Well, I had a long session with Erik (through Kim) on the subject of a Trump presidency. I’ll try to post the YouTube on Wednesday. All in all, it’s uplifting with few exceptions. There was only one question Kim felt uncomfortable about answering and that was whether he’d continue for a second term. I hope to god that doesn’t mean he’ll be assassinated. He’s pretty old, so maybe he just won’t feel up to it. 

Enjoy today’s post on self-direction!

Me: Hi Kim. Your hair looks good. She just got it done, guys, so like this video if you like her hair.

Kim: They colored my forehead, but we’ll cover it up.

I laugh.

Me: Hey, the Internet looks good this time. We had problems the last time so we couldn’t have our session, but now we’ve hooked up directly to Ethernet.

My image is fuzzy and I noticed my screen where the camera port is looks like it’s dirty, but cleaning it with eyeglass cleaner doesn’t take it off. I’m wondering if someone cleaned it with something they shouldn’t have and ruined the finish. Sigh. At least my wrinkles won’t be so obvious.

Me: So, we’re golden. Hi, Erik. How are you doing?

Erik: What’s up, Mom?

Kim: He’s moving and dancing around.

Me: I hope you were with us on our trip to Colorado. I felt you sometimes.

Erik: Are you kidding? Of course I was there!

Me: Good.

Erik: The traveling, the camping, the outdoors, that’s me.

He taps his chest.

Me: Oh yes. Absolutely. All right. Let’s start out by talking about, well, I’ll give you the choice: Vaccines, the importance of boundaries, or how to be self-directed and not put your self-esteem in the hands of others.

Kim: He’s so animated with his movements!

Erik: I really like the last two. Let’s start with being self-directed. This has a lot to do with motivation and what motivates you to something.

Kim (smiling): He wants me to stop.

Erik: Stop and tell her when I said I liked camping and she said “absolutely,” I said, ‘No, abso-fucking-lutely.’

Kim laughs.

Me: Okay. So we had to stop for that, huh?

Kim: He had to make sure he said that.

Me: Not like your older sister, Kristina. She would stay in the camper and read books. She’d have nothing to do with bugs or dirt or animals. You just got filthy, Erik. Camping was a full contact sport for you.

Erik (smiling): Yeah, it just felt good. Okay, so getting back to motivation and what motivates you to do this, that or the other and knowing whether that motivation is self-directed or motivated by other people, things, occurrences—

Me: Society.

Erik: –or events, yep. It can be tricky. A lot of people don’t even realize what they’re thinking isn’t self-directed. They think their thoughts are coming from within themselves, but most of the time what they’re doing is a reaction to something. Now granted, that’s part of life and part of being human. You constantly react to different things, but if that’s what always influences your actions and decisions, if you’re always reacting to something, then you’re not grounded in yourself, and perhaps you don’t completely know who you are. To be self-directed is to be able to separate from society’s ideas and concepts and still be able to sense what feels right to you. People don’t fucking listen to that voice anymore. They think, “Well, society says this, so that’s what I’ll do even though it doesn’t feel right for me. If society says it’s normal, then that’s what I’ll do.” That’s not being self-directed. That’s being directed by society. I want to encourage people to not feel bullied or pressured by the way society is moving because people often make their decisions based on the external. In a way, you’re robbing yourself of your own personal growth. So, to be self-directed, Mom, to really listen to yourself and not just hear but be responsive and interact with yourself, that’s knowing your sacredness and knowing the essence of your value. If you follow society or things that you know in the back of your head doesn’t speak true to you, you’re robbing yourself of completely knowing yourself. A lot of this goes back to knowing the value of your own opinions and what resonates with you and what doesn’t. Just because something might resonate with 10,000 people but doesn’t resonate with you doesn’t mean that you’re wrong. It doesn’t mean you’re weird. It just means you know yourself.

Me: This kind of goes along with what I teach in my parenting books. The first one was Raising Children Who Think for Themselves.

I’ve mentioned this before on another YouTube. We’re pack animals, so we have to have this sense of belonging to a pack. There are a couple of ways to do that. You can conform to the pack and seek its approval, and that means you rely on external beacons instead of your inner compass. That means you have to make your choices based on what’s going to win you the most approval. Or you can get pack approval by contributing something meaningful even if it’s that you are a kind person or whatever. Once you do that, you belong to the pack and you don’t have to seek their approval. You’re free to make your decisions based on your inner compass. You can make a decision because it’s the right one for you. Anyway, I had to do my pitch!

Erik (pointing both index fingers at me): Bingo. Knowing it’s the right thing for you and not just the right thing for society. That’s the difference. But Mom, tell them about your book. I want people to know that resource because even if it’s a book about raising children, people are going to learn about themselves as adult by reading it.

