 Good mental health. I'm Matt Kelly welcome I'm pleased to have your company in our fifth of our podcast series that examines the tweets of Dr. Neil Maranello. He's a behavior expert and a solutions focused life coach in Woodstock, Vermont I'm always pleased to have him on the show Neil a pleasure having you here. Thank you for your company Our topic for today is such a natural progression off of our last discussion The topic today is each of us is doing the best that we can with what we have Why don't you introduce us to the concept behind the tweet? Sure good to see you Matt. Yeah, I think that I have to start with with my mentor even though I never met him His name was Milton Erickson and some consider it the best therapist who ever lived From my point of view, he made several statements and I actually took a course from the From an exponent from an exponent of his Which is the Erickson coaching program, which exists out of Vancouver an excellent program And I recommend it to anyone But he had several basic tenets and I had no trouble with any of them except this one And that was everyone's doing the best they can And for those who have seen the the previous podcast that we've done I was having trouble. I was having trouble with the idea that someone could kill somebody and that Would be the best they could do. I was having trouble with the idea that someone could actually Believe that the best they could do was to rape somebody To do the horrible things that people do I had already accepted that That people are actually Behave behavior is the thing which determines whether a person is good or bad Got thoughts on the other hand trying to explain people doing what Some consider to be the most horrible things in the world And in their own mind saying this is the best I can do was a real problem for me And it wasn't until I read something by D. Pat Chopra And which he said everyone's doing the best he can do Given their consciousness And the concept of consciousness, of course, which I've talked about briefly before Has to do with what are we aware of? And of course, there's also a subconsciousness And the idea that some of these horrible behaviors are an attempt by the conscious mind to deny The primitive parts of ourselves The fact that there's All kinds of darkness inside each of us But the simple reality is that That what we have to do is accept that Not deny it and if We accept the darkness within us we're much less likely to behave in bad ways So it's taken me a long time to Agree with with Milton about this, but I finally am at the point where I do You know it's For me, I I really love the concept and of course, you know In full disclosure for those who are watching I've been a client of dr. Neal's for a number of years and Just really feel honored to Experiences brilliance, but for me, it's interesting because there's so many layers here And I first of all, I see it as really one of your basic teachings That you're actually able to pass on to me as a former client Which I've now adopted as well as one of my own personal tenants And it's interesting because it's uh, it's a A belief that actually forces you to also radically accept yourself As much as it does to see that in those outside Because if you do see that that In those outside of you it actually commands that you see it inside of yourself As well, and you know, just like we were talking about in our last session You know, none of us is better than anyone else or each of us lives in our own reality and whatnot We're all trying to do the best that we can With what we have to deal with what's thrown at us at any any time and yet We're often the hardest on ourselves and and I know that through the self talk that I've you know Through work with you've been able to Try to become more aware of unconscious of trying to Stop phrases that are are less empowering so to speak. So This to me just It's such a great statement that I really have to demand it of myself Yeah, I believe that uh In referring to you you can remember that time when you Definitely tried to kill yourself and And you described it as being in the tunnel of darkness The reality is that It's like painting yourself to a corner into a corner of Of one floor of a multi-story building And that realizing that That's not all there is that in fact the building is inside you Uh accepting that there is a part of you that Can exist solely in darkness and drive you to a point where you would actually Very seriously try to off yourself to deny the only thing that we know in life, which is life Is an understanding that that you have at a deeper level than many people do And now that you've realized that in fact Uh, there's that's just a part of you that you have to accept Is that denying it is in fact denying all of you? And you know as I look to then you know projected outwards, you know, just to give you a An example in my personal life here as well um, you know, someone I know Had been going through a tough time because Uh, they were laid off after covid And had really You know deteriorated over the past year because you know work is really Tied up with a lot of self-worth for a lot of individuals and myself included. I know The spiral downward for me began, you know with the 2008 crash and the layoff that that occurred after that But my attitude towards this individual as I saw them spiraling down While there was you know great care It was also sort of angering because I wanted that person to be able to pick themselves