Gary John Bishop, Author, UNF*CK YOURSELF
[0:07]Hi, I'm Zibi Owens, and you're listening to Momstone Have Time to Read Books.
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[0:28]Today I'm excited to be talking to Gary John Bishop, who is the best selling author
[0:32]of, I can't even say this, if they're kids around, so make sure they're ears are closed,
[0:36]but it's called Unfuck Yourself, get out of your head and into your life.
[0:40]Gary John Bishop runs Unfuck Nation, including a blog called The Asterix, and online
[0:46]classes.
[0:47]He is one of the leading personal development experts in the industry.
[0:51]Originally from Scotland, he now lives in the U.S. with his wife and three children.
[0:55]Oh, hi, Gary.
[0:56]It's Zibi Owens from Momstone Have Time to Read Books.
[0:58]Hi, how are you?
[0:59]Good, how are you?
[1:00]Thanks for letting me push this back a little.
[1:02]Sure, no problem.
[1:03]And I'm great.
[1:04]Good.
[1:06]So your book was fantastic.
[1:08]I feel totally empowered, having read it, although I had to kind of hide the title from
[1:14]my kids.
[1:15]Yeah, of course.
[1:16]My daughter was like, Mom, what are you reading?
[1:17]I know the feeling, I've got a 13-year-old sexual than a four-year-old, so it's a little bit of
[1:23]a dance in my house when I come to the title of the book.
[1:26]Well, I think actually there were a lot of ways that this book can help parents.
[1:32]One of the ways I thought it really helped is I feel like there's a lot of self-doubt
[1:35]in the art of parenting itself.
[1:37]You know, am I doing this right?
[1:39]Is this the right punishment?
[1:40]Should I, you know, should I go in or leave her alone for a time out?
[1:43]All these things.
[1:44]And in the book, you say we have about 50,000 thoughts in a single day.
[1:49]So I'm wondering, what would your advice be for how do I channel the doubts and give
[1:54]myself more confidence as a parent?
[1:56]Yeah, I think I'm able to answer this both from the perspective of what I do and from
[2:02]the perspective of being a dad.
[2:04]One of the first things that I really had to give up and being a parent was that I knew
[2:08]what I was doing, and I really like, you know, mostly people parent as a reflection of
[2:14]a parent or in some kind of reaction to the parent, so it's kind of like you're either
[2:18]going to be like just like your mom or totally not like your mom or your dad or whatever.
[2:23]So people are invariably either trying to recreate or react to the childhood they had.
[2:29]And I think the more you recognize that, the more I recognize that, the more I figure out a
[2:33]little bit more room to breathe, right?
[2:35]But kind of sailing myself down, well, all right, look, this is the first for me, too.
[2:40]I've never done this before to send a world for me.
[2:43]And I've found out with my oldest son, like, really letting him know, look, I'm not always
[2:49]going to get it right with you, but I want you to know that the intention is always there
[2:53]to get it right, right?
[2:55]And sometimes I do.
[2:56]And sometimes I don't, which gave me a lot of freedom at hand, you know, like freedom
[3:00]for myself and freedom for him, too, could you just be authentic with them and tell them
[3:05]the truth, right?
[3:06]Rather than, oh, you know, I'm the voice of everything you'll ever want in, you know,
[3:10]like really to give up the notion that I was somehow the voice of God or something.
[3:15]So that was really like empowering for me as well, because then I could say, well, I get
[3:19]it right, I get it right.
[3:20]And if I don't get it right, you know, I don't get it right, but we'll both learn something
[3:24]out of this.
[3:25]And I think that's part of the part of the dance would be an apparent is we're really
[3:30]committed.
[3:31]I think we're really committed to not screw it up mostly.
[3:33]See, see, I was doing, there was a lot of good intention there, but often the intention
[3:38]behind the action isn't communicated.
[3:41]And so all the kids really last was just the action.
[3:44]But if you're obvious about the intention, look, you need to learn something new here
[3:48]or whatever you're doing here doesn't work.
