1335: Protecting Your Kids from the Evil They Hid | Feedback Friday

1335: Protecting Your Kids from the Evil They Hid | Feedback Friday

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Jordan Harbinger: [00:00:00] Welcome to Feedback Friday. I'm your host, Jordan Harbinger. As always, I'm here with Feedback Friday producer, everyone's favorite savasana shawty getting his chill in Brazil, Gabriel Mizrahi.

JHS Trailer: Daddy chill.

Jordan Harbinger: On The Jordan Harbinger Show, we decode the stories, secrets, and skills of the world's most fascinating people and turn their wisdom into practical advice that you can use to impact your own life and those around you, and our mission is to help you become a better informed, more critical thinker.

During the week, we have long form conversations with a variety of amazing folks, hostage negotiators, drug traffickers, astronauts, neuroscientists. On Fridays, though, we share stories, take listener letters, offer advice, and run naked through the sprinklers of your greatest victories and most confounding defeats.

Speaking of which, I hear we have a little update on a recent letter, Gabe.

Gabriel Mizrahi: Yeah, I just wanted to give one of our listeners, Louise, a shout-out. Louise was the listener who wrote in a few weeks ago asking about how to get meaningful feedback from hiring managers after she lost out on a few job offers.

Jordan Harbinger: Ah, yeah, this was the listener [00:01:00] who almost got that job she really wanted, but like a former cop got it instead for some reason?

Gabriel Mizrahi: That's right. We gave her some thoughts on how to do that, but I guess she didn't really need them because, well, she wrote us: Exciting news. I was offered the role of company manager for a major international circus' show this week So the family and I will be moving to Mexico in a couple of months.

Jordan Harbinger: Wow, random.

Gabriel Mizrahi: The great thing about this is that I actually interviewed for this role 18 months ago and was their backup candidate. The process then was a series of rigorous interviews, whereas this time I just had a couple of very casual video calls and they made the offer.

Jordan Harbinger: I love when stuff like that happens.

Wonder what happened to the primary candidate?

Gabriel Mizrahi: I suppose it goes to show that being the backup sometimes pays off in the end, and this is actually much better timing for us as our family is complete now, which it wasn't the first time around. I'm really happy that the interview process I initially emailed you about has allowed me to expand my network at home, which I will continue to nurture whilst we're away.

I feel very much like it's all working out for the best.

Jordan Harbinger: It is, and that primary [00:02:00] candidate, he's fine in my basement. Yeah. He's going to stay there for a while.

Gabriel Mizrahi: Don't say anything, Jordan. Don't tell them that we did this.

Jordan Harbinger: No, it's, we look out for our listeners here. Well done, Louise, proud of you.

Gabriel Mizrahi: I wanted to share that email not just to celebrate her win, which is very well deserved and we're thrilled to hear it, but also because I feel like it's very easy, Jordan, when we're chasing something, to get frustrated, to feel lost, you know, to just go like, "Why isn't this going my way right now when I want it to go my way?"

But over a long enough time horizon, I think things usually work out, and they work out in a way that we couldn't possibly anticipate when we're in the middle of it.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, for sure. That's been true over and over in my life, I feel.

Gabriel Mizrahi: Same. So obviously we need to work hard, we need to create as many opportunities as possible, we need to plant as many seeds as we can.

I think that's usually when stuff like this does happen, and there's always luck, right? That always plays a role. But Louise's letter, for me, really captured just how perfectly things come together. I find it interesting that in her first letter to us, she was pretty down about the fact that taking time off to have kids might have set her back in her career.

But [00:03:00] then she gets this offer and she's like, "Oh, actually no, this is perfect because now we've had the kids and now I can step into this job and the kids are young enough that they can move to this new country and have a whole experience together without too much interruption." So it's just really beautiful.

It's an adventure and also it's a memory that they're all going to share. Congrats.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, that is awesome. It's so hard to zoom out when you're in the middle of something. It's impossible really. You just don't know what's coming, but then you connect all the dots backward and it usually all somehow makes sense.

Also, I love that she views this frustrating interview process as an opportunity to expand her network at home, and that she's going to keep investing in it while she's abroad. That's some Six Minute Networking stuff right there. Sixminutenetworking.com. Free Zero Shenanigans course on, I guess you could call it increasing your surface area for lucky breaks like this I'm honestly not surprised that a person who has this mindset ended up getting offered a job that she didn't even get before.

That's exactly the kind of stuff that happens when you put people and relationships first. So well done, Louise. We're cheering you on, and we hope [00:04:00] you have a blast running away to the circus in Mexico. And again, don't worry, the, uh, the guy who actually got the job, we feed him twice a week and he's got Netflix.

Oh, and speaking of the circus, for some reason, a bunch of you are getting Ashley Madison ads, because I get all these comments like, "Self-help podcast with Ashley Madison ads." I'm not voicing these, okay? For people who are not getting these. They're just automated. We block them over and over and over from this ad service, but they just keep popping up, and people keep complaining, and I don't really know what to do about it.

So if you're getting Ashley Madison ads, I am sorry about that. Usually I'm able to block things like g- vaping categories, gambling, porn, crypto stuff. This one, and I'm not accusing anybody of anything, the way you get around these things is you lie about the category of ad, and whoever's managing their ad campaign for them is maybe doing that inadvertently or possibly deliberately.

So if you're getting a bunch of annoying ads and your kids are in the car, I do feel bad about that, but, uh, there's, uh, unfortunately, I'm, I'm at my wit's end with this.

Gabriel Mizrahi: It would be so funny [00:05:00] if we were allowing those ads on our show just to create more tea for people to write into Feedback Friday about.

Jordan Harbinger: Right? That's right. I'm slowly trying to sabotage all of your lives so that the inbox gets really spicy.

Gabriel Mizrahi: Feedback Friday gets better the more people gamble, cheat, watch porn behind their spouses' backs, et cetera.

Jordan Harbinger: Maybe that's why you're getting those ads. I don't know. All right, let's do this. What's the first thing out of the mailbag?

Gabriel Mizrahi: "Dear Jordan and Gabe, Four months ago, I was promoted to a leadership role in another department at my very large Fortune 500 company. I expected to have to cover the essentials of my old finance role until a plan was put in place to divide and cover my old tasks. No big deal. This plan, however, never materialized.

I reached out to HR and the respective department leadership teams on multiple occasions to request alignment." And I love phrases like that, Jordan.

Jordan Harbinger: I know. It's so corporate and funny.

Gabriel Mizrahi: To request alignment. It's like, why don't you just hire somebody and not make me do two jobs, you A-holes?

Jordan Harbinger: Yes. "

Gabriel Mizrahi: To request alignment and to define a timeline to [00:06:00] transition out of the old role, but that never happened.

Four months later, none of my old responsibilities have come off my plate. To add insult to injury, I was personally asked to complete the documentation to facilitate outsourcing work from another department with an open role to a contractor. The employee hadn't even left yet when this happened. The message was clear: We will outsource work to not overburden some employees, but not you.

You can work an extra role for free, even though I know the company has the money." I am now working well beyond 40 hours, staying late and taking home work on weekends. My current role does not pay overtime, which is fine, but I agreed to that with the understanding that the salary reflected one role, not two roles with entirely different scopes of work.

My manager understands that this is an issue, but he's very passive, and I can't realistically rely on him to make this right. He's even discouraged me from speaking up about it.

Jordan Harbinger: Oh yeah, don't make my life harder, please. Thank you. Keep bending over for the company. Fine.

Gabriel Mizrahi: [00:07:00] What recourse, if any, do I have here?

How do I avoid being steamrolled by the company without also being branded as not a team player? How would you approach asking that several months of working an extra role be appropriately compensated? Signed, not trying to be snooty, but maybe looking for some extra booty for this endless double duty.

Jordan Harbinger: Man, this is so frustrating. Well, let's start with the good news. Congratulations on your promotion, right? That is super exciting. I'm sure it says a lot about your talent, your effort. I can tell from the way you've continued to do your old role, taking home work and all that, you are super dedicated and hardworking.

I'm sure that you are a huge asset to this place, which is why they keep on working you to death, you know? I mean, that's one reason why. I'm sorry that your company's pulling this BS, man. It's infuriating, especially since they clearly have a budget and means to do this differently. I can hear that it's left you angry and demoralized, and that sucks.

I totally get it. We wanted to run all this by an expert, so we reached out to Joanna Tate, friend of the show and HR professional for over 20 years. [00:08:00] And Joanna's overall take was this is kind of a classic no good deed goes unpunished situation. Joanna pointed out that in leadership roles, especially in the US, there are going to be weeks where you work more than 40 hours.

Yeah, that's been baked into the culture for a long time. But the situation you're in, it's not just working a little extra. Her take, yours too, I know, after four months, four months, a third of a year, this is no longer a transition period. This is an unofficial dual role expectation, and it is unsustainable.

In fact, I don't want to get too technical here, but my professional opinion as a podcaster is this is some top-shelf bullshit. Shit. Joanna's hunch is that if the work is getting done, the effort and stress behind the scenes is invisible, so it's just not prioritized by leadership to fix anything. Very common in big organizations in her experience.

So what's happening is you're performing at a high level, you're keeping everything afloat, and the organization just has [00:09:00] absolutely no incentive to sort this out. Now, Joanna's pointed out that you're salaried, so it's not illegal, although it should be somehow. But it does create risks, risks to you, burnout, mistakes, and risks to your bosses.

For example, that other employees will see how they handle this whole backfill situation and be like, "Well, that's a nightmare. I don't know if I trust these people or have confidence in their management skills." That creates resentment, lack of buy-in, fear, higher turnover. So this actually matters and should matter to them, too.

Now, I know you've already reached out to HR and leadership and nothing has changed. Joanna's question was what was actually said in those conversations? Were there commitments? Were there timelines? Do you have notes of what you discussed? Because her feeling was you should go back to them again. What you're going through, this is obviously overwhelming and totally unfair.

But in Joanna's experience, leading with that, not going to get you very far in some soulless corporation, right? A much stronger approach in her view is saying something like, "This current structure isn't sustainable and creates risk for the business. I've been [00:10:00] covering both roles for four months to support the transition, but continuing at this level isn't going to work long term I need alignment on what my role expectations are, what success looks like in my current position, and which responsibilities will transition off my shoulders and when.