up and not go through the tunnel of darkness that I went through and so here I was being judgmental and yet this person was still doing the best that they could do With what they had in a time of great crisis So it was also a reality check here for me as I've prepared for Our talk here today to again see where I was not giving some of that benefit of the doubt as well Well, we're talking about love And uh, and loving someone means wanting what's best for them Even if it's not what's best for you And accepting the parts of yourself that you have trouble loving Is the key to being able to uh to transcend These issues when you have a friend like you're describing Loving them basically means accepting What they're going through And communicating to them how much You can empathize with them. Well at the same time Doing your best to show them other ways of thinking Because when you really look at This concept of everyone's doing the best they can Uh when you and you add to a deep back Chopra's consciousness Idea the idea the real concept here is to expand your consciousness to include your subconscious to say, okay There's a part of me that is very primitive Uh that deals with the four f's remember feeding fleeing fighting and mating There's that part of me that deals with those that's inside me That's an animal part of me and that has a tendency to drive me In directions uh to that I would rather not go At the same time if I accept that that's a part of me and if I learn to love That part of me Then my uh the likelihood that I will do bad things the likelihood that I will be able to grow rather than shrivel Uh becomes much greater And so I want to kind of bring this back around to how you first began this Introduction to this concept here You know, we're kind of talking about uh two different people in a sense. I would think and that is the the that The people who are evil and that there are those who are evil and you described it in one of our past Discussions here that that is the conscious Will to uh hurt someone, you know that that is a definition of someone that's evil versus, you know The everyday person like yourself and my and and myself Um, you know, we can certainly see that but when we see someone who you know, we may define as evil whether it be hitler or or Uh, you know for you know, our current paradigm those who would see trump that way This isn't a hard concept. I think to kind of wrap our heads around that, you know hitler and our trump Uh, you know, we're doing the past that they could and yet, you know, if you follow Conversations with god and I believe it's james redmond's book there, uh, or neil donald walsh's book there He is saying that even hitler went to heaven well I don't know about heaven uh and hell but I do know that they both exist here on earth and I also know based on The precepts that we're operating from uh that As I said before if hitler could have accepted the part of himself that was jewish Maybe he wouldn't have killed six million jews The reality is that he could not do that Uh, the reality is also that uh that donald trump cannot accept the fact that he lost an election What we are talking about here is What a person consciously says to themselves? In other words, how they think about themselves And that has to do with the conscious mind and remember that the conscious mind is the boss It gives orders if it gives the orders of I don't want to think about that I must have won that election all jews are bad If those are the orders that are being given the subconscious which is a slave has to come up with a way to abide by those orders Even though it knows that there are a lot of crap To me, this is one of your basic tenets again and as you say it's uh, uh a tenet of Milton Friedman That you've adopted as your own but for me Milton erickson, I apologize. I get the two uh, it's one's an economist and one is not And for me it's something that You know, I've adopted as my very own And it's again, it's something that I always want to try to keep in the forefront Of my mind because it defines interaction with anyone and and what's really interesting is that This is also one of your very basic tenets for the five components of a successful relationship Whether it be an intimate relationship or not And this is uh, one of the uh Topics of again, one of our future podcasts, which I'm really excited about But it's such a basic component about respect of the other person whether it's your post master or uh, uh, uh sibling A parent or or and in fact if I can say That I've had to use this Paradigm this concept as it relates to my parents Uh in a way to try to forgive them Uh that they were doing the best that they could Uh to raise me Uh as the best human being that they felt I could try to be Yes, and the the difficulty here is The parts of ourselves that we have trouble accepting To talk about How Milton Erickson developed his extraordinary Capacity to be a therapist the truth is that he had polio back when it was a really major problem And he was in an iron lung for an extended period of time when he was a teenager and uh For much of that time he couldn't even talk he could observe he could think But nobody could hear him and he was asked afterwards. What was it like being in an iron lung? Seeing the people wandering around in the hospital talking to each other And what he said was uh, well the first thing I noticed was the difference between people what people said And what they did And then I noticed the