Season 2, Episode 2 | "Are you playing the role, or is the role playing you?"

In this episode of Strong & Awake, Dane and Mitch explore the four archetypical roles we all play in life: victim, hero, guide, and rescuer. They discuss how recognizing and choosing these roles can transform your life. From pickleball to the literature we consume, this episode challenges you to wake up to the roles you're playing and choose the path of voluntary discomfort to achieve true transformation. Join us as we explore the second anchor of the series, Choose Your Role.

Chapters:

• 00:00 Introduction
• 01:22 Pickleball and the Roles We Play
• 10:12 The Four Roles
• 15:38 Symptoms of the Role We are Playing
• 17:50 Moving Beyond Victimhood
• 26:39 Invitation & Identification
• 32:02 Transformation is Hard

Mentions:

• Donald Miller: Mentioned in the context of his work with StoryBrand and his book "Hero on a Mission".
• Joseph Campbell: Referenced for his work "The Hero with a Thousand Faces" and the concept of the hero's journey.
• Matthew Dicks: Mentioned for his storytelling principles.
• Dan Allender: Psychologist known for his work with adults who were sexually molested as children. Mentioned for his unique therapeutic approach.
• Tim Krueger: Co-founder of MWOD and mentioned in a story about his parenting approach.
• Seth Godin: Referenced for his quote, "People like us do things like this."
• Luke Skywalker, Obi Wan Kenobi, Yoda: Characters from "Star Wars" used to illustrate the hero's journey and the roles of victim, guide, and hero.

Anchor Actions:

1. Identify Your Role: Take a moment to reflect on the role you're currently playing in different aspects of your life in any given moment. Are you acting as a victim, hero, guide, or rescuer? Acknowledge this without judgment and ask yourself if this is the role you want to play or if it's the role your future self would be proud of.
2. Seek Voluntary Discomfort: Challenge yourself to step out of your comfort zone purposefully. Whether it's taking on a new sport like pickleball, tackling a difficult project at work, or having a tough conversation, choose the harder path that requires effort and growth. Remember, transformation happens through overcoming challenges, not by drifting in comfort.
3. Ask for Constructive Guidance: If you find yourself stuck in a victim or rescuer role, reach out to someone who has navigated similar challenges. Instead of seeking someone to solve your problems, look for a guide who can offer insights and direction while allowing you to do the work. This approach fosters personal growth and self-reliance.

Join Us:

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Disclaimer:

The information shared on this podcast and any related materials from Men & Women Of Discomfort (MWOD) or Flying S Incorporated are for general informational purposes only. You should not use this information as a basis for making decisions without consulting your own medical and legal professionals. We aim to provide accurate and up-to-date information, but we make no guarantees about the completeness, accuracy, reliability, suitability, or comprehensiveness of the content.

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*Transcript Note: The transcript of our podcast is AI-generated and may contain errors. We aim for accuracy but appreciate your understanding and feedback on any discrepancies.

Copyright 2024 Men & Women Of Discomfort (MWOD.io)

Dane: 00:00

Even in a given moment I can take on at least four different roles in any given context, and I can shift very, very quickly.

Dane: 00:08

They're the same four roles that are in every Epic story. These roles are up for grabs.

Dane: 00:12

Just know you're playing some role somewhere, somehow, And if I'm not clear and awake to the role that I'm playing, I'm not playing the role, the role's playing me.

Dane: 00:22

Wake up to the reality you're in and, and just acknowledge it neutrally, curiously. If I was playing a role, what might it be?

Dane: 00:30

And then ask yourself, is this the role I actually want to play, or that my future self will have wanted me to play?

Dane: 00:35

If it's easy, the path you're taking, you think you're going to transform, that's not transformation. That's drifting. And no one drifts to greatness. we need compression. We need hard things to overcome in order to become someone new.

Dane: 00:49

And if we don't, we stay asleep and we stay in our roles and nothing changes.

Dane: 00:55

As humans we prefer the path of least resistance. We crave convenience, the payoff without the price. But when our lives revolve around comfort, it doesn't deliver. Living in perpetual comfort leaves us weak and asleep. This podcast is an invitation to flip that script, to choose the unlikely path, to get the life you really want through voluntary discomfort.

Dane: 01:19

This is Strong & Awake. I'm Dane Sanders.

Dane: 01:24

Mitch.

Mitch: 01:25

Yes, sir.

Dane: 01:26

We got to talk about pickleball.

Mitch: 01:28

Oh, okay. You just lost half the audience. No.

Dane: 01:33

Or I just doubled our audience. I can't tell which it is.

Mitch: 01:36

Exactly.

