Mindfully Masculine: Personal Growth and Mental Health for Men
Charles and Dan are just two guys talking about relationships, masculinity, and authenticity. Join them as they discuss books and media, as well as their (sometimes messy) personal stories, to encourage men to join the fight for their mental, physical, and emotional health--because a world of healthy, resilient men is a thriving and more secure world for everyone.
Mindfully Masculine: Personal Growth and Mental Health for Men
The Let Them Theory: Own Your Imperfection
In this episode, we break down Chapters 5 and 6 of The Let Them Theory—and the exhausting pressure to manage what other people think. From family dynamics to workplace image, we dig into codependence, covert contracts, people-pleasing, and the false belief that being lovable means being perfect.
We talk resentment, approval addiction, emotional manipulation disguised as virtue, and why trying to control others’ perceptions will wreck your relationships—and your sanity.
Also in this episode: monkey brains, emotional math, romantic breakups, and what happens when you stop performing and start showing up as yourself.
And something that resonated with me was she's like how many times can you control your own thoughts? A lot of times you've got like random thoughts that pop in your head out of nowhere that aren't good. So for you to expect that everybody's going to like you all the time or never have negative thoughts about you, that's ludicrous. You can't even control your own thoughts.
Charles:You can try and control somebody else's. Welcome back to the Mindfully Masculine Podcast. This is Charles All right Today. Welcome back to the Mindfully Masculine Podcast. This is Charles Alright.
Charles:Today, dan and I are diving into chapters 5 and 6 of the Let them Theory by Mel Robbins. These chapters ask a simple but brutal question what if people are going to judge you no matter what you do? What if loving you and being annoyed by you aren't mutually exclusive? We get into the tribal roots of people-pleasing, the trap of codependent control and the weird relief that comes when you finally stop trying to manage everyone's opinion of you. Let's get into it. And some good stuff in here, some stuff that I do. I am struck by her what feels to me to be her occasional tone deafness when it comes talking about this theory and how people work in her own life and things like that, where I mean, let's talk about the need for approval that we all experience when it comes to we choose our actions based on, in large part, what other people will think of us.
Charles:Have you ever seen the movie my Dinner with Andre? No, neither have I, but I saw a clip about it this week on Instagram, facebook, one of the platforms where this guy was talking about it and apparently it's a fairly it's an old movie, I think it's like 40 years old but and it mainly takes place in a restaurant where these two guys who are maybe casual friends or acquaintances they I think one of them just like returned from, just like kind of disappearing, going off on like a trip or something, and he comes back and it's basically them just having a conversation at dinner. Okay, and the one guy I think it's andre. His position is I basically went off and explored the world all on my own and learned about different people, different cultures. And I come back to modern life here and I think it was New York City, and it occurs to me that all anybody ever does is spend their time satisfying social conventions, like all we do are the things that society expects us to do, where you know these people outside of modern society and more these more remote countries and villages that I visited, like they have a more meaningful life because they're not so concerned about image and reputation and things. And again, this is all based on a clip I saw about the movie.
Charles:Yeah, guys often commentary on it. The other character is like no, the choices we make are just as meaningful. We just have a different kind of social network than they do. And so when she gets into this chapter about the importance of doing what you want to do and not being so concerned with other, what other people are going to think about you? It's like and she even acknowledges that's easy to say it you want to do and not being so concerned with other, what other people are going to think about you? It's like and she even acknowledges that's easy to say it's hard to do, right, it's hard to do because if the tribe doesn't accept you, you'll die.
Dan:Yeah.
Charles:And that's the hardware that we're all still running off of. So it's like, yes, we should all, we should all sort of inject a little bit more of that I'm going to do what's right for me attitude into the choices we make. But we also need to keep in mind we are social primates that are running on that kind of hardware that says if the group isn't actively invested in your wellbeing, then you're going to die alone.
