¶ Intro
At some point something has to happen for you that causes you to wonder who am I really? And everything that I manifest and speak and do is it designed to fit out the people's expectations or does it line up with who I really am?
I truly am so excited to be here tonight at the Auphian Theater in Vancouver with a dear friend, someone that I consider to be the utmost expert goat the greatest of all time in it space, like there is no one like doctor Gabel Matte.
Could you say more about that?
¶ Why Do We Care So Much About Others' Opinions?
We've been talking tonight about worrying about how we're perceived by others, Yeah, and how that blocks.
Us from things in our life. Where does that come from?
Why is it that we're so obsessed and addicted to what people think about us?
Well, it's a great topic, and I think in this culture it's a fundamental one. There's a wonderful Catholic monk and mystic called Thomas Merton who talked about how we live in other people's minds. So when we're concerned about what other people think of us, how they see us, perceive us, judge us, love us, hate us, we're not living in ourselves. We're living in other people's minds. So where does that come from? One of the needs of
the human child. It's an essential need. Just as we have the need to be held physically, to be fed, to be nurtured, we also have the need to be seen because we get to see ourselves the way others see us when the parents can't see the child in the child's essence, in their child's well. The great psychiatrist and co writer with oph of Bruce Perry has written a book called Born for Love, and we're essentially born for love. It's a developmental need. And love isn't just
other people feel about us? Is do they see us? And if they can't see us for who we are, for who we are because of their own limitations, and a lot of parents have troubled doing that, I certainly did, then the child wants to be seen in a positive way by the parent and then they'll change themselves, hide parts of themselves as exaggerate other parts of themselves, basically create an image that they want the other person to
see because they can't see their vital person. So really it comes from our earliest relationships, where we were not seen for who we are. Had we been seen for who we are, we would just accept ourselves and not be so concerned with other people see us. So it goes back to our earliest days in homes where the parents actually love the child. We're not blaming the parent here, We're saying that the parents' own limitations prevent them from
seeing their child for exactly who they are. Then the child will mold themselves into whoever the parents wants them to be.
¶ Learning to Love People the Way They Need
Well, how do you see someone for who they are and not who you want them to be, who you think they could be, or just the best parts of them, Because what I'm hearing is that's what we end up doing, right.
Yeah, Well, well that's the key question. And somewhere I heard you say that people love you, but they may not love you the way you want them to love you. And we actually have trouble loving people the way they need to be loved. We think that love is the feeling that we have for them, and that's certainly true, but it's much more than that. You can have all kinds of loving feeling towards somebody but be limited by your own traumas from seeing them for who they are.
And then and Also a lot of parents in this culture wants their kid to fit in with the culture. Now that means you have a preconceived idea of who the child should be, and then when you don't see the child as the way you want them to be, you're dissatisfied with them. Another child will behave in more impetus to fit themselves into the parents' expectations. So it's it comes from this culture's incapacity to sue people who they actually are.
Yeah, I mean, as I'm listening to you, I'm thinking about just the amount of.
Moments there are in.
Our lives where the person's trauma creates new challenges for us. Yeah, that doesn't get healed, that then gets passed on. How
¶ How Childhood Shapes Our Need for Approval
do people in this room, how do we all make sure that we are people where that cycle stops, that we can break that cycle, that we can interrupt that pattern, that we can be the people in our families, in the lives of people who have children, even if you don't choose to, how do you become the person that changes that trajectory for your family?
At some point, something has to happen for you that causes you to wonder who am I really and everything that I manifest and speak and do, is it designed to fit other people's expectations or does it line up with who I really am? And people get to that point and that's what they call them midlife crisis actually, and all of a sudden you start wanting whose life am I leading? Anyway? I certainly went through that's still going through it. Eighty one years old and still going
through a midlife crisis. You know.
See, you're not too old at yet. Twenty six is all right, you don't testify it. You didn't just flying that too.
