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In this coaching session you’re gonna meet Stephen. Now this guy is literally paralyzed by the fear of what other people are thinking. My name is Stephen Hill. I am 25 years old. I am from North Carolina. The last two years of my life has been, It’s been torture, you know it’s been a very long two years. It’s been like my own personal hell, locked in my mom’s house at 25 years old, laying on the couch for two years. I am here to meet with Mel Robbins because I feel like meeting her and her helping me with personal issues which is helped push me into becoming the person that I want to be. Well, I’m gonna give Stephen a push all right. We don’t call this show kick ass for nothing, but before anyone can become the person they want to be, you gotta first accept responsibility for your role in keeping you stuck where you are and Steven’s about to Discover that ain’t easy.

What’s happening? Why you get upset? Not upset at you, just… I don’t give a shit if you are. You’re revealing things to me that I need to hear. Like me being manipulative. You know I thought others were manipulative. I thought out they were the bad guy, like they were the bad guy, but I’m manipulative. I never thought of that.

You’re listening to live coaching sessions with real people. Hi, Mel. I’m Aisha Hamid from Pakistan. Love you Mel. Hi Mel. I wanna be coached by you. Pick me, Mel. Hi, Mel. My name is Lisa. I’m from Brazil. 54321, come on Mel Robbins, please pick me.

Facing real problems. Anxiety of what other people think. Self-acceptance is my biggest thing. Procrastination is causing me to just build a wall. The fear of losing weight. That should stip this fuck.

And experiencing real change. That’s powerful. That was the real talking. Oh, shit. Now I really know what to do and I feel empowered. That is nuts, Mel. You blew my shit away. This is Kick Ass with Mel Robbins.

Hey. Oh, my God. This is crazy. I’m actually meeting Mel Robbins. I think I’m gonna cry. O, my God. Look at you, you look like really, it’s you. It’s me. See, I’m real. Oh, my God. It’s like looking at an angel. I’m so excited to see you. Oh, my God. Tell me why are you here? What are you struggling with? I am struggling with living to my fullest potential. Okay. I sit around and I wonder are people judging me, are people looking at me like, look at him, look how much weight he’s gained. You know whenever I’m back home and I go out in public, which is very rare, very rare. Like described very rare. Maybe once a week, I mean once every two weeks. Wait a minute. Hold on. You don’t leave your house more than once every two weeks? Yes, I’m at home the whole time in my mom’s house. And you don’t leave? Yeah, yeah. Because you’re afraid people are going to judge you? Yes, yes. Whenever I go in public and someone sees me, they’re like look how much weight you’ve gained or someone said hey fatty, one time. Are they right? I feel like they are. I feel like they are. I feel like, you know I used to be in shape. I used to be this person that was really involved with the church. I was the preacher boy. I was the perfect person to everybody. Even whenever I was the perfect person, I was worried at that time, people are judging me so I’ve got to live the way they want me to live. Go to church every Sunday, go to church every Wednesday or Thursday or Tuesday whenever it was.

So what happened? Well, got involved, speaking at church. What happened? What happened was, as I realized eventually down the road that I’m gay. Okay. When did you know that you were gay? When I was a little boy. So tell me, the moment. When I was very young. Okay. And I just realized I like boys. I didn’t like sports. I didn’t like, you know, roughhousing. A very sensitive kid and I believe it was under five years old when I realized you know I’m different, you know than the other guys. In school didn’t have guy friends. I mostly hung out with the girls and it was really young when I realized that. But in my mind I was like this is wrong. This is wrong. This is wrong. And I suppressed it for years and years. Suppressed it or hid it? Suppress it kind of means you forgot about it or I’m not trying to be academic but I want to make sure I understand what you did. So hid it.

