134 - The 3 Essentials of a Truly Satisfying Life

In this episode Dr. Kelly Flanagan explains the concept of true self and false self and how the voice of shame obscures our clarity about our passion and vocation.

Dr. Flanagan is a clinical psychologist and father known to millions for the letters he writes to his children and shares on his blog. Loveable is written to the little one in each of us, who is all too ready to be reminded: you are enough, you are not alone, and you matter.

In his book Loveable, Dr. Flanagan reveals the core insight gleaned from his years of clinical work: you are here for a reason, yet you cannot truly awaken to it until you have first embraced your truest, worthiest self and then allowed yourself to be truly embraced by others.

Weaving heart-warming storytelling, gentle insights, and the wisdom of Dr. Flanagan’s Christian tradition—including his belief that we are all “the living, breathing bearers of the eternal, transcendent, and limitless Love that spun the planets and hung the stars”—these pages invite you to remember the name you were given before all other names: Loveable. 

To learn more and get access to his FREE Loveable mini-course, visit his website at www.drkellyflanagan.com

In this episode we cover:

00:02:12  The 3 Essentials For A Truly Satisfying Life

00:05:25  Worthiness

00:07:44  True Self & False Self

00:09:46  Tweaking

00:12:11  Belonging

00:17:37  Purpose

00:22:02  People Who Get You

00:23:39  Passion

Thanks so much for tuning in again this week. I appreciate you  🙂

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Special thanks to Dr. Kelly Flanagan for being on the show.

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Transcript

Did You Know  0:02  
Did you know that we don't find our passions and reflection? They find us in action. 

Intro  0:08  
Hello, action taker! Welcome to Live Blissed Out. A podcast where I have inspirational and informational conversations with business owners and subject matter experts to help you get the scoop on a variety of topics. Tired of hesitating or making decisions without having the big picture? Wanna be in the know? Then this is the place to go. I'm your host Marisa Huston. Helping you achieve bliss through awareness and action. So let's get to it. In this episode, Dr. Kelly Flanagan explains the concept of true self and false self and how the voice of shame obscures our clarity about our passion and vocation. Dr. Flanagan is a clinical psychologist and father known to millions for the letters he writes to his children and shares on his blog. Lovable is written to the little one in each of us who is all too ready to be reminded...you are enough, you are not alone and you matter. In his book Loveable, Dr. Flanagan reveals the core insight gleaned from his years of clinical work. You are here for a reason yet you cannot truly awaken to it until you have first embrace your truest worthiest self and then allow yourself to be truly embraced by others. Weaving heartwarming, storytelling and gentle insights these pages invite you to remember the name you were given before all other names, lovable. To learn more and get access to his free Lovable Mini Course, visit his website at www.drkellyflanagan.com. 

Ko-Fi  1:35  
If you'd like to support this podcast and engage with our community, become a professional tear member for backstage access and monthly networking opportunities at www.ko-fi.com/liveblissedout. 

Disclaimer  1:51  
The information opinions and recommendations presented in this podcast are for general information only and any reliance on the information provided in this podcast is done at your own risk. This podcast should not be considered professional advice. 

Marisa Huston  2:03  
Dr. Kelly, welcome to the show. 

Dr Kelly Flanagan  2:06  
Marisa, Thank you. It's great to be here. 

Marisa Huston  2:08  
Oh, it's wonderful to be talking to you. What is your conversation going to be about? 

Dr Kelly Flanagan  2:12  
I guess where I start all the time is my passion for walking with people through the three essentials of what I consider to be a truly satisfying life and that's worthiness, belonging and purpose. I'm a clinical psychologist, I'm an author. I'm a blogger. I started blogging in about 2012 and I had several of my blog posts early on go viral. A couple of them were letters to my daughter and the second letter to my daughter went so viral that she and I wound up on the Today Show. And after the today's show, I had an agent reach out to me, wonderful, lovely agent is still my agent to this day and she started to help me think about the kind of book that I wanted to write. She reached out to me one day, after having rejected a dozen of my proposals. We're on the phone one day and she said to me, she goes, so why don't you keep sending me these three topics, worthiness, purpose and belonging? And I said to her, oh, no, no, it's not worthiness, purpose and belonging, its worthiness, then belonging, and then purpose. That's the trajectory of all personal growth, all spiritual formation is through those three core experiences of life. And she said, well, you should write about that. That's something that's been said before. And that actually turned into my book Loveable, embracing what is truest about you, so you can truly embrace your life, is this idea that there are three sort of core tasks of life, worthiness, belonging and purpose, but we move through those tasks in that order, and we move through them over and over again. So at first we have to, as adults, especially, we need to begin to reclaim our sense of worthiness. And I'd love to talk about how we lose that a little bit, our worthiness, our sense that we are lovable, the way that we are, that we are good enough to show up in the world the way that we are. And only until we start to have the confidence to show up in the world as who we are, do we begin to attract to us the people that we belong to. And then only with the support of the people we belong to do we really kind of muster the courage to jump in to chasing our passions and discovering a sense of purpose in life. So worthiness, belonging and purpose, I'm almost always talking about one of those three things, and I'm sure our conversation will revolve around one or more of them today. 

