How can we embrace our worthiness? What are the three pillars to true companionship? How can loneliness be a good thing?
Find out in this week’s episode of The Learn to Love Podcast, where your host Zach Beach interviews clinical psychologist, author, consultant, and speaker Kelly M. Flanagan, Ph.D. on The Three Pillars of True Companionship
Below is the transcript for the episode, to go to the episode page, click here.
Zach Beach 0:35
Welcome to the Learn to love podcast everyone. I am your host Zach Beach, and I’m here with the incredible clinical psychologist, author, consultant and speaker Kelly Flanagan. Hello, Kelly, and welcome to the show.
Kelly Flanagan 0:49
Thanks for having me on. It’s great to be here.
Zach Beach 0:51
Today we are going to be talking about the three pillars of true companionship. And for those that don’t know Dr. Kelly Flanagan is a clinical psychologist, author, consultant and speaker who enjoys walking people through the three essentials of a truly satisfying life, worthiness, belonging and purpose. His writings have been featured in a reader’s digest, Huffington Post, the five love languages. And in 2014, a letter he wrote to his daughter it led to their appearance on the today’s show. In 2017, Kelly published his first book lovable, embracing what is truth about you so you can truly embrace your life. And his next book, true companions, a book for everyone about the relationships that see us through was published this month. How are you today, Kelly?
Kelly Flanagan 1:41
I’m doing all right. I’m doing all right. You’re you’re catching me in the middle of launch week for true companions. So I think I’ve, I’ve mostly managed to maintain my balance. And remember that my people are more important than my projects. And I think I only went like three consecutive nights sleep lessly laying awake going, what the heck did I do put in all that personal stuff out into the world. Last night, I actually got a decent night’s sleep. So I must be cresting that vulnerability wave a little bit. So I’m doing good. Thanks for asking.
Zach Beach 2:11
Well, that is what I kind of wanted to ask you about. Because first, I want to thank you for this incredible work that you are doing in the world. And for our listeners that don’t know you both on your blog. And in your books, you write a lot of very personal stories about your relationship with your children, your relationship with your wife, which is very different than a lot of psychology books that I read about where the clinicians tend to talk about their patients. And they really remain that keep that kind of like third person scientific objectivity. Right. So I really want to appreciate the vulnerability that you have in sharing your stories. And yeah, I’m curious, how does it feel? I remember reading in your book, you mentioned how your baby brother like almost died. And he was drowning, a total stranger, and they’re like, so yeah, when you’re seven, I can’t believe that thing happened to you.
Kelly Flanagan 3:01
Oh, my gosh, well, and sometimes I don’t remember what I wrote. Like, you know, you don’t quite keep track of like, I can’t remember I wrote that blog post two years ago. And so someone will will know something about me that I’ve even forgotten, I’ve put out a little bit trippy. But my evolution as a psychologist and as a writer sort of influenced each other in the sense that I actually, when I first started blogging in 2012, the original goal was just to share more about my therapeutic services and the therapeutic process in public. But I think I’m sort of I’m wired to be a little bit, maybe more honest about my junk than the average person. And, and I was going through my own healing process at the time. So I started to share a few more personal things on my blog back in 2012. And I noticed a really interesting thing happen, just my clients started to come in and say, you know, I would have never told you this, but now that I read your blog posts, and now that I know you’re messy in this way, too, I feel comfortable telling you this and I realized that posture we take his therapist so often where we sort of sit back as the experts tell client stories because of course, they’re the ones with the problems not us, you know, was actually actually hindering the healing process for a lot of my clients wasn’t doing me a service or them and and so I just sort of let myself continue to evolve in terms of what I feel comfortable writing I always still think like, am I okay with the client knowing this about me? And if I am then it’s fair game, which means there’s an awful lot of fair game and, and so yeah, so releasing something like this book, true companions into the world after three years of working on it, and pushing the limits of of honesty about about life and relationships and myself, it’s, it’s a little daunting to finally have it out there. But again, I think three days and I’m starting to figure it out.
Zach Beach 4:42
Yeah, that’s really beautiful. I totally understand that. Authenticity breeds more authenticity and vulnerability breeds more vulnerability. So when you are that way out in the world, people meet you and kind.
Kelly Flanagan 4:56
That’s right. Yeah. And then when they start to reciprocate that you feel more permission to Do it. And the work that I’ve done with folks and my own process of growing has just accelerated as a result of it. But it doesn’t come without the the occasional is Rene Brown says the occasional vulnerability hangover. So
Zach Beach 5:13
I wanted to talk more about your work in the world, because you focuse on what you kind of call the three essentials. So you have worthiness, belonging and purpose. And I’m wondering how you got here, like, what made you focus on these three specific values?