So when you would go to the Baptist Church and you would be sitting in church and I’m assuming you went to a Baptist Church that was not in the front of the line leading the marriage equality marches. And there would be talking about homosexuality or about marriage equality and what would they’d be saying? They would say it was a sin. You go to hell for it. And what would you think? I felt to myself then what am I supposed to do. What am I supposed to do if I’m, you know to myself I would think that, if I’m gay, I guess I’m going to hell, as a little boy I thought that. Yeah. For years I thought I was going to hell, especially if I acted on it. So did you think, did you buy into the lie that being gay is a choice? Yes. So you bought into the bullshit and the lies that people paddle about that? Yeah. I felt judged. I felt like I wasn’t normal. I felt like an outcast and I felt like if I acted like myself, then they would say oh he’s gay, he’s gay, he’s definitely gay. I mean in most guys other guys could tell I was gay by the way I acted, you know, I’m a very feminine guy. And it was a lot of very very fearful to be seen as gay. Cause I felt like this is the worst thing in the world. This is, you know this is just as bad as murder.

How did it impact your personal relationship with God? I personally as a kid felt God loves every single part of me. if God loves every single part of me then why not this part. What is, you know, what’s so bad about, what’s bad about this? I’m not out hurting people. I’m not out causing pain. It’s just a part of who I am. And they get in the pulpits and churches and they preach. God loves you regardless of your sin. But not this one thing. This is the worst thing. That’s the way it felt. What’s interesting is that it’s pretty clear that even at a young age because you were able to question and say, well that makes no freaking sense, if he loves everything about me then why this one thing. Like you, I think, intrinsically know that he loves everything about you, right? Right. This is a really important distinction for you because you seem and you are extraordinarily caught up and consumed by what other people think. And it’s not surprising because you grew up in a church environment where you hid. Right. And you hid in order to not be judged, and you hid in order to protect yourself. I never thought of it like that and dating girls. How did that go? Not good at all, at all. It didn’t because I felt if I have a girlfriend or if I get married, oh he’s not gay, you know, he’s straight, you know, there was never there would never be that question, took a lot of line.

I’m really like liar too, by the way. It takes one to know one. Right, right, you saw right through me, didn’t you Mel? You know, I’m just trying to put myself in your shoes. Think about what it would be like to sit in a church several times a week and be told that I can’t be who I am. And to then suppress my very being out of shame and fear, and to go into hiding. Eventually, at that church, the leaders of the church had found out that I was. What age were you when this happened? I want to say 18-19 and when they found out it was like the world ended, end my world. What happened? They had found out that someone and I, someone else and I were together. So there were lots of gay people hiding in this church. If you only knew. And this the word got out about us and all of a sudden it was like my world crashed.

What happened? The leaders of the church, the pastor and his wife were both like not happy with me that this happened. You know what really got to me was the time when the pastor’s wife had looked at me and said you need to get this under control cause some parents are not even want you to be around their kids. What? I’m that bad of a person that I can even be around, to hang out with kids? Like the parents are going to judge me like whether or not I’m good enough to say hey to your kids. I was a Sunday school teacher at one point and they took that away from me. I was no longer Sunday school teacher. That was not a fun thing to hear. Honestly, it’s just a sign of somebody being completely ignorant and stupid and prejudiced. Its ugliness is what it is and I’m sorry that that happened to you. They didn’t kick you out of the church, though? No, the pastor did look at me one time, he said do you want to leave this church? And you stuck around after they did this to you? I didn’t know who I was outside of that. Like I didn’t I didn’t think I could survive in the world outside of going to church. I thought if I leave church you know God’s gonna strike me dead. I had that thought in my mind that if I leave this church, I’m gonna get a car accident or you know something or some horrible thing is gonna happen to me, is gonna be, because God was not happy with me.