Marisa Huston  4:19  
You know, I was thinking, as you were saying that when you talk about worthiness, I think that we tend to judge ourselves a lot or compare ourselves to other people to the point that it's never enough. You notice your flaws, and you know that there are things that you do that you wish you weren't doing. Things that naturally happen. Let's say for example, you tend to speak fast. You tend to be the kind of person where if somebody is talking to you, you want to engage with them and you jump into conversations to the point where you feel like I shouldn't be talking as much. I should really try to do better at listening. And so then you get angry, in a sense, because you judge yourself and you say, why can't I be better at this? I'm trying, I know that I'm aware of it, and yet I can't seem to change. And then you just become discouraged. You just get frustrated with yourself. And then you wonder, is this it? I mean, am I never gonna be able to improve as an individual? Because that's really what we all strive to do, I think.

Dr Kelly Flanagan  5:25  
Yeah, you know, becoming a father to now, three pretty grown kids, my kids are 18, 14 and 12. At one point, they weren't, they're just little ones. And I think becoming a father to  little ones, it was an eye opening experience to me to watch these three new people come into the world and see that early in life. They didn't question their worthiness, they didn't wonder, am I worthy of being loved the way that I am? What do I have to do to be loved? They just sort of assumed that they would be. And it started to connect me to this truth that we come into the world with a true self that is worthy of love and belonging and it actually isn't until we begin to experience something that we call shame, which is the belief that we're not good enough the way we are, that we begin to question our worthiness. And we develop shame for a number of reasons. We get the message in a number of different ways, something that we all experience. And the sort of, I guess, most tangible expression or way of experiencing shame is the urge to hide. What I am isn't worthy of love and belonging, apparently, so I need to hide it.  And then as young people, believing our true self isn't good enough to be loved, we begin to build a false self. And it's that false self that is then going out into the world trying to earn us the love and belonging that we so desperately want. So, for me, that was eye opening. And it helped me to begin to discover that, oh, wow, I have a true self that I hid away many, many years ago, because I was ashamed of it believed it wasn't worthy of love and belonging. And this me that I think I am, it was a sort of a fabrication that I built to cope with my shame and to try to earn a sense of love and belonging. And now the rest of my life is going to be about learning how to reconnect with that true self, that original version of me and let that version of me live life in the world and to try to catch my false self trying to protect me and say, Hey, we're good. Now I don't need as much protection anymore. I trust that I'm worthy now, and so no need to do all those things that you sometimes do to try to protect me. So more and more, it's this journey back to our true self, uncovering it, rediscovering it and living it out in the world.

Marisa Huston  7:33  
how do you identify what your true self is? Because a lot of times, we're so used to being our false self, that we don't even know the difference anymore.

Dr Kelly Flanagan  7:44  
Isn't that true? So I think one of the more important insights that has helped me along the way, is to recognize that, this is a lot, that our false self is built out of the best parts of our true self. That when we see our false self going to work, it's our true self being used to protect us rather than connect us. And I'll give you an example of that. So my oldest Aiden has always been a very funny, humorous, witty guy. As soon as he could talk, he made people laugh. And in fact, this year, he's planning to skip college and go and try to become a comedian in Chicago. He's got our full support. But he went through this stage. In sixth grade, we moved to a new town, new culture, new school and new friends and he started to use his sense of humor to protect himself, to sort of roast other kids, to become the class clown, so that he would be sort of admired by other kids. He began to use this gift of His from his true self, his sense of humor, and his wit and his intelligence to stay safe, sort of in the jungles of this new middle school. And so we can actually look at what do I do to protect myself? What do I do to stay safe? What's the version of me that I keep putting out into the world to try to earn love and belonging? And what does that tell me about who I really am, if I could only trust that I'm lovable, that there's nothing at stake, and live those parts of me without a sense of protection, but more out of a sense of vulnerability? So the wonderful thing about our false self is it gives us great clues to what our true self really is.

