Marty: Welcome to Not Your Typical Leadership Coaching Podcast with myself, Martin Kettlehut, and the great IFS coach, Bill Tierney. And I say that because he's been very helpful to me in the past couple of weeks with IFS coaching.

Bill: Well, thanks, Marty.

Marty: You know, some, some weeks and some days I feel great about my skill set, my ability, my bandwidth with using the IFS model as a coach.

Bill: And then there's other weeks that I start getting a little bit lost. And I think what happens, and honestly, this is one of those weeks. I don't know if my clients would tell you, Bill seems a little bit off this week, but I feel like I'm a little bit off this week and, um, and that I'm having to work a little one.

Bill: I'm having to work a little bit harder, um, to sit in my essence as coach myself, capital S Self as IFS would say coach this week. And maybe effort isn't as much the right word as awareness. I need to be a little bit more aware that something's off. And I'll give you an example. Um, today in one of my groups, I usually don't lean too heavily on exercises and content that I've created from in the past and bring into a session unless it supports whatever it is that we're talking about.

Bill: But in this particular group, there's a set of three exercises that we began to use two or three weeks ago. And each of them have been very rich. They, they're producing wonderful conversations. Um, and in between, um, weeks, I will meet one on one with an individual within the group while everyone else.

Bill: witnesses and observes and notices what's happening inside for themselves. Then two weeks later, I'll come back to, you know, the next week, then I'll come back to what we previously talked about two weeks earlier. So it's a little bit disconnected and disjointed. And I have to kind of really make sure I watch, take good notes and, and make sure I connect again to those old sessions and previous sessions and, and bring my group with me.

Bill: So all of that was happening today. And to do all that, I needed to have a part of me, that's an organizer and a timekeeper. Really very work. It was work. That part was working very hard in the session. I just had this feeling. I just had this sense and this feeling after everybody had done their check ins that people have a lot of stuff going on.

Bill: Lots of stuff was, was going on for a lot of people. This group had seven people in it, and I was beginning to move in the direction of, well, okay, it's time to do this exercise. And then something kept saying to me, yeah, but not, but no, let's, can we slow it down a little bit? Because people are talking about some real stuff here.

Bill: Let's at least acknowledge it and see what happens when we acknowledge it. So I, I did that. I said, I just want to slow down. I just want to acknowledge that, that many of you have a lot of heavy duty stuff going on right now. And while I didn't hear any specific requests for support today, um, I don't want to just, uh, not Give you an opportunity to make that request if you have one we can always go to the exercises If that's what we want to do Boy, it just opened up this wonderful discussion that that shifted that energy in me and i'm really glad I paid attention to that but felt like a Um, like pumping the brakes.

Bill: Let's pump the brakes a little bit It's some I don't know how to describe somatically what I was experiencing in my body. I just had a sense of it And it just really opened things up. There was connection and that's, I know that's what we want to talk about today. There was not flow.

Bill: There wasn't especially disconnection, but I wasn't really aligned with what was happening for my group participants until I acknowledge stuff is going on here. Let's talk about it.

Marty: Right, right.

Bill: Brilliant.

Marty: So, that's the, that seems like a evidence for the fact that, that you're on the top of your game this week.

Bill: I've been aware this week of when I've had parts that, that are activated. One of the things, and if, if, if there's a listener that's listening to me talk about parts in IFS for the first time, it might not make a whole lot of sense. So let me just slow it down a bit.

Bill: When I talk about parts, I'm talking about sub personalities, parts of myself that seem to have their own separate agendas. And when those agendas are, are tethered to an unresolved and incomplete past, that kind of gets in the way of me being able to actually be present and, and relating to the present moment as it is, rather than as it has been in the past.

Marty: And I just, just for the listeners, I just want to reframe. This isn't just about Bill. This is happening inside every human being.

Bill: Yes. That's right. That's right. I speak often about myself and my own parts, because I don't know about your parts until you tell me you have them, and then I get an opportunity to engage with them, which is what I do as an IFS coach.

