Runaway Bride: Non-Resonator & Individual Reality

Topics - Living for Others, Non-Resonator

Rabbit Hole: Reality is what you decide it is

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With unending love,

Katie

Medium: medium.com/@genofvenus

Transcript

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Howdy ho, Ranger Joes, and welcome to Popcorn for the Soul, a podcast for ID code spirituality and universal guidance in our favorite pop culture. My name is Katie, student of life, lover of stories, cosmic weaver pulling at the threads that connect it all. Top of the episode disclaimer: I am not a critic. I am not sharing my ratings or telling you whether or not a piece of work is worth your time. I do not subscribe to other people telling you how to feel about a piece of art. However, side disclaimer, this is a non-resonator episode, so I did choose a movie that I find to be good, and I'm going to talk about why I believe it is. But other than that, I am also not claiming that anybody involved in the creation of these stories is at all conscious or not of the connections that I will be pointing out. And most importantly, I am not here to tell you that your interpretation or enjoyment of your favorite stories is in any way incorrect. I'm simply hoping to offer you a deeper understanding through my own personal knowledge and experience. The things I discuss are real concepts that I've learned about through my own study and research, all available across multiple sources for you to learn more about yourself. Except for the rabbit hole portion, that's where we might get a little wild with it. If you haven't been with me from the start, all good and welcome. I do recommend at least listening to episode one, the intro, so you understand my framework a little better, but other than that, you're good to jump right in. And last but not least, thank you so much for being here. I really hope that I can offer you some insight into life's mysteries. Even the tiniest spark of illumination is enough for me because that's where it starts after all. So this week we are talking about the 1999 rom-com Runaway Bride with Julia Roberts and Richard Gere. Kicking it off with our spoiler-free general themes. How riding the frequency of the ego causes stress, forces shortcuts, and leads to the tower moment that sparks a spiritual journey, aka journey of self-growth. How we silence our truth and conform to how others see us in the name of love. Recognizing that real love, even in its many different forms, is that which fosters acceptance of faults and fears, but encouragement to push above and beyond them to your highest potential. Karmic cycles and repeating past mistakes due to constant external influence that will not allow you to break out of the pattern. How lack of self-awareness affects those around you. Paralleling the right partner to a spiritual awakening in regard to gaining self-awareness, the back and forth of the dynamic between the masculine and feminine energies within yourself. The power of taking responsibility for your shortcomings and mistakes, apologizing and forgiveness, how children see the best in everyone, how maintaining individuality within a partnership makes the relationship stronger. The way people, especially women, are vilified for ending a relationship that serves neither party due to extreme societal expectations over commitment. Okay, we are entering spoiler city, so if you have not seen this movie and don't want me to ruin it for you, andor you want to understand what I'm talking about, this is where you go watch it and come back to me. Ike Graham, played by Richard Gere, is a columnist for USA Today who abuses the power of intuition by waiting until the very last minute to write his stories, trusting that inspiration will hit in the nick of time. It has apparently worked for him, if you consider being stressed out, rude, single, and called out by strong women who see through your facade as successful. He's clearly living on a frequency of egotistical selfishness, as demonstrated by his personal choices to get things done at the last possible moment, then take out the resulting stress and frustration on everyone else around him. Ike is already jaded from a divorce, so when his desperation lands him in the orbit of another jaded man who is desperate himself to have his own suffering herd, all the combined karmic baggage is given a platform to manifest as the exact matchstick this particular powder keg was waiting for. Ike shares the one-sided perspective of a broken-hearted man without doing what a journalist is supposed to do. Talk to everyone involved, and fact check. This choice was guided by the time crunch and fueled by his own prejudices against women who he deems as man-eaters. So, karma gets him and gets him good through the official complaint of the exact woman whom he slandered. He's fired by his ex-wife. No second chance, no wiggle room. Boom. Tower moment. Ike isn't completely hopeless though. There's some good in him somewhere, otherwise, his ex-wife's new husband, who he is friends with, loved this dynamic, we will touch on it later, wouldn't have found