Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: So episode one is, do you know you're programmed and that might make you sit there and feel really uncomfortable. I'm not programmed. I have choice over everything I do. It's no one, no one tells me what to do.
But let's start picking that apart.
Hello and welcome to humanizing the podcast that allows you to understand how you've been programmed by both evolution and culture so you can liberate any behaviour you choose and be who you would like to be.
[00:00:34] Speaker B: Today.
[00:00:35] Speaker A: I'm Ginny. I'm the map holder. I'd like to introduce Marheen. Hello. Marhin is the explorer. And together we will journey through this programming so you can understand through the questions you ask and definitely the questions Marhin asks, how to liberate yourself and be the most amazing person that you choose to be.
One of the things I've always been able to see, even as a small kid, is the fact that different social groups or different cultures behave differently because, and Mahin knows this as well, because we're what the universe would call third culture kids. We grew up in a family that would be different cultural programming from when we went to school.
And then also for me, both my grandparents had different sets of cultural programming because I'm a first stroke, second generation child of immigrants. I'm not English per se. My mum's not English, my dad's not English. And Mahin, simile. So whether it's been war or whether it's been economic reasons, we've arrived in the UK. And what was really funny is the rules were different. Wherever you I'd used, I'd go home from being in school knowing that if I went home to my dad's mum, there would be fundamentally different food and different type of interaction than I went home to my mum's mum. And Mahin, this is the same for you, isn't?
[00:02:18] Speaker B: Absolutely.
Well, I had mum here and then I had everybody else overseas. So when I went to see mum's mum, I was off on a plane. Exactly.
[00:02:33] Speaker A: But what I realized, very small, is that different people do things different ways.
[00:02:39] Speaker B: And in different cultures they do things different ways too.
[00:02:42] Speaker A: Completely. And when that, if you look at that, and I've always wanted to know why things worked. Just me. I have this thing that I can't look at something without asking the question why I'm really the inveterate four year old.
Why? And why again. And having taken a lot of that, I then at university, was lucky enough to be on a course that started to look at that programming. And one of the first things it looked at was your interaction with the world. And believe it or not, we don't arrive as babies as like, a blank slate. Our DNA has been constructed in such a way that we interact with the world in a very specific way, because it always has been.
So you don't learn that if someone throws something at you, you need to dodge it. It's actually part of your DNA. So there's a whole load of physical programming which you can play with. Finn is weak, for example. You don't learn that it is part of your programming. And if you present people, things in their environment that respond to the physical things that they're programmed in their head to do, they just behave in certain ways.
[00:03:59] Speaker B: Can you interrogate or reprogram your unconscious programming, do you think? I mean, you should always duck if something comes towards your head? That's just a good.
[00:04:09] Speaker A: Yeah, well, you will do. You won't even think about it. It happens literally in this subsystem. It's a bit like your body knows how to digest a protein.
[00:04:19] Speaker B: Yeah, right.
[00:04:21] Speaker A: Your body also knows how old you are, because it releases different sets of hormones or stops, in my case, at different times in your life. Okay, so the major system in your head holds your body in space and time. And because it does that, the way you move around any environment is programmed.
[00:04:45] Speaker B: But, for example, what you think is attractive is a program, societal program.
[00:04:51] Speaker A: Now, this is a different set of programming, because there are two sets. Okay, so there's one set of programming you cannot do anything about. Bit like can't stop digesting protein, even if I thought about it.
[00:05:03] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:05:04] Speaker A: But there's a different set of programming, which takes the data, information, and knowledge that you learn in a lifetime, and programs you as well. But it programs you in a really interesting way, because we've always been social beings. We've always worked in groups. Going back to an evolutionary program, you can't change. We've worked together as groups for around 6.5 million years to survive. So therefore, there's a set of programming in our head, which wants you to be in a group, wants you to work together, wants you to understand how to do that. But over that time, it's become, let's say, a framework. And I always find that. What on earth do I mean by that? So we learn language. Any kid learns language, and it learns the language that's around it when it's small.
So I was exposed to three different languages. Unfortunately, now I'm only really good in one of them, but I can still understand the other two, one being French, the other being Czech.
