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Welcome to the Infinite Votion Podcast.
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In today's episode, Don and I go deep into people pleasing
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versus authenticity, and how people pleasing really is the opposite of authentic
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desire to give. We talk about healing the patterns of people pleasing
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and how they bring joy back to giving
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and how dominance can also be people pleasers.
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And you'll want to listen all the way to the end of this episode
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when I share an idea that was the most impactful thing
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for Don in being able to see into her people pleasing patterns
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that helped her heal them for herself.
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Hope that you enjoy this episode.
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And please leave a review for us on Google, Apple Podcasts
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or Spotify if you enjoy our podcast.
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[Music]
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So in today's episode, we are going to be talking about people pleasing,
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specifically as it relates to dominant submissive relationships.
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And we're going to take some time to really go into how people pleasing
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played into your role or in your life really before we were
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dominant submissive and some of the ways that it's had to
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work its way out of you.
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Right before we started, I asked you what do you think is the opposite
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of people pleasing? And you said what?
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Authentic desire to please.
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So, like the key word is authenticity.
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And that was the same authenticity.
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It was the same word I had in my mind as well when thinking about
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what is people pleasing not.
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And that really gets at an important point to the whole idea
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of people pleasing.
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Before we dive into it, there is some, at some level,
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the difference between giving and people pleasing is
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there's something inauthentic about it, right?
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There's something not real.
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So, what is people pleasing to you?
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For me it meant that I was giving myself to others
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to either make them happy, to make them feel good,
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to give them what they wanted from me.
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And what I didn't realize for a lot of my life was that
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it was giving to someone else without even considering myself.
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Considering my own desire in what I was doing,
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how I was giving of myself, and the fact that I would put
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someone else's feelings before my own, before anything about myself.
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And it's an unconscious pattern, an unconscious behavior.
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Some people who message us or write to us about submission
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will say with a lot of pride that there are people pleasing,
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like something that they're proud of.
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Would you say that it felt like something you were proud of?
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Once I recognized what people pleasing, the putting others before
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myself actually felt like.
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Once I connected to my own experience of it,
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it felt gross.
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It felt like I didn't have any sense of it.
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Any self-worth.
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I cared so much more about someone else than I cared about myself.
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But before that, when you were living in that way,
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when you were just giving and giving and giving of yourself,
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would you say that you felt differently about that giving?
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Well, when I was living out this pattern that had been there
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like my whole life, this goes back to childhood and witnessing
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probably how many adults, but especially my mother,
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would give of herself.
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This also involves how my impression of,
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I'm going to label this as religion, gave the impression,
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I guess, of self-sacrifice, of hearing some of those words,
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given to others, you know, all of that language that I was a big part
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of my upbringing.
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I mean, private school, going to church every Sunday,
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going to Sunday school, I absorbed a lot of that.
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And so, I associated giving of myself to others as good.
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And what I have now recognized is not all of that giving of myself to others
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was actually out of my own desire to give to others.
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So, many times, it just was following a rule, if you will,
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versus following my own desire.
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Yeah.
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And it's that indiscriminate giving without any consideration
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of what you need, where it becomes people pleasing.
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Right.
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And giving is a beautiful thing.
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Yes.
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And it can be a very fulfilling, rewarding,
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like, absolutely positive experience to give of yourself.
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Yes.
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Absolutely.
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There's so much there that I could elaborate on.
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Well, the point that I want to make here is that people pleasing
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as a pattern that can be broken out of doesn't mean shifting
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to not giving of yourself.
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Not at all.
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It means shifting to giving from a place of fullness,
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rather than giving from a place of obligation.
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Right.
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And so, you know, this journey into submission has been a beautiful
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unraveling of the people pleasing for me.
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It, because I had authentic desire to give of give to you.
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Like, you know, some people are familiar with the five
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languages, and I took that test, and it was like my number two
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love languageless acts of service.
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And it's true.
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I love, I do love giving to others.
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Like, I genuinely, without expectation and return.
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And so, when we started this, added this dynamic to our marriage,
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like, that authentic desire to please you was already there.
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And so, I got to live in even more of that focus.
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What started to, what I started to recognize in that process was
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when that resentment started to build in me.
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And that was eye-opening for me.