Dane: 01:36

Depends.. But, uh, I'll tell you this. I have been taking on this idea of pickleball and like many, when I first heard of pickleball, I thought it was basically a poor man's tennis game, um, or tennis for lazy people or old people.

Dane: 01:50

And it turns out that Uh, pickle is actually, uh, turned into, I think, a pretty radical competitive sport. And I've decided this summer for giggles to, uh, in my move back to Southern California, hanging out with my friends, uh, some are young, like in their twenties, some are older, uh, in their sixties even, but in between twenties and sixties, there are some really, really competitive athletes playing this sport, which I thought was just a game before.

Dane: 02:17

But, and it is just a game like all sports are, but The folks who take it seriously, they're, they're playing like it's real. And, uh, and I'm realizing they're, they're really good at this thing. So I thought, you know, I like choosing hard things. Why don't I learn how to play pickle this summer? And, and I've actually gotten kind of geeked out about it.

Dane: 02:37

I, I, of course I have my paddle and I have, Uh, my shoes and so on, but I also have like a bucket of a rolling bucket that like, like coaches have on pickleball courts. I have, uh, 120 pickleballs that I went out and purchased. Um, I have a ball picker upper, like this big tube thing that you just go pop, pop, pop and like fills it, fills it up and you're able to do it.

Dane: 02:59

And, and I've been so excited. Like, this is great. I'm going to really take this on seriously. But then I went ahead and thought, who, who's the best pickleball player I know? And, uh, there's two of them that come to mind that I'm really close with. And one of them, his name is Preston. And Preston is, I think, 22, 23.

Dane: 03:18

Uh, he's, uh, Fantastic athlete. He probably will play professional pickleball. He could arguably play like professional volleyball. That's what he plays in college. He's still in college now. And last night I had a lesson with him. And in this lesson, I show up and I am double his age. And I used to be like a serious Athlete and volleyball player.

Dane: 03:41

And I think I have some sense of certain things and it became really evident really quickly that I had to make some decisions about how I was going to relate with my friend. Preston. He's actually the son of another dear friend, a guy I went to college with. So he calls me Mr Sanders. He doesn't even, you know, call me by my first name.

Dane: 03:59

And it's, uh, It's a funny phenomenon. So I'm walking into the scene and you could imagine I have options available to me. One is I could be the guy, you know, I coach people for a living. I know a lot about how coaching works and how you set up scenes and invite people to get into experiential embodied learning, not just kind of cognitive.

Dane: 04:19

Passing of information back and forth and, and, and how, how critical, you know, good form and reps are and, and paying attention to the physical body as you're playing. So I'm learning, you know, all these things and I'm, and I'm thinking, Oh, I could, I could actually help this guy coach me. And that's actually how I started the conversation.

Dane: 04:36

I was like, I'm going to coach you coaching me. You know, and, and pretty quickly it was like, yeah, yeah, that's right. Yeah, that's right. And then I realized how foolish that was, that when I took on that role, I actually like was clogging up the role. I wanted him to take on with me. I wanted him to be my guide.

Dane: 04:58

So I quickly shifted and I like same person, same context. And all of a sudden I went from one role to another where I went, I'm a beginner. I'm going to pretend I don't know anything. And I, he clearly knows how to play. He's incredible. And my job is to actually do what he tells me. And that's it. And, and in that, uh, there were even other roles I could play.

Dane: 05:20

Like there was times where he was talking about how he grew up, like he felt bad because his, his, his top spin, for example, was so good. He was like, you know, I learned this playing tennis, or I learned this playing, uh, Ping pong. I was like, I didn't really, I played a little tennis, but I didn't really play those sports and I feel like it's such a deficit and I thought about I didn't have a dad and why didn't I have a dad who could teach me these things and I just felt lower and lower and lower.

Dane: 05:43

I just lost the plot. I was drifting off into a different role again. Where I was no longer this guy who was going for it to become a pickleball player, learning, I actually became a bit of a victim and was just kind of lost in my head to like, well, why didn't I have these things? And, and in that, as a, as we're playing, there's even moments where, um, you know, I'd hit a bad shot and he'd be like, sharing back to me, uh, almost like sympathy, like it's okay, man.

Dane: 06:09

It's okay. And I'm like, I don't like how that feels. Like I, I didn't actually like that. He was swooping in to try to make me feel better. What I was interested in was actually getting better at the game. So two hours later, uh, we're done our lesson. And now 12 hours later, I'm been reflecting on this thing.

Dane: 06:29

And I realized how aligned this is with something that we talk about all the time at men and women of discomfort. And that is all the different roles that we can play in life that even in a given moment. I can take on at least four different roles in any given context, and I can shift very, very quickly.

