In the third episode of their five-part coaching series, Andrew and Catherine tackle the social layer of life by exploring how to build authentic relationships that align with your true self. From friends and family to community and intimacy, they share insights on creating and nurturing connections that enrich your life.
This episode offers actionable strategies to help you cultivate a supportive tribe and let go of relationships that no longer serve you.
This podcast is for informational purposes only and does not substitute professional advice. Please consult a healthcare provider for any medical, emotional, or personal concerns. Some links mentioned in this episode may be affiliate links. If you make a purchase through these links, we may earn a small commission at no additional cost to you. Thank you for supporting our work!
Thank you for listening! If this episode inspired you, please subscribe, leave a review, and share it with someone looking to find their tribe. Stay tuned for Week 4, where we dive into the "Substance" layer of life. See you next time!
Hi and welcome to the show.
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Today's episode is called Finding Your Tribe and it's our third of five in a series of
coaching calls that we take our clients through when they start working with us.
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This is all about the social circle in the layers of life.
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Kat, how are you doing today?
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I'm doing great, how are you?
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I'm good, I'm excited for this one because I think social stuff is something we all feel
like we could do better with.
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I think the pandemic and all that stuff kinda shifted a lot of priorities and making
friends is our most popular episode.
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And I think this is one that will really help clarify that for a lot of people.
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And I'm really looking forward to getting into it.
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I agree.
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And before we get started, I wanted to say that if you are just tuning in to our podcast,
we actually are doing something a little bit different today in that we are making this
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series of five videos.
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And that's because we take our coaching clients through five weeks of inner work to
uncover all of the different parts of themselves.
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Right?
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So the first video, which was two episodes ago,
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is about your soul, finding what speaks to you, finding your purpose in this life.
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Last week's video is on the self, and that is all about how to prioritize yourself, your
mental, your emotional, your spiritual, and your physical well-being.
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And then today is about your social circle.
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So that includes your most intimate relationships, like your spouse or your partner, your
children, and then of course, who you surround yourself with and how that impacts you.
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What we teach at Five Year You is that authenticity is the pathway to happiness.
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And so we teach our clients to make decisions from the inside, from what they really want.
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And that's why this episode is important because so many of us are hanging out with
people, doing work, you know, with partners, doing all of these things that are really not
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in alignment with what we actually want to do, who we actually want to spend time with.
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And we give people the courage to reshape their social circles or even rebuild them or
reconnect with people they've lost touch with because life gets busy.
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So if you're just tuning in, you might want to go back to start with the first episode so
that it makes more sense, but otherwise, let's get going.
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All right.
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Well, there's four aspects of social that we find.
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There's friends, family, community, and intimacy.
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And I think the best one to start with is friends, because I think that one is, you know,
as we grow up,
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We have our friend circle in school and you and I both have been reading Mel Robbins'
book, The Let Them Theory.
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And she talks about the great scattering, which is like, kind of get through the school
years and then all the people that we were forced to be around or got to be around on a
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regular basis, all go their separate ways.
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And then we're left to try to find friends.
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And it's really hard because most of us don't want to be alone.
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So we want to find people right away.
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And so we kind of...
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become a chameleon often where, know, you like doing this on Friday nights?
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Okay, well, I'll go do that because that beats being, not being alone or not doing this
thing that I wanna do with nobody else.
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So I'm gonna go do this.
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When you start from the inside out, and what I just explained was very much an outside in,
like I want to have friends, so I'm going to make myself whoever I need to be in this
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moment.
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I was definitely very guilty of that.
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But when I came from the inside out, when I knew who I was and how I wanted to show up in
this world right now, I got clear on the types of people I wanted to be around.
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Yeah.
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I think that's really important.
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our, again, we've said already, our most popular episode is how to find friends as adults.
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think a lot of people are feeling isolated and lonely.
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And one of the hardest things is that we compare ourselves to others.
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And so I am a natural introvert, very indoorsy.
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very much a book lover and a lover of quiet time.
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And so for much of my life, have felt kind of left out, like sort of the not fun one, but
it was always a catch 22 because I felt like I was not the fun one, but I was not fun
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based on other people's definition of that.
