First of all: My friend is not an insecure loser. He’s an amazing person that I enjoy to spend time with and learn from. But he sometimes thinks that others think of him as a loser. And let’s be honest: Deep down, most of us are scared on some level that we’re losers.
I’m very good at exuding confidence. I can walk into a room and people think I own it. But that’s not always how I feel inside. And after spending a week with this dear friend in Greece, I discovered new layers of my own self-esteem.
TRANSCRIPT:
Sunday morning, my friend, who was visiting and I were planning to do an hour of yoga. Each of us is doing this 40 day yoga program where you do an hour of yoga. That’s very kind of meditative, much more spiritual, not as stretchy, more long haul. We will do that. And then we would go and rent some electronic bikes and do a whole outdoorsy day goat up into the mountains, into the woods and, and explore what’s outside of the city of Thessaloniki. Now, before waking up on Sunday morning, the couple of days prior, we’ve had a re we had a recurring theme in our conversation. Which had a lot to do with insecurity, not just insecurity, actually with self-worth right. The concept of struggling. [00:01:00] With feeling confident and having healthy self-esteem maybe self-esteem is the, the perfect word to describe this. And we went, yeah. Round around, around this theme in multiple and very different in various ways. One conversation we had was about. You know, him enjoying being around me and catching that kind of confident clarity vibe and, and getting some of that for himself, feeling more confident himself around me, feeling more. Aggressive around me, more confident, more, you know, in his, as we say, in German, sometimes in his juice, right. zine it to be in your own juice. Um, and another conversation we had was about a conflict he had with some of our common friends where he. He’s about to [00:02:00] embark in a new business venture.
And he pinged some really good friends to ask them to lend him money. And the exchange he had with those people was very long and drawn out first. They said, well, send us a business plan. Then they told him all, we didn’t have time to look at the business plan. And then eventually when he got them on the phone, they had all kinds of critical questions. Eventually, they sort of told him that. Yeah. Well, we’re not sure. Or maybe you should just find a better paying job and save some money and do this in a different way. He felt hurt. By that it was a mixture of being hurt, being disappointed, but also thinking, oh, now I know where I stand, where, how these people see me now.
I know how they see me. Right. They don’t believe in me. They think I’m not going to do it. And instead of just telling me, they dragged me along for two, three weeks to this result, there was another conversation that just popped in my [00:03:00] mind where he told me about one day where. Uh, another person that we both know that we both don’t like though his wife had tried to set him up with a girl and set up a date for him.
Oh my God. I know the perfect girl for you. I’m going to set up a date for you. You should go out with her. And he went out to the date and he said, the moment I saw that woman, I knew how these two people that set me up. See. It was, it was a great clarifying moment. And then I thought I should have everyone.
I know, tell me what woman he or she thinks would be a perfect match just to know what they think of me truly. Right. So again, that theme of this is how people truly see me. Wow. This is how low of an opinion people have on me. And we had a, a. Dinner conversation prior to a Sunday morning yoga session, where we talked [00:04:00] about that interaction of him, the friends that didn’t want to lend him money for his new business venture.
And I’d asked him, I said, why do you think they struggled for so long? And they w why do you think it was such a painful process? Because it sounds like they, you feel like they knew from the get, go that the answer was, no, we don’t want to give you money. Why did they go through all that process to give you the no.
What do you think? And it was, he was thinking and thinking it was like, I don’t know. Maybe they want it more information. Maybe they wanted more, this, maybe they want it more that I go, why would they want all that? Why wouldn’t they feel okay about just saying. The first time you said, I think I might want to lend some money saying, oh, no, forget about it.
There’s no, I’m not giving you money. Like, why didn’t they do that? And then we went around a couple of circles again, and he ended up at that place of saying, well, I think that they just didn’t feel comfortable saying that. [00:05:00] And I went, okay, why, what, what was uncomfortable? It’s like, I dunno, maybe. Conflict with me.
Okay. What else could there be? Maybe they didn’t want to disappoint me. What else? Maybe they were afraid of how I would respond. I was like, Ooh, could you imagine that? Have you ever gone around and stretched out your answer and pretend that you need it more, this or more? That, because you’re just afraid to say no to somebody and he goes, yeah, I’ve done that many times.
