Welcome back to another episode of the Origination point podcast! Season 2, Episode 21.

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Origination Point Podcast

The Origination Point

The origination point is the focus of looking at what’s happening, how it’s happening, what the effect is on us in our daily lives and our interactions with each other and understanding that everything has a starting place. It’s been a while since we did an episode. I’ve had to take a break over a year to think about and process all of the things that are happening in our world as we went through COVID, racial issues impacting our country, the political climate and the global climate changes that are happening. It’s a lot to process.

Frankly, I wasn’t quite sure how to approach all of this in a way that made sense. Also being inundated with so many people’s opinions and perspectives. I made a conscious choice to lay back and not put too much of my stuff out there. I’ve come to a point where I realize that that’s no longer something that I can do. There’s so much going on out there and it’s time for me to talk, share and let you all think about what our role is in all of this.

Taking Ownership

I think about that every day. What’s my role in what’s happening in America, our communities, my workplace and the spaces that I occupy? Am I playing the victim or am I taking ownership of what’s happening? I can’t take ownership of the big picture things that are happening with COVID, racial issues, global climate change or the divisiveness in the political structure of this country.

I can take ownership of how I move through all of those things. How I talk about them, see them and how they affect me because that’s the only thing that I own. I can’t control all the things that are happening on the planet. All I can do is choose how I want to move through them. It’s been such an interesting ride the last couple of years.

I can't control all the things that are happening on the planet. All I can do is choose how I want to move through them. Share on X

Right before COVID hit, my wife and I relocated. We moved outside of Portland, Oregon to Lake Oswego, where she got a job there as a superintendent of schools. It was great. We were getting to know the community and engaging in lots of activities. Everybody was kind and welcoming. We were both busy with our work and acclimating to a whole new space. COVID hit in 2020. My wife’s school was one of the first schools in the country to have a COVID case. It was this mad scramble to try to figure out what we do and how we do it.

There was no protocol or structure for it. Overnight, our world changed to where her focus was on, “How do you have school in a time of a pandemic and at the same time, everything shut down?” All the activities that we had done to build community were no longer available to us. We spent a lot of time alone with each other. I spend a lot of time alone because my wife’s work was focused on her school in the district with 7,000 kids and families all wondering the same thing. “What’s going on? How do we get back to school? Whose responsibility is it?” She and her team were working hard every day to communicate and did their best. It was a crazy time, to say the least.

For me, that whole timeframe and all the work that I had set up had stopped because nobody wanted to do anything in person. I was also trying to figure out how I do my job in a way that has an impact. I spent a lot of time thinking about how to do that because I had a bias that you can’t do personal relational work over a computer. You have to be in person. You have to see and feel people.

I still believe that’s the most effective way and yet not being able to do that, I had a choice of either not working or figuring something out. After two months of overeating, drinking and binge-watching TV, I realized that this pandemic we were in wasn’t going to end anytime soon. I had to figure out how to redefine my whole professional life. It was challenging at first because I had to work through my bias that you can’t do this work unless you’re in front of people.

I had to change my narrative, take risks and put myself out there over Zoom a little bit at a time. I would invite people that I knew because I figured they would be easy on me. I would do a little workshop to get their feedback and increase it. Over a period of about two months, I finally figured out how to be myself over a camera and make connections with people who were also looking through a camera.

It was such a fascinating approach because it was everything we were doing. The majority of people were working on a computer, sitting 6 to 8, sometimes more hours a day doing work, looking at a screen, having meetings, talking to people and making big decisions. At the same time, we’re being socialized to be afraid of each other.

“Don’t go out. If you go out, make sure you’re 6 feet away from the person and everybody has a mask on.” It’s evolved into who’s vaccinated and who’s not. Over this same time, we’ve been socialized to fear each other. Over Zoom, at least people are more comfortable because they were sitting in their homes. They were in a space where they didn’t have to wear a mask and not have to worry about people that might affect them in some way.

 

As I continue to do this, I realized that it does have its benefits because it’s increased the reach that I’ve been able to have with people around the world. As we come to a balance of in-person and doing things over the computer, I don’t think it should go away because it’s very effective. The last few years have been intense. We weren’t able to make community when we moved to Oregon. We weren’t able to come home to see our kids and grandkids in Colorado. We were in this place of what do we do?

