Are You Secretly Self-Sabotaging? w/ Gary John Bishop

0:04This is the Ed Milet Show. All right, welcome back to the show, everybody. My guest today is somebody whose work I have been a fan of for years, and I have wanted to meet him. One of the great things about this show is I've met most of the people whose work has made the biggest impact on my life. And I've got to tell you, this man is at the top of my list. His work hits you right between the eyes, and I would categorize it as brilliant. I just think the way he phrases things and comes right at you with truth is very unique. And he's also been on the list of most requested guests for quite a while.

0:39The book that first impacted me was Un-F Yourself. I'll give you the clean version. And the book that he has out right now is Grow Up, Becoming the Parent Your Kids Deserve. And as I read this book, it wasn't just really about being a parent. It was actually really about being a human being, which makes you a better parent. So that if you're not a parent and you're listening to this, trust me, every minute of this will apply to you. and if you are a parent, there'll just be an added bonus because this man's work will impact how you're raising your children. Gary John Bishop, welcome to the show, brother.

1:08Ed, it's great to be with you. Thank you, brother. It's good to have you too. So I read your stuff and I'm like, I got to read that again. Crap. It's like it hits you, right? And I want to start out kind of because it leads to the parenting thing, even though I think the vast majority of the day just applies to being human and not just being a parent, being a functional person. You said, You live your adult life either as a reflection of your childhood or in reaction to it. I just think that's really a great place to start. What do you mean when you say that? I know what it means for me, but are we all sort of acting out of some place from our childhood every single day, even to this day?

1:46Yeah. I mean, if you were to look in any area of your life that doesn't work, there is some echo from your childhood playing out there. And it's not always obvious because, you know, your childhood isn't necessarily what you remember. It's a lot of what you forget. And so you're shaped by it in ways that when you start to dig into it, become really surprising. And I think that's the fascinating part of it, at least for me. How did that play out for you? I mean, I know you talked about this situation in the book. It struck me. I think you were four years old. and the fact that you remember this is compelling to me, but I think your parents were fighting.

2:27You're trying to get them to stop, and why don't you take it from there? I think this is just a good example of that. Well, I think, you know, look, if you ask your average person, tell me every moment of your life, they can't tell you, but they'll tell you some interesting bits. But, you know, for years and years, you know, I used to kind of grind away at me, like, why? why do people remember that part and not all those other parts and it wasn't until i started to get more deeper into my own development that i that i started to see them like little milestones or incidents and um and so that that incident as a four-year-old was fascinating to me like i remember the feeling i remember that experience in the book i describe it and the feeling for me in that moment was i had no power i had no i couldn't change it i was so i was overcome with this and you got to get for a little four-year-old this is like wild right but my experience in that moment was like i'm weak i can't i can't do it i couldn't stop them from arguing or fighting and um that that that moment isn't just a moment for a child it's like a it's like a sea change in their experience of themselves i'd never experienced myself that way before it was new and um and then so those little things just sink into the background and they become what you call ontological decisions they become decisions that you've made now that you're gonna have to now handle because they they sink into the background and basically become your truth if you like and that was certainly one of mine that notion of your truth that's why by the way I said whether you have children or not this is about being a functioning human to me I've never read someone's work I don't think Gary where the way you said it I want to write down and remember it like I find myself wanting to quote you more than most people and here's something you said about that very thing on the past this will rock a lot of you and by the way I agree with you after I read the book.

4:37You said, the past wins one way or the other. And then you went on to say at another point, you say, you are not shaped by the past itself. You're shaped by what you said about it. Meaning to some extent, this past thing is a little bit of an illusion to some extent. Am I right about that? Because I totally, completely in my 50s now realized the profound truth in that right so like like this is why this is why this book had to be written like i couldn't put my head on the pillow for another night with uh getting this book out there because i keep hearing all this stuff about generational chains and you know parents oh i'm going to break a generational chain and i'm like you are the generational chain everything that falls out of your mouth you are the generational chain and if you want to break anything it starts with you and so i wanted to people see what we're trying to break with generational chains if you like it's circumstances so we're looking back old circumstances gone those circumstances are not going to happen again what we fail to see is the mechanism that runs underneath those circumstances from that generation to this generation to the next generation.

5:57So you're not working on the chain. You're working on the oil. You're making no effort at the chain. The chain itself continues because, like, if you go back to that example I used in the book when I was four years old, my parents had no sense that that's what was going on in my head. And I had no sense at four years old that I was making a life-changing decision because we don't relate to ourselves at four that way. I'm playing with toys and I'm having a good time and I'm doing all the things that a four-year-old would do. But in that moment, that experience, boom, it hit me like a wall. And so as parents, this is what I wanted people to get from this book.

