Shall We Walk The Talk?

Talking is unlikely to build anything of value!

I decided to finish my gym party with my body balance class. You need to know some context here: My coach was giving her third class after two cardio ones. She is so passionate. After a few tracks, she asked whether everything was okay. We were about 60. She got only ONE answer.

She turned to me and said, “Thank you!”, with her usual grace accompanied by her grateful eyes. My heart was bleeding. It would have taken nothing to answer her question.

She was too tired. Still, committed to delivering her session in the highest quality, and she was! She merely needed to be recognized for her efforts. She needed to be seen. She needed to feel we also did care.

If I was not there, her question would have stayed unanswered, her need unfulfilled, her heart disappointed, and that would have been ugly, to say the least!

What was the root cause of the indifference?

We tend to have many confusions around expectations. Many would have told me, “Well, a giver doesn’t need our recognition. They are doing what they’re doing selflessly without expecting anything in return.”

What is the root cause of such confusion? The myth around the expectations. A considerable part of society believes we need to avoid having any, given they are the source of all our hard feelings.

The truth is it is the case only when our expectations are unhealthy. Does this mean there are two kinds of expectations? Indeed. That’s the reason why there are toxic and healthy relationships in the first place!

This explains my tendency to separate between love and a relationship. Love — the genuine form — is a free emotion we can give to a stranger, to animals, to a flower, to a beautiful rainbow — you name it!

Your center is the foundation of your love manifestation. If your center is your children, the love that manifests from that will primarily benefit your children. If your center is the Principles, the manifestation of your love will benefit the Universe.

A relationship, though, is a wholly different story. It takes two individuals, and what would be defining its nature is how emotionally healthy each involved party is. A person’s expectations can tell a lot about their emotional balance.

Unhealthy versus healthy expectations

An insecure person navigating life with numerous limiting beliefs and emotional scars, who has never had an opportunity to become aware of their conditioning outcomes, or who were not able to get out of their denial circle, would have such unhealthy expectations:

• Expecting the person to fix them,
• To make of them the center of their world,
• To understand them even when they don’t understand themselves,
• To forgive all their endless reactivity and drama,
• To make them happy even when they’re doing everything to stay in their victim position their unhealthy ego loves so much.

An emotionally self-reliant person — or at least who is on the path of becoming one — on the other hand, would expect the following from a relationship:

First and foremost, they need to be actively listened to:

Instead of listening to respond, we listen to understand. Instead of listening to the words, we listen to the body language and emotions. Instead of listening with the ears, we listen with the heart.

How is that even possible? Thanks to a mindset shift — namely “Seeking first to understand, and then to be understood”. — Stephen Covey

What does it take?

Having already moved — at least partially — from the biased personality sphere to the character arena. From the unhealthy ego to self-love. From the distorted center(s) to the original one. From the limiting beliefs to the truth fueled by the universal principles.

Simply put, it takes re-writing your invasive subconscious program, which you were not responsible for writing in the first place.

An emotionally healthy person also needs to be seen, recognized, encouraged, challenged, celebrated. Also:

• Free acts of kindness and generosity,
• The roles in the relationship to be clear.
• People to keep their promises.
• Others to apologize quickly and sincerely whenever screwing things up — as we all do anyway!

They need to be in a relationship where the other party is also living wholeheartedly!

How do you walk the talk?

Coming back to my coach's story, the point here is that it is easy to talk, to preach kindness, to promote the most amazing virtues. Anyone can do it.

The old miserable perfectionist “me” was also guilty of it. She was desperately looking for some external worth since her intrinsic one was discriminated against by her caregivers.

Interestingly, when the situation required showing up for others and proving the virtues she believed she had, she was remaining self-absorbed and neutral many times.

Having started the delusional self-development journey helped drastically. She became compassionate, generous, eloquent, healthy — all that she could ever wish for herself to make it short — until an incident (or maybe 2 in parallel) took place and destroyed her fragile balance.

What happened? Her ingrained limiting beliefs succeeded in overriding all the positive affirmations she spent months mapping. That’s when she started questioning her worth, doubting herself, and adding even more insecurities to the endless list.

She was trying to heal while a malignant narcissist noticed her and decided she would be his perfect victim. She almost killed herself.

At that point, it became clear how much she was lost, and she had only two options: either committing to the real adventure of drastically transforming or dying. Fortunately, she went for the former.

More to the point, the virtues are not mapped. They are acquired when you do your homework, whenever you decide to pay the price and stay with the pain long enough to transform.

I can get pissed off of some ego shows that could, unfortunately, fool many folks who are eagerly looking for some light and distracting themselves with the “feel-good” content.

Developing your critical thinking skills is the most effective antidote I can think of. There are manipulators everywhere, ranging from the fame slaves — with average IQ and EQ — to human predators.

The latter group shows a high level of intellectual intelligence and is master in mirroring virtues for the sake of exploiting, taking advantage, destroying, and creating chaos instead of uplifting the world.

In between, we can find other less dangerous character-disturbed individuals who don’t survive on hurting others like the psychopaths/malignants narcissists.

They are interested in getting their way and wouldn’t care if it means causing harm to others within the process. They manipulate to reach their selfish goals and guarantee they always win, and they do it well.

Take Hitler as an example. He was a visionary (IQ), he was disciplined (PQ), and he was passionate (EQ) about his vision. What was missing? The most important form of intelligence: The Spiritual one (SQ) fueled by the Principles Center.

Instead of being principle-centered, Hitler was an ego-driven individual disconnected from his conscience.

To give you another example from our daily life, I once watched a video that collected thousands of reactions on LinkedIn. I felt frustrated not only watching it but also witnessing the shocking number of people who were fooled by the fake kindness.

The actors are a heterosexual couple. The woman knocks on the door of a family. A mother appears accompanied by her kids. The woman is holding an amount of money and moving it to make sure it is well captured by the camera.

Without taking even a second to build a rapport, she announces to the mother this gift is for her. The mom is confused. The actress is faking being moved by her reaction — without tears. She only has words. Everything is filmed. End of the story.

I sympathize frankly. You want to be appreciated and get some external validation. The pleaser I used to be is so familiar with this pattern. What you are ignoring, though, is that you are not doing yourself any favor through instant gratifications.

You could trick your system for a while to release Dopamine. But, that’s how the panoply of addictions are created: cigarettes, alcohol, drugs, video games, exercising, meditation — even to people!

You could also delude your brain to produce Serotonin — the chemical of status and pride. You may feel great when you buy a fancy car or house or yacht — you name it, and that everyone is talking about it and is impressed.

When people stop mentioning it, you feel like s*it again and buy the next fancy thing to trigger your needed dose. People in this category are centered on “Money and Belongings”.

Since we get our internal security and a sense of worth from our center, this could be explaining why we hear about someone who commits suicide when losing one’s wealth. They become nobody.

Last thoughts

Mapping some positive affirmations could work until a trauma happens. Tricking your system could work until your coping mechanism is not available anymore. They are reversible because they are only tools.

Tools don’t transform. They can only numb!

Don’t get me wrong. I am not saying stop using healthy tools and habits. I will never encourage you to stop eating healthy, taking enough rest to regenerate your cells, exercising, mindfulness, etc.

I am only saying that, if you want to walk the talk, you will need much more than tools! Re-writing your invasive subconscious program is the only effective way to (un)become the filter and meet your True Self:

The servant-leader reconnected with the divinity’s gifts and talents, which you would be progressively developing. This servant leader does not need to prove anything to anyone or promote any virtue. S/he is already living it every single day!

Shall we walk the talk? Are you tempted? I hope you are. Those crisis times are your best chance to make it happen!

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