Transforming Negative Self-Talk into Positive Action

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Speaker 5 Hello, everyone, and welcome back to the show. Today, we have another tremendous episode for you, a conversation with Hilary Silver.
Hilary is a psychotherapist turned mastery coach.

Speaker 5 She helps, in particular, women find their best self, get unstuck, and crush their goals. This conversation goes all over the place.

Speaker 5 It's absolutely wonderful, especially if you are a high ambition, high growth, high goal oriented person who feels like they found themselves in a stuck position. You're going to love this one.

Speaker 5 Hillary's got a great Instagram, great podcast. We'll have links to all that in the show notes.
I also want to introduce you to two new resources.

Speaker 5 The first is the announcement of my latest book, The Civilized Savage, which I'm co-authoring with Chris Paradiso.

Speaker 5 The subtitle is From Mediocrity to Mastery in an Age of Cultural Conformity, where we are talking about how to think independently, how to harness that ambition, how to put that drive into practice while still fitting into our community, our society, and being the type of person that we need to be for our family.

Speaker 5 Go to civilizedsavagebook.com. Put your name, email in, you get updates, resources, as well as access to a free guide on the 29 individuals that we were showcasing that embody.

Speaker 5 civilized savagery throughout history, as well as our favorite quotes from those individuals. Get on that list.
CivilizedSavageBook.com. It's in the description.

Speaker 5 The second resource is a new e-book that I put out, completely free. It's like 40 pages long.
It's a deep, robust seven ways to make better decisions using AI. We have to get out in front of AI.

Speaker 5 We need to do more with these tools than just create marketing language and make emails easier. AI is a powerful tool.

Speaker 5 And as leaders, executives, entrepreneurs, we can harness it to make more consistent, positive outcome decisions. This guide is your resource.
Go to ai.riyanhanley.com.

Speaker 5 Also, we'll have that link in the show notes as well. I love you for listening to this podcast and let's get on to the reseal.

Speaker 5 Let's go.

Speaker 5 Yeah, make it look, make it look, make it look easy. Hey, stand-up guide on 10 toes.
Big body pull-up in a range roll. I could chase a whole game on this.

Speaker 5 It's awesome to have you on the show. Thank you so much for taking the time.

Speaker 5 This is exciting, and I think there's so many things I want to talk to you about. So I'm excited to get into it.

Speaker 6 Well, thanks for having me. I'm excited too.
Let's do it.

Speaker 5 The first thing that popped off at me when I was researching our conversation was

Speaker 5 your work around getting unstuck. And I, you know, my work, I've been an entrepreneur, been a number of different things.

Speaker 5 I currently do some coaching for executives. And what I find is

Speaker 5 they come with all different types of problems that are unique to whatever their thing is.

Speaker 5 But if I were to boil it down, like in my own head, and I don't know, you know, it's not like I'm sharing this with them necessarily. they're just stuck on something and

Speaker 5 one i guess what i want to better understand from you is like how do we get stuck like why does this even happen like so many people are stuck on something it may be how to relate to their spouse or their work or a friend or a community or whatever they just they just can't seemingly move forward how do we find ourselves in this position.

Speaker 5 Why does this even happen to us?

Speaker 6 That's a big question.

Speaker 6 And I, I think what I've come to know after helping people with this, I'm older than I look. So I'm like, for 25 years, I've been helping people with their psychology.

Speaker 6 And to me, we get stuck because of our brains, because of our minds, because of how we're talking to ourselves, what we think about ourselves, what we believe about ourselves.

Speaker 6 It's all relationship with self. And we get stuck in this analysis paralysis.
We don't believe in ourselves. We doubt ourselves.
We question ourselves. We look over our shoulder at everything.

Speaker 6 And we're afraid that because we don't trust ourselves, we're afraid that we're going to mess it up. We're afraid we're not going to do it right.
We're going to get judged.

Speaker 6 There's a lot of fear that comes from not

Speaker 6 trusting yourself.

Speaker 6 And so that's really the work that I like to do is to really go to the root of all of it.

Speaker 6 Because whether, like you said, whether it's you're stuck in something in personal life or relationship or business, Looking outside of ourselves for the answer is not the solution.

Speaker 6 We are always our own biggest problem. And that is the quickest way to get unstuck is to be willing to look no further than the mirror and ask yourself, how am I creating this?

Speaker 6 That's the best thing I could tell anybody.