[3:51]And so we're going to do this instead, but all of those things allowed me to really connect
[3:55]to my children are fanically as opposed to trying to fake it till I make it or something.
[4:01]You wrote it?
[4:02]Yeah, totally made sense.
[4:04]I want to talk a little more about what you said a minute ago about how we parent and reaction
[4:08]to our own parents.
[4:09]Yeah.
[4:10]You wrote your book that, you know, many of the clients have this subconscious desire to
[4:13]prove that their parents did a bad job in raising them and that plays out in their life
[4:17]in many ways.
[4:18]How do you see that playing out and how people become a parent, not just in the habits
[4:22]they sort of pick up throughout their lives?
[4:23]Yeah.
[4:24]The termination to not repeat the past is what repeats it.
[4:28]Right.
[4:29]So you start with an ocean that everyone either reflects or tries to basically do a better
[4:36]job than their own childhood.
[4:38]So you're going to do, I'm going to do it.
[4:40]My dad did that was really great.
[4:41]I'm not going to do it.
[4:42]My dad did that was terrible.
[4:43]So you end up with the opposite.
[4:45]Right.
[4:46]So you end up with like either the opposite or the same.
[4:48]I think one of the things we felt in order says, what do we think our children are going
[4:52]to deal with that?
[4:54]Right.
[4:55]So your children are going to deal with you, dad.
[4:57]What's that?
[4:58]They're either going to do that or the opposite.
[5:00]So if you do the opposite of what your dad did and your daughter does the opposite of what
[5:04]you, dad, they're going to do what your dad did.
[5:07]And that's really the very kind of like pretty crazy side.
[5:10]I think we get ourselves into his parents.
[5:12]It's like, oh, you know, my mom wasn't very loving with me.
[5:16]So I'm going to be really loving with my, you're going to really obvious about my love
[5:20]and my children.
[5:22]Oh, my God, my mother suffocated me.
[5:24]It was like too much.
[5:25]I mean, I want to leave my children alone.
[5:28]And then their parents, their children got with, oh, my gosh, my mom, like never showed
[5:31]me any love.
[5:32]So I just, I want to show it to my, and the cycle just keeps getting paid.
[5:36]And so my focus with my little ones is I'm not trying to make up for some stuff that
[5:41]I didn't have in my past.
[5:42]I just went away, went or I'm not trying to replicate the things that happened in my past
[5:49]because they're gone.
[5:50]And the way I look at it when my kids is really, I'm more interested in what works.
[5:54]What's going to work here?
[5:55]I think it was going to work for you.
[5:57]What's going to work for us as a family.
[5:59]And all of that is kind of shrouded and just might just complete and unequivocal love
[6:03]for them.
[6:04]I'm always, I always tell them daily.
[6:06]I tell my children many, many times every day, you know, really, I don't just mean like,
[6:10]see, I probably love you.
[6:11]I mean, like, I really tell my children, I love them and how much they mean to me.
[6:15]But again, I'm always in this practice, I guess.
[6:19]I know this is something that I'm always in this practice of really trying to disconnect
[6:24]myself from making up for or replicating something that's already happened.
[6:29]So important.
[6:30]Sort of a vicious cycle of things you're talking about.
[6:32]Yeah.
[6:33]Time to stop it now.
[6:34]Yeah.
[6:35]Yeah.
[6:36]You said also in the book that which I found to be really helpful just on a personal
[6:41]level, but also as a parent, you wrote, you must first accept that while there are things
[6:46]that have happened in your life that you've had no say in, you are 100% responsible
[6:51]for what you do with your life in the aftermath of those events, which it seems like an obvious
[6:56]concept, but it's so easy to lose the plot and not remember that in day to day life.
[7:01]Yeah.
[7:02]So what are some sort of adaptive ways to cope with the past?
[7:05]I know it's broad question, but how do you manage things that are out of your control
[7:09]like that?
[7:10]Yeah.
[7:11]It's funny, you know, like, I'll look at the way we are assuming beings from a very distinct
[7:17]kind of place.