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I was like, why, like, what is going on here that I'm starting to
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resent a lot of things that felt good to me, felt like,
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I thought felt good to me in this person that I love and desire
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to give my devotion to and give of myself to.
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And it was just like this contradiction in my body, and I was like,
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whoa, what is going on here?
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And that's when I started to realize that in some ways,
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not all, that I was acting out of the desire to please you without
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even recognizing that I was crossing over my own need and saying no to
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myself in certain ways.
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And that's a really big differentiation between people
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pleasing and authentic, like, authentic giving is, are you saying yes to
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yourself or are you saying no to yourself?
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Exactly. And once I started approaching it in that way,
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and really just sitting with, am I saying yes to you because I need
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to make you feel okay?
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Or am I afraid to tell you no?
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And this, like, also played out in all of the other relationships in my
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life. And it gave me, it was like I put on a pair of glasses that I had been
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wearing and it was like, whoa, it felt overwhelming.
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The amount of myself that I gave away, yeah, and it,
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overwhelming and sad.
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And I, when you realized it, when I realized it, yes.
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And because of all of the different belief systems that felt like
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they were underneath it, and it was like, whoa, who, like, what am I
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doing to myself? Like, that feeling of living in authentically just like
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was a gut punch.
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Another reason that I know you have identified for yourself, and that
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we've heard from plenty of other people too, that people will go into and
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live in this people pleasing pattern is that they're trying to get some kind of a
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need met by doing so.
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What needs would you say you were trying to get met unconsciously?
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To feel loved.
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I was associating with how I gave of myself to get loved in return.
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So looking back at that, how were you, what was the pattern you were trying to
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get to play out? I give of myself and then what were you hoping?
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You love me more for what I'm doing.
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And that's where it becomes actually way less about giving in a people
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pleasing pattern. On its face at the front, it's about what you're giving
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and what you're doing and like how selfless you can be and how kind you can be.
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But underneath it, it's being done to get something.
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Right. And also validating my own self-worth because I definitely grew up with
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an environment that perpetuated that self-sacrifice and for whatever reason
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I put, I attached that to myself worth and how much I gave of myself.
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Like, I watched a lot of that in my, what felt like a sheltered early life experience
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that I watched how adults gave of themselves and how involved they were in church
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and school and all of those ways. And it was this theme of like others need your time,
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your money, everything about you more than you need it yourself. That's how I
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saw it and absorbed it.
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Yeah. And in those, all of those attempts to get the reciprocal,
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like I'm giving my love to you and I'm hoping or maybe even covertly expecting
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that you're going to give back to me in the same way.
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Like, I'm going to meet your needs and then someone's going to meet mine, right?
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Right. And it was this almost like, am I good enough now?
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Am I like, am I good enough to get into heaven? Am I giving of myself enough?
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Am I doing it right? Am I lovable?
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Yep.
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So, when that pattern keeps playing out like that and it doesn't work
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because that self-worth, the gas tank of your energy and your life keeps getting
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given away and given away and given away,
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what I saw you doing and what I see a lot of people do is
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saying to themselves, again, on a subconscious level,
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most people aren't aware that they're doing this and I'm hoping that this podcast
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helps some people see what they're doing.
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But what I watched you do is tell yourself,
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this isn't working, I'm going to do more of it than maybe it'll work.
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Absolutely. That's the way the ego tries to
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protect you and keep you in that perpetual pattern.
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And so, continuing to,
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even doubling down on giving more, giving more time, more money, more energy
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and hoping that at some point it's going to start feeling good.
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Right? So, what really,
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what I remember opened my eyes to this was,
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I don't know how many years ago now.
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We were at a point in our lives where we got to,
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it was newer that we got to spend a lot of our days together.
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And it felt fun, it felt amazing.
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And I remember kind of, you know, just waking up every day
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and it was like, "All right, sir, what are we going to do today?
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How are we going to spend our time just waiting for you to just guide us?"
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Right? Like, I'm following you lead.
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It felt good.
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In my own personal development, my own journey inward,
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I was faced with a point where all of a sudden,
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constantly asking you to dictate how my time looked,
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like I said before, started to feel really gross.
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And I pretty quickly once identified that feeling of noticing,
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briefly noticing something wasn't feeling good.
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And feeling this contradiction of like,
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"What is going on here?" Like, "I love him, I want to give my all to him.
