How Self-Reliance Convinces You That You Can’t Rely on Anyone

Brett: Joe, I wanna go deeper on self-reliance. We had a podcast on this a little while ago, and people have been asking questions, and I recently saw you talking about self-reliance in front of a group of people. 

Joe: Yeah. 

Brett: And it really shook them to the core. 

Joe: I remember that, yeah. 

Brett: Yeah, when they start to see where the patterns come from, how it's holding them back, and the ways that they've been self-sabotaging through running the self-reliance pattern. 

Joe: Yeah. Great. I think that's a great one. Yeah, it's been really impactful on my clients as well, just when they really get to see the pattern. 

Brett: Yeah, 

Joe: And, and then how deep it is. It's really quite a thing.

Brett: So could we just really quickly recap what we talked about last time so that we catch people up? 

Joe: Briefly, self-reliance is the pattern that you think you have to do everything yourself, and therefore, you have a hard time getting help and support that you need to be able to feel great and/or take your life to the next level. So it gets in the way of a lot of CEOs and managers and people who have just learnt that it's all on me.

Brett: Mm-hmm. 

Joe: And that is the pattern and it totally slows people down. Generally, if you have a self-reliance pattern when you're an adult, it means that as a child you learnt very specifically that your needs weren't gonna be met. So in fact, typically what you're taught, and this is about 90% of the time, you get taught that your job is to take care of your parent rather than for your parent to take care of you.

And so that might mean I need to please my parents so I don't get criticized, or please my parents so they don't get angry, or please my parents so that they don't get sad. So that's the, that's the seed of self-reliance because you're being taught, oh, no one's gonna be there for me, in at least X, Y, and Z ways. And so I have to figure out how to do it for myself because I can't depend on someone else to take care of me and that's where the pattern comes from. 

Brett: Yeah. And recently when I heard you talking to a group in a way that we haven't talked about on the podcast yet you had a list of five patterns, five different kinds of aspects of this self-reliance pattern that show up for folks. 

Joe: Yeah. The five patterns are that you have a hard time asking for what you want, you have a hard time identifying your needs, you have an issue with authority, that you feel like it's your job to take care of other people, and you have a hard time expressing when you're hurt. Those are the patterns. 

Brett: Okay, so let's walk through each of these, and I wanna hear where that part of the pattern comes from and how it shows up for people. 

Joe: Yeah. So the first one is wants. So it's very hard for someone to be able to identify their wants and/or ask for what they want, because in childhood, that was not an okay thing.

"Hey, your job is to make me feel better so I don't criticize you or make you feel guilty, or so that I show up for you. And so therefore, your wants aren't important, my wants are important. So your job is to neglect your wants, not pay attention to your wants, or at least strategize to get your wants met by pleasing me or taking care of me."

And so that's the pattern, is not to be able to own your wants outright. It's either they're covertly taken care of by making you happy, or they are subjugated because I need to stay safe, and the only way to do that is to make you happy. And so that's the, the pattern of, of what makes wants very, very hard for self-reliant people to be able to identify and to ask for.

Brett: Yeah.

Joe: And when they ask for them, they typically feel very vulnerable. Because what's happening in that pattern is Right? If I acknowledge when I'm a kid that my wants aren't gonna be satisfied by my parents, then I have to also recognize that I'm not being taken care of, that the world isn't safe, and that's very overwhelming for a kid. So what a kid does instead is they're like, "Okay, how do I make you happy?" And they just focus there. 

Brett: Mm-hmm. What are some signs? If you were to look through your life to see is this happening, what are some of the smoke signals to look for? 

Joe: Yeah, so if you're a manager it's really easy to find. It's ask each one of your direct reports what success looks like, and if they can't tell you what success looks like, then they don't know what you want. If they can't tell you specifically what success looks like, "I'm supposed to get 10 new customers and 5 million in revenue next year," then they don't know what success looks like. It means you're not clear about your wants. That's a easy example. The other example is look at your wife, husband, good friend, and just decide, "I'm gonna tell them three things that I want."

