Episode 57: Loving the Unlovable

Welcome to the 100% Awesome Podcast with April Price. You might not know it but every result in your life is 100% because of the thoughts you think and that my friends is 100% awesome.

Hello podcast universe! Welcome to Episode 57 of the 100% Awesome Podcast. How are you? Life isn't easy, is it? In so many ways, I know that so many of you are struggling right now. We live in a fallen world, with fallen people, and that in it of itself can be excruciating at times, but I love knowing that none of it is by accident, and that all of it can be useful to us, even our own mistakes, even our own failures. Everything that we experience while we're here on Earth is for our good, to help us grow, and become, and learn, and the hard part are our greatest teachers. This Earth life curriculum was designed for you, especially the hard parts, and the things that you're going through right now, the things that you're experiencing, are the exact things you need. And I hope that you'll be able to open up to it, and allow it to change you for the good.

So, today on the podcast I want to talk about something that I hope will be helpful to you as you navigate life on this planet with other humans. So, it reminds me of a few years ago, my daughter was in Sunday school, and her teacher asked the class "What are some of your greatest trials?" And my daughter answered, "Other people." And the teacher said, "Well what do you mean, like peer pressure or something?" And she said "No. Just that there are other people," and perhaps for you right now this has never been more true, right? Sometimes it's hard that there are other people, and if we just had to live in a world all by ourselves, or if we lived in a world where all the people saw things in the exact same way it would just be so much easier, right?

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But we live in a world that we don't always agree with. We live in a world where there is cruelty, and unkindness, and disagreement. We live in a world where we don't always agree with the way other people live, or the way other people think, or the way other people act. Right now, this is especially apparent, but it has always been this way, and it will always be this way, and whether we're talking about race, or sexuality, or gender, or religion, or politics, or being vegetarian, you live in a world where people don't see it your way. And sometimes that makes us seem like the whole world is broken and wrong, but when we villainize others, then we become the victims, and we give all our power to people that we don't agree with to create our emotional experience, to create the emotional experience of our lives. I was thinking about this even in terms of the Corona Virus, and how some people wear masks, and other people don't when they're out in public, and what we make that mean, right? Our human brain has an opinion about the right way to live and when it sees other people living in a different way it wants to make them wrong, and less than, in some way.

And this is where we have the power to change things for us. Perhaps we can't change the whole world to see it our way, but our work is to change us, and to see that no one is less than, regardless of the rightness or wrongness of their opinion. And I think thinking in this way is where your power really is. We don't have to control other people which is a very good thing. We have to control our brains tendency to categorize, and rank, and villainize people, even the people that we think are doing it wrong. And so, today I want to talk to you about tolerance, especially about how to love people that we disagree with. About how we tolerate the intolerant, how we love people who we think are so clearly doing it wrong, and in our effort to increase love in the world. How do we not become haters ourselves? And I know that this is a very sensitive subject, and perhaps you're going to disagree with my perspective, and I want you to know that's 100% okay.

You are totally allowed to do that, you're totally allowed to think I've got it all wrong. But I want to encourage you to just consider if these thoughts are useful to you in your own way, in your own world, to increase the amount of love you feel in your life. I hope that it will help you love all the people in your life, the ones you agree with, the ones that you stand up for, the ones who hurt you, the ones who hurt others. I hope that you will love all of them, and that this discussion will help you love all of the humans a little bit better.

So, I kind of thought that the best way to introduce the ideas that I want to give you is to start with a story, and this story comes from my religious background as a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. But the thoughts I want to offer you are universal to all of us, to any of us who feel that things are just not fair, or right, or just in our world. And in no way am I comparing injustices, but I'm using this story because the thing this story illustrates so beautifully is how to love people when they are not at their best. And why we love people when they are not at their best because that's going to happen for all of us at some point in our human experience.

