189: How to Move on from Rejection: A Solo Episode with Light Watkins

This week's podcast episode dives deep into the emotional turbulence of rejection. Whether it's a love gone sour or a career setback, this episode speaks to the universal sting of being turned down and transforms it into a stepping stone for personal growth.

The episode begins with an honest exploration of the elusive quest for closure. It challenges the listener to see beyond the craving for one last conversation, highlighting this desire as a subtle hope to reignite lost connections. As it progresses, the podcast navigates the complex emotions of heartbreak, underscoring the importance of building resilience through self-awareness.

A key highlight is the concept of surrender, inspired by spiritual teachings. It reframes acceptance not as defeat, but as a courageous letting go, opening doors to transformation. The podcast also introduces practical strategies like the seven-day no contact rule, emphasizing self-care and emotional recuperation.

Intriguingly, it delves into the Mandela Effect in relationships, revealing how our memories can selectively and idealistically distort past events, impeding our growth. The episode then shifts to view every relationship as a spiritual lesson, equating the end of a relationship with a graduation of sorts - a completion of an important life chapter.

The episode concludes by inviting listeners to the Happiness Insiders community, fostering a sense of belonging and shared growth. It's packed with actionable advice, from meditation to reflective exercises, aimed at not just overcoming rejection but thriving in its aftermath.

This podcast is more than a discussion; it's a comprehensive masterclass in healing from rejection, blending personal stories, spiritual wisdom, and pragmatic tips. It's a guide for anyone eager to turn the pain of rejection into a powerful journey of self-discovery and empowerment.

Chapters

• 0:02 Moving on From Rejection and Closure
• 4:08 Moving on From a Breakup
• 15:33 Meditation and Moving on From Breakups
• 24:45 Guidelines for No Contact and Self-Care
• 35:43 The Mandela Effect and Relationships
• 43:26 Importance of Learning Lessons in Relationships
• 59:51 Join the Happiness Insiders Community

Transcript

You don't need closure. Thinking that you need more closure is just postponing the inevitable, which is that the situation in its current form is no longer happening.

And so your ego and your mind which is very tricky in the sense that they will want to look for closure, but really what it's looking for are cracks in the other person's resolve to move on, if you're being honest. And you're secretly hoping and wishing that they are going to somehow through this process of seeking closure see the goodness in you or see the value in you and give you another chance. that's not going to happen. And don't delude yourself into thinking that you need this closure that you actually do not need. You do not need it. What you need is to move on. 

[Introduction]

[00:00:51] Hey friend, welcome back to The Light Watkins Show. I'm Light Watkins. And I interview ordinary folks just like you and me who've taken extraordinary leaps of faith in the direction of their path, their purpose, or what they've identified as their mission in life. And in doing so, they've been able to positively impact and inspire the lives of many other people who've either heard about their story or who've witnessed them in action or people who have directly benefited from their work. 

[00:01:21] And in today's episode, I've got a special treat for you. A little while back, I previewed one of my masterclasses, which was on the subject of Preparing For The One, and it was very popular and it was created for folks who are wanting to call in their next partner. Where I offer a lot of considerations for upgrading your relationsHips. 

[00:01:47] And these masterclasses are all housed inside of my online community, which is called TheHappinessInsiders.com. And there are about 1600 people all over the world working on various aspects of their inner happiness. And if you want to listen to that episode, it's episode 179. It's called Preparing For The One.

[00:02:07] Anyway, in the spirit of doing our inner work, I'm dedicating this episode to one of the other popular masterclasses from my online community, which is about how to move on from a breakup. 

[00:02:22] Now, obviously, not everybody's dealing with a breakup or situation right now. However, we all deal with rejection on a fairly regular basis here on planet Earth. And some of those rejections can be very challenging to navigate. It could be a friend breakup. It could be a pink slip that you got from your job, or even the sudden loss of someone who is close to you still feels like a bit of a rejection. 

[00:02:50] So this episode contains the first two of six modules from How to Move On from a Breakup Masterclass and it will give you a pretty good foundation on how to move on as well as offering some tangible action steps that you can employ today to begin the process.

[00:03:11] So this masterclass is extremely applicable for all of us especially the part about seeking closure. The way closure truly works is not what we think. And in addition to that, we also want to understand why everything is happening for us. We want to understand the importance of our inner work when moving forward. We want to understand what the biggest obstacle is when it comes to accepting our new post-rejection reality, as well as the four non-negotiable things to practice after experiencing a rejection. So I'm super excited to share this episode with you. Let's get into module one of the how to move on from rejection masterclass.

[00:03:56] Welcome to our moving on from a breakup masterclass. This is Light Watkins. I will be your facilitator for this masterclass. And if this is your first time here in the Happiness Insiders community, I want to welcome you. As you may have seen, this is a community that is geared completely around what we call inner work, right?

[00:04:15] Inner work is just another way of saying spiritual work. So all of the masterclasses. Are used to help us cultivate various spiritual aspects of different parts of our life. And when you're living life as a regular person, chances are you will be engaging in relationships from time to time. And the more life experience you have, greater the chances are that you have encountered the occasional breakup or betrayal or some sort of rejection.

[00:04:45] And so that's what this masterclass is all about. We want to understand as spiritual practitioners, how to think about how to look at rejection, whether we are the person who is rejecting someone else, or whether we are the person who's being rejected, right? We can be the breaker, the breakie. 