6:40Like you said, whether you're a parent or not, you have to know that you had experiences in your childhood that you attached to various incidents and you live like it's about the incidents and it's not. It's about the experience that came out of it. It's the ontologic decision. It's whatever you decided, whatever you changed in that moment, that compounded and lives on with you as an adult. So, you know, we've got our eye on all their own things and I wanted people to start to see, like, you have to look at your life, your childhood, your parents' life, their childhood, And if you have children, maybe you'll get a little insight onto what's actually going on with them, no matter how hard you think you might be trying to guide them another way.

7:28I told you, everybody. I'm telling you. His work hits you. By the way, the way he writes, too, he doesn't let you escape you. Every time you try to escape you, this guy's pulling you back to you. And I love that. It's like there's just no BS to this. And so I want to stay right on this incident, this incident when you were four and this absolute truth that you're talking about. I always say it's not the events of our life that define us. It's the meaning we attach to the event. And one of the difficult things when we're a child is we don't have the emotional makeup or experiences to attach. We're not really choosing our meaning when we're capable.

8:05We're choosing the meaning when we're incapable. And so do you then recommend somebody question their past? I know that you do, but I'm going to let you answer it. Do they question the past? And then are you having them evaluate an incident and then try to attach a new meaning to it so that they behave differently in the current moment because they attach a different meaning to an event? Well, what I'd like people to see is that your mechanism for adding to a situation exists to this day. Okay, so it still exists. What's a mechanism mean to you? What do you mean by mechanism? So it's like your automatic wiring.

8:44Got it. Your default is Heidegger, the German philosopher, he would have called it your default ways of being. Okay. So the ways that you are by default. And, you know, people don't wake up in the morning and decide to be themselves. They wake up and that self is there. Yes. Right. And it's a set self. It's not a malleable self. It's like this. That's me that I am. now now when if you if you hang around little ones long enough especially like that age group like two three four there's no real self there it's just like this big expression right there's no there's no set way but anybody who's a parent will tell you they literally watch their children become set right they literally watch them like the age of seven age of 12 age of 14 and then suddenly they're just like that way and they're always that way they were always and and they're always that way as a compensation to whatever they felt they had to overcome that's why it's so testing by the way because you know like people can get through really really turbulent times in their childhood and come out with a whole different thing than somebody who went through a very similar experience they come out with a whole different thing why because they don't come out of the experience what they come out with is whatever they told themselves about it so and it becomes so tightly intertwined that whatever i told myself about it and the incident there's no distinction between those two for me as a human being they're the same thing right so again for instance in that moment i'm four years old i'm watching my parents argue it's about me i'm not observing that like this is about them i'm observing that like this is about me like i came to some some self-determination in that moment what i want people to understand is if they look back in their own childhood what do you think those were just random moments and nothing came out of it no you're the living embodiment of what you decided in those moments.

11:01And by the way, when you make that kind of decision, that's why those memories are so fresh, so clear, that rest of your life is about those little memories getting reactivated, those same emotions coming up and getting applied to situations. As I like to say, you know, people live their lives in little vignettes of fighting the same battle over and over and over, and then they die.

11:26Gary, you're on to such profound work here. As a friend, as a brother, I want to encourage you to continue to dig deeper into this than that there's other, but I'm serious. I've done some work in this myself and started to write about it, and this is new, and this is profound. We'll talk about those three stages in a second. but it's why by the way a child can have the same exact two parents one child takes different meanings from the situations they were raised in and they have two totally different lives i'm raised by an alcoholic father and uh it ends up that all four of us turned out pretty darn okay but usually you'll see one of the children goes on to be a high performer the other one ends up being an alcoholic themselves same exact environment same situations different meanings were attached.

12:15And then that notion that you just said, brother, about that you're fighting the same battle over and over again with different circumstances, but the same battle. Listen to what he says in the book. I tell you guys, I don't ever quote books and interviews, Gary. I don't do this. But I want you to hear what he said here. Every day of your life, I wrote this down for me, bro, not for the interview. This is stuff for me, but I'm going to have it in the interview. Every day of your life, you find evidence for and then confirm in your crevices of your mind, quote you. You talk like you, walk like you, think like you, and react like you.

12:47Every single day, you are justifying you. And one of the main ways you do it is by reaching back into your memories to satiate that beast. Therefore, the past isn't just the past as evidence for you being the character that you've become to this day. The past wins one way or the other. Brother, are you serious. That is so good. I just want you to elaborate on that a little bit. Well, well, you know, look, when I say people are being self-indulgent, right? It sounds kind of narcissistic, which is another word that just can't stand. But anyway, but it sounds like it's just, you know, like self-indulgent.