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So as I've gotten older, now that I'm in my thirties, I have
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come to accept who I am, I have connected with other like-minded people, but I know that
there's a lot of people out there who felt the same, who maybe felt like they didn't fit
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in, or maybe they were an old soul, or maybe they weren't into going to clubs and
partying, or maybe they were into that too much, or maybe that tribe didn't support them,
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and now they wanna find people who are more motivated or driven career-wise, I don't know.
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But I still, even now, even doing this job, I will still...
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you know, look at other people's pictures.
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I have a cousin who I love, who I grew up with, and she is a natural extrovert.
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And she has a very close group of girlfriends and of other moms at her kid's school.
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And they go on like girls trips together and they're, you know, always throwing baby
showers for each other and all of these things.
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And every time I look at it, I'm like, wow, I don't have that.
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But I also like,
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Do you want that?
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know, it's also just kind of not me.
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And so part of the exercise that we take our clients through is to really sit down and
think like, who are the people you actually wanna be around?
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What are the things you actually want to talk about?
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Maybe you get around a group of moms and all they talk about is the real housewives and
all you wanna do is talk about your kids or maybe have deeper, more vulnerable
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conversations.
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It might not be your try.
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So part of this is just asking yourself this questions like wait, do I actually want to be
friends with that group?
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Do I actually want to have a huge group of people to go on a trip with or do I just want
like two or three really close friends?
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I think that's a, you speak to a really big painful point with fear of missing out and
stuff like that.
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I think a lot of times we look at these things on social media or we hear about them for
people that did stuff that we weren't included in.
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And we think we do a lot of self-hating, like what did I do wrong?
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Why am I not like this?
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But that's the wrong.
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path to go down, the right path to go down is the one you just said is going, is this who
I actually want to be with?
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Is this, do I want like a group of 10 people?
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I can barely keep up with the five good friends that I have right now.
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You know, like, or, and it's okay to, I think so much we've gotten caught up with the, you
know, the follower counts of life from social media.
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And that is a
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quantity approach to life, which is very much an outside in type of response.
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Going from the inside out, when you show up and you understand when we talk about
intimacy, we'll get into that a little more, but with your friends, how intimate do you
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want to be with them?
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Do you want to share your deepest thoughts or are you kind of a, I'll use a guy term, like
a beer and hockey Friday night kind of guy, which.
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I tried doing and I never felt like I fit in and the people were all wonderful, but it
just wasn't me.
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And the more you do that and you don't honor yourself, the more you start feeling like you
just don't fit in.
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You just keep reinforcing the stereotype of yourself that, know, I'm not fitting in here.
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Maybe I don't fit in anywhere because everybody I know enjoys doing this, but it's like,
no, you haven't acknowledged who you are.
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And once you start doing that, the right people show up.
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That's exactly right.
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And I want to encourage people, if you're sort of on this journey or this is really common
with moms that, you know, they, they have babies and then like their whole life changes
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and they get really overwhelmed with all those new responsibilities.
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And the thing that goes to the wayside is like keeping up with, you know, friends and
checking in on them and then they're skilled.
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Cause then you feel like a bad friend and there's a whole thing.
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So want to tell you.
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If you want to improve this aspect of your life or have deeper friendships, it's never too
late to start and you can always reach back out to people who you had a good connection
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with in the past and you can always rekindle things.
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It takes effort and you have to be at a point in your life where you have the energy to
put the effort into that.
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But it is possible, so I just wanted to be encouraging about that before we move to the
next category.
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Yeah, I want to also add on to that where that's why we do the five-year plan, the
five-year thing, because knowing the stage of life you're in, especially as a parent,
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makes a big difference.
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If you have kids that are zero to five, they need you a lot more than the kids that are 15
to 20.
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And if you have older kids and you're trying to make friends with somebody that's younger,
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Understand that that timing may not be right for them and that doesn't reflect badly upon
you.
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It just means that You know, you might have to give that one a little more time
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Exactly.
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So the next one is family.
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And this can be the greatest thing for some people, it can be really hard for others.
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Cat, we're gonna start us off.
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Well, I'll say that we've talked to a lot of people and just because both of us are old
souls, a lot of people open up to us about their families and, you know, some people have
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really wonderful close families that they go on trips with and have Sunday night family
dinner.
