We use three voices to communicate with ourselves AND others. Even if you get that you may not realize that not only can someone’s second voice be speaking to you, but you might be using your second voice to speak to them.

Confused? Here’s a reminder for those who haven’t read Three Voices.

Ever talked to someone and realize that you’re not really talking to them, but instead your talking to their experiences, their fears, their… parent from their childhood? Ever talk to someone and feel like they are not “in character?”

or… ever just sat in silence with someone you care about, and just knew that you were in sync?

In both cases you weren’t communicating with your third voice.

Listen to the podcast, and we’ll explore this useful concept and extend the foundation Three Voices. It may just explain an interaction you’ve had and give you an “aha moment.”

Most people think of self care and self love as the same thing. It’s all about you, being nice to you, doing nice things for you. Right? And it has a bit of stigma attached to it to easily make the average person (especially males) feel, well, just selfish about the whole dang thing.

It’s not selfish, it’s vitally important to your mental, emotional and even physical health. It’s important to understand the difference between the self care and the self love.

In this podcast we’ll talk about the following:

Listen, and enjoy as this podcast is literally a bit of both self care and self love for you. 🙂

Transcript:

A revisited on self care and self love.

Hey there. Welcome back.

Though I’ve already done a podcast on self-care and self-love and the differences, I’ve run into this enough that I felt compelled to sort of elaborate a bit more, and it’s an important subject anyway, so let’s do it.

When people think of self-care and self-love, the average person doesn’t really know what the difference is. In fact, they think of them as the same thing. I mean, it’s you taking care of yourself, right? It’s you honoring yourself, so self-whatever.

When people think of self-care, they usually think of a reward system for doing something or putting up with something, right? “Yeah, I’ll… I’ll go through this and then, okay fine, I get my little bubble bath thing, I get my little whatever, I get some chocolate, or I get some whatever, I get to go out and have beers,” right? That’s… that’s self-care.

But it’s not. It’s not a reward system, it’s a way of treating yourself, and for both self-care and self-love, the easiest way to put yourself in the proper frame of mind is to think of yourself as another person.

Now, if you had an 11-year-old daughter, and and you’re like, “Okay, well go work in the salt mine for 12 hours and okay, well, I’m going to give you some self-care. Uh, you can have a cupcake now.”

I mean, that’s essentially what you’re doing when you put yourself through things, and you go, “Well, I guess I’m supposed to have some sort of reward. Okay, that’s my self-care.”

We’re not prompted to care for ourselves because we don’t speak up. We don’t speak up when we look in the mirror.

And again, if you think of yourself as someone else, you as an observer would go, “Why don’t you care for that person more?”

Let’s jump to self-love. Self-love is… is a… is a tenuous thing. It’s something that people don’t want to talk about, especially males, right?

The more manly and masculine you are, the less you’re going to say… say the words “self” and “love” together without either giggling or thinking silly thoughts about something, right?

But you see, self-love is something that’s vitally important to your well-being.

It’s so easy to say, but it’s true.

I mean, if you truly love yourself, you wouldn’t put up with certain things. You wouldn’t allow yourself to be exposed to certain situations and certain things. You wouldn’t work 18 hours in the salt mine and say, “Hey, you know what? I’m a good person. Okay, that’s what keeps me going every day. I just try to do the right thing.”

But trying to do the right thing every day is not related to self-love.

I mean, a person could probably do the right thing and and still have some loathing going on for themselves.

What you need to do is care enough about yourself to make changes or to not put yourself in a certain situation because you love yourself.

And again, going back to the metaphor of treat yourself as a separate person: your wife, your husband, your daughter, your son, your best friend—if you see them go through things and you care about them—let me stop here. Isn’t it confusing when I say you care about them, but we’re talking about self-love? Yes, that’s why these two things get mixed up so much. Anyway, if you love them, you will do everything you can to sort of say, “Look, you know, I know I’m stepping on toes here, I know, but I really don’t want you to go through that or I really don’t I I think you can do better than this,” and so on and so forth, because you love them.

But you don’t look in the mirror and say, “Hey buddy, I love you. We can’t do this anymore.”