You know, has it ever occurred to you that God is waiting for you to find yourself and be brave enough to do what you need to do. It’s a good way to look at. I thought, you know God does want me to live as who I am. Why wouldn’t he? Because I would be lieing. God doesn’t like liars. You tell me that your relationship with God. That’s how I would see. I mean I think God wants us to live who we are. Or what do you want? I want to be Stephen Hill. And what does that mean? To unapologetically, in every way, in every sense, love myself. Now when you look to me okay, if you want to judge me and say you’re not following God or the religious version of God, you’re going to hell. Okay. Why do you care so much? I guess it’s just I want to be accepted by others. Well I think it’s probably the result of for years sitting and hiding, hiding, hiding, hiding, hiding, hiding, shame, shame, shame, shame. That’s what was getting preach to you and so you did exactly what you were told to do. You were a great choir boy and you know whatever assistant preacher, whatever the heck your church calls him. You did a good job. You hid just like you were told to hide. You felt the shame just like you were told to shame. You branded yourself a sinner just like they told you to do. Yeah, that’s right.

And the problem is that for a long time, it was the church and probably your parents and maybe some friends that were doing it to you and now that nobody else is doing it to you, you’re doing it to yourself. Yeah, laying on the laying on the couch or sitting on the couch or you know just in the house, nobody is telling me these things. You are. Yeah, exactly. It’s me, it’s me, it’s nobody else. Somebody taught you to think this way and you can break the pattern. You can break the habit of thinking this way. You can become a totally different person that accepts himself. And the thing you have to understand, and frankly get pissed off about is that you sat in a church for that many years that pretended to be a place that was about love and actually did tremendous damage to you. Right.

So after the pastor and the pastor’s wife shame outed you, and then shamed you and then stripped you of the privilege of being a Sunday school teacher, what happened next? For a while I just kept going. Then fast forward a little bit, an opportunity came up for me to go to a church in Atlanta. I was there for a few months. What was it like to be in Atlanta? It’s a little bit more diverse. Yes. I think it is a little bit more liberal. I went to my first gay club, gay bar and I loved that. I bet you did. You know here I am, I’ve never been to anything like that and I loved it, every minute of it. Eventually I had moved back to North Carolina. Why did you have to move back? Well again with the church thing. Here I am starting to accept myself and I think the pastor was starting to pick up on it. What did he say to you? He told me, he actually told me, this guy told me that I needed to change the way I sound. So instead of you know, talking like this, like my regular voice, he told me that I need to make my voice like really deep, to make me sound like a man. Did he ever ask you if you were a gay? Yeah. And what did you say? I said that I did feel that way. And what did he say? He told me that I needed to not act on it to, resist my side, resist. Did you ever go to the illegal therapy that they do? No. Good.

Alright so I kind of have a timeline as it relates to the church. Now let’s talk about life at home. So you figured out really really young that you like boys. You’re very aware that you’re gay. So your mom, did she have any idea that you were gay? I mean, she must’ve known. I remember her telling me if you ever are gay, I will accept you. You know I remember her saying that to me when I was a little kid. So how and when did you finally tell her? I posted it on Facebook in 2015 that I was gay. So your mother found out that you were gay by your Facebook post? Yes. That is a really mean thing to do to your mother. Well, I felt like if I would’ve told her in person, it would just gonna, you know it would just gonna be one big argument. I understand but I want you as a man to understand how manipulative that it. Absolutely, yeah.

The thing you’re not going to like about yourself is how manipulative you are and it comes from a place just like my lying came from a place of self-protection but when you can start to own what a manipulative son of a gun you are then you will have the power to change. But right now you’re in the zone of what happened to you and what got done to you and that victim feel to all this is what’s keeping you stuck and here’s the irony dude. Your actually manipulative. I never thought of it like that. You are, aren’t you? I think I can see that. Of course you can. Do you know how much you love sleeping on the couch and using this pity party for a reason to not get your shit together? It’s a form of manipulation. What’s happening? Why you get upset? Not upset at you, just… I don’t give a shit if you are. You’re revealing things to me that I need to hear. Yeah.

Why is this sting? Why is this make you upset? Like maybe I’m manipulative? Yes you are. You know, I thought others were manipulative. I though they were the bad guy. Like they were the bad guy, but I’m manipulative? Of cource you are. You lie to people’s faces. You tell people exactly what they wanna hear so that you can stay in their stupid church. You’re not honest about the people that you love. You know, you’re acting like a victim to make it easy for your mother. You’re manipulating the hell out of this situation. Do you see that? Yeah.