Kelly Flanagan 5:31
Yeah, you know, I think as a psychologist, I realized that most of the time, my clients were coming in wanting help with one of two things, they wanted help to improve their relationships, you know, that was the presenting problem, so to speak, or they wanted more clarity about like, what am I here to do? Like, what’s my life’s purpose. And so I spent a lot of years trying to help folks directly with those two things. And it wasn’t until I really started to wrestle with some of my own demons in history and everything that I started to realize, like, well, you really can’t make as much headway with with your your sense of belonging, your relationships, or your sense of purpose in the world, if you haven’t first done the fundamental foundational work of embracing your own worthiness and getting clarity about who you are and how you want to show up to your people and how you want to show up to your life. And so I remember I was when I was putting together a proposal for my first book lovable I remember my agent called me one day and said, Okay, so you got these three things, you know, worthiness, purpose and belonging, why those three things? And I said to her, no, no, it’s not, it’s not worthiness, you know, purpose, and then belonging, it’s worthiness, belonging and purpose. That’s sort of the, the order in which we progress through our personal growth. And she said, Well, that sounds important, you should write the book about that. And that really is what lovable is about. And it’s this idea that until we really embraced who we are our true self, we can’t really find belonging, because we’re not really showing up in the world authentically. But once we do, once we do start to reveal who we are in the world, you just sort of get to look around and see like, who sort of celebrates that, who sees us and goes, Hey, I dig that let’s let’s get let’s, let’s hang, you know, and and this is how we find places of belonging. And then once we found those places of belonging, where people really embrace who we are, now we’ve got community to support us as we’re getting more and more clarity about how we want to, to live out our passions and pursue our sense of purpose in life. And then you pursue your purpose, and it takes you into new challenging territory, and you start to doubt yourself all over again, and you have to embrace your worthiness all over again, he’s gonna cycle through it your whole life. But to me, that’s the progression. It’s how we grow kind of most authentically.
Zach Beach 7:30
So it’s worthiness, belonging and purpose, not only in that order, but also kind of an iterative cycle,
Kelly Flanagan 7:36
you know, yeah, one of the ways I described it in lovable is it’s sort of like circling a steep mountain, you know, you don’t go straight up at you, you sort of you go around it concentrically. And so you circle back to the same view, but now you’re higher up and you’re viewing it from a different angle, you know, so, when I released level bowl four years ago, I was wrestling with, you know, that self doubt all over again. And you know, here I am releasing true companions. And I think I’m wrestling with some of that self doubt all over again. But I’m higher up, I’m further along, you know, it was three days, instead of three months, this time, you begin to excuse me Master this process of moving through your, through your shame and back into your sense of worthiness. So and then from there, you get to clarify even more clearly, who do you belong to? And what do you want to do with your life.
Zach Beach 8:20
So I’m wondering if you could tell our listeners a little bit about both how your psychology background informs this work that you that you are doing, and also how the discipline of psychology is, may be treating your work. And I mean, that because you first mentioned like Bernie Brown, and I remember in one of her speeches, she also kind of like, went to a publisher and was like, I want to research vulnerability, and the person’s like, no one wants to learn. And I think when a lot of people think of psychology, they think of pathologizing. And they think about figuring out like, what’s wrong with this person curing and helping mental illness? And I think a lot of people have a stereotype or even an understanding that psychology is more about what’s wrong, and curing that rather than helping somebody live a fulfilling and happy and worthy life. So what’s been your experience in working as a psychologist and focusing on worthiness belonging and purpose?