[7:18]Okay.
[7:19]So I don't look at, I don't look at you as a human being from the possession of say
[7:22]psychology.
[7:23]I don't look at you from the possession of say neuroscience or something.
[7:27]Those things are interesting.
[7:28]Don't get me wrong.
[7:29]Very interesting.
[7:30]I think it comes from a very philosophical standpoint.
[7:34]And I get really empowered by philosophers like Jean Paul Sartre.
[7:39]And Sartre says it's all meaningless.
[7:41]It's all empty and meaningless.
[7:43]So what does that really mean?
[7:43]It means, well, if you look back, can you are passing, you can't do that in your head
[7:47]by the way.
[7:48]You can't look back any other way.
[7:49]There's no lake standing on the precipice of a cliff.
[7:52]You know, looking under the past.
[7:55]It's not out there.
[7:56]It's on your head.
[7:57]But if you sit and recollect the past, you'll notice you've given some white and significance
[8:02]to some things as opposed to some other things.
[8:05]So another way to say that to human being is you, like all human beings have cherry
[8:10]picked your past.
[8:12]And you've kind of made yourself a nice little basket of goodies there that you're going
[8:16]to carry forward with you as some kind of template for how to live out your future.
[8:21]And when you really dig into it, and I've really dug into this, like it's kind of
[8:26]maniacal level.
[8:27]But anyway, I've been likely actually to come up with a lot of different versions.
[8:32]But I noticed I came up with my version.
[8:35]And one of the things I noticed as an adult is that I've become really dug into my version
[8:40]of my past.
[8:41]So if you dared question my version of my past, I was on the defense and I'm like,
[8:45]you can't tell me what happened in the past.
[8:49]And I noticed that I would say I want to get over my past, but in certain cases, if you
[8:53]poked me enough, I would fight for it.
[8:55]I'd be like, oh, I don't want to get over this garbage.
[8:57]I'm really dealing with this time of life.
[9:00]But if you dared question how I saw it, or my experience of it, I would defend it.
[9:05]And I started to get the absurdity of that, like, what am I doing here?
[9:08]Like, I'm really interested in letting go of this thing called the past.
[9:13]One of the things that might get me there is coming to terms with that I have a version
[9:17]of it.
[9:19]And that was a long process for me, but I started to realize that the moment I got over
[9:23]of what had been with the moment that I realized how I'd used it to justify myself.
[9:30]And the moment I could see that, it was like shocking, like, oh my gosh, like, when I'm
[9:36]doing this, I explain it by talking about that, and I'm doing this over here.
[9:40]I explain it by talking about that over there.
[9:42]And I realized that just framed all my jerkiness around that.
[9:46]You know, it was really like, I'm awesome.
[9:49]And it's completely a function of the people in my life who made me awesome.
[9:52]It was always like, I'm awesome, and spite of the people who attempted to screw me up.
[9:57]And I started to realize, like, everything, I did that, I gave away.
[10:00]my power and I was living some like I was stuck in the matrix of old thoughts and older
[10:04]motions and older approaches and old ways are looking at things. And if I truly wanted
[10:09]to have a future looking unrecognizable future, I'd have to give up that my path has
[10:14]any kind of saying that that's powerful stuff. Yeah, I'm sitting here in my head thinking
[10:19]how can I rewrite my past and like maybe I need to take some things out of my little
[10:23]basket in there. Actually, if you start, the question you ask yourself is, how can
[10:29]I rewrite my past? Okay. That's a great question you ask yourself because it first
[10:34]had met that you wrote it. Right. So it's like that's the place you would start like,
[10:39]what if I've screwed myself? What if I've screwed myself? What if those certain things
[10:46]that happened and I'm not way down by what happened, but rather I'm way down with what
[10:50]I told myself about what happened? What did it really mean? That happened in my past?