Dane: 06:49

And if I'm not clear and awake to the role that I'm playing, I'm not playing the role, the role's playing me. And it is really not resourceful to get played like that. And of course, these ideas, uh, they came, they came, Uh, first introduced to me, I had a chance to work, uh, with a guy named, um, Donald Miller, uh, for a number of years, uh, being a corporate trainer for his story brand business and helping people understand how story works, how they can apply that to their business and, um, really fun conversations over the years with Don and getting an understanding of how story works and even setting.

Dane: 07:24

under other guys, like Matthew Dix and his storytelling principles and how to tell great stories and, and to understand how powerful a story can be. But in all these contexts, as you get to know story, what I discovered, especially through Don is these four roles that I was playing, playing pickle ball are the same four roles that I could play all the time.

Dane: 07:43

And they're the same four roles that are in every Epic story. That's ever been told that these. Roles, just like a cast of characters on a stage or in a movie or in a book that we're reading, these are roles, or even in our family of origin, we play roles. We, these roles are up for grabs. That we actually, as fully functioning human beings, have a capacity to choose our role if we're mindful to it, if we're aware that the roles exist, and if we're aware that sometimes they're running us more than we're running them.

Dane: 08:14

And when we grab them, we gain agency. And it's a powerful, powerful mechanism by when we choose a role, it's a powerful mechanism to kind of grab the handles on our lives. So I would like to talk about

Dane: 08:25

choosing your role today. What a great preamble. And there was so much in that, the, before we get too deep in the episode, I'd love to talk about what these kind of archetypical roles are.

Mitch: 08:38

Um, but I love, and I want to call out. One thing that you said is that we can switch between these roles and part of kind of these anchors in this anchor series is one kind of being awake and aware of these things and these moments in our lives when things like this happen, when we're, When we notice that we're playing these roles, because we've identified them, we've reflected on it and seen when we've played those in the past or when others have played those in the past for us, um, and I think unlike, you know, you know, maybe stories have like a little bit of a longer arc, you know, you can see this transformation of this, you know, This individual, whether that's the villain or the hero, whatnot, over time, uh, and one of the things that we get to do is, is if we're aware of these things and we're awake and we have the strength to lean in, like, it doesn't have to take a crazy long time to switch between these different roles, like, It's a huge advantage and what I'm hoping that this conversation produces is that awareness and some resources to be able to kind of lean in and more quickly identify and shift those roles that we're playing in these moments and in these brief even seconds and decisions that we're making.

Dane: 09:49

Yeah.

Dane: 09:50

Well, it's funny. What comes to mind as soon as you say that is, uh, well, first let me talk about the different roles and then let me give you, um, an example of kind of a, how powerful and potent a shift can be. This isn't my story, but it's a story that I know a number of listeners I've been adjacent to or have experienced themselves and I think they'll get it.

Dane: 10:08

And I think they can begin to extrapolate that and richly. So first the four roles. So in almost, you know, everyone knows from Joseph Campbell's. Uh, here with a thousand faces and a hero on a journey and, uh, or hero on a mission. Rather, uh, Don Miller wrote a book like that, um, or called that. And, uh, a lot of folks have been exposed to the idea of the hero's journey.

Dane: 10:30

And the hero's journey is this notion that someone starts in a state of being actually not a hero, they start in the state of being a victim. And the first role that we all are born into. We don't choose our circumstances, even the age that we're born in, we're victims to whatever the fates have dealt here. We are. And, uh, this is reality here I am. Um, I'm a 54 year old man talking to the microphone to my friend, Mitch, uh, in a room with lights and, and, and, uh. Listening to a plane over over head. I grew up without a dad. Um, my friend, Tim Krueger died of stomach cancer. Uh, I also had, uh, had a chance to go to college. Um, I have food in my fridge and a roof over my head.

Dane: 11:20

There's so many. Like phenomenon going on that can all tell me, give me clues as to which role I'm playing, but oftentimes when I can kind of, when I drift into, um, kind of falling asleep, I tend to drift to this role of victim and victim is just where I kind of get like, I don't like my job, maybe, or I don't like how somebody treated me, or I don't like.

Dane: 11:46

What she really meant when she said that, um, whatever it is, some, some kind of trigger or clue puts me in a state or status in my own heart and mind of being a victim. And that's just the starting point. That's, you know, every great story, you know, Luke Skywalker started as a victim, uh, until he, he, uh, met somebody.

Dane: 12:06

And in one movie it's Obi Wan Kenobi, another movie it's Yoda, but in all contexts, the hero's journey, which is all that story really is, if somebody was in a bad place. And then they wanted to get to a good place and they needed a guide to get them there. And that's the second role is when I, when a victim can find a guide who's been there and done that and has some authority and also some empathy for the person who is going through their journey and can, without doing the journey for them, just kind of.