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I love giving him my time, but it's not always feeling good to me."
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And what I recognized was, I simply needed some time apart from you.
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And you seem to not need the time apart for me at that time.
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But you got it in certain ways, right?
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And so, like, you get up in the morning before I do.
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And so you automatically have this built-in time apart.
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And so I recognized that.
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And then I started to think that there was something wrong with me.
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Like, "Oh my gosh, do I not love him?
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Like, went into all of that."
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And I think, if I remember right, like, this came out kind of sideways.
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One day where I kind of just like, for me back then,
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it felt like losing my shit, even though that wasn't like anything.
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It was a blow-up for Don.
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On Don scale, like, Don scale blow-up.
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Which, especially back then, your emotional expressions were very muted.
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And you kept them tamped down.
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And so to even express frustration or overwhelm or anything,
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like, what felt big to you would probably look silly to a lot of people.
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Right.
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Because it was so hard for you to even express it.
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Exactly.
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So, I remember bringing that to you and just feeling so lost.
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And it was really, really hard for me to speak up for that.
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Because I wouldn't ever say no to someone else, really.
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And I felt like I was saying no to you.
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And it felt like rejecting you at the core of it,
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even though I knew I wasn't, simply by speaking up for a need and asking for a little bit of time alone.
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So, I believe that a lot of women who consider themselves to be submissive
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are living in this people-pleasing pattern,
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where they may be, as you, I believe you were, before I asked you to be my submissive,
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that they may be very genuinely submissive.
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They may enjoy serving.
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They may get a lot of pleasure for themselves out of giving of themselves.
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But in my experience of watching you and working with other people,
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this people-pleasing pattern plays out with submissive women quite frequently.
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And to the point that some equate their people-pleasing patterns with their submission.
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Like this is what it means to be submissive.
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And as you've worked out of those patterns of giving of yourself in a way that is emptying,
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what's it been like for you to start to learn how to give out of authentic desire instead?
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Once I identified the patterns and the emotions that were still connected to them in my body
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and allowed them to go of the authentic desire is just there.
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I didn't have to do anything.
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And so it just started to feel really, really good.
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Even better.
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I don't even know if you can compare it.
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But all I'm going to say is even better than I thought giving felt like before.
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And I've connected to the depth of true love and gratitude in me
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that just feels like it's there and it gets to come out now
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and there's intrude expression in so many ways.
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And then once I was able to feel that it's much easier to see any little bit of that people-pleasing that's still there in other ways.
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I also had to look at this in relation to my own two daughters and parents and friends and all of that
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because if it's happening at all, it's maybe happening in all relationships to some degree.
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But now since I've tapped into what it can be, it's easier to see where it's not in alignment with authenticity.
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A big part of this is really learning to own your know.
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Absolutely.
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Because if you are never willing to say no, and this isn't to say like in our relationship, we have limits.
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We know what our limits are.
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And those things are always respected to the point that you never put in a position
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where you really have to say no or use a safe word when it comes to some of the dominant submissive things.
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So it wasn't a skill that really got to be practiced there where maybe in some people in their dominant submissive explorations,
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it really is a muscle that they get to practice or that they can.
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So you had to learn that in other ways that were more attached to how we relate and how you love.
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Right.
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But learning to say no when you mean no and what you're getting at with the point you just made a moment ago was
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it allowed you to feel your yes to be much stronger.
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Yes.
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Absolutely.
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And submission was never meant to be about giving up your boundaries and giving up your know.
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And there's a lot of conversation and a lot of words that get spent talking about the importance of consent in dominant submissive relationship dynamics.
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Consent really has to start inside of yourself and really it goes beyond the bedroom and it goes beyond the ways that you explore the kink side of BDSM and into consenting to how do you,
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how am I going to give of myself?
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How does it feel good to give?
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How does it, like, how does it not feel good and what's a no for me?
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Right.
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And the biggest piece of that journey for me was starting to connect with my body and learning for myself what the words embodiment mean and like this feminine energy thing and really tuning into what yes feels like in my body and what no feels like in my body.
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And you know, at the beginning of so much of my journey was all happening at one time, right?
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It's not nothing happens in a vacuum.
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And so one way of one important aspect of connecting with my body was being honest with myself about what I'm feeling.