So but what I'm saying, Jay, is there has to be a questioning there. At some point you have to recognize that it's not working the way that feels good in the heart or in the God. So there has to be that recognition. Then there's to be a curiosity. Now you're asking about future generations. But the way we gift future generations is actually working on ourselves, not by trying to be better parents, but by actually dealing with
our own stuff. That's the way we avoid as best we can, passing it on to the next generation.
¶ The Dangerous Belief: "I'm Only Valuable If..."
I think one of the ways the inner critique and that inner voice keeps us imprisoned. Is that it makes us believe we're only valuable when we're busy. Yeah, we're only valuable if this.
Wait a minute. The guy who just starts a thirteen city two in two weeks just asked.
Me, you can't expose me on my own sh.
Look, I just believe in my wife's in the audience, and she once said to me, buddy, you've written a book called When the Body There's No may better waite one called when the Wife Says No, precisely for the same reason.
That's so good. That's so good. We didn't answer my question.
Sorry, Sorry missed what you said.
No, I was saying, yeah, I mean me included. We definitely have that belief that I am valuable if I fill in the blank. It could be I'm only valuable if I'm busy. I'm only valuable if this person says I am. I'm only valuable if I get promoted. I'm only valuable.
I know. And we do have this idea that we're only as valuable as how we appear or what we do, but not for who we are. And again goes back to very early days, and I've often talked about something my friend, the Great trauma psychologist pioneer Peter Levine said to me a couple of years ago, and Peter is, I think a year or two older than I am. He's done an amazing work in the world. One of my mentors, and Peter said, if I ask myself, have I done enough? The answer is very much yes. But
if I ask myself the question am I enough? I still don't know the answer. You know, And in this society, every very much program to identify our value with what we do. And it's very interesting when I talk to people about it, because people tell me I'm only as valuable as as what I do, And then ask them this question, do you value me talk about myself as
a human being? And they say, yeah, of course. I say, okay, what if God forbid tomorrow I'd have a stroke and I couldn't speak, and I couldn't move, and I couldn't give anything to anybody, would you say to me, then, gobble, you're worthless? And they said, of course not. I said, then why are you saying it to yourself? Why are you singing to yourself that you're only as valable as what you do? So that there's this in a concept that I'm only as valable as what I do or
how I show up. There's a tremendous lack of self compassion.
Wow, that's yeah, yeah, please give it up. That's I've never thought about it like that.
And the distinction you just made between those two questions, have I done enough?
Am I enough? How do we learn to.
Give a positive, genuinely true answer to the second one? How do we rewire when the whole world is telling us like, what you do is who you are, your title, your followers, your Instagram bio, your right the whole world is telling us that, how do you kind of even begin to re maneuver how the mind is being programmed?
Yeah, well it's I can't say that I've fully worked it out. But two things come to mind when I hear your question. One is, would you say to a one day old baby who can't do a thing? Would you ever say to them or believe about them, You're not enough? And of course you wouldn't. Then why are you saying it to yourself? Okay, So that's the first answer, And then the second answer is who's even asking? Who you know?
¶ Why Do We Feel Guilty When We Rest?
Gabo?
On the flip side of feeling like we only have value because we work hard. A lot of us are guilty or feel guilty for resting. If you look at the studies in the United States, Yeah, high percentages of people don't use their annual leave, and the annual vacation in the US is far less. I'm hoping in Canada people use their annual leave, yeah.
Area.
And in the UK we definitely use our annual leave. But there's that sense that we all still feel a slight guilt for resting. We feel a guilt for taking a break.
I can totally relate when I was busy and we're call like filmly doctor literally and you know, I just delivered babies and look after pregnant women. I'd feel terrible at going on holiday with my family because somebody might give birth without me. You know. It's like you imagine somebody in the world is born without me. How's that? Yeah? How's that? How did humanity survive all those many of years? You know? But that voice, I mean that says I'm
committed to that patient. I have to be there, and in the sense of guilt that I'm actually looking after myself. That comes from that same belief that we're not enough unless we're doing something that that lack of valuation of ourselves just for being.
