One of the questions that reading Kafka has brought up in my mind is: How much pain are we causing others by trying to carry their burden? How much of the help I’m providing to others is really in the long run taking away their potential blessings?
One thing since reading the transformation from Kafka that has stayed on my mind recently, and then all of a sudden, you see the patterns. Everywhere. And you recollect old stories through that pattern. And through that lens, is this idea of how much pain are we causing others, but trying to carry their burden.
[00:00:25]How much of us trying to help by fixing other people’s problems? By offering advice solutions by stepping in and taking over by assuming responsibility by
[00:00:40]inferring and injecting ourselves into situations. How much of that? I am helping someone. Is truly, I am taking away this person’s potential blessing, right? If you think about every burden, being a blessing in disguise, how much is us solving other people’s problems, truly just robbing people of their own life journey and of their potential blessings in life.
[00:01:07]And, I, I don’t think this is that revolutionary of a thought or concept, but it’s sometimes interesting to observe in how prevalent it is everywhere. And in family just two days ago was having a conversation. With one of my brothers that is going through divorce. And he was saying how his ex-wife is having an interaction or a new relationship with somebody that he thinks is going to be very harmful.
[00:01:36]And he suspects, this is going to be a friendship or relationship that will. Take advantage of his ex-wife and she’s going to be poor and in a worst position afterwards, because of it, he sees that the dynamic in his eyes is not good and it was telling me how that worries him and how he’s wondering, how to step into it and all that.
[00:01:58] And I asked him, How come that you think your ex-wife isn’t seeing this and is seeking out this kind of person in her life. And then he went on to describe to me this 30 year pattern that he observed, that he always was covering up for. Like he was the person in the household and the family that was making sure that these, the bad consequences wouldn’t happen.
[00:02:28] Or friends would not take advantage of his ex-wife and their family, because he would step in and say, stop it and make sure it, it, make sure they’re protected. And so he said, well, this is not a new thing. She’s always been this way, but she always had it me too. And so kind of like, heroic way.
[00:02:46] I was always around as a guardian angel. Now that I’m gone, I see her fully exposed and alone. And I, and I asked him, don’t you think it would be great for her? She’s like a 45 year old woman or whatever, like she’s not a small girl or something, don’t you think it’d be amazing for her to learn, to take care of herself and to become strong and not be taken advantage of by others.
[00:03:11] And he said, of course, and then. He himself knew how to continue this line of thinking and said, well, if I step in, she can’t really learn it. I said maybe, maybe not, who knows, maybe stepping in would be good. I don’t know what the right thing to do, but it’s, if you step in, she will, it’s less likely she will learn that she hasn’t learned it by you stepping in for 30 years.
[00:03:33] And also who knows, maybe if you hadn’t stepped in as early on and she had. Self the pain of being taken advantage of, or having heartbreak or having these negative situations, maybe that pain would have caused her to mature or to change or to evolve something that she was never able to do because you didn’t allow it.
[00:03:55]And this is not the way we think about it. We think about it as like, we are helping these people we love, and we’re always responsible for stepping in and. Stopping catastrophe from happening, but maybe what we’re doing, maybe all we’re doing is we’re robbing the people. We love the most, have a chance to grow and to go on their own path.
[00:04:16] Like we’re jumping in the middle of their own journey and their own path. And we stop them from continuing. We push them off their own road into some shortcut or something else. Who’s to say, and there’s a, there’s an arrogance, there’s an insecurity. There’s a immaturity in thinking we can solve other people’s problems, even understand if the pain that somebody might have to go through would not transform them into this incredible improved person and being in a huge, invaluable gift to their life.
[00:04:50]It’s hard to see in the moment, what is good and what is bad and stopping everything bad from happening, the bad things that happen are really amazing feedback, right?
[00:04:58]And we had this conversation yesterday with my mother. My mother has an older brother he’s now in his seventies. He, and my mom were incredibly close, loved each other.