And if your stomach goes, "Oh, shit," you know? then this is a pattern that you're in, right? Yeah. That, that I feel vulnerable asking for what I want. The other way to know it is tell your... There are some people who just heard that thing that I said, three wants, they're like, "I don't have wants. What are you talking about?" That also tells you you're in the pattern. 

Brett: Yeah. The first one's a really interesting example because it also shows the role reversal because now you're in the role of the manager and if your direct reports don't know what success looks like in a in a verifiable way then what's left for them is to make you happy, to keep their job or to excel or be promoted. Which means you've now taken on the role that your parents had with you. 

Joe: So this gets us into the second part of the pattern, which is, like, authority issues.

And so typically what happens there is that you look at the authority, and the authority didn't take care of you. And so you're saying, "I don't wanna be an authority, but I also don't want some schmuck like that being my authority." So you're in this weird place where you're saying, "I don't want to have an authority above me and I don't want to be the authority."

It's an incredibly insidious pattern, that one in particular, especially for managers. They feel like they're oppressing people by being clear with their wants. They're oppressing people by being very specific about the needs and the roles, and so they don't own the authority in the room. So typically, if they're not owning that authority, then other people will fight over the authority, which means there's more political... It's more of a political environment than otherwise. And if they happen to own it, if they're like, "I don't wanna be the authority," but they own it in this very, very hard way because they feel guilty about owning it. So they'll be like "yes, do it. Do it this way," da da da. And they do it in this way that's, like, very hard for the other person, so it's, like, more dictatorial or totalitarian in their approach because they feel like they're wrong for having it. 

Brett: Which might have been how the wants of their parents were expressed to them. 

Joe: Absolutely. 

Brett: Yeah. 

Joe: But they also are not okay with somebody being over them. Or if they're over them, they're kind of undermining the person who's over them. And it's a hard one for folks because at some point you have to recognize, oh, actually people want my authority in the room, and they wanna be listened to, and they want my authority in the room. They wanna be clear about what I want, and they also want me to be reasonable in that conversation. 

Brett: Mm-hmm. And they want an authority that meets them in their own authority, not dominates them. 

Joe: Correct. And that's a beautiful point. The CEO who can't entirely own their authority, there's a whole bunch of weirdness that happens underneath them. Either the people also can't own their authority, and so that gets weird, or the person's, like, super authority-driven because they're trying to make up for the lack of authority. And so they're, like, very totalitarian in their approach. 

Brett: Yeah. Okay, so we've talked about wants. We've talked about authority.

Joe: Yeah. 

Brett: What's the next one? 

Joe: Self-reliant people are usually incredibly hard at getting their own needs met. 

Brett: I'm curious, just for right now, how do you distinguish between the wants pattern that we just discussed and the needs pattern? How do you distinguish between the wants and the needs and how this shows up in self-reliance?

Joe: Yeah, so needs are the things that you actually have to do to thrive, right? So in this particular case, it's like are you getting enough sleep? Are you getting the right kinda diet? Are you nurturing yourself? Are you taking care of yourself? Just the human essence of, of what do I need to thrive.

Wants I'm distinguishing as I don't need to justify it. I just want it, right? And so wants is more of the evolutionary drive. I evolve because I'm following my wants like a little kid is following their want to walk, their want to play with the bigger kids, their want to fit in with the older generation.

That's the thing that pushes us through evolution. Our needs are just the things that we need to take care of ourselves. And so there's a distinction between do I take care of myself and do I express my wants? 

Brett: Mm-hmm. 

Joe: Yeah. And so that's the distinction I'm making. And so typically the way that they see their needs is weakness. I don't have them. And like a kind of an ignoring of the needs is like typically how they see them. Super self-reliant people like I have in the past will be food, water, shelter, that's it. Those are the only things I need. The needs for thriving completely not even in their, perspective whatsoever. And so and they generally don't take care of themselves very well. They might, like, take care of their body because they're trying to shape their body into something. But they're not actually like, "What are my needs? How do I care for myself?"

Brett: Yeah. 