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Other people have families that check in and some people are completely estranged from
their family.
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And so one thing that really helped me when I was doing my, just a lot of therapy and
self-improvement work is that all of us get the family that we're meant to have as
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children.
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We all get the parents we're meant to have because each situation teaches us lessons and
it helps us become who we are today.
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You would not be who you are today.
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without the family that you had.
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For better or for worse, that is what shaped you.
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It makes some people more resilient, makes some people more loving, it makes some people
more upset and angry at the world.
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And those are, each person is on their own path.
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But once you're an adult, you get to choose your family.
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You get to choose how often you interact.
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You get to choose whether or not you're going to let family members guilt trip you into
certain things.
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you get to decide who you spend Thanksgiving dinner with, who you spend Christmas morning
with.
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And this is the part a lot of people struggle with because there are people who maybe
don't like their family dynamics or they're unhappy with it, but they're so afraid to
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change it because they don't wanna lose their family.
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They don't wanna lose the connections that they have with their blood relatives.
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And the truth is that,
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Your relatives don't want to lose connection with you either.
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It's just sometimes setting boundaries with people or changing a dynamic that's been one
way for a long time can be really hard for family members.
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So this is kind of like a, a sticky part for a lot of people in the coaching process.
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And we're not here to tell you what to do, tell you to, you know, make your friends, your
family, but we're here to offer support and maybe an
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a different perspective on like how you're actually in charge of who your family is and
who you spend your time with.
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think that's the biggest thing is taking ownership of your family past, present, and
moving into the future and being able to see that, you know, yeah, the family I had is the
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family I had.
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I can't really change that.
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There might be some lessons that I haven't learned yet.
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That's one thing.
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In today's day though, you can, you're an adult, you get to choose.
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And if you have somebody that doesn't make you feel good in those...
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interactions, you can't alter the dynamic.
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You don't have to stay in the push-pull dynamic that you might have or the guilt loop or
whatever it is.
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But this is why coaching comes in handy is so that you can have somebody to come to that's
independent of all of this, that doesn't care what you do on Thanksgiving Day or Christmas
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Day so much as we care about what you care about.
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And that's the thing.
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We don't have an agenda for you except for your happiness.
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So when it comes to family for myself, had, I've gone through iterations with my family.
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Growing up, my sister was autistic.
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It was just her and I, and I kind of made the friends on my street, my family.
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And I, my older brother is still somebody I keep in touch with today.
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I'm talking with them later today.
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And I think as we go through life, I
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I think I had to let go of like family had to be DNA related to family is the people I
choose to spend most of my time with or the people that I want to label as my family
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because they love me unconditionally and I love them unconditionally.
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And that's a really big distinction I think for a lot of people when it comes to finding
the family that fits which is a really good alliteration for me.
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Yeah.
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And, you know, one thing that Andrew and I have found is that it's very possible that the
people who become your family are not in your city.
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It's very possible that you'll feel more of a connection with people who you meet in
different groups, different, you know, Andrew and I met at a conference.
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We live in two different countries and, you know, we are each other's
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best friend, family, we're everything, right?
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And there was no Andrew where I grew up in South Louisiana, right?
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So sometimes things can take you by surprise, but it's important to put yourself in those
situations, right?
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So.
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For example, we met at a money blogger conference and I think a lot of people felt like
that their first time going to that conference like, my God, there's other money nerds,
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there's other people who are, like I can talk about money to these people, everyone, like
all my friend group at home or my family, they get so uncomfortable when I wanna talk
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about money and look, we can do it all day long, you know, we can nerd out and like so
exciting.
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So there could be a book club by you, there could be some sort of.
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I don't know.
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What are clubs people have?
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All I know is book club.
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Well, I think as far as finding those family members, think those are ones that we met and
then it evolved over time.
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But putting yourself in places that you enjoy is a great way to do that, whether it's
online through the stuff that you like.
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If you like, I don't know, fixing old cars or collecting certain kind of collectibles.
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For me, I love going to personal development conferences because I really do feel that I
resonate with people there.
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I know Kat, you're the same way.
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And it's just about getting around the things that you like more in a social setting.
