A: Hey guys. Welcome back to the podcast. I'm Amanda.
L: I'm Laura
K: and I'm Kendra.
A: And today we are going to be talking about relationships.
L: I am excited to talk about this today because I just think it's so interesting how misinformed I was about what relation…like really what relationships are. And this is kind of deep, but if you think about our relationships with other people, they really are just the way we think about that person. So we can have a great relationship with a person or have a horrible relationship with a person. They don't have to do anything differently. We just think about them differently. And I think about, I actually, this reminds me of my relationship with my alcoholic father.
When I was growing up, I had obviously a lot of different feelings about him. Some positive, many negative. And as a young adult, I let that kind of consume me and had this horrible relationship with him and had this identity that I was a victim of his alcoholism. But over time, as I read and kind of coached myself. And a book that I read that was particularly helpful was one by Louis Anderson, the comedian. It was, I think it was called Dear Dad, but it was letters to his dad who had passed away. His dad was also an alcoholic. Going through that, it helped me change my thoughts about my dad and helped me. We talk in coaching a lot about going from judgment to curiosity. It helped me stop judging him so much and start getting curious about why he struggled the way he did, and why he was the way he was. And as we go to curiosity, instead of judgment, our relationships invariably are gonna improve.
And so I was able to cultivate a wonderful relationship with my dad, and he never did successfully overcome his alcoholism. He still was very much the same person that I grew up with, but I was able to have a good, happy relationship with him, which I'm so grateful for. I was able to do that for several years before he passed away. So, but that was all in my mind.
We'll talk about this in a later podcast, but we often have rules for people that we're in relationships with. And those people may not even know that we have rules for them, that we have these expectations of them and what the relationship should look like. And having expectations that are not being met is really frustrating for us. So it's actually as simple, oftentimes as changing the expectations.
I have a friend who has a mom who is- she might be called a narcissist. She has a hard time extending love in a way that this woman can understand it. And she is constantly seeking this woman's approval. She's seeking her mother's approval, and her mom is just not gonna be able to give it to her. As long as she is having this expectation that her mom is gonna say nice things to her, she's gonna continue to be disappointed. But if she can look at her mom where her mom is and accept what she is able to offer, she'll feel better about the situation. She'll be able to have the kind of relationship, maybe not that is ideal for her, but the best that it can be given that situation.
The reality is, as adults, we get to be who we want to be. We get to say what we want to say. We get to do what we want to do. And that means other adults too. So we can't have expectations and try to control what other adults do.
We can have boundaries. We can say, you know, we have boundaries. “Hey, don't raise your voice at me, or I will leave the room.” Or, “Hey, don't hit me.” Or, “Hey, don't be unfaithful to me,” or X, Y, Z. We can have boundaries, but we cannot force other people to change their behavior. We can say we're gonna change our behavior based on what you do, but we can't, we cannot effectively manipulate them or change who they are or what they're gonna do, because they're adults. They get to choose. And so along with that comes the freedom of knowing that we are actually not responsible for other people's feelings. Other people are not responsible for our feelings. That's our responsibility. But along with that, we're not responsible for other people's feelings either.
Now, does that mean that we go around acting unkindly? No. The more we come into emotional adulthood (which we talked about previously)- the more we come into emotional adulthood, the more we're going to want to be kind and show grace and courtesy and love to others. That will come naturally. But no matter what we say or do, we are not generating feelings in other people and other people are not generating feelings in us.
I'll give you an example. So if, say, you're married to someone who has a different cleanliness standard than you do. Say you're the one with a higher, so-to-speak, cleanliness standard. And the other person throws their socks on the floor and leaves them there every day. We can make that mean whatever we want. We can make it mean that that person doesn't respect us, doesn't love us, doesn't care about us, doesn't prioritize us. Or we can make it mean- huh, they forgot and left their socks on the floor and go about our day. See those two different ways of approaching a situation like that. We can create all the drama we want, or we can decide not to and decide, you know what? I love this person, and I love being their partner. I'm grateful for them. I can make a request that they pick up their socks and hopefully they will. But I'm not gonna make it ruin my day if they don't because they might not. They probably won't every time. They'll probably forget. So let's not waste our energy trying to change other people.