Because we're predisposed to learn a language, we're also predisposed to learn a set of cultural frameworks which we can break down at another time. But basically, our brain is waiting for that information to know how to behave. So if you're given a certain way of thinking about who you are, or you're even in a world that says how you feel about yourself doesn't exist. So, for example, if you're transgender or you're in a body that looks one way and behaves another, the outside world might tell you, well, there are only two, and you're thinking your head. Well, no, there isn't. I'm a third. But the only choice you're given is binary. One or the other, there's only two choices. It's not tertiary. There's three choices or four. So you only get to choose between two, even though you might feel different.
And that's the difference between a cultural program overlaying an evolutionary program.
[00:07:15] Speaker B: Brilliant. And breaking out of those programs is pretty.
I mean, life changing. I imagine it's not an easy thing to do.
[00:07:23] Speaker A: No, it's not.
But one of the powerful things we've seen over the last 2025 years is that if you allow people the choice, saying, going back to gender, if you allow people the choice, then it liberates their ability to choose, which is going back to our interruption. What we're here about completely is if you didn't know there was a choice wider than the ones you've given, you'll only choose what you've been given, not what you can absolutely be.
[00:08:01] Speaker B: So when we talk about, do you know your programmed, our episode title, give.
[00:08:06] Speaker A: You a little number, we're really saying.
[00:08:12] Speaker B: To ourselves and the listeners and each other, what parts of you do you think you've had no hand in outside of the evolutionary stuff, of course. And are you happy with that?
[00:08:24] Speaker A: Yes. Well, happy again. Is that a choice? Have you been told you should be happy just having these two choices? I'm not sure. For me, it's not about being happy, it's knowing. The fact that I suppose I have to get quite personal about this one is I've always felt like I was a misfit. I didn't fit anywhere right, and I was fed up with being given choices which continually made me feel uncomfortable. It didn't matter what it was, it was wrong, and it almost felt like I had to put on a set of clothes just to be accepted.
And it's that sort of feeling. If you are sitting there going, do you know what? I've just felt uncomfortable with these things. But other people tell me that that's right. You're just supposed to feel uncomfortable. You can't be happy. It's not about being happy, it's about going, is there something else? Can I look at this differently? And for me, it's about power. I want to put the power in your hands to make decisions for you. And even if that is not to do anything, because change is truly challenging and hard work, and you might decide it's not for you. But I think the power is knowing that you could if you wanted to. And you don't have to be this unconscious, like your brain digesting brain and body digesting protein. You don't have to be an unconscious consumer of society's rules.
You can decide to do something differently.
[00:09:56] Speaker B: That's the freedom of choice.
[00:09:58] Speaker A: Yes.
And knowing that the choices you might have out in front of you aren't the only ones. And there only exists to support a certain type of framework and a certain type of way of being. I saw a program the other day which was challenging the fact that devils were always black or nasty stuff was always black, and good stuff was always white.
And when you stand back and look in that, that has a huge reflection into the people who were controlling those imageries. And they might have been doing it well. I do know they undo it unconsciously, because everyone likes to see themselves reflected in something that is positive. So you will do that because you want to be right, you want to be the truth. But what that does is then completely alter how someone else would look at it. And that gaze is really powerful, because if you've been taught to look at something in a way someone else has defined, even if you weren't of a different colored skin, you've always still been told white's good. But I think the interesting thing to understand about that is I don't think consciously that's what those people, I think they're just as much as a victim in this process as everything else. But it's. That gaze is really powerful. How you've been shown to look at yourself. For example, a lot of. Most of the art I've ever seen portraying women has been drawn by a man or photographed by a man.
[00:11:31] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:11:33] Speaker A: Therefore, they're only giving you one way of what they want someone to look at, whether it's a painting or it's someone in clothing. Most of the fashion designers in the world happen not to be women.
[00:11:46] Speaker B: Yes, we are very much saturated by the male gaze, aren't we? Yeah.