So let’s talk about, let’s name some of the ways that you manipulate people. Let’s have some fun. Okay. Tell me some of the things you do to manipulate people. Okay. Let’s have a confession. Oh, goodness. The way I manipulate people, I guess one way is, is when my mom says you’re being lazy, yeah, and I give the excuse of I’m depressed. Oh, yeah, high five. Right there. There are some manipulation. Okay, what else? I have anxiety. Oh, yes. That’s a big one. I care too much about what people think. Oh, yes, manipulate, manipulate. Looking at the things I’ve been through in life, you know, just all these, yeah, these excuses and she is okay. It works, doesn’t it? Yeah. You’re a genius. And whenever it’s time to go out in public and they want me to go out with them, I’m like I care too much about what people think. Excuse, manipulation. Love it. I never thought of it like that. Yeah, well it takes a liar to see a liar and it takes a master manipulator to recognize another one. And the best excuse to hide underneath is the victimhood thing. And look, you’ve been through a lot and the stuff that you have been put through and the shame that you felt is not okay but there came a moment in time where you were old enough to know better. And there came a moment in time and you probably might even remember it where you thought this is, this is the moment for me to just say yes I am gay and to leave the church and to be brave. And instead you chose to manipulate the situation and hide.

Like I get a 5 to a 16-17-year-old sitting in a church pew hiding because you’re living at home and you’re a child and you’re not living in Massachusetts and a Unitarian church. You’re in the deep South in a very conservative church and so you got a lot of evidence by a lot of adults telling you a lot of stuff that isn’t true about what it means to be a gay you know girl or boy. And so I understand hiding in that environment. But there was a moment where you knew it was time and that’s when you flipped from victim into master manipulator. Does that make sense? Do you remember when it was? Posting on Facebook. Maybe, I don’t know. I think it might’ve been when you lied to somebody in one of the churches that when they kicked you when they stripped you of your Sunday school position, preaching position. Yeah and you stayed. Yeah. Like instead you could say, screw all of you, I’m gonna go down the street to the Unitarian church were God loves everybody and they fly a rainbow flag. I’ll see you assholes in it later. Instead of living in the truth, you were like, okay, I’ll just lie to everybody. I get it’s all logical, it’s all understandable, which is why I can call you and manipulator. Because what I want to do in this conversation is I want to give you back power. I want you to understand you’re not the victim of all this shit anymore.

And in fact may be the last seven or eight years, you are 100% responsible for all of this. Absolutely. A hundred percent, every lie, you own it, every avoidance you own it, every excuse you own it. The anxiety came from the lying, by the way. When do you first remember feelings, like an anxiety or panic attacks or something? Whenever, goodness, the first time I think was whenever I went back to church. Of course. I went back to church and… You’re walking in. Yeah. They’re gonna find me out. Don’t tell anybody. Yeah. Don’t tell them my secret. Yeah. I’m not going here and manipulate these people. Yeah. But I’m gonna have a panic attack the entire time. Yeah, looking around, worried, oh my goodness. Yeah. And now that you’re not walking into a church, you know that’s a hide that you’ve basically created the exact same situation in your life everywhere. It’s like this just keeps manifesting itself in my life. It’s a pattern. That’s how it is, it’s a pattern.

Well, you’ve just gotten to be very good at complaining and about manipulating. You’ve basically locked yourself into a fortress and it’s everybody else’s fault. And you did this to me. So I’m pitting this on others when actually I should be look in myself. Yes. The gig is up. It’s like somebody cheating once and not fixing their ways and now cheating becomes a way of life. Lying and manipulating has become a way of life. See, I want you to get out of the habit of saying you have anxiety and saying you have depression. I want you to start looking at all the ways that you’re really lying to yourself. You may be afraid to go on public but that doesn’t mean you can’t. You may be afraid to get a job, but that doesn’t mean you can’t. You may be afraid to start to take your health seriously. See, I don’t think that you’re that lazy. I think as long as you’re overweight people feel sorry for you. It’s like a protection. Or an excuse, an excuse.