[00:05:09] Very, very deeply were like inseparable that people would call them twins. Although he’s like one year older than my mom who called them twins. They loved each other so much that we’re each other’s best friends today at this for, since childhood all the way up to they were in their fifties. So for 50 years, best friends, incredible siblings today.
[00:05:33] My uncle and my mom are not speaking on speaking terms. My uncle doesn’t want to talk to my mother anymore. He hasn’t talked to us, in, in many, many years, doesn’t want to have to do anything with us. Doesn’t talk to one of his child, is still married, but doesn’t talk to his wife. He’s in strange.
[00:05:51] With everyone in his family and his friends, it’s like an bitter resentful guy that tells everything, anybody that will listen to it, how his whole family wronged him. And everybody’s terrible. We would just bad mouth, his children, his wife, his sister, his parents, everyone to the fucking post-match to anybody that will listen.
[00:06:14]And what happened. My mom brought this up yesterday because my uncle’s wife called her and told her about kind of them having all these problems and him being very terrible to her. And my mom was very compassionately listening and trying to offer some help and advice. Then my mother was saying, can I do this?
[00:06:30] I’ve tried so many things. What can I do to change the situation? I probably can’t do anything. And I asked her, maybe you did too much. Maybe you all did too much for too long. And by the time you all decided you can’t keep doing this anymore, more, his world collapsed because his back behavior didn’t stop in his fifties.
[00:06:53] He was that way, his whole life, but everybody in the family was buffering. His behavior was tampering with it, stepping in, excusing it, apologizing for it. Enduring it taking it. And step-by-step over the years as children became adults is my, my only reason that my mom and he are not on speaking terms is that he started having problems with us as children and with some of the things his parents did.
[00:07:20] And my mom eventually was like, no, I don’t think you’re right. I think these people have also a fair point and he got so mad at her that he’s not speaking to her anymore because she didn’t agree with him. Eventually as the family grew. People stopped started saying, fuck you, no, we’re not taking this anymore.
[00:07:38] In his world. Everything was perfect. He was always perfect. And all of a sudden, everybody turned around and decided to be despicable and terrible to him and is in the right to hate everyone. Right? He has not heard that story. That if you meet an asshole in the morning, you might’ve met an asshole, but if you meet an asshole in the morning and evening and the afternoon at night, you’re the asshole.
[00:07:59]And so now he lives and he’s, uh, he has a great heart. I love my uncle. I know he has a good heart. He’s not a bad person in terms of his heart and his intentions, but he’s a terrible person in terms of his actions and thoughts. And I can’t have him in my life cause I don’t want to deal with all this shit, but what a cute to me the first time yesterday as I was talking to my mom is that this behavior did not start.
[00:08:24]When the problem started and maybe all these people that loved him that were buffering him. My mom was always his translator apologist, the person that was calming him down, the person that was telling other people what he really meant. And so they shouldn’t be angry with him that maybe didn’t way more harm than good.
[00:08:44] Maybe in the short term would have been painful for him to go through some of these arguments and fights himself and disappointments and rejections. But look at what you got now. Yeah. She enabled him to be an asshole for a really long time until it’s too late to change almost. Yeah. And then my mom says, you know what you’re you’re right.
[00:09:04] But I just worry about the people he’s hurting today that cannot leave any more like his wife, for instance, my, my aunt and I said she could have left. For 40 years of marriage, because she was always unhappy. She never decided to leave. She also chose him. He was that way. When they met, he chose her, they created this together.
[00:09:28] She’s not the victim, many, many times she said, this sucks. I want to leave. She would make a big deal out of it. And she would stay and not change herself and not change him. Just endure it in complaint. Exactly. And so there are no victim, like everybody is a victim and everybody is the, the Carpentaria person to blame here.
[00:09:54] And then something else popped up. For me as I was talking to my mom, because in certain situations like the situation with my uncle or the situation that my brother was describing, because I mean, I’m close to these people, but I was still at least one foot away from it to have some perspective. And also honestly, since reading Cafcass transformation, this whole theme of sacrifice for family helping others, what is really help and what isn’t.