Yeah that I mean that resonates so strongly and so
¶ What Stress Is Really Doing to Your Brain and Body
many of us are constantly challenged by it. Walk us through what's actually happening to the brain when we stress ourselves physically or get close to burnout. What's actually happening to us that we don't see the invisible effects. We know that we get tired, we get exhausted, but what's actually happening inside that we often miss well.
So stress, by the way, we Canadians can be proud of the word stress because actually was coined right here in Canada in the way that we use it today.
I don't know that, Yeah, I know a lot of people don't They was coined by another fellow Hungarian of mine called Iyano Shohan sally se l Ye, who was a physician and researcher who came to Canada in the early twentieth century just after the First World War, and he did his research on stress at University the Moreal in Montreal, and he's the one that showed in the laboratory the impact of stress on diminishing the immune system overgrowing the adrenal gland, which is a stress gland and
ulcirating the intestines. And he's the one that stress. The word stress wasn't new, but the way he used it was new. He's the one who established it internationally. And the thing about stress is it's an essential response the life challenges. If you're confronting a threat, you'd better have a stress response, which means you'll have activation of your nervous system in a good way and makes you more alert.
You'll have more adrenaline to give you more energy and strength to fight back, more cortasol that gives you more blood sugar to have energy for the challenge you had. In the long term, that's a positive and necessary physiological response of all animals. In the long term, those same
stress hormones. And this is something that my profession and medical profession I only which would understand and practice more is that in the long term, those same stress hormones give you high blood pressure, constrict your bloodless, high risk
of strokes and heart disease, thin your bones. You get the molt osteoporosis, suppress the immune system or can even turn it against you, so you get an autoimmune disease, make you depressed, put fat on your belt so that you're more a risk of heart disease, turn on genes that can cause cancer, turns off genes that can protect
you against cancer, and cause inflammation in nobody. So this is what we all bring on ourselves, and people don't realize how because they've taken on these driven values of this culture, they're actually literally makes in themselves sick. And sometimes it takes an illness to wake people up. And I don't recommend that way you're waking up, but my god,
it works that way very often. One of the Greek playwrights, Eschylus wrote in a play called Agamemnon, written twenty four hundred years ago, and he said that the way that the gods created us human beings, that we have to suffer into truth. You have to have pain wake us up to reality. And unfortunately, too often it's the stresses that we impose on ourselves that then create pain, illness, dysfunction, and that then wake us up that maybe the way I'm living isn't the way I'm meant to live. But
I hate I hate, I don't hate it. I regret that that's how people have to wake up, but it often is certainly I have to be dragged, kicking and screaming to the truth. I don't grab it here there automatically.
¶ Saying "No" Is Essential for Your Wellbeing
If someone's sitting there right now and wondering gabble, I notice stress early. I can see it's getting worse. What do I do? Where do I start? What should I be thinking about doing?
Changing? Shifting? If I want to walk out of here tonight, and I want.
To really prioritize this because I don't want to end up with that long laundry list of pains in my life?
What should I do? What would you say?
Well, read my books? But well, I actually, actually I did mention the book I wrote called When the Body Says No, which is the whole point is that when you don't say no, the body will say it for you in a form of illness. In my most recent book that we've discussed before, the myth Normal, there's actually a whole chapter on this. And when I say this, this simple question to the inquiry that you just made for that person, I would say, we're in your life.
Are you're not saying no? And by that I mean it's a nod that wants to be sad, but you're not saying it. Because you're afraid of how the world will perceive you. You're afraid that people will not like you, You're afraid that people might be disappointed in you. Where is there no that your organism wants to say but you're not saying it? Start with that, where this week did I'm not saying no? Where today that I'm not
saying no? And that usually happens in two arenas of life, in personal relationships, it happens all the time in personal relationships and then work where there's a no that wants to be said but you're not saying it. Again to you that to know that you're not saying is going to be a source of stress for you. So that's the first question. Other questions follow, but that's the first one, Where am I not saying no?