When could you imagine that? That was the reason they did that as well. And he said, yeah, probably. And then we talked a little bit about this, you know, the, I think in the beginning of the conversation, his framing was all about, they see me as a failure. They don’t believe in me. They made me jump through hoops just to say no.
And then it turned around and all our entire conversation. Evolved around the concept of being afraid to say the [00:06:00] truth, being afraid to hurt other people’s feelings, being afraid to be seen as a bad person, a bad friend, you know, somebody that doesn’t believe in others, all that like it flipped around from there, them being so arrogantly, looking down and laughing upon him, to them being really, really afraid and maybe too sensitive, too.
Speak their truth. And these are people. These are really good friends that are incredible truth seekers in some areas, eh, you know, and we’re, I think most of the people that are friends with them, I inspired how honest they are in some areas of life. But then in other areas of life they’re running away from the truth is if their life would depend on it, because they’re really, really scared of anything.
That’s a conflict inducing situation. Um, this reminds me of a conversation. I had a long time ago with Heaton, where I was, you know, I think buffer had just started showing all their revenue tricks and profit metrics. [00:07:00] And I was asking Heaton, Heaton, radical transparency, should every company do this?
Should we at close to this? What about this transparency thing? Isn’t that magical? Maybe there and Heaton interrupts me and says, yeah, I mean, I am an advisor of that company. I know all the metrics. I know them really, really well. I’ve been with them from day one. They are very, very, very transparent in many areas, but they’re not transparent in all.
Nobody is. Do you know that product roadmap? Do you know this dude? He asked me like seven questions. Like, no, no, no, no. He’s like, see, they are transparent about some areas.
So we talked about honesty and being afraid of hurting other people’s feelings, being afraid of being perceived as harsh or hard or rejecting and all that stuff. And then in that conversation, Went back to one conflict that I had with this friend. We only had one conflict in [00:08:00] all the years. We know each other,
and I always remembered that little bit, that small conflict. His lack of confidence. It was just him being insecure in a, in a certain way. And I never reflected back on that until the dinner and that conversation that we had about honesty and insecurity and this, that, and the other.
And here’s what had happened years ago, three years ago, four years ago, this friend of ours, the friend that was visiting me, had a podcast and he wanted to interview money. Interview me on his podcast. His podcast originally started as a podcast. He was recording with people in the car, right. It was like drive with so-and-so and he would drive in the car and talk to people.
But then it evolved to being just a virtual podcast where we just interview people through zoom or whatever. I had not known that transition from car. And he was pinging me while I was traveling [00:09:00] and asking me, when can we find the time to record a podcast? And one day I tell him, you know what, I’m arriving at this airport.
That’s like half an hour, an hour away from you on that date. Do you want to just come pick me up and drive me home and then we’ll do the podcast. Right? I thought on the way to my home, we’ll record the podcast. And he pings me an hour later and says, well, you know, this makes me feel a little bit like I’m a total loser. That I have to do you favors to earn the right to record a podcast? I, I, I’m more than happy if you don’t have a way to get home, to come and pick you up and drive you home. But I’d really like to do the podcast on its own merit and this and that and the other. And I, and I was shocked, shocked, surprised by that message.
And it was like, what the fuck is he talking about? So I’m calling him and I go, what are you talking about, dude? He said, well, you know, this makes me really feel shit. Like I’m such a loser. My podcast is so bad that I have to do some work for you [00:10:00] to earn that. I’m like, wait a second.
Yes. It’s a recurring theme in his life.
So, and I, and I went back then in the conversation, I went, wait a second, you’re doing a podcast in the car. I was just trying to find time for it. So I thought, Hey, I have to drive for an hour anyways. If we, if we drive together, we’ll record it there. Why should we drive circles in the city? If you could just drive me somewhere.
Oh, wait, I don’t do the podcasts in the car anymore. And I go, wow. Would I know, I didn’t know this. And then he went, oh my God. Yeah. How should you know this? I always expect everybody to know everything. This is my fault. Sorry. This was my insecurity. Yada, yada yada. And we, we hung up and everything. Quote unquote was all right, but you know what?