[10:55]What does that mean about me? What does it mean about life? What does it mean about other
[10:58]people? And those things are the anchors that keep you down. It's not what happened. It's
[11:05]what you settled upon after that. That's what has you by the throat and your wife. So
[11:11]that my new book is that some of this actually I want more detail about the ways in which
[11:16]as human beings, we are pretty much in a cycle of attempting to confirm what will be
[11:22]already concluded. And what you've already concluded is not good news. But when you see
[11:28]your own version, you actually catch yourself in the act of perpetuating the mess of
[11:34]your own past. You actually catch yourself doing it. That is a little shock and it's
[11:38]like, wow, like I've coached many, many, many, many thousands of people. And it's always
[11:43]shocking to them when you reveal something that they've concluded. And then they actually
[11:49]get chance to get a real broad view of how they've lived a life with that. And for many
[11:55]people, it's stuff like I'm not smart enough. I'm not loved. I'm never going to make it.
[12:00]I don't belong. I don't fit in. And whatever your personal brand of it is, you're actually
[12:05]out to prove it every day. Like you don't find an evidence for it confirming it. Then trying
[12:10]to get over it and then returning yourself to it. And then trying to get over it and
[12:14]then returning yourself to it. And then you die. Okay then. So I don't know if I can ask
[12:25]this, but there were many references to sort of the quote, grit of your early life and
[12:30]a crisis you withdrew yourself. And I was just wondering if you were able to share sort
[12:34]of what it was in your past that inspired you to take this path and share this help with
[12:40]others. Yeah. Absolutely. So as person, I see you would ask me that question given the
[12:47]context of the conversation we're having right now. But that was like everybody else in
[12:53]this planet. If you'd asked me to tell you about my life, I could explain it to you.
[12:58]And if you'd asked me to tell you why it turned out, the way it turned out, I could explain
[13:03]that too. And if you'd asked me to tell you about my success, I could explain that. And
[13:07]I could explain that too. And it was in my late 30s, I started to realize that I was quite
[13:15]and I didn't think I was a bad man or something. I mean, I wasn't telling me not morally
[13:19]bad. Let's put it out. I would have looked on myself as a morally good person. But like
[13:24]old human beings, you know, I get to write off my nonsense by saying, and I'm flawed, right?
[13:30]I just don't know all of them. But in my 30s, I realized that for the most part, when
[13:35]I looked at the cruddy parts of my life, I could explain that by talking about the way my
[13:39]mom raised me. So I could explain it that way. And then if I looked at the good parts of my
[13:43]life, I could explain that by some of my character traits. So I'm independent, driven,
[13:52]you know, charismatic. That's why I'm awesome. And then here's why I'm not so awesome.
[13:58]My mom didn't do this. Didn't do that. Not enough for that. Not enough for that. Needed
[14:01]more of this. She was never there for that. All that stuff. And I realized that as an adult
[14:06]man in my 30s, I wasn't going around like broadcasting this on every corner. But in the darkest
[14:11]corners of my mind, I was explaining it to myself in terms of I'll never get what I want
[14:17]because my mom screwed it up in the first 15 years. And that was the summer, but there
[14:21]was lots more to it than that. There was a lot more can I gone with it, I can tell it in
[14:25]that right. More drama, I feel it. And I won't bore you with the details because it
[14:29]ultimately is just boring. It's just like everybody else. You know, I'm blaming somebody
[14:34]for the way my life turned out. And I started to leave like, if this is how I'm going
[14:37]to frame my future, you know, I haven't loved with my mom since I was sex-themed. And
[14:42]here I am, 38 still talking about it to myself. And so I just kind of like big
[14:49]computer Jesus in my head, you know, and I called my mom up and I thanked her for my
[14:53]life. And I thanked her for the privilege of being a man and like who had become. And
[14:59]I told her, I loved her, I said, I love you. And in that moment, like it hit me, like
[15:04]I hadn't called my mom, but I loved her since I was about nine. Like I noticed in my
[15:08]wife, like the process had already started by the time I had nine. And I wasn't, I was
[15:12]a good kid. I was like one of these like fundamental children. But the resentment was
[15:17]building. And I was building a case for myself and for her. And it was no coincidence
[15:22]that I'd see thousand miles away from us, you know. And it was radical. Suddenly, I could
[15:29]see my mom in a whole other light. I mean, it literally did a rewrote my past, like a