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And so that that sent me deeper into this connection to my body that is now possible and can truly be authentic.
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And like, a lot of the ways that started to feel like resentment to me, like I also still genuinely give.
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Nothing that I was doing in our relationship is actually like off the table.
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Does that make sense?
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Like, it only was being shown to me because of this block, if you will.
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But now I get to actually feel good about the giving, the saying yes.
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And I'm actually able to release my own projection that someone else is giving to me out of people pleasing.
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Out of an obligation. That's also been a huge piece of my journey is recognizing the ways that I assumed you were just giving to me out of obligation.
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You say a little more about that?
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Because of the way I showed up in the world, in all of my relationships, I started to think that,
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oh well they're just giving to me because they think I want it.
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Or they're just trying to make me happy.
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And I got really hypersensitive to like, basically I would elaborate in a much more wordy way of like,
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don't give to me out of people pleasing, please don't, don't, don't do that.
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To the point that you would reject others wanting to give to you and push it away or, well, and push it away so that you didn't have to receive something in a way that could,
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that you felt like could have been them abandoning themselves in doing so.
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Yeah. And just listening to you say that out loud?
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Hmm. It's like, I just kind of lost the thread that was coming to me.
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But yeah, I stayed a little too focused in that. But you know, all of these things, I've learned how the giving and the receiving, there's some of that in everything, in expression and the receiving.
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And so, when I was so focused on how I've been doing it and then I had to look at the ways where I was rejecting, I had the walls built.
296
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That was also a big part of my journey.
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Getting over a people pleasing approach to life really does mean starting to look out for yourself more.
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And in some people's view of submission, they want to just give, give, give, give, give, give, give.
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And so, being able to set some boundaries around what feels good to give and what doesn't feel good to give,
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if you view submission in that way, is going to seem like you're being a "bad submissive" or you're not being totally submissive or, you know, whatever words someone might put to that.
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But it's very important to be able to have strong boundaries because I heard someone say this and someone can leave a comment, if you know who this quote is by, I don't remember right now.
302
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But the quote was that the most loving people have the strongest boundaries.
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They can be the most loving because they feel so filled up.
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They don't have things constantly taking down, taking them down internally because they've been willing to stand up and speak up for themselves.
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And by protecting their inner space, it allows them to be more loving.
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And that really is what you have experienced in your version of this that I've watched you experience through me, of course, but also in all of those other relationships in your life,
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where owning your know, setting some boundaries, protecting your own energy,
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you give more of yourself now than you ever have, and that continues to grow.
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Right.
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And I like the quote that you shared because, you know, going back to what I said before is what was partly underneath my people pleasing was trying to get love.
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And it's because I was so disconnected from myself that I didn't even love myself.
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And you know, that's an important aspect in this thing we call life is being able to feel your own love.
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And that's been a, been the other, for lack of a better way to say it, aspect of this journey all this time too, because if I'm trying to get love, I actually don't know how to give love authentically.
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If I don't actually love myself, like I thought I loved you, and I did to some degree, but the depths of it can be touched through authenticity.
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And this isn't evolving journey, this isn't like a, they're and done. I truly believe that the depth of what we get to experience with this word love is really can get as big as we want it to be in life.
316
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Dominance can also people please.
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Yes. And I certainly had my own versions of this in our relationship.
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And one of the ways that displayed up for me, I'm sure it does for other people as well, is...
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I guess it's a really similar thing. It was like, as I was trying to lead this relationship forward, there were certainly times where my leadership, my dominance kind of fell into trying to figure out what you wanted in giving it to you.
320
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Yeah, which was a pattern that you had gotten earlier in life.
321
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Which is at its core, at its root, it is a desire to give. It's a desire to give love, but it's also underneath that pattern in a man who is trying to step forward and take charge, underneath that pattern is trying to get something.
322
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And it's not just what do you want, give that to you. Inside here is the covert contract.
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If anyone hasn't listened to or read the book, no more Mr. Nysky by Dr. Robert Glover, pick it up and read it. That's the covert contract concept.
324
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And you can't hear your mind how often we do that. But a covert contract in this case is like, I'm wanting you to do something, give something back to me in exchange for me just finding out what you want to giving it to you.