But that’s exactly what you need to do, and it’s easy to fall into the pitfall of thinking you’re being selfish, you’re being arrogant, you’re being all these negative terms, because you’re just looking out for you.

Somewhere along the line, we lost the default of taking care of ourselves and loving ourselves. Somewhere. And that somewhere varies for the population as a whole, it varies for males, it varies for females, right?

We all have these sort of lofty goals of, “I’m a dude, I can take anything. I will take anything, I’m everyone’s rock, I I that’s it. I the the buck stops here.” If you’re a woman, and you have kids, you go, “This is it, you know, the kids are my world, the kids are this, I will I will take and do anything and everything for them,” you know? And I’m not discounting that males feel the way that females feel, I’m not saying that females don’t feel the way males feel, I’m just saying that’s kind of what’s happened in society as like the defaults for things.

So along the lines there, we just sort of discarded the self-love and self-care because it kind of got in the way.

I have said in my talks, and I’m sure other people have done in their talks too, and probably even used maybe one of the images I’ve used, it’s the whole “put your mask on first” thing. You’ve heard this, right? And if you haven’t heard this, let me enlighten you. It basically refers to the instructions in an airplane that is depressurizing in which you’re going to run out of oxygen if the masks come down and everyone is freaked out. And your first inclination is to go look at your kids or your loved one and put their mask on before you put your mask on. But the counterintuitive thing is to put yours on first. And putting yours on first allows you to stay conscious enough to help them, and there’s enough time for both. But if you struggle to put theirs on first before yours is on, you may actually lose consciousness and can’t help anyone. And both of you will suffer.

So that’s the whole put your mask on first.

And that gets back to not being selfish, not being arrogant, not being self-centered, but just saying, “I need to take care of me so there’s something left of me to to take care of the people in my life, or to be a good person for the people in my life, or not to be sad, or angry, or depressed every single day because I don’t take care of myself,” right?

This is probably ringing a few bells in your head, right? And you’re immediately pushing back and going, “Ah, this is just frivolous stuff for whatever. You know, like, I can’t afford to be all self-care, self-lovey, you know, rose petals and take a bubble bath and read a book.”

Well, if you’re going to read a… anyway. I think what people don’t truly understand is that there are not only ramifications for not giving yourself self-care and self-love, but there are tremendous ramifications for giving yourself self-care and self-love. Tremendous! And you’ve got to get that right first. You can’t just say, “Okay fine,” again, you can’t just say, “Okay fine, I get a treat because I suffered!”

That is not what we’re talking about, and you would never do that to the people in your life.

The ramifications are a clearer head, better feelings about life in general, better understanding of yourself, um just a general higher level of energy. There’s a tremendous amount of benefit for you to be in that mode—the mode of, “I do care about myself. I will not let this happen to me anymore. I will not stand for this! I will stand up for myself in a way similar to the way I would stand up for somebody I say I love, because I love me,” right?

That’s what you need to do.

If you’re not doing that, you will know it once you do it. But if you’re not doing it, you may not realize what you’re doing to yourself until you’ve had enough.

And to circle back again, look, I understand. If you’re not excessively immersed in the world of self-care, self-love, and all the other stuff and all the all the stuff that is ooga booga, you may look at this stuff and you may get a little defensive and go, “Okay, okay, I can’t look in the mirror and say, ‘Hey, Larry, I love you,'” assuming your name is Larry, because if it’s not Larry, then that then that gets even weirder.

I’m not necessarily asking you to do that, although that’s a cool exercise. I hope you can work up to that point where you look in the mirror into your eyes and say that.

And speaking of saying things, which I should have mentioned before, is part of the self-love and care—probably more love than care—is the not saying terrible things to yourself.

And again, let’s use the metaphor of a friend or daughter. I’m sure you’ve done this a hundred times: “Ah, I did that again. I’m so stupid. Haha.” Laugh, laugh, uncomfortably, right?

Now it’s your 11-year-old daughter. “Ha, she did that again. She… she’s so stupid.”

Oh my God!