a path to redemption for him. Ike gets to go to the small town from which the woman of his demise hails to interview her and her family, friends, and exes. Because the story is there for sure. Maggie is no innocent, and she has made some choices that have hurt others as well. But the challenges these two face with one another end up being exactly what they both need to realize some things, gain some self-awareness, own up to their own faults and mistakes, and learn what real love looks like. Kind of the premise of any rom-com, except this one wasn't well received. Especially in comparison to the other, much more popular Julia Roberts and Richard Gear joint about an excessively rich man and a prostitute. Yep, like I mentioned before, here's another film I chose to decode as a non-resonator. I wish it didn't make perfect sense and wasn't going to be so easy for me to explain, but hey, it's the world we live in. Okay, just a quick touch on this twin flame dynamic. So there's a whole like beautiful union thing to it, but essentially the idea of the twin flame journey is to combine the masculine and feminine, or in my belief system, masculine, feminine, mother, feminine, child energies, balance them all within your system to reach your uh highest potential. But when I point out in movies, we talk about the masculine and the feminine energies and how they're represented differently, especially when it comes to um certain couples or non-romantic partnerships that are in the story. So with this one specifically, it's almost a hit in your face. We've talked about it in the past before, but there's this idea of the runner-chaser dynamic, which means the masculine energy is usually the runner, the one that is too intimidated by the intensity of the connection and not in tune enough with its own feelings to be able to handle the power of this union and what it could mean for its growth. And then the chaser is usually deemed the feminine energy, which is the first one to awaken to the connection and essentially just, you know, like be overly desperate to seek it out and have it in its life, feeling that that other person will complete them. That's why it's this whole thing about the energies needing to combine within you first. But specific to the symbolism here, when I talk about the divine trines in other movies as well, I assign the masculine, feminine, and child energies to the character archetypes to, you know, show the dynamics and how we see the growth and what it means in regard to the triad of the relationship. And like I said, with this one, it's pretty in your face that Julia, Maggie, is the masculine energy if we're talking about the runner, right? She's literally called the runaway bride. She has run from the altar four times. And then Ike would be the feminine energy, chasing after this story, chasing after the truth, trying to figure out what it is that he is so intrigued by but is not yet able to understand. And the point again of this dynamic is to start to balance the energies and the truth within yourself in a way that helps you become the best version of you. And as we see them go back and forth between this runner-chaser energy and learning who each other is at the deepest level, we see them after each interaction with each other going off individually to take responsibility and own up for their individual mistakes in their lives outside of this specific relationship. So it's like every time Ike calls out Maggie on something that she did or does that she's not even aware of, she takes in that awareness and then she goes and she addresses it, she apologizes, she owns up to it with the people that she's hurt. And Ike does the same. It's like a complete 180 with how he has viewed himself, and instead of life happening to him, it's what he has done to help guide his life to where it is now, and he's going to again take that awareness in and make some changes, and they're both going to be able to forgive themselves and therefore forgive each other and learn that real love doesn't force you into a box that doesn't make sense for you, it forces you to become the best version of yourself so that the love is real and unconditional. Okay, the first topic I picked for this is living for others. So when I say living for others, of course I'm referring to the conscious choices we make and things that we do to prioritize the needs of those around us over our own. But this movie is a wonderful example of the way we subconsciously shrink ourselves, repeat patterns, and make the same mistakes over and over because of constant reminders of those patterns and mistakes. There's a chance this portion gets a lot bigger than originally envisioned because the reach of this dynamic spreads so far into all aspects of our lives. So I'm just gonna flow and see where we go. Firstly, in the more literal sense, we'll talk about how Maggie is highly intelligent and extremely capable, as demonstrated by the reference to the fact that she received the American Legion Scholarship to go to school for industrial design. But, if I'm recalling the details correctly, she opted not to follow that track and stayed home to