[00:10:23] Who’s the victim and who’s the perpetrator or the, the, the aggressor or the bat, the bad guy, the good guy. Like it’s been on my mind, because again, in my reading of the book, Gregory, the main character who turns into a bug is the one that wants to carry the burden of everybody, that family in be good and do good for them.
[00:10:46]But once he turns into a bug and he can do nothing for them anymore, other than make them discuss it with him and make them feel angry at him. Once he’s in that position where he can’t offer anything anymore, they all have to step up. And all of a sudden the parents that were too old and weak to have a job, both have jobs.
[00:11:03] And the father was a weakling and old and had lost all this confidence, got more confidence. And the sister that was so tiny in his. Words that you thought she’s like 12, all of a sudden had a job too. And was this young lady that was about to get married by the end. And they transformed and became better and stronger people and family through the chair, the tragedy of Gregory turning into fucking bub and dying, and the alternative would have been him slaving away at all these jobs.
[00:11:38] To pay for all the debts of his parents that were just sitting around all day long, couldn’t do anything. Apparently they had a cook that are made, they were living way above their means, and he was sacrificing his entire life to provide for all of that. And he had even the dreams of doing even more shitty work to save even more money, to send his daughter to his sister, to some like special school for, special musical school, because she was into the violin.
[00:12:06] You would have sacrificed his entire life to provide for these people that he loved and to help them carry their burdens. And who’s to say that he would have done anything good for them. It didn’t seem that anyone in that family was happy while he was doing all that. Now they were not happy. When he turned into a buck, they actually became much unhappier way unhappier at first.
[00:12:30] As they were going through the tragedy as they had to start carrying their own burdens and the burden of him. But at the end of that, they were transformed into much stronger and happier people. Right? Every one of us is gets, gets handed a mixed bag of shit. We’re born. Part of it is just sheer luck, timing place, right?
[00:12:53] Place, time, location, location, location. Where in the world are you born? What place, what time then with your family, what are your genetics? The genetic lottery ticket that you got handed. And then what will be the first formative years of your life, your upbringing, how stressful will be the life of your parents or not stressful?
[00:13:15] How present will they be? How loving or not loving, how traumatized are they? Whatever it is in the first couple of years, you’ll be handed a bag of goods. Some things will be gifts in form of strengths, in form of, things that you learn, things that you experienced that are just positive. And useful.
[00:13:36] And a bunch of the things that you’re handed are shortcomings, burdens, a weakness, a disease, a lack of talent and insecurity a personality trait. That’s not good inexperience early in life. That wasn’t good. Those all these little burdened packages that all have the capacity to transform it to the biggest gifts that we’re giving to you.
[00:13:59] But that only happens through your own transformation, through a lot of work and it doesn’t always happen, but it has the potential of it. When we look at people’s packages and we see the packets that are burdens, stepping into take those burdens away is not making their life easier or lighter. It robs their life of their potential, meaning of their potential blessings.
[00:14:22] And I was thinking about my children in this regard. And that was a new thought for me because my children are very blessed that, they’re healthy. They’re growing up in a very safe environment. They’re being showered with love and with attention. And part of me was always a little bit nervous about this.
[00:14:44] I’ve let that nervousness go eventually. But in the first three years of their lives, I had a fear that they would grow up too entitled and they will, they would turn soft because I grew up very differently. Right. I, I didn’t even grow up very differently. I had different experiences in my youth that I didn’t wish on them, but was nervous that I suspected they would not get exposure to.
[00:15:11]And to me that meant that if they grew up. Too happy if things are always too easy, this doesn’t make for strong people. Eventually I let that go as an irrational fear, but in my interaction with my own ex-wife
[00:15:27]I often times would observe. Certain patterns she has or shortcomings, I would observe her blessings, like some of her strengths or some of the gifts that she gives our children that I would have never given them. I really honor. And I’m so grateful for, but then there’s many other things that was part of the reason why we separate it, where there are things that I dislike that I judge, and I see her.
[00:15:56]Live it in front of my children. And in some ways also teaching some of these things to my children, right. If independently, if it’s good or bad university just, it triggers me for me. I see something that is hurting my children or has the potential to hurt them. Long-term and I couldn’t help, but always feel some pain around this and some anger around this.