[15:35]recontextualize every action she'd taken. And then the eyes of the kids, and you have
[15:40]to do this by the way, meticulously, you can't just do this in a blasey statement,
[15:44]like, oh, yeah, they did their best, which is what people said. And it's nonsense. You're
[15:49]not in front, Madison. I looked back and I said, what did she do? Oh, she raised four
[15:54]kids. My dad mostly wasn't out. He was in alcohol. She was in her 40s and basically
[15:59]her life was done. There's nowhere else to go. There's nothing else there. And there
[16:03]I am complaining that, you know, you didn't do that. She didn't do that. I didn't get
[16:08]that. As a kid would do, right? Then I really started to come in terms with, I complained
[16:15]that she wasn't loving with me in the way that I want to tell you to be loving. And I
[16:18]really confronted the notion that I had turned any my own little narrative, but I'd become
[16:23]that guy because it's so hardworking. Don't do that. Well, we stuff for me. I'm not
[16:29]at my most comfortable there. I've literally become the thing that I complained about. And
[16:35]I realized that I've become that way with her. So on this, like, full-on mission, did
[16:39]just demonstrate my love for her, for people, for my family. And everything also for
[16:44]me in the space of five minutes, like my whole life pivoted. And I realized that my life
[16:50]was all about making the difference for people. Like I let my mom out that day, like
[16:54]a Christmas tree, like the way she hadn't been touched or inspired. And I realized that
[16:58]I could do that with my life. I could have something to be here for. And that's what I've
[17:03]been doing ever since. Well, what a story. That's really beautiful and inspiring. I can
[17:10]just imagine how your mom has to felt that day and hoping other parents out there are getting
[17:15]calls like that. As a reaction to this, right? So how do you feel now that you have dedicated
[17:23]your life to helping other people with your books, with the courses that you teach? Tell
[17:26]me a little more about the classes you teach. What, like, what are you getting from it yourself?
[17:30]And what are you offering out there to the universe? So, you know, I've been in this kind
[17:36]of game, you feel like, and I don't mean a game, like, like I set up kind of thing.
[17:40]I mean, like, literally, like, I've been using my life for something. And you know,
[17:46]I was using your life for something. By the way, that's always surprising to be when people
[17:50]think it's noble. Are you using your life to make a difference? Okay, but the alternative
[17:55]was I was going to use my wife to run a small construction company. I decided against that.
[17:59]So I decided to use my life for making a difference for people. And one of the things
[18:04]that I experienced when I was first ended doing personal growth work was to me anyway,
[18:11]a lot of it just didn't land with me. It didn't deal with what I wanted it to do. And
[18:15]I wanted to be awakened. And I realized that awakening needed to provoke me. You couldn't
[18:21]awaken me by telling me to unleash my inner spirit or something. It just didn't work with
[18:27]me. That's not going to deal with for me. I did something to tell me, what are you
[18:30]doing in New York? And then when somebody did that with me, I was like, oh, huh, what
[18:35]do you mean? And that allowed me to confront some sacred cows of mine, which is not
[18:40]really easy, by the way, because you're organized that I'm these things. We've built lives
[18:44]that I don't know. And then somebody says, yeah, you might want to question that. That's
[18:47]not accurate actually. And you're like, huh, what do you mean? I've been doing this for three
[18:51]decades now. Do you mean I might not be accurate? Of course it's accurate. So all of my
[18:55]work is in that genre is in that style, if you like, rather, all confront. I am firmly
[19:03]of the belief that the most powerful transformations of your life are kind of ugly and
[19:08]snorty and have tears in them. And you hide every moment of it, but you know, it's completely
[19:13]necessary for what's on the other side of it. I haven't had any chance. I had no significant
[19:20]transformation in my life. That was like a joyous leap across a blanket of flowers and
[19:26]a country fields, you know, overlooking the Swiss Alps. I never had any of those. I'm not saying
[19:32]they don't exist for people that never existed for me. So my course season, my books
[19:37]and everything that I do is he present people with certain absolutes, because I think
[19:42]he present people with an idea. They always take the road out, immediately start thinking
[19:46]of somebody else and the like, all right. You know, sometimes I'll put stuff up on Facebook
[19:50]and Instagram will say stuff like humility. It's not just for other people. And then I'll see
[19:54]people like tag their friend with it.