Me: Well, one book is called, Hearing is Believing: How Words Can Make or Break Our Kids. Sometimes, some of the things we say create approval seekers. Even saying, “I’m so proud of you” can do this because then the child is going to think, “Oh, you’re proud of me? Well, I’m going to keep doing whatever makes you proud.” Then it’s going to be whatever makes their peers proud and society proud. Instead, you should say, “I bet you’re proud.” That will create self-reflection and make the child think, “Am I proud? Well, yes. I worked hard on that project.” And you can take this language, this new vocabulary that I have in this book and apply it to adults: co-workers, friends, spouses, etc. And it’s so freaking easy. You’ll notice a huge change in two weeks. You’ll have self-directed children and self-directed adults in your life.

Erik: It’s true, Mom. What your book does and just the essence of what you explained teaches people not to fucking depend on others but depend on themselves. Maybe that’s what being self-directed is anyway. You depend on yourself, your heart, your ideas, your feelings and things that match you and are true to you rather than doing things to meet other’s expectations. It’s hard, too, because people often don’t even realize that they allow themselves to be bullied by society.

Me: Well, what can they do if they’re in that trap? Give me some exercises, some measures, some practical advice.

Erik: Really quickly: To think for themselves. Think for yourself, people. That territory where you’re being a self-thinker is not scary. Thinking for yourself and by yourself isn’t scary. People are just scared to get there, Mom.

Me: But you said people sometimes don’t even know. They think they’re thinking for themselves, but they’re really not. So what do those people do?

Erik: Those are followers. They’re just following and aren’t grounded in themselves. Some exercises they can do to embody their own self-direction and truly know that, to know the difference between that and being directed by society. Just what you said, Mom. You have to get real with yourself. “Is it right for me?” If you can at least allow that to be a checkpoint when you’re making tough decisions or changes in your life, that will help. People are afraid to do that. They –“Here’s your can of worms”

He mimics opening up a can.

Erik: Then you get into the whole thing of feeling guilty or selfish, but you have to remember, if it’s not right for you, then you’re going to rob yourself of the experience of truly knowing yourself. Just start there. Use that as a checkpoint.

Me: What if they’re afraid that they’ll be disapproved of or scorned or ridiculed? What do you say to that?

Erik: This is a tough one, Mom. This is their insecurity. It’s about confidence. They have to work on that.

Kim: Okay. He’s talking really fast!

Erik: Two things: They have to know how to trust themselves and they have to have faith. It’s blind faith sometimes. If you can trust yourself to direct yourself, then you’re really going to see your personal growth take off. That was boring. I could have made that way more fun instead of saying “take off,” like “explode” or—“Take off is boring.

Me: Well, we understand it!

Erik: To stand alone in your own truth and allow yourself to be self-directed is sometimes necessary—

Kim: He’s talking about separating from society.

Erik: Sometimes it’s scary, but you might have to stand alone, especially knowing that it’s right for you. You have to stand in your own truth. Tell them about your experience, Kim.

Kim: Yeah, being a medium and coming out of the closet about it and having people not be cool about it was tough. A lot of the family thought I was into black magic or some crazy stuff, but regardless of their insecurities, I knew my own truth, and I had to direct my own path. So, I had to stand alone for a while. It’s kind of one of those things like, ‘Well, this is the path I’m going to walk. You can walk it with me or not.’ Eventually, they caught up with my path. That’s kind of what Erik is trying to explain.

Erik: If you know your truth in your heart and you walk that path, sometimes you might have to walk alone, and it can be—

(Pause)

Kim: Oh, he changed. He was going to say, “It can be scary.”

Erik: But it’s really not if you align with whatever is right for you.

Me: Your truth, yeah.

Erik: What’s scarier is trying to align with something that’s fake to you.

Me: So jump off the high dive and do it. Follow your truth. That’s what you’re saying.

Erik: Just fucking do it.

Kim laughs.

Me: Erik’s version of the Nike commercial. “Just fucking do it.” One last question. You said people who aren’t self-directed aren’t grounded. Can you give us one grounding technique that will help us get into our own space and connect with our own identity?

Erik: Yeah, it’s just asking yourself, “Does it feel like me? Does it feel like me?” But this is so hairy, Mom, because you can’t limit yourself either. You can’t say, “Well, it doesn’t feel like me so I’m not going to do it. Then you deny yourself personal growth. So challenging yourself is good, but if it feels like something that you don’t connect with and it just doesn’t resonate with you, you have to let it go. Doing things that aren’t you pulls yourself from being grounded. It can unground you. The more you do things that honor yourself, the more grounded you’re going to be in yourself and the more you’re going to hear your own intuition and blah, blah, blah.

Me: Well, I think that’s a good place to close. Thank you, Erik. Thank you, Kim.

Erik: Thanks, Mom.

Kim: You’re welcome. My pleasure!