That's a great first question. Yeah, everyone resonated with that. That idea of where am I not saying no? That resonates so strongly with me because I think you're spot on. We all we were talking about that in the first half. We're talking about that inner voice that if you just sit and listen to it, But we're moving so fast, we're so busy, that that no can be really quiet, and it's like this little whisper that's barely getting.
Well, that's small still voice that the Bible talks about.
Right.
And there's a related question as well, which comes later in the same exercise. You might say, which is where am I not saying yes? There were times in my life where I had certain creative verges or desires, but I was too busy not saying no that there was no space for me to say yes to what I wanted to say yes to. So those two questions where am I not saying no? Excuse me, I just came back from a twelve these speaking trips, so my voice is saying no. You know, yeah, I like to see
you at the end of this trip. But those two questions, those two little words yes and no, they're crucial in people's lives. They're small little words in every language. They're very short little words. You know German, nine, Hungarian, nom, Russian yet you know French No, really short little words, but they're just decisive in people lives. And it's very interesting those of you that have been parents, what is the word that your kids start saying it? One and
a half no, put your shoes on. No, And you think as a matter of fact, I had a friend I've told this story before. I had a friend called Harold who had all called Ben, and we were medical residents at the same time. This is decades ago, it's like forty seven years ago. And Harold the father sister his son Ben, who is two years old. Ben, do you want an apple? And Ben said no, I want an apple. And what that's about is the is nature putting a barrier for the child behind which he can
develop his own self. And before your yeses meaning anything, you have to be able to say no. And in this society we call that inner stupidity. We call that that terrible toos when it's perfectly natural. So we start
¶ The Power of Asking Yourself Honest Questions
with that word and then we stifle the inm people and at age forty five, they don't know how to say no.
It's so interesting because I feel like our mind convinces us, I don't know if you're like this as well.
Our mind convinces us that I can't say no, yeah.
Like, oh my god, I just couldn't, Like if I gabble, if I started doing that, my life would just fall apart. I can't do it, like it's not possible. And our mind says, oh no, and I can't say yes to this because so we almost kind of fool ourselves.
Well, we do. And the Buddha said twenty five hundred years ago in so many almost, in so many words, that with our mind, as you create the world. Now, if you've if your mind lives in the world where you're saying no threatens you, then you're not going to say no no. What the Buddha didn't say is that, which is more modern psychology, is that before they our
minds create the world, the world creates our minds. So if you grew up in a family where you know wasn't respected, where it was seen as a sign of disrespect, disobedience something to be suppressed or punished, and your acceptance dependent on your acquiescence, then you will forget how to say no in order to protect yourself. So it starts off as an adaptation. Sometimes when I give my lectures,
I play a song by Elvis Presley. Did you see that wonderful documentary by Pressley about Presley called The Return of the King?
I haven't seen that one, but okay.
It's wonderful. He goes through this phase where he sings terrible songs where he gives upon his incredible charismatic energy and talent and just becomes a puppet in the hands of his manager. And then he does this comeback circuit and he shows up on stage dressed like a god in leather clothing, just the most beautiful man on earth, and he sings his raw, raucous, rebald, wonderful rock and roll and he is fully himself. But then he gave that up and he sings this song called any Way
You want Me, That's the way I'll be. I'll be strong as a mountain or weak as a willow tree. I'll be anything that you want me to be. And that's how he ended up living his life. He ended up dying very young in very tragic circumstances. He's somebody who's raw genius was of world significance, and his energy
¶ How to Listen to Your Gut Again
was unbelievable and he gave it all up. Yeah, it's uh, and he paid a heavy price.