[00:16:21] And maybe even the very kind of masculine thought process of thinking she’s messing up all these things. And then I later we’ll have to fix them. Will later have to have the stress to try to help to fix these bad habits with my children. So they don’t have a hard life. And just yesterday I had a moment of realization where I was saying well, who says that they’re number one.
[00:16:47] Let’s put aside the question, am I even right? That these things are bad habits of that for the children. I’m not a good or bad ways of living or thinking. Let’s put that aside. Let’s just assume for a moment that I’m right. Even when I, if I’m right, who says that that’s bad, maybe that’s part of the packages that they’re getting from their mother.
[00:17:08] And there’s a bunch of things they’re getting from me that I’m not even aware of that are not amazing. I try my best, but I’m sure there’s some things that will be. Challenging for them. Those are theirs to use, to transform if they want and choosing Cantu. It’s not me to Parry them as burdens. It’s also not me to be upset at these things like this irrational idea that you could raise children and all they have in their back is just positive.
[00:17:38] Packages only like good quote unquote things, nothing. That’s a burden that would make for a very weak person that has no strength to carry anything in their life. And to transform through that struggle into a strong, personal, a more fulfilled person. And for the first time I saw some of these things that I disliked, but the way my children were learning in a young age or certain behaviors that were exposed to the young age, And it was thinking of them.
[00:18:05] Well, maybe they’re blessings in disguise. Maybe they’re their little challenges. It’s not my challenge. Like their mom and me, we both do our best. We give them a pretty amazing life. We teach them so much. We show them in love and we really have the best of intentions, but we’re not perfect. And even if we were perfect, maybe that will be even the biggest burden to carry.
[00:18:24] Imagine having parents that are perfect, like truly not just externally, not just appealing. Perfect. The truly perfect saints. But you are a normal human being child. That seems like pretty huge burden to me, like to have parents that are actual perfection it doesn’t matter what your parents do, no matter what they do.
[00:18:43] I mean, obviously are extremes, but no matter what they do, no matter how great they are, some of them behavior will add to the wages you’re carrying in life. And you’ll have to deal with that weight as a person. And it’s such as your parents. Your friends, the school, the environment society at large is placing certain things into your bag.
[00:19:04]You’ll have to deal with it. And it’s true for all of us. That’s stepping in and trying to edit that what is in the bag and what isn’t such a foolish childish action like, and, I can’t, I can’t, I want my children to have the burdens that I had, and I know how to overcome isn’t that convenient. No.
[00:19:23] I want them to be a bit poor. I want them to, go to a shitty school where they have lots of fights and they have struggles. I want them to be a little bit of an outcast because I’m like these things suck, but they make for really strong people because they made me strong. I chose to use these things to become strong.
[00:19:41] They’re not exclusive things that make for strength. Right.
[00:19:43]And I don’t know, it was in a weird way. Just thinking about it differently, lifted a burden. Now off my shoulders, right. This is my little, my little challenge that I had to, and I still have to transform through. Not be stressed about the burdens. I see my children carry either genetically. I never cared because none of them, both of them were very gifted in many ways, but maybe through behavior of their parents or their loved ones or the uncles or school or the school system or society or whatever, it is not try to edit that naturally.
[00:20:23] Not trying to step in, not overly worry, trusting that. Each and every one of us is strong enough and blessed enough to tackle these burdens and to transform through them and with them. And also we’re all free enough to choose not to. And either one is fine. Yeah. Also, I also think sometimes the. best thing that you can do to help your kids deal with some, issue that they might be having is to take one of your own issues and figure out, okay, how can I work on this?
[00:20:56]what can I do to get better at this? What can I do to overcome this, right? how can I become a more full person in this area of my life then? kids observe so much anyway, they have so fine tuned parent in tennis. Right. but just being open with them about that too, and being like, you know what, actually, I don’t know if you notice this, but for me it’s really difficult to XYZ.