We can make requests. We can set boundaries, but it's a waste of energy to try to make someone else something that they are not. Or do something that we want them to do if they don't want to do it too. The best way to preserve our own energy and our own wellbeing is to work on our own thoughts. That is the person that we can change. We can change ourselves. And there's a lot to do. There's plenty to do in each one of us. I'm sure you guys are closer to perfect than I am, but I have so much that I can work on in myself before I need to try to go change other adult human beings.
A: Laura, the fact that you even said that comment must mean that you have never met me.
L: What are you talking about?
A: Nice transition.
I'm going to talk about…we're gonna start now talking about different kinds of relationships. But I love what you said, Laura. Like we've got enough to work on ourselves that we don't need to be trying to manipulate anybody else or writing prescriptions for how they should be like. We are the only people that we can control, and that's beautiful. So let's do that. Let's work on our own thoughts, and let's start work on healing ourselves, and then the rest can fall into place from there. But other people get to be how they are, and we can love them or whatever. It's our choice.
So what I wanna talk about though, is our most important- we would argue our most important relationship is the one with ourselves. Again, we've talked about the image of walking into the newborn nursery. Every baby in there is infinitely lovable and infinitely worthy. They've done nothing to earn it other than just be, and that has never changed. We learn other messages, but the truth is that has never changed. We are still infinitely lovable and infinitely worthy. And if somebody is incapable of that, it says more about them than us. But let's work on it for ourselves. If we're not loving ourselves, why? Because we are still infinitely lovable and worthy.
We have the capacity to do this. And I just wanna point out that loving who you are, loving the set of characteristics that you have is not the same as arrogance. Arrogance is coming from a place of comparison and of lack. Loving yourself is coming from a place of abundance for yourself and everybody else in the world. How you treat yourself reflects your own thoughts about yourself. The things you're willing to put up with reflect your thoughts about yourself.
So I've had people say before, like, “oh, I, I I'll, I'll take care of that. You're a doctor. You need to be doing your more important work.” No, you guys, we all have the same 24 hours in a day. My time is not more valuable than anybody else's. We all have the same amount of time. On the other hand, if you are overcommitting and over, you know, stretching yourself too thin, what is really going on there? And I would argue that a lot of doctors have a problem with thinking that their value comes from what they do and trying to prove over and over and over that they're worthy by doing more, stretching more, serving more.
That's wrong. You guys, we are infinitely worthy as we are. And your worth is not determined by what you do. It's just a curious thing to think about why are you doing the things that you're doing, unless you somehow believe a story that you've picked up from parents or society or even yourself. And that's why it's not, it's not so easy to just instantly love yourself.
I think little toddlers do come by this. You just see them not caring what any- they just dance when they want to. They're just a lot more spontaneous. They haven't learned to self regulate like we have. It is normal though. I just want everyone to know you, just like Kelly Casperson, MD, our previous guest says, “You Are Not Broken.” This makes complete sense. Our brains work by comparison. Our brains work by having a negativity bias. It makes complete sense evolutionarily, why your brain, in order to keep you alive, would focus on the negative, find the things that's going to hurt. Find the things that- the thing that's making you stick out and not like everybody else.
That probably served us at one time. But now that most of us do have our basic needs met, we don't have to use- we don't have to rely on that. We can grow and evolve from there. We can start to love ourselves just as we are. It’s a challenge. I feel like, for us, it is one of the very, most important things.
If we can teach you anything, it's just start to love yourself. The truth of the matter is, is that you are here on the planet. That is not an accident. It is on purpose that you're here, the universe didn't mess up. God didn't mess up. You're here for a reason. And there is something special about you. That that's why you're here.
How do we know? Because you're here! It was always supposed to be this way. So I think just acknowledging that it's not an accident, you're not a mistake. You have the qualities that you have on purpose. Lean into them. Grow what's good in you. And become the amazing creation that you are supposed to be. I think that starts with loving ourselves and becoming the person that we were meant to be.
And so that is the relationship with ourself. And then Kendra's gonna talk about some other relationships that we can work on too.