help her dad with his store after mom died. Talk about a common story trope, life trope, right? Out of a sense of love mixed with familial duty, somebody decides to completely disregard their own goals and dreams to take care of somebody else. Because of course it wasn't just about the store, it was also about the grief, which is totally fair. And it's absolutely true that it helps to grieve together. It would come off as very selfish for Maggie to abandon her father at that moment. But when does it become selfish on his part? When is the right moment to draw the line that signifies it's time to move on and take responsibility for your own life so that those caring for you can focus on their own? Of course, it's always an individual's choice to be the one to draw that line for themselves and make the move anyway, but guilt is a real and powerful influence. So that guilt, whether consciously or not, leads Maggie to stay in a place where she cannot grow and cannot expand beyond the options offered in her small town, perpetuating the cycle of being with a man who is not right for her. We all want our person to love and be loved for our whole self. So of course she's not going to stop trying. The alternative is being alone. I don't believe anybody truly wants that. If you think you can't relate because the concept of being a caretaker hasn't shown up in your life in the literal sense, that's where I'm going to say, uh-uh-uh, think again. Let's look at the spiritual perspective. Any sense of you doing something that challenges and or interrupts the status quo of the beliefs and worldview of those around you threatens them. Not on a conscious level, but as an attack on their very foundation of existence. They can't see what you see, feel what you feel, or dream what you dream because they're not meant to. That's individuality. But the way it shows up is judgment and fear that is projected onto you in an attempt to make you question and reconsider everything that doesn't fit their own mold, their own perception. If you choose to deny what pulls you and ignites your passion because of their influence, you're a caretaker. You're taking care of them by shrinking yourself and your desire for expansion so that they are not challenged, so that they are comfortable. On the surface, it looks like choosing the safe path, which, yeah, it absolutely is. A little deeper than that, it's a choice to subscribe to their doubt as your own and believe that what you want is impossible. And even deeper than that, it's you denying your truth because you've been made to feel guilty for challenging theirs. Your beliefs make them subconsciously question theirs. And what do we know about humans? Most struggle with change, most struggle with acceptance of other perspectives. Again, the way you want to exist shakes the foundation of their existence. That's scary for sure, but at the end of the day, with all the love in my heart, it's not your problem. And we can't ignore the fact that there's also a sense of disrespect. If your parents or guardians or any substantial influence in your life feel that you don't cherish what they have taught you because you don't follow in their footsteps, they can and do very much take that personally. It's a common collective understanding that parents want better for their children, right? That that's what they work for in all the many ways that manifests in daily life. But if the generation wars of today are any indication, there's a strong underlying truth that there's some jealousy and resentment when those who come after us have things easier. Think about all the when I was your age, I had to walk to school in eight feet of snow, sub-zero temperatures, comparisons, or how technology makes everything more efficient than they ever had the privilege of, or this whole student loan debate, which don't even get me started there. Heck, when my younger brother was given a cell phone and a car on an earlier timeline than me, I was blatantly petulant. To go into this is its own massive topic of conversation that maybe we'll get to one day, but bottom line, if they expect you to struggle because they had to, that's not wanting better for you. Simple as that. And please keep in mind that my rants about these dynamics are always in an effort to bring attention to the things that need to be acknowledged for our relationships to improve on a mass scale. It's not to point fingers or ridicule. We're all responsible for all of it in our own ways. We don't need to demonize and blame. We need to recognize, forgive, and pivot to a place of balance. Finding the middle road is the challenge. But we can't meet there without people coming from both sides. Speaking of pivoting, now let's focus on the weird form of gaslighting that is the subconscious influence on Maggie to ultimately make the same choice this time around. Long story short, people won't let it go. All they do is constantly make fun of her habit, reminding her of her mistakes through embarrassment that her friends and family don't even recognize because she's really good at faking a smile and hiding her feelings. So even if she is aware that this