[00:05:06] Look, having personally been on all sides of all of these situations, as I'm sure anyone who's lived 30 or 40 plus years on planet Earth has experienced, you sometimes serve the role intentionally. Sometimes you are the unintentional person who is rejecting someone or who's being rejected. There's no one size fits all way to sort of understand what all of that means. So that's the first thing. 

[00:05:31] But there are some spiritual principles that can apply to pretty much all of those situations in terms of how we want to look at them and what we can ultimately learn from them, because that's the first rule of the spiritual perspective, right? The spiritual perspective in a nutshell is that everything is happening for you. 

[00:05:50] And sure, some things are happening to you but everything is happening for you, which means there's a lesson embedded within every experience if we choose to see it. And particularly when it comes to relationships and particularly when it comes to love relationships, there's a lesson, but it can also apply to friendships. It can apply to jobs. Everything is basically a relationship. If you're having to relate to other people in whatever capacity, then technically speaking, you are engaged in a relationship. And relationships by nature by their spiritual nature, that is, they evolve, right? Which means they change and they progress over time. They are never the same. They're never exactly the same way that they were when they started because a relationship is an experience that is dynamic between two or more people. 

[00:06:46] And as people, we change, we evolve as humans, right? We're here on this planet to participate in a spiritual evolution. So as we evolve, and we're the ones in the relationship, then naturally the relationship must evolve. And what it's evolving from and what it's evolving toward from the spiritual perspective, it's evolving from a sense of separation, sense of isolation, and it's evolving toward a sense of unity. 

[00:07:20] And sometimes that unity is expressed through a physical unity which is, where intimacy comes into play. Sometimes the unity is expressed through a spiritual union, which is to say an understanding that becomes more deeply embodied as a result of whatever happened in that relationship. 

[00:07:40] Now, that spiritual union can occur on the tail end of what appears to be a very rocky, bad outcome to a relationship, which breakup, betrayal, somebody lied, somebody cheated, bad things happen, right? But through that process, we learned a valuable lesson, a spiritual lesson. That could be a lesson of forgiveness, or it could be a lesson of unconditional love. It could be a lesson of gratitude for the experience or some variation of those three things. And so if we didn't go through exactly what we went through, when we went through it, we would not have solidified the lesson in the same way, that spiritual lesson to the extent that we learned it. 

[00:08:24] And this is the thing with living life on planet Earth, the best way to learn something, particularly those spiritual lessons is the hard way, right? You learn it the hard way because when you learn it the hard way, you'd never forget it. You read a book about it, you forget it, but when it actually happens to you, and if it happens to you multiple times, it gets so deeply entrenched in your psyche and in your body and even in your spirit that you get to a point where you literally could not forget it. So that's how a lot of these spiritual lessons are learned over the years and experiences is just the process of going through it ourselves. 

[00:09:02] So if you're watching this right now, because you've experienced a loss or a rejection, a breakup, a betrayal, or what have you, I've definitely been there. And I understand how traumatic it can feel and how just distracting it can be. Overall, it's very difficult to do anything else when you're navigating a rejection. And especially in those initial stages. It's hard to work. It's difficult to be present with your family, with your friends, it's difficult to be present with yourself. It's difficult to even sleep at night. 

[00:09:38] And uh, Eckhart Tolle, who you probably have heard of before the author of The Power of Now. He's a spiritual teacher and he's got this really wonderful quote. He says, "Whenever any kind of disaster strikes or something goes seriously wrong; illness, disability, loss of home or fortune, or of a socially defined identity or breakup of a close relationship or death or suffering of a loved one or your own impending death, know that there is another side to it. There's another side to it that you are just one step away from something incredible, a complete alchemical transmutation of the base metal of pain and suffering into gold. That one step is called surrender." 

[00:10:38] So I'm gonna read that last part again. There's another side to it that you are just one step away from something incredible. A complete alchemical transmutation of the base metal of pain and suffering into gold. That one step is called surrender. 

[00:10:56] Now, what he's referring to about this one step called surrender is referring to the evolutionary process. In other words, surrendering over to that change that has taken place as opposed to seeing it as something that should not have happened and that wasn't supposed to happen.

[00:11:17] And instead seeing it as, this is exactly what needed to happen for my spiritual growth and evolution. Not for my ego soothing, not to make me comfortable, but for my spiritual growth and evolution. 

[00:11:31] And the suggestion to surrender to it is much easier said than done. It almost feels impossible to give into this idea that perhaps this situation was not meant for me, right? Perhaps there was nothing you could have done about it. Perhaps it was inevitable to end in this way. And the suggestion to surrender to it is much easier said than done. It almost feels impossible to give in to the idea that this situation was meant to be, right? And perhaps there's nothing you could have done about it. Perhaps it was inevitable to end in the way that it ended and in the time that it ended. So I get it. That takes a lot to surrender to that. 

[00:12:17] And this is one of the reasons why in this community, we strongly encourage all of you taking these masterclasses to solidify your daily meditation practice. Because when you're operating on a spiritual level throughout life, you will need a foundational practice by which you can anchor yourself. And you will also require an outlet for the stress accumulation that comes along with these kinds of rejections, particularly when you are being rejected, right? 

[00:12:50] Rejection is a major stressor in life and the principles and the experiences that we're going to be covering in this masterclass, all of masterclasses, to be quite frank with you, are not going to work if you don't have a meditation practice in tandem with what you're going through in your home exercises for Moving On From a Breakup. 