[00:11:50] Speaker A: And that's just thing. And I'm not saying it's good, bad or indifferent. What I'm saying is, stand back. What we'll be doing, this whole podcast, looking at the programs, is standing back and looking at those things which we then make decisions about ourselves about said, it's about putting the power back in your hands and our hands to look at the world in a way and to act in the world in a way that is being arbited through the glasses I want to wear, not the glasses I've been unconsciously given.
[00:12:24] Speaker B: When we take these glasses off.
[00:12:26] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:12:29] Speaker B: What happens, I suppose, is the question, really, isn't it?
[00:12:32] Speaker A: It is, because that starts to be about change. So number one, you have to recognize you've got them, which is what this first episode is about. It's all about digging into some of those programs that might exist. And so, you know, even the way you cross your roads program.
Because if I'm crossing the roads in England, we have something called pelican crossings, and in Southeast Asia and asian subcontinent, they don't have those. Everyone just crosses the road and no one gets run over. But I find it nice and simple, but I find it really difficult because there's no pelican crossing, and I stand there and wait for a gap in the traffic where no one else does. That's just the way I've been programmed.
[00:13:13] Speaker B: Right.
[00:13:13] Speaker A: It doesn't mean there aren't other ways, obviously, of doing those things or thinking in that way.
So if you go, there are programs, and then you go, how easy are there to change the actual fact of wanting to cross the road in an area where there's no pelican crossings and everyone else just seems to wander across the road. And this happened to me, actually in both Bangkok. Well, actually, first time happened to me was in Bangkok when I was about 19, and thought, how the hell does anyone cross the road?
But the fear in my heart and in thy soul of like, just walking across the road? I was terrified, of course, because all of the stuff which was going around me didn't match how I thought about the world. Everyone should stop. Then I cross instead of realizing, or I could logically see, that people just crossed the road and all the tuk tuks and motorcyclists just went round them. And I have no understand how you could drive like that. But anyway, it just happened. But stepping off that pavement at that particular time on Cosine road was probably one of the most scariest things I've ever done.
And just to navigate through the track and I got to the other side, I had to literally lean against a shop front for about five minutes, catch my breath, I wasn't dead. But this is the challenge we get when we need to deprogram or look at things is it's going to be scary and you're not going to want to do it because what you've been taught is safe and the right way to do something doesn't have to be. And that's what I think is really insidious mahin about this is the fact that most of the things we've been taught have then been attached to our fear mechanism, which we can't change. Right. Your fear mechanism works because anything it can't predict, your unconscious brain goes, please, please predict something for me. And if you can't predict it, I'm going to make you think of the worst things possible. Because the fear mechanism only looks at do I run, do I fight, do I freeze?
It doesn't actually have a positive outcome. Hence it's called fear mechanism. So as soon as you start to do anything, your brain goes, oh, no, can't predict this, therefore it's scary, therefore I'm going to die, therefore I don't want you to do it.
So you'll be fighting against yourself permanently on that level. And then on the other one is your brain doesn't like change.
It really gets upset when you want to change something because it means it has to literally reprogram something which is using protein, which it doesn't have a lot of, or didn't.
[00:16:02] Speaker B: Okay, so if there's a physical thing that takes place when we are pushing through our programs, we've got our central nervous system. So as you talk about the fight, flight, freeze, fawn response or whatever, you're unsafe. And so you're going to go into one of those states. And yes, I can totally appreciate that's exactly what's happening. And I'm sure you probably go through.
[00:16:26] Speaker A: A couple or you will every time you do it, until your brain reprograms your behaviors, it's going to be something you can't predict because your brain works on the fact it can start to predict things happening or what you're going to do because that's how it works unconsciously. It looks if the environment knows how to behave around it, right. It's based on the fact that if you throw something at someone, they duck. So your brain pre programs what you're going to do and how you're going to work. How on earth do you think we walk down the busiest streets when we used to have rush hour and there would be hundreds and thousands of people coming your way and you're with hundreds and thousands of people on one pavement and no one bumps into anyone else, because your brain is swapping data, information and knowledge with someone else's brain all that time. And we all navigate round each other and we all do this. And when we've all come times when it all goes horribly wrong or slightly wrong.