Bill: As I get permission from my clients to engage with their parts and then interact with them and interact with the client so that we can build a relationship between myself and the client and between myself and the client's parts and between the client and their parts. So that we can connect all of that and actually begin to now make some progress towards healing.

Bill: So that seems to be

Marty: where we want to take this conversation. Connection is where healing and growth happen. It's when there's not connection that,

Bill: that can't happen. In fact, I was even take it a little bit further and say, it's, it's because of disconnection that we end up with being that we end up with incompletions and an unresolved past.

Bill: Still seeing in the present moment, things that look a whole lot like the past.

Marty: Right.

Bill: Parts get created because of that. And disconnection. That's right. Why don't we talk about, why don't we start by talking a little bit about what's the difference between connection and disconnection? What causes that disconnection?

Bill: What needs to be present? What needs to happen for connection to be the experience instead

Marty: of

Bill: disconnection. Okay. What causes disconnection?

Bill: What I've noticed is that when there's something that's been put in the space, that's inauthentic. There's instant disconnection, inauthenticity, instant disconnection. An example of inauthenticity would be a manipulation, a misrepresentation, an exaggeration, a discounting, an ignoring.

Bill: That's just a few of the examples.

Marty: Those are great. Yeah. What, what, and so what, what, let's give a couple of examples, like what the on the ground version of those. So what would be like, what does that actually sound like in, in a real relationship?

Bill: Uh, let's look at 1, a discounting might sound like, let's just say something.

Bill: You shared something with me that that was maybe a little scary to share with me because it makes you open and vulnerable to my judgment. You're hoping by sharing it with me that you can trust yourself In your judgment or discernment that I'm trustworthy that I can be with whatever you shared with me without without using it to hurt you Right if my response is something let's say that's sarcastic So I use what you've shared with me to kind of poke at you a little bit

Marty: Yeah,

Bill: and I hate to admit this but I got that in me I got that in me and and I am so grateful I just had a client point that out to me yesterday and I immediately saw it You Shaming part that came in me.

Bill: So I wouldn't do it anymore, but the moment I acknowledged it and told the client, I absolutely do not intend to do that. That's a part of me that I'll work with and ask to stop doing that. This part wants to try to make you laugh because it doesn't know that what's better is connection. So I apologize for that.

Marty: Yeah,

Bill: yeah, great.

Marty: Awesome. Okay. So we, you've actually now illustrated all 3 of those parts. Not only what caused the disconnection, but how to get back connected,

Bill: right? To own it, just own it. And the difficulty with that is that parts will not let me own it sometimes. And I'm not, I'm not talking about me specifically now, but me, the human base parts will not let us.

Bill: own, because then that would mean we're less than perfect. And if I have a part that's trying to represent that, Hey, I've got my stuff together here. I'm good. I've been on this healing path for 41 years. I'm good. I don't, my parts don't get activated. I'm always in self. I I'm always coming from essence.

Bill: Now that that couldn't be further from the truth, but parts of me really want to represent that. I'm, I got it. I'm good. I'm Mr. Spiritual. I'm Mr. Healed. Look at me.

Bill: When most parts get in there and try to represent, like, that's an exaggeration or a minimization right there. I don't have parts or anything that I might say that would indicate that I don't get activated by parts and I don't struggle with this anymore. Look at me. You can be like me if you do what I do.

Bill: Any of that is so condescending, so patronizing.

Marty: Yeah.

Bill: And so, and it also creates a state of hopelessness. If what Bill is representing is really the truth. If Bill doesn't get activated anymore, if Bill doesn't struggle with parts that get activated, if he's completely resolved from his past, if he's always in self, for me I'm five the client might think or the person that I'm interacting with might think I am five million miles from that I will never get there.

Bill: I'm Activated all the time. I struggle constantly. The best I can do is to pretend like I don't That's the person then. I've just basically said to them you're beyond hope You cannot be helped. If you're that far off the path, like, you cannot be helped. That's the third thing about the message I want to convey, but parts of me That want you to like me or approve of me, um, might present that I got it all together when in fact I don't.