Kelly Flanagan 9:21
That’s a great question that’s that no one has ever asked me that before. It’s, it’s I love it. So what’s interesting, I’m just thinking out loud here. Like if you look, for instance, at the quotes, the epigraphs that begin each chapter in my books, you’ll see that, you know, 90% of them are not from psychologists, they’re from spiritual mentors, and people who are respected leaders in various spiritual communities, in religious communities. And and that’s because for me, I don’t distinguish so much between psychology and spirituality. I think they’re so closely integrated, though. It’s hard to know where one ends and the other begins. And so, you know, ironically, I think most of the reception that my work has received has been more in communities of faith, you know, I speak a lot more to church groups and to other groups who are spiritually oriented than I do to psychological associations or conferences, or that sort of thing. Part of that is just that it’s my own voice. I don’t think necessarily, you know, lovable, so much about true self and false self. And there’s enormous psychological literature out there about that. But the way that I write about it, I think, is more attractive to spiritual communities, and just more a reflection of my voice and my perspective on the world. So I’d say that’s the direction in which my work tends to lean. And I yeah, I sort of like getting away from the pathologizing of everything. And getting back to the basics of there’s something basically good in you and, and there is a process to discover what that is, and experience it and live from it. And again, that’s, that’s changed everything that I do. As a psychologist,
Zach Beach 10:48
that’s really wonderful. And I wholeheartedly agree with you. For me, psychology and spirituality have always overlapped. Because both involve looking within and understanding the nature of our own mind, the nature of suffering, and removing the obstacle that prevent us from being happy. And indeed, when I was reading your book, and looking throughout your website, I did find these ideas that I would definitely say are quite spiritual, and one of them was writing that you had that worthiness isn’t earned, it’s remembered. And I definitely like agreeing understand what the first part that we should all know that we’re worthy of love, acceptance and belonging no matter what. But that second part that our worthiness is remembered, I was like, well, that’s a very spiritual idea that you’re putting forth there. And I was wondering if you could tell us a little bit about well, what have we forgotten?
Kelly Flanagan 11:38
Yeah, that’s a great question. Yeah, I remember another conversation. And it wasn’t I was a text exchange I had with my agent as we were proposing lovable and it was a little further down the road and I’ve sent her a bunch of writing related to the worthiness part of the book. And I remember she has, I think, was like a Friday night I’m standing in my kitchen when I got her texts and her text said, you know, you Okay, so you keep sending me all this, this worthiness stuff, and I’ll never forget she I love her to death. She’s she said, it’s great work if you can get it back. But how do you become worthy? And, and I said to my wife, ah, you don’t become worthy, you forgot that you were worthy. And you need to remember that you are that’s how it works. And my wife, of course, like, well, you should probably tell her that. And I did. And that became one of the themes of lovable but the idea is that, you know, we enter into the world with a self that’s created for us a true self that is good enough and worthy of love and belonging, the true self knitted together in our mother’s womb, fearfully and wonderfully made, and the imago day, if you will, and when you when you witness young children, you know, toddler, it toddlers, young, young children, they don’t question this, they don’t, they don’t walk around going, Hmm, I wonder if I’m good enough to be to be loved. They assume that they are, they just know it is part and parcel of who they are until they’re given a message that contradicts that. And that message is something that we call shame, which is the message that you aren’t good enough to be loved. And to belong exactly the way you are. And and so children accumulate enough of this message over time that they eventually usually by at least fourth grade, start to build what we call the false self, or an ego. And this false self is now the self bear creating to make sure that as they go through the world, they’re going to be loved, and they’re going to belong the way that they want to, it always backfires for all of us human beings. But at some point, usually by a middle school into high school, we are now identifying more with our false self. And we’re literally beginning to forget who we really came into the world as. And so so much of healing. So much of growth is about remembering and reconnecting with that true self that is still in there, but buried away safely, you know, so that it hopefully can’t be shamed anymore and reconnecting with that part of us and then sort of resurrecting it and bringing it out to live.
Zach Beach 13:48
That’s so heartbreaking that children assume that they are worthy until they are given the message that they are not like, Where’s that message come from? I feel like parents try their best.
Kelly Flanagan 13:59
Yeah. So I’m so glad you put your finger on that. Because I like to reassure parents who are listening to these kinds of conversations and other does that mean I’m shaming my kids? And my answer is always absolutely you shame your kids. There’s one thing that shame does is it overflows and so we’re all carrying it. We all tend to pass it on to other people. We’re all still in the process of healing and becoming so we do do some of that. But try to reassure parents, kids don’t need you to be perfect. They need you to know you’re not perfect. And when they call you out on doing things like shaming them, you need to be open and receptive to that and then they’ll learn Oh, I don’t have to be perfect to be okay. Mom makes mistakes, Dad makes mistakes, they own them. relationships can heal through that. And so it does happen. I think there’s no way around it. I think an awful lot of parents these days are trying to somehow get their kids through life without experiencing shame. But you know, even if you don’t do it as a parent if you mad you know if you happen to be the first perfect one that says they’re gonna get it out in the world. So let’s be talking about it. Let’s you know, let’s be talking about what’s the message that isn’t true about you that you’re not good enough. The way that you were made. And so the goal of a parent in my mind is not to never shame their children, it’s that as their child begins to build that false self, which they will inevitably do, and they need to do in some ways to stay safe out in middle school, you know that the goal of a parent is to help keep alive that connection to their true self. Okay, so you’re doing this, you’re adopting these personas and these roles and these protections. But let me remind you as much as I can about the beautiful kid that I’ve known all along, that’s still in there, so that when they’re ready to remember that kid, it’s not quite so hard to do. So
Zach Beach 15:31
that’s really beautiful. And we really just recorded an episode on parenting. And our guests had the exact same message that as a parent, you don’t have to be perfect. And embracing your imperfections is an important way of raising your child so that they realize they also don’t have to be
Kelly Flanagan 15:48
exactly Oh, there’s so much pressure to be raised by a parent that everyone thinks is perfect to do it yourself to replicate it. And deep your inside of you, right is a kid so you know, you’re not perfect. And you’re like, what’s wrong? What’s wrong with me that I’m not as perfect as Mom or Dad, it’s a terrible conundrum to be in. So I’m glad you’re here hearing that from multiple people here.