13:24What I mean is we indulge self. That is we get up every day and we respond to what it wants, right? So we respond to its upsets and we respond to its desires and we respond to its quote unquote needs. So it's like, I really invite people to get like, who you are is more like a venue for something to show up. And what shows up every day are the same noises and you just go along with it. You finally see that you're the venue in which all of this is happening. And with a little bit of like a shift, like just a little shift in the way you think, you could get a little bit more observant of that self, actually see what it wants to do and understand it in those terms.

14:18And I look at it more like it's just something I got to be responsible for rather than something I'm fighting against. Like either it's going to talk or I'm going to talk. And, you know, I've heard all the shit that it wants to say, you know, I'm bored by it now, you know. Stay on that. I, man, bro, I got to tell you, it's one of these conversations I'll remember a long time. I often say, and if you don't mean it this way, correct me and say it your way. I often say just the awareness of the pattern of me being me, it loses a lot of its power over me when I'm just in awareness. Oh, I'm doing that thing again.

14:55I'm doing me again. I'm doing that thing I do. and what you said is then that former you the way you just said that is not the voice that i can now choose the new voice is that what you mean by just being stepping back and getting above yourself a little bit and going oh i'm doing that thing i do again i'm being me again that awareness allows you to then make a conscious choice as to how to behave or change rather than to keep responding unconsciously. Right. So awareness isn't a stage that you arrive at, right? Awareness is a constantly unfolding phenomenon. Like as you're going through a day, you get aware of one default response and shift in that moment.

15:38I mean, I really believe, let's not believe this, I really want people to get this. In that moment, that shift that you make, you have literally changed the trajectory of your life in a moment. Now, because your life would have kept going along that path and you just were like, nope, we're not doing that, right? So imagine being someone who manages, I mean, to catch yourself a handful of times a day, just catching yourself to go in a direction that you know you typically do. And you're like, you know what? Not today. I'm not doing that. Now, when I wrote my first book, that was a nine-month, ten-month process of catching myself 30 times a day because the self that I am had no interest in writing that book and had zero interest in you reading it because, you know, I'd be open to scrutiny and judgment and ridicule and la, la, la, la, la.

16:35So the kind of self that I had become was going to make that a long process that eventually I would give up on and just say it's not worthwhile. And I would tell myself some nonsense like, I'm going to go in another direction. I see something else I think would be more powerful than writing a book. And all I did in that process was just catch, catch, catch, catch. No, not today I'm going to write. No, not today I'm going to write. And I wouldn't call it necessarily a struggle, but it was definitely like it was the first time I feel as if I'd really exercised that muscle and producing something that went beyond my wiring.

17:19I relate very deeply to that, very deeply. And it's just the last four or five years for me that I've done that. One more thing on the past I want to cover just because I want you to elaborate on it because this stuff, you know, to be honest with you today, guys, you're listening to a conversation between he and I that I wanted to have. And you said you are not a direct product of your past. And while it's true, you were born, thrown into an already existing conversation of family and values or morality and so on. You are in fact a predictable, repetitive, emotional expression of what you have come to believe is true about all of that past.

17:56And no, what you've come to believe about it, this is not the same as actually what happened. so you have a right you're saying you have a flawed recollection of the past because why this matters as a parent because you're you're imprinting on your children all the time it matters as a human being to then understand that imprinting that you are now reflexively unconsciously living through now you have a terrible recollection of the past like terrible and i know a lot of people are oh no i still remember the smell look here's what neuroscience I'll tell you, every time you recollect a memory, you don't recollect the memory.

18:37You recollect the last memory you had of that memory. Yes. And that's how your brain works. So now if you're someone in your 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s, 70s, if you recollect a memory right now, you're recollecting a memory of a memory of a memory of a memory of a memory of a memory of a memory of a memory of a memory of a memory all the way back. so all the times that you've recollected that memory how many tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of times down the line you are that's how far you are away from that memory and again if you use that example when i was a four-year-old the memory isn't so much about the parents the memory is more like for me in that moment it was i'm weak but just as easily by the way in that moment a child might have said my mother's week or my father's week and set themselves on that pathway therefore through the rest of that childhood it's a bit gathering evidence for see there he or she goes again there they are again there they are again there they are again that's why that's why when people you know like you just gave an example earlier a family of maybe three or four all have a different experience and you shared that you thought you know you're an alcoholic father and you know i'm one of those i don't call him an alcoholic anymore by the way i call him you know somebody who drank to the degree that he couldn't manage his life anymore that's that simple alcoholics a whole world that i don't want to dwell in but but when i look at that childhood you could get a child coming out of that childhood and saying my father was selfish and i hated him You have another child coming out of that family saying, I love my dad.