Unfortunately, we have a strong relationship so it made us even stronger, yet we still long for other people, to be with other people, go out with other people and maybe even do things by ourselves. It goes back to what is that balance. At the same time, my wife has an aging mother who has accelerated dementia and Alzheimer’s. She got COVID and survived that. We realized that it was a long trip from Oregon to Texas to see her mom.

After a couple of years out there, we decided that it was time to come back to Colorado because that’s an easier path to get to Texas. We were trying to figure out how to support her mom and how to best care for an elder who has Alzheimer’s and dementia because nobody prepares you for that. That’s a whole story in itself about watching somebody slowly lose memory. They know that you’re there and a day later, not even remembering what happened. For those of you who have aging parents, you know exactly what I’m talking about.

My mom passed from Alzheimer’s and dementia. I only have one regret in my life and that is I didn’t spend as much time with her in those stages as I probably should have and would’ve liked to. It’s partly because I was in Colorado and she was in California. My sister was the primary caretaker at the time. If I’m honest, I didn’t make that much of an effort because of the way that it affected me. As I support my wife in being with her mom, I realize that that was not the right choice for me. I should have made the effort and not make excuses about it.

There were probably a lot of conversations we could have had with each other that I will never have now. It wasn’t a hard decision when we said, “Let’s get back to Colorado,” so that we can be closer to her mom.” It also worked out that we had other families and the community here. It became a grounding thing for us to do. It was bittersweet leaving Oregon because we left when things are opening up. Everybody there that we met was kind, welcoming and warm, yet it still wasn’t home.

We had to balance all of these competing needs and that’s what brought us back to Colorado. We’re here. We live a short way from my wife’s son, our daughter and our grandchildren. It’s an easy trip to get to see her mom as well. All of these things have transpired over the last few years. I didn’t know what to say. Rather than put out a bunch of nonsense, I’m going to be quiet. When the spirit moves me, I’m going to get back in and do my show. That’s what you’re reading now.

What I shared with you is a foundation for where I’m going to start with this conversation. I have to recognize that part of what’s driving me is I can’t continue to live in such a divisive country, community and structure without doing something about it. We can’t continue to live like this where we are fighting, demeaning and labeling each other and in so many ways, not accepting the shared humanity that we have with someone because they disagree with us.

We can't continue to live where we are fighting, demeaning, and labeling each other in many ways, not accepting the shared humanity with someone because they disagree with us. Share on X

In May or June 2021 when we were heading back, my daughter who had two kids asked me if I could watch after them in August 2021 because they wanted to take a vacation. I was like, “Yes.” I knew we’d be back in Colorado. We’d have a house. I was so excited about it. It seemed so far away in May or June 2021 when the request first came.

It was such a blessing when it happened. Number one, I have a huge appreciation for both stay-at-home and working moms and dads because I haven’t had to keep up with a 3 and 5-year-old in a long time. I have to tell you, it was quite a marathon. I can’t believe how many peanut butter jelly sandwiches, grilled cheese sandwiches and pancakes I made in a week that I hadn’t made in years. I have a good relationship with these little guys. They are such a joy to have in my life.

It was a week when I wasn’t very stressed. I was present with them because, for the most part, they demanded presence. I would make sure that their needs were met. Everything from bathroom stuff to food, toys, games, activities, walks and all of the things that a 3 and 5-year-old wants to do. Their life wasn’t so much about all of the craziness that was happening in our country. They were right there each moment saying, “I have some needs I want to have met. Can you help me with that?” They were like, “Poppy,” and I loved it.

After I took them home, I started to think about my time with them. That was a week when I had very little stress, even though I had to operate outside of my normal element and take care and keep two little ones safe. I started to reflect on what was so different about that week that made it less stressful than a normal week when I was by myself. I realized that having them around me created a level of accountability in me for how I think and what I say.

What I realized was that everything I said, they would repeat somewhere. Maybe to their mom, dad, at school and Gigi, their grandma. My head was still filled with stereotypes, biases and judgments. What I didn’t do is verbalize them because if I verbalized what was in my head, the kids would repeat it. I would be feeding them thoughts or ideas about people based on my perception and I didn’t want to do that.