Dan:Yeah, in your wellbeing, then you're going to die alone. Yeah, I think my takeaway was that and if you remember, in the book she talks about a lot of times when she's talking to somebody and they're scared to do something. She'll ask them questions like why are you scared to do this? Well, I'm scared of what my friends will think. And then she starts to kind of bring it back and ask the hard not hard questions, but reality questions. Well, which friends do you think are going to judge you? Or I'm going to look stupid. And she's like look stupid to who, right? And so a lot of these are just her asking the next level question of these assumptions that we all tend to make on a surface level, because we have that built in genetic predisposition predisposition to worry about what the tribe is going to think for our own survival. So I my takeaway from this chapter was just a lot of how we're operating is on assumptions and worries that are not based in reality. Yes, that's true.
Dan:Yeah and yes, that's a, whereas like these he's like remote, like in that dinner from Andre. You're talking about dinner with Andre. The people that he was talking about might be. It might be more meaningful because the feedback that you're able to get in a smaller group is reality right and they're.
Charles:They're close. They're closer to their consequences than we are.
Dan:That too. So in that case, yeah, it's more meaningful because it's more based in reality, whereas a lot of the way we're operating now isn't as meaningful because it's not really based in reality. It's based on.
Charles:That's true. I mean, yes, we do need to. We do need to make the kinds of choices that get a certain level of approval from the people in our lives, so that they stay in our lives and we can continue to rely on their support. The problem comes in when you start making decisions based on what you think people will approve or disapprove of, when it's not even accurate.
Dan:Yeah.
Charles:And that's the thing, that that's the takeaway I'm trying to focus on from these chapters, where what she's saying is don't say to yourself I'm just not going to care what people think anymore. It's don't tell yourself inaccurate stories about what people are going to think or not think.
Dan:Yeah, I appreciated that because she was like of course we're going to care what people think, right. And we should Absolutely A hundred percent, but it's just how much power or weight are we giving them? I the other thing that I liked when she said just assume people are going to have negative thoughts about you.
Charles:I like that too, yeah.
Dan:And she said a lot of times, perfect example, like her big hairy dog jumps on her lap and she gets annoyed and says he needs to basically control himself and be better behaved, but doesn't take away from the love that she has for the dog. And what helped me also was when she said two things can be true at the same time. You can be really annoyed by somebody in your family or friend group or whatever, but still love them and that doesn't take away from the love. So just assume that people are going to have negative thoughts about you when you are doing anything that perhaps makes you feel a little bit nervous by putting yourself out in public, and I absolutely need to take that advice as well.
Charles:Yeah, I think one of the interesting points that was made in chapter five is that sacrificing what you want in order to please other people is not a sign of virtue. Like sometimes I have to remind myself that people like adults have members of their family of origin in their lives in a way where they're like talking or catching up or conversing on like a daily basis, and so I've had to make do with finding my own family in other ways. But yeah, like it's, it must be tough where it's like I love you and I want to be around you, but you're making it hard. It's like if it's only the you're making it hard, the easy decision.
Dan:Yeah, fix that Right.
Charles:No problem yeah.
Dan:Yeah, yeah.
Charles:So I do understand some level of people pleasing and saying yes to things that you don't want to say yes to.
Dan:I just don't understand it on that level with mommy, daddy, grandma, grandpa I mean you could basically, I think you swap out a friendship you've built for years, right when there's been years of value between the two of you, where you're just like oh, I'm not going to throw this away because this certainly went right, so certainly had that.
Charles:I've had it in romantic relationships as well, where it's like, okay, this is not going well, but I don't want to, I don't want to 86 it, because there's a lot of good stuff here too. I get that, yeah, yeah, I. Just when people tell me their story about how hard it is to relate to their mom and dad or aunts or uncles or grandmas or grandpas, I'm like, yeah, what, it's not hard, just hang out when you want to and when you don't, you don't Right, like what's the problem? Yeah, it seems cut and dry.
Dan:Yeah, and that's where she tries to get you to almost, I feel, with the letter. Almost. Yeah, it's kind of like a let go of that obligation and attachment that you have.