Which is a chef's kiss of a script. I've been out of corporate life so long that I don't even know how to word things like this anymore. It's just one reason that I love our experts here on the show. Joanna said that this is a very different conversation, right? Because you're not complaining, you're highlighting a business issue.

When you're stretched thin like this, a person's performance drops. That's when mistakes happen. Some of them could be critical, and Joanna didn't think that would be failing. But in a corporate environment, we're taught to believe that it is, unfortunately. So getting out of this, it's going to take a little more effort.

Her tactical advice is you need to document what's actually happening. Nothing fancy, a bulleted list of your current responsibilities, your old finance responsibilities, roughly how many hours per week each one is taking. And I feel the need to say [00:11:00] this as an attorney, document this stuff on, I don't know, your iPhone or something in a note.

Don't put it on your company computer, because once they turn off access to that, you'll just never see this document again, okay? Then when you bring these documents and notes, whatever, into the next meeting, the question she would ask is, given my current capacity, what should I deprioritize? In other words Yeah, I love that.

Which work can I dump? Which one should I throw

Gabriel Mizrahi: back at you?

Jordan Harbinger: Yes. Which stuff are you taking off my plate before I quit right freaking now? In other words, make this conversation about capacity, not willingness. You've already proven you're willing to do the work, so Joanna would stay away from framing it as a fairness issue, because we already know they don't give a crap about what's fair over there wherever you work.

Again, fairness arguments, they just don't move leaders, but capacity and risk, that can.

Gabriel Mizrahi: Awesome advice. And by the way, Jordan, I feel like we should use that deprioritize concept for everything. Like, when you break up with someone, you shouldn't be like, "I'm dumping you." You should be like, "I'm deprioritizing you."

Jordan Harbinger: I'm deprioritizing this relationship- ... in that it's over, and we will never speak again. Mm-hmm. [00:12:00]

Gabriel Mizrahi: Now, about your current manager, you said he's passive. You said he's discouraged you from speaking up. That's frustrating. But Joanna was curious about whether that's just his personality or whether this guy has tried to push on issues like this before and he's gotten nowhere.

She had an interesting observation/theory. She said sometimes passivity is a learned response in certain corporate cultures, and so this guy's response might, we're not sure, but might give you some insight into how things actually happen at your company. For example, if your manager has figured out that simple needs are just not taken seriously at this place, this is probably a difficult organization to work in a lot of the time.

And if he's signaling that the bosses responsible for this problem won't give it the attention it deserves, then the business might suffer every time transitions like this have to happen, which is really good information for you. Then it's up to you to decide, do I want to adapt and learn how to work around these things, or do I want to maybe factor that into whether I stay long term or whatever it is, or maybe even how you want to lead when it's your turn.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, I agree with that. It might be time to [00:13:00] get more creative. Joanna had one last practical recommendation for you. If she were in your shoes, one thing she would not do is threaten to quit unless you are 100% ready to follow through, because that can backfire quickly in her experience. Also, she wouldn't lead with, "I want back pay for all this free work I've done," which I, I...

Man, I... Good thing she's giving advice, because I probably would've said that. A better approach, in her view, is something along the lines of, "Given the expanded scope I've been covering, I'd like to discuss how that will be recognized, whether that's compensation, bonus, or a formal adjustment to my role."

Gabriel This, she is like a translator- She is ... a Google Translate for corporate- But hearing

Gabriel Mizrahi: you say it is like watching a dog walk on its hind legs.

Jordan Harbinger: Yes. Yes, exactly. That's how it feels to me, too. I'm just like, "Oh my God, I'm w- it's like a handstand walk here. I could never do this." I'd be like, "Hey, I've done a bunch of free work.

You're going to pay me for that, right?" I'm sorry, what I meant to say was, given the expanded scope that I've been covering, I'd like to discuss how that will be recognized, whether- Oh, it's not

Gabriel Mizrahi: going to be recognized? I quit

Jordan Harbinger: In that [00:14:00] case, I need to deprioritize yo ass. All right? Give me my mug. I'm out of here.

Okay, so framing it in that way opens the door without putting your leaders on the defensive, because then they'll probably go, "Well, we're not about to pay her two salaries. I guess we actually have to hire somebody else to do this stuff." So annoying, but that's just how this is. So again, I'm really sorry this is happening.

This is, oh, it's infuriating. I'm sure it's frustrating and exhausting. I'm angry about it. I can only imagine how you feel. But in a messed up way, it's a huge endorsement of you, and it's a testament to how valuable you are to this place. I know you're worried about not coming across as a team player. I totally get that.

But this is not ultimately about whether you are a team player. You've already proven that you are by eating all this nonsense work for months. The real question, in Joanna's view, is whether your organization is holding up its end of the deal. If they're not, she said that the most professional thing you can do is to force clarity with the right language and spirit instead of just continuing to [00:15:00] absorb the work.

Don't become like your manager, where you just suck it all in until they break you. From there, she's confident that you'll know your next step. Big thanks to Joanna Tate for her insight and wisdom here. You can connect with Joanna on LinkedIn. We'll link to her in the show notes. By the way, you can reach us Friday at jordanharbinger.com.

Keep your emails concise. Try to use a descriptive subject line. That makes our job a whole lot easier. If you're trying to run a business with an avoidant parent, you're being hit on by a creepy psychiatrist and wondering whether to report him, or you're struggling to manage an unstable, chaotic partner with a painful past who's creating more and more risk for you, whatever's got you staying up at night lately, hit us up Friday at jordanharbinger.com.

We're here to help, and we keep every email anonymous. And now I want to force some clarity and request alignment between your ears and our sponsors. We'll be right back

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All of the deals, discount codes, and ways to support the show, searchable and clickable on the website at jordanharbinger.com/deals. Please consider supporting those who support the show. Now, back to Feedback Friday. Okay, next up.

Gabriel Mizrahi: Hi, Jordan and Gabe. In 2019, I was sexually assaulted at my children's father's place of worship, the Halifax Shambhala Center, in the company of one of my children.

I reported the assault to the center's executive director, as well as their international governing body, Shambhala Global. I expected my experience to be addressed empathetically, given that the organization had recently been through a massive sexual assault scandal in which their religious figurehead, Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche, fled the country to [00:18:00] escape being charged with sexually assaulting multiple women."

Jordan Harbinger: So okay, pause. You said you looked into some of this?

Gabriel Mizrahi: I did, yes, briefly.

Jordan Harbinger: And so this is true, right? I want to be kind of careful, but-

Gabriel Mizrahi: Yes. The short story is in 2018, after multiple allegations by women of sexual misconduct/abuse involving a bunch of senior figures at this organization, including this guy she just mentioned, Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche, Halifax Police opened a criminal investigation into the Shambhala international community.

In the end, though, no charges were filed because there wasn't enough evidence under their criminal standard, I guess. But this guy, Mipham, did step down. I'm not sure that he technically fled, as she put it. He relocated to Nepal, where he apparently still teaches independently, and no charges were ever filed against him.

But some critics say that was basically him fleeing. Either way, this whole thing sent shockwaves through the organization.

Jordan Harbinger: Wow. Wild story.

Gabriel Mizrahi: Yeah. The details, by the way, are quite disturbing. We will link to an article in the show notes if anyone wants to read [00:19:00] more about it. Also, there were two independent investigations, one by a law firm and one by a survivor organization called Buddhist Project Sunshine, and they both confirmed that there was a ton of abuse going on at this place, and apparently, the power dynamics and accountability in this organization were ripe for this kind of thing to happen.

Jordan Harbinger: Tale as old as time, sadly.

Gabriel Mizrahi: So she goes on, "Eventually, the organization responded by hosting a year's worth of events focused on empowering women and challenging sexual misconduct and creating a new code of conduct with the stated goal of appropriately addressing sexual misconduct within Shambhala communities."

Oh, yeah, this is another thing I read about. So they apparently instituted a bunch of reforms, all the stuff she just mentioned, new ethical codes, clear reporting channels. They've apparently moved away from a single guru-led structure and also away from apparently a heavy drinking culture, stuff like that.

Jordan Harbinger: No binge drinking after meditation and no recruiting mistresses for the Rinpoche at, at the Buddhist center? The bar is low, man. What a concept.

Gabriel Mizrahi: To be completely [00:20:00] fair, and please keep in mind we're just learning about all of this ourselves, the headline seems to be that some of this change is real, and there might be some truly genuine people who stayed and want to make things better.

But A lot of people say that the change is uneven or it's not genuine. They say a lot of the culture is exactly the same. Problems are still handled largely internally. So a lot of victims are saying, "We feel ignored. We even kind of feel re-traumatized by a lot of this." And a lot of people have just left the group.

Jordan Harbinger: Does not surprise me at all, but okay, they're maybe trying?

Gabriel Mizrahi: Unfortunately, rather than receiving any kind of support or kindness when I reported the sexual assault, my assault was concealed and mention of it was suppressed at every level by the leader of Halifax Shambhala Center, by the code of conduct officers, and by my common law partner and his family who forced me to continue attending events at the center thereafter, despite me repeatedly saying that I was not willing to attend events there until my sexual assault was appropriately addressed.

I was yelled at for infractions [00:21:00] like having tears run silently down my face while being forced to attend an event on the anniversary of my assault in the place where I was assaulted, and for any mention of the assault or how it affected me.

Jordan Harbinger: Ugh, I'm really sorry to hear that, friend. Oof.

Gabriel Mizrahi: I was eventually diagnosed with PTSD resulting from the assault.

Jordan Harbinger: Sure.

Gabriel Mizrahi: Eventually, I was able to leave my abusive partner. We share custody of our children, who are five and six and a half years old now, but he's still bringing them to events at the center He is well aware of the sexual assault and its concealment. He is also aware that since my assault, there have been several other sexual assaults at the center and that one of their leaders stepped down a few months ago, publicly stating that he was stepping down due to ongoing repeated sexual abuse and its concealment within the community.