Yeah, those stories and when we have hindsight, can be so powerful for us. Yeah, even if we're not living that life, whatever it may be, they're so powerful for us to look back on and tonight, I wanted to make this an extremely special experience because I want you to know just how deeply grateful I am that you're here today. And I've asked doctor Gabo as my first guest if he was comfortable leading and guiding an individual who wanted to go through his compassionate inquiry personally in
this seat up here tonight. And so if there's anyone who's going through something, feels like they've been held back, feel like they've been challenged, who wants to before we take questions, would like to go through a process in front of the audience, he'd happily walk you through. So if you want to, just raise your hands and I'll have a look around.
Well, thanks for coming up. I hope you're not nervous. There's only a thousand stranger and thousands of strangers watching you. What would you like to talk about?
I'm on your chapter on intunement attunemant, and I guess I would love to hear it from your point of view, because I think I'm really trying as of this week to stop trying to explain myself and rEFInd my instinct and listen to my gut, and I would just stop trying to be seen, stop trying to explain myself. Is something I'm really working on right now and something I want to pass on to my children and would really
love to see how that starts. And I think you guys kind of gave a really good intro to that today.
All right, thank you. So are you concerned about if you don't figure this out, that might affect your children somehow?
Yeah?
Okay, Well let's start with the beginning. How old are your kids? You said one on three? Yes, And how old were you when your mother began to work on herself?
That's a tough question.
Well it was the answer probably, Now, okay, what would it have meant for you if your mother had begun to work on herself when you were one years old?
It made a big difference, so.
Um, you would know who you were. Yes, you've already given that gift to your children. Notice that, Okay, because you've already begun that work, you've already began to answer those questions, ask those questions, so you've got nothing to worry about. That's the first point, Okay. The second point is, who's the one who's even asking that question? Who's the one that notices that sometimes you don't follow your gut,
that sometimes you don't listen to your heart. Who's the one in you that notices that?
Me?
Yeah? So you're already here, you say, I'm trying to be myself. You don't have to try anything. It's already here. You have to pay more attention to it. Not that part of you that sees and asks. Can you check in with that in your body? What does that feel like in your body?
Peace?
Yeah? Peace? But you said it with the kind of a scrunched up face. Peace. Just checking again. I'm not criticizing you. I'm just noticing, like you're not quite ready to believe yourself. So checking again that party that notices and is committing committed to being you and is committed to helping your children be themselves? How does that part feel like inside you?
Confidence?
Thank you? Not noticed? How you said that with absolute confidence? What else do you need to know? Is there anything else you need to know? I'm asking you?
So?
How do you just be confident?
You just did it? You know what you do? You check in with your body. This thing that I'm doing is called compassionate inquiry. It's the therapeutic method that I've held to develop, and we teach it internationally online. You can look it up on nine if you want to. But it's based on the fundamental belief that there's nothing wrong with anybody to start with, that everything, for example, you were disconnecting from your gut feelings was an adaptation.
But that the tooth is inside you, and by asking the right questions, the tooth will emerge. It's as simple as that. And I think the audience has been witnessing that tooth emerging from you very easily sense unless you're pretending, which I don't believe you are. Okay, So just keep asking yourself. Where am I not saying?
No?
Today? If I didn't pay attention to my gut feelings, not judge yourself for it. I didn't, you know, screw it up again? But huh, I noticed I didn't pay attention to my good feeling today in that situation. I wonder why not? What did I believe at the time. So just keep asking yourself, just keep showing up for yourself, which is what you're already doing. So I'm telling you you're on the right track already, far more than I was at your age. By the way. Okay, thank you, You're very welcome. Thanks.
¶ A Live Compassionate Inquiry Session
That's I really love that method, and I hope as you were listening, you were practicing it on yourself. Like I right, because as I was listening in there was a real sense of just how we constantly think we're not on the path.
Yeah, we constantly think we're not doing the work.