Zach Beach 16:06
So I love that you said that the goal is to keep alive that connection to their true self in terms of our parenting goal. And I almost want to get into like a cosmological discussion about who our true self is. So we can just talk about it briefly. Because I’m curious, as we’re going along this spiritual path of self discovery of discovering our true self, are there any other words you might describe this true self like soul? Or spirit? Or the God within? Or love? Or light or source? Like? Yeah, and who are we deep down? In your opinion?
Kelly Flanagan 16:42
Yeah, oh, this is, let’s have a look. If you don’t mind, invite me back, let’s do a whole episode on it. Like, that’s actually been going on a friend’s podcasts here. Not too in the not too distant future, we’re going to talk about this, we’re just gonna riff about it. In in lovable I describe each of us as having a spark of the Divine, at the center of us. And that sparked up the divine is, is part and parcel with our true self, I sometimes say that we you know, it’s like, we’re all fragments of the divine being drawn back to the, to the source, like metal filaments being drawn back to the magnet, you know, that’s the beautiful thing about it is that as we get closer to our true self, there’s a lot of concern that as you talk about true self, there’s this sort of navel gazing selfishness to it. But the reality is, as you draw closer to your true self, you’re drawing closer to your divinity to the ground of your being, to the most open and inclusive and giving and sacrificial, sacrificial and surrendering energy that we can have access to. And so, to me, it’s quite the opposite of selfish. It’s the it’s the way out of selfishness in a way.
Zach Beach 17:46
So I think I need to add spiritual guide to your bio. Well, that’s, it just, it’s so refreshing to really hear that, you know, from a clinician from somebody with some important letters after their name, that the spark of the Divine is at the center of all of us. And I love also that you said, We are all fragments of the divine being drawn back to source.
Kelly Flanagan 18:13
Yeah, so much of what gets stuck in our lives is resistance to that drawing, you know, so I just, I’m, I’m hopeful to let people know that the drawing is good and beautiful, and, and something to celebrate, and participate in
Zach Beach 18:27
It absolutely is. So I want to shift a little bit more towards today’s topic and a little bit more towards your newest book. And as I was getting into it, I was quite surprised to find that a book on true companionship, and on our true companions, begins by talking about loneliness, and talking about the importance of befriending our loneliness. So what what gives?
