Crash Course 215: Valentine's Day & Relationships

Relationships. Depending on where you are in life, this word can be scary, exciting, or anywhere in between. But the most important relationship you can ever have, is with yourself.  Whether you're heading into the holiday in a relationship with someone else or spending it with friends, family, or solo - there's plenty of positives to celebrating this pending season of love. In this episode of the Crash Course podcast, Andee and Shaun share their unique perspectives of love from both personal and client experiences, and share a special announcement!

Transcript

Coach Dan: Hey, welcome to Crash Course. This is your weekly podcast, brought to you by The LiveUnbreakable brand.

Coach Shaun: I'm your host, LiveUnbreakable, founder and head fitness and nutrition coach Shaun Provost. Alongside me, I have my co-host, strength and conditioning coach, Dan Murray. We're here every single week to give you a Crash Course and something about health and wellness, diving deep into the science behind diet and exercise. In each episode, we look to provide you with the essentials on important topics and give you the best advice and training, mindset shifts and overall healthier sustainable living, so you can make the best decisions for you and your lifestyle. No fluff. Just fit.

Coach Shaun: We are back again with another amazing podcast with another amazing guest, it's Andee, guys.  Welcome back, a mindset coach and just guru of all things life-coach, and welcome back. 

Andee: Thank you for having me back.

Coach Shaun: Absolutely, and y'all, I want to take this time to officially welcome Andee as one of our podcast hosts, she will be on the crash course podcast now at least once a month.  Welcome.

Andee: I am so excited about it. It probably was overdue. I love when we do these, I love being here, so I'm excited for the residency.

Coach Shaun: Yes, absolutely.  I’m excited about it. Yes, and today you guys, we have an amazing podcast for you as I alluded to before, we are talking about love.

Andee: Because it really does need the audible exhale, I think sometimes because I think it doesn't always promote that reaction in people you say love and they go, Oh, this is scary. Emotion.

Coach Shaun: It's trepidation. It's a little weird for some people, so absolutely. But with the upcoming Valentine's Day holiday coming, I wanted to just pick your brain a little bit about what it's like heading into the new holiday season.  I feel like we're always in a holiday season, so heading into the holiday season of love and maybe out of cuffing season as it were.

Andee: Oh, yeah. Because that was the fall, right? So we went from the cuffing season to the holidays to the new year, to now we're at Valentine's Day. Yeah, it's almost like I feel like we were just here doing New Years.

Coach Shaun: It goes so fast.

Andee: Oh man, what can I say about love? Alright, well, since we're coming up on Valentine's Day, I think that there's a lot of pressure. When we planned this episode, we were going to talk about different things on both of our ends, from what we see and what we hear from people about what they're saying and love. It's interesting because Valentine's Day isn't really about love, is it, it can't be.

Coach Shaun: It definitely can be. I would agree. It's not usually the focus. Unfortunately, yes, that's true.

Andee: And then we go out and we do want to celebrate Valentine's Day, and I think that if you have love in your heart, we all want to celebrate that, we want to spend time.  Especially if we're with somebody, we want to be able to express that, and then there is that lovely place that I lived for a good bulk of my life, when I wasn't with somebody and I was just bitter as h*ll about it.

Coach Shaun: The best part about that is being able to say that, is we’ve all been there.

Andee: I think that so many people are going to relate to that because I'd love to come into these podcasts with this.  I’m so about it, and I am guys, I am, but I was in the bitter as h*ll for such a long time. And I guess what I want to talk about love is that when you're going into Valentine's Day, the thing is one of my biggest things, is that we tend to feel this FOMO or we feel whatever we're going to feel about all of these people celebrating love around us when we aren’t.  And I used to feel this way, and then I met somebody that I would have called my soulmate.  If I could have drawn up a photo of a guy and just had him have all of the personality traits that I needed or thought I needed to complete me, he would have been it.  I mean, he was everything. He made me laugh. We had the same interests. We both like public transit, I have a weird fascination with public transit where are you going to find somebody that likes public transit.