Dane: 12:37

map a path, give the clues, invite them forward, call them up, the guide can actually help the victim transform into the third role, which is the hero. And this is profound, uh, when a victim can transform into the hero. A hero, especially when they're helped by a guide, it is a magical story, and we've seen that story told over and over and over again.

Dane: 13:05

Almost every great story includes those three characters, but there's also a fourth character, and the fourth character is usually some cleverly disguised villain, and one of my favorite disguises that villains wear is the role of rescuer. The role of rescuer is so conniving, so subversive, because the, the rescuer often looks like a guide, but actually is competing with the hero for that role.

Dane: 13:34

They want to still be the hero of the story. They want to be the big deal. The truth is the guide in the story is actually a bit part. They don't transform at all in the course of any story. Obi Wan Kenobi didn't transform. Yoda didn't transform. It was Luke Skywalker that transformed, and And they play the role of, I'm going to guide, but not be relevant, not be important.

Dane: 13:54

I'm going to actually create space for you to have your day. And you're going to win the day. And, but villains are the rescuer villain. What they do is they appear to be offering advice or input or help, but they want to swoop in and be the reason why the victim became the hero. So those are the four primary roles.

Dane: 14:14

And those are the roles that I could play last night at pickleball, or I could experience in any given day. And I, if I'm conscious to it, I can step into, um, like from victim status to hero status, um, or from, even if I'm tempted to want to compete as a rescuer, I can actually upgrade rescuer to guide. But the truth is we want to be in a position where we're either creating hero energy or guide energy.

Dane: 14:40

We don't want to spend much energy at all in that victim state. It's pretty discouraging. Even though we all are legitimate victims, we want to invite beyond that status. And if we find ourselves swooping in and rescuing people over and over and over again, it's really critical to realize we're actually not helping the people we think we are.

Dane: 14:59

We're actually disqualifying them from having a chance to make the leap they really want to make.

Mitch: 15:05

I mean, bookmark it. Go back, listen to that section. That's going to ground a lot of what we're doing, uh, here and talking about, but also that just every time I hear this as a part of our MWOD community, you know, you get to reintroduce these, these ideas, these anchors every round, and there's just so much gold every time.

Mitch: 15:25

You know, I can read all the books. I can hear him over and over. But you're I'm interpreting my experiences leaning into these things and even recent moments in my life through this lens. And like,

Dane: 15:37

give us an

Dane: 15:38

example. What's that moment that comes to mind for you?

Mitch: 15:40

Well, I was actually To, to, to state one that might not be as

Mitch: 15:45

obvious and follow, track with me here.

Mitch: 15:48

I was recently talking to my dad who's in town and he and I both share the same propensity to default to things that have just so much pragmatic value in the world. And one of the, the, one of the ways that that surfaces is in our choice of reading. Uh, we can tend to our books. Our shelves are full of, you know, business books or nonfiction books.

Mitch: 16:11

And we were talking about that dynamic and interpreting kind of this conversation or interpreting that through this lens. Uh, I realized that I am drawn, I like, I often, Just look for rescuers in the literature that I read, like, I want to just, just someone just tell me, answer my questions, give me all the knowledge so that I can magically transform without any effort on my side and not to say that, you know, business or self help or whatever books aren't You know, are bad because they're not, but I, I don't lean into fiction as much, which I see as playing more of a guide role.

Mitch: 16:51

It's an invitation into a story, someone that's showing and not telling, uh, and it's an actual opportunity to live in that for a moment, experience that, and then I get to through my own actions, through my own interpretation, through my own understanding, like be transformed and do the work on my own. And so that's like, you know, uh, it.

Mitch: 17:13

Kind of abstract example of where this shows up, but that's like a very real one for me right now when I'm realizing, wow, I, if you, if you're playing a victim, you often attract rescuers and even not just in people, even in the things that you consume, even in the, the things that you're putting in your brain, um, and in this, you know, trivial story, it's fiction versus non fiction, but, uh, I think that shows up in a whole lot of other places.

Mitch: 17:43

Yeah. I'm curious, like, if you have other, uh, examples or stories that come to mind for you.

Dane: 17:50

Yeah. One of my favorite examples, uh, connects less to my narrative and more to some lore, um, around a pretty remarkable story in the Pacific Northwest here in the United States. So there's, um, a, Therapist, a psychologist, or a psychologist up in the Northwest, um, named Dan Allender.

Dane: 18:13

Dan's written a number of books. His best friend actually was a colleague of mine at Westmont College when I used to teach there. I had a chance to hang around with him, uh, on a couple of occasions and, um, he tells this remarkable story about how he does his work. His specialty is actually, he works with adults who were.