What a horrible person you are, right? It’s the same thing!

You don’t get to mistreat yourself because you’re you.

That’s the difference.

So, if you feel I’ve I’ve beaten a dead horse with self-care and self-love because we already had a podcast, sorry. But I thought it needed to be said, I thought I needed to clarify the difference between the two because they get messed up a lot, and the why of it. And I needed to focus on the fact that there are super positive ramifications for doing so. It will change your life.

And I’m all about that. So, I hope you’re well, and I thank you for listening. If you enjoyed what I did for you today, please like, share, and subscribe, as they say. If you didn’t like it, I I appreciate you waiting until the end, and take care of yourself.

Hey there, thanks for listening. You know I always appreciate your feedback. Please keep it coming. Three Voices is out. It’s a fun read and only $9.99 US on Amazon. And as of this recording, it reached number three in experimental psychology. So thank you so much.

I decided to make the text for this episode an outline vs. a long form article to match the podcast. Did you like this better?

I. Introduction:
A. Overview of the topic: the mind’s ability to recall negative experiences with ease (Negativity-Bias)
B. Purpose of the story: exploring the reasons why negative experiences are easily remembered and the ways to shift towards a more positive outlook

II. Background: A. Explanation of negativity bias
B. Understanding why negative experiences are easily remembered

III. The Challenge:
A. The difficulties of trying to recall positive experiences with the same ease as negative experiences
B. The impact of negativity bias on mental health and well-being

IV. The Search for Solutions:
A. Overview of different approaches to shift towards a more positive outlook
B. Discussion of the most effective tools for reducing negativity bias and increasing positivity bias (spoiler…)

V. The Journey to a More Positive Outlook:
A. Exploration of the challenges and obstacles faced while trying to shift towards a more positive outlook
B. Discussion of the importance of persistence and effort in creating change
C. Emphasis on the benefits of reducing negativity bias and increasing positivity bias

VI. Conclusion:
A. Summary of the key points discussed in the story
B. Final thoughts on the journey towards a more positive outlook and reducing negativity bias
C. Encouragement for the reader to continue their own journey towards a more positive outlook.

If you’ve read Three Voices then you know we all have three voices that we all use to communicate with ourselves and others. As a refresher and for those who have not read the book, our first voice is our speaking voice, our second is also regarded as our “inner monolog” or “the voices in our head” or even a replay of a conversation.

Last week I had two encounters with people whose second voice was actively interacting with them (and consequently me). I’m going to skip the interaction I had that was particularly unpleasant for me, and go with the one I mostly observed with the other individual

I was chatting with a gentleman and just before I came to see him he’d had an interaction with a man that was trying to goad him into doing something physical. Yes, the other dude was trying to get him to come to blows. He handled it like a champ and did not allow this to happen.

But there was a problem. His second voice was now replaying the interaction over and over in his head. You can imagine how this felt and I could see it in his eyes—that distant look of being somewhere or’ somewhen’ else in time. His second voice was challenging him—asking him over and over again why he didn’t do anything. You can probably relate with a scenario that happened to you in your past.

What he did next was predictable (to me) but invisible to others. Listen to this episode to find out what happened.

My unspoken perception (my first voice*) is as follows.  I am not saying this is correct, and in most of this it certainly is not, but here it is.  

There’s this thing.  People who have overcome this have always struck me as… more adult than me.  They seem more mature, more developed.  But also perhaps more anal retentive?   They overcame it—this thing—probably at an early age.  They come from better stock, are more educated, more refined.  They were taught this by better parents, or at Yale or something.   

Of course my interaction with them never proved any of this correct but I continued to have this inner belief.

So then, why didn’t I overcome it and strive to be like them?  Well, there’s a block preventing that:

If I overcome this thing two things might happen:

Those two things are literally the opposite of reality.

I’ve been afraid of tackling this—not just on a case by case basis—but on the whole… as part of my personality.  If I fix this I’m fixing me in a way that’s scary.  Because what if it leaves ol’ lovable Mark behind?

I suppose this is an innate fear for anyone wanting to make a big change.  We seek out that comfort and want to stay there.