[20:00]And I'm thinking, no, it was for you, but I'm back, right?
[20:07]It's not easy to challenge people with absolutes because when people say, I was trying
[20:11]for being analytical, I only want to do what we talk about the theory of it, rather than
[20:15]confront, well, what if this is true about me, what does that mean?
[20:20]And that's what I invite people to do when you interact with my work is to look at it
[20:24]like I'm talking only about you and they're saying totally applies to you, even though
[20:27]first you might say, this isn't quite me, but you set less at and you're still in it
[20:33]and you allow yourself to be with what I'm proposing, you often get shocked at how penetrating
[20:39]it is because, and I think that's something we don't really do enough of as human beings that really
[20:44]do the critical thinking to break things down for ourselves and question ourselves.
[20:48]So it seems to have really been a powerful approach for a lot of people, you know, I think the
[20:54]books, I think it's about 800,000 copies or something, and it's been received in such a
[21:01]passionate way by people, I think people want something else. So I think sometimes they want
[21:06]to cuddle and sometimes they want to wake up and I'm the wake up guy.
[21:11]That's awesome. And you have a new book coming out on your blog, The Asterix, which is such
[21:17]a cool name. You wrote, I've been working on the next book for the last eight months or so,
[21:21]and as with everything I write, I've gone through my usual library of negative self-talk,
[21:26]and then you go on to say ultimately what it comes down to is whether I'm going to define myself
[21:30]with all this stuff over the past, or am I going to strike a blow for some as yet to be uncovered
[21:35]future? And that's the choice we have to be defined by what has been or what has yet to come.
[21:40]So tell me how this applies to writing, because I know they're a letter,
[21:43]writers out there who are, you know, plagued by self-doubt and don't have enough of the positive
[21:48]self-talk that you preach. How did that play into your writing, your next book? And when does it
[21:52]come out? Yeah, well, first it comes out May 7th, and it's about, it's a whole thing to
[21:58]themselves to advertise, okay? But it's about, you'll actually uncover your very personal self-sabotizing
[22:04]this book. Don't actually see yours. And you'll see the whole of it, like not just the better
[22:09]that you'll see the whole model. So I see, like, oh my gosh, this is what it's all based on.
[22:15]And I think one of the downsides with a lot of personal growth work has been this
[22:21]propensity to have people constantly be positive. Which, you know, has a value, but at least you
[22:28]short, if you're struggling with that, like, you're pretty much toast. If you don't have something,
[22:34]you're not in some kind of positive state. And as we negative thought, you have, if you start
[22:40]listening to it and get the nature of it, you'll see that it's based in some already
[22:45]existing notion that you've adopted. So I can't do it too hard. I'm not smart enough. I don't trust
[22:52]people since too much of a struggle for me. It's never going to happen for me. I'm not loved.
[22:57]I'm incapable. So you've already had all these thoughts. So not, it's not like something new,
[23:03]like, oh my gosh, I just came to the conclusion that I'm a smurf. You never have thoughts.