Joe: And the weird part about the needs is that because their needs weren't met at a young age, they have this like little childlike, like who's, "Why don't you see me? Why aren't you, like, petting me? Why, why can't you, like, nurture me?" Where's the person who's gonna say, "You, yes, you are strong and you're, oh, gonna be okay"? It's like there's this desire in the self-reliant person to have this care that is very, very young. And it's something that nobody can actually give them because it's really the only kind of care that can be given between a mom and dad and a kid. It's like that deep attunement. But they're craving it, and they're expecting it, and they never get it, and so they use it to prove that they aren't gonna get their needs met. 

Brett: Yeah. 

Joe: How do you know when you're in the needs is you're just not taking care of yourself and you're not allowing other people to take care of you and your needs.

Brett: By in the needs you mean how do you know that you're running this pattern where you don't know your needs or you're not addressing your needs? 

Joe: Yeah, exactly. Yeah. You know you're not taking care of yourself. You know you're not nurturing yourself. Maybe you don't even know how. You're in some sort of weird should game of you should do it, but I'm not doing it, but why aren't you doing it? Like, then you know that you're in that pattern. 

Brett: Okay, so that's wants, authority, needs. 

Joe: Yeah. 

Brett: And there's two more. 

Joe: Yeah. Having a hard time expressing when you're hurt. Because if they express hurt, it means it's acknowledging and admitting that they actually need somebody. It's also acknowledging, admitting that there's somebody who can upset them. Right. So as a kid, what happens is, okay, somebody's not taking care of me. That hurts. But if I acknowledge that, then again, my world is falling apart. I'm acknowledging that I'm basically in this wide open world with no one taking care of me.

So instead, I think, "What did I do? How do I take care of it? I must have done something wrong that pissed off my parents." And so there's this kind of constant reflection of hurt, of like, "How do I manage this situation? How do I make the situation right?" Instead of just saying, "Ouch." Really, really hard for self-reliant people to just go, "Ouch." And super effective. When they make that bump. 

Brett: Versus getting defensive or turning it around. 

Joe: Or managing the person and making the per- like, "Oh, I can't count on you, so I'm gonna do it myself," which actually makes a person unreliable. Generally, the pattern is like, "I just can't express my hurt."

Brett: Yeah. 

Joe: Which is interesting because what that does is, "Oh, I can't express my hurt, so the people around me don't know that I'm hurting, so they don't come to help me. And so, blah, nobody's here to help me." 

Brett: They see you as, "Oh, that person's probably fine. They always seem to be fine," and so you never get the support. 

Joe: So why would I offer any help?

Brett: And it also, it also means people will lack empathy for you. 'Cause, like, when you're behaving in such a way that's not attuned to others or, like, they're gonna assume that it's just 'cause you're an asshole, not because you're hurting.

Joe: Exactly. Yeah. That's exactly right. Yeah.

Brett: So number five. 

Joe: Number five. So the last one is that they take responsibility for other people's happiness. They've been entrained into this pattern of, "Oh, if I make you happy," my boss, my board, customers, wife, "then I will get my needs met." And so that happens, and it actually happens often with employees too, where a CEO, super self-reliant, thinks that they're responsible for everybody's happiness instead of treating people like adults.

I'm responsible for your happiness rather than you're responsible for doing your job, and then if you do your job, you get to be happy. Like the same way, if I do my job, I get to be happier, get to keep the job or whatever it is. And so typically, that's part of the pattern, and it comes obviously from their job was to take care of their parent instead of being taken care of by their parent.

Brett: Yeah, and my guess is that often shows up not as actually caring for the people, but doing some form of taking care. Like, "Here's your employee of the month plaque to make you more productive," rather than really, "Hey, what do you need to succeed in this role? What clarity do you need from me? How can I support you in greater autonomy and responsibility?" 

Joe: Yeah. The distinction is that it's fear-based. I'm not gonna have that conversation 'cause my employee might get mad at me. I'm not gonna have that conversation because the employee might leave. I'm not gonna have that conversation because then I'm gonna be seen as a dick. It's care out of fear rather than care out of our natural tendency to care for people. 

Brett: Yeah, or out of empowerment. 

Joe: Or out of empowerment, that's right. So that's how you know it. 

Brett: Yeah. 

Joe: The way you know that you're in that pattern is because when you think that you're being caring for somebody, and then the idea is now do a counteraction. You're like, "No, I couldn't do that because they might get upset, because they might leave, because they might break." 