We constantly think that there's something wrong with us and something broken. And you were just saying, actually, that is the challenge that you know.
Yeah, yeah, And I'm saying that whether for you or for me or anybody in this audience, whatever you think is wrong with you, at some point served the purpose. So for Christina, at some point disconnected from her gut feelings, served the purpose of being accepted by the people that she had to be accepted by. It wasn't a mistake,
it wasn't the moral failure. It was an adaptation. The problem is that the zerally adaptations then becoming ingrained, and that which was helpful in one situation becomes a limitation in another situation. But asking herself the right questions will
get us back to source. If I may mention, I'm wearing this bracelet here and I was given this in Haida Guai, which is people in British gon't me know that it's a beautiful set of islands in the north of our province where indigenous people have lit for some like ten or twelve doosand years, and then it was colonized and they were treated terribly. And I gave a trauma workshop up there a year and a half ago, and an elderly woman came up to me, and I've
told this story before. She was so ashamed of herself because she forgot her native tribal national language. And I said, well, what happened to you? And I was giving this bracelet at that workshop, and what happen? She went to Resi Residential School, where indigenous people had to surrender their children to the state and to the church, and she made the mistake of speaking her native tongue, at which point they took a stake and they beat her. Wow, her
forgetting her language at that point saved her life. And then she was ashamed. I didn't fight back. I said, okay, you were five years old. Could you escape?
No?
Could you ask for help?
No?
What would happen if you fought back? They might have killed me. So not fighting back, what she's judging herself as cowardice was actually her organism's wisdom. To save her life. And what I'm saying is that all these things in ourselves that's an extreme example, but all these things in ourselves that we beray ourselves for, judge ourselves for, criticize ourselves for they began as adaptations, need to be very kind to ourselves. And that's why I'm saying compassionate inquiry.
And there's a spiritual teacher who says that only when compassion is present will people allow themselves to see the truth. Well, that compassion needs to be extended to ourselves and then we can extend it to others as well.
¶ Your Healing Is Helping Your Children
It's so yeah, it's so powerful for me to hear that from you, because I think we're so good at saying oh god, the last three years, we're just a waste of time. But now I figured it out. Yeah, you know, all that job that I was in ten years ago, I just I should have left it earlier.
You know, that relationship we're so good at and as you said, and just saying oh, that was a waste of time, and it's almost like, oh no, no, no, it wasn't ideal, it wasn't help, it wasn't easy, it wasn't comfortable, It wasn't nice.
But.
It's aided you, it's helped you, it served you, and you're so right that.
Well, you know what the great German philosopher nietzschee he said ones that we I'm fair phrasing him, but he said, we talked about these dead ends that we went down. He said, they're they're no dead ends. We just found out that that wasn't the way to go, so we
didn't waste any time. Thomas Edison said he was once asked, what is it what did it feel like to have failed one thousand and nine and ninety nine times to build a light bulb until you finally got it, and he said, I didn't fail one thousand and nine and nine times to build a light bulb. I found out that there was one thousand and nine or ninety nine ames not to build a light bulb. And so much for our dead ends and our mistakes and all these things.
Do that, you know, we have to do it to find out to find out a reality, that's all.
Yeah.
I wanted to give you all an opportunity this evening
¶ Trusting the Wisdom Already Inside You
to ask questions to doctor Gable Matte, as we have him here for the last few moments. If you would like to ask a question. I'm going to come out into the audience and hand you a mic. So raise your hands and I'm going to come and find you. So, yeah, keep them race.
I can see you even as an adult in my experience of working with many different people in marketing and business, and when you say no to someone right away, whether you have a reason to, people abruptly shut down. They don't hear what comes after the no. So what I've been doing with my children, I'm also a school counselor, so I talk about diplomatically saying no, saying like, do just that pause moment for you to share your no without saying no right away.
What are your thoughts on that?
Well?