20:18Okay. So which one's the truth? Well, for the individual, they're both the truth, but they're not the truth. Yes, that's right. Truth is he did what he did and that's it. That's right. What's added to all of that is what people have to live with. Yep. Guys, this is how you change your life is these realizations. You're you're a you're a Accumulation of patterns of behaviors and thoughts And in order to change your life, it requires evaluation of those things And the way that this is worded to me is is the most profound I have to I have to tell you that for me blame has been a major Destroyer of my own life and you write pretty hardcore about blame in the book So once you have these memories, by the way, as a parent, this stuff matters.

21:10This thing he just said about repeating the memories, one thing I just want to say, that can happen at any age. I've had friends of mine that have gotten a divorce. We've all seen this before. You knew them when they were married. You knew them when they got divorced. And one of them has a repetitive version of their memory, of a memory, of a memory, of a memory, of a memory. And you see them 10 years later. And the other one, then you have them get together and they go, I didn't do that. I didn't say that. I didn't mean that. And they both in their own world are right, except both of them are actually wrong.

21:34to your point is there was just a behavior that took place. So let's talk about blame. Whoa, boy, here we go. You say blame creates a sort of safety. Blame is a catalyst for keeping you tied to what has been. Blame to blame is to perpetuate the past, to keep it going. And you're an effing blame machine. Ouch. So what do we do about that? And why does it matter? You know, I kind of hung up with a whole notion of blame for a number of years. Like, it's a word that, by the way, as a culture now, it's a firestorm we're in when it comes to blame. Right. So I know people have got a lot of ideas about, you know, why society is the way that is.

22:27in my view, right, again, just some random Scottish guy, but in my view, the propensity for blame is wildly out of control, like wildly out of control. And we have fed that beast, by the way. We are feeding it and eating from the same trough. And so you cannot, cannot experience true freedom from the past and keep your blame. You can't. Now, again, I know people will say, well, oh, no, no, that's not true. I mean, I'm free of that incident. And I'll say, that's funny. Why are you bringing that up? That's good. And they're bringing it up because they have to continue, continually remind themselves that they're over it or they're past it.

23:23Yeah. Now, I know this to be true. Not only this is I'm not speaking from personal, just personal experience. In fact, my personal experience really only aligns with what I've discovered in, you know, years in coaching tens of thousands of people and going deep into the background of their lives. and when you go in there you'll you'll find the same undercurrent just running through it time after time after time and and how does it tie into the past well it's quite as simple if you had to you know we talked about my experience when i was a four-year-old imagine somebody else is a seven-year-old and their experience of an incident or two incidents or four incidents with their father is that he doesn't love me he only cares about himself, that gets married.

24:16That goes through life, gets married, and has children. What gets married? I'm not loved gets married. And I'm not loved has children. And so what does it do? It does what I'm not loved would do, prove that it's not loved. It's not the opposite. It's not like, oh, you know what I mean? Surround myself with love. No, I'm going to diminish the way that people love me. I'm going to make it hard for people that love me. I'm going to prove that that decision was true because I've developed some sort of persona or personality that allows me to grind up against it and prove it over time. So that blame actually has now become so embedded in me that I identify with a blame.

25:05And when I say I identify with that I say the persona that I am identifies without blame now I've had people come to me and tell me my life is miserable this is terrible my relationships don't work and that I'm coming with this and I'll say okay well let's look at who you're blaming and we'll dive in there and I'll say yeah you're blaming your father you need to let him off the hook and then they'll say no they'll literally argue for their misery and then what they'll do is there's got to be another way and i said there is no other way this is that let's get at the source of something here and and it's very very testing for people people fight for their misery people fight for their right to hang on to their blind because they feel as if somehow letting go of that but maybe let somebody else off the hook so they'd rather grind it out in their own toxicity then then reach for freedom i think you hit on it at another part in the book i want to ask you this.

26:01I think they feel like they're letting go a part of themselves when they do that. It's become such a familiar part of me, that thing you called you, this blame, this pattern, this belief, whether I've overcome it or I haven't. I think that holding onto that, letting it go, you feel like a sense of loss of who you believe you are. It's part of your identity. It's part of how you get through life. It's part of how you get the emotions. We move in our lives towards what we're most familiar with. And even if we have emotions that aren't healthy, we become addicted to them. And we're going to find a way on a damn daily or weekly basis to get those emotions one way or the other.

