Love and Obligation

Episode Intro: Welcome to the Art of Accomplishment, where we explore how deepening connection with ourselves and others leads to creating the life we want with enjoyment and ease. I'm Brett Kistler here today with my co-host, Joe Hudson.

Brett: Alright, so Joe, there's a common pattern that we see when we're working with people that is around obligation, or responsibility. And just yesterday, I saw you work with somebody in a rapid fire coaching session, and handled this really beautifully. And I'd love to explore the topic more deeply.

Joe: Yeah, that sounds great.

Brett: Awesome. Yeah. Okay. So I want to start with a two minute clip from yesterday's coaching session.

Joe: Hi, hi.

Coachee: Yeah. You know, I seem to be on the cusp of everything I could want and hope for the patterns of obligation and responsibility, probably intertwined with fear and scarcity mindset just seemed to get in the way. You know, my specific question would be around, why can’t I finish up with a divorce? But the same patterns apply sometimes in work and everything else?  

Joe: Where does obligation sit in your body? 

‍Coachee: Chest?

‍Joe: Great 

‍Coachee: Upper arms.

Joe: Feel it for a minute. And what happens if you're just like, if you see that as the part of you that never got loved? 

‍Coachee: Yep.

‍Joe: And love it.

‍Coachee: I can get to acceptance, it's hard to get to loving it.

‍Joe: Is that what you're doing every time you accept responsibility for somebody else? You get to acceptance, but you don't actually get to love them.

‍Coachee: Yeah, like that's, that's fair. I can accept myself. I'm not sure I can get to loving myself. 

‍Joe: Great. Do me a favor. Get in contact with the love that you once had for your wife. Maybe you still have some. 

‍Coachee: Yep. 

‍Joe: And tell me when you feel it.

‍Coachee: Okay. 

‍Joe: Okay, now I want you to feel responsible for her happiness. 

‍Coachee: That's easy. 

‍Joe: What happened to the love?

‍Coachee: Disappeared, dissipated, retreated deep into a dark place. 

‍Joe: You stopped loving her to take responsibility for her, is what I'm hearing you say? Motherfucker, right? 

‍Coachee: I guess I've never heard it said that way. I guess that's accurate. My first response would be…

‍
Joe: Oh, I don't want to guess I want you to actually feel it. This is an emotional experience. 

‍Coachee: Okay. 

‍Joe: So it's not a guess, it's like, every time you took responsibility, acted out of obligation, it stopped the love that you felt for her. 

‍Coachee: Yeah.

‍Joe: Woof. 

‍Brett: Wow. Yeah, that's gonna be a great topic. I can't wait to discuss that. For anyone who wants to listen to the entire episode or watch it, there's a link to the full session in the show notes.

All right. So tell me tell me, Joe, about what you’ve, what you've seen in the pattern that people carry around obligation, responsibility, and how does that relate to love? 

‍Joe: Yeah. So what I noticed is, if you have a sense of obligation, then a requirement of that obligation is to stop the emotional experience of love. Doesn't mean you stop loving the person but it means that your emotional experience of loving someone has to end. The obligation literally constricts the emotional experience of love. And so every time we are acting out of obligation, we're saying hey, I'm going to trade obligation for love. I'm going to trade either feeling an obligation to do something rather than love myself, or I'm going to feel an obligation to do something for you rather than love you.

‍Brett: Okay, so we've talked before about how, how we come into this world, how children are born hardwired for love. 

‍Joe: Yeah. 

‍Brett: And so what would cause us to go into this pattern of trading love for obligation? 

‍Joe: Yeah, oddly, it becomes a strategy to get love. Oh, I've been disconnected, so I've been disconnected from you, so now I have to do something to try to get the love back. Right and so if you notice what I said that the feeling of love gets cut off and then there's a stagnation of emotion, the emotion gets cut off and it kind of therefore creates a stagnation. So we got obligation and guilt, obligation and shame are very closely related.

So if I'm going to guilt you, it's to make you feel obligated to do something. If I shame you, it's going to make you feel an obligation to be a certain way. That's the whole idea behind them is to shove this obligation. And we've talked about in the podcast, how guilt and shame are the stagnate emotions. 

‍Brett: Yeah. 