Marty: Well, it sounds like though, these, these sorts of moments where parts get created because of the, these things you named and manipulation or ignoring or the 1, the 1 that happens when we're very young. You know, like, oh, shut up and eat your pudding or, you know, um, you know, what would you know about this?

Marty: Or, um, you know, those things that just, those are inauthenticities too, because they're, they're not recognizing the whole human being that's there. They're reducing a human being to, you know, some, something they couldn't something that person can't do or doesn't see or something. It there's an. It's inauthentic in the sense that it's not recognizing this whole person.

Marty: That's right.

Bill: That's

Marty: right.

Bill: Well, and that's always going to come from someone who is seeing themselves as less than whole, perfect and complete. Right. There's something lacking or missing in me. and that makes me feel an, an, but I don't notice that, that there's something lacking. I don't even think there's anything lacking in me maybe, but what I'm noticing is I'm feeling a discomfort.

Bill: You're experiencing something real and authentic over there and that makes me feel uncomfortable because it reminds me of that, that real and authentic thing in me that I have never come to terms with. Therefore, I have to be sarcastic. I have to discount you. I have to handle you and put you down.

Bill: Remember,

Marty: this was in my senior year in high school. To make a long story short, I showed up one morning with a hickey, but I became the victim. I, they made the guys were making fun of me. Oh, Marty's got a hickey and and I, there was a disconnect from them then. You know, and really later on, my friend Dan told me, well, we were all just jealous.

Marty: We want we wanted to get in on the kiss and, you know, you had already been kissing some girl and we did we weren't. But, but in the moment, I just felt like, oh, my God. You know, like, I have no connection to that. I've lost them now. They're making fun of me. And, and, you know, I needed, I, I became defensive and protective and yeah,

Bill: secretive and all that so much comes into play here.

Bill: You know, so in that example that you just gave, you had your experience, they were laughing, making fun of you, what they were experiencing over there was like an envy, they wanted to be able to have the experience that you were having, but the way they expressed the energy that was behind that was to poke fun at you, that, that, that landed on a, like a painful place for you.

Bill: Or else it wouldn't have been a problem. Well, it was inauthentic.

Marty: What they're actually feeling is envy. What they made me feel was less than or, or stupid or, I don't know, um, something, you know, like I, I was, I was disconnected. I was outsidered, you

Bill: know? So, I mean, how old are you when, in this story? 15, 14, 16 years old, somewhere in there?

Marty: Yeah.

Bill: Okay. All right. So how many 16 year old kids know how to be authentic in front of their peers? Not, not too many that I've run across. I certainly wasn't, I had, I don't, I didn't know how to spell authentic when I was 14 years old. I don't know what it meant or how to, how to pull it off. And even that, you know, hearing myself say that, how do you pull off authentic?

Bill: Laughable off authentic, you just show up authentically. Everything else is a performance and that's what I did at that age, 14, 15, 16 years old as I just performed in life. There's something very exciting to me and about this recognition that authentic connection is where healing and growth happen.

Marty: Yes. Yes. It seems so simple.

Bill: Why is it so hard? Wow. It seems so simple, but why is it hard? You know, in the 12 steps when I was involved in it, there was a placard up on every single room that I went into to have a meeting as, uh, that, that pointed to that, that principle It just talked about how, how challenging it can be, but, but it gets easier if you keep it simple, keep, keep it really, really simple.

Bill: Otherwise it's going to get really, really hard.

Marty: So let's move on then if you don't mind to how do we get from that in that moment. Where, you know, a part is triggered or created to the other side, back to connection and authenticity.

Bill: Yeah, right. So you're talking about, your question involves the evolution of, um, Well, let me talk about these different stages of personal development as I think of them.

Bill: Mm

Marty: hmm.