Eckart Toole, who's another Vancouver based teacher, internationally very well known, I'm sure very well known to this audience. He talks about a high quality no. So there is that's kind of an automatic, resentful, reactive no, which doesn't get across, it just creates more resistance. Or there's a high quality no where you're really honoring yourself and you're not making
the other person wrong. You're just saying no. That does not work for me, and I will not do that and if you can't accept that, it's not my problem. I don't know if that answers your question, but that's what comes up for me. And by the way, I thought,
¶ Your Coping Mechanisms Aren't Failures
I heard you say that you had cancer at some point. Well, in my view not that's one of your body's way of saying no is through illness, you know, and I've seen that all the time.
So my question is, as an Indigenous person who's had family that I went to residential school. As I get more serious to my partner we're talking about children, how do I know if I'm healed enough cannot pass.
On that trauma.
Well, some friends of mine who made a film about my work called The Wisdom of Trauma, or just releasing a film this month. It's called The Eternal Song, and it's about indigenous wisdom around the world and what they and they came to Hidaguai, they came to Northern Britshcondia, Africa, South America, Australia and New Zealand. They spoke everywhere to indigenous people, and the Eternal Song, the universal message everywhere is about the importance of learning from the heart and
unity with nature, unity with the whole world. And when I speak in indigenous communities here in Canada. What I stress is that your own traditions that they try to they try to kill in you. And you know, one Canadian politician said about the residential schools that the intention
is to drive the Indian out of the Indian. So when you ask me hard or not to pass it on to your kids, I say, first of all, as I've said before, working on your own trauma, but also as much as possible, connect with that deep wisdom and your own traditions that would be so official, not just for your people, but for the whole society. And I think it's one of the tragedies of modern civilization. I've
just did it speaking to in Australia. In Australia, they've been indigenous people for sixty thousand years, a continuous culture for sixty thousand years. Canada is not two hundred years old here. Do you think in sixty thousand years that might have learned a few things? Do you think in sixty thousand years there over there or your people here might have learned a few things that would be worthwhile
for the rest of us to learn. So what I'm saying, respectfully in response to your question is deal with your traumas working through, but also go back to your own wisdom, because there's so much there that is healing. The unity, the chanting, the drumming, the dancing, the sun dancing, the cedar brushing, the what do you call the smoke that you a certain plant? You know that the sweat largest
¶ Turning Past Mistakes Into Lessons
There's so much there. So combine modern trauma work with your own traditions, and I think you'll have the perfect brew. That's my best advice to you. Thank you.
So I'm just wondering how, relating actually to your previous conversation, how does one balances the desire to self improve and self acceptance.
You see some kind of a contradiction between what you call self improvement and self acceptance. Can you see it? Tell me a bit more about that. What is the contradiction that you're perceiving there?
The way I see it is.
For you to want to improve in the first place, you might see maybe yourself as not enough in some situation or facets.
And that's true. If you working on self improvement, you're making some kind of an accusation against yourself. But ah, but if you just put the two together as how can I reach my full potential, and I shoul yourself that question, then there's no contradiction. How can I reach my full potential? And what is keeping me for my full potential? There's no accusation in that, there's no self judgment in that, there's no self rejection in that. It's
just as how can I reach my full potential? And that is a lifelong process, but it's a beautiful one
¶ Balancing Self-Improvement and Self-Acceptance
and there's no contradiction in it. I hope that answers your question.
Thank you so much.
Hi, I've been on a similar journey Kinnel as Jay Shatty, I grew into wanting to help people since a really
young age. I've always wanted to just be there for my friends, for my family, and I think one of the things that I've been that have limited me a bit is just feeling too young to help people, to give guidance or to you know, just and yeah, I recently started a YouTube channel, and like I was saying, I feel like there's just a lot of things for me to still learn, and I feel sometimes too young to be spreading out whatever it is that I know.