Jordan Harbinger: So this is another person, not the Sakyong, and he's just like, "Hey, I'm out of here. I don't want to be associated with you guys,"

Gabriel Mizrahi: from the sound of it? Correct. That's what it sounds like, yeah. Wow. The Sakyong stepped down in 2018. This other leader was a few months ago, she's saying.

Jordan Harbinger: So even people in their own [00:22:00] ranks are just, "Hey, there's a systemic problem here that everybody's sweeping under the rug."

Gabriel Mizrahi: I talk to my kids regularly about consent and about appropriate and inappropriate behaviors from adults towards children at what I feel is an age-appropriate level. I've also sought professional advice from several local social workers, police officers, and mental health professionals on how to go about giving my kids information that they can use to keep themselves safe.

But my impression is that they don't have much expertise when it comes to how cults operate or how to protect children from becoming victims of dangerous practices. The advice I've received to date is that my only course of action is to teach the kids about consent and appropriate conduct, and that I shouldn't tell them anything that they might perceive as a negative view of their family members or spiritual community.

But how can it possibly be appropriate to intentionally not tell my children about sexual misconduct and associated cover-ups happening in a place they visit? If I were to do this and one of my children were eventually assaulted, [00:23:00] I would consider myself 100% to blame for having done nothing to warn them about the risks associated with this community.

It's important to me to not make them anxious or fearful, but also to empower them with the age-appropriate knowledge and skills that they will need to become healthy, successful adults who can navigate an environment like this with open eyes and open minds. How would you talk to kids about this?

Where's the line between being age appropriate and being protective? How much detail should I go into in trying to keep them safe? And what else should I be doing for my kids as it relates to this organization? Signed, Getting fussed about how to discuss the fact that this organization betrayed my trust.

I'm not trying to cuss, but I do think it's a plus to tell my kids what goes on there, even if it's treasonous.

Jordan Harbinger: Bruh, what a story. This is all very disturbing and sad and gross, and I'm so very sorry for everything you and your kids have been through. Once again, this is some HBO documentary- Truly ... [00:24:00] ish, or do we call it Max now?

I don't know. Gabe, I feel like we've been talking a lot about misconduct or, or just incompetence in religious organizations, or negligence, and I, I kind of feel bad about that. We're not trying to do that specifically. These stories just have a way of ending up in our inbox. I think organizations like this in general can just become coercive so quickly and easily that it's almost endemic to any sort of group like that.

That said, I find it interesting that this kind of stuff happens in the Buddhist organizations as well. You know, it's not just like the ancient Catholic Church and the Lydias and the Chocolate Factory- ... and all that stuff.

Gabriel Mizrahi: My favorite L. Frank Baum novel. Yeah, no, I, I take your point. Humans are humans, even the ones who meditate, I guess.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. So all y'all who accuse me of having it out for Christianity or whatever, I promise you no such agenda exists.

Gabriel Mizrahi: So before we go on, I've got to share some interesting stuff I learned reading up on this place. I'll keep this short, but I just feel like it might shed some light on her story. So first of all, this organization was founded by the students of a guy named Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche, whom I have heard of.[00:25:00]

He's quite a famous Tibetan Buddhist master, and he's a major figure in the spread of Buddhism in the West.

Jordan Harbinger: Okay. I sort of think I know this name. I feel like I see this guy's quotes on Instagram and stuff like that.

Gabriel Mizrahi: Probably, because he wrote a ton of books that are quite famous and apparently gave some absolutely fire lectures in his day.

But this guy was very unusual. He was kind of the bad boy of Buddhism, if you want to think of it that way. He smoked, he drank heavily, he had sexual relationships with a number of students. He reportedly had multiple, quote-unquote, "spiritual wives," some of whom were apparently minors, some of whom described him as abusive.

There's a crazy story about him. I guess he once drove his sports car into a store, possibly/probably drunk, and the accident left him partially paralyzed. So he's had quite a life.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, sheesh.

Gabriel Mizrahi: There is so much to say about this guy. There are reports of cocaine use, weird sexual stuff at parties, incoherent lectures.

He had a track record of very dodgy behavior. The list [00:26:00] goes on and on. Some former students described aspects of his community as cult-like, although I guess reasonable people might disagree about whether it was actually a cult.

Jordan Harbinger: So this guy was on one, and probably kind of a fun hang in your 20s, but, you know, except for the whole abuse part.

Yeah, on ones. Multiple ones. They say breathwork gets you high. I guess, uh, it wasn't high enough. Need a little backup.

Gabriel Mizrahi: Sometimes you just need a little bit, you need a little, you need to go skiing. Little

Jordan Harbinger: bump.

Gabriel Mizrahi: Yeah, that's right.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. It's breathwork all right.

Gabriel Mizrahi: This is another form of it. We need many traditions.

But then a lot of his supporters frame this behavior as a Tibetan concept called crazy wisdom, which basically means a teaching style that's meant to, like, shock students out of their ego and attachment.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, I love that reframe. I mean, it just sounds like a really great way to excuse a bunch of absolutely reckless behavior.

Like, "Hey, look, me driving my car through, through the w- the lobby of this hotel, I'm just trying to [00:27:00] shock you out of ego and attachment. That's all." You

Gabriel Mizrahi: know, my car wasn't totaled. It just was sacrificed on the altar of crazy wisdom.

Jordan Harbinger: That's right. I feel like this is what so many weird gurus end up saying.

"I might be unconventional, but I do it for you. It's all about enlightenment."

Gabriel Mizrahi: So in the end, he renounced his vows in 1969, and then he died young, if you can believe it, uh, in 1987, and he was, like, 48 years old.

Jordan Harbinger: Wow. So he did all this before age 30. This is, he was obviously super talented and tortured.

Gabriel Mizrahi: Well, this is also very interesting, because another crazy fact, he was one of those kids who was chosen to be a lama when he was, like, a year old.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. Okay, that makes sense. So they were like, "You're a reincarnated master and this is your path," or whatever. Yes. And he wasn't like- No ... "I'm going to become a monk." I got it.

Gabriel Mizrahi: Depending on how you look at it, he was training before he could even speak.

Jordan Harbinger: Okay. Well, I'm going to leave that right there.

Gabriel Mizrahi: Also, fun fact, in the '60s and '70s when he was coming up, there were very few Tibetan Buddhist teachers in Europe and North America, so guys like him, who were very [00:28:00] charismatic and smart and provocative apparently had enormous influence with Westerners, and he spoke English and he adapted strongly to Western culture, and a lot of prominent artists and intellectuals sought him out.

That's part of why he's so famous now.

Jordan Harbinger: Right. Okay. I mean, he adapted well to Western culture. Yeah, he drove a sports car, did blow, and had sex with lots of random women. Nailed it.

Gabriel Mizrahi: Red-blooded American.

Jordan Harbinger: Fits right in over there in LA, so he was kind of a rock star in so many different ways.

Gabriel Mizrahi: Yeah, and a lot of people say he was brilliant.

Flawed, clearly. Maybe that's understating it, but powerful, and he talked about some really important stuff. Like, this is... You're going to love this, Jordan. One of his big themes, ironically enough, was how people have a tendency to use spirituality to avoid real psychological work.

Jordan Harbinger: Oh, you don't say?

Gabriel Mizrahi: Amazing, huh?

Isn't that great?

Jordan Harbinger: What a mixed bag this guy was.

Gabriel Mizrahi: Anyway, like I said, I'm just learning about this guy. I hope I'm getting this mostly right, but if Shambhala was founded by his students and it was basically a continuation of his community, then this might just be-

Jordan Harbinger: It might be, [00:29:00] like, the culture of the place.

Yes. The problem is institutional. It started with a rock star abusing his students, and then the, he goes away and the other guy's like, "No, no, no. We don't want this party to end. This is pretty fun."

Gabriel Mizrahi: It's possible. A lot of people seem to think that that's the case, or maybe these groups, to your point, Jordan, just attract questionable leaders.

I honestly do not know.

Jordan Harbinger: I think a, a crazy guy like that could attract a bunch of people that go, "Hey, I want to glom onto this. This is a good time." But that's very dark. So all that to say I'm deeply disturbed by what's happened to you and to your child, and I'm very disappointed by how all of this has played out.

This organization should have done the right thing after learning about all of this, and it sounds like they didn't, and that's unconscionable. We wanted to get some experts in the mix here, so we reached out to Dr. Aaron Margolis, clinical psychologist and friend of the show.

Doctor Clip: I'm also known to the people who know me the best as the doctor.

Jordan Harbinger: And we reached out to defense attorney and also friend of the show, man, we have a lot of friends, Gabe, Corbin Payne.[00:30:00]

And both of them, of course, were equally devastated to hear about what you've been through, and angry and sad, and basically we all just wish things had gone very differently for you, of course. And so naturally, Dr. Margolis' top priority was you and your wellbeing. She wanted to know, do you have a therapist?

Are you actively working on all of this with someone? Does your child have someone to talk to, or could they when the time is right? I'm not hearing that in your letter, aside from the mental health professionals who told you not to say too much to your children, which I want to talk about, but maybe you are.

Obviously, seeking treatment for this trauma is crucial. As for how to talk to your kids about all this, Dr. Margolis' general thought there was you can absolutely talk to them about what happened as long as you're doing it in an age-appropriate way, which you say you are. The key is making sure you're reflecting not only their chronological age, but their developmental age.

You know, their psychological and emotional sophistication. A big part of this is following their lead. Maybe you speak in more general terms about some of the dangers of this place, and if they have more [00:31:00] questions, if they seem to be able to talk about this at a more mature level, then you can share more details.

Dr. Margolis' feeling was the most important thing is giving them enough information to keep them safe right now. That's the priority So maybe that means telling your kids, you know, "Most adults are safe. Some aren't. So if you ever feel scared, if somebody ever asks you to do something you don't want to do, or says something that makes you feel weird, or you see something weird, I want you to listen to that feeling.

Find more adults, look for me, ask for help," that kind of thing. Also, a lot of predators, they tell kids stuff like, "Hey, this is our secret. Don't tell anyone," or, "If you tell anyone, something really bad is going to happen." So I would tell your kids that that is never the case. They should always get away from people like that, and they can always talk to you about anything.