I didn’t want to have them create a stereotype, a judgment or a bias based on my perspective of another human being. I knew that if I voiced those things, that’s what I would be doing. Even when I would be driving and see somebody who didn’t use their blinker and cut me off or found that they had to get off the highway exit 10 feet before and weaved over 3 different lanes of traffic, I would normally have muttered something under my breath, honked my horn or done something.

I didn’t do any of those things. It created less stress in my week by letting those things go. It made me realize that I do have the ability to not allow my stereotypes, judgments and biases negatively impact my relationships with my grandbabies and other people. If I could do it for a week, why wasn’t I doing it every day? When I think about where we are in our country, communities, schools, churches, grocery stores and all the conflicts that we have, I keep wondering why aren’t we working towards resolving that with each other.

What is it that’s driving us to see each other so much as the other versus seeing each other as part of our community? What I want to talk about after we take a short break is how we move through this time that we are all living where we are fighting each other over everything. We are being divisive, accelerating from being in a relationship to saying to that person, “I know where you live. I will find you,” and sending death threats.

It is amazing to me that we are in this place as a country and community. I want to say something connected to my little grandbabies in terms of what’s happening. If nothing else, I will ask you all to think about the children. What we are doing is modeling behaviors to probably 1 to 3 generations of children that if we don’t do something different, we’ll believe that this divided threatening behavior that they’re seeing in our country and communities is how you’re supposed to treat each other.

I have the fortunate ability to talk to hundreds of people every week in my role, both in person and over Zoom. I can’t tell you how many parents across the country I’ve talked to are concerned because they’re seeing this divisive behavior replicated in their families with their children and seeing siblings debate an issue. Some of them have come to blows but for the most part, these parents were concerned because they’re seeing their children arguing, demeaning and in many ways, treating each other like the model that they’re witnessing at school board meetings, companies and our community. I want to encourage you to think about the impact of your behavior, words and thoughts.

I was talking about the importance of my grandkids, modeling behaviors and the importance of community. Thanks for letting me share a little bit of my story about my journey to Oregon and those great experiences there. Also, coming back to Colorado where I’ve been since 1979 and reintegrating into a place I call home. If anything, the last couple of years has shown me the importance of family and community. Most people get through the last couple of years because of the family that they had around them and the community of people that they could be with. I also have to acknowledge that some people had to be around family that they didn’t get along with and that brought its set of dynamics and challenges for people.

Where I’m going to start is to recognize that everyone reading out here has some trauma that you’re bringing into your life. When normalcy was disrupted in March 2020 when COVID started and all around the planet, people were shutting down, businesses were closing and the normal things that people do every day like working out, going to the post office, having a cup of coffee and going for a walk. We couldn’t do and it was all based on trusting that something was happening here that was bigger than us.

When our normalcy is disrupted, it creates trauma. I don’t think there’s anybody on the planet that’s not living with some trauma. When you add war, famine, global climate change, racial issues and the political climate in the world, it adds to it. There’s a lot of uncertainty. I talk a lot about the origination point and I want to go a little bit into detail about it because, for me, it’s been a game changer in how I approach my personal growth.

 

When Normalcy Is Disrupted, It Creates Trauma

The origination point is something that came to me after years of working on myself and working with thousands of people and hearing their stories about the connections that they’re making as adults to things that happened to them between birth and adolescents. It made me realize that there’s something to this. I started to think, “What characteristics or behaviors do I have as an adult that are connected to narratives or experiences that I had as a child?”

I realized that there’s a lot that I can heal in myself if I’m willing to look at some of the things that I’m experiencing as an adult and correlate them to what I learned growing up. You might be saying, “What is he talking about?” I’ll start with my story. I grew up in an abusive home. My dad was beating up on me when I was nine years old and telling me I’d never be successful and never meant to do anything.

By the time I was thirteen, I created a bias that all men are mean. I extrapolated the behavior of one person to a whole group of people. My narrative in my head was that every man that I met was mean, out to get me and would destroy me if I let them. That’s the way I approached my relationship with my dad. I had no skills, understanding or self-awareness. All I knew is that I didn’t like men.