Do you want people to feel sorry for you? No. I was sitting on the plane and I said and I actually said I might have to get off. Why? Because I thought the seatbelt wasn’t going to fit. And the lady’s beside me said it’s okay, they’ll bring you a seatbelt extender. And you know I kept saying, you know I just, I’m too big for this seat. I wanted them to comfort me, to calm me down. Everything’s all right honey. And it worked, didn’t it? Yeah, it worked. See that’s why I would have panic attacks, too. Because if I had a panic attack, they were very manipulative. Not in the beginning, like they kind of came because of some unresolved stuff just like we’re talking about with you but when I have a panic attack is a foolproof method to make everybody else rescue me from whatever I’m dealing with. Does that feel right? Yeah, yeah, it does. What are you thinking right now? Like I can see the wheels spinning upstairs. That I’m not actually a victim and that this is just, it’s all excuses. It’s all excuses, everything, laying on the couch all day. It’s an excuse. Being overweight is an excuse for me. Not going out and going on dates is an excuse. I’ve been lying to myself and manipulating others. That’s why sometimes I’ll get on social media and I’ll post a really sad post or something. I’m looking for comfort in other people. And this right here that my weight is looking for comfort, my mindset, my words, the way I act, not wanting to go out in public, it’s manipulating people. Isn’t it kind of funny? It’s like whoa the table has definitely been turned.

Well look, me feeling sorry for you, it’s actually not gonna help you change. No, absolutely not. I also want to make sure you understand something. Okay. The fact that you’re a manipulator, it’s a really good thing. I know it sounds like a bad word but you developed that as a strategy to survive. You got two choices when you’re about to be found out, right? One is fold, admit, have the courage, glide into the open, live your truth and all that stuff, very difficult for a lot of us to do. The other thing if you’re going to continue on with the charade is start to manipulate the entire situation. To me, that pattern is something powerful because you made a choice and because you are in control of the things that you’re doing. What’s good about that is that, that pattern becomes a habit or you’re in control of it of your excuses, you’re in control of being lazy, you’re in control of hiding, you’re in control of manipulating everybody and that means that we can actually teach you how to do the opposite. So that the habit becomes not hiding and not manipulating and not, you know listening to excuses, but it actually becomes becoming the Stephen that takes action, the Stephen that doesn’t have excuses, the Stephen that is off of his couch. Do you see what I’m saying? Yeah. Yeah, it’s a very, I’d rather have you be a manipulator than a victim in this situation. Because when you’re a victim, it feels like the weight of the world is on you and it feels so overwhelming to overcome it. When you can fully embrace, holly shit, I’m actually a good liar. Right? I’m pretty good at this. I can hide in the most conservative churches in the world.

That could be used as like a superpower, couldn’t it? Of course if you use it for good. For good, yes. And you used it for good. You were hiding from judgment. Do you understand me? Yeah. I mean I’m walking a fine line here because obviously manipulating is not a good thing to do to people but you did it to yourself and you did it because you were afraid and you did it because he didn’t want to be judged. And that means that if you got this superpower where you can navigate things and where you can make yourself do things that you don’t feel like doing and maybe it’s hiding; then you also have the superpower to be able to manipulate your excuses and manipulate your laziness and manipulate your anxiety. I think that’s genius. Why? Because if you can be lazy manipulate yourself to be lazy then you have the power to manipulate yourself to get your life together, stop being lazy. That’s awesome. Well, it’s just this idea that you’re in control when you decide that you’re a victim, which you have for years. You basically are convincing yourself over and over and over again that you have no control. When you can start to own your own part in it then you have the control to change it.

