your details in the show notes as well.

SPEAKER_03 1:16:56

Thank you so much. This has been a pleasure.

SPEAKER_00 1:17:01

Live Differently is made on Unceded Warundri Land in Melbourne, Australia. It's an independent production of the Seven Generations Project, founded and led by its host. Live Differently is possible because of our listening community. My thanks to all who listen and give by sharing and supporting the show. All right, one more thing. The information shared in this podcast is intended for educational and entertainment purposes only. The views and opinions expressed are based on personal experience, research, and perspectives in the area of health, spirituality, and alternative living. This podcast does not provide medical, mental health, or professional advice, and nothing discussed should be used as a substitute for consultation with a qualified healthcare or licensed professional. If you have a medical question, health concerns, or are considering making changes in your life or wellness routine, please seek guidance from a licensed healthcare professional or local provider or local professional who can address your individual needs. By listening to this podcast, you acknowledge that you are responsible for your own health decisions and well being. Awesome. I'll see you next time.