Speaker 5 It seems like

Speaker 5 social media, our society, et cetera, would tell us or wants us to think differently about that, right?

Speaker 5 It's, you know, you're not feeling good about yourself, go buy a new car or, you know, you're not feeling good about yourself, update your kitchen or, you know, whatever. You know,

Speaker 5 how do we catch ourselves? I completely agree with you. And I think you're 100% right.
And I, I, but I feel like we, we struggle to catch ourselves in those moments, right?

Speaker 5 We, we get down some Instagram death scroll and all of a sudden we think if we buy this online, this one online course will change our entire lives.

Speaker 5 And like, how do we, how do we start to pull ourselves in and actually be self-aware of what you just said?

Speaker 6 Yeah, well, I think, first of all, a lot of people give us that advice, therapists, well-meaning family and friends, even coaches sometimes, because they want you to feel better.

Speaker 6 But feeling better doesn't mean you're doing better and it doesn't mean that you're being better.

Speaker 6 And so it's not helpful. It's a temporary short-term fix to pat you on the back and tell you that you're great.

Speaker 6 Intellectually, we all do know that we're great or in a good moment or in a strong moment where we know we're great. It's the deep down self-doubt, naysayer,

Speaker 6 fear of failure, not believing that we have what it takes. It's our belief system that's in the way.
And so

Speaker 6 my whole approach, while I get a lot of haters for it, I also change a lot of lives for it. The right people understand what I'm trying to do, which is you have all the answers.

Speaker 6 You're the problem, and that means you're the solution. So if you're willing to actually just take responsibility for how you may be getting in the way here,

Speaker 6 you can fix it fast. You don't have to be stuck for long.
And it's literally asking

Speaker 6 okay i'm stuck right now how am i contributing what am i thinking or not thinking what am i feeling or not feeling what am i believing what belief needs to change in order for me to be able to move forward and if you believe oh my god i'm afraid i believe that i don't have what it takes well what do i need to believe in order to get to move forward i just need to believe that

Speaker 6 I moving forward one step is better than not doing anything at all.

Speaker 6 And then I'll, you know, so, and so changing our mindset and changing our belief that even if it doesn't work the way we want it to, we still took action and we learned something from it.

Speaker 6 So therefore, we have nothing to lose ever. We always win, no matter what,

Speaker 6 when we are willing to do that, like self-reflection and self-inquiry and ask ourselves the right questions, we always have the answers.

Speaker 5 There's so much in there to unpack. Guys, if you didn't pick up on that.

Speaker 5 early quote that hillary had feeling better doesn't mean you're doing better i think that in and of itself we could probably do an entire episode on because you see it all the time, right?

Speaker 5 Like I have friends who are so successful in business, but they're unhappy, say they

Speaker 5 seemingly just can't break down their vulnerability layer to speak to their wife, say. And instead, what they do with that pain is they ignore her and drink seven Miller lights before they go to bed.

Speaker 5 And like, these are like well, these are professionals who get in a suit and tie and go do financial stuff all day and and then but then they they they can't get past this hurdle.

Speaker 5 And then they self-medicate and, you know, that, that intoxication for a few hours at the end of the night of just releasing, they think they're releasing stress and feeling better, but no part of their life is moving forward.

Speaker 5 If anything, it's, it's moving backward. I, I, guys, if you write that down, that is an amazing quote.
Uh, feeling better doesn't mean you're doing better. I think that that's really great framing.

Speaker 5 Um, I did want to comment on the hater one because I think this is important for everyone to hear. I try to keep in everything I do, like a 15% hater quotient.

Speaker 5 Like if I'm not, if 15% of the people aren't like,

Speaker 5 you know, you don't want to say not necessarily being vile, but, but questioning or pushing back or whatever. And I saw this, and this is where I want to get, this is where my question is going.

Speaker 5 I did a post on LinkedIn, I don't know, some number of months ago, and it was just titled, It's Your Fault. And it basically was my version of what you said.

Speaker 5 It's, it's, it doesn't matter what happens, if you can frame it as your fault, you can start to develop a solution to move forward.

Speaker 5 And it was probably one of the most negatively commented on posts that I've ever done.

Speaker 5 Why is it that we struggle so much to take responsibility for our lives?

Speaker 6 I think people are stuck in wanting to feel righteous in how they've been done wrong. It feels good to like the victim mentality is addictive.