‍Joe: And so it's the same thing here, you're basically, that sense of obligation means that there's been some guilt and shame that is stagnating the experience. But I think the important thing to say here is that, one thing we're doing is we're differentiating between in the moment and over the long term meaning, this experience right now, in this moment, I cannot feel obligation for you, to do something for you and feel love for you, at the same time. It doesn't mean that I can't care for you. It doesn't mean that I can't be generous with you, or a whole bunch of things, but I can't do it out of obligation and maintain this feeling of love. However, I could feel a sense of obligation as a strategy to get your love or to feel love for you at some point. And so that happens all the time. So that's the distinction. 

‍Brett: Got it. It's fascinating. I like how you connected that to the shame, because in one sense, it could be the obligation is like an internal threat of shame. 

‍Joe: Yeah. 

‍Brett: That, like, the obligation is the threat that there will be shame if I don't do what I feel obligated to do. And there's a way that that threat is a fear. And you have that fear and love spectrum there where it's, it's hard to love something, if you're afraid of it, or if you feel like it can dominate you, 

Joe: Yeah. 

Brett: Or withdraw love from you and hurt you and that would make you go into shame. 

Joe: Yeah, and also, what also is interesting about it is, if you are trying to prevent shame in the future, it means that you think that you would do it, which means there's already something wrong with you, that you're already like, I'm not like, Okay, I better not kill anybody. That's not how, I'm not doing that because I might be ashamed if I kill somebody. The things that we are trying to prevent for shame are things that we think about ourselves as true and that are bad. So it's kind of like this self fulfilling prophecy too. 

Brett: So it interacts with identity there, 

Joe: Exactly 

Brett: Cause if we have the identity of I'm bad, or I'm wrong, or I'm selfish. And that has been that has been drilled into us for decades, then of course, we're going to be under the constant threat of feeling shame. 

Joe: Yeah. 

Brett: Yeah. Fascinating. 

Joe: So that's the pattern is that we go and we try, sometimes we have learned that obligation, feeling of obligation is going to get us the love slash approval that we want. But if you've paid attention in the moment, it actually takes the love away. Immediately. 

Brett: Yeah. How does that work? How does it not get us the love? 

Joe: Well, it might get us somebody liking us or somebody approving of us or somebody maybe even loving us, like, oh, wow, thank you so much for the Porsche, honey, and then this person has this feeling of love, it actually does work sometimes, which is why we do it. However, there is something like that, It's always kind of a watered down version of it, 

Brett: or a surrogate of it. 

Joe: Yeah, our surrogate but because somewhere in the back of our mind, we know we had to perform for it, which means that we're not getting love for who we are. We're getting love for our performance. 

‍Brett: Right? 

Joe: So never fully fulfilled. It's never like a wholesome meal. At best, it's like a Pepsi. 

Brett: Yeah. What's interesting about that is that even if we act out of obligation in such a way that we receive unconditional love from somebody, we won't be able to receive it as unconditional because we already placed all these conditions on it. 

‍Joe: Yeah, that's right. 

‍Brett: And performed for it. So they couldn't possibly actually love our authentic expression. They'd only be loving what we presented. 

‍Joe: Yeah. 

‍Brett: And we've already decided that what is lovable in us is the obligated part. 

‍Joe: Yeah, exactly. 

‍Brett: Yeah. 

Joe: You don't love me. You love me because I felt obligated to do something. 

‍Brett: Yeah. 

‍Joe: Right? Which the feeling of obligation in some level is also a way to say I'm doing something in authentic. Right? If I feel obligated to do something, it's like that means I'm not going to do it naturally. 

‍Brett: Right. 

‍Joe: Why would I feel obligated to breathe? I have to fucking breathe. 

‍Brett: Yeah. So the obligation is essentially a mask another layer between us and them that is in the way of that connection or just a longer path to connection and the connection is more fuzzy and distant through it.

‍Joe: I think you can equivalently say it's in the way of our connection, is it also means it's it stops us from loving. 

Brett: Yeah. Which is very opposite to how it's often viewed, we often when we're in the pattern of obligation, we see that the obligation is the only thing that's maintaining our connection. And we may even internally justify it as it's an intense form of love, you know, I have to do this because I love this person so much. And so what would you say would be behind that kind of an inversion? 