[00:17:25] Speaker B: Absolutely.
[00:17:26] Speaker A: And if you notice, those times are usually when there's only two or three people or birds. You're going down one way and someone's coming up the other way and your brain goes, oh, there's only one person, and you swap data and you might get that slightly wrong, but if there's hundreds of people, you just navigate through it.
[00:17:45] Speaker B: I like the person to person dance you do when there's not that many of you, because I think when there's lots of people, you make quick choices, don't you? There's no time, really.
[00:17:52] Speaker A: Well, it's your unconscious for the dance, right. And usually what you're doing is you're thinking about something else, like, what am I going to have to dinner or the next meeting? There's only you and one other person. You've noticed there's only one other person. So now it comes into consciousness. Your bloody conscious brain gets involved and it all goes horribly wrong if you leave it subconscious. Everyone does it really easily. And that is the thing, because as soon as you change your behavior, which has been programmed, you raise it into consciousness. As soon as you put it into consciousness, your brain goes, what the hell is it doing here? Now what do I do? Usually this just happens. I've now got to think about this.
[00:18:28] Speaker B: So are you using different pathways? Are you using a different part of your brain? When you're sort of coming out of this programming, you do, because what you.
[00:18:36] Speaker A: Start to do is for your brain to program something new. First of all, it holds it in consciousness.
For example, learning to drive. I'm sure you all remember learning to drive. Mirror signal, mirror maneuver. I think it's right. And yet now I'll drive without thinking about it.
[00:18:54] Speaker B: I think that's right.
[00:18:55] Speaker A: I think that's right, because I haven't done it for ages. That's what I did the other day. But this is the bit where your brain goes, oh, right, so this is something new and I'm learning to do it. It's called skill acquisition, which we'll look into is another one of these things we're doing. But if you're doing something, it takes up conscious programming, and there's not, compared to your unconscious programming capacity, there's very little. And what your brain really wants you to do with that thin layer on top, your consciousness is monitor the environment so it can keep you safe. Right?
[00:19:28] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:19:29] Speaker A: But if you're holding something in there, which means you're doing a new action, a new thing, like learning crossroads somewhere differently, over and over again, over time, it thinks, right, how often are you doing this?
And therefore, do I have to spend the protein to wire it down as a new behavior so I can do it unconsciously and free up that consciousness to keep you safe? So if you keep doing something over and over and over and over again, it programs it. It literally puts it into unconsciousness because you keep doing it and you've kept doing it. So it puts it in a very particular place, but it has to spend. When I say spend, it costs the brain protein and energy, and it doesn't like that because back in the day when this beautiful brain of ours was designed, there wasn't a lot of either of those around.
So the more you do something. So when people say it take you 21 days to form a habit, they're lying.
Because it depends on what it is you want to reprogram and how often you do it.
[00:20:33] Speaker B: Is it also how deeply rooted it is? Yes.
[00:20:35] Speaker A: Deeply rooted or deeply programmed. If it was something you learned when you were four, it's going to take you a flipping long time to redo. If it's just something you learned. Well, let's say I learned to cross the road, probably about seven or eight.
I still, although I've spent quite a significant amount of my time working in Asia, my heart goes into my mouth every time I cross road still, okay, because it's something I learned quite young. But if I'm using a different program on my laptop or my computer.
[00:21:07] Speaker B: It.
[00:21:08] Speaker A: Takes me less time than it would do because I perhaps have only learned one of those in the past five or ten years.
But the bottom line is our brains don't like change. So, one of the challenge, the second challenge you get when you see something you'd like to do something differently about is due to evolution, your brain is going to make it hard work.
So not only do you get the power to make you stay where you are comes from society, it also comes from your brain. So you sit in the middle where these two things are going to challenge you when you want to do anything different.
But I think the power coming back to the power is knowing they will do that. So it's not that you didn't try hard enough. It wasn't any of those things. It's the fact that literally being human, and this is what we talk about, humanizing what we do, being human is going to make that challenge.
[00:22:05] Speaker B: Hardy, how do we change our programming?
Thought I'd ask a really simple question there.