26:32And you are not going to tell me I don't get to get my crack. You actually call blame in the book crack. It's the crack of emotions. And I think you're onto something there because I actually think we become addicted to these emotions, even if they don't feel good anymore, because they're our version of crack and we're not going to let go of them because then we lose part of ourself. There are, there are families who don't, that no longer exist because they couldn't settle on who was to blame. Period. It's a shame. By the way, there are companies who no longer exist because in that company they couldn't figure out who was to blame.

27:12This addiction to blame, most things that end, you've nailed it in the book. You actually say something that I love because it helped it lose its power over me. you say there is nothing remarkable about shame it's it's like it's almost like this badge of honor that we shame ourselves with there's nothing remarkable about shame nothing extraordinary about guilt and absolutely zero personal power and blame but then you actually take it a step further and and that includes blaming yourself right there's a lot of us right now that come to the show today listening and there's a little yeah we blamed a lot of that's that's the addictive part It's your fault.

27:50But political does that very well. No, you should blame them. No, it's whichever party allows you to blame someone else for your life. You'll choose that one that feels more reasonable to you. That's that's that's a biggie. But there's also and I almost consider these like the good people. you know what I mean like to me like a weak person you know who I don't really care for they blame other people almost to me like the good people blame themselves you know what I mean and that but but there's no more nobility in that in your point in the book either but I almost don't you feel that way there's almost like a redemptive social quality almost or a morality to not blaming others but blaming yourself and then you just carry that crap you carry that crap through your life the rest of you.

28:32I blame myself for the failure of my marriage. I blame myself for the fact that I've gained weight. I blame myself. And there's a difference between blame and ownership and accountability, right? There's a difference there. I'd love for you to talk about that. Well, the guy who's flying my plane to LA, I want me to fly it responsibly rather than he's to blame for it. So there's two different pilots up front when that's happening, right? I want the guy who's just responsible and accountable and owns it and owns all of it, right, and can fly the plane with that ownership. But self-blame is the biggest get-out-of-jail-free card you can ever play yourself.

29:25And people don't like to hear that one, right? Because it's like, you don't know. It's like, no, I do know. I actually do know. And I want you to understand, like, this is how you get off the hook for being on the hook for living a great life. You get to say, oh, well, you know, I'm still punishing myself. Okay. And anytime somebody gets himself to that point, like, there's one question you have to ask yourself. If you're blaming somebody else, what are you getting out of it? Just really look, like, what are you getting out of it? And if you're blaming yourself, what are you getting out of it?

30:01What does it justify? What does it allow you to perpetuate? What does it allow you to keep doing in the name of what? And you'll see it. There's so little introspection with us at times because, I mean, there can be too much introspection. If you're grinding a hole introspectively, then you've got to loosen that up a bit. But that is a balance. There's a nice balance where you can actually start to, you know, look a little bit, learn a little bit, step out into the new with what you've learned. But all too often, we're just, I mean, this is why some things when I talk to people, they're shocked at what's coming out of my mouth.

30:44And I'm like, well, you know, you should be a little more shocked with what's going on in your head than what's coming out of my mouth. Because I'm just joining the dots together for you. you're the one who wrote this story. Yeah. That's why I said when I introduced you, brother, like you, you don't let them escape themselves. And I think one of the reasons you don't is that you're trying not to escape yourself. And we haven't even talked about parenting yet, although all these things imprint on parenting. And we ought to jump there for a second on why all this matters. But everybody, if you're now, we were 30 % of the way through this interview or 50 % of the way through, if you're not doing some of that self-reflection right now, please start what are some of my patterns?

31:26What are some of the meanings I've taken away from my life? To your point, does it serve me to believe these things? Does it serve me to blame this person? Does it serve me to blame myself? Start to live more consciously rather than unconsciously. Start to evaluate and be aware. And the reason that it matters as a parent, as I often say, Gary, most things with our children are caught, not taught. They're catching things from us all the time. You make the point in the book that we should know, but we just forget all the time. And man, I wish I could get a do over after reading your book, to be honest with you, but it's how much as a parent you're truly being observed by that child.

32:05And I just think sometimes we're so busy in our own emotions and stress and making sure they get fed and off to school and they did their homework and these other things that we're not aware of their, the subtle observances that they're making all the time about us right and that's that's actually part of the development of a human being when when at the beginning of your life your very young life you're a player you're in it right but once you start to hit like 10 11 12 there's a shift and the shift is now i'm watching it so i'm kind of in it but i'm watching it and i'm watching the players around me more now than I ever watched them before.