K: Yeah. So, just like Amanda said, we believe that our priority for building relationships is with yourself. But we know as we go through life- we just had a podcast on community and what it is to have a social circle. We know that some of our most important relationships are also having to do with our spouse, our children, the families that we didn't get to choose, but we do life with. And so we want to start by talking about your family, which can be one of those…
For some people it's very blissful and joyful, but for some people- just like Laura used the example with her father- sometimes can be very stressful and actually elicit a negative emotion or feeling instead. So we know that we didn't choose our family: our mom, dads, siblings, grandmas, grandpas, aunts and uncles. But we do know that they grow up in whatever situation they grow up in and become adults. And then they choose how they act, feel, speak.
So like we said before, we do not get to control, or we should not think that we get to control their behavior. So instead, why don't we give them a little bit of grace to behave like they do, but then maybe we could think about it as we fix how we feel and how we think about it and then elicit a feeling or emotion that is more positive. And then our response to those people may be an example to them of how to be curious instead of offended or maybe how to be more empathetic rather than judgemental. So maybe giving them a little space to behave like they do, but then watching you be an example of how, not only to love yourself because you are wonderfully and marvelously made, but also how you respond to them may just get them thinking also about how they interact in relationships.
So another relationship that is very important to us and that is in our face 24/7 is our children. Our children will be influenced by us, though it be influenced by what we say, by what we do.
They are in our lives, in our worlds 24/7. As children, they will be influenced by us. And so as they grow from emotional childhood, into emotional adulthood, they also are going to have a choice. So as we reflect on that, we can reflect about what are we teaching them?
Are we teaching them to prioritize that relationship with self? Are we teaching them how to love themselves first? Prioritize the way they feel about themselves first, because in that way, when we have a positive view of self, it will actually reflect in our relationship with others. Are we trying to teach them that they can't control the way others feel or choose or act? Do we try to teach them to have a responsibility? The way they act is their responsibility, and the way other people choose to act is their responsibility. And what that means to building relationship and how they feel about others.
I know that I have a 16 year old daughter, and sometimes there are things that occur that make her feel left out or isolated. Maybe she doesn't feel as connected with certain girls in her grade or in her group. And so she feels a little bit left out, and I doubt those friends of hers are actually doing that intentionally. But as she has grown through this, I continually ask her, “do you really think they're intentionally leaving you out? They are your true friends, some of your besties. I don't think they intentionally try to leave you out. I think maybe you feel left out because you're not connecting with that certain topic of conversation or maybe because we live out in the country on a bunch of land and don't really have neighbors.” It's not as easy to just pop over to a neighbor's house or something. So she feels a little bit left out because she can't just pop over to the neighbor's house or something like that.
But it's not really about them trying to isolate her. It's just how she perceives it because she feels left out because she doesn't live in a neighborhood, something like that. It's just about a little bit of perspective to our children as they're growing up, maybe just opening up. Well, maybe that's actually not reality. Maybe they are just talking about it because that's a reality.
That's their day to day living. They live in a neighborhood. There's other girls that live there they're able to pop in and pop out. And that our reality is that we live on a bunch of acres on a cattle ranch, and our neighbor is half a mile away. But there's- that's no fault of- that's just reality. That's the circumstance. And so just trying to give her a perspective of how she develops a thought, which makes her feel a certain way and giving her the responsibility to change that and maybe giving her a little bit of a perspective check sometimes.
A: So yeah, as much as I wish that kids would do as we say, not as we do. That's not how it works, unfortunately.
K: Right.
A: So when I start thinking about that, like, would I want my kids to be saying the same things to themselves that I say to myself? That's heavy. That is why the relationship with ourself has to be healthy because they do pick up on that, that sort of thing. And I would never want to teach my kids to, you know, judge myself in, many times, the ways that I have had a habit of doing.
But they don't- they feel it. They, you are, we are their example. We lead by example, you know what I mean? And we teach our spouse. We teach everybody in our relationships how to interact with ourselves. And that's all from how we think about ourselves. And so on behalf of my kids, I'm going to work on my relationship with myself because I want them to love themselves. I want them to know that they're not responsible for how somebody else feels. I want them to know that they have a choice in how they feel. It's not their circumstance. It's when they pick that painful thought that they're being left out…there's other options available.