relationship really isn't that great for her, now she's being shamed into pushing forward to prove everyone wrong and stop the jokes. But because we can all see that she's not truly happy in this relationship, we know how it's going to end. It's this weird self-fulfilling prophecy as written by others, if that makes sense. I talked about it in the episode of The Grinch. How if others don't give us the space to change and constantly push us back into the box that fits their opinion of us, we'll remain there, out of bitterness, out of doubt, out of fear, out of misguided love, whatever the personal circumstance. Maggie just wants to be happy. Don't we all? It's a crazy, unintentional, roundabout manipulation that guides our decisions based on a desire to prove people wrong, to show others that we can do something they're saying we can't. And when that's your motivation, you lose sight of yourself in the process because every choice is being determined by how it will make them see you. Hence, living for others. You feel me? Remember, they're not the ones living your life every moment of every day. You have to do what's best for you, whatever that might look like. And I hope I don't have to clarify as long as you're not physically hurting anyone or being abusive or superior about it, though I don't think anyone listening to this podcast comes from that place. It's an individual assignment of a bigger project aimed at eliminating the low vibration emotions and frequencies from our collective. Though this way of thinking will ripple out and improve so many things, it strongly targets one of the darkest energies we as humans suffer: resentment. Okay, so here's where we talk about this as a non-resonator. Now, again, I make it clear at the top of every episode that I don't care to be a critic and I don't talk about my opinion regarding whether I think a movie is good or bad, to each their own. But when I pick a non-resonator, the point of doing so is because I genuinely enjoy it as a good film. But according to reviews, box office performance andor ratings, not many other people do. P.S. I call them non-resonators because I believe they elicit a frequency that the masses can't relate to or don't agree with for one or more reasons. This one is particularly interesting because we have another story to compare it to, where the genre is the same, the symbolism of the plot can be described in the same exact words. The lead actors are the same, and the director is the same, but the writers are different. I can sum up my whole discussion by saying this: the writer of the more successful movie is a man, the writers of the less successful movie are two women. Both stories revolve around a man and a woman with completely different backgrounds who come together under serendipitous circumstances and fall in love by looking beyond appearances and assumptions to the truth of the person within. Pretty Woman is a movie where the man is a super successful but lonely rich guy, and the woman is a strong-willed prostitute. He spoils her with money and luxury, rescuing her from a life deemed by most as less than ideal. The only way this woman could ever hope to achieve such status. Runaway Bride is a story about a reckless, mildly successful, unhappy single man who screws his life up by vilifying a woman he does not know and goes on a journey of redemption where he falls in love with her, another strong-willed female character, but talented and capable in a male-dominated industry, and successful in a content small town way, but who has ended multiple unfulfilling relationships, embarrassing four men by leaving them hanging at the altar in her desperation to avoid unhappiness. And she ultimately proposes to him. I'd say the vibe of the former is pretty outlandish in its plot points and implications, enjoyable in a fantastical fairy tale way. It's one of my mom's favorites. Yeah. Um the vibe of the latter is extremely simple, grounded, and enjoyable in a charming, realistic way. So let's look just at some of the facts and stats here. Pretty Woman came out in 1990. Runaway Bride came out in 1999. Pretty Woman's budget, $14 million. Its opening in US and Canada was upwards of $11 million, which brought back 78% of the budget. Runaway Bride's budget was $70 million. Its opening in US and Canada brought in $35 million, which was 50% of the budget. Pretty woman's gross income for US and Canada was close to $180 million, which was 13 times the budget. Runaway Bride's gross US and Canada was $152 million, which was two times the budget. Pretty Woman's Gross Worldwide, $463 million, which was 33 times the budget. Runaway Bride's Gross Worldwide, $309 million, about 4.5 ish times budget. Pretty Woman's IMDB rating, 7.1 out of 10, a 51 metascore in the yellow. Runaway Bride's IMDB rating, 5.6 out of 10, 39 metascore rating red. Pretty Woman Rotten Tomatoes, certified fresh at 65%, full popcorn at 68%. Runaway Bride's Rotten Tomatoes, Rotten at 45%, Spilled Popcorn at 52%. Oh, and Julia was nominated for a Best Actress Oscar for Pretty Woman. The rise of the divine feminine in the spiritual community is all about reclaiming power