[00:13:12] So I strongly encourage you to start your 7-Day Meditation Kickstart, if you haven't already done so. It's complimentary with this masterclass. Together they will be so much more powerful than just taking the Moving On From A Breakup masterclass because the days of the intellectual understanding of these concepts, that's not enough, right?

[00:13:35] If understanding this stuff intellectually was enough, you wouldn't be taking this class. So your best thinking your best understanding got you to the point where you're taking a class called Moving On From a Breakup, right? That's because we need to embody this stuff. It needs to be embodied. And these principles need to get to a point in our spiritual approach where we're able to surrender to what is and our surrendering capabilities are going to need to be charged up.

[00:14:07] And the only thing that's going to do that is a meditation practice because meditation helps to get rid of the thing that blocks you from being able to surrender, which is the stress, right? Stress will not let you surrender. Full stop. Stress will not let you surrender. 

[00:14:27] And I've talked about this before. People think meditation makes you gullible, right? But it's actually stress that makes you make stupid choices and be gullible. It's stress that makes you want to hold on to this thing that's obviously no longer happening. It's stress that makes you toss and turn at night, hoping, wishing the person is going to reach back out to you. It's stress that makes you cling and claw your way into some rigid attachment of this situation. It's stress that makes you project what you could have done better, what you could have done right, what you should have done. What would have happened if this had gone down a different way, right? And playing these kinds of dead end mental games with yourself that are not honoring the truth of the situation and they're not leaving you in an empowered state. So stress does all of that. 

[00:15:21] Meditation actually allows you to be bold. Meditation allows you to surrender to what is. Meditation allows you to adapt to this new change in your life. Your meditation practice allows you to see the truth of the situation for what it is and to accept that truth for what it is.

[00:15:41] Meditation allows you to take a leap of faith in a different direction, which could be spending some time on your own, or eventually could be going in a different kind of relationship. So you need the meditation practice as your primary spiritual practice to be able to embody these principles that we're going to be talking about in this masterclass.

[00:16:01] And they're going to be a total of 6 modules, including this one. So there are 5 instructional modules. And then the last module is always the Q&A. So that's the 6th module. Because we want to make sure that we're covering everything that is on your mind before the masterclass actually ends. 

[00:16:19] For this module, we're not going to get deeply into the principles yet. I want to give you a full week. These next 7 days to sort of prime yourself for the principles that we're going to be discussing in this masterclass. And there are 4 things that I want you to practice this week. And this mainly applies to people who are. moving on from a breakup of a love relationship, although it could also apply to a friendship, or it could apply to moving on from a job. It could also apply to betrayal, right? 

[00:16:49] So these four things, you're going to practice them every day this week, leading up to the next module, and that will prepare you for the principles that we're going to ultimately discuss. Okay? 

[00:16:59] Number one, you are not to speak ill of the other person or of your former job or of the situation that you feel betrayed. You are not to speak ill of that person. And the reason why you're not going to speak ill of them is because speaking ill of them negates the principle that this was happening for you and not to you, right? It distracts you from that principle. So in other words, you want to see that person, if you can, as your professor, that was your professor of spirituality helping you to master this particular spiritual lesson that you're going through. 

[00:17:45] In fact, we can make the argument that from a spiritual perspective, there was a sacred contract that you and that other person agreed to where they were going to come into your life, and they were going to behave in a very specific way that would then lead you to some degree of unity. And now we're talking about unity with your spirit, or it could also be physical unity, or maybe both. 

[00:18:12] Bottom line is with you speaking ill of that person and/or negatively about that person, you're distracting yourself from that overall lesson from the main goal of the experience from the spiritual perspective. We don't want to do that. We don't want to continue perpetuating that sort of behavior. Instead, we want to get to the heart of the lessons as quickly as possible because we're not going to be able to move on properly until we do that. So that way we don't have to personalize the situation.

[00:18:44] And sure, maybe they did some stuff, maybe the way the thing ended or the way that they behave during the breakup or the way the breakup went down altogether. It wasn't cool. I get it. I've been there. Like I said. And it's going to be very difficult not to speak ill of the person because maybe you've told your friends or you told your family what happened, and they're going to want to talk about it. And maybe they're going to instigate that conversation about how messed up that person was or they're going to come to you with all this juicy gossip about what that person is up to now and when that happens, because it's going to happen, you're just not going to have anything to say about it, at least for these next seven days. You're not going to have any comment. You're not going to join in. And if it requires a response, you're going to say something to the effect of, "Look, I don't really have anything to say. I don't have anything bad to say about him or her. I just don't, not right now. I'm still processing it. So if it's okay with you, I'd rather not talk about it. I just don't want to talk about it. I don't want to give it any of my energy. I don't want to hear what they're up to." 

[00:19:55] You don't have to say it from some sort of antagonistic place. You could just be yourself however it comes out naturally. It's fine. But just be very clear and very direct to get your point across. I don't want to have this conversation. So that's how you're going to respond when it comes up in the conversation with your friends and family. Again, we'll explain all of that a little bit more later. 

[00:20:16] The next thing you're going to practice is you're not going to wait for closure from that person, because the truth of the situation is you already have closure. Now, the closure may not look like the closure you wanted to have, but you have it because you see how that person closes relationships and friendships that they're in. And so that's the extent of their need for closure. And therefore you are going to practice accepting that for what it is. Okay. That's how the thing closed.