Andee: I had a client one time that said I really like, I forgot what juvenile boy TV show she really liked, but she really liked these things, and she's like, Where am I going to find somebody that likes that.  You will eventually find that person, but what I found through that experience of finding my soul mate, which really wasn't my soul mate at the time, is that I didn't have a lot of love for me, and because I didn't have a lot of love for me, it wasn't enough.  I know that that's not super, super comforting to a lot of people that are going into the holiday alone, but I want to tell you that if you are feeling like you're missing something, there isn't another person that's going to give you that piece. It might seem like there is.  You might just want a body in your bed that particular day just to feel like something, but it isn't going to give you that all-encompassing feeling of completion, like you might be thinking. So if you want to feel better at the end of 5, 10, 15, 25, 50, 70, all those years. I promise you, you're not missing out on something.

Coach Shaun: Yeah, it's okay to be in that space and it should be acceptable to be in that space because you have accept that you're there before you can move on.  That’s really the mindset work that had to happen to get out of that space, is to accept that that's where you are: bitter about it, for whatever reason, thinking that somebody else was going to come along to sweep you off your feet like they do in the movies.  You’re going to be on the white horse with some white knight doing whatever, and that's just not how it works. That's not the someone that you were talking about, if you could have drawn him up and he was right there right in front of you, if he really was present, you wouldn't even have known it because you were not in love with yourself.  That’s where we really have to start this holiday: understanding where you are in your relationship and your love for yourself.

Andee: Yes, absolutely. We both do this work, we both do it in different ways, we both have different kinds of things going on in our professional lives.  Tell me about some of the concerns that people have around this time, especially with their relationships with them as we go into February.  I know that we're done with the first three weeks of the year, which is always chaotic as h*ll, going into Valentine's Day.

Coach Shaun: Yeah, and I think a lot of where we're coming from now, February kinda starts a new beginning.  We’ve accepted that, we made these outrageous New Year's resolutions in January, maybe we've stuck with them, maybe we haven't, maybe we're turning a new leaf in February.  We have a couple of weeks under our belt now, but really, it's going to be spring soon.  We’re kind of in this new endeavor.  What I'm seeing, and we'll take two paths here, because I think they are specifically for you and then one for me.  The one that I'm seeing from my clients right now coming in, is that they're really starting to accept who they are and their bodies for themselves.  I think everyone starts New Years kind of hating where they've been hating what they've done to their body, hating their body and wanting to change it.  By the time they hit February, they'd be there completely given that up, and they're like, Alright, well, this is just who I am now, and then kind of back in their old ways.  They’re feeling that sense of accomplishment, that they've kind of overcome that battle with themselves, they've accepted where they are, they know who they are, they love their body for what its been through and what it's done for them, and now they're ready to push past that and that's that self-love and acceptance phase that we can be in.  I think the mindset shifts and the sort of lifestyle shifts that people are looking for now, and what I wanted to talk to you about this is that thought of needing someone or something to complete themselves.  Now they've maybe made this transformation physically, what's the next step for them to kind of move on and say, Alright, well, universe, I'm ready for a man or a woman, or multiple partners, what is that next step for them? What does that look like?

Andee: I guess it's different for everybody, but I think that what it really looks like is that you have to be ready to let it in.  I love to tell stories. I'm sorry if I tell too many, but it's kind of  why it's the best.  I mean, I don't have limiting beliefs around love, I do have them around money, so I'm going to tell you about a situation recently where I had a bunch of people that were due to be paying me at around the same time, and I knew that the money was coming.  But because I had events in my childhood that were very traumatic around money.  My parents have several bankruptcies between them, we lost our home, we lived with my grandmother and my mother slept on a couch, she was on well, fairly, all this sh*t, but that kind of moves into your subconscious.  So as a person in adulthood, those limiting beliefs live there, so when these people were due to pay me, but haven't yet, and like my bank account was getting a little lower than I liked it to be, I started to just clamp up. So I started to come and I started to project and I started to think, Okay, I have to do things right now.  What happens is, you can't create or you can't attract and you can't draw things into your life if you're in those survival emotions, and so if you believe that you're not worthy of it or that it's scarce, or that it's something that you have to actively try really hard to get, then it's not going to come in.  I ended up getting paid and everything ended up being fine, and able to get all these meetings and all these people offering the freelance work and all these people offer anything, but that didn't happen while I was in that, Oh sh*t, I have to do something I have to do something, I have to bring in more. And we do that with love, where we're not ready to let it in.  Around this time, like Valentine's Day is right around the corner. So we have to do something.

Coach Shaun: I have to do something.

Andee: I have to get on Tinder. I have to say, I have to get on that. That's my thing. Oh man, they're all used up. I have to hurry up, I have to get ahead of the divorces, I can't go without.