See the cool thing is that when you’re open about who you are and what you’re thinking about and what you’re doing and just you have this level of bad ass honesty, if people react negatively, it’s their issue. Right. The hardest piece about being a manipulator is that when the pastor and the pastor’s wife find out, and when the minister up in Atlanta finds out, and when people that you’ve been manipulating find out that you’re actually a liar, their upset is on you because you weren’t upfront about who you are. And this is a critical distinction for you to understand because those of us that lie and manipulate, we think we’re doing it for other people. We think we’re doing it to make it better for our moms or for our dads or for the friends around us. We don’t tell the truth. And when you make a decision that you’re gonna manipulate who you are because you think it’ll make everybody else comfortable and you think it’ll save your ass if people react negatively when they find out, you’re 100% responsible for that breakdown. But when you live fully open in your truth Stephen, as a gay man, if people react negatively, it’s their bullshit. Do you understand? And that will be one of the most liberating things that you will discover.

I would be willing to guess that a lot of your anxiety comes from constantly being in a situation where you’re worried about being found out, where you’re worried that you’re going to find that people are going to react negatively because for so long you lied. That’s the source of the anxiety. And the second that you own that you lie that you manipulate and that means you also have the power to manipulate your excuses and manipulate your laziness and manipulate your anxiety and say yeah I feel lazy but I’m going to the gym anyway. Yep I feel nervous I’m gonna bump into somebody but I’m running to the grocery store because my mom needs my help. Yep, I feel anxious about getting a job but I’m gonna manipulate my way right through that anxiety and I’m gonna go apply anyway. When you start living like that, the anxiety will disappear. And you start to care less and less and less about what other people are thinking because you’re actually doing things that you want to do. Does that make sense?

Yeah, it seems like the freedom that I would feel just, I would feel amazing. I felt growing up, life would be so different. What did you think of your life? I thought I was going to be this amazing, bright, live in my dreams, traveling the world, meeting these amazing people, doing huge things and here I am, living on my mother’s couch. And it makes me feel like sick of myself. Okay. Because like everything I go after, I end up failing at. Is that true or at some point you get scared and you start to hide? Because it’s an old pattern. That right there, scared, and I hide.

Let’s think about a really irritating, annoying blabbermouth. You’re just one of the judging preachers for instance. Okay, okay. The wife. Are you sure? Yes. You still go to that stupid church? They might watch this. I don’t give a shit. They have to learn something about how you should treat people and what it actually means to be gay and how to talk to somebody when they come out of the closet and have the courage. Her name is Sharon. Sharon, great. So whenever you have your thoughts drift, okay, to some bold talky, I want you to picture Sharon, okay? Is that a good name? Yeah. So is it annoying when Sharon talks and gripes and like tells you to worry about all this stuff? So when you start the pattern of thinking stuff that doesn’t serve you; I’m fat, I’m lazy, no one’s gonna hire me, I’m gonna get a speeding ticket, I’m gonna be sweating; you’re gonna be like, go away Sharon. Yeah. Can you own this? Yes, yes. So when the nagging thoughts come, shut up Sharon. Yes. And then just go back to that feeling of I’m a great person. Yes.

You’ve got to start to see that the old chapter is about hiding. Hiding who you are. Hiding from the things that scare you. Hiding hiding hiding and that as we turn the page and we look at this new chapter, you talked about feeling awesome, you talked about feeling powerful, and you also have got to be seen. And that means leaving the house every day. Where’s the place that you’re the most worried to go? Grocery stores. Grocery stores. Because every body, you know every time I go to a grocery store, I always see somebody that I know. Okay. Or who knows me. Okay.

So let’s role-play a little bit. Okay. You walk into the grocery store. Who’s somebody you’re scared to see? Someone from church or from high school. Okay, so Sharon is in the aisles. She’s pulling some cereal down. You walk in, you see her. What are you afraid she’s gonna say? Why aren’t you going to church anymore. Or maybe look me up and down you know you, you can see when somebody’s observing you. Yeah so what do you do if somebody’s observing you and then they say nothing. I try to hide. Okay, good. That’s the old chapter. The new chapter is about being seen. It’s about power. It’s about awesomeness. So what do you do if you see Sharon and she looks you up and down, what do you do? Just keep, you know, hey Sharon, how are you doing girl? Perfect. Make her uncomfortable. How you doing girl? You doing good girl. How you doing. What are you doing, you know… And then if she says why haven’t you been coming to church, what would you say? I been living my best life. Perfect or you know I don’t feel comfortable coming to church. Yeah, exactly. Yes. I’ve embraced myself, just loving myself. Yes. This is who I am. Yes. And I even like the headcount going when you do this. If she says, boy you’ve got heavy, what do you say? Girl, yes I have. Yeah.