[00:20:56] And now within that closure, again, are some hidden lessons. They're hidden lessons within that. And these are very valuable lessons. So I want you to study and embody the lessons that you're able to see. It doesn't mean that it's not going to happen to you again, but if you notice them, and if you study them, and if you embody them, you're going to be more prepared when it happens the next time. And again, you won't take it as personally. So please don't wait for closure. You don't need to wait for any closure. You don't need to wait for them to reach out to you. You don't need to reach out to them. You don't need closure. Thinking that you need more closure is just postponing the inevitable, which is that the situation in its current form is no longer happening.

[00:21:48] And so your ego and your mind which is very tricky in the sense that they will want to look for closure, but really what it's looking for are cracks in the other person's resolve to move on, if you're being honest. And you're secretly hoping and wishing that they are going to somehow through this process of seeking closure see the goodness in you or see the value in you and give you another chance. So that's not going to happen. And don't delude yourself into thinking that you need this closure that you actually do not need. You do not need it. Okay, what you need is to move on. That's what you need to do. And if you want to get back with this person, which I get, I've been there. It's not going to happen from seeking closure. It's going to happen quicker from you moving on. 

[00:22:43] Okay, the third thing you're going to practice over these next seven days is you are not going to distract yourself from beginning your healing process. And what I mean by that is no alcohol, no drugs, no casual sex with rebounds, no doing anything that is not ultimately progressive, no doing anything that is not progressive. 

[00:23:09] In other words, you are going to stay away from destructive behavior. All of those things that I named in the category of destructive behavior; rebound sex, drugs, alcohol, and other kinds of distractions. Those are not reflective of experiences that you ultimately want to have for yourself. That's not reflective of the life that you ultimately want to create for yourself. Those are not going to lead you to the spiritual lessons that you ultimately want to have for yourself, right? Those are all coping mechanisms that are meant to distract you from the healing process. Which means you're just going to have to spend more of your precious time healing once the substance or the alcohol or the dopamine rush from the casual sex wears off or the distraction wears off. And those are the go to coping mechanisms that people usually indulge themselves in because it's very painful to deal with the breakup, and we don't want to feel that pain, we don't want to be thinking about this other person, but that's what you're going to have to do. And that's why your meditation practice is very important.

[00:24:19] So I want you as best as you can to redirect that energy where you may be tempted to distract yourself into your meditation practice. And you're going to do this again for the next seven days until we get to module number two of the course. 

[00:24:34] Now, the last thing you're going to not do over these next seven days, and this is the most difficult one of all, you're not going to contact that person. You're not going to reach out to them for any reason. Okay. You're going to go on a no contact policy with yourself. So no contact means no following them on social media, no checking their social media accounts. In fact, you may even want to block them on social media. So you're not tempted to go and see what they're up to, right?

[00:25:05] It's not about them. It's about you giving yourself a nice, firm, strong boundary. No texting the person, no WhatsApping the person, no DMing the person, no reaching out to their friends to find out how they've been doing. None of that. You're not going to do any of that and whatever else you're thinking of right now that I did not name, you're not going to do that either.

[00:25:29] So that's the deal, no contact. And again, I know this is difficult. Trust me. I've been there, but from what I understand, you being a part of this masterclass means that you genuinely want to move on and you want to move on as quickly as possible. So if that's your objective to move on as quickly as possible, to get back to your true self. And to be back dating ready or job ready without carrying this old trauma from this thing that didn't go the way that you wanted it to go, then you're going to have to follow the protocol. 

[00:26:03] And the protocol is don't speak ill of the person. The protocol is you're not waiting for any closure as hard as that is. You're not going to distract yourself with any substances or sex, and you're not going to contact the person for any reason. 

[00:26:21] Again, the mind is very tricky. It'll come up with all kinds of important sounding reasons to reach out to the person. Obviously, if you're still living with the person, or if you're enmeshed with the person because you guys have kids together, or you have a job together, or something like that, it's a different situation where you may have to communicate in a very cordial way, and just do the best you can with that. 

[00:26:44] But what I've done in the past and what I recommend you do just before you cut contact is you say to that person, "Look, I'm going to be cutting contact with you. And if you reach out to me, I'm not going to be responding back. And I hope you understand it's not personal. This is a part of my own healing process." 

[00:27:04] And that's it. You're not asking them to do anything. You're not asking them for permission. You're not making it into some secret coded message or a plea to get back together or anything like that. You're just stating the fact that you won't be contacting them. And if you feel like you need to do that, then fine, go ahead and do that. That'll be your last point of contact. 

[00:27:28] Also, if you want to go a little step further, you can say, "If I accidentally reach out to you, please do not contact me back for any reason." 

[00:27:40] Okay? If you really want to give yourself that double assurance that you're going to have no contact because it happens, you get weak. You get vulnerable. This is why I don't want you drinking alcohol because in an inebriated state, you're more prone to reach out to the person and you may forget about these things of what you're not to do over the 7 days. Or you see a movie, you see that movie that you guys love to watch together or you have some other experience and you feel like you have to reach out and you think, "Oh, this is serendipity. It's a coincidence. It's a sign," and all of that. You can preempt the communication by saying, "Look, if I actually reach out to you, please do not contact me. But otherwise I will not be contacting you for the foreseeable future until I'm able to move on past this thing."