[23:08]It's always the thumbnail. We are right. And when you're pressed in light, so people call
[23:14]it overwhelmed or stressed. I call it press. It seems like life is on you. And it's kind of
[23:19]squeezing on you. You know, and when life is on you and it's squeezing on you, that's when the juice
[23:25]comes out. And it's not like, it's not like the awesome juice of a mango or something. It's like
[23:33]it's like your ugly snot juice that comes out. So it's when you're at your worst. And it's seemingly
[23:39]you're at your worst when you need to be at your best. And like, that's what I would stand
[23:44]anyway. Like, I really need to be confident right now yet somehow I'm drained of any last moment
[23:48]you come of self-belief. My possession with people is, what if you could still act on
[23:55]something else while gripped by this negative. And so in my new book, I actually talk about
[24:02]the illusion that we have as human beings is somehow we are caused by our past. So that is,
[24:08]there's some kind of direct correlation. In fact, not even a correlation. It's more like a causality.
[24:13]Like, I am this way today because of that thing that happened this morning on happened last night
[24:18]or happened 10 years ago. Like, everything that I am today is a function of something that's already
[24:23]been with it two minutes ago or 20 years ago. And included in that notion is that causality only travels
[24:30]in one direction. Only ever travels from the past to the present can only ever be caused by what's
[24:36]being. Again, if you give that some thing, not some thought, which is usually pointless,
[24:41]but you actually give it some thinking. There's been plenty of times in your life if you just
[24:45]let yourself be with it when you've actually, causality has actually traveled from the future.
[24:52]So at my time, there was hope of strat. But if you've ever gone on, or you've ever booked a flight
[24:59]to go on your vacation and you've experienced the excitement of going, yet you haven't gone yet,
[25:06]you'll be in cause then that moment by the future. The future hasn't happened, but it's
[25:12]reaching back to you and lighting you up. So you're actually being inspired by something that hasn't
[25:18]even taken place. So I say to people, well, if you're an awesome, you say, okay, what's my book?
[25:26]What's my masterpiece? I'm going to create your, what if I was caused by that? What if that
[25:31]was what got me out of bed in the morning? What if that, even though the past might be trying to
[25:34]pull me in another direction? And that's kind of the little crossroads where you'll find yourself
[25:40]in that little intersection there between being pulled to explain yourself by your past,
[25:46]or being caused by a future that hasn't happened yet. In that moment, all it really
[25:52]choirs is you to be a potent demand of yourself to act on your future as opposed to succumbing to
[25:57]the thoughts and emotions and moods and outlooks of your past. You don't have to feel it to do it.
[26:04]You only have to do it to do it. And if you just get that to your bounce like, oh, I don't have
[26:09]to feel it to do it. I don't have to do it to do it. And when I wrote my book, I said, no, there were
[26:15]many days when I didn't want to go to the last talk, but I did it anyway. And I did it because I said
[26:20]it would do it. And that was the only reason I was there. And I would sit there and type,
[26:24]and type, and type, and type, and type, and I might not have liked it. And I might thought
[26:27]it was terrible. I'm just going to keep going. I'm only going to keep going because I said
[26:30]it would keep going, not because I feel like it, or even that what I'm saying is decent. I'm only
[26:35]going to tell it because I said it would. And I'm going to keep doing that. And I'm going to keep
[26:39]doing that. I noticed I could be highly productive, even in my most negative space. And in fact,
[26:45]some of the juiciest things that I wrote in the book were given by being someone who could
[26:50]relentlessly produce those results and the face of myself. Mm-hmm. Got it. That's awesome. Well,
[26:56]I think we're kind of out of time. But thank you so much for sharing all this amazing advice. I'm
[27:02]now going to be, you know, rethinking my entire life. So you will be in my thoughts as your
[27:10]book is here on my desk. I don't know if you're thinking it through. So anyway, thank you so much. And
[27:14]thanks for inspiring all the listeners and doing all you do to help people. It's really amazing
[27:20]to find someone who's so generous with their life's work. So thank you. Awesome, Debbie. Thank you.
[27:24]All right. Take care. Bye-bye. Bye-bye.
[27:26]This episode has been sponsored by Bookhampton. Bookhampton.com.
[27:30]Thanks to Ryan and Steve at Texture Sound for the audio editing and mixing. Thanks for listening
[27:35]to Momstone. Have time to read books.