Wasn’t all right. How I was feeling towards him and how he was feeling towards me. I, after that phone call, he is the very next thought that I had was I have to hang out less with a sky. [00:11:00] I can’t handle this, this level of insecurity. Is creating drama and I don’t want drama in my life. And I, I want to be able to freely act and talk without being afraid of hurting feelings and everything I say.
So I kept, I started keeping a distance towards him all over the last year or so we’ve gotten closer again, um, through a variety of reasons and circumstances. Invited him to come and spend a week with me in facade, Nikki, a big, nice Airbnb. I’m like, come here. You can work from here. I work from here. We can help each other out a little bit.
We can hang out. And during this week before, before you arrived, there was a little bit of a moment where I thought, Ooh, I hope that this is going to be okay because I’ve never spent a whole week alone with him. And what if this insecurity thing pops up? And what if everything I do makes him feel insecure like a loser. I don’t want this heavy energy. I just want like I’m, I’m in the [00:12:00] business. I’m open for business for light hearted, easy energy in my life right now. I don’t need, I don’t need heaviness. And we had a great week together. We had a really nice week and at the very beginning of the week, I told him, listen, I wouldn’t have invited you if I didn’t think you’re an awesome person.
You have great energy. You’re creative. The stuff you’re doing is awesome. Like please chill. Then the next. The second thing I told him because I was in conflict. I typically invite all my. Most of my very close friends, not all, but most of them I’m in a financially much better position than they are. And I am, I don’t know.
Maybe it’s the way I was raised. I feel the urge to invite, to pay for things, to invite people to things, especially if it’s somebody that’s like a, an entrepreneur that is, you know, broke. I’ve been there before that doesn’t have that much money. I, you know, I, I want to, I want to invite him, but I also know.
I make people sometimes uncomfortable with this. I’ve learned this over the years, so I’m [00:13:00] more careful and thoughtful around it. So the very next thing I told him was, listen, I’ve invited you here. So, you know, uh, tell me, how do you want to handle money? Because I would just default to in paying for everything we can.
Is that okay with you? Do you want to pay for half? Like how do we do this in a way that’s okay for you? And he said, you know what, thank you so much for bringing this up. I was really nervous about this and conflicted, how to handle it. Here’s what I’d like to do. I can’t pay for everything. I don’t know where we’re going to be at what we’re going to be. But let’s do this any time that I want to pay. I’ll tell you I’m T I’m paying this bill and then don’t argue with me, just allow me to do it. And I’ll just decide based on the pace of how things are. I said, all right. That’s totally cool. But he paid for a lot of things, way more than I had thought when he suggested this, but that’s what he wanted.
And I gave him that space to feel good instead of. Steamrolling over him. Like I used to do coming back to the dinner conversation, [00:14:00] set it at night, I’m jumping on timelines here, but this is the way it is for today. And we talk about these friends that rejected him and how he felt. And then we talked about, and we remembered, I remembered our little conflict that was about insecurity and him feeling like I thought he was a, nothing, and had to drive me around to earn the podcasts. And I told him and he was like, yeah, that was all my fault. It was just, I was in such a bad place. I was so insecure. It, nothing to do with you. And I stopped him in it for the first time I realized this myself in that moment and I go, dude, you know, what’s crazy. Yeah. It might’ve been on your end. It might’ve been insecurity, interpreting my behavior.
And what I told you in a very specific way. Not the way I intended it. Right. You misinterpreted my actions in my suggestion, but. Here’s how this reflects back on me. When we hung up and we had clarified the situation, I didn’t feel [00:15:00] okay. I wasn’t clean and clear. I felt afraid of you. I thought I need to keep the sky away from me because I cannot handle his insecurity.
What is that? I’m T I’m going to tell you what it is, because I just realized that that was my fear of being seen as arrogant. I’ve had this for a long time. Like I, I was terrified of having you around and maybe an acting freely speaking freely, behaving freely without holding myself back without filtering.
Wait a sec. Will this make. Insecure, could this action be interpreted as arrogant? I didn’t want to have to do that work. And if I didn’t do that work, I was afraid that I would do things and say things that would make you feel insecure and make you feel like, I think I’m above you. I am arrogant. I placed myself higher than you.