Coach Shaun: No, we have to do something.

Andee: It's like, maybe there's nothing to do. The more that you try to clamp in, like hammer in, and this is so relatable for your clients, especially with nutrition.  When you see that a lot with nutrition, the same kind of thing, and we talked about it the last time we were together about the letting go.  What happens with your body if you're just trying to treat it like a science experiment, it's not going to turn out the way that you want it to turn out, and that's what we do with love.  We're not going to let that in, we're not going to let that love come into our lives because we think that we need to alter and change.  You accept you and just be so inherently you. I let that just be what? And what is the date? There's always a sense of urgency like, Okay, I need to alter myself because February 14th is about to approach, so I have to alter myself so that I have someone to spend this day with.

Coach Shaun:  What is the pressure?  Is it parents?  Is it family? Is it friends?  Is it society?  Is it people that are not even going to know if you're there or not?  Is it that you don't want to go out to a bar by yourself that day?  Why?   That's a great time to meet people because somebody else is going to be out there.

Andee: They're right there.  And you're feeling this pressure to change and to do and to attack it and be like, Okay, I have to do something by the date.  I talked about this on one of my podcasts a while back about “The Stranger” by Billy Joel.  I love it. But what is that?  We take them out and show ourselves when everyone has gone, Okay, well, we have these faces, and I think a lot of us think we cannot put that out there, we can't put our best face forward because people are going to judge us and think there's something wrong with us, and so we don’t.  And then we don't attract the people that are meant for us, we attract some person that likes whatever we decided we were going to be to get a mate by February 14th. No.

Coach Shaun: No, no, it's uncomfortable and it's so out of alignment, it's so frustrating to feel that pressure inside of yourself: in your heart, in your head, in your life, feeling that pressure of trying to be that person that you thought you needed to be for that one time. It hurts, it's frustrating.

Andee: Yeah, absolutely. And it is. So I know that we want to serve people in the best ways, and it is a heavier thing because Love isn't a science.  Like, I can write this down and I can approach it, and I can put in this formula, the way that I've always been able to let love in my life is just to show up as Andee, and that's the way that love tends to manifest for me.  Okay, I'm here and I'm Andee, and all of my relationships are real and authentic and beautiful, and I think even with friendships, even with you.

Coach Shaun: I was just thinking that it doesn't have to be a romantic relationship, it can be a friend relationship, it can be a family relationships, it can be people that you are like, I haven't seen you in years, and we're still really great friends because we've always been ourselves.  That’s the basis of the relationship. There's no need to be anyone else when we're upset, when we're frustrated, when we're happy, when we're related, sharing all of those feelings is really what makes it exciting, that's what makes it a great relationship.

Andee: So what do you think it is with people in terms of why they have an easier time doing it with friends as opposed to with a partner?

Coach Shaun: I think it's the unwritten pressure from other people in their head, there's this assumption that to be successful, you have to have the house, the white picket fence, the partner, the family, whatever it is, and that's like the epitome of the American dream or whatever it is.  But that's so old school. And it's not what makes everyone happy, it's not that it made everybody happy then either, it's just the exercise of going through all of that.  Everyone’s experiences are completely different, so what I see when people are coming to me with this “I need someone to complete me” sort of feeling, it really is what is keeping you from bringing that to yourself?  What is it that you see yourself being successful in the future, does a partner fit into that, and if not, then why are you looking for one right now? That's what I'm going to help you.

Andee: I love that you brought up the white picket fence. So I was listening, I talk about this a lot, I talk about this all.   I love Ram Dass. I am such a Ram Dass fan because don't know if I believe in past lives.  If I do, I definitely lived during the 60s, and I was listening to Ram Dass.  So, I know that you're in Raleigh and I'm in New York City, and people in those different geographies definitely do have differences between them.  But I think both of us have clients that come from all over via the internet, and so you get so much different stuff, but it's a reflection really on a lot of external factors.  My background's in sociology, so I always look at the macro and I always think, Okay, well, how does society play into this and how it is someone else's idea (the white picket fence), how somebody else's idea plays into what I think that I want.  I was listening to Ram Dass because I love around us, and he was talking about some people, it's their car and that they're going to get married and have a bunch of kids and that's all that they have to do, and then that's something that they need so desperately and in their heart of hearts, that's what they want, and those people will always have that.