Dane: 18:32

Uh, sexually molested when they were kids and they're trying to overcome the trauma that they experienced. And it turned out that Dan himself was a victim in the same way, where he was as a kid molested and worked through a lot of stuff and actually became an expert in that field and has a particular modality to help adults navigate healing and recovery in that space.

Dane: 18:56

And his method is fascinating to me because he has one goal and he has one rule. I'm speaking in broad strokes. There's certainly more to it than what I'm suggesting, but it's really helpful and informative relative to this conversation to understand. So he's taking these people who are legitimate victims, right?

Dane: 19:14

Like no human in the world would say someone who was molested as a kid was not a victim. There's no question. That's true. And, and in that, he He recognizes the state that people were in, and he's inviting them into something new, and his rule is he'll only work with his clients for one year, and then they have to stop.

Dane: 19:37

And the reason he will only work with clients for one year is because he has one goal, and the single goal he has is to take these people who are legitimate victims, Like, that no one questions, no one's asking them to take responsibility for being victimized, no one's asking them to do anything in that regard, but he is inviting them to give up their victim status, to, to, to take off the role of victim and put on a new role.

Dane: 20:05

And in his estimation, after decades of work with a lot of different folks, is that if people don't do that in about a year, they probably never will. They probably never will give up that status. And what often people misunderstand about the victim role, because people are like, oftentimes when we talk about this, people are like, well, who would want to be a victim?

Dane: 20:22

Of course I want to not be a victim. But there's a huge upside to being a victim. A huge upside. And the huge upside is, if I'm a victim, I'm not responsible for my life. Now, again, I want to emphasize what we're not suggesting is that anyone who's victimized like that is responsible for being victimized.

Dane: 20:40

That's not what we're talking about here. When we say responsible, what we're talking about is, um, given that reality of what's happened, To the victim, what will the victim do then, like from here forward, not from what happened historically, are they still going to retain their victim status where they can't do anything because they've been traumatized and that's just the way it is and we're done or do they want to do the work where they can put themselves in a position to become someone new and that's the work that does and I find that to be profound because it's, it's very much analogous to the notion of moving from victim, even though we all are.

Dane: 21:20

And being a victim isn't even bad. Even the folks that they don't get the work done in the year and they stay a victim, it's probably because the trauma is pretty brutal. And they're just, that's, that's just the amount of work that they're up for. And, um, it would be kind of cruel to keep pushing them in the direction or inviting them in the direction where they would change their status when they're really not interested in that.

Dane: 21:40

But for those of us who are interested in finding a way out of their victim status into maybe hero status. Going to a guide like Dan Allender can be remarkably helpful, um, especially if that guide is not going to swoop in and try to just, um, make the feelings go away, or just somehow, uh, say the right things, or, uh, you know, give the right answers, like, that's not the kind of work that I don't think that Dan does with folks, and I, I want to suggest that As we consider these four roles, Dan's formula is pretty instructive.

Dane: 22:17

I think, for us to get clear that if we find ourselves as victims in our lives, if people are listening at home or watching at home, and they're like, Oh, I am a victim. I'm a victim to, you know, that old talking head song, like, How did I get here? Uh, uh, this notion of like, Who's, who's my beautiful wife? And who's that house?

Dane: 22:34

And what am I in? Like, how did I get here? Well, here you are, is a more important question. And based off of where you're at, this is reality. What do you want to do from here? And do you, can you find the agency to move forward? Can you find the competency to get better in a direction? And can you do it in a way where you feel like you're a part of something that's bigger than you?

Dane: 22:53

That's what I encourage folks to look for. Because when those three ingredients are in play, people can feel that sense of self determination. As they move forward and, and if they can find others to help them in that journey, it is just magical. It's magical to witness. And we get to witness it every single day at men and women of discomfort.

Mitch: 23:14

Yeah. And I think there's a certain dignity with acknowledging that, that you have the capacity to choose this role and to use our friend Meghan's language. You know, there's honor and it's like exercising that agency, uh, in choosing that role, um, is big and not recognizing that. Of course, all of the acknowledgments and caveats about, uh, legitimate, uh, people that have been victimized, uh, but the, the path forward and, um, exercising that agency, um, in choosing that role.

Mitch: 23:44

And I want to zero in on, on, on the language there because it, choose your role. Like we have, I mean, there's no wasted words there. We have the choice. Yeah, you it's your so this isn't something externally. It's not just an external guide, an external victim, an external hero, et cetera. Uh, and then role.

Mitch: 24:02

These are roles that we play, uh, and we can switch in between them, like you said. Um, and again, these are anchors which help kind of anchor us, uh, through the whirlwinds and storms, like we've said. So I'm curious, like, how does one go about kind of choosing I think it's easy to think like, Oh, I can kind of choose to have a guide.