And because I’m afraid of people seeing me this way. [00:16:00] And I truly was for most of my life afraid of people. It’s hard to believe if you, if you, if you pay attention to how I walk into rooms and how I talk, it’s very hard to believe, but dude, Rameen, you know, this a little bit. It has taken me the last three years for three to four years to even realize.
That I come across as hyper confident and slightly arrogant and always cool that I built up that kind of facade and that external persona. And that look, I didn’t know for most of my life that that’s the exterior that I have crafted that I had sculpted myself. I didn’t know. It makes perfect sense that I did that, but I didn’t know.
And so it was walking into rooms. Feeling, you know, sensitive and self-doubting, but I, if I looked at myself from the corner of the room, I looked like the most arrogant asshole that was like, so self centered and self [00:17:00] secure and, you know, egocentric that thought that everybody’s, you know, nothing against the amazingness of how cool and awesome I am.
And there’s something to that. I do have confidence. I’m not going to pretend that I’m always insecure because. I am a great way, greater deal than I expose. And I didn’t know this a couple of years ago. I just come to learn this myself and it took me a while to understand. I have a deep seated fear of people see me as arrogant.
Although a lot of things that I do come across as, you know, you know, there’s a fine line between arrogant and confident, right. But it’s, um, oscillating between those two worlds, probably. So I told him, you know, this dance, we danced, we danced together. Your part was to interpret my words and my actions. Demeaning to you. And then my response to your insecurity was to be afraid of [00:18:00] having you around me because I, I, I wasn’t able and willing and company of dealing with somebody else’s insecurity while staying in my security. Why can’t I like if I’m really, truly secure in myself, somebody reacts insecurely towards me, that doesn’t affect me.
That doesn’t bother me, but it always did. It’s not just him many, many times when I was aware that maybe what I’ll just say could make, even with you, I’ve done this many times with you in the past. When I thought, if I say this or show this to remain, it might make him insecure. It might make him feel less than.
I would either hold back and not say it, or I would say it an edited down. I would fuck around with it because I was not comfortable with the idea, the idea in my head, in my body, that I would say something that would make you feel bad that would make you feel less than me, was [00:19:00] incredibly comfortable with that idea. And at that dinner, et cetera, tonight, I realized, wow, I always thought this was just his issue. But he was on the flip side of that coin was my part in it. And I responded really strongly without noticing it. I just thought, I thought I’m so cool. I have no emotions towards this person’s insecurity. I will just cut him out from my life because I cannot have insecurity around me what this is a pretty harsh and extreme action to take for somebody that is emotionally, untouched and unfazed by something. Finally we get to Sunday morning. Okay. Sunday morning, I wake up and I want to go out to do my yoga routine. This is an hour of yoga. You start the program by, by the first couple of times, Charlie, our yoga teacher [00:20:00] is guiding us through the yoga routine that she designs for you. Life and synchronously through a zoom call.
Then she records the whole thing edited down, sent you the audio, and then you listen to the audio and follow along the instructions. And eventually after 40 days, at some point you follow you do that practice without listening to somebody, no music, no person. You do the practice completely within yourself. My friends. And I, he, a couple of times during the week of doing this yoga routine on his own, in his own room and I am doing it in my own room, brought up, Hey, do you also feel this way when you do it in the morning where you’re really exhausted, you don’t want to do it and it’s. And I always had to tell her, no, I kind of love it.
I actually really, really love it. And I don’t have that big of a struggle with it right now. Then a few times he said, oh, how do you do this position at that position? And I went, I don’t have these positions. He’s like, what position do you have? And when I don’t [00:21:00] know this, and that is like, you have these positions, I don’t have these positions.
And again, it was a little bit of a comparing and instantly just within. 30 seconds of conversation. It was clear to both of us that I have so much more challenging positions than he’s gotten. Right. And that maybe he has a bit of more of a struggle in the morning to do it meat, which instantly means made me go.
I know I cannot talk about yoga with this friend because I don’t want to make him feel, I feel bad about this Sunday morning, right? That, oh, a couple of days before. I had talked to him five days before about Charlio yoga teacher suggesting to me that I should start doing the practice on my own without listening.