Andee: But then you have someone like me that never played wedding when I was a child, and I never had the little dolls get married, and I never pictured myself with a little baby that I was walking around with.  It would be almost defying intuition for me to think, Oh, I should go try to get that, because there's just a feeling that that's not what I desire, and I've thought about it a lot over the years.  I thought, is this just programming? Is this just because of what my family wants? Or this that I'm in now, it's not my family. My brother is engaged, my other brother really wants to be in a committed relationship, and here's me, I'm content just eating lamb over rice and watching TV by myself and go in bed at 9:30 and not feeling inadequate when I wake up in the morning, and I think you know what it is.  I'm talking so much about as we approach Valentine's Day, you see what you focus on, so I don't remember the last time, I think it was when I was really bitter about it that I used to think, Oh, this day is coming, but most years, this day goes by and I don't even notice because you notice what you're really paying attention to, so if you hype this day up as a big deal for yourself, then it's going to be a deal for you, and if you're like a hype it up that it's just going to be a day.

Coach Shaun: Exactly. There's a movie about this.  A producer I love did something similar about Valentine's Day and in it, there's this one character that is like a workaholic, she's always looking for a partner and looking, looking, looking.  It's like her assistant helping her with all this stuff, and she ends up with her best friend, because he was always there for her and she never realized it until she was alone on Valentines day and he came by to cheer her up or something.  I was like, Yeah, that could be it, but it also could just be like, You're going to be alone that day, just like you were the last Wednesday or next Thursday.  It doesn't matter because if you are happy with what you're doing in your life, another person is just adding to that, they're not completing anything, they're just another awesome thing about your life that you get to indulge in and appreciate and be grateful for.

Andee: So if you go out that day, I'm not going to say... And I think we've spent some time about, Hey, if you're alone, and I think the reason why is just because those are the people that tend to be the most pissed off and are always looking to feel better. And you have the other people that are looking to feel better, and those are the people I know that you've experienced this with your clients, I know you were talking to me a little bit about it about just the anxieties of going out that day.  We wanted to offer all of your wisdom on that because I know that that's something that your clients have been concerned about and talking to you about, and you've been having conversations, eat the chocolate, order the dessert, drink the wine.

Coach Shaun: It's just one day. It's like every other holiday, and we talked about this for Thanksgiving.  It’s just a day and you have a box of chocolates.  If you don't eat the entire box in one day, granted that shows some self-control; if you do eat the whole box in one day, okay, that's still fine.  You’re not going to gain 10 pounds overnight for eating a lot of sugar, you might feel sick the next day, but you're probably not going to gain 10 pounds from that one moment, just enjoy being with someone, even if it's your friends. If it's your family, whoever it is, if you're going out by yourself, that's fine, too.  If you're staying in and you're making a big meal for yourself or whoever you're with, that’s great. Indulge, appreciate it. There's only so many holidays you're going to be alive for.  That sounds grim, but you get to celebrate how you want to, and if you want to indulge on this day because it's a day that other people are also celebrating, be a part of it. Do it. Why not? True. Like any other day, you know? Yeah, I don't make it a big deal and then be able to appreciate that your body can do something like that.  Yeah, body, keep it up, you're doing great.

Andee: I mean, I remember reading on it, one meal isn't going to kill you, so it’s not going to kill you. It's not going to do anything.  Metabolically, it's not going to do much. Like one big to do is not going to do much.  Your eyes are lying to you, I think we're both a little bit like this, and I had a client, and this is now going back some time, and she posted something on Instagram about being really self-conscious about her belly area and how she got it.  She got over that and she posted it, and I wrote on the post that I didn't even notice, and then I sent something privately and I said, I really didn't notice because no matter what her body looks like, she is beautiful.  Every person is beautiful, but no matter what your body looks like, how you think it looks is not actually probably how it looks or how what people see, even if they will see true life.

Andee: If they see you, they're not looking at what you're looking at here.  The first thing I noticed in that photo that she saw this in was how beautiful she was.  She was smiling, everyone in the photo was smiling, I was like, Look at this photo of happy people. And then I read the caption, and I think I'm bringing this up because I want people to remember that when you're going out on this day, whether it be with friends or by yourself, whether it be with a romantic partner, you're beautiful.  Whatever you're focusing on, that little tiny thing that you're looking in the mirror and focusing on, no one even sees it. Now, I have a picture from a client of herself when she was much younger, she's a lot older than I am, and she sent me a picture when she was probably in her 40s.  She looked great in the photo, and I thought, Wow, this is great, she was smaller then.  And she was leaner because she was more physically active, but she said to me, Oh, those shorts I was wearing my ass looked huge, and I did not notice that at all. It didn’t even cross my mind, so for all of you listening to this podcast, if you could just Google Dove’s active Beauty campaign, I don't know, Shaun, if you're familiar with it?