Joe: It's again, that we were taught as kids that we had to do something to be lovable. Right? That's where that comes from. If somebody was taught that they don't have to do something to be lovable, that they're lovable, just the way they are, their chances of feeling that sense of obligation are far reduced. Their chances of feeling guilt are far reduced or shame is far reduced. So I think that that's the main component of it. I think the other component of it is, it's like this, this idea that we have, and I know, I've said this on the podcast before, but the idea that we have that there is some sort of differentiation between doing what's best for me and doing what's best for you. And that somehow or another, I have to make a sacrifice, to be a good friend, or I have to make a sacrifice to do the right thing for you, rather than finding the thing that says, Oh, this is actually what I want. It's actually what's really deeply good for me. And it also corresponds to what's deeply good for you.

And that false binary that we had, that it's one or the other is also, I think, the mental reflection of how people get lost in the idea that I have to do something for somebody I love. 

Brett: Yeah, yeah. So what I'm seeing here now is that kind of two aspects. There's the obligation, and there's the threat of shame, or the shame in the obligation. And then there's also the confusion of our concept of love, which we talked about in another episode called how love gets confused. 

‍Joe: Yeah. 

‍Brett: And what we think is love is a conditional form of love, whatever kind of love we were given, and what we were taught would make us lovable. 

‍Joe: Yeah.

‍Brett: And so then that becomes the kind of love what we're seeking through the obligation. And again, it's another surrogate form of love. It's something that might feel good on some level, but it's gratifying something to our identity, rather than who we really are. 

‍Joe: Yeah. And just to be clear about this, I'm imagining somebody listening right now. And they're thinking, Oh, my gosh, I have to not feel obligation for somebody, I can't act out of obligation for it. I'm not saying that, like, feel free to act out of obligation. Just notice that you have to cut off your love to do it. Just notice that you have to stop loving the person to do it. 

‍Brett: Yeah. 

‍Joe: That's all. 

‍Brett: And so when, let's say somebody does this exploration, and they start to notice the places that they're cutting off love, what are some of the places that this might show up for them? Like, how does this work in business or with money? 

‍Joe: Yeah. 

‍Brett: Or action sports? Podcasting? Yeah.

‍Joe: In the rest of life? Yeah, well, I mean, let's take money, for instance, like if somebody feels like they have an obligation to make money, it doesn't allow you to love money. And there's like, probably 20 heads that just went like, love money? What the fuck are you talking about, Joe? Right? Like, and that's how much it entrenches, how much money becomes like an obligation? Because one of the things about obligations in general is they're oppressive, right? Like, most people aren't like, Oh, it would be awesome for me to have 20 new obligations this week.

And the reason is, because that feels oppressive and the idea that money is an obligation slash oppressive, is so prevalent that the idea of loving it is so confusing or so foreign. It's like, but I can love everything else, but just not money, right? And so then since you can't love the money, then like, why do you want it in your life? Like if you're, if money is this oppressive obligation, like that doesn't really motivate you to make it like you might say, Oh, my God, I want money, I want money, but you're not gonna actually make it if it’s this oppressive obligation thing that cuts off your love, like what like fuck, like, we're not wired to feel obligated and cut off from love. That's not like our wiring. So it's inadvertently pushing money away. And that's what happens with almost all forms of obligation is that sense of obligation in some level pushes it away, it pushes away the love that we want, it pushes away the money if we're feeling an obligation towards that. 

One of the things you said in podcasting, so if you feel an obligation to perform a certain way on this podcast, it's going to take away your love of doing the podcast, it's going to take away probably, to some degree, your performance on this particular podcast because part of what we're here doing is being in a certain way, it's not just talking words and making some sort of sense out of them.

And so, that's another thing that it doesn't and jobs, one of the places that I see it the most is with managers, or owners, and they just feel like this sense of obligation, like, oh, I have to do this for this person, I have to do this for the customers, I have my boss that I have to do this for, I have the board that I have to do this for. And it just takes their love of the business away. And when you look at the entrepreneurs that are just wildly successful, one of the things I notice about it is they don't have that sense of obligation, they have a sense of like, we're gonna get this done and we're doing this but they don't feel that it's, there's a feeling of I get to, I want to I want to build this business, there's not this feeling of, I have to keep the customers happy. So it also marks a certain level of success, because you're getting in touch with what inspires you to move forward instead of what oppresses you to move forward. And you get to stay in touch with yourself, you're not stagnating your emotions, you're not stagnating your love of the experience. And so you can go through it, you have a lot more resilience, if you love what you're doing, you have a lot more resilience when shit goes sideways, than if what you're doing is an obligation, then shit goes sideways, you're like, fuck it, I'm out. 