Without listening to the audio anymore. And that I’d been terrified by that idea, excited, but also terrified. I was like, it’s so comfortable, comforting that I just follow along and do whatever the voice tells me. I don’t have to decide [00:22:00] how much longer I have to hold the position. I don’t have to decide if I’m motivated to keep going.
I just do whatever the voice tells me. I’m like, I can’t even imagine doing this without the voice, so much more work. And he was telling me, yes, I feel the same way. Dah, dah. I don’t know when I’m going to do the transition. I talk with Charlie. She calls me to talk about this and she gave me some simple words of encouragement.
She said, Hey, you can do the, you can do this on your own whenever you want. After 40 days of the three months, there’s no hurry. And I said, yeah, how do I do the transition? How do I know how long some positions I feel like you’re doing 20 deep breaths. Sometimes it’s 15. I am not exactly sure. How do I do all this?
And she said something that I’ve told too many people in many different areas in other contexts as in life. So it clicked immediately for me. She was like, it doesn’t really matter. You’re going to struggle. Once you start doing the practice on your own, you’re going to forget some positions. You’re going to do some shorter, some longer.
It’s going to just be a little bit of an awkward duckling transition, [00:23:00] and that’s fine. And there’s nothing you can can do to bypass that. And you can write down the positions if you need some guidance on a piece of paper somewhere, but at the end of the day, it doesn’t fucking matter. But what matters is. Once you start doing it on your own. No music, no voice. You actually are a yoga practitioner because then you’re with yourself, you hear your thoughts, you feel your body. There’s nothing else. And that’s a deeply spiritual practice. It’s different. If you go to a yoga studio, it’s full of people and somebody guiding you through it in this cool music and sense everybody.
That’s really nice. And you want to, might want to do that on top of your personal practice, but your personal practice is different. And so. Whenever you’re going to decide to do it. It’s going to suck either way. So just, you know, whenever you feel ready, you do it. And after that call, I was like, huh, this isn’t a big deal.
I didn’t know this concept. Uh, okay. And then two days later I woke up one morning and I thought, today’s the day I’m doing this without anything. So I did it without any audio, one hour [00:24:00] of yoga on my own. And it was a fucking amazing, it was incredible. It was perfection. And I did it the next day, the next day.
And then it’s Sunday. Sunday morning, I get up and I want to do my yoga practice. I go out on the balcony, this balconies perfection for yoga, sea view, everything beautiful. And I already see my friend out there doing yoga. With playing out the, the audio voice of our yoga teacher, loud through the positions. And I
with playing or without playing.
with playing, playing the audio of the yoga teacher, and I think, ah, fuck this, he’s already out there. I go back inside and I go into my little room and I go, well, I’ll just do the yoga session in my room. And as I put out the mat and everything, my body goes. Really, I start feeling really unhappy. My mind is saying, this is no [00:25:00] problem. I can do yoga anywhere, but my body instantly feels depleted and kind of depressed and sad. And I stopped myself and I go, why, why would I do it in this shitty little room instead of on this beautiful mungus balcony?
Just do it next to him. And I think, well, if I go outside, He will a see that I do the yoga session without audio, that I’m already, again, kind of a step ahead. And B, he will see all the difficult positions that there’s going to be a comparison struggle, and it’s going to be fueling the fire of insecurity, which is something I don’t want to do. And I go, God, damn it. What do I do? I want to do yoga on the balcony and I don’t want to wait a whole hour. Then I remembered she had texted me when he started yoga and I go, let me see how much maybe he’s done in 10, 15 minutes. And I can just wait for him to be done. And then I go out and I [00:26:00] looked at the time and it’s been 20 minutes.
I’m like, fuck, I don’t want to wait for 40 minutes. I don’t want to do yoga in my own room. And then it clicked in my mind and I went. Shut the fuck up and just go out and do yoga and don’t worry about other people. He can handle it. You do worry about yourself. You’re not doing anything bad. Just do your fucking thing and let him do his thing, who the fuck knows.