It motivates me more to work on my relationship with myself just knowing that my relationship with myself bleeds out into every other relationship in my life.
L: Yeah. I, I love that. That's so important. And I love your point about choosing the painful thought. Every thought that we have, we can choose. We can get control over our thoughts and choose thoughts that serve us, choose ones that are not painful.
Sometimes we need to feel some pain, but we don't need to feel any unnecessary pain by attributing things to people in our relationships that just aren't there. The socks are not on the floor because that person disrespects you or doesn't love you.
A: Or trying to stress you out.
L: No. And the socks are not causing you stress. You're causing your own stress.
A: Now you can make requests. We've said this a bazillion times. I do. I would prefer there not be socks on the floor. And so that can be…”let's just pick up the socks, guys.”
L; Yeah. That's right.
K: As we know, we have boys that easily get distracted. All of us have boys, all three of us. And things just, they're not as strong of multitaskers. So they can't just put that in the back of their mind and say, “well, soon as I get done, mom, I would love to pick up my socks.” So when it doesn't get done, instead of me going, like, crazy on my son, cuz I'm like, “I told you three times!” I just give him - I've, I've decided that he just needs like a two minute warning. Like, “okay in two minutes, I need you just stop what you're doing and go get these socks. Or the underwear, or the…
A: So back in the day, when I would make it mean that nobody valued my time, nobody valued, you know my feelings of like feeling blissful in a clean house, that you see how that, part of that's imaginary, that I've created, and it's just not that helpful.
K: No, absolutely.
L: It's not. Yeah. I mean, one of my children is the sweetest child on the planet, but the boy leaves a trail of like literal trash, literal candy wrap. I mean, like he doesn't even see that he's doing it. And if I allowed that to affect my relationship with him- I just don't want that to happen. And so.
A: It's just not necessary.
L: No, it's just not necessary. And he'll clean it up. I just, I don't need to have any negative emotion about it. I can just…
A: Or, or he won't, and he'll get the consequence of it. It's it's fine. It's his choice.
L: That's right. So we get to choose. Yeah.
K: So to recap. We've talked about relationships today. We've talked about how important relationships are. Actually, we define what really relationships are because we have such a counterfeit message of what a relationship is. If we were gonna listen to social media, or if we listen to television or movies, or even music sometimes, likes to give us this counterfeit message of what a true relationship is.
And so we've attempted to lay the framework for what true relationship is, and that we shouldn't get locked into the rules of relationships and the expectations, but really giving grace for people to act how they're gonna act, and then deciding how we're gonna feel. We have complete control over how we are going to feel and what we are going to say and how we are going to act. And not spend this wasted energy on trying to get people to behave like you want them to behave. So we've expressed that self is the most important relationship that you can not only develop but maintain, because when you show up as your best self, then it overflows into the relationship with others.
When you are your best self, you are the best coworker. You're the best physician. All the roles that we have. When you take care of self first and have amazing, beautiful, wonderful thoughts about yourself, then that reflects in all aspects of our life.
We then decided that marriage and family are some of our most important relationships. So we touched on the family that we have. We didn't get to choose, but we could give them grace to act and behave like they do. And then we can decide that once we allow space for that, we can give them that grace. And then they can maybe see how we react or, or how we build relationship with them, and it could affect them in a positive way. Same with our spouse. And then our children. We know that they all will be influenced by what we do and say, but as they are growing into their emotional adulthood. We have the power to affect them by instilling in them that they also have a choice.
They have a choice to put themselves first, and then they have a choice to take responsibility for their feelings and emotions. And so we hope that you have enjoyed this framework and foundation for building relationships. We hope that you can take one or two things away today that will change the trajectory, maybe, of some of the relationships that you didn't get to choose. But that you can begin even today just taking that step towards a little bit of freedom through grace.
And just know that we know that you are amazing and that you were created to be amazing. And so, love yourself, just like Nike says, “just do it.” Love yourself and the rest will follow.
So until next time you are whole, you are a gift to medicine, and the work you do matters.