Marisa Huston  9:19  
So are you then saying for example, that a lot of times when we grew up in environments where we're told that we have to conform to certain things, because it's what people expect of us, you get to a certain point in your life where you come to the realization that you can't please everyone, and that you need to be honest about what works and what doesn't work and embrace that rather than fight it?

Dr Kelly Flanagan  9:46  
Wow. You know. It's funny you say that, because I remember very specifically. So Aiden was probably in seventh grade. My wife and I were sitting at the counter doing something and he came over to us and he says, Hey, Mom, Dad, I think I know what I want to be when I grow up. We're like, oh, oh. Why do I think this is gonna be interesting? And he said, I want to be a comedian. This was in seventh grade. My wife and I are both psychologists, we know the importance of this moment, you know, so we try to be supportive. And we're like, oh, yeah, comedian. Like, trying to fake excited about that. I remember the moment. You can literally see the wheels turning. You know, and he's going, oh, oh, this isn't good enough. And he goes, and I also want to be a history teacher. And then my wife, and I literally, in spite of ourselves, we're like, hey, History teacher, you know. You got a pension, you got summers off, you get insurance. We do the parent thing. And there's a moment there that you sort of realize that moments repeating itself over and over in our lives, where we are stepping out and saying, hey, this is who I am and the world reacts to it. And we sort of soak that up and go, ha. I guess if I want others approval, if I want to be loved, I'm going to have to tweak what I do, who I am. So thankfully, with Aiden, clearly, we didn't discourage him too much. He's still planning on going out there and giving it a try as a comedian. But yeah, we are constantly sort of tweaking our false self to try to please and accommodate other people's wishes for us.

Marisa Huston  11:13  
And I love that example. Dr. Kelly, I think that that's when it hits us, particularly when we're talking about family, parents, or people that we admire, or have influenced us in our lives. Because when you talk about belonging, we're never going to belong in every place. Because people are tribal. We have groups that we like to be around. So for example, if you like photography, you're gonna hang out with other photographers to learn things from them and be able to share because you feel like they understand you in a way that nobody else does. And that's something that we gravitate towards. You can't please everyone, and we get that. But I think that when it comes to family, or people that really matter to you the most, you look for some sort of validation from them. And when you get a sense that they are not fully on board, then you start to question whether or not your path is the right one.

Dr Kelly Flanagan  12:11  
Right. I think that's true. You know I think one of the more complicated sort of realities of life is that our family are not necessarily the people that will ultimately discover we belong to. One of the things I talked about in Loveable is that as we begin to embrace our worthiness and realize, hey, it's okay to show up as me in the world, then you don't have to find belonging, it finds you. You sort of begin to show up, announce in a way who you are, have a voice, be yourself, and the people that are like, ha, I dig that, those are the people that you belong to. And they're not always going to be your closest family members, to be honest. But if that's coming from a place of worthiness, and you no longer need your family members approval, in order to feel like you're worthy of love and belonging, then it's okay that they're not your people. It's okay that you don't belong to them. They belong to other people, in a sense. Now, I know people who they find belonging in their families, and it is such a huge blessing. And it's lovely, and I wish it for everybody. But I think for a lot of us, we sort of have to realize that's just not the place that we're going to find it oftentimes.

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Marisa Huston  13:49  
Yeah, and I think that it's so important to remember, we can't always get approval from the people that we want approval from. There are going to be people that you just admire, and you want to be like or you really want their validation in some way and they won't give it to you. And you know, you kind of have to accept that that's going to happen. And you then need to ask yourself, do I want to continue down this path or should I just be myself? And going back to family too. There's so many different personalities within a family that you sometimes ask yourself, how could this person be my sibling? Like, I don't even understand how we grew up in the same house because they are so different.

Dr Kelly Flanagan  14:32  
That's right. Yeah. You know, it reminds me of, I shared this on my blog recently. Right before COVID hit. We were at a conference for families and the keynote speaker was this young man. His name was Nick Santonastasso. He was born with a rare condition called Hanhart Syndrome, which left him with no legs, only one arm and a single finger. And he told us this incredible moving story. For his sake. I hope I get most of it right. It was a while back. But basically, he's getting onto like a Southwest flight where he can choose his own seat and he's gonna get to go first because he's a person with a disability. So the flight attendant helps him onto the plane, gets him to a window seat and says sir, you know, we have a full flight today and these are great seats. You're gonna have company real soon, get yourself comfortable. So they start to board the rest of the flight and the other passengers sort of look at him and look at these prime seats, and they pass them by, and they go past him to other seats. And Nick said, you know, I looked out the window, because I didn't want them to see me crying as I experienced the rejection. But as I was looking out the window, I heard this voice inside of me and it said, Nick, your body isn't working against you, here, it's working for you. It's screening out the people that you don't want in your life. And to me, that is such a beautiful image of what it looks like to show up as our true self and to begin to discover that belonging finds us. Here's Nick, right? He's sort of broken by normal standards in so many ways. But by showing up in his truth and his reality, and his true self, he's actually screening out the people that he doesn't want his life. And I just think that's sort of the process of finding belonging in a nutshell, is showing up as we are and seeing who wants to sit by us.