So go outside and I do my yoga practice next to him. Now that yoga session was. On a new level of spiritual enlightenment. It was an intense yoga session at the beginning because not only was I doing it outside and this like, it’s a very noisy environment, but I’m listening to my own yoga teacher, giving yoga instructions, but not that paying attention to the yoga instructions of what the person next to me. And, you know, I had all kinds of insights. I’m like, wow. You know, we have been [00:27:00] conditioned to childhood to be responsive, to listen, to respond to our environment, to act on external stimulus. And this has only exponentially grown with technology and there’s a real counter conditioning that needs to happen every single day.
Not just once to live a life where you can be unresponsive to learn, to be unresponsive. Probably one of the most holy skills you can hone today and in the future of your life, learning to be selectively, unresponsive to external stimulus. And you can’t just say you want to do it, or have an enlightened moment at a meditation session that you go, ah, I need to respond less to the external stimulus of the world.
It is a conditioning, a practice you have to do every day. Because every day, the entire world is conspired against that and is trying to stimulate you to respond. So as I’m going through all these things on my own, I [00:28:00] do this yoga session. And then at some point it clicks, it’s like a download from the morphogenetic field.
It’s like an instant insight and aha moment or Eureka moment where realized. The reason I’m so terrified at making others insecure with my competence and my confidence and my arrogance and my, whatever, the reason I’m so terrified of making people I value feel bad because of the way I hold space or enter space is because the insecure part in me, the part of me that is. Maybe insecure in certain areas, maybe a little self doubting that part cannot handle the confidence and competence of other people. When I’m in my own insecurity, I feel less when I see people that are more or that are greater or that I [00:29:00] had, my insecurity is overwhelmed by the competence and confidence and arrogance of others.
That’s why, when I think. See that externally in somebody else. I’m terrified of hurting that person because I am being heard when I’m in my insecure self, in the insecure parts of myself. And I realized in that moment, the only reason that is true is because. That part of me feels disconnected. We only can get, we only can feel insecure in relation to another human when we feel disconnected from humanity.
And from that other person, when we feel connected. It is inspiring. It is encouraging isn’t it is enlivening because we’re all one. And we believe if this person can do it, I can do it. If this person is doing it, it is benefiting me and everybody else. If this person is doing it, it is good for them. And I love them and I want them to be [00:30:00] flourishing when we.
Confidence and arrogance and, and competence in the world. And we are connected to the world. We feel connected as part of the whole part of the group. Part of that person’s life impacted by everything that everybody else is accomplishing. We are lifted up by that only when we cut ourselves off from people from humanity, from friends, from family members, from competitors, from whoever.
Do we look at that and it makes us feel less. Look, this person is high. Look at how much lower I am. This I am less, I am less worth. I’m less worthy. I’m value, less or less valuable. And I was thinking, or I had this, this, this sensation that made me feel, it’s not a coincidence that I invited him to spend a week with me. And [00:31:00] that he and I both benefited tremendously from this week of togetherness because he was benefiting from my confidence. And I was benefiting from his struggle at times because I was also seeing the beauty of it. I was seeing the strength of it. I was looking at him for the first time ever and thinking he’s a fucking dope person and he’s so strong. I always saw him as somebody that has a lot to offer, but I never saw the strength in him.
I always saw him as maybe a little, a little bit of a softie, a little bit of a gentle soul. That’s nice, but needs protection. But this week I was experiencing him totally differently. I thought, wow. Look at all. The things he has attempted all the failures. He’s had all the missteps and look at him. He’s still going.
He’s not quitting. He’s still believing you still trying. And yet, does he have [00:32:00] dark moments? Does he have moments of doubt? Does he have moments of sensitivity where think feels overwhelmed or where other people make him feel bad or less, or he makes himself feel that way through other people? Yes, he does.
But even that. Requires tremendous strength and strength that I never had in my sensitive parts. I didn’t have the strength to feel enough, to fully feel my insecurity around people that made me feel less. I always blurted it out. I was suppressed it. I was pushed it away. I was moved my focus to something else because I was terrified of feeling that way for long.
I was terrified of accepting that feeling and. Experiencing this friend and thinking the courage it takes to feel this badly. At times, this insecure the sensitive into it. Keep attempting things that are so difficult. So outside your comfort zone, so [00:33:00] clearly at risk of not working out and to keep exposing how you feel and who you are to the people you love without holding back.