Speaker 6 And there are a lot of people who have lots of followers on social media because they are like

Speaker 6 little, they attract the bees to their honey of victimhood. And people want to feel, oh, they get me.

Speaker 6 I belong. See, I'm seen.
I am struggling. And there's a reason I'm struggling.
And yes, it's because my husband sucks.

Speaker 6 Or yes, it's because I put myself last and my whole family doesn't appreciate me and all that stuff. And it's alluring.
It draws us in because we feel vindicated in our suffering,

Speaker 6 but it doesn't change anything. And so I get a lot of haters when I post on the, I have, I can't help myself, but to comment on those and say, can you see this? Like, it's like, where's Waldo?

Speaker 6 Where's the victim? Can you spot the victim?

Speaker 5 Because it's right there.

Speaker 6 And while your feelings are valid, have your feelings for a minute. But then what are you going to do about it? Do you you want to stay that way?

Speaker 6 Or do you want to actually feel better and make your life better? And taking responsibility is the most empowering, liberating thing we can do. It feels a whole lot better than we think it's going to.

Speaker 5 I agree. It's

Speaker 5 pain now for,

Speaker 5 we'll call it joy or meaning or purpose down the road. And that to me is often where I find this victimhood porn comes from:

Speaker 5 they're grasping for meaning or purpose

Speaker 5 but it's almost like they're reaching for the wrong things and i'll give you an example of this there was a there was a viral video that a woman did uh recently that came out where she was crying about on mother's day she was all alone and she's baking something it's in her kitchen i don't know and and then her ex-husband comes out and is basically like the reason she's alone is because she's on house arrest because she has like 17 convictions for burglary and robbery and extort and all these like things.

Speaker 5 And like, if you saw her, she's, you know, she's probably in her early 40s, late 30s, put together looking woman, attractive.

Speaker 5 She's in a backdrop of a kitchen that looks like a nice suburban center stair colonial. You know what I mean?

Speaker 5 So, so like playing on all these things, and here she is weeping and the tears are coming down and she's baking herself a cake for Mother's Day is like this video.

Speaker 5 And it's just racking views like this. And then like a week later, there's a response video from the ex-husband and he's like, let me tell you what's really happening.
Like she's playing you guys.

Speaker 5 And look, I don't mean to make any light of her plight in life, decisions she's made or whatever that situation is, but my point is to what you said.

Speaker 5 I think if we're in a bad moment and we're following someone whose brand is victimhood porn, we have to be very, very careful that they're just not playing some script to get us to watch or to buy something from them or whatever.

Speaker 5 And, and, and this goes to Abigail Schreier's new book, which I don't know if you've seen, which is, uh, it's like, um,

Speaker 5 I'm going to butcher the name. I will make sure I have it in the show notes, but it's about negative therapy work, bad therapy, I think is what it's called.

Speaker 6 Oh, yeah, I have. I saw it.
Yeah. Yes.

Speaker 5 In which she says, basically, for 20 years, we've been showing up a therapist talking about our problems. And all that's doing is telling our brain that we have problems.

Speaker 5 So, how do we, how do we get out of,

Speaker 5 you know

Speaker 5 long contextual question but that's the way that i roll so

Speaker 5 for the remainder of this episode you have to deal with that um

Speaker 5 how do we start to break that cycle how do we if we are filled with we're having a negative moment we just got fired uh our our husband or our wife just left us or whatever some some negative thing happens we're filled with that negativity which is going to happen right it's going to happen

Speaker 5 How do we start to break that cycle? What's that first step that we can take to start to

Speaker 5 insert one positive thought in between those, that negativity that's keeping us down.

Speaker 6 Literally feeling the feeling that you're having and recognizing there's an immediate thought.

Speaker 6 There's usually a thought before the feeling, to be honest, but sometimes we're not aware of it. So if you feel the feeling first, then backtrack and ask yourself, what did I just say to myself?

Speaker 6 And

Speaker 6 it doesn't really matter.

Speaker 6 anything else other than the next question, which is, all right,

Speaker 6 what's the truth? I just did an episode of my own on chasing closure, and we don't need the answer from somebody else. We can give ourselves the answer that we need so we can move on.
And

Speaker 6 to me, that's the only question we ever need to ask is, well, what's the truth? What did I do? How did I contribute? If I got fired, okay, did I have a bad attitude? Was I not up to snuff?

Speaker 6 Did I cause drama? Did I

Speaker 6 not get along with other people?