Charles:Yeah, On some level I've been doing that with certain people in my life for a long time, before I ever heard of this book. Right, yeah, it's just like. Yeah, at some point you do the math and I think all of us who have initiated breakups or divorces or just had to give up on friendships maybe a lot of people don't have my experience where you've had to do it with your family of origin but most of us have gotten to the point where we're like, okay, look, I've had to do the math on this relationship equation and it's been a negative number for so long.
Dan:It's time to just say enough's enough. And I think it's so much easier to do that based on the amount of value that you've gotten out of that relationship. So if you've been getting a tremendous amount of value, I feel you might have a tremendous amount of guilt when you try to lay down the law with yourself and force your own boundaries. But if you haven't been getting much out of it, it's kind of like a well, it's like I'm not. I'm also, and I think it kind of shows itself in the form of feeling guilty about enforcing your boundaries, because now you're almost scared to lose that value. If you do, you've got something to lose, you've got something to risk by putting up those and enforcing those boundaries.
Charles:Yeah.
Dan:So but you know, when I've done that in my own for my own family and friends and I've done a form of let me and just kind of let them do what they want to do, it's more of a let them kind of thing Right, and then at that point the relationship usually got better because it like let me, let go of my expectations and the stories and the things I wanted those other people to do or be or behave like, and once I did that, like it brought my stress level down and that show and she talks about this I showed up as happier and more open and friendlier to those people and it definitely made things better.
Charles:Yeah, and I had to learn myself over a couple of years of studying codependency and how it made an invest in myself that you know people pleasing and giving people what you think they want. It's a another mechanism of control and, in many cases, manipulation, whereas it's like you don't think about it like that.
Dan:You're like oh, I'm the good person because I'm doing. I'm doing what you want me to do. I think she mentions that in one of these chapters where it's just like no, you're actually being very manipulative, yeah, and that's something. By trying to get them to like you, no matter what.
Charles:Yeah, people who struggled codependency don't. Really it's difficult to accept that realization and own it, that just because you're willing to sacrifice for other people and do the things that you think will fill their needs, it's like it's still in many cases a way to just kind of craft this life where you're the indisposable person that they rely on and they get their fulfillment on, because you're always willing to do what you think they need to have done for them.
Dan:And when you don't get that expectation back, you don't get your expectation met of what you think you should be getting back from doing all this, it turns to resentment on a dime. Well, instantly, yeah.
Charles:Like you with my, I had this unspoken expectation of what your gratitude would look like for this thing. You didn't ask me to do it, you didn't give it to me, so you're a piece of shit. Yeah, and it does. It can turn into that sometimes.
Dan:And the funny thing is I think a lot of us don't realize that, yeah, sometimes it will turn into like a, like a resentment, and it will be a very obvious like blow up.
Dan:But until that happens, it's a slow burn and it starts to eat out in other ways of your behaving and your communication and your language and your stress level. And yeah, you're, you're messing yourself up, but you're also messing up that relationship without it's like. It's like boiling the frog right, like you're turning it up slowly and you're just doing more and more damage and not even realizing what you're doing I think a lot of that. I'm guilty of that for sure.
Charles:Yeah, no, yeah, me too. It wears on you because, yeah, you've. I mean, it goes back to what we've been talking about for two almost I guess, three years now, with with so many of the issues that men struggle with. It's these covert contracts, and this book is a lot, especially when it comes to relating to other people. It's yeah, you have this expectation. If I do this, then people will treat me this way, even though you're not telling anybody that. You're just working on this assumption that if I do the right things by the right people, then I'll have this easy, comfortable life where everybody loves me. Yeah, and what's in?
Dan:It's manipulative. Yeah, you know what's interesting is humans, we've evolved a lot based on the tools that we've created over the millennia, and so in those respects, we've kind of conditioned ourselves to say we do X, this is what happens, the Y happens. Right, we use a tool and this is the result we get, and I think we're we end up applying that to our behaviors and our communication with other people. So we do, this is what should be happening, this is what should come out of it, right, and that is, we're not able to control that. And so now we're trying to control the uncontrollable.