Kelly Flanagan 18:56
It’s a great question. Well, that’s honestly, that’s part of the vulnerability I felt over the last month is like, really, you’re gonna start a book on relationships about loneliness, like, no one’s gonna get through that first third, but I just hear I keep hearing over and over, I had about 100 people on my launch team. And now the books have been out there for a few days. And I’m just getting, you know, I probably had two dozen emails today from people just saying, this is a game changer. For me. My experience of my loneliness is being transformed in a moment. And it’s, it’s liberating, it’s freeing. I feel more comfortable in my own skin than I felt in a long time. And boy, if we’re not comfortable in our own skin, how can we how can we really encounter the skin of another right so so the idea and this is I give my people my my sort of online tribe, so much credit for this because I knew what I wanted to say about loneliness. But when I brought them the original ideas about it through Facebook, live conversations and these sorts of things, they push back on me and they’re like, ooh, loneliness. That’s that sounds terrible. No, and loneliness can’t be a good thing. It can’t be redeemed. And it made me think of A couple who came into my office once, and they were fighting about whether or not to put a TV in a living room. And, and I was having I was walking them through a conversation about it. And something dawned on me. And I’m like, oh, they’re using, they’re using the word living room in different ways. Here. This is interesting. And and so I stopped them. And I asked the husband, I said, Can you please describe in detail the room, you’re referring to his living room, and he did this way. It’s like, that’s not the living room is the family room, you can put a TV in there, you know. And I think that’s what’s happening here, when we talk about our loneliness is that my people told me that when I when when we usually say lonely, we’re actually talking about a room inside of us that’s decorated with three really painful human experiences, which is abandonment, shame and isolation. And so when you hear loneliness, you hear abandonment, shame and isolation. But really loneliness, the loneliness I’m talking about is an entirely different room within us, it’s the room right at the center of us, it’s the place no one else can get to. It’s, it’s at our very core, it is so unique that no one else can understand it. And therefore we are always alone in the experience of being ourselves. And if we can recognize that that’s not a bad thing, that’s not a broken thing about us. It’s not a problem with our people, because they’re not taking it away from us. If we can embrace that our loneliness is just the shadow side of our uniqueness and our deepest self, then all of a sudden, we have an opportunity to befriend it, to move towards it, to get to know ourselves better, and to enjoy who we are even more deeply. And so I’ve heard from people this week that wow, this is every time I feel lonely. I wonder, what did I do wrong? You know, why am I lonely? Why do I deserve to feel lonely, and now I realize I’m lonely because I’m human, and I can begin to enter into that experience is an opportunity to get to know my humanity even better. And to me, that’s freeing for relationships. It just sets up an entirely new dynamic and relationship. So I’m super excited people are receiving it that way. I had my fingers crossed, and it seems like it’s happening.
Zach Beach 21:55
No, it makes so much sense. It even reminds me of I teach a lot of writing workshop, and particularly even around poetry. And I’ll tell people like you have a poet inside of you have a unique story inside of you. Because no one has lived the life that you have lived. No one has had the perspective that you’ve had. So what I’m hearing from you is that befriending our loneliness is actually embracing our uniqueness.
Kelly Flanagan 22:20
That’s right. Yeah, I say somewhere in true companions, that, even though like you know, as human beings reach 99.9%, alike, we each still have 3 million variations in our genetic strand that are entirely unique to us that no other human being shares, 3 million ways, right, in which no one else could understand us. And then you multiply that by how unique our story is. And it’s like, the number of digits are infinite in terms of how rare we are. And so yeah, so to be able to tap into that, that rareness. And that uniqueness and speak from it is a gift to the world if we can do it.
Zach Beach 22:53
So there’s 3 million variations of our genetics round, I’m glad that clinician scientist just came the conversation. Exactly.
Kelly Flanagan 23:00
You know, it just it does put it in, in sort of scientific terms, like how dramatically unique we all are, even though we’re have so much in common.
Zach Beach 23:08
So our topic for today is the three pillars of true companionship. And let’s get into those right now. I want to make sure we have enough time to cover them all. So what are the three pillars of true companionship?
Kelly Flanagan 23:21
Well, it’s a good segue from what we were just talking about. So the three pillars are the one experience that causes the most conflict in relationships, but could be the source of the greatest connection. And that’s loneliness. Loneliness caused an enormous amount of conflict in relationships, as we demand that our partners and our people sort of take it away from us when they’re not even able to do that. And we wouldn’t want them to even if they could. So it’s the one experience of loneliness that we could actually draw upon to connect rather than being conflict. The second is what I call the one goal that is essential to altra companionship, which is the mutual commitment to taking responsibility for our own defenses, and protectiveness. So much of what happens in relationships is is about me pointing out your defenses and the way you’re protecting and trying to get you to do something about it. But if we can, both, in any relationship mutually agree that we’ll take responsibility for our own, and that we can share that goal together, then it removes so much of that tug of war push pull that goes on in relationships. So the one experience of loneliness, the one goal of mutual responsibility for our defenses, and then the one perspective that we really need to adopt in order to really give the attention to our relationships that all of this requires. And so if I can, if I get back to the psychology side of things here again for a minute, we’re actually neurologically wired to to quit paying attention to our closest companions. So there’s a term for in psychology called habituation and habituation is the idea that if if a stimulus is presented over and over again, and you deem it safe, your your mind actually withdraws resources from processing it. So for instance, this morning, I got dressed and at first I could feel my blue And by, you know, my flannel, but I’m not I don’t feel them anymore at this point in the day because my my brain said, Oh, it’s there all the time, and it’s safe. And we need to keep channels open for more dangerous crises that are being thrown our way. Also, ironically, you know, we take our people for granted and we’re wired to do so. we’re wired to actually they’re there all the time. They’re basically safe. And so we we redirect our, our mental and emotional resources elsewhere. So we need to reorient ourselves and do on habituate to our companions. And there’s a great line of psychological research by a psychologist Laura Carstensen at Stanford that says, basically, unless you are aware of your fragility, she says it unless your fragility is primed. your priorities will include expansiveness and achievement and accumulation and meeting new people and doing new things. But once your fragility is prime, doesn’t matter how old you are, your priorities will immediately shift to deep presence to ordinary, everyday pleasures, and to deepening your existing relationships with your closest companions. And so to me, the third pillar is this one perspective of fragility. And recognizing that if we don’t keep that prominent in our minds, we will naturally like, well, just sort of life will pass us by as we get distracted by other things. But if we can prime our fragility, and be aware of it, we’re gonna naturally bring a deep sense of presence to our companions. So I hope that answers your question.