Mitch: 24:24

I can go out and seek a coach or something, but how do we. switch between these roles, like in ourselves, and how do we start to take steps towards at least recognizing or defaulting to these more resourceful, helpful roles?

Dane: 24:38

It's interesting. I was distracted for a second. As you're asking that question, I'm going to actually need your help to hear it again.

Dane: 24:43

Cause I'm looking over to my left. I just saw a text message from my daughter, my wife. Um, we're missing our cat right now. Our cat went missing this morning and we have an indoor cat. It's gone outdoors. Uh, we think, and we're just get it right. Like we just feel so. Just gross that pit in your stomach, like, what does this mean?

Dane: 25:03

What could it be? And the stories are making up and I couldn't even hear what you're saying a second ago because I just immediately went to like, I hate that we live in a world that missing cats is not good news and things can go sideways and weird ways. And we don't want that. We know we're really hopeful.

Dane: 25:20

Uh, but the question becomes in these kinds of moments, like, well, what are we going to do about it? And I was looking over and what I noticed was my daughter. Was stepping into this, like, Hey, I just posted this on next door and Hey, we lost her cat. We want to, you know, I'm like, I like that. Like, there's a sense of like, you're doing something you're pushing against the force.

Dane: 25:38

That's taking you in the direction of victim and and taking a stand in a certain kind of way. And, and I, I can, I see these kinds of opportunities all the time, but they're not always taken. Uh, it's just tempting to go, why, why me and why this and why that and, and things fall apart. So all that to say, forgive the interlude.

Dane: 25:59

Can you state the question again? Cause I totally, I totally missed it.

Mitch: 26:02

That's fine. I think it would, uh, it's, it'd be good to have a take two anyway for me since I can tend to ramble on, but the, the, the essence of the question is it's easy for us to identify like an external guide, an external victim, something that's a little bit harder when it's identifying these shifts in these roles that we play ourselves. So one, how do we begin to identify those things? And then two, How can we begin to kind of recognize that and then take action to kind of push back against those less helpful, uh, rules?

Dane: 26:38

Well, one of the reasons why archetypical roles, roles that are pervasive in every story are so helpful is.

Dane: 26:46

You can't be on stage if you're not playing some role. There's something you're doing. And if, if these were the only four options available to you at any given moment, you could ask yourself the question, what role am I currently playing? You don't need me to be judged. You don't have to be judgmental about it.

Dane: 27:01

You don't have to be anything about it. It's just like curious. Like, hey, if these were the only four roles available to me on the stage of life, which role am I playing right now? Am I playing the victim in this circumstance with what I'm dealing with right now? Am I playing the hero if I'm stepping up to something?

Dane: 27:16

Do I have an opportunity to be with people in such a way that they feel heard and understood, empathy, and they're being guided with authority? They don't have to pick the thing that I'm offering them. It's not heavy handed. It's really just an open handed. And, or Do I find myself seeing, because of my experience, something going on in someone's life, and I feel like the best thing I could do is to swoop in and tell them and fix them and dial them in and all of those things are clues that we are playing a particular role more than another, and we can shift the moment we see it.

Dane: 27:52

Now I want to be a little careful with that because There's a sense in which, again, in deep drama and trauma, it's not quite as obvious, uh, that that's the case. Uh, and it might take a lot of discovery and some sifting and some things to kind of bring to the light so that it can get worked through. That said, at least in a micro moment in a given day with more domestic pedestrian kind victimhood, uh, that shift it's usually two paths.

Dane: 28:20

It's victim to hero. Or it's rescuer to guide, and those are the directions you want to go. Um, and, but just know you're playing some role somewhere, somehow, and it doesn't take a lot of love of, um, reflection to realize it right away. Cause even as I'm saying these words, I know listeners are going like, gosh, that's me, like I'm doing that right now.

Dane: 28:44

Um, cause you're human, right? This is, there's not, it's not about feeling badly or feeling shame or it's like, got it, like I, every morning I wake up. Oh, and guess what? The cat came home. Oh, I'm so happy.

Dane: 29:01

I'm so happy.

Mitch: 29:03

This, this show, this episode is sponsored by next door. No,

Dane: 29:06

I'm so

Dane: 29:10

relieved. Incredible.

Mitch: 29:12

Oh, that's awesome.

Dane: 29:14

Uh, anyhow. So, uh, I'm really over the moon. Uh, yeah, I won't go into any more with that. But anyways, uh, uh, you were always playing a role. Turn into yourself. This is the awakeness, right? Wake up to the reality you're in and, and just acknowledge it neutrally, curiously. If I was playing a role, what might it be?