Coach Shaun: I love this campaign.

Andee: Oh my God, it was just gorgeous.

Coach Shaun: What we see in ourselves versus what people see in us is just dramatic.  What we see versus what another person sees.  So you're going to put on an outfit for Valentine's because you want to feel beautiful, look beautiful, all of those things. You do wear what makes you comfortable, if that's a skimpy Red Dress, do it.  If it is a flowing full body black gown, do that.  Whatever it is, you get to celebrate you in a way that makes you comfortable, and no one else gets to decide that.  This is a day you get to feel confident, you get to feel beautiful because you are.  Whatever your body is, whatever insecurities you have, I love that message and the Dove campaign is 100% that it's so beautiful and it's just so vulnerable.  This is a great time to be vulnerable, you get to be.

Andee: I feel every time I get to talk to you on a podcast, I'm flailing around like the Italian that I am.  I’m one half Italian, but the Italian comes out the most.  I'm Athenian with my gestures when I get really excited. I get really excited about talking about this stuff I do. I'd love to talk about love, I love to talk about self-love, but a lot of people are really weird about self-love, they're like, Oh, go f*ck yourself.  Still, I love myself and I'm alone, and I said this in the past, and I might venture to stand by it and that it might piss a couple of people off, but some of the angry people that I've ever seen are people that found the man that completed them.

Coach Shaun: Yeah, I know 100% what we're talking about because they didn't find anything, they settled into a situation that they thought that they needed to be happy and they're so stubborn.  They’re not happy and they're so stubborn about admitting it.

Andee: You could love the man, I’m not saying you don't love him.  I don't think either one of you would love the f*ck out of that man to pieces. Yeah, I love you, you're going to be reaching that man for so much, and I have a really good friendship with one of my really good friends, what makes us have this beautiful relationship that we have is that we're always just working on ourselves.  Then we come to each other, and it's just this blossom.  It's amazing, I feel so much love, and I feel so much, so much with him because of how we are with ourselves and how we bring it to each other.  This isn't a romantic relationship, this is just a friend, but it's one of my dearest friends and it's so beautiful and that we can do that. And I have somebody that I consider to be my life partner, we're not romantic; that’s Mario.  If Mario is listening to this, Hi, I love you better.  He's been in my life a third of my life, and he's just the most wonderful man, and we do the same things.

Andee: Well, I had a meeting, I remember recently, and he said, So how was the meeting with your spiritual healer? And I was thinking, four years ago, he would have been like, how was the bar? And then a few years before that, he would have been like, how was the lecture.  And this is somebody that's just grown with me through the years, we're not romantic, we're really close.  We’re not sleeping together or anything like that, but we do offer that support to each other and that we're constantly growing ourselves, and then we come together and we are able to have that connection because we're always working on ourselves.  We’re not looking to each other to complete ourselves, we're completing ourselves, and then we're supporting each other, and he's been rolling with me, from the 23-year-old that was rolling out of bars at 7:00 am to the person that I am today.  We don't look to each other for that completion, it's just love, it's just pure love, and that's because of the love that we have inside, not because we're looking to the other.

Coach Shaun: Absolutely, I think that's such a good juxtaposition with what I've been feeling in my life for a couple of years of outgrowing friends or situations because I had been looking to them to complete me or to complete something in my life, or to check something off that I thought I needed at the time. And you're talking about loving yourself and having this other person you kinda bounce ideas off.  You’re happy where you are, but it's nice to be able to talk to somebody else about that, and the other kind of relationship, friendship or otherwise, where you're looking outside of yourself for that validation can be so detrimental. I remember dating this boy when I had just left college and I loved him, I still hold so much love for this man, it took me a long time to understand that that's where my heart was, but yeah, whatever. I was young, and the two of us were great, we were super active together, we did a bunch of active things together, and then I remember sitting in a bar with him one day and he watched a waitress walk away and to me at the time, and this was like the height of my body dysmorphia, and a bunch of my other obsessive food compulsions.