Dan:And something that resonated with me was she's like how many times can you control your own thoughts? A lot of times you've got like random thoughts that pop in your head out of nowhere that aren't good. So for you to expect that everybody's going to like you all the time or never have negative thoughts about you, that's ludicrous. You can't even control your own thoughts. You can try and control somebody else's. So for me, I was able to release my thoughts about it, or my predispositions about this, when she's like hey, let them have negative thoughts about you, Expect that they're going to have negative thoughts about you Right, I was like huh, all right.
Charles:And that's hard because, especially if you lean on the controlling, codependent side of things, where you know you're codependentent but you also want to control things and you have those control patterns it's like it's hard for me to accept deep down in my core that someone can occasionally think bad things about me and still love me and still want to stick around yeah it's like no. This experience has to be 100 positive and perfect all the time otherwise you're going to leave Love or hate Right.
Charles:Like one of the right. Yeah, it's a simple way to think about it. I mean, if I mean, if you're essentially a monkey, that when you flip the switch up you get food, and then when you slip it on a down to zone, then, yeah, you're going to be conditioned to think that way.
Dan:Start a fire, you right, or?
Charles:yeah, it is. We'll get you from point a to point b.
Dan:It's like tempting to look at people as tools sometimes that's the model, that's the kind of the brain that we're working with this chapter was good.
Charles:Like I said, there were some things where it's just hard to take these kinds of thoughts and simplify them down to the point where you can fit them in a book and and that was one of the things I thought of, like when she's talking about how you do what you want to do and don't care, you know, what other people think.
Charles:It's like okay, you say that, but even in the process of writing and marketing this book, you're not doing that. It's like you care very much about all these words that you're reading to me in this audio book or putting down a paper. They're very curated, very curated. Sure, as a part of your function to sell books, like you, you want me to respond to you in a certain way so that I buy your product, and you need me to buy your product because you want these ideas to be out there and you want to be, if not wealthy, certainly financially independent. So, yeah, I feel like she doesn't caveat the complexity of some of the things she talks about quite enough to say, yeah, we are all going to always be convinced or concerned with what other people think of us.
Dan:Yeah, that's a deep Born to when we die. Yeah, that's a lot of. There's a lot of work just to work on that. Like a lot of, yeah, but.
Charles:Things that need to be done in order to get through that or get over that type of or not let it paralyze you, I think for me, for me it's. It ends up making me procrastinate or paralyze, and I don't let it. And especially the most important version of this, at least to me feels like don't be paralyzed by your false ideas about what people will think of you. And that's the thing is see, it's not the gotta. Remember, if you are objectively concerned with, okay, if I have a job that requires a suit and I just don't feel like wearing a suit into work one day, there could be some very real consequences to that decision.
Charles:Like I, it's clear that when I show up on my job at wall street, I'm supposed to wear a suit and tie. I don't feel like it and I I'm not going to do it to please other people, so I'm just going to walk in there in shorts and a t-shirt. I was like, okay, you can do that if you want to do that, but to think to yourself, well, I'd like to wear shorts and a t-shirt to work today, but I'm not going to do that because of what other people might think of me. Like, good you, you should in that exact scenario.
Dan:you should be concerned. What other people will think of you? And I think that's where the work begins, because then you have to say is well, what will happen? What kinds of things will people think about? And then what will happen? You got to keep going step by step. So then what would happen? Well, I might lose respect around the office. Okay, what does that mean? Well, I might not be eligible behaving outside of norms.
Dan:Behaving outside of, radically outside of norms with no good reason for it. Yeah, so there is and are those things important to you? If they're not, then yeah, go ahead and wear those shorts. But yeah, I think what happens is under the cover, is where we do that processing and that thinking of those steps ahead, and that's where we can kind of go wrong, because it's Because it's we're now, I think, keeping it all in our brain, where we've got the logical, rational part of our brain but we also have the emotional arching over paranoid, it's primitive part of our brain kind of mixing all the stuff together.