[00:21:19] Right. And I’m trying to get back. And then over time when they see that within a year, you actually change in that regard. That’s so. powerful for kids when they see that in front of their eyes, that, with their parents, especially when they’re young. Right. That I think they, at least I saw that with Anna.
[00:21:35]she is, she’s integrating that into the way she thinks about things. What, what I do. That’s all you need to know. Like, I love you and watch what I do. That’s all you need to know and all you need to do to raise children. Right. What would I do? I remember when I was 17, 17, 18, my first older brother I’ve told her brothers first one had a child and then my other brother had a child.
[00:21:59] And for between 17 to 30, when I became a parent, I always maintained that I’ll write a. Parenting book, that’s going to be one page. It’s basically just going to say, figure out your own life, deal with your own shit. Just love them. But then every day, work on your own issues, honestly, and heartened and everything else will take care of itself.
[00:22:20] My brother would laugh at me and be like, yeah, let’s wait until you have children. And this is one of those things. There have been many things that my mother was telling me when I was younger. Once you’re older, you’ll see this differently. And I thought F you mom, I’m smart. I don’t have to be older to know this.
[00:22:34]And I was certainly wrong, or at least I don’t see it as strong. I’m like, what did I know with 14? Talking to a 30 year old, 35 year old mother of three sons, that’s a widow that has seen so much at what does she did? I know, I knew nothing. I’d done nothing. So in many ways I’ve changed my mind, but this is one of the areas where I thought, no, I was spot on through 17, 18.
[00:22:55] This is, this is the truth. I just deal with your own life, figure out your own stuff. And everything else will fall into place. And that is logically, logically, this was still true a week ago for me, but emotionally when I would watch. Some behavior, like of their mother, something she was doing in a way too, that caused a lot of frustration.
[00:23:21] And then I saw them repeating it. And then they’re all frustrated. There’s all this drama for no reason whatsoever. Then it was very hard for me to. To emotionally be relaxed and not feel tension and a little bit of resentment. Look what they’re doing. Why is she doing this? Why is she teaching them this pattern right now?
[00:23:41] We’ll see if next week when this time happens, if I’ll be a bit more relaxed, but I don’t know yesterday we were big family event. Lots of people there. I was talking to my mom about all this, and it’s sort of something felt different inside of me that there was a click at a moment where I thought, wait a second.
[00:23:59]These things. Why did I feel so much tension? Why do I, am I afraid of them learning these things wrongly or getting taught these things or being burdened by these bad behaviors or patterns or thoughts or habits. And I thought it does. Yeah, because there’s an insecurity. What will this do to them? And will this be bad for them?
[00:24:21] And what will this do to a lot lives or will I be able to change that then I’m like, well, It’s not my job to change anything. And those are their blessings. There’s a reason why this is happening. And they also, his children, they have both of us as examples and they can pick and choose which burdens they’re going to take on and how they’re going to interpret the burdens that they’re taking on.
[00:24:41] I mean, I see this even with my two brothers, lately we’ve talked. Incredible. We’ve talked way more about our childhood than we ever used to. And we’ve talked about a mother a bit more honesty and more adult and maturely than we have in the past. In the past, it was kind of a very sterilized, simplified version of history.
[00:25:00] My mom is a Saint. She was perfect. She did her best. We had a bit of a tough childhood, but that’s what happened. She always loved us. And that was amazing. It was sort of the story. And just in the past two, three years, have we started to also have some conversations and going, wow. Mom also had these big flaws.
[00:25:19]She made these, or she behaved in these ways that we just didn’t see, we edited all this out. We didn’t experience it as directly that way. Huh? Isn’t that interesting? I never thought, I never thought of a mom in this way or that way. And so we had more of these conversations and even then you realize sometimes like with my middle brother and me, when we talked the other day, he would interpret some of her behavior.
[00:25:45]And make it a burden for him, say, mom always did this and this make me suffer. And this is why I’m having problem XYZ. And when I was talking to him about that particular behavior, I said, do you know what? I also observed that behavior? And it also affected me in this way, but I interpreted it so differently.