Now there’s one other thing, your mom. Yeah. I want you to talk to her. And not through Facebook, in person. Well you live with her. You’re chewing on your lip, why? That conversation in my head can go one or two ways. It can go really good or I don’t wanna hear that. That’s not true, you’re not gay. Some I’m, just like there’s some angst about having that conversation, I know… That angst is normal. Remember, what’s the rule about telling people the truth and being exactly who you are? What have, whose problem is if your mom has a negative reaction? The terrors. Why? She is in charge of how she responds. Correct and who’s responsible right now as you’re manipulating the situation by not talking about it? Me. Correct. I don’t know if it will be an easy conversation. I don’t know what she’s going to do. I suspect that since you’ve been out now for almost 3 years and you’re sleeping on her couch that she has made some level of peace with it but I don’t know. What are you afraid of? Sorry, will she still love me? Will she still looks at me? Will she kick me out? Sometimes I still feel like that little boy who just wants his mama’s love. I’m sorry. Don’t apologize. You’re being honest. You’re being honest. When you’re sitting there… I’m sorry. Don’t apologize. This is how you feel Stephen.

As you are explaining how scared you are, I was envisioning a seven-year-old boy sitting in church being afraid about whether or not God still loves him. I don’t want to be that little seven-year-old boy anymore. Every day that you don’t have the conversation with your mom, you’re that seven-year-old sitting in a church pew, manipulating the situation out of fear. It’s totally understandable. Guy that fear is real, but it’s a choice to live there. She knows you’re coming to Boston. She knows you’re probably gonna come back and want to talk about this. Or she not know you’re hear? She knows I’m here. She’s very excited. She’s very excited for me to come. Why? She thought this would help me get unstuck, this would be that push. But I don’t know if she knew that you and I are gonna be talking about this. How could she not know? Maybe she doesn’t know how to bring it up either. She’s already accepted you. You live with her. She’s already told you that she loves you no matter what. This is about you making it right.

And then you’re gonna start doing that in every area. You’re gonna make it right with your body. You’re gonna make it right by getting a job. You’re gonna make it right by getting your ass out of that house every single day. When you get home, I want you to go to the grocery store, every single day. It’s gonna be busy. Here you bump into all kinds of crazy people. Thanks Mel, that’s perfect. And most importantly, we gotta get crystal clear about what the old chapter was. The old chapter in description is a person who manipulated others so that he could be lazy, so that he could have the excuse of anxiety, have the excuse of not wanting to live to his fullest potential. That’s a very sad chapter. Yes. Can you now do that chapter in your grocery store voice? Girl, that person was so lazy. He was nothing. He was always whining, always complaining, never want to do what he needed to do, just sitting around all the time and it was all excuses. Every time somebody would tell him something that he didn’t want to hear, he get mad and go cross somewhere, grows too much. I’m done with it.

Now moving into a more serious voice. He’s just loving himself. Awesome, he’s not hiding. I always saw everyone else’s like the bad guy when it was just my decisions, it was my choices, it was up to me, it was no one ever had any power over me to make what was in my mind, to make me believe anything. It was just me. There is a light in you, You’re the one that turned it off. And in this next chapter, you get to turn that light back on. That is power, that is awesomeness and that is what it means to be seen. Everyone deserves to be fabulous, everyone. You’re not supposed to be pathetic. It’s not who you’re supposed to be. You deserve to be the light that you were born to be. Turn the light on.