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So, as you may know early members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, who are also known as Mormons, were heavily persecuted throughout the 19th century. And these early saints were harassed by mobs, they were tarred and feathered, they were robbed, they were beaten, they were killed, they were abused, their prophets and leaders were killed, they were displaced and driven from the homes, and cities that they built, and established with their own hands. And for all of these crimes, no one was ever held accountable by the law. And at one point God told these saints to seek redress through legal channels from the judges, and the governor, and then the president of the United States. And when they sought redress from Governor Boggs of Missouri, instead of helping them, he issued a proclamation which said "The Mormons must be treated as enemies, and must be exterminated or driven from the state if necessary for the public good." And that extermination order unleashed untold brutality from other Missourians who did not like these early Mormon saints.

So, after this the Saints then appealed to President Martin Van Buren of the United States, who told them "Your cause is just, but I can do nothing for you." So, eventually their prophet Joseph Smith was killed, and everything these saints had built, and owned was stripped from them, and they were forced into the wilderness right. And they made their way west to land that nobody else wanted, to what is now Utah. Now here's the part that I want to emphasize. Five years after their prophet was killed in this extermination order against the Mormons was issued, and they were forced from their homes, five years after that, these pioneers had a huge celebration in Salt Lake City on July 24th 1849. And they built a bowery in the center of the town, they put up a flagpole, 104 feet tall flagpole, and they made this enormous national flag. Sixty-five feet in length and they unfurled it at the top of this pole, there was a brass band, there was this huge procession that contained hundreds of people that were all dressed up and as part of that procession. There were 24 young men there who were dressed in white pants, and black coats, and they had a red scarf on their shoulders, and in their right hand they each held a copy of the Declaration of Independence, and a copy of the Constitution of the United States.

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And when they reached the Bowery in the center of town The Declaration of Independence was read by one of these young men. Now, notice that these documents that they were holding had done nothing for these early pioneers. These documents had not protected the rights of these people from the hate, and dislike of others, but they carried them, and they respected them, and they had this huge celebration for the United States of America a country that for all intents and purposes had let them down, and thrust them out, and ignored the injustices against them.

And much later a man named Boyd K. Packer remarked on this, and he said, "It may seem puzzling, incredible, almost beyond belief, that for the theme of this first celebration, they chose patriotism, and loyalty to the same government which had rejected, and failed to assist them. What could they have been thinking of? If you can understand why, you will understand the power of the teachings of Christ. One would think that compelled by force of human nature the Saints would seek revenge, but something much stronger than human nature prevailed."

Now, I want you to think about this for a minute. As humans we want to be right. We want things to be made right, but this is not always the course that leads to happiness, and peace. Technically, the Saints would have been right in feelings of retribution, and revenge, and anger. They had been misjudged, and they had been mistreated, as President Van Buren said, "Their cause was just." But no one would help them, right? And perhaps they had a right to their anger, but here's the thing, and this is the most important thing I want you to understand. Being angry, and resentful, even righteously angry even justifiably upset even about things that were clearly unjust would only have hurt them, and would only have served to fill them with anger, and resentment. So, often we think that being angry, and indignant, and upset at others for their brutality, and unkindness, and intolerance, will punish them in some way, and make them change in some way that it will make them different. But our anger is only ever felt by us, and ultimately it only punishes us.

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It makes us brutal, and unkind, and intolerant, to others and it only changes our experience of the world. If those early pioneers had chosen resentment, and anger, even when it was justified, the result would have been that they would have felt resentment, and anger, and it would not have changed the people who hated them at all. It wouldn't have gotten their property back, it wouldn't have reverse the situation. It would only change them, and their experience. So, how does any of this apply to us today? When we see people, or groups of people mistreated, or killed, or undervalued, or maligned, because of their race, or their religion, or their sexual orientation, our instinct is to be angry about it, our instinct is to want to change it, and to change the people that are doing the mistreating.