I think as a parent, this is how I approach things with Jayden and Junie, I want them to know that if something bad ever does happen, they can always come to me and Jen, that no matter what happens, we're here to listen to them. We're here to respond to them, advocate for them, whatever they need. [00:32:00] And as they get older, you can talk about this in more depth if that's necessary.

But for your kids right now at this age, it's all about making sure they're empowered to stay as safe as possible.

Gabriel Mizrahi: I find it very curious that some of these people she spoke with, and we don't know if it was a social worker or a police officer or a therapist or what, although honestly, they would all surprise me.

But apparently somebody told her, "Don't tell your kids anything that might disparage the family or, or, like, speak ill of this spiritual community." I find that very odd.

Jordan Harbinger: When I heard that part, I was like, "Okay, sorry that she has a few notes on the organization where she was literally assaulted and that then covered it up."

Gabriel Mizrahi: Seriously.

Jordan Harbinger: Why is it her job to protect these people? Also, that's... Are they advocating for you, or are they just covering their ass? Because that's what it sounds like to me.

Gabriel Mizrahi: That was basically Dr. Margolis' response, too. Her take was, that's fine if that's what these people believe, but you don't have to follow that advice.

These people don't know your kids. They probably do not have the best interests of your children at heart if this is really how they feel. To state the obvious, this advice is not gospel. It is not prescriptive. These are just data points. [00:33:00] You are their mom. So if you believe that it's best for your children to know what goes on in this organization and you're doing that in an appropriate way, then great.

I mean, you know your kids best, right?

Jordan Harbinger: Also, if she did end up poisoning the well by telling her kids the full story and-

Gabriel Mizrahi: Yeah, like, so?

Jordan Harbinger: Exactly. So freaking what? She was assaulted at this place. Apparently, there's a well-documented pattern of this and of them covering it up, so their reputation, I mean, this is on them, man.

It's not on her for telling her own kids, "Hey, we have to be careful at this objectively dangerous place."

Gabriel Mizrahi: Of course. So maybe a bigger question here is, why is these people's advice to not speak poorly of the organization more important than her own duty to protect her children? I think I'm confused.

Jordan Harbinger: 100%.

I don't see why anything else matters, candidly. It's... sounds culty to me. I'm not going to lean into that, but come on.

Gabriel Mizrahi: As for not making your kids anxious or fearful, Dr. Margolis' thought for you was, unfortunately, you can't predict exactly what's going to make someone anxious or fearful. In her view, it's less important to try not to make your [00:34:00] kids anxious and afraid at all, although obviously you should do everything you can to not freak them out for no reason.

But in Dr. Margolis' view, it's much more about if your kids do become anxious or afraid, how can you help them navigate those feelings? How can you listen to them? How can you support them? How can you help them understand how to work with their anxiety and fear? That's your job. I'm sure you would rather your children be a little anxious and not become victims than have zero anxiety and be vulnerable.

Jordan Harbinger: Dr. Margolis also pointed out that if you haven't worked through your own anxiety and fear, then there's a much greater chance of passing that along to your kids. So that's another reason you need to make sure you're taking care of yourself here so you can talk to your kids in the most helpful way instead of, like, inadvertently downloading your fears into them in the course of trying to keep them safe.

Gabriel Mizrahi: And that's actually what Dr. Margolis felt was the real issue in your letter, your own trauma, your own anxiety, and how badly you want to control it. And I get that. What happened to you and your child is just awful. But Dr. Margolis wondered if the fact that you couldn't stop this from happening might be creating [00:35:00] some guilt on your part.

So much of your letter seems to be coming from this place of wanting to prevent anything bad from happening to your kids in the past, in the future, which again, of course you do. But as Dr. Margolis pointed out, you can do everything right as a parent and something bad could still happen. Short of, you know, never letting them leave the house ever again, the reality is that you cannot completely protect your children forever.

So maybe part of what you're coming to terms with is the limit of your ability to protect your kids, and in this specific situation with this organization, maybe a sense of powerlessness after the way they responded, which again, so infuriating, so crazy-making. But that doesn't mean you can't still talk to your kids about all this.

Dr. Margolis also pointed out that the trauma of this situation has probably created a lot of grief about how unsafe the world can be, about how organizations that are supposed to help people sometimes clearly do the opposite, and also grief about this loss of control or invincibility. And her loose theory was if you can work through these feelings, then this [00:36:00] all-consuming terror about your kids going out into the world will probably start to transform.

Hopefully, it transforms into a type of productive anxiety, you know, that's necessary to stay safe and survive rather than remaining this debilitating anxiety that just feels distressing and unmanageable.

Jordan Harbinger: I fully agree with that. Also, her kids are still very young, right? So it's not like she can have a super nuanced discussion about this organization.

But I do wonder if she can subtly counteract any questionable beliefs or messages from this place. For example, she could say, "Some organizations say X about life. Other organizations say Y about life. What do you think?" Again, I know they're five and six. Maybe this will just make them a little confused, but I think there are ways to keep her kids grounded in reality, make them appropriately skeptical without necessarily slandering anyone.

Gabriel Mizrahi: I like that idea a lot, but look, our main question for you is why are you allowing your kids to keep going to this place if it's really this dangerous?

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, that's what I want to talk about, because she's framing a lot of this like it's just out of her [00:37:00] hands, like it's only her ex-partner's call, but she's their parent too.

Isn't that the best way to protect them? Just get them out of there.

Gabriel Mizrahi: I'm also just remembering that she said her ex-partner forced her to continue a- attending events at the center after this went down, despite the fact that she repeatedly said she wasn't willing to attend.

Jordan Harbinger: That confused me too. He forced her to keep going, but how?

He didn't kidnap her and take her there. Did they block the door and prevent her from leaving? I mean, I,

Gabriel Mizrahi: I- Yeah, we're getting into complicated territory for a victim, but I- I know ... share your confusion about this. It's curious.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, I know. I say this with a lot of compassion for what it's like to be in an abusive marriage, in a coercive environment, okay?

But we have to acknowledge this. He said, "You're coming to meditation tonight." She said, "I'm not going until they make things right." So how do we go from there to, "Well, I went and he made me"? Did he threaten her? Did she capitulate? I just, I want to understand.

Gabriel Mizrahi: This probably relates to our other big question, and both Dr.

Margolis and Corbin arrived here too, which is Why haven't you reported this to the police?

Jordan Harbinger: Yes.

Gabriel Mizrahi: I understand that this happened now seven years ago, which [00:38:00] might make things harder, but I'm just wondering, is it because you don't want to have to talk about it? Are you afraid to talk about it? Do you not think you're allowed to speak up?

Are you still protecting the organization or your ex-partner to some degree? I want to understand.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. Is this part of the legacy of the trauma? I mean, I, I have all the same questions.

Gabriel Mizrahi: I get that reporting an assault is not easy. We do not blame you for whatever stopped you- No ... from speaking up. Victims deal with so much in reaching out for help, so we understand that.

But Continuing to attend after the assault and not reporting this to the police, I do wonder if they might both speak to the same underlying issues. But making a report, if what you want is justice and if you feel ready, that would be quite important practically speaking obviously, but also in taking back some of your power here.

Jordan Harbinger: Could not agree more. And Corbin's thought there was, and by the way, Corbin's an attorney in the US. He knows very little about Canadian law, but there are enough similarities that he felt comfortable offering some very general thoughts. His thought was, yes, reporting the assault to the police now at this [00:39:00] point, it might not result in a case being brought against the attacker, but he still feels that it would be wise to talk to them, because you just never know what an investigation could turn up.

Also, if there are other victims who have come forward in the past or who come forward in the future, multiple reports about the same person or the same center, Corbin said that might actually make the cops take new allegations more seriously. Also, if you take any further steps in the future, it's only going to help if you filed a police report at some point.

And look, hey, post Me Too, I think people have come to understand that assault victims are often reluctant to go to the police, but obviously there's nothing they can do about crimes that they don't even know about, okay? So if and when you do go to the police, Corbin recommends taking any and all evidence that you might have with you, even if it's just texts or emails where you were talking with the leadership about what happened.

He said that can be helpful in establishing wrongdoing.

Gabriel Mizrahi: One big thing working in your favor, the fact that this MIPAM guy publicly admitted to wrongdoing and stepped down, Corbin said that that public admission is key. So [00:40:00] if you do end up going to the police, take that admission with you, his public statement, the organization's statement, news articles about all this, although I would hope the police already know about this because they did an investigation even though it didn't lead to charges, but still, show them that this is not, you know, some vengeful ex-member looking to settle a score.

Your story fits into this very publicly acknowledged pattern of abuse.

Jordan Harbinger: Also, Corbin said he'd be willing to bet there's a class action lawsuit against this organization building somewhere. This would be one way for you to get some justice. It might just be a way to cripple the organization's ability to cover for abusers.

And if there are multiple victims bringing the suit, Corbin said that you won't have to shoulder the burden of confronting the organization alone. So y- if you can get involved, Corbin strongly suggests that you do so. And the way to get involved in these things, generally speaking, is you talk to a plaintiff's attorney and they look into any cases developing.

Keep looking for press coverage of filed complaints or motions for class certification. Any articles should mention the lawyers leading the case.

Gabriel Mizrahi: I imagine you can also reach out to Buddhist Project Sunshine. They're [00:41:00] probably very plugged into all of this, and they must be pretty motivated to help victims.

Jordan Harbinger: You can also reach out to firms that have represented victims individually. There was one in Vermont, for example. We'll link to it in the show notes. They should have a ton of information. Maybe they can also refer you to a Canadian law firm. Also, going back to the whole why are you still letting your kids go to this center question, if you feel they aren't safe in their dad's care Like, if he's taking them to lectures three times a week and he's refusing to acknowledge this abuse, then you might need to consider fighting for full custody.

Again, I understand this is complicated. I'm not telling you you absolutely have to do this, but you're asking us how to protect your kids, and I feel like this is another big way you could do that if necessary.

Gabriel Mizrahi: I'm really glad you brought this up, Jordan, because here too, we're talking about another very concrete strategy that she isn't exploring.