Zach Beach 26:25
Absolutely. And I’d love to kind of go into each one. And let’s just take the last one further, since that’s what we’re talking about right now. And embracing our fragility just reminds me of a lot of, again, spiritual teachings that tell us to kind of embrace even our own death in order to live a fully lived life. And you mentioned this process of habituation and this process of automating our partner like they kind of become a routine. So frame the picture real quick, like, how long does this process take? And then what does it usually look like?
Kelly Flanagan 26:58
Well, I’ll give you a couple of examples from Carsonsens research. So she did like sort of naturalistic observational research centering around various crises. So for instance, around 911, or around the SARS epidemic. And what they found was that when they interviewed people, during those times, it didn’t matter what your age was, you your priorities had shifted to the priorities of what are typically elderly priorities, caring about your people focusing on everyday pleasures. And then once you get further away from those crises, young people would shift back towards these other these other priorities, like accumulation and achievement and expansion, whereas the elderly would continue to have their fragility prime because their lifes horizon is so close. It’s always primed. Right. And I suspect, I suspect if that researchers can being continued right now, in the midst of this pandemic, and all the various quarantines we’re in I would suspect that everyone’s everyone’s fragility is more prime than it’s probably been in modern human history, to be honest with you, or at least since World War Two, this idea that well, a tiny, invisible thing can completely uproot, and upend our lives. So I think I think when you you think about the world right now, our fragility is prime, but we’re going to move beyond this, we’re going to move beyond this. And then person centered in a laboratory study where she brought in, I think it was people from age eight to 93. And she prime them to two different things she was one was a question. She said, basically, like if you could get a but if you knew there was a medical discovery in your 30 bonus years, what would what would you do with your life and what she found was that everybody from eight to 93, started talk, even like 93 year olds were like, Oh, I, I do a second career. I, you know, I tried to buy this house and live on the beach. And but then she asked a second question. And she said, essentially, if you knew you were moving away to a distant land and would never see your people or your current context, again, how, you know, what would your priorities be? And everyone from eight to 93 said, I’d focus in on my my people, I’d focus in on deepening my relationships and being present to my life’s the idea of being with just a simple question, you can reorient your priorities. So it’s just a simple question of on my last day, how will I wish I’d live today? If you were to ask that question at the beginning of every day, your fragility would be primed? And you’d have an opportunity to make different decisions with your day. It’s a very different question than if this was the last day of my life, right? Because you know, that I wouldn’t go to work or pay the mortgage bills or you know,
Zach Beach 29:31
Take out a big loan?
Kelly Flanagan 29:32
Yeah, exactly. But if this were the last day of my life, say 20 3040 years from now, how will I wish I’d spent today and the reality is you’ll still have to balance your people with all of your other priorities, but you’ll you will keep them in more balance and you’ll be more present to them. And so I think it can be as simple as just asking ourselves one reorienting question, can can sort of re sensitize us to our people. You’re right. Can I say one more thing? You’re right though. Like if we If we haven’t cultivated some surrender right to our mortality, some acceptance of death, then then we don’t get access to this invaluable tool for, for cultivating companionship because we’ll resist any thoughts about our awareness of our fragility. And we’ll live our lives habituated to our companions until the end. So I do think this, this pillar sort of goes hand in hand with doing the human work of what does it mean to be human? What does it mean to be mortal? What does it mean to be fragile? And how do we come to terms with that, and accept that so that we can really live our lives according to our highest values? Absolutely.