Bill: I believe that we develop as persons. Personal development occurs in this in this order, although it's not linear. It's not not especially chronological. Some of these stages overlap and some of them last throughout our lifetime. But there is. For example, stage one is, um, the experience of being whole, perfect, and complete.

Bill: It's not a concept, it's not a theory, it's an experience. Each and every one of us were born whole, perfect, and complete, but we don't experience ourselves as whole, perfect, and complete once we get an idea that we're less than that. And that's my definition of shame Is the idea that i'm less than whole perfect and complete that i'm less than who I actually am Another way to say it would be that there's something wrong with me.

Bill: Yep Yep, the moment I get that idea and attach to it the moment that idea gets traction inside of me I now have an identity for the first time and it ain't a good one. I call that stage of personal development, loss of self and the self in that title is the self that IFS talks about as who we truly, authentically are.

Bill: Mm-Hmm, , that whole perfect and completeness that of, of who we are. The loss of that, the loss of the experience of, of whole Perfect incomplete introduces. An identity that I refer to as the shame identity, the

Marty: tragedy of this, though, is that I didn't know that I just got an identity and it's attached to being, you know, called stupid, let's say,

Bill: and believing it.

Marty: And, but I don't have the, I don't know that I, I actually am whole and complete. I just have this identity

Bill: is imperfect. I would equate the experience of whole, perfect and complete as innocence.

Marty: We

Bill: lose our innocence the moment that we begin to think of ourselves as the one, as, as the cause of the pain or discomfort that cause that, that we're now experiencing that, that, that is ushered in with the idea that we're less than whole, perfect and complete.

Bill: So something happens and it hurts. Something happens and it scares me. This is,

Marty: this is the, we don't need to go into this, but maybe a footnote. This is what the Adam and Eve story is all about in the Garden of Eden loss of innocence.

Bill: That's right. That's right. That's right. Lots of purity. Lots of wholeness.

Bill: Paradise. Yeah. And it's all about perception.

Marty: Mm

Bill: hmm. It's all about perception. The same paradise that, that existed five seconds ago still exists, but we're not aware of it because we now have blinders on. And those blinders are the shame identity.

Marty: Mm hmm.

Bill: I see myself as less than whole, perfect, and complete, therefore everything I see outside of myself has changed.

Bill: The colors are darker and duller. Nothing, nothing is the same anymore. Give me a thing leaf. Yes, yes, yes, exactly. Oh my God, you've got a penis.

Bill: Okay, that's stage one. Stage one is perfection. Stage two is loss of self, which involves the formation of the shame identity and then necessarily the formation of the, of the false identity. I cannot let my shame identity hang out there and be seen by the entire world. I've got to cover it up. I've got to hide it.

Bill: I got to, got to, got to control what other people think of me and so that they don't think what I think of me. Others thought of me, what I, the way I'm now thinking about myself now that I know that I'm not whole, perfect and complete and there's something wrong with me. I'd rather be dead. I'd rather be dead.

Bill: Well, and for young children, they will be dead. They think, like, my caretakers now think less of me than I did. Now I think less of me than I did. Yeah, maybe they do. Maybe they don't think less of me. But, but the fact is something hurt, something scared me, something was painful. And I now am shaming myself.

Bill: I'm, I'm believing I'm less than whole perfect, whole perfect and complete. So stage 1 perfection stage 2 loss of self. And because now I'm, I'm operating in life as if I'm some, someone that I should be ashamed of. And pretending to be somebody in life that I can be proud of so that and hoping that the world buys my my act.

Bill: I spend years. Most of us spend years and years and years developing the act, the performance, putting on the show and convincing ourselves that we have to try to be our best selves. And we have to hide our worst selves. That is very confusing. The more effort we put into that, the further away we get from our true, our true selves.

Marty: Yeah,

Bill: what we're calling our best self there is not authentic. It's our false identity. It's polished. It's pretty. It's glamorous. It's

Marty: it or it helps us get by.

Bill: Yeah. Yeah. If I, if I'm stupid, you might see me showing up as real, real smart. If I believe that I'm stupid, I might compensate with I'm really, really smart.