325
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And in some ways that can mask very well as leadership. It can mask even as loving dominance. But in reality, if it's attached to an unspoken desire, then it's not just leading. It's manipulative.
326
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Right. And in everything I hear you speaking there, it feels like the same thing I've already said. Like you're trying to give someone what they want in order to fill that void in you.
327
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And at the root of it is just this, the void that we, in my opinion, naturally have as a human in this world. And we all seek, we have a need to be loved.
328
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And so we get to make sense and a felt sense and start to understand the depths of what is love. Because if you, if you in your mind and your body earlier on in life, you have giving equals love, then that is going to perpetuate so many different behaviors and responses in your life.
329
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And one of the most uncomfortable things for both of us over time has really been speaking up and saying, this is how I need you to love me.
330
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Mm-hmm.
331
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This feels like love to me, right? And these are my needs.
332
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And without thinking about this too long, I'm guessing that some of those things have slightly shifted over time as we've started to understand all of these things about ourselves, all while being in relationship together.
333
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So we were showing up differently before. Now you start personal development and then I'm starting this personal development of what I call the journey to authenticity.
334
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And how all of like, wow, the amount of conversations and communication that we've had to really have, dropping any sort of like swords that want to come out in any sort of like fighting just and be real with real like authentic conversations and be willing to receive the other in their
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authentic selves too.
336
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And in their vulnerability.
337
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Yes, that's the better word that I was going for.
338
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Because let's face it, it's a vulnerable position to put yourself in to lay yourself out there and say, I need this.
339
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And I can't get it from you. I can't make you give this to me. And if you do it out of obligation or out of people pleasing, it's not going to feel good because it's not going to be real.
340
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So expressing a true need without expectation of having it filled is a very vulnerable position you put yourself in.
341
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Right. So I'm curious how your experience of me was different when there was people pleasing and what it feels like now.
342
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When you know something is off, but you just can't quite put your finger on it.
343
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But it's just not right. Like, it's not like it's light in the room.
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The lights are on.
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But it it seems dim.
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But I can't quite put my finger on why is maybe a decent metaphor for how it was before.
347
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Because you would do things for me. Like you would give to me.
348
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And this would play out in the bedroom. It would play out in like anywhere and everywhere.
349
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You would do things for me. You would give things to me. You would even say that you wanted to.
350
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That you liked it. That you wanted to do more of it.
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But it just felt off.
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Like I have a great example.
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What's that?
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What has shifted in me is the act of kneeling that happened at the beginning of our relationship daily because like you shared what this meant to you.
355
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And you know, it was an honoring you. It was respect. It was love. It was devotion.
356
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I don't remember exactly how you described that before. But that's what I somewhat remember.
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And so I would kneel for you.
358
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And I feel in kneeling for you now. And many different ways is a true respect.
359
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A deeper love, a deeper devotion.
360
00:42:09,000 --> 00:42:15,000
And again, I wanted to give you respect. I wanted to give you admiration.
361
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I wanted to give all those things to you before. And so I would kneel.
362
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But I know that you feel me differently now in that.
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And so I think that is one of the most profound differences for me.
364
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And I just didn't know what I didn't know before.
365
00:42:40,000 --> 00:42:50,000
So in retrospect, now what I can see is that before you were performing.
366
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And I hate you in like saying that, but it was to some degree.
367
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Because I would say I want something. You would want to give it to me. And so you would do it.
368
00:43:02,000 --> 00:43:09,000
But you would do it because I wanted it not because you wanted to do it.
369
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And I wanted to please you and I wanted to show you the things you wanted to feel.
370
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But you can never do that by just performing.
371
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No.
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Like it will, it will never feel like the way I want it to feel.
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Unless you are doing it because you want to.
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And when I say I want to, it's like what again through connecting with my body
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has opened these felt desires and felt experiences that just couldn't be experienced before.
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Before using the kneeling thing as an example, you wanted to kneel for me because I wanted you to.
377
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Yes.
378
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Now you want to do it because it feels good to you to display yourself to me in that way.
379
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And now it still feels like I can't even display it enough.
380
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And that desire to give to give yourself that's coming out of you instead of coming out of people pleasing,
381
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instead of coming out of performance is the difference in how I receive it.
382
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Because you know I'm feeling you feeling that desire to give.
383
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And that's back to the light analogy.