through self love, compassion, nurturing, and truth. Breaking Free of the shackles of societal expectations, propriety, and the need andor desire to be rescued by anyone, especially a man. It's showing up in our world by the number of divorces we're seeing in millennial through middle-aged women as a result of recognizing emotional abuse, gaslighting, and especially a resentment towards strength and success. The point of the twin flame journey, or spiritual awakening in general, is to balance your energies and realize your full potential so that you are able to remain wholly yourself within a relationship instead of losing yourself to it, and to learn to settle for nothing less than being loved for exactly who you are, but who you really are at your best. The you that you found through the pain in the darkness, the you that rescued yourself. The goal being to cultivate an equal relationship where both, or all, your preference, parties proudly cherish the other both as their own individual and for the love they share between them. Maggie and Ike's vows at the end encapsulate this perfectly. Quote, in this life that you share together, may your individuality strengthen your love, unquote. And oh trust me, I believe in a Disney-esque fairy tale love I have all my life. But more along the lines of these remade live-action versions that emphasize and romanticize the plight and the fight of the princess and how that's what the prince falls in love with. Not just beauty and a pretty voice, but strength, bravery, and heart. And I'll end this portion by leaving you with a couple sets of lyrics here just to get those empowered juices flowing. By Kelly Clarkson from her post-divorce album, the song Me. I don't need somebody to scold me. Don't need somebody that hurts me. Don't need somebody who feels weak standing next to me. And honestly, this entire song by the Cheetah Girls called Cinderella. When I was just a little girl, my mama used to tuck me into bed and she'd read me a story. It always was about a princess in distress and how a guy would save her and end up with the glory. I'd lie in bed and think about the person that I wanted to be. Then one day I realized the fairy tale life wasn't for me. I don't want to be like Cinderella, sitting in a dark, cold, dusty cellar, waiting for somebody to come and set me free. I don't want to be like someone waiting for a handsome prince to come and save me. Oh, and I will survive. I know somebody's on my side. Don't want to depend on no one else. I'd rather rescue myself. Someday I'm gonna find someone that wants somebody's soul, heart, and mind, who's not afraid to show that he loves me. Somebody who will understand I'm happy just the way I am, don't need nobody taking care of me. I will be there for him, just as strong as he will be there for me. When I give myself, then it has got to be an equal thing. I can slay my own dragons, I can dream my own dreams. My knight in shining armor is me, so I'm gonna set me free. Divine feminine anthem, if I ever did hear one. Okay, we have arrived at our rabbit hole. So this is where I ask you to trade your PC thinking caps for your mad hats and follow me down. So something really interesting happened while watching this movie with my companion, and it all kind of can tie back into this non-resonator idea. He was demonizing Ike the whole time, and I was cheering him on. The scene in particular that kicked off the awareness and debate was when Ike attends the softball game and starts to grill Joan Cusak's Peggy. He pushes and makes ugly comments and suggestions about Maggie's effervescence towards Peggy's husband getting in her head about its inappropriateness and making her clearly embarrassed and uncomfortable. It's this teeny little moment where when she gets up to leave, Ike asks if she's okay. When he is talking as she's crossing in front of him, he has a kind of like relaxed, light-hearted attitude and not necessarily a smile, but like a general lightness to his features. Peggy dejectedly just says she needs to go, and the second she is past him, it's like a mask drops. He immediately is no longer smiling and appears instantly and entirely regretful. I immediately paused the movie and pointed it out because I had, as I always am, been paying attention to the subtle details, the nuance of every interaction, every word said, looking for the motivations. For me, it was very much a C, he knows he pushed too far and really hurt her, and now he's feeling icky about his manipulation. He's aware of his own facade. Good for him. My companion's opinion? Ike was pissed that the conversation ended and he couldn't squeeze any more juice out of this particular source. Up until that point, we had been on the same page about Ike. Both of us were particularly frustrated with how he was weasling his way into relationships with Maggie's family and friends, becoming like this shiny new small-town celebrity who was giving them space to gossip and feel important. And here's another thread of dynamic to follow with this. Of course, what Ike is doing is obvious, frustrating, and icky, but we know that that is exactly what he's here to do. So