Bill: That's it. But by the way, that that's an inauthenticity that people sense. We sense it in each other, but we can't put our finger on it. What's, what's going on with that guy?

Marty: Yeah. Yeah. It doesn't

Bill: feel real. I mean, he's, he's always got the answer. He's always there to help me. He's always being so nice. He's always, or she's blah, blah, blah.

Bill: So we sense it. And because we sense it, we're cautious around it. And because we're cautious around it, now there's a disconnection. Yeah. Human beings can smell inauthenticity, inauthenticity, like a dog can smell a bone from 500 miles away. At the same time, though,

Marty: we get immune to it, or I'm not sure if that's the right word, but like, we're swimming in it in a lot of our relationships and a lot of our things we read and TV.

Marty: It's just, none of it

Bill: is authentic. It's conditioning. It's what we have come to accept as that, well, this is reality. This is just the way things are.

Marty: Yeah.

Bill: Yeah. Is

Marty: there a path back to, well, we haven't done three and four yet, but is, do we get back to one at some point?

Bill: We can. Yeah. I mean, that's the goal.

Bill: That's the entire goal. And, and so once we've lost cell, we need to experience a period where we begin to stabilize. If you think about like a domestic abuse situation where a woman is being abused by a man, it can go the other way around, I know, but let's just say there's an abusive situation where one of the caretakers is abusive and the other is being abused and then can't even care for the kids.

Bill: Uh, you know, the law might come in and, and step in and say, um, we need to separate this couple. Uh, let's protect the, the victim here. That's the kids and, and often it's the woman. And, and so by separating them and, and, and, and not, and making sure that the violence ends. The woman now begins to stabilize and so do the kids.

Bill: Their lives begin to stabilize if they've got the proper resources to support them. Well, that's an example of every kind of stabilization that we need to experience. It's an extreme example, but if I see myself as As stupid and I hang around with people who reinforce that and with humiliating comments and and sarcastic and ridicule and and that sort of thing, then I've got to get to a point of stabilization.

Bill: And for me, that that happened when I got sober at the age of 27 years old and and that continued before my next stage happened 20 years later and that next stage is awakening when I begin to become awake and aware of some of reality. And then healing begins, that's the next stage, when because of there's been enough stabilization and awareness and awakening, that I can begin to heal.

Bill: Once I begin to heal, now growth and development can happen. And with enough growth and development and healing, I can return to the experience of whole, perfect, and complete.

Marty: Yeah, we have moments of it. Probably. I mean, I, I think I do, you know, like it's not all solved, but there are moments where you just feel like, ah, I'm okay.

Marty: The world is

Bill: fine. We do, we do get glimpses of that. And then when we try to chase it, when we try to, my, my wife was telling me that she went to the Van Gogh. What do they call it? The bingo show, the display,

Marty: the one that's been going around the world. It's sort of sound

Bill: around and everything.

Bill: Right? Right. I've seen, uh, I've not gone myself, but she said that she was in Seattle here a couple of years ago when she was there, she went and she said, for just this brief moment, she was in this moment, this, the state of, ah, and then she realized she was standing in someone's way. And then she realized that she lost the awe.

Bill: She moved out of their way and waited for them to be finished having the experience and then moved back into the space that she was in, making sure that nobody was around her that she might bother and waited for the awe and it didn't return. She couldn't get it back. I think we have moments like that

Marty: a

Bill: lot.

Bill: Yeah, that's that flow state that we can get back into when, when all of our defenses and all of our act, we forget, we forget that we're, we forget to act, we forget to perform and we find ourselves in an authentic state.

Marty: Well, and this is part of what I think the, the work of coaching and maybe therapy too.

Marty: I'm not sure is all about is, is getting us, you know, what are the tools that get us back there? Are you asking me? Yeah. I can also answer the question, but like, top of top of the list are things, simple things like telling the person with whom you were inauthentic that you were telling, you know, and introducing your authentic self to like, look, you know, that was really manipulative.