Brett: Yeah. 

‍Joe: And any entrepreneur who has been really successful, they will tell you, there was this moment, when I was going to quit when it all looked like shit. You know what I mean? And I kept going, and it's because they didn't feel that, they did feel a want, they did feel they weren't connected to their love of what they were. 

‍Brett: Yeah, something fascinating here also is you describe, so if the obligation is cutting us off from love, and love we've often described here as a deep welcoming, it's allowing, a letting in, then we're also not letting in the thing that we feel obligated to get. So if we’re obligated to get money, we're not actually allowing ourselves to have the money and then that leads to the craving. So often, if you have somebody who feels obligated to help everyone around them, they also often feel totally unsupported. And they're not letting in the love and support of others. And the same with money. If I'm obligated to make money, then I'm also setting myself up for feeling really scarce around it and craving it and then, you know, feeding the resentment cycle that it is some force in my life that I don't have some sense of control over or like whatever the whatever the story or the feeling is there. 

Joe: Yeah, it oppresses you. Yeah, I mean, that's the other thing just to know about that. Obligation is in its essence, a form of management. So there's not only not letting it in, there's a pushing away of it. Right? Things don't want to be managed, you know, like, wow, I really like my wife, because she manages me. Like it's not, it's not something that you hear very often, you might say, Oh, they're a good manager. But what that means is that they give you autonomy and appreciation. That's what a good manager, like so if I talked to him, they're like, I really love my manager. I'm like, Oh, tell me about the autonomy, tell me about the appreciation. Because that's usually, not always, but usually what's there. And so, but nobody really wants to be managed, we don't run towards things that are like trying to control us and trying to control us for a particular outcome. No, it doesn't feel particularly good. And the way this works in an interpersonal way is, I feel obligated to buy you something so that you love me. So I'm trying to manage your love for me, or I feel obligated to take care of you and make you happy so that you're not in a bad mood when I get home. Or I feel obligated, I was just working with a client the other day where it's like, it's gonna be good, we're all okay, we're gonna be okay, like managing that person's anxiety out of a sense of obligation, because they didn't want to have to sit with the person's anxiety. But all that does is increase the anxiety. So there's a way in which, like, our obligation is to manage something, like their good mood, we're pushing it away. Or if the obligation is trying to manage something, like someone loving us, we're pushing that away. And so if you look at the long haul of relationships, you know, that everybody's walking on eggshells, everybody feels obligated to do a certain thing all the time so that they can be loved in the marriage, just the love erodes. So long term, the love erodes, short term, the love isn't even available. It's just only in that medium frame of time, that you might get lucky every once in a while. 

Brett: Yeah, yeah, there's something that springs up for me, which is somewhat related to each of the things you've just mentioned. Kind of in my history, I got into air sports and skydiving and bass jumping and action sports and I loved it and I didn't want it to turn into an obligation. And so while there were a lot of other people who were like, I'm going to become a professional instructor in the sport but I was like, No, I don't want to do that. I don't want it to become an obligation and sap my love for the thing. So I always maintained my own separate business that was in tech doing something else. And that way I always had like a foot out the door, essentially, if I started to feel obligated. 

‍Joe: Yeah.

Brett: So that I could continue to love it. And on some level that really worked, it was quite smart of some part of me to not fall into the, you know, the treadmill of getting YouTube likes, and feeling obligated to an audience and making dangerous decisions from that place. And there's also a way that I kind of shut myself off from a lot of paths that I could have taken if I was just like, all in on doing what I loved, and allowing myself to make money doing it and be supported by it and have that be all in one basket. There's a different path that could have been available to me, had I had freedom across all of those different aspects here and not been afraid of obligation. 