Dane: 29:34

And then ask yourself, is this the role I actually want to play, or that my future self will have wanted me to play? And usually, this is really critical to understand, I alluded to this earlier, if you find yourself a victim and you feel kind of like stuck, You feel like you're like, on the, on the metaphorical couch laying back going like, you know, um.

Dane: 29:57

You probably need to get off the stinking couch. There's a sense in which you might be, you might be an accomplice to your victim status. And, and you, because of the responsibility, it takes challenge to get off the couch. Metaphorically, it takes something in you to get up. And I think this is some of the rub, right?

Dane: 30:17

Is we live in a culture where the messages we're getting all of the time over and over and over again, our whole economy is based on it is, you know, the, the core of what we're about and at MWOD is when you feel down, when you feel like you're under it, you feel like a victim. Here's what you ought to do.

Dane: 30:35

Have a donut, uh, skip the workout. I know you said you're going to get that report done. It's okay. You can get away with not doing it. You probably yourself, you treat yourself

Dane: 30:46

Have a glass of

Mitch: 30:46

wine, mama,

Dane: 30:47

or two or seven, you know, But at the least be sure to show like, turn on some crap television and for the next three hours and we're making a joke of it on some level.

Dane: 30:58

It's not a joke. It's a tragedy because nobody feels good. Nobody feels better when they're a victim and they decide to make it worse. At the end of it, it's always, it's short term, very short term, very fleeting, like eating cotton candy, like might taste good for a second, but you're not going to get nourished by it.

Dane: 31:16

And pretty soon you're on the other side of that and you're like this, I just feel worse than I felt. And if you'd just gotten off the metaphorical couch, which is no small thing, I get that you might need a guide to get off the couch. You might need a community who's getting off their own couches who are next to you and you're like, I want to be like them.

Dane: 31:32

You know, people like us do things like this says Seth Godin and this, this is where it gets pretty magical is you don't have to drift to irresponsibility and victimhood perpetually. You can actually stand up. You can stand now, which is a future anchor we'll talk about later. But this notion, this notion of movement, um, It requires an embodied response to the recognition of what role you're playing, and you have a few options.

Mitch: 32:02

I think another indicator, too, of the role that you're playing, if you're still, hopefully it's obvious what role you're playing, but another indicator would be This kind of like law of attraction. If you like victims tend to attract rescuers, heroes tend to attract guides. You know, it's not my original thought.

Mitch: 32:19

You've shared that. We've talked a lot about this over the last two years.

Dane: 32:23

Well, it's again, it's Don Miller's insight. Like, and I think that that's, it's critical to understand that. We see this with our kids, right? You know, we have, uh, two kids who graduated from college, two kids that are, one's a senior in college, one's going into her freshman year. And as they begin this adulting process, my wife and I are, are constantly tempted to rescue them. To swoop in to, you know, to pay the bill, to get, you know, whatever.

Dane: 32:49

And we're in that in between stage, right? Where we were responsible and now they're becoming responsible for their lives. And, and it's appropriate, you know, to, you know, put the diaper on the kid. But if we're still putting the metaphorical diaper on the kid and they're in college, it's a problem, right?

Dane: 33:04

And, and this is the sense of like, am I, am I actually helping them? Um, one of the stories I've told before on one of our episodes, if I want to tell it again, uh, the guy who. Who I started MWOD with, my friend, Tim Kruger. Um, his son, Henry is a remarkable baseball player. And, uh, I just got footage from his wife just the other day of him pitching, uh, to win the championship for his travel team.

Dane: 33:30

And it was just, I love, I love cheering for this kid. Um, but early on, uh, Tim was not. He was a unique kind of parent and there's this moment where his son Henry, uh, I think he struck out or something like that at a rehab bat. And, and I, I came over to Tim's house and I saw Henry in the backyard digging a hole.

Dane: 33:53

And I was like, Tim, what's, what's Henry? He's crying. I'm like, what's he doing, man? He's like, well, a good dad, when their kid strikes out, the whole game would take him out for, you know, a milkshake. But a great dad would make him go in the backyard and dig a ditch. And I was like, oh my gosh. I'm glad that, you know, Child Protective Services aren't aware of this behavior.

Dane: 34:18

But of course, that's where you get it, right? Like there's a sense of like, no, he, what he was saying was sometimes it's going to get harder before it gets better. And that's not bad news. It's actually good news. Because what happens to the kid that learns how to do to respond to a hard moment with hard work.

Dane: 34:41

Well, they actually have the opportunity. They don't, it doesn't have to go this way. If he was forced, you know, he wasn't forced. There was agreement, but you understand the point. There's a sense of, and this is controversial. Like a lot of people think, no, no, this is cruel and mean. And like, no, no, no.