At the time, I didn’t put an age on it. I looked at a male who was older than me as a man. It doesn’t matter if it was my brother, my uncle, the guy who lived next door to me or my male teacher. When I interacted with men, I didn’t trust and like them. In my head, I’m wondering, “What are they going to do to hurt me?” I would typically destroy the relationship because, in my head, I wanted to destroy it before they could. In my mind, if they destroyed the relationship, it meant that they destroyed me.

These were all the narratives that were going on. I can’t tell you how many men were in my life between 13 and 20 that wanted to help and support me that I pushed out of my life unconsciously because of that narrative that I was carrying that all men are mean. That’s how a bias is formed. I had no idea that at thirteen, I had a bias that all men are mean. I had no idea that at thirteen, that bias inhibited my ability to be in authentic relationships with men.

It inhibited it because it didn’t allow me to get to know that man for who he is. I was interacting with him based on the story that I had going on in my head. “You’re a bad person. You’re out to get me and hurt me. I need to get away as fast as I can.” I carried that narrative with me for a long time. As I started to do more of my work, I realized that my dad was only one person and didn’t represent the whole group. I was able to increase my self-awareness a little bit more.

I’ll tell you the other part about me. When I was young, my self-awareness was probably in the minus category. I had no ability to critically self-reflect. I didn’t even think about the impact of my behavior on other people. Coming from a home where you see people being abused in the relationship, that’s what I modeled out in the world. I interacted with people based on that experience. I would demean and denigrate them. I would say, “It’s your fault that I’m treating you this way.”

Looking back, I realized that the way that I treated other people was number one something I learned when I was 8, 9 and 10 years old. Number two was hurtful. I reflect on the impact of my behavior on other people. A lot of these people were in and out of my life and I never saw them again. Some were still in my life and I had to go back and say, “I’m sorry. I realize that I treated you very poorly.” Some forgave me and some didn’t. Some never wanted to talk to me again.

I live with that and I have to be aware that there’s no perfection in this journey in life. It’s all about practice. I have had many opportunities to practice. As I was doing my work to deconstruct this bias, in my 20s, I had to go back to the origination point, that 9-year-old boy. The reason why the origination point is so important is that’s the point of healing and understanding.

There's no perfection in this journey in life. It's all about practice. Share on X

In going back to that nine-year-old kid, I had to feel all of the emotions that I squashed and all of the hurt that I had inside of me from both words and beatings. I start to feel them like I never have before. It was hard because I had to relive those painful experiences of sitting out in the driveway for three hours waiting for my dad to pick me up for a camping trip and he never showed up

Also, being hit for doing silly things like my kids would do and we would laugh at each other and be told, “You’ll never be successful.” Those actions created a lot of hurt for me, hurt that I never looked at because I was too busy giving it to other people. When I became an adolescent, I use substances to numb myself because it was easier to be high than it was to feel the hurt, pain and anger. I also was afraid that I might hurt somebody else because that’s what was instilled in me.

As I started to look at all of these aspects of myself, first, I felt like a horrible person. I was like, “You’re a terrible human being. How could you even be here? Look at how you treated people.” If I stayed in that mindset, I wouldn’t remain a terrible person and I probably wouldn’t do my work. We shut ourselves down with self-talk that is either judgmental, shameful, blameful or in some way, can hurt us. As I did this work, I had to move through all of that as an adult.

Let’s go to the origination point. The origination point is the point of healing and understanding. What I had to do is go back to that nine-year-old boy and feel everything that I squashed, put away or didn’t want anyone to see. I had to shed tears, scream, get angry and hit things. I never hit anybody. I figure out a way to get that stuff out and start to heal that emotional part of myself that was still being carried 20 or 30 years later.

The origination point is the point of healing and understanding. Share on X

As I began that process, it enabled me to start to reflect on, “Who am I? What can I do? What am I capable of? Can I be successful? Am I going to be worth it?” All the things that I was given as a child about, “You’ll never amount to anything. You’ll never be successful,” as an adult in my twenties, I had to relive and think, “Is that true or is it not?”

I would say at some places in my twenties, I was exhibiting behavior that didn’t show I was very successful or that I would amount to anything. I had to own that as well as I started to figure out what my path was. The other part of my life is that for a long time, my dad wanted me to be like him and I wasn’t. The things that he was interested in, I wasn’t as interested in. That hurt his feelings. When his feelings got hurt, he hurt me. It was all of these patterns that I had gone through that I had to start to look at.