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Like the dim light was you're doing the thing.
385
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Like the action is the same.
386
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It's just the energy that you feel in doing it.
387
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And that's where expressing desire can be so vulnerable.
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Expressing a need can be so vulnerable because I can say this is really important to me.
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And I can speak up for my own need. And I can tell you exactly what it is that I need.
390
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If you take that and then just do the actions, it's not going to meet the need.
391
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Yeah, I think that's a whole mother rabbit hole we can go down.
392
00:45:40,000 --> 00:45:54,000
But one other place that that plays out in a lot of people's relationships in dumb sub dynamics is where one partner really wants this.
393
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Like let's say the submissive really wants this dumb sub dynamic.
394
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And she goes to her vanilla partner or maybe to a new person she's dating who doesn't know much or anything about dominance and submission.
395
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And says I want this kind of relationship.
396
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This is how I want my relationship to look and I want to be submissive to my partner.
397
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If that dominant partner wants to do that for her, maybe because he loves her or because he's really fond of her and wants to see this relationship work.
398
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If he's doing it just because she wants him to, that's the same thing. It's just going to feel to her like he's performing.
399
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Because what she really wants is for him to want it for himself.
400
00:46:50,000 --> 00:46:51,000
Right.
401
00:46:51,000 --> 00:47:02,000
And so you can take that all the way down to the smallest little tasks and rules in a dominant submissive dynamic all the way up to the level of the existence of the dynamic itself.
402
00:47:02,000 --> 00:47:05,000
Exactly.
403
00:47:05,000 --> 00:47:22,000
So one thought that I want to end on here is something from Einrand's book Atlas Shrugged, is where this concept comes from.
404
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And this thought is that someone else's need does not create an obligation on my part.
405
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You shared that with me? I don't remember one, but wow, is that...
406
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Yes, that was eye-opening for me.
407
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And that will strike right at the core of people pleasing.
408
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If anyone listening to this, ask yourself that question, where am I making someone else's need into an obligation for me?
409
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And the reason it strikes right at the core of people pleasing is that if that dynamic is true, if the dynamic of someone else's need means that I must meet that need.
410
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If we expand that out just a little ways and everyone is looking around looking for what does anyone else need?
411
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How can anyone... where is their need present in my relationship, in my family?
412
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And that might even be going far enough to completely spend a whole person's entire life.
413
00:48:57,000 --> 00:49:05,000
But if you go out to the community, you start going any wider, you see how fast this evolves.
414
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Because everyone is giving away into this bottomless pit of need, because need can be expanded so easily in a way that becomes manipulative.
415
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And this is where I believe a lot of submissive women end up in relationships with takers, because their submission gets seen as a willingness to always meet any need that gets expressed.
416
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And so need becomes a bottomless whole, a black hole of absorbing the giving of anyone who's willing to step forward and meet that need.
417
00:49:51,000 --> 00:50:01,000
But the amount there is to give is always finite. It's limited by time, it's limited by energy.
418
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And if someone gives themselves away to any place that they see need present, then they can only hope that what they need is going to get filled by someone else.
419
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Which means that the only way for that person to not completely collapse in exhaustion and be out of money, out of energy, out of time, and completely used up is if somebody else sees their need and gives to them.
420
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And the truth is that we all are, every single person operates out of self-interest to some extent. We have to.
421
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We absolutely must operate out of self-interest or we would never take a sip of water until we knew that every other person on the planet had some water.
422
00:51:22,000 --> 00:51:30,000
Right, it's just that self-interest is pretty unconscious.
423
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And the alternative to giving away all of yourself to any expressed need is to take some ownership of your self-interest, even as a submissive.
424
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Yes.
425
00:51:48,000 --> 00:52:04,000
To take some ownership of your self-interest and recognize that if you give yourself away always all the time, you're just empty.
426
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And that's why you may feel tired and exhausted and burned out at the end of your rope.
427
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That was something you pointed out in our discussions before I said yes to becoming your submissive is some of the ways that you see that play out in me.
428
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And I was like, "Whoa! Wow! There was no denying it and how I gave up myself to anyone and everything and really didn't get in return."
429
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Outside of you.
