Are you being refined?

If you are in any kind of relationship, you are being refined. The question is what do you do with being refined....embrace it or ignore it...

Doc David

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Hey, Doc David here. Let's talk about refining.

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You are listening to Hedgehog.

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Hello, hello, friends. Um, Doc David here. I want to talk about something. It's interesting. As I meet with people, as I meet with couples and individuals throughout the week, there's just seems like there's themes that come up. And I don't know if it's I often wonder is like, is it me? And it like it happened today, and I really thought about it. I thought, I don't think it's me, but maybe it's if you believe in the universe telling you things, maybe it's the universe telling me things that are going on in people's lives, and that's why there's these themes that come up. Um and so the theme that uh I've kind of talked with several people about this week, and kind of has resonated with me over the years as I've um gotten older and been married longer and have had more kids and parented uh kids over time, is this idea of refining. Um so I want to read you the definition of refining. Um it's the dictionary, the Oxford language dictionary definition. Remove impurities or unwanted elements from um, in parentheses a substance, typically as part of an industrial process. Now, um other names, other words that go along with refining is to purify, clarify, cleanse, sift, filter, distill. So you get the idea. It's it's removing something that is um of negativity from wherever, right? In this case, it's gonna be removing something that from your personality. Um and so how that how that has been relating into conversations that I've been having with people this week is specifically it's been relating to parenting. Um what I've what I tell people, I I believe this, is that marriage and and parenting children is a refining process. Now there's there's two ways you can look at it. There's a victimhood process or there's a student process. Um and I think a lot of times people stick with a victim process in in regards to this refining. Um, but then it can even go deeper, and just as I was talking with a couple just an hour ago, that this is something that you can be aware of purposefully, or you could just be oblivious to. I think what happens is if you're oblivious to this refining process, um, that's where divorces happen, that's where separations take place, um, that's where hurtful things in relationships happen. If if you're aware of it, um that's where real growth can take place. So let me let me step back a little bit and talk more about it. Um, this idea of refining, so in my own life, I it's it helped me recognize like that I'm pretty selfish. And if you are selfish and you have kids and or are married, you will you will learn that quickly about yourself. And in my case, uh it related to don't judge me, um, video game playing. Like I I just enjoy video games, and you can say, well, I'm a child of the 80s when video games first came out, and so they fascinate me. I I enjoy a good storyline, um, I enjoy the the fast pace of things, whatever it is, I just enjoy video games. But video game playing and being married and having lots of kids usually are not compatible. Um, because if you love anything, um video game playing, hiking, biking, um, sailing, whatever, fishing, hunting, um it and you love it, usually it's not done in moderation. And when it's not done in moderation, that creates problem with problems with other relationships that you have. Um, and so video gaming is no different. Like you want to do it, and you want to, and with the advent of being able to play online with friends, that that even makes it more kind of hard to moderate. Um, but what I found over time is that as I would want to play video games, there would be heated conversations with my wife um about the amount of time that I'd be putting into these games. And so I could either view that as wow, what a drag she is. I can't believe she's so whatever. I'm uh what a miserable life I have. That's the victim. Or I could look at it as a student like, yeah, she's right. I have kids, I have a wife, I need to be like making a priority in my life. Um and I thankfully I I went the victim route, and I'm not always successful at it, but I I recognize now that okay, man, I love video games and I need to be, I need to do them in moderation. And exchange the word video game for anything else, biking, r running, hunting, fishing, spending time with friends, socializing, drinking. Um, any number of things can that if you are married or have kids and you don't moderate them, can be a bad thing. So again, I I went down the route of being a student. Now, now that I'm a student of it, um, a goal is to be very conscious of it. Now, sometimes I'm more successful at that than I am at other times. And I and I think there is a direct correlation with if you're not conscious about these things that need to be refined out of your life, um, that's where you end up with with being divorced. Because, so let's take, for example, um people that hunt, right? They love to hunt, they are gone every weekend. They can be gone during hunting season. If you're not married to somebody that val like understands that, or if you view yourself as a victim and being controlled by the ball and chain, the old lady, whoever, um, you're gonna be unhappy and you're probably gonna end up divorced. Now, if you recognize I love to do this thing, but I also am married and I have kids, and I need to, for a period of time in my life, I'm gonna have to be more moderate around it, that's gonna mean your marriage is gonna last most likely for the long term. And you're also recognizing, hey, there's this thing that has a hold on me that maybe I it shouldn't have a hold on me. Now, some pushback may be like, Oh, I want to do what I want to do. Okay, great. Do what you want to do, but then maybe you shouldn't be married and maybe you shouldn't have had kids. Um, your kids and your