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So I know a lot of people will go to Comic-Con because they love to dress up as their
favorite character.
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And that's how they've met some of the best friends that they'll ever have.
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And those people ultimately are their family.
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They're the people that they go to in hard times.
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they're just, they're
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They just find their good people.
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And that's what we want for you is to find these right people for yourself and to let it
happen and unfold.
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It's not a great idea to find somebody that you think might be a good fit in the mall and
go, hey, do you wanna be my family?
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It usually doesn't go the way you want it to.
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Don't get kidnapped, don't kidnap anybody else.
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These are just some basics.
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Yep, yep.
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Don't go up to somebody and say, I want to spend a lot of time with you when you haven't
told them your name yet.
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These are all things that you learn from our mistakes.
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No, I'm just kidding.
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When it comes to family though, give yourself permission to branch out.
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I think the best thing that I did was loosen the definition of my family.
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And I have had people, two of my closest friends live,
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besides you, course, Kat, you know, they live in Atlanta and I'm in Canada.
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And, you know, they've both told me like, you're the only person I can come to with all
these things.
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And like, you're, I've never had a good, I never had a good family growing up.
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You are my family.
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And I wasn't trying to make people my, my family.
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was just showing up.
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Yeah, it just kind of happens over time.
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So
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Allow yourself to be surprised with how this unfolds, but again, you gotta be clear on who
you are and how you wanna show up in the world.
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We often say that the people you spend the most time with, the five people you spend the
most time with are the ones you're gonna develop the characteristics of and you're gonna
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be kind of an amalgam of them.
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And I always think about that because...
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I can look back at my life growing up as a kid, you know, when you're all smushed together
in schools, like you don't get a lot of choices when you're in a small school.
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And sometimes you pick badly and I can see how those things happen.
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But as an adult, when you know that you start to put yourself in situations and you can
look at people and go, is this, do I want to be more like you?
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You know, like, and it's not so much a judging thing.
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It's just an awareness of like,
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Wow, you're really kind.
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I want to be more kind.
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Or, wow, you're really abrasive and rude to people and I don't want to be that way.
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So I'm going to, yeah, this doesn't make me feel, but it's okay.
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I think that's a really good test as you go through this discovery phase and go like, who
do I, you know, no barriers, no borders, no time differences.
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Who would I want to spend the most time with?
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And that's kind of how you start to pick your family and your friends.
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in this situation.
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Well, the next category is community and I feel like we have like kind of touched on
community as well.
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But what would you say is the differentiating factor or like if someone wanted to focus on
this, like what does that mean to you?
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Community can mean a bunch of different things.
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For some people, it's the people you live with on your street or in your block.
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For other people, it's those people that are not in those two circles, those two pillars,
right?
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I have some wonderful neighbors.
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I like talking with them.
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I will help them when they need anything.
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I wouldn't consider them like my friends and they're not my, you know, they're not.
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if they're not my friends and they're not my family, they're kind of in that community
aspect.
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For everybody, it's different, right?
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I mean, we call our group the Five Tribe because anybody that's listening to this show is
like they're a kindred spirit wanting to grow and, you know, discover themselves more.
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Whereas, you know, we're not in all their families.
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We're not in their, we're not.
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We might be their friends, but it's a different dynamic where it's like, consider friends
to be somebody that I'm actively talking to, like I'm actively talking with you.
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I have several friends that I speak with on an ongoing basis.
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And that ongoing basis might be once a year.
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I think that's another thing with these definitions is like, you get to make them as they
are, but community is like, what kind of energy do you want to put yourself around?
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Do you want to be around people that are helpful?
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Do you want to be around people that
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thoughtful, do you want to be around thought leaders, do you want to be around people that
are a lot of fun, do you want to put people who are really active and outdoorsy?
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There's a ton of communities that you can find online, so that's really how I look at
community.
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Kat, what would you say?
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Yeah, I think that too.
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And I think we have this as a separate category.
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For me, it is important to have community in your geographic area.
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And again, these don't have to be people that you're like best friends with.
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These don't have to be people you have Thanksgiving dinner with.
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But for example, we just moved to Chicago, what, like six, seven months ago.
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I can't believe it's been that long already.