Marty: Manipulative of me. I'm so sorry who I really am for you is commitment to your health and welfare or something like that. Right? I love or love or admiration. Right? That's that's a very simple way to restore in a relationship is say how you were in authentic

Bill: and

Bill: that

Bill: can't happen unless you can see it.

Bill: So how do you see what you didn't see?

Bill: That's that is such a challenge. It can be especially at first.

Marty: Yeah. Well, I don't just, I'm just living from personal experience. I get, I know when it's not me. I, I've already spat it out, but I'm looking at my own communication going, look, that doesn't sit well with me. I, and sometimes I didn't, I don't even, I couldn't articulate in the moment.

Marty: Oh, I was being inauthentic. I just know that that

Bill: doesn't work for me. A lot of times in those situations, like what you're describing right now, my first impulse is to say, Oh, what did, look what, look how you made me feel. Look what you did to me to make me feel this way. Right. I'm sorry that I reacted that way, but if you hadn't done this, then I wouldn't have, you know, that's not, that's not what we're talking about here.

Bill: That's, that's actually what blocks awareness of my own. And it's more inauthenticity. Yeah, I mean, as a group, there's a gross example of, of, of inauthenticity and disconnection. Truth is, I'm having this experience over here. No matter what you might have done to poke it or prod it or activate it, it was in me and it came out because of the situation.

Bill: So if, if I can start there, start with the premise that what I experience is my responsibility, no matter what seemed to activate or, uh, yeah. Trigger this, this experience that I'm having, how I'm perceiving it. It's what I think of what's happening here. That's making me feel the way that I feel. And I may not like you very much in the moment because you made you, you were the one that provided the activation and got this thing going in me.

Bill: In my second marriage, I'd be, I'd be watching the Seahawks in my mind here was the deal. I'm a Seattle Seahawks fan. So go ahead and feel sorry for me. But in those days, back in the 90s, if I said I was a Seattle Seahawks fan, of course, you would feel sorry. We never won. We never had a winning season. It was horrible.

Bill: And yet. I, I did all that I, in my mind, I did all that I did for the family and for my wife in exchange for three hours on Sunday when I could, you know, six months out of the year when I could watch the Seahawks lose. And so they know that this was the agreement. That's no, no. So I would plot myself on the couch.

Bill: Turn on the TV between 1 and 4 on Sundays. I'm going to watch the Seahawks and anybody comes and wants my attention for anything for 5 minutes. I'm angry and the angry that I'm feeling in between 1 and 4 on Sundays. Is either because the Seahawks just messed up again, or because somebody walked into the room and wanted my attention and didn't keep the agreement that I forgot to tell them that we had.

Bill: But in my mind, it was all their fault. I wouldn't have felt that way if they hadn't walked into the room and made another demand from, from, for me, given I've given them every other minute of my week up until now. It was all up here. It was all all according to my perception my meaning making and my own manual about the way life should go Fortunately I was able to recognize that but but at that time It was very difficult to see it.

Bill: My mind went to I feel bad and it's your fault. You got to change. Yeah True healing happens when I recognize not just pretend not not just follow the formula because somebody told me to do it But when I really get That I'm feeling upset because there's something in me that needs to be healed. You just happen to be activating it.

Marty: You just

Bill: show up and poke it for me.

Marty: I lived under the impression that my dad didn't trust me with money. Didn't think I could make enough of it. Didn't think I was wise about how I spent it. When I was living in this number of years ago, I, I wanted to show that I have mastered money, right? So, I invited my parents to meet me at my time share on the big islands, right?

Marty: This will prove I've made it money wise. We were out to eat. And, you know, I was, I was coming from showing them. So I was ordering appetizer and bottle of wine and, you know, being real, real, um, generous is what I thought my dad, my dad was sitting over there scared to death. Like, I'm not gonna be able to pay for that.