We have to be careful that in our desire to control the actions of other people we don't end up doing exactly what we're mad at them for doing. For example, if someone judges someone else as inferior because of their race, sometimes we then judge them as inferior because of their thoughts about race, but the result is the same. It's just judgment of someone else. We are making someone else inferior. We are putting someone else down. If someone hate someone because of their sexual orientation, and we hate that they hate them, then the result is the same, it's hate. We see people who don't tolerate differences in others, and because this feels so unfair, and so wrong, we are tempted to not tolerate the differences in the way other people think. And I understand, you're like, "April, but it's about right and wrong. I don't tolerate wrong thinking about others." But what I want to offer you is that it's only wrong because you think it is, and they're thinking that someone else is wrong for who they are, is what has started the whole thing in the first place.

Anything that puts other humans lower than others, even for characteristics that we view as reprehensible, is still ranking people as better, or worse, as worthy, or unworthy, and it is still a form of judgment. It is still valuing one human above another, and even when we do this for what we think are obvious, or justifiable reasons, we are still creating inequality, and exacerbating the very problem that we are so upset about. So Byron Katie said "If you see anyone as bad, how can you understand that we are all created equal?" No one has more or less goodness. No one who ever lived is a better or a worse human being than you.

Now, as a person with a human brain, programed to rank, and judge, and evaluate, we have a hard time with that statement, right? That no one who's ever lived is a better, or worse human being than you. But that is the key to getting to love, to understand truly that no one who has ever lived is a better, or worse human being than any other.

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The truth is you have different thoughts than the people that you disagree with. And notice that their thoughts are causing them to misjudge, and mistreat others, and your thoughts are causing you to misjudge, and mistreat them. And I also want to offer the idea that your thoughts are causing you to mistreat yourself, because those thoughts are filling you with judgment, or hate, or resentment, or superiority, or anger. None of which feel good, and that's why I say that in an effort to get them to stop mistreating others, you mistreat them, at least in your own mind. And you mistreat yourself by experiencing all that negative emotion. And the real problem with all of that is that we haven't increased love, which is our whole goal. Our whole goal in pointing out injustice is to increase love, and decrease hate.

But we have only added to the problem, by adding to the negative emotion we are feeling about others. When we think anyone is a worse human than us, we're in trouble. Okay so you might be asking "Well then what do we do? How do we change things? How do we stand up, and make a difference? How do we make things better in our world without adding to hate, and intolerance? How do we stand with those who are being mistreated without in turn mistreating ourselves or others?

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So the first thing I want to offer is that we make things better for us, and others when we tolerate intolerance, when we allow for intolerance. And I know right away that seems wrong, right away we feel resistant to that. We think "Well we can't tolerate that. We can't allow it or then it's going to continue." But I want to offer you that tolerating is not the same as upholding, or supporting, or condoning, or agreeing with. Tolerate means that we allow the existence of something even if we don't agree with it. Now I know you think "But wait, I don't want to allow the existence of racism, I don't want to allow the existence of hate." But that isn't up to you, you don't get to decide what other people think and feel. You don't get to allow certain opinions while disallowing others, that is setting things up according to your rules of righteousness, which is exactly what you find so abhorrent in others. Tolerate means allowing everyone to have an opinion, tolerate means letting everyone think what they want, and not needing to change that.

And here's a secret. People do get to think whatever they want, and wanting to change that thinking, never works. Have you ever had an argument with someone where they're like "Oh my gosh, I'm so glad you pointed out how wrong I was. Thank you for proving me wrong, and showing me the error of my ways. It rarely happens!"

Tolerating intolerance means understanding that every single person has free will to think and feel how they want, and when we argue with that, we lose. But only 100% of the time, right? Every single person has free will to think, and feel, how they want, even mean things, even hateful things. You get to think, and feel how you want, and so do they. And they know that sounds like very bad news, right? Other people get to think other people, or groups of people are inferior. It doesn't make them right, but tolerating it allows you to drop your resistance to reality and your judgement of them. It allows you to release your opinion that the haters are inferior, and your need to change them, which is painful, and exhausting, and fruitless.

Now this doesn't mean that there aren't consequences under the law. It doesn't mean that people shouldn't be held accountable, and answer for crimes committed. They absolutely should! There are consequences to hate, but we cannot hold those consequences, and we can lobby for consequences, and we can work for consequences to be enacted, and we can do all of that from a place of love.