‍Joe: Yeah, so that is, it's interesting, because obligation is an emotional experience. It's not a reality meaning, like, I know, when I did a lot of art and knew a lot of artists back in the 90s, some people had a chance to do it professionally. And then they felt obligated, and then their love for their art fell away and then they just kind of bit the dust. And some people were like, I fucking still love it. I love getting up and like playing rock and roll or I love the painting that I'm doing, I feel so lucky that I get to do it. And in that, even though there was an obligation to make an album and to go on tour, it never felt like an obligation, right, that it's that feeling of obligation. And so for me, the question to you would be, how do you imagine you could have continued in the air sports without feeling obligated, professionally? 

‍Brett: Yeah, one way one way to have done that would have been, or one way to have to have approached it would have been just, yeah, I'm gonna stay in my love for the sport. And if it means that I have opportunities to be professionally involved or sponsored, then I'll follow those to the extent that they feel good to me. And if they don't, then I won't. And, you know, just because somebody starts writing checks doesn't mean that they have control or management over me. 

‍Joe: Yeah. 

Brett: And, and if I make agreements, that doesn't mean that I'm obligated, in a sense, like you described, it's not a new reality for me. It's an agreement. 

Joe: Yeah. 

Brett: And I'm choosing to be there.

Joe: That so what you just said that there's two like really huge components exactly that, that allow an artist or air sports or whatever to do that is one is to put every one of those things through the frame of I get to choose this, do I want to do this? Or do I not want to do this? As soon as it’s like, I have to do it because I need the money. Right? So to just put it through the frame of do I want this, is a huge thing. And then the second thing is saying no, from time to time, really, really helps. I get very, very deeply in touch with my want when I draw boundaries, right? When I'm like, yeah, no, I can't work with you. I won't work in this company. It's just like I feel this tremendous sense of empowerment, of I'm doing what I want to be doing. Those as a great tools. The other thing about airports that I noticed is that there's also this other like different kind of obligation that I've noticed it’s fear generally. So you're at your exit point, you're looking off the side of this cliff or the side of this telephone pole or whatever, radio tower, whatnot. There's almost a feeling of obligation to jump for some people, I would assume. 

Brett: Oh, yeah, often that happens. 

Joe: Yeah. So curiosity strikes, like, how does this pattern play out there? 

Brett: Yeah. Yeah, on some level, it depends on what we feel the obligation to, I might feel the obligation to my jumping partners and the plans we have for the day and whether or not they're gonna have to wait for me at the car, if I walked down. It might be obligation to some expectation for myself. So there might be an obligation to like a parental figure or a mentor figure from childhood that I'm not recognizing. And as far as how that relates to love there is very clearly I'm cutting myself off from love for myself, if I make a decision that is taking me outside of my risk tolerance, in order to please somebody else, even if they're just an imagined entity in my head that doesn't actually exist, a representation of society and Bond movies, for example. 

Joe: Yeah. 

Brett: And I'm also not loving the people that I'm with if I am contributing to a group dynamic, where each of us is subtly taking a couple steps away from what's true for us to do what we project the group wants without really checking in on it. 

Joe: Yeah. So that's the other thing that I think is interesting is, in general, cutting off your experience of love, like the feeling of love, which is, I would argue, is a natural state, right? Like, there's just there's a very natural, expansive state, not to say anything else is unnatural, but there's this very, it's just a way to explain it is a very natural state, love. And when you cut yourself off from love, you have to constrict the musculature in the body, like it's less expansive, it's less open. And you also have to cut yourself off from other senses, right, because there's like this very kind of soft, open, expansive system. And my guess is not having done that kind of sport. But like, having done live performance and stuff like that. If I am in that expansive state, then I can react to and adjust for and be responsive to things in my environment, that I can't be if I'm in a more contracted more rigid, state. 

Brett: Yeah, absolutely. And in an air sports, in particular, you're flying your body through the air, and if you are rigid, if you're tense, you're far more likely to be kind of flopping around in a form that we call potato chipping. Like, you're dropping like a potato chip out of the sky. That's like the, you know, the worst case form of it. It's typically, like beginners do this while they're just learning. And the thing they need to learn to not do it is to be able to relax. So to the extent that you have these tensions, whether they're conscious or subconscious, that does inhibit your capacity to feel and notice and be present in the moment, and respond to what's happening. 

‍Joe: Yeah. 