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But, you know, my kids started a new school and I knew being a solo parent to them, like I
knew that it was important for me to at least get other moms phone numbers to, you know,
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just in case something happened to just communicate with them.
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And, you know, it sort of naturally happens as the kids want to hang out with each other.
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These are not people that I'm having coffee with or dinner with or anything like that.
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They are people, my kids are at their houses and so I want them to know I exist and say
like, thanks for having them.
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Thanks for feeding them pizza.
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Thanks.
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You know, is it okay that my kids at your house right now?
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You know, like, did you know my kid is there?
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You know, that kind of thing.
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so, and again, the neighbors thing too, like again, I'm not best friends with my next door
neighbor, but when I was visiting Andrew last week in Canada, she collected all my
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packages for me.
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Right.
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And so it's just good.
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in an emergency, in a friendly way to just to have things in your immediate vicinity that
you do some community building things for some people.
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Some people are very into like volunteering, you know, they're on boards of their animal
shelter, like whatever that means to you.
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for some people it's a huge part of their life to make a positive impact on their
immediate community.
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So again, we go through this in coaching, we find out what's important to you.
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or find out what's missing, what you wish you had.
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And then we give advice and we make a plan to start slowly adding these things into your
life.
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Yeah.
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And I think one of the big things in our sessions is asking people what kind of community
they want.
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Because I don't think a lot of times we really think about it.
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We just kind of, you know, when we start out life, we're on the street we're on.
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And that's that's our kind of our that's our first community.
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And we just assume that's how it always is.
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But the world keeps changing.
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And you can I agree with you wholeheartedly about, know, knowing the people around you and
having numbers in case you need somebody to pick something up or, know, you need help or
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whatever.
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Those are great examples of why we all need community and from a fundamental needs point
You feel better mentally when you are a part of something bigger than you and that can be
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family But for most of us it's community and that community community can be a cause or
anything like that I mean, I was just thinking for myself like well, what other
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communities do I have?
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like, well, I've got my my kids sports community.
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I've got you know, the the
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the parents at school community, like it doesn't always have to be this one label, but
it's also being bringing the awareness to the community and going, is this what I want to
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be a part of?
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sometimes you have to, mean, I don't have any say on who's in the hockey team community
and they're all good people, but you have to kind of be aware that sometimes you're in
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communities that you just, you may not be right for you, but it's just a season that you
have to go through.
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Right.
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Okay, well, there's one more category in this layer of life in this social layer of life
and that is intimacy.
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It is.
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And so intimacy is something that, you know, if for a lot of people, I know for myself
originally, when we were coming up with this, kind of made me go, Oh, what does that mean?
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And to me, intimacy is how you want to present yourself to these people, to your, your
spouse, your kids, your friends, your family, your community.
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Some people are, if we go into, if we were to rate
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intimacy from one to a ten.
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Ten being you share everything with that person and one being like you just give a nod to
somebody in the hallway.
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I think more people are below the five mark than above it for a lot of things.
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And I think that is partially because we don't we want to make sure we fit in with the
people we're around and we're afraid of rejection.
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And that's just ingrained in our DNA.
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There is this aspect, though, of
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knowing who you are and owning your truth and then walking into places and when somebody
says something that puts you off, you can understand that first of all, you know who you
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are so you're able to present yourself in a way that makes sense but you're also able to
share with these people in a way that feels right for you and it's different for everyone.
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I know Kat, you and I, we're tens with each other.
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We share every thought that we have.
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I have other people that are like, you know, two or threes because I will happily share it
with them, but I know they're just not, that's not where they're at.
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So just, I would define intimacy as the amount of yourself you're willing to let be seen
by those around you.
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I think that's a really good definition.
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It is...
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I am wearing glasses today.
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So for those of you listening, so was bound to get something semi-smart.
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Yeah, intimacy is a closeness.
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It's how much of your soul are you willing to bear to another person?
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Because all of us, right, again, I just gave the examples of the moms, like I'm not going
to text someone and say, oh, you know.
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My kids at your house, by the way, do you want to talk about, you know, our childhood
wounds?
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Right.
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I mean, cause there's, don't have that level of intimacy, of vulnerability, but
vulnerability is the key to creating a depth in relationships.