Turn the light on. Isn’t that beautiful? I get chills thinking about the possibility that’s now in front of Stephen. The thing the he said that I love the most is this: no one ever had the power over me to make what was in my mind, to make me believe anything. It was just me. And that brings us to take away number one from this episode. Stephen was manipulated by other people as a child and he was victimized by it. So it’s natural that he would start repeating the pattern of victimizing himself as an adult. But now that he sees that he’s repeating these patterns, he has the power to change it. So ask yourself, are there patterns that you learn from the adults in your childhood that you’re still repeating that don’t work for you? Because seeing the destructive behavior as a pattern is the first step to owning it, and ultimately ending it. And that brings me to take away number two. It’s a tool you can use to actually destroy the pattern and that’s shut up Sharon.

One of the ways you can take control over your mind is to exaggerate and make the negative things that you say to yourself into a character. Stephen for example, told that negative voice in his head to shut up Sharon and you can do the same thing. If you have a problem with negative self talk, here’s what I want you to do. First, pick a name and It could be someone you don’t like very much. It could be a fictional character. And then I want you to borrow the shut up Sharon concept. You might say to yourself, knock it off Mike or perhaps you’re gonna say, I’m not listening, Lisa. It doesn’t matter the name you use. It doesn’t matter the little phrase you come up with, just name it and tell it to shut up. And whenever you catch yourself speaking negatively, that’s when you’re gonna pull out this character and you’re going to cut it off.

Now our 13-year-old son has used this exact same strategy to fight his anxiety and he’s done it by naming his anxiety, Oliver. Whenever anxiety comes into his head or he feels a coming in his body, he knows that Oliver is there. Then he tells Oliver to go away. He might say shut up Oliver. I’ve heard him say, Oliver, you’re not invited. I’ve heard him say Oliver, you’re not allowed. Oliver, you’re not coming. By naming it, he takes control of his thoughts and he overrides the anxiety in his mind, and I’ll tell you what. It’s pretty amazing how effective it is. And let me also make one more point about this naming tool. Based on some of the other coaching sessions that you’ve listened to, you’ve probably started to notice that we’ve been naming behavior. We did it in Kim’s coaching session, in Jesse’s coaching session and in Evelyn’s. During those coaching sessions, I asked each one of them to not only describe the old behavior patterns that have them stuck, but also to label them and the new positive behaviors that they wanted to adopt.

So for Kim, for example, she’s either acting like a big baby, like she has in her past or she’s Kimpossibility. Jesse, same thing. She’s either stuck as the fat narcissist or she’s living her future self, light is a fairy. Evelyn is the Richmond Evelyn or she’s in her glow up as Daly city Evelyn. When you turn old behaviors into a caricature, you remove your emotion and drama and heaviness around it and it makes the behavior more objective. Now that’s going to help you not only identify the negative behaviors quickly, but it’s also gonna help you move into the new behavior, the new chapter instantly. It’s like flipping a mental switch. You can snap out of the old behavior or the old chapter and into the new one the moment you see it.

Now, the concept that we’ve just discussed in Stephen’s coaching segment, shut up Sharon, it’s just an extension of that tool only we’re teaching you to use it to change negative thought patterns. By turning your old negative thinking pattern into a caricature, you can then use it to change your thought process in an instant, simply by saying shut up Sharon and moving on. Now the third take away is really really important, and it’s on the topic of manipulation. When you’re afraid to upset other people and you use that fear to justify not being yourself, not telling the truth, not showing up, it’s actually a form of manipulation.

So let me unpack this for a minute. If you live your life in a way where you avoid upsetting people at all cost, so you keep quiet, that’s a form of manipulation. If you’re afraid of hurting people’s feelings or disappointing them and so you lie, that’s a form of manipulation. If you hate confrontation so you don’t tell the truth about how you’re feeling, that’s a form of manipulation. And what’s the golden rule of manipulation? Well, you learned it in this coaching session with Stephen. When you manipulate people, you’re responsible when they get upset if they find out the truth. But if you have the courage to just say how you’re feeling, or to tell them what’s true for you, when they get upset or they react negatively, it’s on them. You know having the courage and the clarity to just be yourself, that’s what it means to be truly fabulous.