As I started to heal myself, by that point, my dad had Alzheimer’s and was soon to pass. I couldn’t have a conversation with him so I couldn’t even resolve it with the person who was a part of that experience with me. It was a lot more work to try to figure out, “How do I move through this? How do I let this go when the person who was a part of it is not here?” They should be here. They should acknowledge what they did. They should apologize to me. I had all of these things of shoulds that he should do to make me feel better. Until I realized that no matter what he did, it wouldn’t make me feel better. Only I had the power to do that.

I had to ask myself this question that I ask every group that I work with and the question is, “What is it that we’re holding onto that no longer serves us?” I truly believe that everybody has something that they’re doing that doesn’t serve them for some reason. For everyone, it’s going to be different. For me, holding on to a bias that all men are mean is the highly emotional charge of being angry at what was done to me. It was something that I was holding onto that no longer served me because it was inhibiting my ability to be in an authentic relationship with men.

Over time, I have let it go to where it’s not a part of my life anymore. I don’t get emotionally charged. In the same way, I don’t have a bias toward men. I have great relationships with men of all ages and all identities you could imagine. The origination point is if you think about your behaviors, your characteristics and your language as an adult, put them into this category of biases, which are experiences that we have.

Biases are a result and ideology, something that happens based on a real-life experience that we have. They’re not a bad thing. Every human being on the planet has biases. When we’re talking about biases, we’re asking ourselves, “Did my biases inhibit or enhance my ability to be in an authentic relationship?” An authentic relationship is defined as getting to know you for who you are versus a story that I’m making up about you.

 

Authentic Relationship

If you think about behavior or a characteristic that you have, sit down, write it down and correlate that to messages, narratives or experiences you had as a child. What I’ve found is people make these amazing connections after they understand what the process is that supports them in understanding, “This is why I behave like I do.” I was socialized to do this as a young child and then the people who were my role models exemplified it or in some way, gave me a message like, “Yes, this is how grown-up people act or think.”

It’s not that they were bad. I believe my dad loved and respected me. I also know that he did the best he could because he was raised by my grandpa, his dad, the same way he raised me. I have to forgive to do this process because if I didn’t forgive, then I would be keeping that energy of resentment within me. I didn’t want to keep that either.

The healing and understanding process is a way to be able to understand why something is happening as an adult. In the story that I told you when I was thirteen, I thought my bias was men are mean. I interacted with all men like that. That was how it showed up. My bias showed up as men are mean and it showed up as one man as mean and then I extrapolated that behavior onto everyone that I met, even when they were nice. Either way, I still have to own it.

The bias I have and I still have is against parents who don’t create a loving and safe space for their children. When I was younger and I was in a space like that or I’d heard a story from a kid about a mean parent, I wanted to get angry, go over there, shake them and tell them that what they were doing is so wrong. Now when I experience that, I come from a more empathetic and compassionate place because I know what it’s like to be there. If I know the person, I offer support. If I don’t know the person, I might offer support and see what they say.

At any rate, it’s not as easy to say that person is this versus that person acting out in this way because of something that happened in their past. How do we bring them to the origination point? It’s through a process of self-awareness and critical self-reflection. Self-awareness is the idea that you can create a practice and be hyper-aware of it for a few minutes.

Maybe a practice around, “I’m going to be more aware of my stereotypes.” For the next fifteen minutes, I’m going to be hyper-aware of how many people I stereotype or judge. I did that one time and I ran out of paper. I started to see patterns in my behavior about my judgments and stereotypes. I realized that my stereotype, judgment or bias about somebody isn’t necessarily who they are. I only not looked at my behavior but I had to rework how I interacted with them.

I’m going to share a story or two about people that I’ve worked with that have created these origination points. I was doing facilitation for a group of people. It was a foundational bias development work that I created. A woman came up to me afterward, probably in her mid-30s and said, “You saved my marriage.” I’ve never heard that before. I knew there was a story there. I said, “Tell me the story.”

She said, “I’ve been married for about four years. My husband and I have a good relationship. We have the normal husband and wife stuff that goes on in a growing relationship except for the last three months when we started having some of the worst fights that we have ever had. It was emotionally charged. We’re yelling at each other.” She couldn’t figure out why it was happening because it was like this shift that happened over 1 week or 2.