[00:28:25] And if they are spiritually mature, they will understand completely. Otherwise, they may not understand. Your boundary is not contingent upon their understanding. Of it. They don't want to be in a relationship with you. So it really doesn't matter what they think anyway. 

[00:28:41] Now, what are you going to do in the meantime, you're just going to be living your life, which means you're going to be taking good care of yourself. You're going to be eating properly. You're going to make sure you're exercising. So I want you to eat at least one salad a day. I want you to exercise for at least 15 to 20 minutes a day. I want you to get outside. You're going to get some Vitamin D, meaning sunlight, and I want you to as much as possible surround yourself with positive influences, right? Not people who want to keep talking about the past. Not people who are instigating gossip conversations about that person. 

[00:29:18] If someone reaches out to you and say, "Hey, I saw your ex. Do you want to hear about it?" 

[00:29:23] Your answer is no, I do not want to hear about it. That's part of no contact as well. You don't want to hear about what other people have to report about that person.

[00:29:30] It's not serving you. It's not serving your goals. It's not helping you get where you ultimately want to get. So your answer is a flat and a clear and a direct no. And it's difficult to do this, but it's a practice and that's why they call it practice.

[00:29:47] So you're going to practice these four things. You are going to practice taking good care of yourself this week. And then next week, we're going to talk about the stages of a breakup. And we're going to talk about storytelling and the stories we tell ourselves related to breakups. And how we can use our own tendency to tell stories to empower us to be able to get us through the healing process a lot faster.

[00:30:14] So we have some good stuff coming. In the meantime, fire up that meditation training, get that going, and it's going to be very important to your healing process. Otherwise, I will see you in seven days and we will continue on with our moving on from the breakup masterclass. 

[00:30:31] Okay, so that was module one of the How To Move On from Rejection Masterclass. Again, these classes are structured into six models that you listen to ideally one week apart to give you time to do the exercises in between the modules. Because it's not just about understanding these concepts in theory, it's about embodying them so you experience real world changes in your life.

[00:31:01] I'm going to play for you module two, to give you a sense of how the masterclass continues, as well as a deeper understanding of how to move on from rejection. 

[00:31:11] In this module, we're going to recap the four things not to do. And then I'm going to share with you this concept called The Mandela effect that you can use for your healing process. And we'll talk about why moving on is sort of like a bootcamp for your spirit and how you can fast track your moving on process.

[00:31:31] 

[00:31:36] Welcome back to the How To Move on From a Breakup Masterclass. We're now in module number two. And in the last module, we talked about four things not to do as you're preparing yourself to move on from this relationship, and this is what you were to practice all last week, leading up to this module.

[00:32:02] Okay. The four things not to do were: 

[00:32:06] We were not to speak ill of the person or the job or whatever thing was that we were rejected from. And so we're going to talk about why in this module, so we'll get to that in a little bit. The second thing that we were not to do is we are not to wait around for closure.

[00:32:29] And I get it, maybe things ended very abruptly or you didn't get to have that final conversation. Maybe you feel like you don't exactly know why things ended. So naturally, we want answers. And that's what closure basically is, is, you know, a need for answers so things make sense to us.

[00:32:52] So we'll talk a little bit about why that's not necessary actually, as much as we feel like we need it, it's not necessary for us to be able to properly move on. If anything, it could even keep us tethered to the past and to that person. 

[00:33:08] Number three, we were to practice not distracting ourselves from this moving on or healing process. And the typical go to ways of distracting ourselves are, indulging in alcohol, using other substances to numb the pain jumping into some kind of rebound situation with somebody else as quickly as possible, thinking that if we get a couple of orgasms, then we won't think about this other person. That doesn't usually work either. So we need to break that down and talk about why trying to distract ourselves only gets us further enmeshed with our past. 

[00:33:54] And then finally, we talked about not contacting the person, and this was probably one of the most important actions is not contacting the person because that's, again, something that we oftentimes want to do in order to get closure or we want to stalk them, and I'm using that word lightly, stalking them, meaning, you're scrolling through their social media feeds, you are looking at old photos, reading through old letters. And just reminiscing on the past.

[00:34:32] All right. So let's get into it. So I came across this this concept not long ago that was surprising. And the concept is called The Mandela effect. I didn't know what it was either The Mandela effect. But apparently The Mandela effect is where we actually you know what I'll show you what it is. I don't know if you've seen the movie Star Wars. Okay. But as you may know in Star Wars, there's Luke Skywalker, and then there is the Darth Vader character. And Darth Vader and Luke Skywalker have this really interesting relationship. And in one of those early Star Wars movies. Darth Vader says something that everybody remembers. It's like the one thing you remember that Darth Vader says that kind of changed the trajectory of that relationship.

[00:35:31] So do you remember what that was? What that line was? And don't overthink it. Just see if you can recall whatever line you can remember Darth Vader saying to Luke Skywalker in one of those early Star Wars movies. 

[00:35:46] I'll give you a second.

[00:35:56] So if you remember Darth Vader saying to Luke Skywalker, "Luke, I am your father." 

[00:36:03] Or "I am your father, Luke." 

[00:36:07] Then that would be what most people, myself included, remember Darth Vader saying from those earlier movies, right? And that changed the trajectory of their relationship because before that they were protagonist and antagonist.