Brett: Which is a sign that you're managing them. 

Joe: Correct. Yeah. 

Brett: Which is a fear-based move, yeah. 

Joe: Exactly. So that's how you know you're in it. 

Brett: So for those of us who have been listening and are seeing some scary things- 

Joe: Yeah, yeah.

Brett: what can someone who's listening or watching this do? 

Joe: Yeah, I think before we go into that, I think it's important to talk about, like, how the self-sabotage mechanism in all of these things work. 

Brett: Yeah. 

Joe: Right? Because the thing that, the way that our brain works is I'm not asking for help. I'm not identifying my help because it's not gonna come. I can't rely on the people. I'm not asking for what I want because people don't care what I want. They only care about themselves. Or, you know, right, there's a self-sabotage mechanism, and there's proof because the way that we create our worlds, it proves that we're right about these things, right? Mm. And so I think it's important to go through that because if you don't see how you sabotage it, then it's really hard to fix it. Because anything you do to fix it can be a self-sabotage. 

Brett: So let's go through them in order, starting with the pattern of not owning your wants, not recognizing your wants, not sharing your wants, 

Joe: Yeah, yeah 

Brett: How does self-sabotage show up in that pattern? 

Joe: Right. So oftentimes a couple things can happen.

So you don't show your wants. This is the most obvious one. People don't need them, but you think you've shown your wants. Well, of course, they know what I want. Of course, it's their job as the CMO to market, so why they're not marketing, see, I can't count on them.

That's one way, because you haven't been super explicit about what your wants are. That's one way in which we can kind of prove that our wants aren't gonna be met. The other way that we prove our wants aren't gonna be met is because when we say our wants, we say them with so much harshness because we're scared they're not gonna be met, that people rebel against it, right?

So instead of saying like, "Like, I just need you to get this. Like, I just need... when I come home from working all day, I just want my fucking dinner ready. Can you just make my dinner ready? Like, you're not working. You're just taking care of the kids." You're not gonna get your wants met that way.

Brett: Right. 

Joe: You know what I mean? As compared to "Oh, wow, I'm... I just noticed when I'm coming home super exhausted, and how do we take care of a situation so that I can have 40 minutes of downtime, just get some food before so I can, like, recharge so I can be here for you for the rest of the night," et cetera, right? There's a lot of ways to ask, and that isn't gonna be harsh.

Brett: Well, the second version that you just did there was also not just directly an ask. It was an invitation for collaboration and like, how do we do this together, not here's what I need and you're responsible for meeting it, which is the flip that we talked about before. Like, you might find yourself in a relationship where somebody does feel like their job is to make you happy, and then you end up in the, in that situation. 

Joe: And oftentimes the person who has the self-reliance pattern, it gets resentful of the people around them because they're not there for them. Like, "I have to take care of you, but you're not taking care of me back." And the more that resentment builds, the harsher the ask, the more indirect it is. And even when it's just a very direct kind ask, it's like- " Babe, I am exhausted. I would love it if, you know, you could do dinners."

Great. But it's probably gonna sound like, "Babe, I'm so fucking exhausted, and I do breakfast, you know? And, like, I often cook all weekend, so could you, like, just do dinners, please?" So just even in the directness of the ask and the open-heartedness of the ask, once the resentment comes, because you feel like you have to take care of other people, that resentment is there. Instead of, "Oh, I'm choosing to do this, and I, and I get to choose when I don't wanna do it." 

Brett: Yeah. How does the self-sabotage show up in authority? 

Joe: So that one, obviously, C, I have created a power vacuum by not owning my authority. Now there's people fighting over who's in control. And so C, they don't want me to be in authority because they're fighting for control. Like, they're fighting me for... Like, they're stepping all over me. 

Brett: Mm-hmm. 

Joe: 'Cause when people fight for a control, the person who's supposed to be in control, whose, like, whose authority it is, immediately takes that as a challenge. So evidence, clear evidence that they don't want me in charge. They don't like authority. They wanna be in control themselves. They don't. They want you to own your power and for them to own their power. So that's one example of it. The other example of it is that because you're not owning your authority in your room, everybody's frustrated with you. And so you're like, "See, I'm... they're frustrated with me because I'm in authority." But they're actually just frustrated because they don't have a clear understanding of what they need to do to succeed, or because you're not handling the situations that the authority is supposed to handle, so they have to handle them, so they're resentful.