Marisa Huston  16:15  
I love that! You know, because it's really just changing the way you look at things. Because a lot of times when things don't seem the way they should we think of it as a negative thing, when you're actually turning it on its head and saying no, actually, this is a tool for you. 

Dr Kelly Flanagan  16:31  
Right? What a powerful reframe, right. And I think in that sense, like a reframe, not just to something to sort of help you get through the day, but that he hit on a core truth about what it looks like to form circles of belonging. And it's people who are saying, I dig you enough to travel through life with you, let's do this. He taught me something that day and it's really powerful.

Marisa Huston  16:52  
Yeah, and some of us figure this out very early on. And some of us take a longer time. For example, in my situation, my family believed in traditions or obligations or doing things because it was expected of us. And we had to try to conform to that. And so when you live in that kind of environment, and then now you're being told no, if you're not comfortable with that, you need to let people know, that is counterintuitive to what you've been taught from a very early age. And so it's difficult to be that person because you almost feel shame, like you feel like, am I being terrible for saying no or not doing what is expected of me?

Dr Kelly Flanagan  17:37  
Right? You know, this process of traveling through our worthiness into belonging, and then into purpose, or passion. In Loveable I talk about how really purpose is such a loaded word. That shame sort of takes that word, and it says purpose means something big and dramatic and grandiose, and you need to do something very ambitious in order for it to be worthwhile. So in Loveable we say let's just sort of put the word purpose aside. Let's talk about our passions, these natural instincts for the things that bring us joy, for the things that are creative and interesting and exciting to us as people. Well, yeah, a lot of times those things, we get shamed into not pursuing those things. We get shamed and say, well, that's not really a good way to spend your life. Like my poor son, right? Yeah, be a history teacher, not a comedian. And so a big part of the process of healing is as we begin to rediscover our true self is letting it speak to us about what we want to do with our lives. I had another wrestling match with my shame in this regard here over the last couple of years. I have always wanted to write a novel. I've written a couple of nonfiction self help books, but I have always wanted to write a novel. But there's this part of me that sort of tucked that passion away, because it didn't seem like the kind of thing serious people did, or at least that's what I was taught or told, right? I'll share with you the way that like my shame, tried to suppress that passion of mine over the last couple of years. I published a book called True Companions. It was the first of a two book contract. And I was due to submit the proposal for the second book. And I submitted it to my publisher, and they came back and they said, wow, we really love this idea, but we think it would work better as a fictional book. Now, my publisher is coming to me saying, do the thing you've always wanted to do, right? Practice your passion. And my response is no, I don't think you understand. Let me rewrite the proposal. You're clearly not getting it. So I rewrote the entire proposal, rewrote the sample of the manuscript, took a couple of months, sent it back to them, the editorial board reviewed it and they said, I really love this idea. We think it would be better as a fictional book. And I said, Okay, all right, fine, I'll be a non serious person. So I started writing. And writing this novel was the greatest vocational joy of my life. I've had relational joys on par with it. It took me about six months to write the novel. I had it finished, I was going for a walk with a good friend and he asked me about it, when I was going to be sending it to the publisher. And I said to him, I literally said this, I go, I just don't think it's the right book for me right now. I'm thinking about just trying to propose another nonfiction book. And this is really funny. He goes, Well, what do you want your nonfiction book to be about? And I said, Well, Loveable was a little bit about pursuing your passion. I want to write a whole book about pursuing your passion. And he looks at me, my dear friend, he goes, How can you write a nonfiction book about pursuing your passion if writing a novel is your passion, and you're refusing to do it? And I said, oh, there's this voice inside of me going, like, yeah, that's not a serious way to live your life, you got to be serious about being successful and ambitious. And, you're not going to be worthy of love, and belonging, if you choose to write fiction. And so I had to push through that shame voice all over again, in order to get this book to the point of publication. And now I'm in the midst of writing my second novel and enjoying it just as much as the first. And so this is what we're all facing. We're all facing all of the voices within us and outside of us that say that thing that brings you the greatest joy, the most excitement, don't do it, for any variety of reasons. Go do something else instead. And we are in the position of having to be faithful to our true self and our passion and to try to do that in the world.