Speaker 6 Was I not really happy in that job and i stayed because of a paycheck and people could tell you know you can't only hide that stuff for so long so we just have to be willing to ask ourselves how did i contribute yeah that's it really that is the first way and step to get out of it but i another episode that i just also did was because i was a therapist for 14 years before i left my practice and i don't believe in therapy at all anymore because of that very reason we get stuck telling the stories of the past without a path to move forward.

Speaker 6 And then we start identifying with the problem and we don't know how to live our lives without the problem.

Speaker 6 And

Speaker 6 all that we do is continue telling the story over and over and over and over again.

Speaker 6 We have to tell a new story.

Speaker 6 And over time,

Speaker 6 people become codependent with their therapist. It's like, I just, they go back for a sounding board.

Speaker 6 I'm like, do you want to have to call your therapist every time you have a difficult life situation? Or do you want to learn to handle it yourself?

Speaker 6 This is the question you need to ask yourself forever to always know that you can handle it yourself. The key to self-resiliency, self-reliance

Speaker 6 is asking yourself, how am I doing this? How am I creating this? Because then you can figure out the solution forever, no matter what it is that's going on in your life.

Speaker 5 Guys, this is so good.

Speaker 5 This is so good.

Speaker 5 I think that this is the stuff because

Speaker 5 I have people in my life.

Speaker 5 Thankfully, none of my inner circle, which I've taken and sculpted a lot this year, which has been a huge net positive for me.

Speaker 5 It's really surrounding myself with people who are positive, driven, who will tell me the truth about the stupid shit that I do.

Speaker 5 The problem becomes their identity. And it's like, it's almost as if they're.

Speaker 5 They're so worried that if they start to take control of their life or they start to live positively, that people will almost not recognize them.

Speaker 5 But with the problem, everyone recognizes, oh, we're sorry this happened, or oh, you know, hey, you're doing well, keep going, you know what I mean? And they feed off that.

Speaker 5 Like, if I just keep pushing out the fact that this thing happened, man, everyone just tells me to keep going, and that feels great. And they never

Speaker 5 even begin to try to fix it because that problem becomes who they are. And

Speaker 5 I feel so bad for those people. Like, I

Speaker 6 identity. It's a total identity.
They get attention for it. They, they're positively reinforced in some way for, for being that.
If they,

Speaker 6 if they change, and let's say it's the weight loss issue. If you lose weight, you no longer are part of the club that you worked out with,

Speaker 6 you know, or you quit your Weight Watchers group or whatever. You're no longer, it's identity.
I don't fit there anymore. So where am I going to go?

Speaker 6 If I'm no longer single and struggling with all the single ladies or all the single guys and I find somebody, are they still going to want me around? Maybe not.

Speaker 6 And so it's identity work is really the gateway to your next level. You have to become the next level version of you to live your next level life.

Speaker 6 You have to be, it's about who you are being in your life first.

Speaker 6 You go first. Then you get.
what it is that you want next. That whole thing, seeing as a believing is backwards.

Speaker 6 You got to believe first and then you'll start seeing external results of this new identity, of this new way of thinking about yourself.

Speaker 5 Is there like

Speaker 5 so? If we're not working with a therapist, which I agree with,

Speaker 5 I have a counselor that I go see just about every other week, but she's not a therapist, not even, she's just a counselor. Like we talk, we don't talk about problems.

Speaker 5 Most of the time, we talk about like how we're gonna, how I'm gonna get somewhere with something, right? So, it's very positively driven. It also has a religious aspect to it.
I'm a Christian, um,

Speaker 5 but

Speaker 5 you know, that's a very positive experience because we're oftentimes breaking down. She also doesn't take any of my shit.

Speaker 5 She's 82 years old, and she'll just straight tell me I'm full of it, which I love. You know what I mean? She'll be like, that's a stupid thought.
You're better than that.

Speaker 5 Let's get rid of that one and move past it.

Speaker 5 But

Speaker 5 we have to be very careful.

Speaker 5 This is how I want to frame this question.

Speaker 5 How do we start to recognize the people in our lives who may be well-meaning, but are ultimately perpetuating our negative thoughts or our victimhood, right? Like we have these people in our lives who

Speaker 5 seemingly are trying to be nice, but will never call us out and tell us, you got to stop that.