Zach Beach 30:41
And that is my follow up question is, I really love this process of recognizing our own fragility of shifting our perspective to think about, how do I want to live my best day today? Who knows what’s gonna happen tomorrow? And how does the affects our relationships that we’re in, I can see, it’s a very nice increase to make sure I’m living in line with my purpose to make sure I’m doing what matters? And what does that change in my relationship?
Kelly Flanagan 31:09
Well, I think I just give you a practical example. right on the heels of releasing my new book, there’s a billion things to do to get worried about it out there. And those sorts of things like it’s one of the busier weeks of my life. But am I get emotional talking about this, but my wife called me from work just a couple hours ago. And she just said, I want you to know how much it meant to me that that yesterday, you took an hour out of your day and had lunch with Aiden, who’s our 17 year old, and that when I got home, you were going through Caitlin’s homework with her. And those behaviors came directly out of the primary of my fragility and going, I got a billion things to do today. But someday, I’m gonna wish I’d taken an hour to have lunch with my son. And I’m gonna wish I’d taken just a moment or two to enjoy my daughter sharing her homework. And then like you said, you know, vulnerability is reinforcing. Like it starts to feed itself, that sort of presence starts to feed itself as well, because you get to experience your how happy Your daughter is that her daddy is interested in her homework, right? Or how much fun you had sitting at the table with your son is only going to be in the house for another year. So and So to me, those are the concrete, just the small moments that start to build up and add up and encourage us to do it more and more.
Zach Beach 32:22
Absolutely. It’s one of the most common and profound teachings of impermanence of the reality of our death is that the only time we have to express love, express appreciation for the people in our lives is this moment, right here and right now, and it makes every moment and every day become precious with the people that we are with
Kelly Flanagan 32:42
It does. And you know, I come from a faith community that has a lot of focus on the afterlife. And one of the chapters and true companions is is about like, that is good. I think it’s a beautiful thing to include that in our, in my tradition, in our eschatology. But don’t forget about the heaven that exists right here inside of molecules and matter. Don’t Don’t overlook it while you’re waiting for a different Heaven, because it’s as beautiful as the one that comes after so. So focus here, focus now,
Zach Beach 33:11
don’t forget about the heaven that exists in molecules and matter. Can I have that on a T shirt?
Kelly Flanagan 33:17
I’ll see what I can do.
Zach Beach 33:18
All right, cool. I’ll be on your merch, I want you to open up a merch part of your website. So priming our fragility, it’s really beautiful pillar. And let’s talk about another one that you mentioned. So you mentioned that we want to have a mutual commitment to taking responsibility for our own defensiveness. And I imagine this comes up a lot in couples therapy is that a couple comes to you and they’re like, yes, you need to tell my partner how wrong they are.
Kelly Flanagan 33:47
That’s exactly right.
Zach Beach 33:49
Like few people go to couples therapy or work on themselves. They, you know, they think the other person is the problem. So I’m imagining there’s a process of kind of guiding somebody to acknowledge, like their own stuff. So, you know, what does it look like to take responsibility for our own stuff?
Kelly Flanagan 34:08
Yeah, well, I share a metaphor and in true companions, that I think it seems to have helped a lot of couples already who have encountered it sort of understand real quickly the intuitive wisdom of how important it is for both people to be responsible for their own stuff. And it’s the metaphor of Of A Butterfly that’s trying to emerge from its cocoon. And it’s fascinating to me, because so the sputtering of the caterpillar goes into the cocoon goes into the lonely space of the cocoon to become in the beautiful thing, it’s here to be and then and then eventually and it spins this protection right to protect it while it’s doing that. I think that’s how our lives work. Like once we start to get hurt and shamed we spin these protections, but if we want to be able to truly connect with to sort of fly with our opinions, we need to be able to exit those protections. We need to leave them behind. And so a butterfly when it’s time to exit the chrysalis it actually it Literally pushes its way out with its wings, like it ruptures the chrysalis, and eventually pushes its way all the way out with its wings, though it takes some time. And the interesting thing about this it to me is that if a butterfly, if you if you tried to help a butterfly along, say I’m gonna get you out of your protections real quickly, so you can get on with life and you cut them out of their, their cocoon, they wouldn’t be able to fly, because it’s it’s through the process of pushing their way out of the protections that they grow strong enough to fly, actually, and and I think the same is true of us as people that it’s the process of growing out of our protections and pushing our way out of them, that makes us strong enough to love. And so it’s important that we not be constantly focused on our partners protections and saying, well, this is this is what you’re doing. And this is how to stop doing it. Because they have to go through that process, they have to take responsibility for that process, it’s the way that they will grow as a person, it’s the way that they’ll grow as a companion and strengthen themselves enough to to love you for the long haul. So if two people can be doing that, taking responsibility for their own protections, then you’re you really are golden and true companions. What I did is I sort of laid out what I see as the nine core protections that we as human beings bring to relationships to help people sort of start to become aware Oh, yeah, that’s I do that when I engage in yessing, or helicoptering, or in order to kind of begin to facilitate that process of self awareness around our own protections.