Dan:And I think we can kind of undo that if we like write it out. I mean, again, it takes time and effort and energy to do that and to say, hey, I'm going to write and list this, all these scenarios out. So a lot of us don't do that because it takes extra energy. We don't want to do that, so, but we end up getting a distorted sense of reality because it's all getting mixed in here. We're not putting it out into the world reality-wise.
Charles:Yeah, I think the problem we all get into where the people pleasing and the codependence will creep in. I mean, one one indication of that and one way you can try to get a handle on it is stop and ask yourself how often am I having thoughts like if I do this, then they'll think that, if I do this, then they'll say that, and so when you are starting to apply that level of strategizing to your personal relationships, then that's a good indicator that you're struggling with a lack of confidence, or just you're struggling with lack you. You feel like the world is a place of scarcity where I might not get my needs met.
Dan:Yeah.
Charles:And so I need to figure out ways to game the system so that I can get what I want or what I need, because just approaching it or asking for it with directness isn't going to work, because why would that work for me? So I'm going to start coming up with tactics and strategies to get what I need out of people without them knowing that's what I'm doing. And then, yeah, that's when it's clear that you're you're trying to get access to things that you want or need, that you don't think you have a right to, that you don't think you've earned, that you don't think you deserve, and that's a very precarious place to approach the world from.
Dan:Yeah.
Charles:Because then when your machinations don't work out, then you're going to end up with unmet needs and all the resentment and fear and anger that comes along with that. Yeah, yeah. So let's talk about let them judge you. No matter what you do, people will find a way to have a negative opinion on you. I mean, there's a billion ways that any decision you make to slightly even just change your aesthetic for what you were to work could have, could give people a reason to judge you and think harshly about you I mean I think we kind of gloss over the old wisdom of you can't please all the people all the time.
Dan:Right, it's almost so simple that we're just kind of like, yeah, it's almost like lost its meaning, we don't really think it through, but here it applies. I mean, it applies all the time.
Charles:Yeah, there's a lot, you yourself all the time, right, yeah, so there are a lot of ways that you will think to yourself okay, what's the safe play here?
Charles:And the result of that safe play, whether it's in the content you choose for your podcast or the way you audition for a role in a TV show, the safe play is never the one that gets you what you're after, because you're too concerned, you're too in your head about pleasing everyone Instead of I'm just going to show up for this date, for this job interview, for this whatever as me, I'm going to try to be as me as I can be, and then, whenever people say yes or no, whether they accept me or reject me, they're accepting or rejecting exactly what I would bring to the table, and so that's a win. And it's hard to look at things that way. It requires a level of confidence, and life is so compartmentalized. I've never had a problem bringing that level of confidence to a first date or to a job interview. I can just show up that way and I'm just going to be me.
Charles:I'm going to make jokes about things that I think are funny, I'm going to make cracks, I'm going to ask questions, I'm going to push back or challenge, because that's If you hire me To be your boyfriend or to be your employee. That's what you're going to get. How?
Dan:much do you charge for the boyfriend?
Charles:Oh, yeah, yeah.
Dan:A lot of decimal points.
Charles:Yes, a lot of dots. I'm going to show up. I'm going to show up that way, a lot of decimal points, all the decimal points. Yeah, so I am going to show up that way to a first date or job interview, no problem, yeah, because I'm not looking to, I don't people, please, people. I just met. That's ridiculous. Who would do that? No-transcript, and meanwhile, six months of that down the road, it's like I'm bored or miserable all the time and have turned into a terrible partner. And now you're also getting tired of my bullshit too. So you know that's what it could turn into. Uh, but yeah, not, it doesn't always have to go that way, and you can figure out ways to short circuit that. By spending time in books, like what we're talking about and the therapy and the support groups and all that stuff that are available, you can let go of some of those tendencies to default to uh, I gotta be the thing that this scenario, this situation requires, otherwise I'll lose it all yeah, I think that's.