Jordan Harbinger: Well, again, that might be the real theme of her letter, this powerlessness, this fear, this looking to other people and institutions to do right by her. I totally understand why she might feel that way. But I'm with you. I do wonder if not speaking up and taking the reins [00:42:00] a little bit more, to Dr. Margolis' point, if that might be contributing to her anxiety and her grief because they're just kind of there.

Gabriel Mizrahi: And now I'm thinking about that other thing she said, how if something were to happen to her kids, she would feel 100% responsible. I mean, look, I think we can all agree that if someone assaults someone, the responsibility falls exclusively on the assailant. But I also wonder if she holds this feeling because she's not exploring the handful of very practical things she could be doing to remedy the situation and actually protect her kids to the extent possible.

So her passivity and her hyper-developed sense of responsibility might be two sides of the same coin, and I wonder if what she is looking for is basically someone to save her or protect her, including the very organization that apparently allowed this to happen, when really what she needs is to look inside and start answering this question for herself, which is: Why is it so hard for me to take these steps to do what I say I want to do, which is protect my kids?

Like, what is actually standing [00:43:00] in my way? And I ask that without judgment. I know that this is heavy. I know that this is complicated. I get that there are a lot of nuances, but I do think you need to get clear on this if you want things to change.

Jordan Harbinger: No, that is the question, because if she did, say, contact the police or hire a lawyer or fight for custody or go to the press, I imagine she'd have to confront some pretty intense stuff.

Would she feel scared of facing her abusers? Is she afraid of being judged or ostracized by this community? Is she afraid of how her children's father would respond? Is he going to retaliate against her? All of this is totally normal and understandable, but I think that's probably why she's kind of paralyzed here, yeah?

And then she's going, "Okay, I can't do anything about this, but at least I can worry."

Gabriel Mizrahi: Exactly, and not to put too fine a point on it, but Dr. Margolis also pointed out that all of this will probably become more doable if she has worked through her PTSD to some degree. If not, she said the symptoms could prevent our friend here from being willing to engage more because she explained to us one of the symptoms of PTSD is actually avoidance, which makes a lot of [00:44:00] sense, right?

You want to avoid external reminders or internal cues about the trauma, right? Any kind of trigger. So this is where her personal healing and these more practical steps are totally connected, but she might have to go inward for a time before she feels prepared to go outward.

Jordan Harbinger: Totally agree. Again, I'm so very sorry that you're going through this, my friend.

It is disturbing, it's heartbreaking, and not okay at all. Candidly, I would have zero qualms about talking to my children about all this and doing everything I could to protect them, and myself for that matter, but there's also a process that needs to happen closer to home. So I hope you get to do that, my friend.

Sending you and your kids a big hug and wishing you all the best. You know who's definitely been approved of by a panel of horny, cocaine-fueled monks? The amazing, decidedly non-gropey sponsors who support this show. We'll be right back

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Gabriel Mizrahi: To my favorite podcasters, my mother is 83 and has been, quote-unquote, "dying" for 10 years.

She is relatively healthy. She is quite manipulative, and it's taken me years to understand this with the help of therapy. The dying part has held me living next door to her and her partner, Mike, for 10 years out of obligation, even when it wasn't what I wanted. Mike is, from my point of view, a sanctimonious a-hole, and I feel Mike's dislike of me when I'm there, but he takes care of her well.

We just stay out of each other's way. However, I have [00:48:00] tremendous guilt about not spending more time with my mom. I love her, but it's problematic. My mother is quite wealthy. My wonderful stepfather left her very well taken care of. She supports me financially almost completely. I have limited resources.

After 25 years of marriage, the state I live in only gave me three years of alimony, and I was a stay-at-home mom for all that time and have few skills. I feel ashamed about taking her money, but I worked for years after my divorce as a teacher's aide. When it got too much for me, I'm over 60 now, she encouraged me to quit.

She had always claimed that my stepfather left enough money for both of us, but now she uses her money as leverage over me, and it makes me want to visit her even less. The other problem is that she allowed her father to sexually abuse me as a child, let him babysit me when I was little, even though she was a victim of her father too.

Jordan Harbinger: Oh my God, this is [00:49:00] awful. Stories like this just make my blood boil. I'm so sorry.

Gabriel Mizrahi: So I have a bit of bitterness about this. My children think I should just get over it. It's done, and she didn't know better. Perhaps that's true.

Jordan Harbinger: Eh, I'm not sure telling a victim of childhood sexual abuse to just get over it is fair or helpful, but okay.

Gabriel Mizrahi: I wonder if that's what they actually said or if she's editorializing a little bit.

Jordan Harbinger: I almost hope it's the latter. I mean, good point. We're only hearing her account. Maybe it's hard for her kids to see her struggling with this pain and resentment, and what they're trying to say is, "Don't live in the past.

Turn over a new leaf." I feel like, hope that's what's happening, I guess. I don't know.

Gabriel Mizrahi: Which if that's how they feel, I guess I can understand, but also easy for them to say.

Jordan Harbinger: Seriously. You know what? You know what this-- It gives me those vibes of when someone's depressed, it's like, "Hey, have you just tried, like, I don't know, getting out of bed and, like, going outside and just, you know, have you tried not being sad?"

It's-- It gives off those kinds of vibes. It's tricky, though. It is.

Gabriel Mizrahi: My mother has no boundaries and shares personal [00:50:00] things with anyone. I prefer more privacy. She has also betrayed me numerous times to benefit herself, another thing I didn't know until therapy For example, she moved in next door to me without asking.

That is such a crazy thing to do. Can you imagine moving in next door to your child without talking to them about it? They're just home one day and a moving truck pulls up to the house and your mom jumps out of a U-Haul like-

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah ... "

Gabriel Mizrahi: Surprise." That's so crazy.

Jordan Harbinger: Surprise. Grab a box.

Gabriel Mizrahi: She watches my every move out the window.

It's a very expensive neighborhood, and I tried twice to move to make my investments last longer, but she begged me both times not to move. Now she doesn't remember doing this.

Jordan Harbinger: How convenient. My God, what a piece of work. Gabe, it's hard for me to hear all these details and not go, "This mother is a narcissist and control freak, and she's using every method at her disposal to keep you close and under her thumb."

Gabriel Mizrahi: That's kind of what it sound- money, housing, fake medical drama, literal [00:51:00] spying. Yeah.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. Candidly, this woman sounds insane and a little bit dangerous, and I'm, I'm sorry that this is your mom.

Gabriel Mizrahi: Now my relationship with Mike has deteriorated, partially due to her involving him and all our other family members in our financial matters, the money she gives me each month.

And now her sister thinks less of me and no longer calls me, whereas before I was close to my aunt. Finally, I live in a very small judgmental southern town where I don't know any women who aren't married or, horror, don't go to church. I want to move out of state perhaps and have a fuller life, but my children think I'm being selfish.

I'm confused and conflicted. How much time do I owe my mother? Am I selfish for wanting friends and perhaps a relationship with a man? Signed, a daughter trying to reverse things now that I see what this tricky curse brings and making sense of why my family's words sting when my mom controls the purse strings.

Jordan Harbinger: Holy smokes, quite a [00:52:00] situation. So obviously, I am very sorry for everything you've been through. Having this mom your whole life, being abused by your grandfather, that is just awful. There are no words. Struggling financially, not knowing how to carve out your own life, your own identity. This is a lot to go through, my friend.

There is so much going on here. Let me try to pick it apart a little bit. So this mom of yours, I feel like I've been saying this a lot lately. I really try not to overuse this, but this, she really does sound like a Dr. Ramani case study. The whole I'm dying for 10 years thing, plus the moving in next door to you without asking, then begging you not to move away, and apparently not taking any of your needs seriously other than giving you money, which apparently also serves an agenda for her, and then by the way, pretending not to remember that she, she asked you not to move.

I mean, all of this just paints a picture of a deeply self-interested, disturbingly manipulative parent, and I can only imagine the number that that has done on you. The guilt you feel, the sense of [00:53:00] obligation, this pattern of capitulating to your mother and, and consistently putting her needs and interests above your own at your own expense.

All of that makes a lot of sense in a parental relationship like this. Just one reason that I am thrilled to hear that you're in therapy. It sounds like you've learned a lot there, and I'm very glad that you have that support. I hope it's been helpful. I hope it gives you the resources you need to consider trying things in a new way.

But look, the whole financial piece of this, you depending on your mom for money, or maybe a better way to put it, you accepting your mom's money, that does complicate all this, okay? On one hand, I understand your predicament. You need financial support. Your mother is blessed with money from your stepfather.

So this money, in a way, it's a gift. On the other hand, like I said, I get the strong feeling that this money is a way of controlling you and keeping you close The fact that she's encouraged you to quit your job and rely on her, that you tried to move away twice to be more financially responsible and then she begged you not to, that just kind of says it all.

And I think it's important to recognize that you have chosen [00:54:00] this relationship with her. You have accepted her money. You have chosen to stick with this arrangement because, to be fair, when she encouraged you to quit your job, you could have taken a beat and gone, "Okay, how am I going to take care of myself financially?

Is retiring really the right move right now? Will accepting her money create any obligations or conflicts between us? Are there any other jobs I could explore?" Maybe you didn't realize the problems this would create back then, okay, but I just got to ask. Or when she begged you not to move away, you could have said, "I know this is hard, Mom.

I need to be responsible. I need to have my own life. I need to take good care of myself, so this is what I need to do." And even now, as hard as it is, if you really wanted to, you could decide to stop taking her money, although I understand that at 60 years old and after years of relying on her, that's probably gotten a lot more difficult.

So my point is, I think it's fair to say that your mom is a very difficult and potentially quite toxic person, but if you want things to change, I think you also have to recognize how you've participated in all this, [00:55:00] decided consciously or unconsciously that being financially secure was more important than being independent, emotionally safe, a true individual.

And so the shame you feel about taking her money, it makes a lot of sense, and I appreciate that you're owning that so fully. The shame is probably a symptom of everything we're talking about, shame about putting your money above independence, above fulfillment, maybe some shame around relying on a parent at this stage of your life in general.

I don't know.

Gabriel Mizrahi: Yeah, for sure. Shame about essentially kind of ditching herself to please her mom, not an easy feeling to contend with.