But the paradox is that by fixing this you have MORE comfort, not less.  You have less stress, not more, and you realistically can be more ‘laid back.’

This is in line with Alchemy for Life, the coaching and podcast I started years ago.

So what is this thing?

It’s clutter.

You might think it’s a joke—this anticlimactic answer to what you thought was mental click bait—but it’s not.

It’s serious, it’s prevalent, life long, and it’s ingrained in your psyche like a bee sting in your flesh.  Any attempts to dig it out fail and the poison remains forever.

So now you know my mental blocks for avoiding it.  The clutter isn’t so bad.  Everyone has a “junk drawer’ anyway, right?  So what if there’s also a junk closet, a junk pantry, a junk dresser top, a junk office area, a junk floor made of grey clothing, etc…

The problem is that, just like saying “no to drugs” there’s more to the issue.  You can’t just “put it where it belongs” for more than one reason—the most obvious being that it might not actually have a place.  This is due to it being new, a one of a kind, or something that you just haven’t made space for yet.

You may do this because out of sight/out of mind has worked well enough for you.  Or—and this is self-worth related—you may think you (and therefore it) is not important enough to warrant the time to make a special space for it.

Even if you live alone you still may fear carving out a space “just for that stuff.”  A perfect example is a craft area.  Sure the kitchen gets proper space, and the bathroom, and all the supplies that go along with those rooms.  But a craft room, or a work area might feel sort of selfish.

And that is exactly what my knee-jerk reaction to some craft rooms has been.  When I’d see someone with a really nice craft room, and all sorts of organization, I would sometimes think just how selfish they must be to put all that effort into that… just for themselves!  The nerve of them.  They should be solving world hunger, or making dinner, not having an epicly laid out room with all their tools and stuff at their fingertips.

And at the same time I envied them.  But then they were more adult than me.  They figured it out.  And being in a relationship with someone like that would be scary.  Imagine the expectations!

This craft area idea also extends to the kitchen and the bathroom and other mundane utilitarian areas. 

So I found there were really three things that generated the clutter.  In other words there were three reasons that you would not have everything in its place.

Lazy.  As you would expect one reason is that you just fail to do it.  You have a place, all neat and tidy, but you just leave it out, on the counter, or you just shove a bunch into a big area (the classic “junk drawer”)

There’s no place like home.  The second reason is that you actually haven’t made a place for it.  But why wouldn’t you?

Do not take all of this to mean that we are sorting down into infinity.  That’s not what this is about.  A jar of change is perfectly fine, we needn’t make a little tray for pennies, nickels, dimes, quarters, half dollars, silver dollars, etc etc.   Yes, sorting is the base of much of this, but it can be taken too far.  The difference between non-clutter and clutter is the difference between a tray for pens and pencils, and a drawer filled with random office supplies.  You don’t have to separate the pencils from the pens if you don’t want to.  And in fact, if you almost never use office supplies, then a drawer full of random office supplies may not even be clutter for you.  That may make the average person uncomfortable, but if you are a grandma that has an epic knitting supply you just might have a teeny drawer with three pens, two pencils, a few binder clips and a couple paperclips.

It’s all about what is in sync with your life.

You don’t store your forks in the bathroom.  You don’t keep your socks in the garage.  The WD40 is not in your top dresser drawer.  Duh and double duh, right?  We know how to store things by room and purpose… mainly.  But we run into problems sometimes because of that.  We rely too heavily on it and just stop there.  As long as all our bedroom crap is in the bedroom that is enough.

And then the clutter occurs.

So we separate socks, undies, workout clothing, shirts, etc.  Drawer, drawer drawer.

We should put things we use most in the easiest reach and/or near our head.  Our head is the sensor pod that has the eyes and the ears.  We design things so we don’t have to go shove our heads into the top shelf for something we use every day.

You’re not going to bend all the way down or get on your knees to open the bottom dresser drawer for your daily underwear.  You want that right up top.

It’s that procedure, simply put, that allows us to organize best.