Brett: Yeah. To offer a little pushback there, you said, like, they don't want you not owning your authority. They want you in your authority, and they want themselves in theirs. 

Joe: Yeah. 

Brett: How about if you have a bunch of people on your team, some executives or whatever that are that are running the self-reliant pattern in such a way that they would actually just be rather running the show? Like, if you have a bunch of people who would love to just be the top dog because that way they could run the self-reliance pattern in a more siloed way than having an authority. 

Joe: What I hear those executives say traditionally is, "I would love to work for a great boss. But I'm not gonna work for-" so if they were given a choice, like, would you like to work with somebody that you deeply, like, work for somebody who you deeply respect who you can learn a lot from, or do you wanna run it yourself? Oftentimes somebody in a bureaucracy will pick the first. Now, an entrepreneur is different. Also very self-reliant pattern. 

Brett: Yeah. And often I will never work for anyone. Which means I will pick 15 clients who are all I'm trying to make happy instead of one boss. Instead of one. 

Joe: Yeah. But they'll absolutely do that thing where and they just won't ever work for somebody.

Brett: Yeah. 

Joe: But if you're looking inside of a bureaucracy, almost everybody you talk to will say, "What I would really rather do is just have, like, a great authority than to have to do it this myself." Not that they, they're not ambitious, not that they don't wanna grow into the CEO role, but typically when you see that they are struggling for power, it's because they don't feel safe because the authority's not owning their authority.

That's typically the case. Obviously it's not all the time, but that's a grand majority. And so, yeah, there are gonna be some people who are just like, "I can do a better job than you," but oftentimes those folks feel very contained when they're in, when they've got somebody who's completely owning their authority.

Brett: Yeah, and the pattern of wanting to do a better job than you might show up more when they feel the insecurity of not knowing how to please you and feeling like that's their job. 

Joe: Or when they feel your insecurity of being in power. 

Brett: Yeah. Okay, so we've gone through how people self-sabotage with the wants pattern, the not owning their wants, not recognizing their wants how they self-sabotage in the realm of authority. 

Joe: Yeah. 

Brett: And now, how about needs? How do people self-sabotage their needs? 

Joe: Yeah. The needs piece is just like I have this super childlike idea of how I'm gonna get my needs met. Nobody can actually do it as adults, so I have evidence it's never gonna happen. Then if I do get it, I go "yeah, this is never gonna last," because maybe it happened when I was a kid, but it never lasted, so this is never gonna last. Which is true. It will never last. Like, nobody's ever gonna be, like, 100% trying to satisfy your needs forever and not have their own needs.

And so then every time it stops, you're like, "See? I can't depend on them to get my needs met." So you're taking something that's just real and using it as evidence that nobody ever wants to meet your needs or that you can't get your needs met. And so it's like you can always see evidence of the fact that your needs aren't gonna be met, because nobody can meet your needs in the way that you want them met and they can never sustain that forever. And so that, that's basically how that works. 

Brett: Yeah, sounds like a lot of that comes down to a mismatch of expectations. Like, the expectation has never evolved from the expectation of a young child- 

Joe: That's right ... 

Brett: to the expectations of an adult and in relation to needs. 

Joe: Yeah. 

Brett: And so it can never be met, which once that gets out of sync enough, the evolution sort of stops because the evolution is served by the needs being met, and if they're not being met, they stagnate. 

Joe: Yeah. And it's like, just to make it practical, so a CEO, super self-reliant entrepreneur CEO comes home to their husband and I've had a really bad day. I just need someone to pet me and tell me I'm doing a great job. They never do that. If they do do that, then they're like, "That only happened because I asked." 

Brett: Yeah. 

Joe: And then when they're letting it happen, they're saying to th- themselves, if they're not completely disgusted by the idea of doing it even though they really want it, then at some point they're like, "This only happened because I asked, and they're not gonna be able to do this tomorrow."