Dan:I could see it being tough going through the mental exercise of acknowledging that I can't control what other people think. I can't control what they do, so it's futile. So why bother? Worrying about what they're thinking or doing are gonna say, okay, so now that I'm not spending my time worrying about what other people are thinking and doing, I've got a lot of time on my hands. There's a vacuum like what am I going to do with this, with these, with this mental energy? What am I going to spend my time? My monkey mind wants to think about something and chew on something. Oh, you just took dinner away from me. I can't chew on this anymore. What's left now? And that's kind of a scary proposition at times too, I mean your brain, you're so busy.
Charles:I mean, yeah, and if you're an anxious person and you've cut out of your sources of anxiety, your brain will find new sources of anxiety. And yeah, what it comes down to is I mean, that's the same thing that people do dealing with substance abuse can. If you're a cigarette smoker and you just stop cigarettes, then you're going to look for something else. If you're an alcoholic and you stop drinking alcohol, how are you soothing that anxiety Cause?
Dan:that's what you're doing.
Charles:Yeah, there's a root cause, or whatever you're trying to medicate. And then, if you take the medication away, your brain's going to say I need to find a new form of medication, cause I can't just live, yeah, without.
Dan:It's a lot easier to swap a negative habit for a bad, a good habit for a bad habit, but you need to have something there Most of the time to make that an easier transition versus just taking it away, Because again and even then, yeah, you're avoiding what the root cause is, and even by maybe swapping out the good habit for it. Right, Like, all right, I'm feeling anxious. Instead of smoking, I'm going to go for a walk every time. Well, how come you're? Why do you feel like you've got to go for three or four walks a day, Like?
Charles:or you know what's causing that. Yeah, and then some people oh, the walking's not enough. I got to start running, and running an hour a day is not enough. I got to run for two hours. I got to run for four hours. I mean, that's not a problem, I have, obviously, but yeah. I mean it can. Yeah, I think that's technically called exercise bulim. Is that appalled to?
Dan:there's a couple of people in my gym that used to be like oh my God, you need to be in a hospital bed, not on the stair, master, because you're so thin, like that's hard to see, yeah, yeah.
Charles:And eating disorders, I mean, yeah, the survivability of those is, it's like, as bad as some aggressive forms of cancer.
Dan:That's the thing to think about. Well, cause, what are we doing other than we don't do anything more than eating, other than, like, maybe, breathing every day or drinking something? Yeah, it's one of the most common things we do every day, all day long, for our entire lives. So that's why people, I think, struggle with eating and stuff. It's just our habits around that are just so strong.
Charles:Yeah, I was talking to some friends about that, how the treatment for substance abuse is so different from some of the other psychological disorders. Because you can just not drink alcohol anymore, you can just stop using heroin. But when it comes to love addiction, sex addiction, food addiction, it's like abstinence is just not an option for those. For most of us at least, this could stop eating food, and none of us can stop caring about being loved, and most of us can't just give up sex for the rest of our lives to, you know, to become abstinent forever. And so I'm not saying that those are harder, but they're differently. They're complex in ways that substance drinking, alcohol or smoking cigarettes is not complex. Yeah, because you can't just stop doing those things and you're not going to die. You can't just stop eating food or you will eventually die.
Dan:Mm-hmm.
Charles:Mm-hmm. So, um, yeah, but those are some of the ways that, uh, you know you can. You can trade one unhealthy coping mechanism for another one, and sometimes you get yourself in worse shape than you were with the original problem yeah, than you were with the original problem.
Dan:Yeah.
Charles:Yeah, yeah. So let people, like you said and it ties back to the to chapter five assume that people are going to be thinking negative things about you and learn how to accept that and be okay with it, and then you're not going to find yourself doing all these somersaults and backflips to try to avoid anything that might lead to judgment or negative feelings or negative thoughts. Yeah, flips to try to avoid anything that might lead to judgment or negative feelings or negative thoughts. Yeah, because, yeah, it's. Nobody has ever crafted a life free of criticism from other people. If you do anything, if people know you people, if you show up for anything, it's possible somebody is going to have an issue with the way that you've shown up, no matter how hard you work at trying to make all the people happy, all the time yeah, what's interesting is, in fact, you'll turn yourself into a try hard, and then people like me will complain about you.