difference between what they said and what they did And what they thought they were doing And then I noticed the difference between what they said and what they thought they were saying and what they did And what they thought they were doing Truth is that he was a wonderful man. He helped virtually everybody came in contact with But people were afraid to walk in the same room with him because he could hypnotize them just like that Wow Well, our uh topic again is that each of us is doing the best we can with what we have and again I thought this was really important because it brought it back to the fact that each of us is living in our own reality in that Our reality is a construct or an amalgam Of our nature and our nurture And that each of us is doing the best we can Based on our nature and our nurture, you know, whether you are born with a physical defect You're trying to make your way in a world that Perhaps isn't exactly kind to uh, someone who's deaf or blind or whatnot But yet, uh, constructs have been made to try to help you deal with uh, this reality For me, I grew up again in perhaps a violent household that was Uh emblematic of the era that type of violence isn't seen Much today and yet was commonplace back then And yet again, my parents were doing the best that they could with what they had at the time That's true, but to Truly get to the points that you are now You had to deal with the violence that you grew up with and uh, there's No question in my mind, but that uh, when you tried to kill yourself You were dealing with that violence and it was mostly Put in your subconscious by your father And to the extent that uh, that you wound up surviving And getting to know your father and beginning to realize that he was doing the best he could It's part of what your healing has been all about Wow And for others as well. I mean, I'm I'm hopeful that This whole series will allow You the opportunity the viewer to do some self-interpection about Uh Giving yourself a break that you're doing the best that you can with what you have And that as you go out into the world to keep that as a forefront Thought to those amongst whom you interact with and and again I want to bring this back to relationships in general that neil you believe that this really is one of the five core tenants of a successful relationship That each of you have to Believe that the other is doing the best they can with what they have Yes, those five tenants include Each person Doing knowing that the other person is doing the best they can And if you are in a relationship and you begin to question whether the other person is doing the best they can Then you are not totally empathizing with that person and it may be extremely difficult to do Especially if what that person is doing is hurting you on the other hand If both people want the relationship to work If the good times outweigh the bad times and on that one one really bad time can outweigh a lot If not all the good times If each person feels like the other is doing the best they can if each person feels like they have a good deal With the other in the other In the relationship, uh, you wind up with An understanding that all of the factors that make a relationship work are attitudinal Yeah, if If you have a Seven-foot guy and a four-foot gal who it'll still work or vice versa than male female. It doesn't matter You know part of this has to do with the idea of accepting That all of us have within us the capacity to do everything That is good and everything that is bad And the key to the difference is accepting that the parts of you that have the capacity to do bad Are within you I was in fact just watching I quoted this I was just watching the The Netflix show lucifer and it has a scene in it where God says to Ella everyone has darkness in them. It's not about getting rid of it. It's about accepting it That's a season five episode 14 I wrote it down 10 minutes ago simply because it just seems like the basic concept that we need to accept and understand With the topic of today Wonderful your final thoughts on our on our topic each of us is doing the best with What we have each of us is doing the best we can with what we have some parting words for our viewing audiences They go out into the world Be kind to yourself Accept that there's a part of yourself that's capable of doing all the horrible things that hitler did And there's a part of yourself that's capable of doing all the wonderful things that jesus did And the key to it is understanding that It's inside you but that doesn't mean you have to do it You know and to wrap that up It just reminded me so much of our second podcast There's no part of you that is not a part of me and that you were talking about hitler and jesus in that You know as we walk the earth today We are breathing particles That were around and were breathed by both those two individuals And that's a tremendous unifying concept for me That is something that i'd like to leave us with as we again keep in mind that concept the forefront of our mind Each of us is doing the best we can with what we have My conversation with dr. Neal marinello. You can follow him at coach dr. Neal on twitter as we examine His tweets in the past our conversation will continue next week where our uh topic will be The only rules Controlling me are my own. It's a natural progression It's another in our podcast series of good mental health for the good doctor neal marinello I'm matt kelly wishing you good mental health