And you're right, they're not gonna be able to do it tomorrow or the next day, and then boom. "See? I have evidence." And so that's typically how it works. I'm not gonna ask. If I do ask, I only got it 'cause I asked, and it's gonna go away. And of course it goes away. See? This is never gonna work. 

Brett: Yeah. There's an interesting head, heart, gut level thing going on there where like the needs are happening on the physical and the nervous system level, but the mind has learned how to keep a worldview in which those needs won't be met. 

Joe: Yeah, exactly. Because it hurts, it's heartbreaking a lot. Yeah. Yeah, like as a kid, like I really need nurturing. I really need that like care.

I need that nervous system like love, and it hurts a lot to not get it. And it hurts a lot when you're like, "Oh, I'm only gonna get it at this one section if I've been really nice," which means it's, it's not me getting it. It's just getting rewarded because I did what my parents needed me to do.

Yeah, it is, and I love that. That's another great way to think about the difference between wants and needs from before. I think that's really beautiful. It's like the needs is more of a nervous system kind of reality. It's like, right? Because the nervous system of somebody in self-reliance is on high alert a lot.

Brett: Yeah. 

Joe: Because they didn't get their needs met, so they're like, "How do I, what, when is it coming? What do I do? How do I take care of it?" 

Brett: So l- let's talk about the self-sabotage in taking responsibility for others. 

Joe: Yeah, great. Th- that one's super easy. I'm gonna take care of you, which makes you have learned helplessness that tells you that you're not capable, and then you don't do the thing. You expect me to take care of you, and I have evidence that everybody needs to be taken care of. 

Brett: Or it brings up resentment and resistance in the person who doesn't wanna be taken care of. 

Joe: Right. And then, see I can't ever take care of you. But I'm supposed to take care of you. 

Brett: Yeah. 

Joe: So yeah, right. So you're training the person that you're supposed to take care of them. They get resentful, and they become incapable, and they expect you to do it, all which become evidence that you need to be taking care of that person. The self-reliance pattern is like feeding a stray cat every day, and then one day coming to the door and going, " You expect me to feed you? What the fuck. Why do I have to be the one that feeds you? You're a cat. Why don't you go out and mouse? Like, what's up?" That's what it is. Yeah. That's exactly how it's done. 

Brett: Yeah, a great way to create the conditions to not feel cared for. 

Joe: All of these self-sabotage ways are ways to show that you're not gonna get cared for. They're evidence that you're not gonna get cared for. I'm not gonna get cared for because when I own my authority, people buck and attack me. I'm not gonna be cared for 'cause when I own my wants, they don't meet them, and then they only think about their wants, or they're not gonna be capable of meeting them when I... every one of these things is just evidence that I'm not gonna be cared for.

Brett: Which brings us to the fifth one. 

Joe: Yeah. 

Brett: The hurt. Not showing hurt. 

Joe: Yeah. 

Brett: How does self-sabotage show up? 

Joe: Very natural for humans to go to somebody who's hurt. Somebody, like, hurts, hurts themselves, w- we like to go to them, especially if they're close to us, right? Maybe if it's a complete stranger, we get scared. But generally, we go to people who are hurt. Don't show you're hurt. Nobody comes to help out. See? Nobody's here to help me. By the way, I'm hurt, but I'm gonna show you I'm hurt typically like this: "Goddammit." Not like, "Ouch. Ouch, ouch. This hurts. This sucks." 

Brett: Yeah.

Joe: Or through withdrawals. Any of the things besides ouch is gonna... and all of those things actually drive you away, which make it so I have evidence that no one's gonna be there for me when I'm hurting, so I won't express that I'm hurting. It's just weakness. 

Brett: Yeah. How does that work in the inverse? If somebody who doesn't allow their own hurt in the self-reliant pattern is with someone who feels hurt- 

Joe: Yeah

Brett: or as an employee who feels hurt or has a boss who feels hurt. 

Joe: "Really? I have to take care of you again? Do you understand what the fuck is happening in my world? I, just dealt with 23 problems, and now my job is to take care of your fucking little problem? Fuck." 

Brett: So condescension. Yeah. 

