174: Our Inability To Receive
Jan 8, 2019
We have so many stories about why we’re not worthy and why we’re not lovable, how no woman or man could keep up with us, how they would not want to be with us if we showed them all of us. We put on this girdle, this protection and armor because we don’t think we’re deserving to receive. Sometimes we even think that not receiving and not taking in is noble. You have to realize how utterly and deeply selfish these thoughts are. When we minimize how much we can receive, we’re awful to the people who want to give to us. On this episode, Robert rants on our inability to receive.
174: Our Inability To Receive
This show is about the concept of having our ability to receive, which I think on some level, I probably talked about in other shows but I haven’t spoken directly with. As I published my book, I am going through my own evolution when it comes to my ability to receive. First and foremost, it is scary as shit to have your book out there in the world. I thought I was prepared. I read this thing. It’s like, “Yes, I’m ready to have a kid. I’ve got the room set up. I’ve got all the tools, toys, the crib, the pacifier and all those things. I’m ready.” You get a kid and all of a sudden everything you prepared for doesn’t mean anything. The reality of the baby coming out is not what you were thinking. That’s been my experience with this book.
I have been mentally preparing for this book to be out for a long time. The actual truth of it coming out has been scary. I did two Indiegogo campaigns. One was highly successful and one tanked miserably. I shipped out 250 books of pre-orders and they’re slowly drifting into all the people who bought. I’m confronting this experience of seeing the challenges of reception. I was posting on my Facebook group and I came up with this little line. I wrote this poem. I don’t know if I read this one yet. It was inspired by this Facebook post. This might add some value to your life. This is a Kandell original, “I tried to be someone else. It didn’t work out that well, so then I said, ‘Why not?’ I embraced me. Let the chips fall where they may, but drama took the day off and the clouds continued on their way. I said, ‘No one can keep up with me.’ Somehow they did. I tested, prodded and poked, trying to prove that no one would love me if I was being me. Surprise, I navigated the obstacle course, got the ribbon. They prevailed, she prevailed. I said, ‘I wasn’t worthy. Who would ever believe I was in a parade? This must be all some cosmic joke, but they keep asking questions and the muse delivered the answers. I guess that story can’t stand the light of day. What do I do when the stories all had been proven wrong?’”
I have so many stories about why I’m not worthy and why I’m not lovable. How no woman could keep up with me, no woman would want to be with me if I showed her all of me? This book would sit in a corner and no one would promote it. No one would show up for me. I realized how utterly and deeply selfish these thoughts are. When we minimize how much we can receive, how awful we are to the people who want to give to us. There’s this thing where we think that not receiving and not taking in is noble. We actually believe that we’re better people if we starve ourselves. We think there’s some award system out there. She or he could receive the last wins. It is the detriment of society because we put on these walls. We put on these girdles. We put on this protection and armor because we don’t think we’re deserving to receive.
Inability To Receive Everything You Want
In that, I think that’s the cancer of our relationships because we’re not providing the ability for energy exchange to happen between two people. One of my favorite new sources of information is NLP Marin, which several of my friends have been through and raved about for years. Finally, we got a clue. I did a session with Carl. I did a class for Michelle Masters. I had Michelle Masters on the show. It’s about money. Your lack of ability to receive money. Imagine this long banquet table. Imagine your ancestors in the past are on different sides of you. They have plates in front of them. In your plate, there’s a full plate of food. There’s everything you want. Your favorite little goodies are on the plate. You look to the right and then the ancestors to the right sitting next to you have some fish and chips because they’re English.
The next person has scraps. If you go down the line, they have empty plates. You’re sitting with this full plate of food. You’re starving. You don’t eat because you look there and feel guilty that they don’t have food and you do. What do you do? Do you give away all your food to your ancestors? Do you not eat? Do you not have nutrients for yourself because you don’t think you’re worthy? If they’re suffering, does that mean you have to suffer? There’s a metaphor on how we treat ourselves in terms of how much we can have because we think those people in our lives didn’t have it. That we need to punish ourselves.
This is an insane thought because they want you to be happy, most of the relatives. They want their progeny. They want their seed to expand. They want us. It’s in the biological desire for us to survive. You not eating is going against the concept of those people. What we do is we torture ourselves. We keep ourselves small. We keep ourselves not willing to receive out of some story in our head that says we’re not worthy. It’s self-sabotage at its greatest. I wrote my little poem. My friend wrote like, “She left me. Your woman prevailed. She turned tail and run.” I said, “Okay.” I responded back. The teacher I am, I said, “Probably one of three things happen. One is she got scared and ran. Two is you both got scared and put up an intimacy roadblock or three, you got scared and self-sabotage and pushed her away.” My viewpoint is that we often do this, is that we believe that we’re not worthy. We can’t have it.