[00:36:22] But then after that conversation where Darth Vader cuts off Luke Skywalker's hand and then says, I'm your father, right? That was the big reveal of the early Star Wars franchise. The problem is Darth Vader never said, Luke, I'm your father. What Darth Vader said was, I am your father. In other words, he never said the name, his name, Luke.

[00:36:48] But that's how we remember it. We remember him saying, Luke, I'm your father, or I'm your father, Luke. When you go back to the tape. He doesn't say that. He just says, I'm your father. So that's an example of the Mandela effect. What that means is we have a tendency to misremember the past based on how we want to remember it.

[00:37:10] And this is a very human tendency, which means that we all do it to some extent with other things. Okay, I'll give you another example. There's a brand of peanut butter in America, and it's commonly known as Jiffy peanut butter. However, again, we're employing the Mandela effect. It's actually not Jiffy peanut butter.

[00:37:36] It's JIF peanut butter, but we mostly remember it as Jiffy peanut butter for whatever reason. So there are a lot of little things like that, that we just have come to a conclusion about that aren't actually true based on how we want to remember them. Okay? 

[00:37:58] So when it comes to relationships, we tend to do the same thing we apply that Mandela effect, and we remember it, usually for the good times, we have a nostalgic memory. Another way of saying that is we have selective amnesia. We tend to practice amnesia selectively with the bad times and things that caused any sort of tension in the relationship and we tend to focus on the good things, especially if the relationship ended abruptly. Okay?

[00:38:31] So that's 1 of the reasons why we have a tendency to want to look for closure. That's one of the reasons why we have a tendency to speak ill of the person because if we remember the good and they should also remember the good, then why are they doing this to us? That's one of the reasons why we like to distract ourselves is because we're sort of being forced through the breakup to remember the past negatively.

[00:38:56] And that's the reason why we don't want to have contact with the person because we will be tempted to want to reach out and get clarity. And all that does is it, I'm just going to speak very frankly here, it puts the other person in a power position. And when the other person is in the power position, then they're just going to become more determined for you to move on and for this thing to separate. And so even if you thought that reaching out to this other person would potentially cause you all to get back together. You're actually going to have the opposite experience because you just basically verifying and validating to that other person why it was the best idea to move on. Okay?

[00:39:40] So all that to say, we have to understand that this is a part of our tendency. This is a part of our nature, the Mandela effect. It's natural to think of the nice things that we experienced, even though there were some other things that maybe weren't great, because if they were great, then the other person probably would not have rejected you.

[00:40:02] And at the same time we want to be able to frame the situation accordingly. And again, this is all with the objective of being able to move on smoothly and efficiently and without a lot of carnage behind us. 

[00:40:19] So when we talk about framing, we're talking about basically the story we're telling ourselves around why something ended. From the spiritual perspective, which is how we want to view our relationships when we're talking about moving on. 

[00:40:35] From the spiritual perspective, the point of the relationship is for us to embody spiritual lessons. In other words, we want to look at it like bootcamp for our spirit relationship is bootcamp for your spirit. Now, do you need a bootcamp in order to grow spiritually? Perhaps. Let's run this analogy.

[00:40:54] Let's suppose you were at home and you were reading about boot camp, right? And you're reading about all the pushups and how they have to climb over the wall and scale the rope and. It would be freezing. It's early in the morning. There's a drill sergeant. There's all this crazy stuff happening that's gonna push people to their physical limits. And in the process, they're getting stronger and stronger and stronger, and they're becoming combat ready over time. That's why they do the boot camp. They do boot camp to become physically conditioned for combat and to learn how to operate under pressure. So after all is said and done at the end of the boot camp period, now they're ready to go into battle. Okay? They've become resilient. They've become attuned to the pressures of being in combat. They have been able to operate under duress with a calm state of mind and all of those things. They've been able to take orders. They've demonstrated that they could take orders from a drill sergeant while observing this sort of hierarchy of the military and the chain of command, and still perform their duty accordingly. All of those things are happening. 

[00:42:13] Now we can read about them all day and night. But does reading about it make us combat ready? If we read a book about boot camp, would we be ready to go into combat? Would we be ready to go into battle. Would we be physically conditioned to go into that kind of intense environment where we're under duress and you have to perform our job? Chances are no, we would not feel ready under those kinds of situations. Okay? 

[00:42:40] So that's why the intellectual understanding of these principles is not enough. We need the actual physical, mental, spiritual, emotional experience. We need to go through that. From beginning to end, all the ups and downs, the whole rollercoaster of emotions, wanting to quit, trying to talk ourselves out of wanting to quit, feeling like I don't want to be here, being tired, the whole thing. And so that's why having to actually show up at bootcamp is not just a suggestion. It's necessary. It's a hundred percent necessary in order to be able to do what you have the potential to do. Okay? 

[00:43:18] So the same thing basically applies to relationships. We need to go through all of the craziness and the ups and downs and all of that in order to embody the various spiritual principles that you're learning through that relationship dynamic and different dynamics are going to be about different principles, which means in one relationship that perhaps you had five or 10 years ago, that relationship dynamic could have been about learning forgiveness, right? And then in another dynamic that you had a couple of years later, that relationship could have been about learning unconditional love. And then in another dynamic, it could have been about learning how to have and enforce your boundaries. So every relationship in that way is like a masterclass in spiritual principles, learning these spiritual principles. And it can really be that simple. It can be that simple, meaning everything that you all experience, all the restaurants you went to, all the trips you took, all the experiences you had were really just about you learning that you need to establish better boundaries and you need to enforce those boundaries.