Jordan Harbinger: No, but I do think it's also an extremely important feeling for her to come to terms with.

Gabriel Mizrahi: Well, it's kind of a huge neon sign pointing to an area of her life that seems to desperately need her attention.

The problem is, what does she do if she, say, moves away and her mom's like, "Okay, well, I'm cutting you off"?

Jordan Harbinger: So one way to sum up your story is you're going to have to choose between the money and yourself, between not having to work and being a true individual who gets to assert her own wants and needs [00:56:00] appropriately and enjoy her life.

That's basically the choice. Obviously, I hope there's a third way, some conversation with your mom that allows you to enjoy the money without the obligation. And if there is, I would encourage you to find it, maybe with the help of your kids and any other friends or loved ones who might be helpful here.

I know things are tense in the family right now, but I'm not convinced that your mom is actually capable of that, especially at her age. And so no matter how creative you get, no matter how much nuance there is here, this might ultimately come down to money versus happiness or money versus self.

Gabriel Mizrahi: Interesting. But if this money comes with all of these weird obligations and messages, the cost of accepting it is increasingly steep, and it sounds like she can't ignore it anymore.

Jordan Harbinger: Right. So I guess my question is: Is there a way to accept your mom's help and say, "Mom, I love you. I want to be in your life.

I'm always going to stay close, but I also need to be my own person"? Maybe that's the dialogue that needs to start.

Gabriel Mizrahi: But if the answer to that question is absolutely not, the second I assert myself, she's definitely going to cut me off, which I hope that's not the case, [00:57:00] but I don't know, I'm sort of getting that feeling, then yeah, you might have to make this choice that Jordan is talking about.

I suppose there might be a way for you to accept your mom's help and maybe find other ways of asserting yourself or giving yourself some agency, like, I don't know, going over there less often or keeping your visits shorter or taking trips on your own regularly so you get some time and space for yourself, or maybe you and your therapist need to talk about how to not let your mom's actions get under your skin as much, stuff like that.

So maybe that's the third way, something else to consider. Jordan, I'm just sitting here thinking about how unbelievably complicated and often hurtful this relationship with her mom must be.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, because of the abuse you mean?

Gabriel Mizrahi: I mean, what a thing to live with, knowing that your mom was a victim of her father herself and still let you be alone with him and then this awful thing happened, which-

Jordan Harbinger: Yes

Gabriel Mizrahi: maybe the fact that her mom was his victim too changes things slightly. I mean, it certainly explains a few things. I'm not sure that it lets the mom off the hook for everything she's done, but I've got to assume that mom has her own trauma.

Jordan Harbinger: True. I mean, that abuse and whatever else was [00:58:00] happening in their house growing up, that could account for the narcissism or personality disorder, whatever we're looking at here.

Gabriel Mizrahi: But I'm guessing her mom is not going to really talk about all of that in a real way, almost certainly won't apologize for it, and anyway, unfortunately, the damage is done. So not only does she cater to her domineering and manipulative mother in all of these ways, she's catering to the person who is partly responsible for what happened to her, and I just, I guess I just want to acknowledge that that is really tough.

Jordan Harbinger: Dude, how she goes over there for dinner and stuff is beyond me.

Gabriel Mizrahi: Seriously.

Jordan Harbinger: She must carry around a lot, so much rage.

Gabriel Mizrahi: I can only imagine, and I get it.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah.

Gabriel Mizrahi: And then she seems to be getting even more difficult messages from her kids that she just needs to, like, get over the abuse, that she's being selfish about wanting to move away and live a bigger life.

This is a lot.

Jordan Harbinger: I truly don't know what to make of that, Gabe. It's just so hard for me to believe her own children would hold that view if they had all the same facts that she does. But maybe they're just not being very kind to her, or maybe they don't realize what's at stake for her. I don't get it.

Gabriel Mizrahi: Well, [00:59:00] to your point, we don't know if they're actually saying this or if this is what she's hearing or if she's editorializing.

Who knows? Maybe it's a little bit of all three. We also don't know if they feel that she's being selfish to her mother or if she's being selfish to them by wanting to move away. I mean, maybe they love her and they don't want her to go. Maybe they just want her nearby and they feel like moving away to find some freedom is only going to come at their expense, which is not entirely fair, but I might understand

Jordan Harbinger: that.

Although if that's the case, then I would ask, who's really the selfish one here? Especially because she's what, she's 60. So her kids are presumably full-grown adults. They got to be at least 25, right? Maybe even 30, 35, older. So it's not like they need her close by in the way a young adult does. Even a young adult doesn't need that.

When I was 18, if my parents told me, "Hey, we're leaving you here. Bye," I'd be like It'd be like, uh, Tom Cruise in that, what was that? Risky Business, where he's sliding around the house- ... empty house with his shoes off. Yeah.

Gabriel Mizrahi: So assuming that this is in fact how her kids feel, then it kind of sounds like no one in this family really understands her or takes her desires seriously, and that sucks.

But I [01:00:00] guess a couple questions present themselves. One question is, is she prioritizing her children's wants and opinions above her own in the same way that she has prioritized her mother's? Because that might be a bit of a theme in her life. And if Mom is the template for her, I would not be surprised if she has recreated that in a number of her relationships, including the ones she has with her kids.

Another question is, is moving away, maybe even out of state, truly necessary for her to get the freedom she wants? I get that she wants a fuller life. I want her to have a fuller life, but she might want to get clear on whether moving out of state is a fantasy designed to create the distance that she feels she needs, or whether it's truly necessary to be her own person and start a new chapter.

Jordan Harbinger: It's a good question, because I wonder if she could find that freedom just by moving neighborhoods. I feel like-

Gabriel Mizrahi: Yeah ...

Jordan Harbinger: the most dysfunctional part of this is living next to her mom. Maybe a lot of this would be resolved by finding a place 20 minutes away, and then she can still be in her children's lives.

Gabriel Mizrahi: Exactly, and maybe that's what's making the kids think that she's being selfish. I'm [01:01:00] just guessing. Maybe they do want her to separate, but they don't understand why the move needs to be so dramatic.

Jordan Harbinger: The fantasy might say more about how desperate she is to get away from her mother than it does about the kind of life she actually wants to live.

But that would be a great thing for her to get clear on before she puts down first and last month's rent on a bungalow in Bozeman three states over. So how much time do you owe your mother? Oh, I don't know if there's an easy answer to that. You have some very good reasons to pull back and protect your time and energy and your sanity, especially since you've given her so much already.

I also think that accepting her money does, to some degree, create a certain obligation, and that's why it's so tricky. And she's your mother, so maybe there's some minimal level of love and respect you need to show her, although I think the way that she's behaved, let's just say it changes that duty somewhat.

Plus, she has Mike, so I'm not clear on why all this falls on you.

Gabriel Mizrahi: Jordan, I think I have to jump in here and acknowledge something potentially a little difficult, and I'm, I'm going to be speculating here. Maybe it's not entirely fair, but I'm just trying to imagine this from Mike's point of view and maybe [01:02:00] her aunt's point of view Mom encouraged our friend here to quit her job and she said, "I will support you."

Now, to your point, our friend here also freely accepted that deal. No one made her quit. No one made her take her mom's money. She chose to do that when her job, how did she put it? When it got too much for me.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, I see where you're going with this and this is in the back of my head too, I think.

Gabriel Mizrahi: She said that her relationship with Mike has deteriorated recently partly because her mom is now involving him and I guess other family members in their financial matters, which I guess means the fact that she gives her daughter money.

So I'm just thinking about that and I guess I'm going, are Mike and the aunt and other people in this family looking at this arrangement and going, "We have some questions about this. Like, we're not sure that this is entirely right or fair." I'm just wondering.

Jordan Harbinger: Yes, I wanted to be a little bit more of a dick actually, so I think you're guiding me gently into this territory.

Gabriel Mizrahi: Again, I understand this is complicated because if what she's saying is true, her mom encouraged her to quit and offered to support her, which I assume that's her mom's right to do. It's her money. I don't know if anyone [01:03:00] else is entitled to that money. Like, does our friend here have siblings? She didn't mention that.

But it's not like she quit her job and then she went to her mom and was like, "Okay, now you have to support me," and then her mom was like, "Okay, I guess I will." That would be a different story. But That doesn't mean that these other people might have some feelings about the fact that she is taking her mom's money and might not be taking full responsibility for her financial situation.

And so I just want to make some room for the possibility that Mike might not just be a sanctimonious a-hole, or the aunt might not have turned on our friend here for no reason. Not saying that it's fair, but I'm just saying there might be a reason. And framing things this way, the way she did in her letter, even if there's some truth to it, might be a way of not having to acknowledge that this situation is messy and it might have implications for other people in the family.

And man, this is-- It's hard to say, but I've got to say it. It kind of fits with this general lens that I am hearing in this letter. I'm curious to know if you are, Jordan, which is that a lot of things are just kind [01:04:00] of happening to her, and she doesn't have a choice in the matter, right? Her job got too much. Her mom was the one who convinced her to quit.

The alimony she received was not fair, which might be true, but also who knows how those things are calculated in any way. At what point do you say, "Okay, but I have to take care of myself"? Another example, her mom moved in next door, and she simply couldn't leave, when to your point, Jordan, she had a role to play in every single one of those events, if only in the way that she chose to respond to them.

Jordan Harbinger: Hundred percent. Man, I'm really glad you dug into this because something about this was nagging at me, and I couldn't quite put my finger on it. I stand by what I said. Her mom is a piece of work.

Gabriel Mizrahi: Yes.

Jordan Harbinger: But at a minimum, she has to recognize that she has more agency in this situation than she seems to be acknowledging, and maybe that's what her shame is about, not just taking the money but viewing the world through this frankly quite disempowered lens.

If I were in Mike's shoes or the aunt's shoes, I might be going, "Look, you're just mooching off your mom," and the mom might be turning to Mike and her sister like, "My daughter's making me support [01:05:00] her," which even if she freely chooses to give her daughter this money, if she's a narcissist or has a personality disorder or something and she goes around talking to other people about their private business, presumably in a way that recruits other people to her side, I don't know if it's entirely crazy for them to have some judgments about all this.