‍Brett: And on a jump, or wingsuit flight that is extremely dangerous. And the same flight that might have been perfectly safe for you to make in a, in a relaxed state where you're, like you said, self loving and also in, like, welcoming of all of the sensations in your body and not tensing against them, the same jump can become far more dangerous, simply because there's obligation running in the back of your brainstem. 

Joe: Yeah. Yeah. I love that potato chipping. It's like, it's like seems like such a great way to describe somebody who's like caught in their head too. You know what I mean?

‍
Brett: Yeah or caught in a decision like, should I buy the car or not buy the car? Like flip flopping? You know, that's another expression of the same thing often. 

‍Joe: That's cool. Yeah, so I think that the reason I love the question so much is because people often like put obligation towards, like somebody else but there's an obligation that you have towards yourself. Obligation towards business, obligation towards money, obligation towards art, you know, it happens a lot of places, and the place we haven't really touched on is the obligation to self. So if you have a critical voice in your head, and like our thing, we have an episode on this, you're constantly telling yourself to do something, you're often doing it out of obligation, because you're like, not really questioning the voice in your head, you're taking that all on and, and the same thing happens there, you have to cut off love from your self, you have to cut off self love, if you're acting out of obligation towards the self abuse self, the self management. 

‍Brett: Yeah. 

‍Joe: So it's the same thing. And you're pushing yourself away from yourself, and you're not able to accept the love that's actually there. So it's all of that also happens just in your relationship to yourself.

‍Brett: Yeah, that makes me want to ask, if we were completely free of obligation how would we know if we're acting from love rather than some other pattern? And if people are often like, well, if I wasn't obligated, I would just be selfish, self serving, I wouldn't help people and that's one of the things that people will say to themselves to keep gripping on to the pattern. And I'm curious to what extent is there some wisdom though, because if we had no obligation whatsoever, how would we know? 

‍Joe: No sense of emotional obligation, would we? 

‍Brett: Yeah. 

‍Joe: What I'm hearing you say is if you had no sense of emotion, the emotion of obligation would you cease to act in anything but radical self interest? 

‍Brett: Or how would you know that what is there in the wake of that is love and not another kind of confused pattern around love? 

‍Joe: Yeah. So as a great question, I mean, I would love to jump inside of like a dog's head for a minute and like, see if they actually say I really should do this as a form of obligation, because many other mammals take tremendous amount of action without any sense of obligation. So I definitely don't think it's required for action. But then there's a question of, would I be nothing but self interested? 

What I find interesting is that if you scan the world, and you're like, Okay, who has the deepest sense of obligation, like people feel like really obligated, really obligated to be good? Or to be smart? Or to go to the job or to make the money? And are they like, the paragons of love? Like, you know, so I think there's just some evidence out in the world that shows that they're not particularly correlated.

The feeling of obligation and or getting things done, particularly like in the case of the CEO that we spoke about. 

‍Brett: Or busyness, being busy, you can be extremely busy and not feel obligated.

‍Joe: Absolutely. Right. 

‍Brett: Yeah. 

‍Joe: So, and I would also argue like, this is a great intellectual conversation to have, but emotionally you have to cut off love to allow for obligation. So if you think that what's going to make you a bad person is cutting off the experience of loving somebody, then like I would say, go experiment, find out if it's true, find out if you walk around like allowing yourself to feel a deep love for everybody, if you become a, if you become a worse selfish, self involved person. Like this is back to the selfishness episode, that we talked about where it's just like that idea of selfishness is just something that our parents, whoever told us as a way to make us not listen to ourselves and do what they wanted. 

‍Brett: Yeah. This is making me think of a conversation I had with my brother over the holidays and he was describing having a family cause you know, I'm on the verge of potentially having a family. And he said, something I've noticed is that. The more busy I become with family, with work, with business, the more I just have been finding myself enjoying it. Like the more I love my life, the more busy I become. And that really hit me as a reality, somebody can live in, but also as like something coming from my brother, from my family. And, you know, of course, dissolving some of my perceptions that I've had in the past around, what it would mean to have kids and settle down rather than gallivant around the world and jump off of cliffs and party all the time. And there's no part of him that felt, to me, to be obligated in a reality of obligation, as he said that, but what I felt was, it's just a deep love.