We had finished our foundational bias development work where we talked about what I shared with you about how as an adult can you make a connection to the origination point of something that you’re feeling. She started telling me about how the connection that she made in terms of all of this anger and volatility that was coming out started when her husband left a regular 40-hour week job to be a part of a startup and now he was gone 60 hours, sometimes 80 hours every week. That’s when the emotional charge came up for her, all of this time that he was gone.

She told me that the connection that I made and what I’m experiencing is connected to when I was twelve years old and my dad abandoned us. Her abandonment issues, which were unhealed and not understood as a 12-year-old were getting in the way of her marriage as a 35-year-old woman. My first question to her was, “Does your husband know this about you?” She said, “No.” She had never shared this story with him so he had no idea that she was even carrying that.

My first suggestion was, “Maybe you should go and share this with him. That would be important for him to know and for you to be vulnerable and share this story. At the least, it’ll help understand why there’s so much emotional energy in your relationship.” Once she made that connection, she started to understand as an adult what was happening to her and realized that this truly was about her experiences. Once she got to the origination point and created that understanding, she started her healing process.

That’s what the origination point is. It’s looking at wherever you are in your life reading this and critically self-reflecting. What critical self-reflection means is that you look at your day-to-day interactions, words, thoughts, attitudes and all of the ways that you show up in a day and self-examine and critically self-reflect about the impact that they’re having without judgment, blame and shame. It’s from a place of saying, “I think this is about that group of people. I think this is about myself. This feels like a barrier. This feels like something I should continue.”

The origination point is looking wherever you are in your life, listening to this, and critically self-reflecting. Share on X

Critical self-reflection is about hyperawareness for a short amount of time, especially as you’re building a practice. Remember, this work is about practice. It’s not about perfection. We have opportunities to practice every single day because most of us are interacting with people daily in some form or another.

Create a practice that allows you to start to critically self-reflect on the impact that your narratives are having and look at the factual outcomes of your behaviors. If I were to do that, I would say, “Most days, I am as present as I can be in the moment. With people, I do my best to be open, not judge them and not allow an experience with somebody who reflects them to cloud the way that I see them as their unique self.”

I’m not going to sit here and tell you I’m perfect at it. I’m far from it. I’m the same human being as everybody else. I am challenged every day. I struggle. Every day, I have an opportunity to practice doing it all over again. As I continue to keep my awareness as high as I can, I also have to up the level of critical self-reflection. I don’t let my ego get into it and say, “You’re there or that’s enough.” I don’t believe that’s true. I believe it’s a daily process. There are days I can relax and there are no days I can stop.

Look where we are. I’m going to circle back to where I started. We live in the most divided country I’ve ever seen in the most divided world. We have families, children, grandchildren, aunts, cousins and uncles. This divisiveness is hurting everybody. It’s permeated our schools, churches, workplaces, grocery stores, cars, parks and our families. Very rarely can we have a discussion that doesn’t end in someone being denigrated or in some way dehumanized.

It’s time for us to rehumanize. It’s time for us to see two things. Everyone has a good heart and everyone deserves to be trusted. I try to lead with that in most of the cases that I am in. I say most because I’m not perfect. There are some places where I may not think that about somebody because I have a preconceived notion about them. That shows me a place where I have some more work to do.

Practice not perfection. We have to find a way to connect through our hearts. For nothing else, our kids are watching us. Our kids are taking in everything that we’re doing. I, for one, don’t want to be responsible for raising and modeling 1 to 3 generations of young people that this divided way is the way that we communicate with each other. I want to model something that’s more loving and connecting and allows us to get to know each other. You all have a good heart and you all deserve to be trusted.

 

In closing, I want to encourage you to create some daily practices around your origination point, understanding your biases, stereotypes, how you judge and most importantly, the impact that all of those things are having not only on the people that we direct them to. It has a detrimental impact on us personally when we live in that space of judgment. My ask is simple. Create a daily practice, increase your self-awareness and critically self-reflect.

If you find this content helpful, interesting or intriguing, share it with somebody. We’re working to increase our subscriber base to over one million people. With one million people increasing their self-awareness, using critical self-reflection and seeing everybody they meet as having a good heart and deserving to be trusted, we could change the world. Thank you so much for reading. We will see you next time.