Self-Sabotage
We’re very brilliant where we’re manically brilliant in our ability to self-sabotage. We have this hammer in our hand, always available. We always have this chance to cut ourselves. I do it all the time. I’ve been working on myself for many years. I still do this with Morgan. I still do dumb things when the sensation rises and what happens is down deep this fear about the reception of receiving. It’s a beautiful form of self-sabotage. What’s happening in our relationships is that we don’t think we’re worthy. We put up roadblocks to not have it. Layla Martin is a good friend of mine and colleague out there. She sent out this email on our mailing list about how she broke up with Andrew, her partner business partner, romantic partner for a couple of years.
He wrote the response in this truly elegant, eloquent, beautiful prose that both of them wrote. It’s deeply honest for a teacher to express the problems with their relationships and how they solved it. I have deep respect. What he wrote that I got from reading at once very quickly was that he was lying to her. He wasn’t lying to her out of any malicious intent. He was lying because he didn’t feel himself worthy to tell her the truth about what he wanted. They had a year. He had an Ayahuasca journey. He had this flash. It was time to end the relationship and he didn’t listen. A year later, he’s had some meditation retreat. My point is that we do this to ourselves. We don’t think that we are worthy of hearing or listening, of believing and having for ourselves until we do is we cut ourselves off at the knee, which is annoying.
If you're willing to do the work and you're receptive and grateful, then the genders can actually connect. Click To TweetIt’s annoying to watch people minimize themselves. It’s annoying that I have to keep telling Morgan that we’re co-creating this reality. This is a funny story. I got dumped badly by a client. I’ve been fired. I’ve been let go by clients. It’s part of the job. It’s actually on some level I’m happy when it happens, but this client dumped me. They ghosted me. I was annoyed. I’m still annoyed. They dumped me hard. I was frustrated. I said to myself, “I need another client. I need another large client to fill that void, to keep my income stable so I can do whatever I want to do.” I meditated on. I felt into it. I reached into it. Some guy found my website and offered me a better gig than the one I had. It’s not signed yet but if it goes through, it’s an up-level from my previous.
I told Morgan, “Morgan, this thing happened.” She was like, “You’re amazing. You’re this. You’re that.” I was like, “What do you mean me? This is us.” This is the marriage of her and I. This is her appetite because that woman’s got a big appetite. She wants a lot of things. She wants a lot of trips. She wants a lot of decadence and my little production managers got to provide. When she said, “You’re amazing,” I said, “No, we’re amazing.” Morgan still hasn’t figured out that it’s the combination of the two of us that manifests this magic. This is what we do. She keeps thinking it’s all me, which is part of the patriarchal society is that I am the big producer and she’s a little woman at home. I see it differently. It’s not annoying. It’s fun but it’s like I have to keep reminding her. No, it’s the combination of the masculine, the feminine. It’s the combination of the two of us that produces the magic.
Example number two, I have a client and her name is Rose. I got permission to use her story and use her name. She told me about she’s having an issue with her mom and her business. They’re being business partners. We had this coaching session where I nailed her in her own ability to minimize and how she’s the one setting the speed and how if she starts to have the desire, if she starts to believe in it, then things will change. I felt it. There was that one moment that clicked. I don’t know if you’ve ever had this experience with your partner when there’s one moment you’re fighting and all of a sudden it shifts into softness or one moment where you’re having sex and everything lights up. One moment when you have this realization, your whole body softens. I’m trained to feel those little moments in my clients. There’s this one moment in her where it clicked. This one little thing softened. I saw and she saw.
Three days later, she had a conversation with her mom. There was a heart opening. There was space. I said to her, “The only thing that changed was you. The only thing that opened was you. In the opening of your heart and in the belief in who you are, you impacted your mom and all of a sudden it’s possible.” We’re often blaming the circumstances. We’re often blaming someone else. We’re often saying, “When this happens.” No, it starts inside. It all starts with our ability to receive and think that we’re worthy. It all starts with this weird viewpoint that if we’re small, we’re nobler. If we cut ourselves down, if we self-sabotage, we’re doing it better, which is dumb. I got this message from the wife of ex-client of mine. She’s a fan. I’ve worked with her in different programs and she’s amazing.
The Concept Of Fear
She wrote me this email, “One thing I haven’t quite figured out is the concept of fear. It seems there is some deep repressed fear in men. Women have this too, and perhaps in a different way, but the manifestation of men’s fear in their careers, relationships, view of self, and the world seems so toxic and harmful. I hear what you’re saying about men’s fear of abandonment and rejection. I’m wondering what we have done as women and in our society to create such a dynamic for men. It seems quite deep and very destructive to partnerships.” This is a two-part answer to this question. It’s important. We talk about the book, which you can find at RobertKandell.com/order.