And you will find that if you are plagued with clutter there are a number of areas that you have done exactly the opposite for yourself.  And at the same time it is the keeping important things within reach concept that has allowed you to comfortably forget about everything else—until you need something.  Then you discover the nest, and start complaining to no one and everyone about not being able to find it.

Let’s define the clutter we are not talking about here.  We are not talking about what I call meaningful purposeful clutter.   Meaningful in that it has a meaning, there is a reason for it.  Purposeful in that it has a purpose—it is there for a very good reason.  Meaningful, purposeful clutter only exists temporarily while the task that creates them is being completed.

Examples of this are when you are working on your car and now your garage is taken over with tools and parts.  Things are laying all over the garage floor as if the car literally exploded.  

When you are cooking there are cooking implements—spoons, ladles, a colander—lying all over the counter.  There are mixing bowls, pans and measuring cups.  Some are oozing ingredients onto the countertop.  There’s flour and chopped items everywhere.  It’s a mess.  It’s temporary, and it has a purpose and a meaning.   In a couple hours the kitchen will be back to normal—less perhaps the giant pile of pans in the sink.  That too is temporary.

This is not the clutter we are talking about.

We are talking about the one without purpose, without meaning (well there is one in a way) and it has permanence.

Clutter.

If you are moving things to another place/room that just clutters that up (and isn’t the actual place it belongs) then you are just adding to clutter to declutter, and that’s not decluttering.  That’s exactly what created clutter in the first place—the uncertainty of narrowing it down and just dumping it into an area.

Clearly there is something that prevents us from just having meaningful clutter (see above).  Something is causing us to have the clutter that haunts us, annoys us, and plagues us. 

It’s something beyond just being lazy, or “messy” or “disorganized” or “not having the time.” 

Spoiler: it’s psychological.   What follows is an introspective examination of why it affected me.  You may relate to this.

So you start decluttering and sorting in good faith, and start to create piles of things and then… you stop.  You’re overwhelmed.  You start running into the other room, or reading old books, looking at old pictures, find interest in something you haven’t looked at in a decade.  Oh, and you should continue this after you eat.  Yeah, low blood sugar and all that.

You’re overwhelmed.

Decluttering is overwhelming because you get to a point of permutation that you can’t hold in your brain’s workspace processing area.

Meaning, when you take something out that doesn’t belong, and think there may have to be a new place for that there are only three options.  When you take more things out there are three options, and so forth and that can all multiply.  This goes here but oh I don’t have a space and is this thing like this thing and how many of these do I even have!  Oh I can’t throw all of this out.  Dang I wish my house would just burn down and I could start from scratch.

Don’t wish for a house fire.  The solution is easy enough.

Listen to next week’s podcast for the solution. If you are a subscriber you’ll automatically get the pdf(s) that contain the roadmap and checklist that takes the emotion out of decluttering.

*Three Voices. My latest experimental psychology, explains that we have three voices and how we use them to communicate. While you’re at all this great fixing, why not pick up a copy. Just $9.99

From Interviews to a unique take on word meanings, to turning negatives to positives (and maybe vice versa) you don’t want to miss this.

Welcome to The Complete Alchemy for Life™ Episode Guide, where I give you a comprehensive overview of all the episodes in our podcast. In this episode, I’ll be narrating a catalog of all our episodes, giving you the titles and a brief description of each one. Whether you’re new to the podcast and want to catch up on past episodes, or you’re a long-time listener looking to revisit some of your favorites, this episode is for you. So sit back, relax, and get ready for a journey through the the Alchemy for Life™ complete episode guide.

If this is your first podcast, hello and I hope you enjoy this year’s catalog. Reach out and say high with feedback, like, rate the podcast, and if you have a friend that would benefit from one of these I don’t mind if you forward this to them!

Also, let me know what you want me to tackle in 2023!

*Mentioned in this episode: The Myth and Magic Podcast. Neil is the person that turned me on to the emotional variant of Liminal Spaces when he interviewed me.

You’ve heard this before right? That as you get better and better at something, you can do it more efficiently. So your skill is just as good as your competitor but you do it faster. great! Except that you charge hourly. So now they are getting better for less, and you are getting… shorted.