[00:26:06] And so in my world, This was something where I learned a great deal of what I want and don’t want. And I only saw a look at this behavior is like her best effort. And he saw this as something she did actively to remove love from him or to make him weaker. And he still has some resentment. In an, in him for that, he still has some struggle around it.
[00:26:27] And so even as children with the same parents in the same situations, we will pick and choose which burdens we’ll take on, how will we interpret these behaviors? And we’ll probably pick and choose if we want to talk spiritually and philosophically, we’re choosing the ones that are meant for us for whatever reason.
[00:26:46] So who am I to be? Stepping in and trying to edit or, or see these challenges are good. These difficult life experiences are good, but these ones are bad. We’ll step in and we’ll feel resentful or angry or fearful around these. And I will feel relaxed around that. Those it’s just a personal bias. It’s not up to me to say what’s going to be good or bad.
[00:27:07]So it was a nice moment. I don’t know how much it will last. Sometimes these things, there’s something inside of you that clicks and it maintains and sustains. Sometimes you have this big moment, it clicks. And the week later you realize it did not stick, the light went on, but it’s off again. So we’ll have to wait and see, but I have thought an incredible amount.
[00:27:32] More than I’ve done in a long time about the concept of quote unquote, helping others, solving other people’s problems, stepping into do good for others and not to say university, that’s always the wrong thing to do, but you have to be very careful and much more humble about what is actual truly help.
[00:27:57] And where do you harm more than you help? No matter what your intentions are. Yeah. How you’re just perpetuating the problem and becoming like a, how do you call these driving wheel? So they depend on it, right? Yeah. I mean, even with my middle brother, we had talked about this. Awhile back where he and my oldest brother always their entire life, they had these conflicts of these problems.
[00:28:19] And I was always the judge, always the jury, always the Buffalo, the negotiator, the mediator between the two, every other week, they would call me one is angry with the one. The other is angry with the other. Then I would talk them both down and I would, decide how to move forward and bring them to the table.
[00:28:37]And then I stopped doing that. And at first things got a lot worse and then things started to get a lot better until just months ago where my middle brother was telling me something. He was planning to say to my oldest brother, And I thought I was thinking, this is going to end in a catastrophe. And I wanted to tell him why it’s wrong and how to do it better.
[00:29:01] And while our brother will interpret this really, really badly. And then I thought, who the fuck am I to a really know if it’s going to go down that way and to be stepping these two grown men. And if my brother, if maybe they need to have a huge explosive argument to clear the air, maybe something transformational will happen.
[00:29:21] What am I to step in and stop this again? Let them do their thing. And also nobody asked me what my opinion is. He just told me what he’s about to do. I don’t have to tell him what my opinion is. And it was the first time that I thought something like this and didn’t say it to my brother. And then a day later, he calls me two days later and he tells me, you know what, after we taught at a shitty feeling and I was.
[00:29:46] Wondering, why do I feel this way? And I carried that feeling around as sit down and I meditated on it and boom, all of a sudden I realized I still have all these angry that comes from this place. And, and then he figured it all out. And when you went to talk to my brother, they had an incredible conversation that brought them much, much closer.
[00:30:03] And I thought if I had stepped in and said, my piece, this transformation would have never happened. Also this maturation would have never happened because my brother arrived at some of some similar conclusions that I did, but he arrived there on his own. I didn’t hand it to him. So when he had these insights, they’re truly transformative.
[00:30:24] And when he talked to my brother and it was a beautiful conversation with a. We’re able to resolve some of the grief they had between the two of them. It was his and their victory. It was their moment. It was not their moment that their brother gave them that it was the wisdom and knowledge and leadership of Steli that brought this to us.
[00:30:45] And so it was different. And I was so grateful. I was so happy and glad that I didn’t step in. It was half a moment of presence and awareness in the little bit of luck. Like I, I. Acknowledged that I could have easily spoken and ruined it as I’ve done many times in the past. Yeah. It’s like, you’re in a new town and then you want to go to whatever place a right.