The concept is that men have unhealthy relationships to both their fear and their desire. They do not have permission in society to fully connect to and fully embrace both their fear and their desire. Because we’re not allowed to have our emotional intelligence, because we’re not allowed to connect to our emotions, because we have masks that we must live in, that we’re not allowed to fully express either our fear or desire. The worst thing a man can do, trained from birth is part of our society, is for a boy to show fear. In the cadre of men, in the kingdom of men, a fearful boy is one that can be terrorized, that can be made fun of, can be bullied. I know what this is like because I was a kid who was bullied. I was a kid who was ridiculed. I was a kid that was beaten because I had fear.
Once I said, “I’m going to fight back once I’m going to push back,” those bullies stop bullying because I had out bullied the bullies. I got stronger and faster and meaner. The point is that we’re taught to have no fear, show no fear, perceive no fear. We’re taught to not feel the pain. We’re taught not to embrace what’s happening. In that, we shut down our emotions and shut down our relationship to fear. Fear is something to be feared. Fear is we have nothing to do but fear our fear ourselves. That was a masculine thing to say because fear is an important thing to notice and feel because it provides so much information about what’s happening in your environment.
The first question is that men are not trained to have fear. What have women done to enhance this? Men thrive because we are external validation junkies on external validation. We look externally to see that we’re doing it right. If we don’t do it right, we’re afraid that the external validation is going to go away. We don’t have the ability to internally validate, to internally believe in ourselves, we’re looking at something else, mostly women. I don’t know about bisexual and homosexual men because I’m not one so I will not speak for them. In my experience, the greatest validation heterosexual man can have is an attractive woman on his arm who’s having sex with him.
We need to keep being more intimate and honest with each other and ourselves to get to the level that we truly want. Click To TweetYes, money. Great. Yes, power. Yes, the bank account. Yes, the cars, those are all great. Why do we do that? We do that to get more women. We do that because we want to get more nookie. We work hard to have all these things to attract women. If we have the hottie on our arm, that means we’re doing something right. Women also are pissed off. You deserve to be. You have the right to be pissed off. I’d be pissed off if I was part of the patriarchy for 6,000 years, if I was imprisoned and my body was in danger, if I lived in fear. Women are pissed off. We have women that we’re depending on to get our validation. We’re afraid of losing it with pissed off women.
What do we do? We don’t show any of the relationships to fear. Here’s the thing that women don’t do, that they can do. They can say to their man, “I want to know all of you. I want to experience every last aspect of you. I want to be there in your highest highs and your lowest lows. I want to be a safe space for who you are.” This is important because I can get in trouble with this. This is not a job or requirement. This is an opportunity. This is something you can do if this is your desire. I am not putting it on women to have to do this because God knows women have to do a lot. I’m not saying that. I’m saying this is your opportunity. Like my little poem, like my Morgan, she’s provided a space for me to be all of me. I can tell you even after years of work and thousands of experiences with women, I’m still hesitant to show parts of myself. What she does is she creates an opportunity for me to be all of me.
In that opportunity, I can tell her my fear without me fearing the withdrawal of her love and approval. In that belief system, which I’ve tested and she’s proven time and time again, then I have the ability to allow all my emotions to arise and be seen. This is what women have not done. I’m not telling women to snap their fingers and do it instantaneously. I’m not even telling women to do it. If you feel like this is something that you can use to embrace yourself and have a better relationship, please use it as a roadmap to have a deeper relationship. If you have enough surplus, if you have enough belief, then do it. That’s the thing that’s going to have men have better relationships with their fear because we’re so unwilling to believe that we’re lovable.
In our own beliefs of unworthiness, we hide. We live hidden lives and in that hidden lives, we have deeply toxic relationships. For women to do that, they need to also have the complimentary with men. Men, you’re not off the hook. You have to make it very pleasurable for a woman to receive you. This is not like women have to push side their relationships or their feelings to hold you. There’s a point. For some men, that means first going to a therapist, first going to a coach, first going to a men’s group and getting you cleaned up and solid and electric to bring to your woman. I’m not saying you can sit back and expect your woman to be your therapist. I’m not saying that.
Men, you have to do your own work. I have to do my own work. We have to constantly up-level our lives, but in that, if you’re willing to do the work and you’re gracious, receptive, and grateful, then all of a sudden, the genders can connect. Men’s fear does not be something in a box running the show. It actually can be a deeply pleasurable, intimate part of your relationship. The thing that needs to happen is that both parties need to feel worthy of that depth of that relationship. The last thing I want to talk about is I’m reading a book from 1991 called Fire in the Belly by a guy named Sam Keen. I’ve read hundreds of books at this point. The thing that I keep getting from this book time and time again is how similar his book and my book is. It’s different and similar.
The thing that I take away from that is in 1991, things were a lot like they are now. Even though we’re seeing progression across the board in terms of women economic development, women in Congress, minorities, more space for LGBT, more space for all of it. They’re still the same thing going on than it was years ago, which is a drop in time in the grand scheme of things. My point is that we need to keep going. We need to keep working. We need to keep being more intimate. We need to be honest with each other and ourselves to get to the level that we truly want.
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