Coach Shaun: And why someone would want to be with me. So for him to check somebody else out, oh my gosh, the rug was ripped out from under me.  I was like, Well, now what?  Now he thinks somebody else was hot, so I don't even belong here, and we got into such a big argument about it because that's not even what he was doing.  He was like, Oh, she dropped something or whatever.  I don't know, it could have been a lot. But anyways, it was the glass breaking moment for me, in my own relationship with myself, I was realizing that I had put so much value on something that he didn't even notice, you know what I mean? It wasn't like he took for granted my looks, but that wasn't the only thing he appreciated about me when I had held that in such high regard. So anyways, fast forward, we don't keep in touch anymore, but I always hold love for him, and he's doing his own thing.  He’s now so successful in what he is doing in athletics that he never would have done if we had been together, and same with me.  I have done all of these things in my life where if we had stayed together, even past that one situation, that's not why we broke up, but that was part of it.  We both had leaned into each other to validate.

Coach Shaun: And that's not what we needed, we needed to validate ourselves and grow together, and so now, you know, we've had all these experiences, we've moved on in our life.  I can casually look back now and say, We did so many great things for each other, and that was a growing experience, but then we grew apart and we grew out of it together.  While we don't have the same relationship that you were talking about, I think it's just as important to recognize those relationships in our life where we didn't get to grow together, but we did grow outside of that, and whatever happens in the future happens for a reason.

Andee: And we all relate to that young love, and nobody just comes complete as they are today, we all have to grow to here.  You are not a very high being, like I might be the f*cking reincarnation of the Buddha for all I know. But I still have to be potty trained, I still have to go through everything, I still have to have these young love experiences.  We all have to go through it and grow through it, and your love was beautiful and it was in that time as it was what you wanted.  Now, you both are doing these beautiful things on your own, and it happened as it was to happen; you guys were present in that love and every experience that you have, you'll be present in it, because it's going to give something to you.  I was thinking as you were telling your story when you started talking about the end and going your own ways.

Andee: And I'm more guilty of it when I was younger, was that when I would meet somebody, I would think, Okay, let's think about every step down the road, Oh, I can never possibly be with him because of a, b, and c.  And I'm not a relationship coach. Something I read on Instagram, I remember a while back about know your deal breakers.  I agree with that know your deal breakers, but everything else, you don't have to be planning the wedding venue before the relationship even starts.

Coach Shaun: No, no, in fact, don't, because that puts a lot of undue pressure on timing and all of this other communication that you have.  This conversation in your head, and they're like, What do I want to eat on day two, or maybe they're having the same conversation in their head about what wedding venue they'll have. But that's just a lot of pressure on both sides. It doesn't need to be there on day two or three.

Andee: I was dating a guy, he had planned out and then we're going to move here and there, and this is after a month, he's like, Well, I'm over here and you're going to come with me and I'm thinking, “B*tch, come on.”

Coach Shaun: No no. That's nice for you. But that's not where I'm going.

Andee: Let's be in it right now. Let's be here now.  This one of my favorite things, I mean, this is like I mentioned Ram Dass.  All these people, I'm not a Buddhist, but I am about the present moment.  We’re being here now, and right now what's happening? And if you can just look at right now, and you could have a good time in the right now.

Andee: I was thinking about what you said about at the time and how much stake you had placed in your body and how when if he could look at somebody else the way that that made you feel.  I was thinking about how we tend to do this.  I used to do this where I used to compare myself to other women, and with me, and at the time it was, Oh my God.  I do it less now. I don't do it with women's bodies pretty much ever, although every time I see your arms, I think: “Oh, you have killer arms.”

Coach Shaun: You get inspiration.