Like, I'm speculating, I know Also, her aunt doesn't talk to her anymore. She couldn't call her aunt and say, "Hey, I see we're not as close as we used to be. Can you help me understand why?" And either tried to see her situation from her aunt's perspective or helped her aunt see that this is between her and her mom.

I don't know. But here, too, she seems to be settling for a certain narrative, which is they're all against me and there's nothing I can do about it.

Gabriel Mizrahi: Well said. I think these are some fair points, Jordan.

Jordan Harbinger: Again, we might not be getting this entirely right, but I think we'd be remiss if we didn't at least acknowledge the possibility.

I'll let her decide. What I can say for sure, though, is that you are not selfish for wanting friends and a relationship with a man. The fact that you're even wondering that, I think it just says a lot about how hard it is for you to be a full [01:06:00] person. Of course, you should have friends. Of course, you should find a guy if you want.

We need these things, some of us. I don't know if your family's actively opposing them or if this conditioning has made you feel like you're not allowed to pursue them. But if you're looking for permission, here it is. Go make some friends. Go flirt with some silver foxes down at the honky-tonk or whatever.

Get on Plenty of Fish, whatever the kids are using these days, the 60-year-old kids. But most importantly, start living because, again, you are 60, my friend. You only get one life. So if this isn't the one that you want, then it's on you to create a new one. I'm going to leave you with a potentially radical idea.

It's a little intense, but I think it could help. My idea is I don't know if your mom is the true problem here or Mike or your aunt. Yes, you have a very challenging mother, but maybe the worst thing she did to you is make you feel like you didn't have any power, and no one, no one is going to hand that to you.

You're going to have to discover it by either making peace with your financial arrangement with your mom and deciding that that's what's best [01:07:00] for you and it's no one else's business or by weaning yourself off your mom and creating a different relationship with her. I'm not saying you can't have the money and freedom.

That might be your task. But I think framing this as my mom has ruined my life in all these different ways, that might just be one more way that you are keeping yourself passive and stuck. And I'm sorry if that's hard to hear, but I say this with a ton of compassion for how complicated your family is and a genuine desire to see you thrive.

Sending you a big hug and wishing you all the best. Also, in case y'all don't know, there is a subreddit for the show if you want to tell me exactly how wrong I got this question and all of the nuanced ways that you would have done better. Yeah, I would love to hear from you. No, in, in all seriousness, there's a lot of really fun conversations, not just about Feedback Friday, but about every episode of the show and all the meta stuff around it.

That's over there on the Jordan Harbinger subreddit. And look, if none of those ideas work with your family, by the way, you could always try winning Mike and your aunt over with some of the fine products and services that support this [01:08:00] show. We'll be right back.

If you liked this episode of Feedback Friday and found our advice valuable, I invite you to do what other smart and considerate listeners do, which is take a moment, support our sponsors. All of the deals, discount codes, and ways to support the show are on the website at jordanharbinger.com/deals. If that doesn't work, email me Jordan@jordanharbinger.com.

Somebody here will dig up the code for you. It's that important that you support those who support the show. And now back to Feedback Friday Okay, time for the recommendation of the week. I

Lip Filler Clip: am addicted to lip filler.

Gabriel Mizrahi: So as a lot of you guys know, I love music, huge part of my life. I'm usually listening to something when I'm working out, when I'm hanging with friends, when I'm cooking, when I'm packing up, which I seem to be doing almost every other day.

I usually have something on, music or a podcast or an audiobook, and, uh, over the years I've had a couple good Bluetooth speakers, but my absolute favorite, and now the thing I cannot travel without, is the Bose SoundLink [01:09:00] Flex. This thing is so good. The sound is amazing. It has super clear highs, very deep bass.

It also auto-adjusts the sound based on whether it's upright or flat or hanging, which I have no idea how they figured out how to do that, but it's an amazing feature. It's waterproof, it's dustproof. Apparently it can survive being submerged in up to, I think, 3.3 feet of fresh water for up to 30 minutes.

Full disclosure, have not tested that, but I believe Bose when they say that that's possible. So it's really good for the beach, the shower, on a boat. If you drop it in the water, nothing bad is going to happen. The battery lasts for, I want to say, up to 12 hours. It's compact, it's lightweight, especially considering how good the sound is.

It also has a built-in microphone if you want to take a group call. I love this thing. I use it almost every single day. I would say probably every single day I use it. In fact, I rented a car here in Floripa, and my phone would not pair with the car, so I couldn't listen to stuff in the car. So now I just bring my SoundLink in the car and the sound is probably even better than the car speakers would be.

I'm a huge fan of Bose. I have their [01:10:00] noise-canceling headphones, which changed my life. They make amazing products at a still affordable price point. The SoundLink Flex I think goes for $159, which is a little bit more than some other Bluetooth speakers on the market, but the quality is significantly better, and it's worth every penny.

So we're going to link to them in the show notes. Great buy.

Jordan Harbinger: It's cool you mentioned that they adjust the sound depending on whether the speaker is upside down or sideways. One, why would it be upside down? But who knows. That's something you just never think about, that sound is supposed to come out a certain way to hit your ear a certain way.

I didn't know that. I bet you Jase, I bet our engineer knows all about that.

Producer Jase Sanderson: Yeah, so it's basic physics. Bass waves are pretty huge, so they spread out everywhere, and treble frequency waves are much smaller, so they're more directional. Bose is probably using DSP and some phase timing to control how these sound waves all add together by the time it reaches your ears, so a tiny speaker can sound way bigger than it physically should.

It's basically acoustics plus some clever math. Uh, Gabe, I [01:11:00] presume you're ChatGPT-ing this right now. What does it say?

Gabriel Mizrahi: The feature is called PositionIQ. Small speakers are extremely sensitive to orientation. The direction the drivers face changes how sound reflects off of surfaces. Bass response changes depending on whether the speaker is against a table, hanging in open air, or firing upward High frequencies are directional, so tilting the speaker can make vocals sound dull or harsh.

So without compensation, the same speaker can sound bass-heavy or thin or muffled or uneven when it's hanging in different ways.

Jordan Harbinger: Crazy, dude. I had no idea.

Gabriel Mizrahi: And the way they do it, it, it says here, "The speaker probably contains an accelerometer and/or gyroscope."

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, that's for sure.

Gabriel Mizrahi: Uh, DSP, digital signal processing software, and preset EQ profiles, which is just a thing in the software.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, so then the accelerometer sa- says, "Hey, I'm upside down," and the built-in equalizer DSP says, "Oh, okay, then we need to make the bass higher because it's going to be weird."

Gabriel Mizrahi: That's exactly what it says. Yeah. It says, "The DSP [01:12:00] instantly adjusts EQ curves, bass emphasis, treble balance, dynamic compression, and sometimes stereo imaging behavior."

Producer Jase Sanderson: And yeah, you can actually do a fun experiment for yourself if you want. Take out your phone and play some music in an open space. Uh, then you set your phone down indoors in a bowl or even tuck it into the corner of a room, so put your phone right in the corner of a room, and suddenly it sounds louder and fuller and sometimes with more bass than it would have done maybe outdoors or in an open space.

That's because the surfaces are reflecting and reinforcing certain sound waves. The shape of the bowl or the walls change how those waves combine once they reach your ears. Bose is doing a much smarter version of that. Instead of relying on a random bowl or a corner in your room, it's using the DSP and timing to control exactly how that sound arrives at your ears.

So that would be how they're doing this.

Jordan Harbinger: That part makes total se- That's how... I don't know if you've ever done this, but some speakers will be like, "Hey, put me in the room you're going to be in, and I'm going to play some weird high-pitched sounds [01:13:00] and other stuff you can't hear and then change my EQ- Yes ... so that it sounds better."

And you're always like, "What is this? Is this a real thing?" It's like, yeah, that's what happens when you have a bunch of quartz or concrete floors. You want it to change, and y- I don't know how to do that stuff manually, so it just does it for you when you run that. Yeah, that's, man, that's freaking cool. So if people are interested in audio engineering.

All right. What's next?

Gabriel Mizrahi: Before we wrap up today, I was thinking a lot about the series of letters we took last week about religious counseling. I thought it was so interesting that we started out trying to understand the upsides and the downsides to religious counseling, but we ended up talking about belief in general, spiritual belief mostly, but also secular belief, and how our ideas, even when they hold water, can also sometimes get in the way of encountering new ideas or seeing ourselves more clearly or opening ourselves up to new people, new experiences.

In last week's episode, Jordan mentioned this idea from a newsletter that we wrote a while back. It's fine to have beliefs, just don't believe in them, which I love.

Jordan Harbinger: It's a nice turn of phrase, isn't it? I mean, we didn't come up with that, by the way, just want [01:14:00] to be clear.

Gabriel Mizrahi: So I was thinking about all of this, and then I happened to be rereading one of my favorite books this week, which is True and False by David Mamet.

Jordan Harbinger: Mm, Mamet. Nice. Yeah, so he wrote Glengarry Glen Ross, which is one of my favorite movies, which I haven't seen in a long time. I've got to get that.

Coffee Clip: Put that coffee down. Coffee's for closers only

Gabriel Mizrahi: That's the one. Yeah. Iconic scene right there. Among other iconic lines. So good. So anyway, I'm rereading this book, and I get to this part that kind of stopped me in my tracks, and so I just wanted to share it with you guys.

And just FYI, this book is about acting and directing, but I think what he talks about really applies to everyone, everything in life. So every time you hear the word actor, just replace it with human being. So he writes, "Let us learn acceptance. This is one of the greatest tools an actor can have The capacity to accept, to wish things to happen as they do.

It is the root of all happiness in life, and it is the root of wisdom for an actor. Acceptance, because the capacity to [01:15:00] accept derives from the will, and the will is the source of character. Character is habitual action.

Jordan Harbinger: Nice. I feel like I hear some stoicism in there.

Gabriel Mizrahi: Totally. Mamet is actually really into the stoics, so that makes sense.

Jordan Harbinger: To wish things to happen as they do. Okay, but man, is that hard.

Gabriel Mizrahi: So hard.