Moving to the shadows or in hiding. I saw his tremendous strength and it inspired me. And I saw, I, I saw how much power and strength and beauty and humidity and energy he has and how much I’ve benefited from that. And I could see how he was benefiting from the flip side of that coin. Right. And so that week that we spent together oversimplifying him the insecure, sensitive creative one, and me the confident arrogant, you know, successful one or whatever, it’s, it wasn’t that easy.
But if you want it to simplify it to that, those two, the ying and the yang of that, we both. Needed each other benefited from each other. And we are each other, like we [00:34:00] are the, we reflected back parts of ourselves that are within ourselves. The only reason why he was able to say. Having your army Steli I’m instantly walking with more confidence, instantly believe more in myself.
I’m instantly more energetic. I benefit from that is not that I am robbing all of him as some external piece of metal that rubs off some other metal. And there’s the material for me on him. It’s that parts of him, the parts of him that are confident, that are cocky, that do believe that our arrogant, that are believing.
Are activated when I’m around him. Like he sees me inside of, he finds him, me inside of him or a part of him that reflects back from me. And that part of him gets activated and he goes, that’s awesome. It feels dope to be this confident. It feels dope to believe. You’re the fucking man. I love feeling this way, but he couldn’t feel that way.
If that [00:35:00] didn’t exist already inside of him, it was just something that wakes up more. When he’s around me, it’s not that he doesn’t exist. And I hand it to him as a separate thing. He attaches to him that that’s not true and vice versa in the past when he was around me at times, I liked it. And at times I disliked it because I went, Ooh, I don’t want to feel that insecure part of me.
Ooh. I don’t want to feel that part of me that feels worthless. That terrifies me. That feels makes me feel really, really bad. And I don’t want. Right. I had the weakness of running away from what he was reflecting back on me. And this week I experienced him completely differently. Step-by-step it wasn’t quite obvious to me at the beginning of the week, why we had come together.
But at the end of the week, that morning doing yoga next to him, I was like, we are one thing. And this week we’re both accepting fully of each other. And more accepting of our whole self. And so this week has been healing [00:36:00] and holy and awesome. And it’s not that we’ve been giving each other, these things through each other with being willing to see these different parts of ourselves, accept them more and realize that the, the, the part of Sally that’s insecure and feels worthless.
And the part of Steli that’s confident and cocky and beliefs, you will rule the world. They’re both one thing. And they’re both part of the same thing. That one team they’re part of one ecosystem, one organism. And when they don’t feel and relate to each other as two separate, then what one is doing is benefiting the other and it’s complimenting the other.
It’s not in conflict and polarized with each other. And so I ended the yoga session and it was amazing. And. We didn’t talk about yoga. He didn’t ask me about yoga. We went on to have a wild adventure that we’ll tell you about [00:37:00] in private, in a bit. And at the end of that wild, crazy, slightly dangerous adventurous day outside and outdoors that we have in the, in nature.
We went to dinner at night and a dinner. He said, Wasn’t the yoga session this morning out of this world, I was like, beaming. I was this, this new university. It was the best yoga session I’ve ever had. How did you feel? And I went, wow. Well, I felt the same way. I had an increase, incredible yoga session. I was high coming out of it.
It wasn’t. Yeah. Incredible. It’s like, yeah, dude. It was so dope. He’s like at first I was a little afraid. Because as you came out, I thought, fuck, I have the yoga audio playing out loud and it’s very loud. And I wonder if it’s going to distract Steli from his yoga session. But then I thought, well, he’s not saying anything.
I think he has his airports on. He probably doesn’t even hear me. So I don’t have to [00:38:00] worry about Steli. I’m just going to do my own. And so I did my own thing and he’s like, I could barely see you. I like you were gone. Everything was gone. I was just so in my own little world, He’s like, did you hear Charlie?
Was it distracting on top of your own audio? And I went, oh, I wasn’t listening to audio. I stopped listening to audio for the last couple of days. I’ve been doing it without what? That’s amazing. Oh my God. Well, didn’t you say you were scared five days ago. And I said, yeah, but then I talked to Charlie and he said this and I felt like, ah, it’s not a big deal.