430
00:52:45,000 --> 00:53:03,000
So when you take care of yourself first and you let yourself be filled up by yourself first and you allow yourself to receive from others who want to genuinely want to give to you,
431
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then this is the analogy I use of a bathtub where if water is flowing into a bathtub and you leave the drain open, all of the water that runs in is going to run right back out.
432
00:53:18,000 --> 00:53:38,000
And so anything you receive is just going to be gone because you are out there looking for anyone who needs what any energy you have and giving it away, taking care of other people, giving your time to other people, giving your money to other people, just giving, giving, giving, giving, giving.
433
00:53:38,000 --> 00:53:47,000
And if you close the drain on the bathtub
434
00:53:47,000 --> 00:53:57,000
and you let some water pour into you and fill yourself up, eventually you will be full.
435
00:53:57,000 --> 00:54:05,000
And if that water keeps pouring into you and you continue to allow yourself to receive when you're full,
436
00:54:05,000 --> 00:54:25,000
which is hard because, "Oh, now I have enough. I feel really good. Like, I'm full. I am complete. I'm whole. I've taken care of myself by closing that drain, stopping for a little while, slowing down and letting myself be filled up. I've become abundant.
437
00:54:25,000 --> 00:54:34,000
And some people get very uncomfortable with being abundant when they're used to being in lack in the giving away of themselves.
438
00:54:34,000 --> 00:54:52,000
But if you close that drain and fill yourself up and you allow yourself to continue to receive when you are in that state of brimming with abundance and love and resources and energy, guess what?
439
00:54:52,000 --> 00:54:55,000
The water is going to overflow on the floor.
440
00:54:55,000 --> 00:55:10,000
It's going to make a complete mess. It's going to go everywhere because you're going to have so much in you that you can give of yourself from a place of fullness instead of a place of emptiness.
441
00:55:10,000 --> 00:55:22,000
And the overflowing becomes beautiful and feels different and good. And for me, it feels like being alive.
442
00:55:22,000 --> 00:55:27,000
You are alive because now you're full of energy instead of empty of energy.
443
00:55:27,000 --> 00:55:28,000
Exactly.
444
00:55:28,000 --> 00:55:37,000
And you can still give the same amount.
445
00:55:37,000 --> 00:55:41,000
So, people pleasing is not submission.
446
00:55:41,000 --> 00:55:42,000
No.
447
00:55:42,000 --> 00:55:44,000
And people pleasing is not dominance.
448
00:55:44,000 --> 00:55:45,000
No.
449
00:55:45,000 --> 00:55:54,000
It's also not healthy relating for any person in or out of a dumb sub-dynamic.
450
00:55:54,000 --> 00:55:55,000
Right.
451
00:55:55,000 --> 00:56:03,000
It is okay to be a little bit selfish and put yourself first and to take care of you.
452
00:56:03,000 --> 00:56:11,000
And it's necessary so that you can be in authentic giving of yourself.
453
00:56:11,000 --> 00:56:17,000
This was, you know, throughout this process, was where you told me like, "I want you to be selfish."
454
00:56:17,000 --> 00:56:22,000
And I had to sit with like, "Why does that word feel so ill to me?"
455
00:56:22,000 --> 00:56:25,000
And it's just the connotation that I had with it.
456
00:56:25,000 --> 00:56:29,000
When I grew up hearing, "Don't be selfish."
457
00:56:29,000 --> 00:56:33,000
And you're telling me like, "Be selfish." I'm like, "What is that?"
458
00:56:33,000 --> 00:56:40,000
But when you think about it in the terms of the bathtub analogy and actually like giving to yourself first,
459
00:56:40,000 --> 00:56:50,000
it makes sense because you truly can't give of yourself if you don't have a self to give.
460
00:56:50,000 --> 00:56:52,000
So, this is a really great conversation.
461
00:56:52,000 --> 00:57:00,000
I appreciate all of your insight and your growth in this and how much it's given back to our relationship
462
00:57:00,000 --> 00:57:07,000
and allowed me to experience a totally new version of you.
463
00:57:07,000 --> 00:57:13,000
It feels good. Thank you. Thank you for leading me through it.
464
00:57:13,000 --> 00:57:15,000
I'm very glad that you're mine.
465
00:57:15,000 --> 00:57:17,000
Me too, sir.
466
00:57:17,000 --> 00:57:27,000
[Music]