Marty: He, you know, he's my dad. He always paid for everybody's dinner. And he was scared out of his gourd and he got really upset with me, reached in his pocket, he pulled out a hundred dollar bill and threw it on the table and left the restaurant. Wow. Wow. Right? And so, we didn't, uh, we didn't make up that night, but I, I, I wrote him a letter and put it on his desk.

Marty: Bed stand, um, so that he would see it 1st thing, when he woke up in the morning, basically in the letter, I said, look, I realized I was just showing off and I didn't realize that you thought that you're going to have to pay for this. And, you know, none of that is how I really feel about you and I'm glad that you came and all that stuff.

Marty: And in the morning, he, he got up and he hobbled out of the room and he came right over and he just hugged me. He didn't even say anything. We reconnected again.

Bill: Wow. That's powerful story. That landed hard when you shared that just now. Wow, what a great story. Great, great illustration of the power of, of connection.

Bill: The power of authenticity. And we, we need, we need connection. When we talk about ruptures in relationships, when a, when a relationship is ruptured, what's happened is there's been disconnection. And usually, and I'll go back to Byron Katie here, usually that disconnection happens because of a misunderstanding too.

Bill: A misunderstanding may not be an intentional inauthenticity,

Marty: uh,

Bill: but nevertheless, it's an inauthenticity and, and misunderstanding simply means that, that your experience of, of this situation that you and I shared together. Is dramatically different than my experience of it, my understanding of it, your understanding of it.

Bill: They don't match. They're misaligned and because they're misaligned, we are disconnected and when we can come back together and say, what was your experience over there? Here's my experience. Something was off. I felt this disconnection and I want to be connected again. Can I understand? Can you help me to understand what your experience, what your reaction to me was all about?

Bill: And are you open to hearing and understanding what my reaction was all about? Can we, and can we talk about this in such a way where we're not, where we're not trying to offload our stuff on each other?

Marty: Right, exactly. That's tricky because I've seen people try. Like, I witnessed the conversation recently, you know, where the, the husband was trying to be transformed.

Marty: You know, he, he got that they, there was something that he had done it and he didn't know what it was. And so he asked his wife, you know, well, what did you think? And it was just the energy was just a little off as a dig a further dig when when he was really trying to do is just get get an understanding of her perspective.

Marty: And that case it didn't, it was just a little too fast, little too energetic, and she thought it was just more of the same instead of criticism. Yeah,

Bill: yeah, I think as a criticism rather than what did you think? Help me to understand what you were thinking. Huge difference, huge difference, right? There's an awesome book and you and I talked about this before on a much earlier episode when we talked about Susan Campbell and getting real.

Bill: And she, she breaks this down beautifully. She, she talks and gives great examples and we even talked through 1 of those examples before. So getting real by Susan Campbell highly recommend that. But really, for me, the vehicle that I have found. Let me back it up a little bit. I said I was going to say something about Byron Katie.

Bill: Byron Katie says that forgiveness is recognizing that what you thought happened didn't.

Bill: I

Bill: love that. Two people can get together to forgive each other. Essentially what they're doing is saying, this is what I thought what happened. The person is saying, well, this is what I thought happened. Now, can we get to the truth?

Bill: What actually happened? And usually what I thought happened, I thought happened because I'm looking through the lens of an unresolved past. That's right. So if we can get to what actually happened here, and usually when that becomes clear, hearts crack open, that connection's made again, and whatever damage has been done has been healed.

Bill: Usually,

Marty: I'm in the midst of a, of a relationship issue right now with a friend where when the truth was revealed, he chose to continue to hold a grudge and I thought, I thought, Oh, I now I see what I did and I see why he reacted. I said, I, here's, here's what I did. But, um, it didn't, it didn't transform our relationship.

Marty: He he's still angry

Bill: at me. What he thought happened is what happened for him. Exactly. Yeah. No, what

Marty: actually happened, even though it's been pointed out. It's been discussed. It's been

Bill: disclosed and what would prevent that. I know this story. I know what happened. And prior to you seeing what you saw, you didn't see it.