Speaker 5 Like that's like pounding three beers every single night when you get home to like numb your brain is not healthy like you have to stop that whatever whatever the thing is right and um

Speaker 5 how do we start to recognize those people and i think

Speaker 5 we get really scared about how to start to remove them from our lives does that make

Speaker 6 so so this is going to be a little i'm going to answer the question kind of through the back door yeah yeah it's in rather than focusing on what everybody else is doing

Speaker 6 focus on what we're doing. How are we inviting the lies? How are we inviting them to tell us what we want to hear? Are we going to freak out, cut them out, be mad, fall apart in tears?

Speaker 6 What's our reaction if we were to get the truth? Are we inviting them to tiptoe around us? Probably.

Speaker 6 Because if you drink three beers every night and, you know, your friend or somebody who loves you would call you out, are you going to just lash out? Because they're going to just avoid that bullshit.

Speaker 6 Yeah. And let's tell you what you want to hear.
So if we want to be told the truth, we have to be willing to accept the truth first. We go first.
That's the message still. We go first.

Speaker 6 And so we have to go to the people in our lives and invite them to tell the truth.

Speaker 6 Say, I really don't want you to just tell me, like, don't, I, and I do this, and I have for years and years and years and years with my friends.

Speaker 6 I don't want to go shopping with a friend who's going to tell me something looks good on me if it doesn't. Yeah.
You know, if my jeans aren't going to look good on me, I don't tell me I can do better.

Speaker 6 Yeah. You know, like that's not flattering.
It's not an insult. It's they love me enough to tell me the truth.

Speaker 6 They want me to pick a different pair of jeans that that are going to fit me better, you know. And, and, and, you know, I've been with my husband now.
We're about to celebrate 24 years together.

Speaker 6 Congratulations. Thank you.
And, you know, I have girlfriends along the way when we've hit some hard times. I'm like, don't just tell me he's an asshole.
Tell me what I, what I'm doing. Yeah.

Speaker 6 Am I seeing it the right way? What's another way I could see this? Sometimes they get, you know, we all get stuck in seeing things our own way.

Speaker 6 It's not that we don't need an outside perspective to sometimes shift our own stuckness, but we have to invite those people in our lives to do that, or they will not.

Speaker 5 I love that. You know, so I

Speaker 5 got divorced almost three years ago.

Speaker 5 Probably a net positive.

Speaker 5 We were just very different people, very different things that we wanted out of life. And ultimately, I think we just grew apart and it had to happen.

Speaker 5 We have two young kids, 10 and 8, and have had to deal with that. That's not the best.
That's hard. But

Speaker 5 at first, I was just pissed, right? Like at first, I just, it was,

Speaker 5 God, I never cheated. I don't have debt.
I'm a good dad. I'm here.
Like, you know, by all metrics, I thought I was doing a good job. Okay.

Speaker 5 So, you know, at first, you're just, you know, you just go, you go all the way down. And that's why I love, I love the way that you're framing this.

Speaker 5 And guys, I'm being very honest when I say this, this isn't just me stroking Eller's ego, which you definitely don't need is this idea of feeling the feelings, right?

Speaker 5 Like, there's so much terrible advice around around how to like get rid of feelings. It's like, no, like the best advice I was ever given was by my 82-year-old counselor.
Her name's Margie.

Speaker 5 She's amazing.

Speaker 5 She's like, why are you trying to avoid these feelings? And I was like, what do you mean? And she's like, you should feel terrible right now. Not forever, but this moment, it's okay to feel terrible.

Speaker 5 Like let it hit you and wash over you because that's the only way to figure out. And this is why I think what I think what you're saying, doing is phenomenal.

Speaker 5 And guys, I can't push you hard enough to go check out more of Hillary's work. We'll have all the links in the show notes wherever you're listening.
But like

Speaker 5 we, we, I had to go back and go, well, geez, I

Speaker 5 basically just told her whatever she wanted to hear because I thought that's what being a good husband was, right? Even though I disagreed with it.

Speaker 5 If I disagreed with something with the kids or with this or with that, I thought being a good husband was not causing drama. So I would just agree with her.

Speaker 5 And then I would build up resentments and blah, blah, blah.

Speaker 5 So it's, I needed to feel the feelings to be able to go back in and look rationally at the 13 years that we were together and say,

Speaker 5 maybe,

Speaker 5 maybe

Speaker 5 she's responsible for the end and I don't love the way that she did it.

Speaker 5 But man,

Speaker 5 I got 13 years of mistakes in there myself. And let's start to clean those up.

Speaker 6 Doesn't it feel better?