what's even more pulling your hair out upsetting is the way that these people, Maggie's people, are embracing him, not just letting him get away with it, but actively contributing to his infiltration. That's its own hours-long topic of conversation. As the story progresses, though, if you're wanting to witness some growth from this guy, you can tell that he's analyzing every little thing as well. Finally tapping into his instinctual inherent talent for research and journalism to get down to the nitty-gritty that paints a bigger picture entirely different from what he had originally been seeing. It's why he ultimately roots for and defends Maggie falls for her. He recognizes what she has given up, how she loves fully even through ridicule, how strong she is, even through not knowing fully who she is or what that strength means. For Ike, it's a journey of self-discovery through witnessing the shortcomings of many different men and the lengths that a single woman has had to go to to keep herself from being pulled down to that level, the bravery it has required. He has no choice but to face the fact that Maggie, though not blameless, is in no way the man-eater he had assumed. So now he has to question those filters within himself that would lend to such an oversight. Self-awareness, the first step in any process of real change. Anyway, I continued to see each interaction and choice after that as progress. My fellow audience member would say, Nope, I'm still seeing it this way. Then we would discuss. He'd say his perspective, I'd say mine. And to again use that initial scene as the example, it was as simple as this. Him. He's upset he couldn't get more. Me. I say he's upset that he upset her. So off we go on our individual frequencies as to how we take in this story. He's looking at everything through a lens of judgment and nefarious ulterior motive. My lens is one of growth, love, and finding truth. At one point, one of our discussions sparked him to ask, Do I just hate men? Which is so interesting considering he is a man. But I'll remind you if you haven't already heard it in a different episode. My companion is the man I am currently platonically married to, with whom I live under the same roof along with our daughter, as we co-parent and transition to a dynamic where romantic expectation is no longer on the table. I had been very focused on self-growth in the several years prior to leading up to the decision to establish this dynamic. The past several months have required a lot more introspection and awareness on his part than he is used to. And that involves looking at the male influences in his life and societal expectations of husbands that led to the shortcomings he brought to the relationship. So, yeah, he's not the biggest fan of men right now. And our current leadership is only fueling that fire because it's not just affecting women anymore. Everyone is suffering. And of course, I want to chime in here that we both contributed to the toxicity in the relationship. I am fully aware of my part in it. But my genuine belief and sum-up of the basis of the situation is that it's because we have just always been better as friends. So pushing for and forcing a different kind of love that we believe should be there because of our perceived compatibility was jading us both. Does this sound familiar at all to the movie we're talking about? His parents are decades-long married and so unhappy. My mom and dad divorced when I was like four or something. My dad and stepdad, friends. Of course, there were ups and downs throughout the years when it came to the logistics of everything, but we can and do all get together and hang, no problem. I go golfing with both of them and my brothers for a Father's Day outing every single year. You know how Ike hangs around his ex-wife and her husband, no concern of infidelity? How that husband was the one to pull the strings that would help Ike save his livelihood. Yeah, that makes sense to me, and I love every minute of it. But I'm sure there's a lot of people who watched that dynamic on screen and thought it was weird, crazy, and unrealistic. I'm telling you here and now, it's not. I love this man on a similar level. What we have done in our life together is incredible, and I'm proud of it in all regards. Grateful for how it has helped us grow. If we're going spiritual terms, we would call it a karmic relationship. I believe at this point, we're meant to be an example to anyone else who might be struggling with a similar dynamic. To demonstrate that both or more parties in a relationship where maybe they don't feel fully seen can recognize it and admit it to each other, choosing a transition of peace and stability rather than turning each other's worlds upside down out of revenge and resentment. It's possible to stop it before it gets to that point. And that's exactly what I did because I had to. But he has surely put in the work and been so gracious on his end of things as well. It's a two-way street. But dang, if you ever cared enough about the person in front of you to have agreed to spend a lifetime with them at one point, there's gotta be something in you