Dan:Oh, that guy and I don't think she I don't know if she addressed it in this, these chapters, or if he does in the book, or if it's a different form, but I'm just wondering okay, so now that you're assuming that everybody on the planet has will have some sort of negative thoughts about you, or what do you do with that information now? Like, how do you come to terms with that? And I guess I'm answering my own question here is you look at what reality is and you look at okay, people are still pretty kind to me, or pretty nice, or they're not people.
Dan:I still have people in my life. So, yeah, maybe the consequences of them thinking negative thoughts and making negative posts and stuff like that isn't as bad as I thought it was.
Charles:Right, I mean, yeah, if you think about the best, most romantic day you've ever had with your partner, sometime that day they thought something less than ideal about you and you still had an amazing day with them and the better day you had at work. One of your co-workers still had a negative thought that if, if your co-workers all had actual thought bubbles around their head where you could see what they were thinking all the time, you would see some things that would hurt your feeling. Even on the best professional day you've had of your life, even if you were delivering your dissertation to get your PhD and it went really great and still point, somebody still probably had a thought that if you knew that they thought that thing exactly, you'd be like, ooh, that hurts a little bit.
Dan:I think the other piece of that is also realizing that you aren't the only contributing factor to them having a negative thought, right so?
Charles:sometimes, so you're going to fall.
Dan:It's a negative thought, right? So sometimes, so you get a false even about you, aren't about you, right? They could have had a horrible night's sleep the night before, they could have missed a meal, and I mean they even do that. I'm sure you've heard of that study. I think they did a bunch of. They interviewed a bunch of judges in Israel, whatever, basically, and they basically who they treated people before lunch versus after lunch.
Dan:Yeah For whether they're coming up for parole, whether they voted yes or no. And it was radically more denials before lunch when they were hungry. Right, it was enough of a swing to not be right and it was just right and so that's like the ultimate negative thought right denial of your parole. So, yeah, that's about as bad as it gets, the worst scenario I mean think about it like we don't make our best decisions when our physical needs are not on par peak performance.
Charles:So, knowing that it also waters down the amount of influence or attribution to that negative thought that you should place on the thing that you just did, and what you think you might need to do about it or what you expect somebody else to do about it too, cause I, I mean, yeah, mean, yeah, I, it's very easy.
Charles:If it's very easy. If your partner, for example, is in a bad mood, if you take that on and say, okay, she's in a bad mood, it must be because of something I've done. Yeah, if that's true, then therefore, well, if she's in a bad mood because of something I did and I'm a hundred percent the cause of her bad mood, then I've also got all the control to fix it. Yeah, and so if it's all my fault, then it's also all in my control. If I'm uncomfortable with the fact that she's feeling a little down today and I take a hundred percent responsibility for her current state, then it's also a hundred percent of my responsibility to fix it. So now it's time to let me take away your individuality and your autonomy and start digging in to fix it. So now it's time to let me take away your individuality and your autonomy and start digging in to fix your problem for you. And that's even worse to do to somebody when they're already in a bad mood no, it's yeah I speak from experience.
Charles:All right, dan, let's stop it there today I'll try to remember what the introduction to the next section was, but I don't, do you recall? I do not. Let me see real quick Focus on long-term vision and dynamics of friendship, particularly in the context of adult relationships. Acceptance and understanding and friendships recognizing connections may evolve or fade over time due to various factors. Sounds good, all right. Thanks, we'll pick it up there next week. Thanks, all right. Thanks so much for listening to the entire episode. We'll be back next week with the next couple of chapters. Please follow our website, mindfullymasculinecom, for audio episodes, video episodes and anything else we feel like sharing. Thanks, see you next time.
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