[00:44:31] You need to be honest and candid about the fact that you need boundaries and all the things related to boundaries. And if you get to the point where. You fully embody that then you may find that relationship starts to dissolve for whatever reason. And it could be for the most random reason, right? But if your relationship is dragging on, it could be because you're still learning that lesson. And if the relationship ends and you haven't fully learned the lesson, you may find yourself attracting a similar type of partner and you end up on the same carousel, the boundary carousel where you're trying to figure it out again with this new person and presenting you with a new set of challenges.

[00:45:14] So that's how we want to ultimately frame the relationship and the reason why it's useful to frame relationships this way is because. It empowers us, first of all, and number two, we have an easier time depersonalizing the experience when it ends, because it's going to end at some point, right? It may not end until one of you transitions off of this planet, but at some point it's going to end.

[00:45:43] And when it ends, we don't want to look at it as, Oh, this was what I needed to complete me. No, you don't need it to complete you. It was. a part of your studies, right? And if you look at the relationship through the lens of a college, a university curriculum, right? That was a class you took. You took one class in boundaries. That person who you were relating to was your professor. Their job was to present you with certain situations and scenarios that would give you an opportunity to establish boundaries and to speak openly about your boundaries and all the things about boundaries.

[00:46:22] I'm just using boundaries as an example, but it could have been another spiritual lesson. In any case, the professor is not trying to sabotage you. The professor's job is to present you with pop quizzes and tests and final exams, and a chance for you to present your dissertation and all the things related to that course of study so that by the end of it, you have a better understanding of it, of that subject than you did at the beginning of it. 

[00:46:49] And here's the thing, you're doing the same for them. You are giving them an opportunity to learn whatever spiritual lesson that they are in the process of embodying. And it could be two completely different lessons, right? You could be learning one thing, they could be learning something else. And the fact that you all were attracted to one another, meant that you had something to help the other person learn. That's the general way we want to frame the experience because a college course at some point is going to come to an end, right?

[00:47:23] And when it ends, all that means is you learned what that person was there to teach you. That's what it means. Okay, doesn't mean that something is wrong with you. It doesn't mean that you're unlovable, doesn't mean you're undateable, doesn't mean any of that stuff that we tell ourselves as a sort of a victim frame of why this experience ended. That's not what happened at all. It ended because you graduated from that course of instruction. 

[00:47:52] Again, you may or may not believe this, right? It may be a very hard thing to sell yourself and that's fine, especially if you're still in the initial mourning period of the breakup, but that's a part of the process. And then in the future model, we're going to talk about the stages of the breakup process, right? So we can understand where we are within that process. But eventually, you will get to the point where you can see it for what it is. And so all this to say, you want to practice, you want to recognize the Mandela effect, first of all. And then you want to practice coming back to the hero frame as opposed to the victim frame of what happened, what that relationship was all about. And it's just because it helps you to move on faster, right? Right now, we're not concerned about them so much. We don't need to be trying to forgive them although that will come with time. But to start, we just want to depersonalize the situation. And once you depersonalize it, then it becomes even easier not to contact the person, not to distract yourself from your healing process, not to wait for closure and not to speak ill of the person. But preceding that, you have to frame the experience for what it truly was. You're the hero. You're the hero of the experience. You are the student, another way to say it, and you were there to learn something. Okay?

[00:49:18] When we don't do our work of reframing and we get into the business of gossiping and speaking ill about the person and wishing them ill, then it keeps us plugged in to the past. And we end up paying more attention to the character flaws of the teacher as opposed to the value of the lesson, and that's not a habit that we want to create through repetition. We don't want to focus on character flaws of people just in general, in our life in general, because the reality is we're in a relationship with everybody and we're learning something from everybody. It's just that these love relationships tend to be deeply rooted lessons. And if you are able to see the professor for what they are and appreciate their willingness to come into your life and help to facilitate this lesson for you, then it can discharge the situation and depersonalize them as the teacher. And that way we can put more of our attention, if not all of our attention on to the lesson. And once you're able to do that, and you're able to embody the lesson, the wonderful thing is you can now take that with you to the next relationship. You graduate from having to learn that lesson, which means you now are not going to be attracted to other people who are wanting to violate your boundaries. But you're still going to have to learn something. So it'll be another lesson that will complement this lesson that you just learned. If you have a tendency to make it about the professor and their flaws, then you're just going to attract someone else in your next relationship that will continue on where that professor left off .

[00:51:06] And look, nature is very patient. They'll give you 20 professors in order to help you learn the lesson. So now that we know what's going on again from the spiritual perspective, we have an opportunity to fast track our way to the main lesson at hand. 

[00:51:23] I know you're asking, Light, if nature is very patient and this is what we're doing with all relationships, we're learning something. What difference does it make if I speed through this one or goes slowly as I want to go through this one? 

[00:51:36] Here's the thing, the more we stay caught up in the past and what didn't happen, the less present we are in the moment. And the less present we are in the moment, the less present available we become to our path and our purpose. So we end up making a lot of mistakes when pursuing our path and our purpose. And to be perfectly honest with you, being on your purpose is what makes you the most attractive to the highest quality people, right? Being on your path and your purpose is what makes you the most attractive to the highest quality people.

[00:52:18] So I don't have to ask you if you want to attract a high quality person. I already know you do because that's again, that's part of human nature. But in order to do that, you have to be on your path and purpose. That's the proper sequence. Get on my path and my purpose. That's how I attract the highest quality people.