And I just tried it. It was awesome. It’s like, that’s so good. All right tomorrow, I’m doing it without her for a week. I’ve been afraid and I’ve been thinking it’s actually getting annoying, listening to her, doing the thing. I’ll just try this. And if it doesn’t work, I’ll go back to Apollo. Just try it. And I thought, look at, look at both of us being afraid for each other and each other’s experience at yoga in the morning.
And look. Me telling him like [00:39:00] his response, he was genuinely excited and thrilled and inspired and encouraged by it versus being like, oh my God, I’m so worthless. I can’t do this, but you can do it. I think that people are oftentimes, I thought people would think that way, because I would think that way, although I would never accept that a part of not all parts of me, sometimes I’m super competent and hyper confident, but there is an insecure part of me that would think.
Wow, this person’s way ahead of me while this person’s more than me. And we all kind of project our own insecurities or securities onto each other. It was beautiful to see that reflection that he was afraid. He would ruin my yoga session with his audio. And here we were both not ruining anything, having amazing yoga sessions and at the end being inspired by each other rather than anything else.
Um, yeah. That week of hanging out with my insecure reflection [00:40:00] in full acceptance, open, curious, relaxed. I learned so much about myself. Uh, like you wouldn’t believe it was a really, really amazing experience to go through this.
People can handle everything. Or they really can. There’s often so much also of our own. Our own insecurity is feeding the insecurity of the other person. Like I’m insecure about being this confident around this person or about being ahead of this person. I may, my insecure part is saying, being ahead is bad, will make people feel bad that you love.
And that that insecurity is feeding into the insecurity of the other person. I’ll get to this in a bit. We went on this wild adventure with the bikes in the mountains. And, um, at one point we’re coming down a narrow road and there was a stray dog, a large stray dog. [00:41:00] And I was playing loud music through my phone while we were biking and the dog as we come around the corner and the doc sees us jumps up and gets really aggressive.
And I stop on the bike. I turn off the phone. I tell the dog, doc, this was just music, relax. I put the phone back into my pocket and I start pet like bicycling towards the dock in a calm and confident manner. And I look at the dog and the dog at first is kind of observing me, not moving. And then. Moving his tail and he starts softening in the face and I go, all right, we’re cool.
I’m cool. You’re cool. We’re cool. As I pass the dog, the dog starts following me, but in a kind of hoppity hop way where he’s like, I’m going to follow you a little bit to see what’s going on here, but in a free, it was, it went from very aggressive to kind of friendly. It was kind of cool. And then two seconds [00:42:00] later, I hear the dog barking in.
Very threatening way. And I stopped immediately in a turnaround and as see our friend off the bike and the dog in front of him and the dog is in a very aggressive posture. And I, and I think to myself, Will I have to throw a bicycle at a dog today to save a friend. Will this be something I have to experience?
I hope not. And I just look at him and I go out. They’ll figure. And my friend looks at me and looks at the dog and gets back on his bike. And the dog is just barking and barking, going closer to him, closer to him and barking. And my friend starts bicycling, awkwardly, wobbling a little bit, and the dog is very aggressively barking behind him, but eventually let him kind of pass.
The the street. And later when we’re talking about this [00:43:00] doc, our friend goes off the bike. Eventually it looks at me and goes, dude, dude, I’m going to have nightmares about this doc. I was so afraid and we talked about it and we both. Thought, you know, the difference between he’s like, I see you. I’m like, look at Steli cool, calm, collected the leader of people in dogs, just biking through it.
The dog is accepting, accepting of him. And then I come up, oh wait. And he’s like, I was driving, trying to get close to you. And the doc turned around and was sort of surprised that I was this close to it and got very mad at. But we were talking about this concept of the dog, feeling that you’re calm and confident and things.
Okay. There’s no danger. This person doesn’t want to do anything. And then the dog feeling someone’s fear and thinking something is happening here. Is he about to attack? Is he, do I have to attack? Why is there fear here? [00:44:00] Right? There’s something to be aggressive about how the animal picks up on it. It was kind of a nice little metaphor for what was happening prior.