Joe: It's condescension. It's, like, resentment. It's like, "Oh, I have to take care of you." It's... Yeah. Obligation ... it's like, "Great. I'll take care of you. That, that'll make you like me." Yeah. "And now I can be resentful of you tomorrow or the next day." So it can be that as well. But that's generally the pattern, is like, some resentment will eventually happen when somebody else shows hurt. Which is kind of how they got into the whole mess, right? Because the parents are like, "I need someone to take care of me. You're supposed to take care of me. You're hurt. Fuck. I gotta take care of you? Ugh." And that's the learned pattern from it. 

Brett: Yeah. 

Joe: So all of these things are just ways... and the reason that they're important to discuss is because the solutions to all five of these things look very much like the ways that we sabotage them. Meaning like the great solution to not owning your wants is to own your wants. But if you do it in a self-reliant way, it'll only become evidence that you're not gonna get your wants met. 

Brett: Right. So there's each... the way out of each of these patterns is a, has a false friend…

Joe: Exactly. 

Brett: Right next door to it, which is exactly the thing that will prevent you from getting out of the pattern. 

Joe: Yeah. Right. 

Brett: It's very Truman Show-esque. 

Joe: Yeah. So, so it's like on the very tactical level, express your wants, express your needs, own your authority, allow people to see that you're hurt, and stop taking responsibility for others. You do that in a slightly wrong way and all you do is just recreate the entire thing. 

Brett: Well, the mind fuck here is that I don't know if I've seen an example of this occur without somebody stepping through that stage at least some amount first. Like, "Okay, I'm gonna, you know what? I'm not gonna take responsibility for you anymore." And then see. 

Joe: See. Exactly. 

Brett: Or I'm gonna own my wants. I want...

Joe: Yeah. 

Brett: Yeah. Again, right now I'm just thinking about The Truman Show, where the part where he's trying to get off the island. 

Joe: Yeah. 

Brett: And he goes to the place to buy a plane ticket, and all the posters on the walls are like meant to scare him out of flying.

Joe: Yeah. 

Brett: And like that's the way our minds work. Right. Like, no, no, no, we can't go there. Right. I can't, I can't show my hurt. 

Joe: Exactly. 

Brett: No way. 

Joe: Yeah. 

Brett: But I can act out my hurt in a way that gets it not fully seen, not fully met. 

Joe: Yeah, and so just a general trick is we'll talk about how to do the work to get there, which I think is beautifully seen. But generally the way to do all of them is to do them with an open heart. How do you ask for what you want with a whole bunch of love? How do you express your needs with a whole bunch of love? How do you own your authority with a whole bunch of love? But own your authority. 

Brett: Right? But I've been taking care of everybody for my whole life, Joe. Isn't that a whole bunch of love? 

Joe: No. That's a whole bunch of fear. Right? And, and if you are caring for people, are you doing it out of love? Are you doing it out of obligation? Are you doing it out of fear? So that's the thing is like can you open your heart and do this out of love, not out of resentment, not out of management of other people, not out of fear? To get there, grieve the fact that you weren't taken care of as a kid, and that you really fucking want it. To actually own, "Oh my God, I really, really wanna be taken care of. I've always wanted to be taken care of," and that I never got it. Ugh. Like that is, to feel that grief, that's the first step.

Brett: Yeah. 

Joe: Because what's happening is your heart is hard because you're not feeling that grief. It's all protecting you from that grief. 

Brett: Yeah. Right? And the grief is the down-regulating process of letting go of the hypervigilance, the hyperactivity mentally, emotionally, and just resting in the reality of what you've experienced and what you've lived, so you can act from that place rather than from a fantasy world where you're gonna get your four-year-old needs met by a 40-year-old spouse. 

Joe: Yeah, who has, like, three other kids to take care of, et cetera, et cetera. The other thing is to own the fear that's behind it.

Because the reality is if you've been taking care of people and you change that habit, some of them are gonna leave. Some of those employees aren't gonna work out. Some of the, you know, some of your husbands, wives, and, and it, whatever it is, it's gonna be chaotic for a little bit when the new situation arises.