[00:52:36] If I'm living for the relationship, if I'm living to attract someone, and that's my main purpose, I'm going to end up attracting broken people who have a lot of unresolved healing to do. People who haven't been paying attention in class. And it's the same thing as in, actual school, you have the misfits, the knuckleheads people in the back of the class are not paying attention to the lesson. What ends up happening is they end up getting detention with all the other knuckleheads in the school. So they end up spending more time around more knuckleheads as opposed to the smart people, the people who are on top of their studies. And so the people who are on top of their studies are fast tracking their way through the learning process.

[00:53:22] The knuckleheads have to repeat classes a lot. They're missing the lesson. They have to go to summer school. They get more of what they don't want. So I don't know if I'm using this school analogy too much, but it does explain a lot of things. So we want to be on our best behavior when it comes to focusing on the lesson at hand, because then that way we fast track our way through the learning and we can attract those higher quality individuals into our life. 

[00:53:51] Okay. So your homework for this module, the homework for this module is to do a deeper dive on the whole framing process. And here's what I want you to do. Over the course of these next six days, a little bit at a time, maybe allocating 10 or 15 minutes a day. I want you to come up with six things, six potential lessons that you learn from this past experience.

[00:54:18] If you can't come up with six lessons, I want you to come up with six things you're grateful for. Okay? And then I want you to list five things, or we'll just keep it simple. Let's list six things under each thing, each lesson or each thing you're grateful for six reasons supporting that lesson or that thing you're grateful for.

[00:54:39] Every day, you're going to write 7 things total. Okay. One is a lesson that you learn from your past relationship, such as I got to learn my boundaries. And then you're going to do six points of justification for that. I got to learn my boundaries and that's because I became more available to my health and my wellness.

[00:55:03] And I was able to spend more time with people that I love, and I was able to recognize other areas of my life where I didn't have strong boundaries. And like that, you just list out six things justifying what you wrote as the lesson for that day. And then the next day, you're going to repeat that doesn't have to be perfect. You're not going to have to submit it to anyone. This is just your own work. Okay. If you're serious about moving on from this breakup, this is a really powerful way to not just again, intellectually reframe the experience. We want to actually embody that reframing. And the way to do that is to really spend some time with it and to go deeper than just, thinking about it for two seconds. You really want to spend some time thinking about how the lessons connect to the actions in your life. And it can be a future action as well. This is showing me that I need to have better boundaries at work. This is showing me that I need to have better boundaries at school and with my other friends, whatever the justifications are, right?

[00:56:07] So just spend some time with that. And then when we meet up in the next module, we're going to talk a little bit more about the difference in a hero, which you are and a superhero, which you're not. I'll tell you what that means in the next module. So I'll see you guys in a week. And and make sure you have your meditation practice going in the background, because that's also going to help you embody this this information and integrate it into your life and create some space in between your desire to reach out and do those other four things and your ability to say, you know what, this is not serving me, so I'm not going to do it.

[00:56:42] All right, see you next week. Namaste.

[00:56:45] Thank you for tuning into this preview of the How To Move On From a Rejection Masterclass. Again, this is just a snippet of a larger course that you can find in my Happiness Insiders online community. There are several other masterclasses in this community as well, such as Finding Your Purpose, Overcoming Fear, Radical Authenticity, How to Stop Overthinking, Preparing For The One which you've already previewed, Accessing Your Potential, Manifesting Abundance. 

[00:57:14] And we have a series of challenges as well, such as the 108-Day Meditation Challenge, Healthy Eating Challenge, movement Challenge. There's a 30 Day Mindfulness Triathlon. There's a no Complaining Challenge, Gratitude Challenge, et cetera.

[00:57:28] So if you got a lot of value out of what you just heard, you can sign up for the full course at thehappinessinsiders.com. There is a small accountability fee just to make sure that you show up for yourself. And we also do a free week long trial, if you want to get an all access pass to the entire community.

[00:57:46] So theoretically you could test it out for seven days and then cancel before you pay anything, but I think you're going to enjoy all of the resources that community provides, which includes a live weekly zoom session and Dharma talk with yours truly. Plus, a community of like minded folks from all around the world who are actively working on their inner practices.

[00:58:08] And that's what's so cool about being a part of The Happiness Insiders is you no longer have to feel like the lone wolf when it comes to your inner work. Plus it's all practical, real world stuff. And that's partially because it was created by me and I'm just a practical real world kind of dude. In other words, if it doesn't help to make your life better in real time and if you can't verify it by your own direct experiences, then what's the point of learning it? So that's the vibe of the community. 

[00:58:33] And if you've grown tired of trying to reinvent the wheel, when it comes to mapping out your own inner work journey, don't worry, I got you. And I also post the raw unedited version of these episodes in my community as well. So you can listen to them a day before anyone else. And if you're the type that likes hearing all the false starts and the chit chat and all of that, you can listen to that by taking any of the masterclasses and that automatically gives you access to those raw episodes. 

[00:59:00] Alright, I look forward to hopefully seeing you back here next week with another story about someone just like me or you taking a leap of faith in the direction of their purpose.

[00:59:08] And until then, keep trusting your intuition, keep following your heart and by all means keep taking those leaps of faith. And if no one's told you recently that they believe in you, I believe in you. Thank you and have a great day.