Speaker 5 than feeling like a victim to her decision if it was her decision when you can look back and say, I can see where I went wrong yeah yeah and i feel better than you think it's going to you know it's funny and i've had people go no you know screw her she you know whatever

Speaker 5 and you know she shouldn't have done this you're a great guy and it's like i can see how people would marinate in that right like it was a real-time experience to what you're saying in which i if i hadn't done a lot of personal work from earlier trauma i would have sat in it because everyone was like you're such a great guy you're such a great dad.

Speaker 5 You know, you know, screw her.

Speaker 5 And I could have just sat in that victimhood of being this divorced dad and, and like, just basted and all these, you know, things.

Speaker 5 But I would have never been able to be a good or better partner to the next woman that came along in my life because I would have done the same exact shit again because I would have just allowed all these validations of people who didn't know our situation, you know, to go.

Speaker 5 So you can, you can see how it happens. So, um,

Speaker 6 I love that. Can I just say before you move on? Like, that's a big deal.
Not a lot of people will do that, so good for you for looking in the mirror. It's you know, that's what you were saying.

Speaker 6 Like, why do we not do that? And

Speaker 6 because

Speaker 6 it, we think it feels better to be vindicated or to be righteous and how we've been done wrong, and we get all the attention and the pats on the back, but it might feel better temporarily, but it's not going to help you be better in the long run.

Speaker 6 So, that's amazing.

Speaker 5 Well,

Speaker 5 that is learned through many, many beats, unfortunately. So

Speaker 5 thank you very much, Valente.

Speaker 5 So, but I want to get back to this topic. So is there,

Speaker 5 let's say I'm not ready to go all in with a counselor or to get involved with a program.

Speaker 5 I'm listening to this and

Speaker 5 I'm not there yet,

Speaker 5 but I want to start taking, is there like a...

Speaker 5 journaling practice,

Speaker 5 is there some small thing, some very small introductory first step that someone who's listening to this could do to just just start to move down this path of taking a little more responsibility and accountability for themselves.

Speaker 6 Yeah, I,

Speaker 6 there's a, there's a lot of things coming to mind right now. I think

Speaker 6 what you were saying about feeling feelings is really a big piece of it.

Speaker 6 I've always said that our feelings, our emotions are the greatest source of wisdom for us about who we are, because in the moment it tells us what's going on.

Speaker 6 It tells us our feelings are telling us I'm sad. What's making me sad? Why am I so sad?

Speaker 5 Well,

Speaker 6 this thing that's making me sad, that it may not make somebody else sad. So that tells me something about me and who I am.
Like

Speaker 6 our emotional state provides information for us about who we are. And when we know who we are in the moment and we're honest about that, then we can make decisions that are in our own best interest.

Speaker 6 And so I hate to keep beating the dead horse, but the biggest question always is,

Speaker 6 how am I contributing here? What have I done? Like your wife, I don't know how, I don't know the story. She made her choices and she has to take responsibility for herself and how she handled it.

Speaker 6 Yes, she does. Maybe she will, maybe she won't, but it doesn't matter.
And you will do that and have done that, it sounds like, for yourself.

Speaker 6 So pointing the finger at everybody else to make your situation better doesn't work. We just have to be willing to, it's not like a daily practice or anything.
It is literally just,

Speaker 6 it's a belief. It's a mindset, personal responsibility.
It's just a decision that you live this way.

Speaker 5 In the last like five years, personal responsibility has become like a four-letter word. I mean, obviously it's not, but it has become like this four-letter word.

Speaker 5 Like if you're, if you're pushing, I shouldn't say pushing, if you're promoting, if you're talking about, if you're encouraging people to be accountable and take personal responsibility, somehow you get framed as, and I don't necessarily mean this to be political, but it kind of is like you get framed as this right-wing extremist who wants, you know, who like hates people and wants, you know, and I just, you know, I look at like, I'm a big fan of Jordan Peterson and his book, 12 Rules for Life back in 2017, kind of cracked me out of a very negative place and put me on the path that I'm on today.

Speaker 5 And

Speaker 5 he's been had all this stuff. And, you know, now we see the way, like, I just saw some stat

Speaker 5 26%

Speaker 5 of

Speaker 5 Zennials bring their parents to job interviews.

Speaker 6 I just saw that too somewhere.

Speaker 5 Yeah, less

Speaker 5 for the first time in the history of our country, we're actually not having enough children.