"Wait, no, you, you always came home and took care of me. What do you mean I have to take care of you? What the fuck? That's not the, the deal I signed up for." So there is gonna be some kickback to change, which happens for all of us, and so that's another piece. And so to really own the fear so that you're not being run by the fear. Can you feel the fear, let that fear move, is a huge part of moving out of the self-reliance pattern. 'Cause the self-reliance pattern is basically all based on fear of, "I'm not gonna be taken care of." Right? Even though we have, like, all this evidence to the contrary, right?

Like, there's nobody... I don't care who you are, I don't care how self-reliant you are, I don't care if you are a man in the woods who is, like, making your own food, building your own house out of the woods and the trees, and there's nobody around you, and you figured out how to, like, completely... no, you still rely on people.

You still rely on the ecosystem around you. You still rely on other humans not destroying your habitat. And so, dealing with the fear of that, that we are all interdependent, is critical. 

Brett: Which relates back to that fear you alluded to of the child who would have to recognize that if their parents aren't- 

Joe: Correct

Brett: aren't really taking care of them, if their parents aren't capable, or if they're all in their own fear obligation matrix that's if the child's ideal vision of a parent Falls apart while the child is still a child. That's terrifying. Very overwhelming. 

Joe: Yeah. Right. The world, in that, in the modern translation of an adult is the world is inherently unsafe. That's true. 

Brett: Yeah. 

Joe: The world is also inherently safe. That's also true. Far more safe than it is unsafe. But both are true.

Brett: And unsafe to what is the question. Like, what is it that wants to be safe? The identity…

Joe: Exactly ... 

Brett: The physical body? Like... 

Joe: Exactly. And so, but to actually sit with that reality, well, wow, it's like it is unsafe, and I can own that, and I am out of control, and I can own that, and I can feel that, allows you to actually have a lot more agency over what you do have control over and what is, right? 'Cause if you're just like, "I can control everything," you're kinda perpetually keeping yourself back from what's what's actually, right?

Brett: It's a lack of participation, and what you're talking about is an invitation to deeper participation. Yeah, the world is unsafe.

Joe: Yeah. 

Brett: I am part of the unsafeness that the world is. 

Joe: Yeah. 

Brett: And there's actually something deeply safe in acknowledging and recognizing that because now there's nothing to protect, there's nothing to defend, but there is a lot to care for.

Joe: That's the emotional side of it. Just on the logistic side of it, there's a whole nother if you look at organizations that become more and more decentralized, Uber from taxi cabs or limo services, where you rely on people to actually, like, be at the right place, but you don't tell them to do it.

You don't have the control. You just set up the rules of engagement. GM to Toyota is another example of decentralization. Just the more autonomy and decentralization you have, the bigger and faster things grow. AA is a great decentralized approach. It's like book clubs. Like, these things grow exponentially fast.

They are amazing, but you can't get there if you're a control freak. And if you're super self-reliant, you have a, like, a high tendency to be a control freak because you're trying to take care of everything and make sure that you're the one taking care of everything, right? So you... Like, you lose this leverage of, "Oh, I don't need to take care of everything. I just need to set up the situation so it can." 

Brett: Mm-hmm. 

Joe: And you... It's very hard to just see those solutions when you are in self-reliant mode. So it also just holds you back from being able to do massive things in the world. It's a fascinating thing. But at the end of the day, you know, on the self-reliance pattern, the trick is open heart, feel your grief, feel your fear. Allow yourself to, like, go through that early childhood experience, feel everything that you weren't allowed to feel as a kid. Heal that, and then allow yourself to break these five patterns with an open heart, and then that will change everything, and then all of a sudden you have, like, all these new opportunities. You get to really see how you're affecting the world and your company and your family and it just gives you so much more leverage. 

Brett: Mm-hmm. Awesome. 

Joe: Yeah. 

Brett: Thank you, Joe. 

Joe: Yeah. Pleasure. 

Brett: Thanks for listening to The Art of Accomplishment. If you enjoyed this episode, please share it with a friend or leave us a review. We'd love to hear your comments, questions, and suggestions for future episodes. You can leave those to us on Spotify, or on YouTube, or by emailing us at podcast@artofaccomplishment.com.