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Even for our romantic relationships, there are people who are, who have been married for
30 years and their intimacy is a three and not a 10.
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And of course, intimacy encompasses everything, right?
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All levels of closeness.
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But what I'm saying is people could be married for 30 years and be at a three because they
don't understand or know the inner workings of someone else's life.
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Maybe they don't know what their spouse is struggling with at work, or maybe they don't
know that their spouse is deeply anxious about their children's happiness or something
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like that.
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be with somebody every single day and not have any intimacy with them, not have any
closeness, not have any vulnerability or a depth of understanding of their soul and who
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they are and what makes them them.
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And we're not here to force anybody to have deeper intimate relationships, but I can say
that having them in your life
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really adds to the quality of it.
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It adds to you feeling supported in this life.
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And a lot of people can say, I have all of these friends, but they might not be above a
five with them on this.
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Maybe you're like motivating to your friends, but they have no idea that you're
struggling, right?
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Right, and that is a really good example of that level of intimacy, of a five intimacy
where, you know, you're with people, but they don't really know who you are.
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And I will akin that to a lot of times you feel alone in a crowded room.
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And it's because you're craving that extra, that depth.
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I'm gonna share something personal with this because, you know, I don't know boundaries
and I...
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Kat, you know this already, but when I was looking at intimacy, I really did have to ask
myself how I wanted to show up with a lot of different people in my life.
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And everybody's different, right?
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Like I'm not gonna, like you said, I am not going to share my soul with the guy sitting
next to me on the plane.
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I might, never know.
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I totally would, and I totally have, so.
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then they open up to me and.
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And that's where I'm going with this.
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I felt very much at a three, four with my parents over the years.
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And I didn't like it.
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I acknowledged that it was something in myself.
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And I kept hoping that something outside of me, from the outside was gonna come in.
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And then I realized that if I wanted to have better relationships with my mom and dad, I
needed to be the one that opened up.
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about the things that were going on with me, the things that were bugging me, the things
from our past that needed to be healed.
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And as soon as I started doing that, as soon as I gave myself permission and the strength,
and you've always been really good at supporting me with these things, I was able to
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rewrite the relationships with these people in a very short time.
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We're talking like weeks of addressing things, and that's only because I don't see them
every day.
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They live a little bit away from me.
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But in being able to allow myself to be intimate and know who I am and know like I need
these things, I was able to make deeper connections faster.
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So sometimes when you're looking at the intimacy thing, and this is going back to the
friends and the family and the community, sometimes if you wanna have it happen, you've
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gotta be the one to take the first step.
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Nobody else is going to typically, and I know that's really scary.
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It was scary for me to do with my parents who love me dearly.
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It was scary for me to do it with everybody.
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But it gets easier and the benefit of it is that in all the times I've opened up, it's
always been a positive outcome, even if the outcome wasn't what I was hoping for.
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And what I mean by that is, sometimes you open up to somebody and they just kind of, they
shift and you're like, great, now I know that I can't talk about
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these kinds of things with my neighbor or the pilot.
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He really didn't want me in the cockpit that day, talking to him about those things.
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And just kind of moving on, he's like, dude, I'm trying to land the plane here.
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I'm like, yeah, but how was your childhood?
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Dude, come on.
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So it's just about giving yourself permission and you don't have to, everything's a
step-by-step process that we teach at Five Year U.
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You don't have to be all of the things at once, but just knowing where you wanna go is how
you take steps is why we get used to taking small steps to get there, because that's how
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you're gonna get there regardless of taking the small steps one at
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Yeah, so I hope this has been helpful to everybody.
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If you'd like to work with us or you'd like somebody to walk with you through this
process, we'd be delighted to meet you and to help you.
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00:33:04,162 --> 00:33:14,402
You can just send us an email at hello at fiveyearu.com and we'd be so happy to hear from
you and to see if there might be a way that we can help.
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Exactly and I guess that's it for this episode.
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The next one is going to be Substance and I like this one because this is kind of where
the the stuff and the the time and everything kind of starts to come in and It's so much
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better when you come it come at it from the inside out Which we will get into next week.
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00:33:38,443 --> 00:33:39,304
Yeah.
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All right, we will see you guys next time
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Bye.