partner should not suffer because you're not able to moderate this thing that you love. And that's where the ref the refining of it comes, that's where the refining process comes in. Um I fully believe you should still be able to do things that you enjoy. Yet you're married or you you have kids, and that's where you need to have some self-control and moderation about things. That is hard to do. Um, if a new game comes out and I think, oh, I've been waiting for this game, I want to go play it. I want to play it for hours if I can, just because it's an interesting storyline. That's not good for my kid, that's not good for my marriage. But sometimes I do that and I have the consequences of that. But the older I get, the more I recognize, hey, this is something that's not good for my relationship or not good for the interactions with my kids. Therefore, I need to change that. If you don't change that and you recognize, oh, I need to moderate this, and you don't like lean into that refining process, chances are you're gonna be in an unhappy relationship, and or you're gonna end up divorced. Um so, where where does that leave us? That leaves you in a place where you need to embrace the refining. What I've seen so many times is people don't embrace the refining and they just um focused in on how bad their partner is and how controlling their partner is, rather than thinking, oh, maybe I should put some control on these things that I'm like really focused in on. Um the the question that I encourage people to ask, you know, if if they see their partner and they say, Wow, they're really controlling me, they're not letting me do whatever it is I want to do, you know, hunting, fishing, whatever it is, playing video games. The question that you should be asking yourself is why do I feel like this? Um and then really dig down and try to understand why it is that you feel like this. So so for me, it was like because I'm selfish. Um, why do I get mad when my spouse says something about my video game playing that's hours long at a time? Well, it's because I want to do what I want to do, and typically what that means is that I'm a selfish person. So let's say uh exchange that for drinking. Um your spouse or partner says, Hey, you're drinking too much, you need to control your drinking. So if you respond in the negative, like, well, you can't control me, you can't tell me what I what I can or can't do, I'm a grown adult. Well, sure, you are. You're a grown adult, good for you, yay. But the problem is you partnered up with somebody and you have kids with somebody. So if you get resentful and annoyed that they're commenting on your drinking, for example, the question you should ask yourself is why am I getting annoyed with them having a problem with this thing that I'm doing? Why? It could it be um that I'm doing it out of moderation, I'm not using any kind of self-control, and that when I do it, I just want to do it as much as I want to do it. So drinking is a great example because um it's the person that can't stop at one, right? And they're and their partner's complaining, hey, you're drinking too much, you need to control your drinking. Oh, my partner, what a drag they are. Um, no, actually, you're the drag because you're not being consciously, you're not consciously thinking about these things that you need to moderate in your life. And the problem is when you don't moderate things in your life, people don't want to be around you. And again, that's whether it's drinking, running, hiking, uh, boating, fishing, playing video games, any number, any number of things. If you if you're not moderating it, if you're not thinking, how is this how is me partaking this activity, the amount of time that I'm partaking in it, how is it impacting the person that I say I care about? That should be what you're thinking about, rather than, well, they're trying to control me and they're trying to make my life miserable. No, they just want to spend time with you, they just want to interact with you. Um, so my my encouragement to you this week is to really dig deep, like do some internal um get some internal insight. And how you do that is you kind of think about your own behavior. Think about okay, my partner's complaining to me about this thing. Is that a problem? Do I spend an unreasonable amount of time doing this thing? Chances are you do. Um, I'll just help you with that. If you have a partner that seems like they keep coming down on this one issue and the amount of time you're spending doing that thing, chances are you have a problem with moderation. So let's just say you have a problem with moderation and you get annoyed with your partner on when they bring it up. Why do you get annoyed? Chances are that you're getting annoyed because they're bringing up a flaw that you recognize you have, but you don't want to address. And so if you want your marriage to go long term, if you want your significant other relationship to go long term, you have two choices. You can either ignore what your partner is saying and say, oh, you're being unreasonable, you're trying to control me, which is the victim route, or you can go the route of like, huh, maybe there is some truth to what they're saying. Why do I get upset when they bring these kinds of things up? What does that say about me that I get super protective around my hunting? What does it say about me that I get super protective around my biking time that takes up the whole weekend and I don't spend it with the kids or with my partner? Like asking yourself those questions are key to growth. And I would add, I think they're key to having a long-term successful relationship. So if you have comments about that, if you have questions about that, I would love to hear your thoughts on that. Um, you can email me at headshrinkinc at gmail.com, or you can go to my website, docdavid.net, and drop me an email and let me know what you think, or go on Facebook and find me, or go on Instagram and find me. All of those social medias you'll you'll be able to find me on. Um but yeah, I'd love to hear your comments on that. Hey, hope you have a great weekend. Looks like it's gonna be warm out. Stay safe.