Speaker 5 More, both men and women, reports. report that they haven't had sex in the last year than ever before in history.
Like,

Speaker 5 to me, this is all the same problem. Like, we're so caught in ourselves.
We're so caught in our own crap. Like, we, we, we struggle to, to take these concepts.

Speaker 5 Why are these concepts become like politicized and seen as anything other than positive? Like, what is what is going on today that is is that we even have to have this conversation.

Speaker 5 Like, why, you know what I mean? Like, why is this even even a thing? Like, it seemed like a given for the last, you know, 200,000 years.

Speaker 5 And now all of a sudden, it's like something we have to teach people. Where did that come from? Why is that happening?

Speaker 6 Well, I mean, I think one thing that I'll say first, because you were saying, oh, you're some right-wing crazy person or whatever.

Speaker 6 I have been called a victim blamer because I'm not in a victim enabler, right? If I'm not an enabler, then I'm a blamer, you know, and the whole point is to

Speaker 6 empower people, to teach them how to be empowered themselves um

Speaker 6 that's really the ultimate is to take responsibility to answer the other part of that question about why are people not engaging in relationships the way they used to i think social media makes it very very easy to hide and to not have to you have kids so you and they're of the age did you ever see the movie wally

Speaker 5 yeah

Speaker 6 That's where we're headed.

Speaker 6 AI thinks for us and cars will now drive for us. Some point we're just going to stick a feeding tube and feed ourselves.
Like we are dumbing ourselves down. And social media makes it.

Speaker 6 My kids are now 14 and 17 and the whole phone and screen and TikTok and Snapchat is how they talk. They don't talk to each other.
It's because.

Speaker 6 Social media and all of the conveniences have made it so that we don't have to.

Speaker 6 And when we have fear of rejection and fear of not being good enough and fear of being found out that I'm stupid or I'm not this enough or that enough or I'm too much of this or too much of that, it feeds on our fears to put ourselves out there in a real way.

Speaker 6 So we don't have to. We can still think that we have friends when we have a Snapchat group of 30 people.

Speaker 6 You know, I see it. I see it with my kids.

Speaker 6 My older one is more social and hangs out with his friends a whole lot more, but my younger one, just a few years' difference.

Speaker 6 I don't think it's the, it could be personality too, but and one's a boy, one's a girl, but

Speaker 6 it could just be the three years of time that has made it worse where she can spend her whole day in her room on her phone communicating with friends, but that's not real.

Speaker 6 So, I think I blame it on, I do, I blame it on social media, and that's how kids are now communicating with each other.

Speaker 6 They don't have the real social skills, they don't have, they don't know how to handle difficult situations, they don't know how to feel their feelings, they're numbing out, they don't know how to entertain themselves because they're scrolling.

Speaker 6 And I constantly tell my kids: Do you want to be a consumer or do you want to be a creator? Yeah, stop fucking consuming. I hope I can cuss on your show.

Speaker 6 Stop being a consumer. It is so passive.
Go live your life. Yep.
And don't even think about being a creator.

Speaker 6 You're like for social media purposes, go create your own life, whether no one is, anyone's looking or not.

Speaker 6 That's, I think, what's happening.

Speaker 5 I always tell them

Speaker 5 they play, my kids, two boys, they play Fortnite. So what they do not have social media, they do not have phones.
But I let them play. I've let them play some video games because whatever.

Speaker 5 In the right amount of time, I don't see a problem with it but it has to be monitored which we which I do and all this kind of stuff but you know they'll tell me about something that's going on in Fortnite because they just want to share with their life with you and and that's great um and I'll listen and I'll and I'll be excited for them whatever they're at the time I don't even understand what they're saying but um

Speaker 5 but then I'll always kind of finish with and they they'll give me like this look but I always finish with just remember optimize your real life like we'll spend there are people that will spend tens hundreds thousands of dollars optimizing this fucking character in a video game.

Speaker 5 And it's like, why not take that same effort and those same resources and put it into optimizing your real life? That you have a real life out here.

Speaker 5 This is this whole real life and you're putting it into this computer. And I just,

Speaker 5 it's hard because I don't understand, I don't connect with that. Like, I, I'm like, good, you know, good for you.

Speaker 5 It means nothing to me. Now, if you tell me that you've created a business and that's your business or your whatever, I still am like a little weary, but good for you.
I just,

Speaker 5 it's very difficult. And maybe we can, we can end here.