that can be truthful without wishing for their complete destruction. Call me crazy if you want, but I'm honored to be helping him through this. It's a true joy to see all the changes he's making and what he's learning about himself. But he's only doing this because I had the courage to shed light on what was happening to us. And I'm happy to help him become his best version from a friendship standpoint, so that one day he can be loved like he's brand new. Because in a sense, he will be. I love him in a way that makes me genuinely want that for him. And when that day comes, I'll feel blessed to honor the transition from a place of gratefulness and not resentment. I mean, she'll have to be a very special human to respect our relationship, especially with a child in the mix. But with where he's headed, I have no doubt she'll be everything and more in a way that helps him shine like he's always been capable of and loved the way he deserves. And because of his awareness, he's gonna know the difference. The way we interpret things, apply meaning, and determine how a situation played out, is a completely individual experience. A perfect scientific reference is how vastly different eyewitness accounts of the same event are. Things are seen and witnessed through our own filters, shaped by what we've been taught, our beliefs, our lived experiences, and our desires. My best friend, the one that I did the School of Rock Part 2 interview with, she thinks she's a babbling, incoherent mess in conversations like that. I've spent the last year doing what I can to help her see herself differently, but she's got a lot of baggage she's working against. She told me she listened to the episode and still entirely agrees she doesn't make any sense when she talks. I said, Emily, yes, that is absolutely how you're hearing it, because it is what you believe. You felt self-conscious while doing it, you felt self-conscious while listening to it, so yeah, that's how you perceive it coming off. But I see her truth, and I personally think we freaking crushed it. I can't wait to bring all of our conversations to this space. She's not as excited, but we'll get there. And always in these situations, she'll ask why or how so or something, and I remind her, it's because you don't like yourself. Other people have made her question her worth down to the marrow of her bones. So that's what she does every single day. But when we really break it down, she does love herself. This goes back to her and I discussing how two things can be true at once, right? Deep down, she knows how much of a rock star she is. She knows what she brings to the table as a human, a solid influence, a person putting good out into the world. But on the daily, yes, as we all do, she struggles to carry out that confidence and faith in herself. So she questions everything she does and says and how it came off to others and what the consequences might mean, and blah blah blah. Anyone out there who can relate? I'm going to use these quotes again. Him. He's upset he couldn't get more. Me. I say he's upset that he upset her. Because here's the thing to sum this all up super quickly. Reality is what you want it to be. It is what you say it is. If that's how you feel about it, how you want to see it, then that's what it will be for you. And you will make choices and take action based on that perception. That is your truth. There are concepts and phrases we have that reflect this, such as what other people think about you is not your business. A person's opinion of you is a projection of their own insecurities. It's true. If you're honestly a genuine, loving, and kind person to everyone you meet, that doesn't mean you'll be received that way. If you're exposing the shadows of someone who is deceitful, hate-led, and just downright mean, you will be labeled in a way that reflects that. Not your problem. I just recorded this episode yesterday, and later that day I had a conversation with my friend about a local theater company where the a young woman who um constantly gets their major lead roles is very, very sweet, very, very nice and genuine and kind, and she is just hated, vilified, is really the language that was used to describe it. And it's just because, especially in theater, it's that air of jealousy and resentment and competition. And it's just really, really sad. But of course, you do have shortcomings and habits that need improvement. We all do. It's a balance of the self-awareness to take responsibility for whatever negativity you are actually contributing to the world while recognizing what is a false box someone else has put you in. It takes a whole lot of digging, and you'll definitely want to own up and apologize wherever you can to whoever you can. That's where the reshaping of others' perspectives begins. And honestly, it's all you can do, it's all that is in your power to get that influence and energy off of you. It's up to them whether or not they'll choose to see the progress. But that should have no say in whether or not you actually put the work in for yourself. Heard? Keep watching, reading, listening, and waiting. The answers are waiting for you.