[00:22:25] Speaker A: For me, the house starts with first understanding what it is you're trying to change, and that is, is this something I've learned in this lifetime, or is this something that is just part of being human?
So one of the episodes we're going to come on to next is, why the hell do I want to eat crisps or donuts?
[00:22:51] Speaker B: Because they're delicious.
[00:22:53] Speaker A: Yeah, your brain thinks you're delicious. You'll never not think that.
There's a whole load of things around food that we're just going to have to learn to live with and also not beat ourselves up about when we can't do them, because some of those mechanisms are really strong. So the things you can look at differently, though, are those things you've been taught in your lifetime.
And that's, I think, the basis of a lot of what we'll be covering in the next episodes we're looking at is, what are these things? And how have I then been taught to think about myself? So, for me, it starts with a program, right? It starts with, what program am I looking at? Where does it come from? And do I have the ability to change it, or am I going to have to live with it?
So, once we've understood that bit, we've broken that bit down. The second thing comes from, okay, how old is it?
Because understanding how much a part of who we are, it is, let's say something. I learned that when I was three.
That's really difficult. You are going to have to work for incredibly long time to look at undoing that. It doesn't mean it can't. It just means it's going to be hard work. And there are. Then we'll come onto this again, specific ways of making that hard work easier, like finding other people who want to do that with you. And we'll dig into why that works in more episodes. So is it a changeable program? How long has it been there?
And this is a really interesting.
[00:24:34] Speaker B: Part.
[00:24:35] Speaker A: Of this, and we might not even get to cover it properly in this podcast series, but it's, how do I stop a behavior becoming an automatic reaction?
Okay. Like, I said, we've looked at how our choices work. You think you've perhaps looking at gender, we've only got.
For years, we only thought we had two choices. We actually now know not only biologically, but in society, that's wrong. However, if you only think you've got two, you've only got a choice between them. But if you've got three.
First of all, you had to understand that the fact that that program has come from a way of looking at the world. But now I can look at it differently. So it's the depth. Sorry, can I. The depth, how those depths and evolution ones interact together.
[00:25:28] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:25:29] Speaker A: Then it's, how do I stop it being an unconscious one? And that's about how you start to interact in a very particular process in your brain, which is there'll be a neuroreaction somewhere to something which always delivers an emotion. An emotion is then attached to a thought, a thought is then attached to a behavior.
And what you then need to do is learn how to intersect between those three and how perhaps you sit just with feeling something and not reacting to it. And I'm saying that quite loud. Really difficult. There are methods that's really difficult. It is.
But by the time you get there, you're already halfway there, because you've realized it's a program. You've realized something you can do about it. You're doing it, perhaps with people who are also doing it, but we all know that is hard. And there are, again, don't have time now, but there are very specific ways you can start to interact in that within your own head. And then what you do is once you've sat with something, you then choose to think differently, and you choose to behave differently because the think and the behavior are easier because they're in your consciousness. And the more you do it, the more you can. Then your brain will program that behavior down because you're thinking about it. So we get round again. The thing is, it's not easy. And it's pointless ever saying, there's a hack for this, and I hate people and I hate stuff, which goes, this is the way you fix it. It can take you a lifetime. In fact, it's taken you a lifetime to get to where you are today.
But that's about knowing you have choice and know you have power to do things. The human brain is the most plastic organ ever invented. You can change what you choose.
It doesn't mean it's going to be easy.
[00:27:24] Speaker B: I love that because it's so worth it if you're noticing something that's not serving you or doesn't feel good for you or doesn't feel right in your world, in your life, in your skin, whichever way it is. And there's a little void, the little niggling voice totally sort of saying, change this or do this or this isn't quite right, or this isn't quite working for you. And you can spend a lot of time ignoring that voice.
[00:27:49] Speaker A: Well, you're told to a lot of the time, because you're told you actually thinking that you're wrong, even though you've still got that stone in your shoe and every time you walk on, it feels uncomfortable and you take your shoe off and you look for the stone and you can't find it, you put your shoe back on and it's still there because someone told you that that stone wasn't there, but you know it is.