Let’s take aerial photography. You could possibly (illegally) have a friend of a friend fly a drone, take some pics, and then get a memory stick of images. Or you could have an insured, licensed professional (that literally got clearance from the FAA to fly for you today) and do the “same” thing. This professional also has mad video editing skills and gives you very professional, color-graded results. The professional studied for months, paid and took a test from the FAA, keeps the license current, purchases a half million dollar insurance policy for each commercial flight, and learned the software necessary to provide the files. And to top it all off he has the skill to understand the difference between a simple wide shot and a customer that is trying to showcase their landscaping skills.

So did it take him 15 minutes to fly that, or a bit more time that you never see?

If you buy a microwave do you think about the actual cost? The amount of time it took to create it? I bet you don’t. And yet you probably almost always do for the service you might purchase.

Let’s talk about that.

(part one of a two part)

We recently talked about measuring, and now we’re talking about NOT doing it.

We have many programs running. We are always tasting, listening, looking, sampling… and measuring.

“Hi, I’m Mr. Scale! I’m going to disappoint you every day.” 👀 It’s pretty easy to stop measuring when it comes to that particular stat. You just stop stepping on the scale… “until you are ready.” But if you stop measuring then what happens?

Let’s talk about measuring, why you would stop, and what you might want to do next. As always, it’s information and then you can decide. Just ten minutes.

We’ve talked about tension before. We’ve talked about tension vs. something being at rest and what that means for us. But now I want to talk about the tension of disagreement.

Everything is going to be OK. Does that relieve you? It might, especially if it comes from a higher status individual. But it doesn’t really do anything. It’s a perfectly acceptable phrase if you are doing everything you can, or you’re beaten up and need a break. But what if you haven’t really even started working towards a goal?

Try this out. You are single and really want to meet someone. Do you prefer to say:

“Don’t worry, there is a plan, I’ll will meet the right person / I can feel it / I know it’s in my future.”

or

“I’m never going to meet the right person.”

Well of course EVERYONE around you will scold you for saying the second one! They will say that’s self sabotage, and that you are “putting that out into the universe” and that “You’re going to fail if you think that way.”

I disagree.

But then there is nothing to do if you only immerse yourself in those other phrases You’re removing the task, the fight, the struggle, the… tension. Get it?

Try it yourself. I submit to you that if you say “God/The Universe has a plan, everything will be fine” then you will be immersed in fuzzy, protective, useless warmth.

Now try the opposite. “Oh my god this is NEVER going to work!” or “I am never going to meet someone great!”

Those are strong statements that your brain will challenge. Your brain is made to challenge logic, and statements, and weigh statements. If it’s wrong and you WILL meet someone your brain will then say “Well yes, if you keep doing THAT. You have to think of something else… think think think!”

Your brain isn’t challenged and your problem solving ability is blanketed with it’s ok, everything will be OK and something will fall out of the sky if you always give yourself those statements.

OK, why do friends do that? Why do they always just give you these statements?

Because they don’t want to suffer. If they tell you it will all be fine, then you’ll shut up, and then talk about something else, all the while silently suffering without a solution.

If you do the research you will find that the people who accomplished the most didn’t avoid tension. They saw the problems and recognized them head on.

So, try it at least once – look in the mirror, yell up and the ceiling and say “Wow, does this suck!” and see what happens next.

It might just surprise you…

Did you ever have an issue with someone and tell a friend about it? They usually say “Oh well I would just say this.” You roll your eyes , take a deep breath, and attempt to explain that this is pretty complicated, and that you’ve already tried that. You could go back and forth or you could just make a note to not mention it again. yeah, that’s a better option.

They don’t understand because you’ve presented a simple issue and they present a simple fix, without taking a step back.

We all know what taking a step back means, and we even talked about that dang 30,000 foot view recently. But this relates to why we take a step back and examine the whole when it comes to accomplishing things.

And that’s exactly what Alchemy for Life™ is. It’s taking that step back and examining everything.

And, it’s having not only a system in place, but a machine/application/tool to allow us to manage it.

Curious?

Good.