Dane: 34:57

Choosing the uncomfortable thing in these kinds of moments. Is what's required if you want to get to a different status, like, it was not comfortable for Luke Skywalker to join the rebel force and become, uh, I wanted to say ninja, but become a Jedi Jedi. There's nothing, there's nothing, there's nothing comfortable about that process, but because it's a movie, we think it's like, oh, no, it's just like this predetermined destiny.

Dane: 35:26

It's like, no, no, no, an actual hero's journey looks like it's really hard and you're probably not going to make it. And you go anyways, and, and I think this is this, this notion of what we're up to is if it's easy, the path you're taking, you think you're going to transform, uh, you probably aren't going to transfer that's not transformation.

Dane: 35:46

That's drifting. Um, and no one drifts to greatness. It, we need compression. We need hard things to overcome in order to become someone new. And and that's good news. It's actually the fact that it's even possible to happen is incredible. What's what's sad to me is that we've largely forgotten this in our culture.

Dane: 36:08

We think that comfort is the ultimate ideal. If I could only just plug myself into a comfort machine for the rest of my life, I'll be good. But you'll get to the end of that life with massive regret, massive regret. That's not what you do if you want to have satisfaction in this life. Becoming is actually the creative act that is so moving and that we live in a world that's designed that we can, that actually can happen is remarkable if we take advantage of it.

Dane: 36:38

And if we don't, we stay asleep and we stay in our roles and nothing changes.

Mitch: 36:46

Well, let's end it on that. I mean, I encourage you if you're listening, if you're feeling that, like Dane mentioned earlier, that like, Oh, that recognition in yourself of those moments, lean into that, lean in, recognize it. Don't shy away from it.

Mitch: 37:00

Change your relationship with that.

Dane: 37:02

Maybe even ask for help. Yeah, exactly. When we

Dane: 37:05

say lean in, we're not just saying like, suffer a little longer, uh, without construction, you know, make something from it.

Dane: 37:12

Yeah.

Dane: 37:12

Look to someone in your world that seems to have had similar experiences, but haven't, they don't feel stuck.

Dane: 37:20

Like you feel stuck. See if you can get into a conversation, ask them what they did. If they try to swoop in and do it for you, say, please don't do that. Instead, give me some instruction on what I need to go do. What's the hard thing I get to go do. And we get to begin to see how these anchors start playing with each other.

Dane: 37:38

Right. Getting to choosing your role and in many ways, choosing your role is the means by which you transform a have to into a get to, which is what we talked about last week. And and that that practical reality that starts with a recognition. And then we take action. Usually it's looking for a guide and our context.

Dane: 37:54

You know, if you can't find a guide very quickly, I'd encourage you go to MWOD. We got a lot of people. Like in this context, it's not that any individual is necessarily a guide. It's really more of the community is a guide that we have a lot of shared experiences now with a lot of years under our belt, where we've discovered a lot of things.

Dane: 38:14

And what I can also count on is there's not going to be a lot of rescuing. We'll be with you though, every step of the way as you account for where your life is and account for the life you want and who you want to become and actually have a path to get there. So I really hope people consider that, but I also hope that people just come back next time because next time's conversation, again, we're going to get super practical, a little less kind of heady about these things and get more into what do you actually do like practically in order to see this get to happen to see the role shift happen. And I think it's going to be really, really helpful for folks.

Mitch: 38:52

I agree. So join us next week as we dig into this anchor series. And if you're curious to learn more about MWOD, uh, if you want a guide, if you want to get off that metaphorical couch, then just visit MWOD. io slash apply. We'll see you next week.

Mitch: 39:06

Thanks Dane.

Dane: 39:07

Thanks Mitch.

Dane: 39:08

Men & Women Of Discomfort is our membership community and we are open to everyone but keep in mind our tagline is it's probably not for you if we're wrong about that or if you want to find out for yourself you can find us at mwod.io. The information and material that we're sharing both of this podcast or anything connected to men or women of discomfort or flying s incorporated it's all for general information purposes only. You should not rely on this material or information on this podcast as a basis for making any kind of decision.

Dane: 39:33

We do our best to keep everything up to date and correct, and we do a lot of due diligence, but the responsibility is on you to make sure that you're in sync with your own medical professionals that you wouldn't see what we're offering here as somehow a warranty or representation in any kind expressed or implied about this being complete, accurate, reliable, suitable, or comprehensive in any kind of way.

Dane: 39:47

It's critical you own your agency, which is at the heart of everything we do at Men & Women Of Discomfort, we invite you to take the input that we're offering and consider it for yourself. And if it's helpful, please do take advantage of it. But if you do, it's you who is taking the opportunity and we're assuming that you've done your due diligence with it.

Dane: 39:58

Thanks.