[00:28:10] Speaker B: You can feel it.
[00:28:11] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:28:13] Speaker B: And so the pushing through of saying, I'm not going to stay here because I know this isn't right for me, it's not serving me. It's not.
Whatever the phrase might be that describes that thing is probably the catalyst for most people changing the programming that they have been given.
[00:28:35] Speaker A: It is, I think it. Would you say catalyst to start? Right, brilliant.
[00:28:40] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:28:40] Speaker A: Because you've noticed something that's not serving, that isn't right for you.
It's a bit like if someone ever, only ever told you there were two flavors of crisp salt and vinegar and unsalted, you didn't like either of them, so you never ate a crisp.
Missed out on prawn cocktail or cheese and onion.
Come on. But this is the thing. If you're only told there are two choices and you don't like either of those choices, you don't choose crisps. Right.
[00:29:07] Speaker B: Yeah. You don't like crisps. That's absolutely true. You don't like crisps, which is wrong.
Yeah. Then you find a whole other world of crisps and away you go.
[00:29:15] Speaker A: Exactly. But this is the same about how we talk to think about anything. Right. It's all these. And those choices have been defined in a specific way for us.
[00:29:35] Speaker B: When we talk about the programming that can be changed in our lives and we are pushing through ourselves. Yes.
And then we have to face the people around us who have that same programming or who gave us that programming.
[00:29:47] Speaker A: Well, this is interesting, because now we're talking about change and transformation and why change is difficult and impossible. But if you want to dive into that one specifically, it's not just your brain who gets involved with you not changing, right.
It's the other people around you. And this can be really insidious. And I use that specifically because they don't do it to you on purpose. Let's put that out there. No one stops you being brilliant or wanting to change something. What we have to remember again, human beings humanizing this, is that human beings always changed as groups, period. That's how we've done evolution. We've done it as groups of people doing things. There is another framework in human beings about how we change, which will literally will take us a whole episode to go through. But the bottom line is, when you change something about your behavior and what you do in the system where everyone else is staying the same, what it elicits in their head is, oh, do I have to change, too?
And of course, they don't want to do that because their brain is going to tell them it's damn hard work if you do that change. And also if you do that, it's going to impact all of these other things. So you become a point of threat and a point of fear if you decide to do something differently. So they'll actively undermine you, because to be fair, they want you to stay the same. Because if you stay the same, they don't have to do anything to change or even think about it. So, for example, if you as, let's say a simpler one, that your whole family is vegetarian and you decide you want to eat meat, right? Of course, what everyone will tell you is, oh, it's hard work. I've got to cook all these meals. I've got to do this, that and the other. What it really means is I'm going to have to think about why I'm vegetarian.
[00:31:53] Speaker B: Right?
[00:31:54] Speaker A: Because to have that interaction with you, I have to understand why you want to do that. And I don't want to do that because that means I have to think about it, and therefore I have to review and understand why I think the way I do about something. So not only do I have to find space for it in my consciousness, which your brain doesn't want you to do, I then have to dig into why I'm doing that. And you know what? I don't want to do that because that's scary. Because I'm going to have to bring up all of these other things so other people make change really hard. And there's a third one underneath that, which is if you change, you might get more power. If other people like you do exactly the same thing, tearing down slaver statues, let's have a look at that one, shall we? Different groups now have different power in the UK, and other groups are seeing that as a threat because if you become powerful as a group, you might take power.
We don't want you to take power because that means you might bring a load of things we don't know. Again, it's all based in fear. But what that looks at is some tenets of our cultural programming, which is trust, power and truth. Who have it? Who has it, who owns it, and who do we then trust? So we've all worked in organizations because, let's be fair, organizations are just small cultures. That's the work I do with organizations and we've all been there. When the person at the top says, today, red will be blue.
Now, even though every single one of us knows that's wrong, you will find there is practically no one in that system who will dare stand outside that for today, unless you're an outlier, unless you will really have a very confident. Sorry, understand yourself in a particular way. You're a particular type of change person in evolution, where you will hold your hand up and go, no, it's not. But then you get thrown out the group. If you got thrown out of the group, how are you going to earn money? How are you going to survive?