Zach Beach 36:19
So it’s the process of growing out of our protections that makes us strong enough to love. And this is a message I also communicate in some of my teachings, particularly when I teach yoga, as I tell people like I really wish we were plants. And we could just absorb the light, and just soak up wonderful nutrients from the ground. But that’s not how humans work. And we actually grow through stress, to get stronger, physically, you have to put stress on the body by lifting heavy weights. But to get stronger, emotionally, mentally, and relationally, we also have to do some work.
Kelly Flanagan 36:56
This stands out as a time where like, I pushed my way out of my protection very consciously, I woke up one morning, I was in a bad mood. I don’t know why I was aware at some level that I was sort of acting like a jerk. And my wife said, Why are you acting like a jerk this morning? And, and if I were to, like, let that protection lead the way it would be I’m not acting like a jerk or jerk for asking me, you know, but I was aware of it enough to push my way beyond it and just say, I don’t know. I’m sorry. Right? And so it’s, it’s just those two things. It’s that moment of awareness of the protection that you’re using in this given moment. And then the choice to say, I’m gonna leave it behind in favor of something different right now. That’s the whole process. And if you’re engaged in that on a moment to moment basis in your relationships, I think that’s what grows us into true companions.
Zach Beach 37:43
That’s just a nice phrase, “I don’t know. And I’m sorry.”
Kelly Flanagan 37:47
Yeah. I don’t know. Maybe I had a bad dream. But I am aware I’m acting like a jerk.
Zach Beach 37:52
Yeah, awareness is such a key step. Absolutely. So those are the two pillars. And then the first pillar, we’ve covered a little bit, but I just thought I’d leave it open. If there’s anything more you wanted to say, because we’ve talked a lot about loneliness already. But you mentioned loneliness, also our third pillar, and we want to draw upon our loneliness in order to connect rather than being conflict. So what does that process look like?
Kelly Flanagan 38:15
Yeah, I get an image in my head of like, if loneliness were a tangible object you could hold in both hands, right? It’s the difference between saying here hold holding, holding your loneliness out to your companions and saying, Here, take this away from me, versus sort of holding it close, no expectation that they’ll take it away from you, and holding it up. And saying, Here, let me let me tell you about my loneliness. Let me let me show it. Let me let me tell you about the story of loneliness in my life that started way before I met you. And that sure, sometimes you intersect with but and and that when two people can hold it close and hold it up, instead of holding it out, what they begin to discover is that the experience of human loneliness actually becomes a source of disk deep connection. It’s like, I can’t understand what it’s like to be you completely, but I can understand what it’s like to be lonely, because I’ve got it too. And all of a sudden, we feel a little bit less alone in our loneliness. So to me, that’s how if we quit trying to shove our loneliness toward our companion saying, Take it away, and instead uses as an opportunity to be honest, authentic to reveal ourselves, we actually discover ourselves more connected, even though the loneliness doesn’t go away.
Zach Beach 39:22
I feel l like that approach just breeds empathy.
Kelly Flanagan 39:25
Yes, absolutely. And that is that’s a it’s a mutual and I love that that’s a great word for it’s a mutual journey towards empathy for what it’s like to be human and to be sort of alone inside our skin. And
Zach Beach 39:35
just hearing your story of like holding up our loneliness. It just reminded me that the silver lining of loneliness is it does bring us in desire to connect with somebody else. Like if we were really happy 100% all the time being lonely, we would never enter into relationships right
Kelly Flanagan 39:52
In true companions I describe loneliness as similar to like hunger or fatigue, you know, just to normal human experience. Is that telling you that you’re in need of something? And you’d never get angry at your hunger and say, oh, there’s something wrong with me. Like, I’m bad because I’m hungry. So I have a normal human experience that’s telling me I need food. Well, you know, loneliness is a normal human experience. It’s telling you that you need closeness. And it’s okay.
Zach Beach 39:35
Thanks so much for coming on Kelly.