And like what we were talking about earlier, like feeling like I'm gonna be judged or be looked at as like, what do you know? You know, but I'm twenty two years old, so I do feel really really young still, and yeah, and so I guess just my question would be, how do I how do I, I guess, tap into that wisdom that I have without feeling like it's not enough.
What I heard you say is that you feel that you're too young, and you have a fear that other people would judge you as too immature, as just not ready to make a contribution. That's what I heard you say. Okay, Now, I can think of lots of people at age twenty two who were recognized geniuses by the time they were twenty two. Mozart was one of them.
You know, he was.
Composing stuff when he was eleven years old, you know, So that ages got nothing to do with it. That's the first point. Second point is when you say I feel I'm too young, that's not a feeling. Feelings are I'm tired, I'm hungry, I'm sad, I'm angry. Those are feelings. I am too young is not a feeling, it's a belief. Okay, can you see the distinction. Okay, if a friend of yours, Like I aged twenty two, I was at university and
I was writing columns for the student newspaper. Would you have come to see Would you have come to me and say gob or you're just twenty two, you're too young to write anything? Would you have said that to me? How come you wouldn't have said that?
Okay?
I think, well, one of the I think one of the things that I see is that, like we were talking about earlier, too, I.
Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait wait, I'm just asking a simple question. You're twenty two and you're saying yourself, I'm too young. But you would not said that to me at age twenty two. I didn't have YouTube. There wasn't YouTube then, what there was a newspaper that I wrote for. Why would you have not said to me? God? Are you too young to do this? How come.
Because you're not me?
Oh so there's different rules for you and me? Is that right?
No?
But I think I would just automatically think that you're good.
Well, here's what I'm thinking. Are you willing to apply the same rules to both of us? Yeah, then just apply the same rule to yourself. As a matter of fact, Even if a friend of yours who's your age, said Hey, I got this idea of a YouTube channel and make a contribution and express myself. And when what you said to them, Hey you're too young. Okay, So again, notice what I referred to before as the lack of self compassion, and just notice it now. Don't judge yourself lacking self compassion.
Just notice it and then make an effort to treat yourself the way that you treat me or anybody else, and you'll be just fine. Now, you know what, people may judge you. That's totally true, that made true, that may be true. So what what's the headline? Human beings judges other human beings. People judge me all the time. I mean, just go to the YouTube channels where you know all this stuff of mine and lots of wonderful comments. But some people say this guy bores me to death.
And one of them, actually I love this one. Today. It was on a political issue that obviously this person didn't agree with me, but they said gobl obviously as dementia. Okay, so what okay?
Thank you so much, Gabor.
You have been such a joy and such a treat to have my first ever live interview for the podcast we've ever done, to do it in Vancouver, to do it with you, someone that I genuinely learned so much from every time you speak, every time you share, someone that I'm so.
Grateful to call a friend.
We've meditated together, We've had plenty of conversations together, and I want to ask you one last question before I.
But before you do, let me just also say that it's a real on a pleasure for me to be invited by you, to speak with your audience and to be the first one on this tour to be a guinea pig for you.
¶ The Question That Can Change Your Life
We've all been guinea pigs tonight. We're in it together.
But I want to end with one last question I wanted to ask you, which is, if there's one thought you'd love for people to discuss as they left today, something that they could talk to on the way home with their friend, that they came with, the partner, the family member, and if they came alone, something they can start a conversation tomorrow at work, at home.
What would you encourage them.
To Well, I'll tell you what comes up right away from me is ask yourself this question. What is true for me? What is true for me? Ask yourself that question, and keep asking that question, keep asking that all your life. That's what comes up what.
Is true for me? I love it, Doctor Gable, matter everyone, thank you.
If you love this episode, you'll love my interview with doctor Gable Matte on understanding your trauma and how to heal emotional wounds to start moving on from the past.
A therapist one said to me that if your parents didn't not hold you, you developed the mind you hold yourself with. It's a fate of pain and it's designed to keep you from experiencing pain.