‍Joe: Yeah. Yeah. There's another experience of this, like, I remember this in college. I also remember this, I see this with my eldest, like, if she's got a little bit of work to do around stuff, then she's like, feels obligated to do it, more likely to feel obligated to do it, more likely to wrestle with the doing of it. But if she's stacked, if she's like, okay, I'm taking four AP classes, and I have to like, apply for college, which is all just what happened, then all she has is just do the next thing. There's no time for the sense of obligation. And she'll say, Oh, it feels so empowering. It feels so powerful. I feel so confident. And to some degree it's because literally there was no time to like feel obligated because there was no time to like back off. You just were doing one thing. Obviously that's not sustainable to be healthy for an extended period of time, but there is this rhythm that's important. And part of a good rhythm is that there isn't, you know, there's not a lot of room for obligation, for that feeling of obligation, which often happens as a way to try to motivate ourselves out of a procrastination. Right? We're giving ourselves the obligation as a way to try to motivate ourselves to manage ourselves.

‍Brett: Yeah, it seems like what you just said, choice can play into as well, where if we are thinking about all the different things we might do, then the option that we chose or we find ourselves in can often feel far more obligated or will feel more obligation around it if we're avoiding feeling the fear of missing out on everything else. And so there seems to be something about the, kind of what people describe as a tragedy of choice. 

‍Joe: Oh, interesting. Yeah. 

‍Brett: That seems to be related too. 

‍Joe: I agree. Yeah. It's also why the no become such a powerful and empowering thing is that that no, because it's, you're cutting off that choice or you're making the choice and so it's not like I'm confronted with it. It's I've made it. 

‍Brett: Yeah, one thing that no does is bring that back into our own agency. So I don't get to say that I'm being dragged around by life, I'm choosing it. And so I can choose to do something different next time. So, and there's something scary about that empowerment also to take that responsibility.

‍Joe: It's very alive. 

‍Brett: Yeah. 

‍Joe: Right. It's very not cut off. Obligation is very like deadens it. It is cut off. 

‍Brett: So we've talked about obligation being a way that people cut themselves off from love. They cut off the love. What are other ways that people cut themselves off from love? 

‍Joe: Wow. I think the easiest way to think about it is, maybe I'm wrong, I would have to test this theory, but let's put it out there as a theory, which is, any strategy you use to get love, in a way cuts yourself off from love. So I'm going to try to be powerful to get love. I'm trying to be, trying in itself is a way to kind of cut off from love. So I think that might be a really great, I'm just checking to see if that's true. I don't see a way that that's not true. So there's a way, and the way I would describe it, this gets a little bit weird, but I love that.

One of my favorite phrases is the search for light requires darkness. The search for love requires lack of love, right? You actually have to cut yourself off from love instead of see the love that you have in this moment to recognize the love. And in a weird way, I would say that that's like A way to describe potentially the entire journey of unconditional love is that you think that it's not there. You think you have to do something to earn it. You think you have to like eat a certain thing or act a certain way or have a certain amount of money or whatever it is, your particular thing is. And then at some point there's this just recognition that nope, love's just available. It doesn't require anything besides not cutting it off. But if you're looking for it, then you cut it off. So I would say that's, that would be the, and so probably there's a thousand different ways to do that. So there's a thousand ways to describe how we cut ourselves off from love. 

‍Brett: Yeah. I like the way you just described that path as the looking is the cutting ourselves off from love. And I imagine to get back to that love, there's the grief, grieving that that's been the case all along. 

‍Joe: Oh, yeah, there is. And just to be clear, there's a difference between looking and assuming it's there, like, I'm not saying like, Oh, see the love that's there is not a looking. It's like, it's when it becomes in time when it becomes, I have to do X, Y, and Z for love. I have to blank for love rather than, Oh, I can just see the love that's available. 

‍Brett: Even I have to find myself or I have to love myself more. 

‍Joe: Exactly. I have to be awake or whatever the fuck it is 

‍Brett: Awesome. Thank you, Joe. 

‍Joe: What a pleasure. Great conversation. 

‍Brett: Thank you everybody for listening. If you like this episode, please share it with a friend. Find us on X at artofaccomp and Joe and I also have accounts up there and check out the show notes. We are going to link to some of the other episodes that we referenced. And I hope you enjoyed the show. Take care. 

‍Joe: Awesome. All right bye.