Bill: And as long as you didn't see it, then then you had to forgive that there was a forgiveness needed from you for him.

Marty: Yeah,

Bill: right.

Marty: So you're saying he just doesn't, even though it might have been said, he's not, he's still looking at it through a

Bill: lens such that he can't see that yet. I remember earlier, and I was talking about how everything paradise turns dollar.

Bill: The colors lose their luster, see things as they are anymore because because our perception is sorted by an unresolved past. I guarantee that whoever this is, this friend of yours is is being blocked in his view. This view is being distorted by an unresolved past you how you talked, how you treated him, what you said, whatever happened, reminded him of a past that still hasn't been healed.

Bill: And until until that gets addressed for him, he probably won't be able to see you for your true heart. That's right. Got to work both ways. I, I can't be the only one authentically revealing myself. If the other person over here is using that to fuel and make themselves right about what they what they thought about me.

Bill: And that's so, so painful. So, it's

Marty: very painful. I keep trying to move on from this because I, you know, I'm like, okay. He's not coming into the truth with me. He's got something from the past that's holding that filter over his ability to see, and I love him. So, I think I just need to move on because I can't, I can't make him have

Bill: that realization.

Bill: That's right. That's right. Yeah. My codependency tendencies would have me chasing him in the situation that you're describing. And I've done this so much in the past, one of the most challenging and the, and yet the most healthy things I can do is to let go of someone that, that cannot see what's true and insists that who they hold me as is me.

Marty: Yeah,

Bill: in, in, in whatever way that is in their disdainful way, or their critical way, or their shaming way, who they see me as is who I am. They are attached to it. They won't let it go. And there's nothing I can do about it.

Marty: Thank goodness, there's 7Billion other people on the planet.

Bill: 8, last I heard is closer, closer to

Marty: 8.

Marty: Oh, sorry.

Bill: Right. We're

Marty: getting up there. For sure. So any, anything that you want to, I mean, say to just round off

Bill: our conversation for today. Well, you know what, not once have we talked about leadership and, and this is not your typical leadership coaching. So let's just acknowledge how this, how this has anything to do with leadership.

Bill: Yeah, well,

Marty: I think it has everything to do with it myself. I talk about this in the last part of my book. Because our energies are constantly, we're like bees in a hive, we're running into each other's energy all the time. If you can get yourself cleared, you're helping people, you're leading to a more peaceful world. And by being in these sorts of communications for, you know, returning to Authenticity and connection. You're, you're leading the world in that direction

Bill: and not everybody's going to follow and not everybody's going to follow, you know, Whitman and his brilliant book traction says one of the, one of the principles within traction is the right button, the right seat.

Bill: Right? Exactly. If you've got an organization and we all do. We all are leading our own organizations and we have people within those organizations that, that want to be a part of that. Then there's other people that find themselves in our organizations that don't want to be a part of it and only want to change the organization because they don't want to leave.

Bill: Sometimes we just have to let them go. They're in their own butts in their own seats.

Marty: Right.

Bill: And that's why there's no traction. Exactly. Exactly. And no, and more specifically, no connection. When there's no connection, there can be no traction.

Marty: Right. That's well, I mean, that's the cars wheels have to be on the ground or it will can't get traction.

Marty: That's right. Great conversation. Wow. How fun

Bill: was this was and it always goes so fast. Thanks for that. Yeah. Thank you, Marty. And, uh, tell, tell the next episode of not your typical leadership coaching. We'll talk to you then. Bye. That concludes another episode of Not Your Typical Leadership Coaching. We hope you found inspiration and valuable insights to fuel your leadership journey. Remember, true leadership is not about you. It's about empowering others. Take your insights to heart and cultivate a leadership mindset that will transform you from within. Thank you for joining us on this quest to leadership excellence. Don't forget to subscribe and stay tuned for our upcoming episodes where we delve deeper into the art of leadership. Until next time, remember that you have the power to lead with confidence and compassion from the inside out.