[00:31:08] And you use Google maps to go there and you just follow Google maps. and you can do it like 20 times, but you don’t really still know the city, but if you figure out like this is not the greatest example, but I was thinking, where’s he going with this? I’m curious.
[00:31:22]Um, you can be so reliant on the, on, Google maps versus yeah. It’s uh, there was a point I want to make, but I don’t know. I get it. I get it. I could inter you know, relying on others and never paying attention versus you get a couple of times lost. You find your way around and now, your way around in the city, right?
[00:31:41] Yeah, exactly. And there’s so much to it. There’s a such a big difference if help, like maybe giving people an impulse or stimulating them when they ask. It’s one thing to put something on the table and then people could choose if you want a ticket and run with it versus where you put it in their hands, or when you go and run for them, with it such a big difference.
[00:32:05] And when you run for them and with it, they never learn. They never grow. They might not make the mistake. They might not have the failure in the short term, but they’ll never have the success. And you only postponing the failure to later. Probably bigger, right? If I solve all your problems, you might be ascending to more and more and more and more responsibility.
[00:32:26] And then when I stopped solving your problems, now you’ve the consequences of your failures have grown so much because you’ve only had success. Right. And so more and more resources of swarm to you. If I had let you feel when it was the whole point of learning, when you make these small mistakes, is that you can internalize learn and grow when it’s not life or death.
[00:32:47] When it’s not someone you mentor, when your decisions are not affecting millions of people or whatever, right. Have these huge consequences. But if I don’t allow you to fail when they’re consequences are small, eventually you’ll start feeling later in life. When the consequences are much larger. You won’t understand what the hell happened.
[00:33:04]It’s a confusing reality to have the worst thing that happens now to me and, I’m still transforming and learning this myself, but in the last year or so, I would say about 60, 70% of the time when I talked to, People I manage, or when I talk to people I mentor or even friends, I am much better at just potentially putting a few things on the table.
[00:33:33] And then when they take them and run with them, they don’t even remember it was me and they just, it’s just completely their success. And I applaud that once in a while, I’m going to be honest, there have been moments where it was a bit ego hurt where people would claim that as their big victory. And I was like, well, I was kind of instrumental.
[00:33:52] I put this little thing on the table that you took in one week, but then I guess I’m just a human. And then I thought, what the fuck are? You didn’t want it to be your victory? You should applaud this person. And I’m like, yeah, but why don’t they give me some credit? Okay. Shut up. But I’ll tell you what’s and this just happened, like, once very rarely, a few times maybe, and I don’t know why that would trigger me but many times I’d be so happy and proud.
[00:34:18] To see people grow and evolve and it’s all their growth. It’s their journey. Right? The worst thing that would have maybe three out of 10 times, I would forget myself and active and act out an old version of myself and be much more hands-on take over much more forceful. And then the worst thing that could happen in the feedback loop, the most soul crushing thing.
[00:34:40] Is when people would tell me Steli I just wanted to let you know you were right again, after you talk to me, I realize Steli is just always right. Just do what he at. Right. That would be like something that back in the day would have, when I was younger would have blown up my ego and make me really proud and happy, totally was deflating me last year.
[00:35:03] When I would hear that I knew I fucked up. It’s like, I fucked up when somebody tells me that I was right again and everything I said was right. And they just did the thing that I said, I’m like, ah, I fucked up. This is not good.
[00:35:19]So baby steps, it’s a learning process. the best way to help others obviously is always to help our selves first. But even how we judge what is bad and good for somebody else can be so misleading can be so confused. This really bad thing that has happened to them might be one of the most important moments of their lives.
[00:35:38] Right? You and I, we both know when I think about the worst moments of my life. I’m incredibly grateful for every single one of them, because they all played a role, enormous part in who I am and who I became as a person. I don’t want to miss any of these things. They sucked, but they were important blessings.
[00:35:55]And I know for you, it’s the same way. So when I see somebody else, somebody, I love a friend, find a neighbor or an employee, a partner who’s going through really difficult time. Of course I should be there and ready to help as a friend. But. This urge to step in, take over or fix, maybe does way more harm than it does good.