This is fear which keeps people in that group and in line with something that when authoritarian structures, when trust, power and truth are held by the top, not by the group. And again, we'll come on to how that impacts us far greater in more episodes. So you're right, when we try and change, there's a load of stuff internally in our heads and there's a load of stuff in the groups that actually want you to stop. It doesn't mean you shouldn't do it. It just means not only have you scared your brain and the brain doesn't like scaring, you've also scared the people around you, because by you changing, they don't want you to do that either because they either have to change or it's impacting a power structure that they believe they have to stay within to survive.
And that all relates back to evolution.
[00:34:55] Speaker B: Gosh.
[00:34:56] Speaker A: So that's why people find it so hard.
But they're all programs and knowing that's how you're going to feel, knowing how that's going to impact you, knowing those does give you power and choice over what you do. Even if it's difficult.
[00:35:12] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:35:15] Speaker A: And it's whether, I suppose for you as a person, the staying where you.
[00:35:24] Speaker B: Are.
[00:35:26] Speaker A: Is destroying you. More than the challenge of changing.
I mean, that's, that's where I found myself.
Would I continually lie to myself and fit into a very male patriarchal system at work?
And I've tried to change it from the inside. And then one of the reasons I'm doing this is I gave up in the end and thought, the only way I'm going to get out of this and speak my own truth is by giving up the monthly crack of a salary, which it was, and go, do you know what? It matters that I do this, but it's the scariest thing I've ever done to go out on my own. And I've only managed to do it after my daughter was old enough to look after herself.
[00:36:12] Speaker B: Okay?
[00:36:12] Speaker A: She's 24.
And maybe for the past couple of years I've just been thinking about doing it. And so not only those, but I got a group of mostly women around me who also believed the same thing. And we've all come together. Mahin is one of them, with an organization called Laugh Think play, because we believe we can do this.
But I'm not by myself.
Fitting in was killing me more than the fear of going out and changing it. And I'm doing it with other people who see the same thing as me. And those are the three of the most powerful things you can ever deliver to yourself if you want to change. But my brain still goes back every day. Have you really made a good idea? Are you really doing this? Wouldn't you feel more comfortable back in that system over there?
[00:37:04] Speaker B: Yeah, it's funny, isn't it? We keep sort of keep ourselves small sometimes.
[00:37:11] Speaker A: Yes.
But I think understanding why you keep yourself small is the threshold or your proceeding arch in the theater of being able to move forward. Okay? It's up to you whether you want to open those curtains. And that's when we keep coming back. This is a choice some people will find this far too difficult. This is only for the brave.
[00:37:30] Speaker B: Yeah. Because as you described, there's lots that happen when you go through your programming and decide which ones you want to keep and which ones you want to chuck. Yeah.
[00:37:37] Speaker A: And I would never, ever undermine anyone or tell them they were wrong for not wanting to face that challenge. Okay. Because that's me using power structures that exist in the system I will not support anymore.
[00:37:53] Speaker B: Right.
[00:37:54] Speaker A: I'm not going to frighten you into changing. I'm not going to tell you you have to. I'm not going to say you'll be a failure if you don't sob. That that's what we were told for years, right? If you don't want to, that's fine.
But don't stop me and don't stop the other singular, brave souls for wanting to do what's right for them.
Thank you for listening. Thank you for coming on the journey.
[00:38:26] Speaker B: With me, with us.
[00:38:28] Speaker A: Well, you're the explorer, Maheen.
[00:38:30] Speaker B: I'm off. I'm bashing into the undergrowth of our.
[00:38:35] Speaker A: Brains and into all that programme, plodding around, gallivanting within that programming. What we want to do, as we've always done with this, is help you understand why you feel the thoughts that you do and then the behavior behind that. So you have a choice of how you behave and who profits by it. And if it's not you and it's not humankind, then stop and think and go. Who's controlling who's behind my steering wheel?
So I want to invite you back, whether you're on a walk, going for the train, on that commute, taking a bath, even cooking, driving a car.
Wherever you find yourself, come and find us. We will be waiting.