Marisa Huston  21:21  
It's really deprogramming, in a sense, what you've been told. And instead of just going with your gut, like really pursuing where you tend to gravitate. The thing that's hard about that Dr. Kelly is when you do it, the people that you care about the most who set you up to not pursue that thing, are now going to think you're in a sense, crazy. Like, what is wrong with this person? Like, why would they want to do that when they should be this other person that they envision. The question, then you ask yourself is, are you living for yourself or for somebody else?

Dr Kelly Flanagan  22:02  
You know, to go back to the concept in Loveable it's why it's so important to have really rooted ourselves in communities of belonging, because there are going to be a lot of naysayers. And yes, I would like to think that I can just pursue my passion completely on my own without any encouragement from anybody. But boy, it feels good when you have people you do belong to who are encouraging you along the way. And my wife is one of them. You know, she's believed in me every step of the way. She's someone I belong to, I've had friends who reach out to me after True Companions, and they said, you know, I love True Companions but it's the storytelling in the book that I love the most. I hope you'll write fiction someday. It's nice to have those folks we can sort of lean on who do believe in us, when we're doubting ourselves. That's part of that trajectory, from worthiness, to belonging, to purpose, is making sure we're surrounding ourselves with people who are in the front row and cheering us on.

Marisa Huston  22:55  
People who get you.

Dr Kelly Flanagan  22:56  
People who get you. 

Marisa Huston  22:57  
And sometimes when you find those people, you even ask yourself, wow, I mean, there's people who actually think this is a good idea? Because all I ever hear is people telling me not to do something. But that's why it's so important to be comfortable in yourself and be willing to explore new things and realize that failure is part of the process, too. Because I think we're so fearful of that, that we tend to then go back to maybe I shouldn't have done that. I should have listened to what they said, because I failed at this. But you're not really failing, you're growing, actually. Because it's through those experiences that you can be better or learn more about what it is you really want to do and who you are.

Dr Kelly Flanagan  23:39  
Well, and I think when you're operating from a place of false self, I always say the false self is fueled by ambition, whereas the true self is fueled by passion. And when you're operating from false self and ambition, then failure really hurts. There's no point in it if you fail when it comes to the false self, because it feels like it failed to prove you are worthy, failed to prove that you sort of deserve to be loved. But when you're living from true self, and from passion, there's really nothing to lose. The joy is in the getting to practice the passion, the sense of purpose is in Wow, the meaning that comes from moving towards something that I really love to do. And so the outcome becomes much less important. And so the failure is a little bit less threatening. I'll say a little.

Marisa Huston  24:23  
A little. That's right. I mean, it's not easy to fail. But to your point, yes. It's how you view it and how you understand it. And that I think makes all the difference because we just tend to shy away from it or think that it's a bad thing to fail. And, honestly, if you're not doing things you're never going to fail, because you're not doing. Any activity will require some sort of learning process, which inevitably leads to failure in some aspect.

Dr Kelly Flanagan  24:52  
Words are important. I know someone who he's replaced the word failure with pivot. He says, Yeah, when I fail, it's not a failure, it's just a pivot, I just changed directions a little bit, I learned a little bit, and I'm going in a new direction now. And I think our relationship to failure, and how we redefine it as a learning process is really important.

Marisa Huston  25:11  
You have a couple of books, one of them is called Loveable. Can you share with our listeners, how they can get more information about your books, and also the services that you offer?

Dr Kelly Flanagan  25:23  
My website is www.drkellyflanagan.com. If you go there, there's a button at the top that says get access to the lovable mini course. And you click that button, you're gonna get access to a five session audio mini course walking through all of these ideas related to worthiness, belonging and purpose. You'll also get my monthly blog posts sent to your email. And right there in the menu bar, you'll see a tab that says books and you'll be able to go to the book page for Lovable or True Companions, and also to the page for my novel, which is The Unhiding of Elijah Campbell. And you'll be able to take a look at that and see what it's about and preorder it if you're interested.

Marisa Huston  26:06  
Thank you so much for sharing this with us today. It was so great to talk to you.

Dr Kelly Flanagan  26:11  
Oh, great to talk to you, Marisa. Thank you for having me on.

Outro  26:14  
That's a wrap for this episode of Live Blissed Out. Thanks to Dr. Kelly Flanagan for joining us and thanks for listening. If you have a question or comment for a future episode, all you have to do is go to www.speakpipe.com/lbovm or click the link in the show notes to leave a brief audio message. If you find value in our show. Please visit www.liveblissedout.com to reach out, subscribe and share on social media. This show is made possible through listeners like you. Thank you. So long for now and remember to keep moving forward!