Speaker 5 I think a lot of parents, oh, I don't think a lot of parents are dealing with this particular problem.

Speaker 5 How do we start to instill? a sense of accountability and personal responsibility into our children. They, they,

Speaker 5 I don't know that brute force necessarily works, maybe in small doses, but what are some of the things that we can be talking about, conversations we can be having, whatever, to, to, to help as parents that, you know, say, say, we've decided to embrace it, but we're struggling to communicate to our kids.

Speaker 5 How do we do that?

Speaker 6 Yeah. Well, for personally, I know that I can only do it in small doses because otherwise I turn into a lecturer and I know it all and whatever.

Speaker 6 And of course, I know nothing, no matter what, who I am and what I've done in my life, I know nothing, according to my kids.

Speaker 6 So I find my moments to just slip it in, you know, and have the conversations with them that I wish somebody was having with me. And mostly it's just listening.

Speaker 6 And when they, and when you listen, they're more likely to talk and give you the opportunity to just sprinkle it in. And

Speaker 6 I will always just kind of insert little nuggets, you know, like I know it doesn't feel really good that, you know, this was going on in your friend group or whatever.

Speaker 6 Is there something that you could have done differently

Speaker 6 that might have had a different impact? Or, you know, like, if you're really going to be the best person, the best version of you, what is that version of you going to do to handle this situation?

Speaker 6 Yeah. You know, or,

Speaker 6 you know, it doesn't really matter what happens at the end of the day.

Speaker 6 You can't control what the other kids are going to say or do, but you'll you'll feel good about yourself if you handle it in a way that makes you feel proud of yourself. Yeah.
That's what I say.

Speaker 6 I teach them how to win no matter what. Yeah.
You win no matter what. That's a phrase in our house.

Speaker 6 You win no matter what when you handle things in a way that you're proud of, when you've lived your, to your own values, or you've honored yourself, or you've been honest.

Speaker 6 I always teach them never to people please and to just do what they need to do or say what they need to say to go along or get along,

Speaker 6 even if it's unpopular.

Speaker 6 And I want like, that was, cause, of course, that was the one thing that I really didn't get that I wanted, which is like to be seen for who I really am and to be, have somebody reflect back to me what they see, good and bad, strengths and weaknesses.

Speaker 6 And,

Speaker 6 and to help me understand what my potential is as a, as a person.

Speaker 6 So I, I, I do that for my kids and I, and I know their strengths. And so I could say, well, you're really good at this kind of a thing.
That's why you're in this situation.

Speaker 6 So what are you going to, how are you going to use use that strength of yours in this situation? So it's as parents, like our job isn't to turn them into little people that we want them to be.

Speaker 6 It's to see who they are and help them see it too.

Speaker 6 And in those moments, just to guide them to be their best self, to always take care of themselves, to always listen to themselves, to do, let them teach them to be self-guided and self-led.

Speaker 5 Hillary, this conversation has been phenomenal. I, I love the message that you're putting out into the world.
I love the way you're doing it and framing these things. This has been tremendous.

Speaker 5 If people want to learn more about you, your work, if they want to be connected to you, where do they go? Where's the best place for them to send them?

Speaker 5 And just so everyone listening knows, we'll have all the links, everything in the show notes or descriptions as well.

Speaker 5 So if you don't just go direct, just go there and you can click over and find Hillary. But where should we send everybody?

Speaker 6 The best way is just my website, HilarySilver.com. It's Hillary with one L.

Speaker 6 And you can download.

Speaker 6 I have a free like five-minute video explaining this philosophy philosophy a little bit and a PDF download with some of the steps, the action steps to help you start living this way.

Speaker 6 And I did also just launch a podcast recently. It's my second time around.
Been to this rodeo before, but this is a new improved better one.

Speaker 6 And so you can find the podcast page on the website too and then follow along there.

Speaker 5 Hillary, I'm so glad you're out there doing this work. I love this conversation.
I'm glad we were able to share it with the audience. Thank you so much for being here.

Speaker 6 Thanks for having me. I enjoyed it too.

Speaker 5 Let's go.

Speaker 5 Yeah, make it look, make it look, make it look easy. Hey, stand up, guy, on 10 toes.
Big body pull up in a range roll. I can change the whole game when I say so.
I pull it up, shut it down.

Speaker 5 Yeah, they know. Running this game ain't a thing for me.
I never switched up, no change in me. The only thing changing is

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