Andee: It is inspiration, because I don't feel inadequate about my arms, I just think, Oh, I want to be like her, but I do.  I used to look at other women and what I would do was, for me, my wild card was intelligence, so I am the smartest person in the room. I don't know, whatever you want to say, but when I was a kid, intelligence was really praised, so I grew up knowing that if I was smart, if I was fast, if I was funny, all those things.  We got 36 years of practice. But if I was all those things that I was worthy, and what would happen is I would compare myself to other women, I would do it with that and I would do it with weight, so it was like If a man chose to be with a woman that was not as smart as I perceived myself to be? This is going back a much more un-healed times. I would think, Oh my God.  Am I completely garbage? Because they didn't choose me. And that was the danger of it, the danger of it was that I placed myself in this hierarchy with other women, and then that would happen with weight as well.  When I had issues with my own body, I was overweight and I would think, Oh, well. I remember this one time, back in 2014, this guy, we slept together, he was kind of whatever, and then I found out that he was also sleeping with this other woman, and she was beautiful, but she probably outweighed me by a lot.  And at the time, I thought thinner was better, like if I was thinner than I was better.  The thing was, I never thought heavier women were less attractive, I found heavier women very attractive, it was about me, it was about my own feelings about my weight that I struggled so hard with my weight.  So if I had struggled this hard and somebody didn't choose me, where was my worth?  Where was my value? And it was just so confusing, it was confusing for me in so many ways, I couldn't make sense of it, and now knowing what I know now, I know we're all beautiful and we're all worthy, and if somebody didn't choose you, it's because they were attracted to someone else for the reasons that that person was... And I know it's not easy to always hear in the immediacy, but I have dodged so many bullets, Shaun, and how I end up with that guy, that same guy I'm talking about. Oh my God, the things I know now, yes, 100%, right away about that man, there was a reason that that man did not end up with me.

Coach Shaun: No regrets, everything you've have done. Everyone who you have been with has made you who you are

Andee: Please know that if they don't choose you, it's not cause in your body, it's not because of your intelligence, it's not because of anything, and not only that, but those things are not what makes you worthy.  You are a tremendous athlete, but that's not where your worthiness is because you're inherently worthy, because you're human.  I’m an athlete and that's not my worthiness, I’m educated. That's not my worthiness. I live in New York City, which makes me pitch my worthiness, and that's not our worthiness. Our worthiness is just because we are here and we're inherently worthy for so many reasons, and all of these other things are just icing on the cake. Those are all just decorative.

Coach Shaun: It's a delicious cake, just being human, just being who you are truthfully, 100%.   Being human is a delicious cake, and every other piece of it, New York City, battle bots marathon, or all of those things, they're just like the gummy drops, the icing, the ice cream, whip cream, or whatever it is that you want in the cake.  That’s all that stuff.  That's good, it's great. You'd be grateful for it. I celebrate that, but it's not the whole cake, you're the whole cake.

Andee: You're the whole cake.  I'm going to start talking about the whole letting love in.  Yes, we were talking about that right at the beginning, that was how I wanted to tie that back in.  Right at the beginning too. I love that we do it. It was the whole letting love in, and this is where it comes down to the limiting beliefs, and when we're talking about the whole cake, people's limiting beliefs will be one of the blockages that sometimes keeps you away from love. I know that this one guy I dated, it was an education, but he was very intelligent and was an intellectual, but didn't pursue higher education.  He had some stuff go on in high school and even younger, and so those limiting beliefs affected how he felt that his worthiness.  I don't give a sh*t like what your education is. I don’t give a sh*t what you do. It doesn't matter. Yeah, I've dated people like my ex-boyfriend gave up a full ride in engineering to start his own business and only have a high school education.  And was the most brilliant man I've ever known. Like that man could probably tell you how to take apart and put back together a f*cking 787.  This guy was brilliant. I mean, he used to buy cars that nobody else could fix, and he'd buy them for like $3,000 or $4,000, and he'd fix them within minutes.  He bought like a BMW one time for pennies on the dollar because no one could figure out how to fix this. It was a BMW diesel and in his mind for engineering was brilliant, and he had a high school diploma and he didn't go on past high school.  That was what his plan, so these are the things we have stories we tell about ourselves and our worthiness.  If we don't believe that we're worthy in some area, because of the stories that we lived.  My ex-boyfriend didn't tell the story that he was unworthy because he wore that with pride, what I did, I didn't go get six figures in debt, I went in and I made seven figures.  That was his story, but some people tell a completely different story and then they allow that to be their limiting belief, and they allow that limiting belief to play into why they don't love.

Andee: And I was that way for a long time.  People will often identify themselves by their jobs if they're unhappy in their job.   Who's going to want to date me? I'm just a bartender and especially since Americans will come at you with the “what do you do” question right away.  If you have a job problem, if you're unhappy in your career and someone immediately comes at you with what do you do? You're like, that's it. I'm going to die alone with 18 cats, and then that's what it is.  But if you have limiting beliefs around your body, and I'm sure you see this all the time.