Jordan Harbinger: But it's powerful. I feel like Ryan Holiday, of course, talks about all this stuff as well.

Gabriel Mizrahi: I'm sure. Yeah. And actually, I think Mamet was on his podcast, so yeah, there's- Really? I'm sure there's a ton of overlap. So he goes on. Wow,

Jordan Harbinger: that must've been a conversation.

Gabriel Mizrahi: On stage or off, one may or may not believe that one's father has died when faced with the facts. One can strive to accept that fact, and that struggle is, of course, the struggle of Hamlet. One may not believe that one's wife has been unfaithful, but one may strive to accept it, and so we have Othello. Or that one's protege has been duplicitous, and so we have American Buffalo.

American Buffalo, if any of you have not seen it or read it, please do. You can read it in, like, one sitting. It'll take you an hour. It is an incredible play.

Jordan Harbinger: Didn't they [01:16:00] do that in New York with Bill Burr? I think I read about this.

Gabriel Mizrahi: Yes, and Kieran Culkin and the guy from Better Call Saul, whose name escapes me at the moment.

Jordan Harbinger: Bob Odenkirk?

Gabriel Mizrahi: Yes, Bob Oden- Odenkirk.

Jordan Harbinger: Okay.

Gabriel Mizrahi: So the play is, is about this group of small-time thieves who try to steal this coin collection from, uh, someone else, but it's really about, like, capitalism and loyalty and delusion, and it's also very funny. It's a great play. So he goes on. The habit of cheerful acceptance is an aid in the greater life of the theater, too, because it induces truthful consideration.

The world is as it is. What can I do about it? But belief, on the other hand, induces self-deception. For example, I believe my teachers are bright. I believe producers are powerful or evil or good. I believe my director hates me or loves me. I believe the audience is good or bad or hot or cold.

Jordan Harbinger: So there we could substitute bosses or parents or whatever.

Gabriel Mizrahi: Yeah. Society, Mike, my aunt, anyone. So he says, "Perhaps no one in a situation demanding [01:17:00] courage, that is, in a situation that has frightened him, can believe it. When the ramp comes down on the landing craft on D-Day, when the baby is ready to be born, when the time comes to address the court or to plead with a spouse for a second chance or to ask the bank for an extension, when the time comes, in short, to act, it becomes apparent to these people, as it should to you That no one cares what you believe, and if you've got a goal to accomplish, you'd best set about it.

To deny nothing, to invent nothing, accept everything, and get on with it.

Jordan Harbinger: Well-

Gabriel Mizrahi: Yeah. Powerful, right?

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, very. So I just want to think about that for a second. He's saying your beliefs are all well and good, but actually they might just be deceiving you.

Gabriel Mizrahi: Or you're deceiving yourself when you try to make them feel true, and they don't.

Jordan Harbinger: Uh-huh, and you don't actually even need them. All you need is to accept what's happening. Face the music, whatever that is, and just do the thing that you have to do.

Gabriel Mizrahi: Exactly. What I find useful about this, and look, I don't know if he's 100% right. This is just an [01:18:00] idea to play with. But what I like about this is if you take this approach, it kind of shifts your lens from what do I believe about the world or what's happening to me, and how can I convince myself that that belief is true so that I can be okay, to here are the facts, this is what's happening to me.

Now, how am I going to meet this moment? What can I do?

Jordan Harbinger: Okay, just to challenge this a little bit, isn't making a decision compatible with having beliefs, though? I don't know. Like, why do you have to choose?

Gabriel Mizrahi: I don't know if he's saying that we have to choose. Okay. I think he's just saying, have you noticed that believing stuff and trying to convince yourself of your opinion does not always help and can actually create more problems when believing is not even the thing that you need to do.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, okay, I see that. So in the example he gave, you have to stand up and address the court or you have to ask your husband or your wife for another chance. He's saying it doesn't matter if you believe the judge is kind or you believe that spouses should forgive you or whatever. All that matters is how you say what you have to say or how you ask or how you listen or whatever it is.

Gabriel Mizrahi: [01:19:00] Yeah. I think that's basically it, because even if you hold those beliefs, and they might be true beliefs to some degree, right? What work are they really doing for you in the moment? Almost none, I would say. You just have to do the thing.

Jordan Harbinger: I mean, he makes a good point. Obviously, now I'm thinking about the woman from last week who was wrestling with her faith.

Gabriel Mizrahi: That is exactly where my mind just went, yes.

Jordan Harbinger: She was very committed to her beliefs, but she was also kind of tied in knots about them. Yeah. And didn't she say she was unhappy because, what did she say? She, she just didn't believe strongly enough?

Gabriel Mizrahi: She wasn't putting her beliefs into action, and she felt that that was the key to happiness, yeah.

Jordan Harbinger: Right, which is the exact opposite of what Mamet is saying.

Gabriel Mizrahi: Which is also very interesting, by the way, because Mamet is quite religious. I don't know how to pin him down on the topic of God and stuff. I don't think he really likes to talk about it, but he's an observant Jew who is very passionate about Judaism.

Anyway, I wanted to share this because most of the letters we take on the show seem to deal in some form with this question of, "Here's what I believe. There's this other person in my life who believes something else, so which one of us is [01:20:00] right?" Or, you know, "I believe in X, but I don't know what to do with that belief," or, "I'm not following through on it."

And I'm not just talking about spiritual beliefs. We hear about secular beliefs. We hear about, you know, opinions about family members, assumptions about what a friend might owe us, whatever it is, and that is a very real problem, especially when the person writing in seems to be in the right But I've been trying to make room for this idea that maybe one of our jobs in life is not to believe harder or better, but just to accept.

To not even believe that it's important to accept, just to accept, and then to see what needs to happen next because maybe the thing you need to do becomes clearer at that point. Or maybe you realize, as I'm finding more and more in my own life, that when you truly accept something, there's often nothing to do.

The acceptance was the thing.

Jordan Harbinger: This is making me wonder what would happen if our friend from last week, the one we were just talking about, if she put down the pressure to believe any particular thing or to apply her beliefs out in the world more passionately and she just accepted that she was struggling with that?

Gabriel Mizrahi: [01:21:00] That feels like the beginning of a really interesting process for her.

Jordan Harbinger: I agree, and that doesn't necessarily lead to her giving up her faith or anything like that.

Gabriel Mizrahi: No, not at all. I think it could even potentially bring her closer to her faith.

Jordan Harbinger: But hopefully a more solid faith, right? I mean, didn't our pastor friend from the last letter say that he arrived at his faith that way, basically through doubt and interrogation?

Gabriel Mizrahi: Yeah, and still is in that process. Good point.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. It's a nice idea. I'm glad you shared this.

Gabriel Mizrahi: Just a little something to play with. I'm aware that there's a temptation to turn an idea like this into yet another belief, which I think would be missing the point. I'm just appreciating more and more, largely because of the show and all the conversations we get into, that we need to be very thoughtful about the ideas we buy into.

It's impossible to avoid beliefs. I mean, look, we, we talk about, you know, understanding your values all the time, so I guess values are a kind of belief too. So I'm not saying that these concepts do not have any place in our lives. They can be very useful. They can be very powerful. But there are the beliefs and then there's the way that we relate to those beliefs, you know, the way we invest them with meaning or the way we defend [01:22:00] them with people or the way we use them to beat ourselves up when we fail to live up to them, and that's a whole separate thing from the belief itself.

I just find it really interesting that getting that relationship right really does determine so many of our results in life.

Jordan Harbinger: For sure. Knowing when to hold these ideas close and when to put them down, super important. I'm sure we'll come back to this idea again. Damn, hats off to Mamet. I can see why his plays slap.

Show notes on the website. Advertisers, deals, discounts, ways to support the show all at jordanharbinger.com/deals. I'm @jordanharbinger on Twitter and Instagram. You can also hit me on LinkedIn. Gabe's on Insta @gabrielmizrahi. This show was created in association with PodcastOne. My team is Jen Harbinger, Jase Sanderson, Robert Fogarty, Ian Baird, Tadas Sidlauskas, and of course, Gabriel Mizrahi.

Our advice and opinions are our own, and I might be a lawyer, but I'm not your lawyer. Consult a qualified professional before implementing anything you hear on the show. Ditto Corbin Payne and Joanna Tate. Dr. Margolis' input is general psychological information based on research and clinical [01:23:00] experience.

It's intended to be general and informational in nature. It does not represent or indicate an established clinical or professional relationship with those inquiring for guidance. Remember, we rise by lifting others. Share the show with those you love. If you found the episode useful, please share it with someone else who could use the advice we gave here today.

In the meantime, I hope you apply what you hear on the show so you can live what you learn, and we'll see you next time. You're about to hear a preview that may completely reframe how you think about nuclear power. What if the energy source we've been taught to fear is actually one of the safest and cleanest tools we have?

JHS Trailer: We're very familiar with electricity. You get home, you turn on the lights, you charge your phone, charge your computer, do all the things that we do without thinking twice about electricity, right? But electricity is a secondary source of energy. The primary sources of energy that we use are coal, oil, methane gas, solar, wind, hydro, geothermal, and nuclear.

Nuclear is actually the largest source of clean energy in [01:24:00] the United States. It's the second-largest source of clean energy in the world, and what I mean by that is that whenever we make electricity with nuclear, we're not releasing greenhouse gases into the atmosphere or even particulate matter, so there are no emissions that happen whenever you're creating electricity with nuclear.

So it's just to say, you know, everything that's related to nuclear accidents in Chernobyl is completely overblown. Because people tend to think generally, like, everybody died, and it became this wasteland, and nobody can go in. And so it's interesting, right, that we have all these weird fears about nuclear when the facts and reality just point to it being actually extremely safe.

The biggest energy disaster in history was actually a hydropower dam collapse, so entire villages were swept away. It's estimated that 200,000 people died. You would need, like, at least 200 Chernobyls happening every single year for nuclear to be as dangerous as fossil fuels. What about the four million premature deaths from burning fossil fuels?

Why are people so [01:25:00] afraid of nuclear?

Jordan Harbinger: Hear the science behind the stigma with Isabelle Boemeke on episode 1277 of The Jordan Harbinger Show.