Coach Shaun: All the time. And I think one of the first things I have people do, and this is why my program gets so intense so quickly, is the first month we work on mindset around diet, culture, and the limiting beliefs that they have about themselves and where they are in life. They’re here because they blame someone else or they're here because something else happened that was traumatic to them.  We all have things that happen to us, we all choose to do these things every single day that lead us in the cycle of whatever it is that caused it.  We just continue it and we never stop the cycle, so the first thing that we do is stop the cycle. What are the limiting beliefs? Write them down right now. Why aren't you letting love in.  When you ask that question, it's very blunt.  Some people can't answer it. Why, I'm letting love in, I'm trying everything I can. But what are your limiting beliefs about it, is it that you can't date because you don't have time, because you don't have money, because you don't make time, because you're not pretty enough, because you're not smart enough, because you're not in the right city, because you don't have the right personality, what are the things about you that you believe to be so true that you would never say out loud to your best friend.

Coach Shaun: Right, and then take it back and say, You know what, I would never say that to my best friend, so I'm not going to say it to me.  I wouldn't stand here and be like, Andee, you're not worthy if you don't come in first, and then your age group in a marathon, I would never say that to you. I repeat that in my head on repeat during my runs all the time, I'm like, Well, you have to come in first, otherwise it's just Why are you even running. But that's a limiting belief. Thinking that I could never do that. Well, we'll toss that out the window. Write it down and then say, that's a limiting belief. That's not true, I can train hard, I can work for this, I can do this. Same comes to love. It's tangible, it's something you can work towards, it's something that you are inherently worthy of.

Andee: Inherently, and I know I know your audience, I know you have a lot of athletes in your audience, and there's so many parallels.  I don't think would have developed as quickly in terms of the kind of coaching I do, and I do very different coaching, I'm not a performance coach, but I wouldn't have developed in these areas of being able to kind of be a professional mind Hacker if I wasn’t first an athlete.  Because limiting beliefs are the thing that keep you from achieving the goal, and when I learned that and when I realized what that meant.  Then I started translating it to all these other areas, I was like, Oh, okay, but it does so if you can, you have limitless potential.  I get animated in my hand at potential, you have a limitless potential.  I just got off a call earlier today with somebody about their body and they were like, it shouldn't be hard, and I'm like, it's not hard, it's not hard.

Andee: And I think that this is the advice that I gave her was look at an area where you're doing well, and look where you're crushing those beliefs in that area. And why do you not think it's the same thing with love?

Coach Shaun: That's beautiful, because I see it translate right on over if you are in a relationship.  We're talking about friends, or if we're talking about Valentine, where we're talking about the true love of your life that you're already in a relationship with.  There’s ways that you can be more open and communicate and vulnerable and really love.  Even if you think you are doing that beautifully right now, like a challenge, everyone is listening to this podcast to write down their limiting beliefs about love.  If they're happy in love or not, and just really confront that this Valentine's Day and maybe celebrate something about yourself and your partner or your friends that you really appreciate, and then be very grateful for all of that in your life, whether you're solo, whether you're with someone, whatever.

Andee: Love and gratitude. Such elevated. Beautiful emotions. Oh, that was beautiful. That was so beautiful.

Coach Shaun: Yeah, I love it.

Andee: We got together to talk about this

Coach Shaun: Yes, I love sharing stories with you, I love you sharing stories with me and having everybody be able to learn from our collective knowledge base and be able to just take it, run with it, learn from it. Don't make the same mistakes that we did, but just appreciate the experience, and maybe you need the experience to have the same experience.  Everyone’s living this life and is doing the best that we can, so more power to you.

Andee: Oh, it was great, Shaun, thank you. Thank you for the opportunity for the residency.

Coach Shaun: I initiated that thing. Yeah.

Andee: Great. I love being here on Crash Course. It's awesome, so thank you, I'm excited to come back to it.

Coach Shaun: Yes, Happy Valentine’s Day.

Andee: Happy Valentines Day.

Coach Shaun: We hope you all enjoyed this episode of Crash, Course right on Live Unbreakable.

Coach Dan: And if we made you smile or just have to think about something in a new way, go ahead and screenshot post or share this episode and we can get your feedback and share more knowledge with the world now get out there and eat, train live subscribe to our Crash Course podcasts, so you never miss a beat and be sure to follow us on Instagram, Facebook and LinkedIn to keep up with it all.