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It's like, of course you're allowed to think, and behave how you want, and when you do that, this is the consequence. And what I want to suggest is that you can do all of that from a place of love. Love for yourself, because you don't have to feel the frustration of needing people to be different. Love for those who are being mistreated, because we're drawing a line, and saying "No! that's not okay." And love for those who are doing the mistreatment, it looks like "I love you, and no, you can't act like that, and live, and work with the rest of us. I love you, but no."And none of that requires them to change, or for you to change them, and to demand them to be different, because when we set things up so that other people have to change in order for us to feel okay we're gonna be in trouble, right? People aren't good at thinking and behaving like us. Have you noticed?

Okay, now you might be thinking, "But April, that's not fair. If I don't get upset, and if I don't feel angry, then people are going to think it's okay to treat other humans badly, and it's not, and we are saying that people get to do whatever they want without consequence." But we are saying, they can do it without us punishing ourselves. When Christ was on the Earth he instructed his disciples and his followers to love others. He said, "Love thy neighbor as thyself." This doesn't just mean the neighbors we agree with. This doesn't just mean the neighbors that are mistreated.

It means the mistreated, and those that mistreat, it means loving the bullied, and the bully. Christ says, "Love thy neighbor as thyself." Love thy neighbor with the opposite opinion as you, as much as you love you, with your opinion. Love thy neighbor. You don't have to love the thought, or adopt the thought, or condone the thought that they're having, but I think that the requirement is to love the person thinking the thought, and understand that that person is simply making a choice.

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Yes, it's a choice that you may not agree with, but it is their choice, and our work is to just love them regardless of the choice, and that love means upholding consequences, and standards, and appropriate behaviors, but not having to vilify, or villainize, or hate, or condemn, as we uphold those standards. Now, if you're like me, perhaps your thought is "Holy cow April! This is so much harder than it sounds," loving others is so much harder than it sounds, right? Because I have a human brain, and that brain wants to judge, and categorize, and villainize, and look for danger. It wants to label people, and demonize them, and sort people into dangerous, or not dangerous. It's always looking for threats, and it often sees other people, and their differing opinions as threatening. And when that happens, we have to work to find love. Love is work, it isn't the easy way. C.S. Lewis said "If you want a religion that makes you feel really comfortable, I certainly don't recommend Christianity. Choosing love, to love your neighbor as yourself is not easy work."

So how do we do it? How exactly do we love the unlovable, the lovable in others, the unlovable in our loved ones, the lovable in strangers, the unlovable in ourselves? How do we love the unlovable? Today I want to give you a few thoughts to help you as you go to do this work. This uncomfortable work, which is I think, the work we each came to Earth to do. We didn't come here to love all the easy people, we came to love the people who are hard to love, that's where the work is.

So, first we have to remember that our feelings about someone else are created by us, by our thoughts, and not by their actions. So, right now you might feel angry, and you can absolutely. You can choose anger that is your right. But, we need to recognize that we are in fact choosing it. And then we have 100% responsibility for how we feel when we think that someone else can make us angry, or frustrated, or powerless, then we have given in a sense all of our power to them, to the villain in our story. And that person is controlling your experience now, but when you take responsibility for your choice, you take your power back from the villain, you control your experience.

No one has the power to make you feel anything. You are in charge of how you feel, and it is always a choice. And if anger is a choice, then so is love. And so, if we want to feel love we have to choose thoughts that create love. And maybe right away you're like "But I can't possibly have loving thoughts about a hater." Believe me, I understand, but I want you to remember that every thought is a choice, it's just a decision. If our thoughts are creating anger, and resentment, and judgment, we've just made a decision.

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But we don't have to keep making that same decision. You are totally allowed to choose those feelings if you want them, just as others are allowed to choose them. But if you want to create more love in the world, and in your own life, you will have to choose to think differently. And when you think about it that is really what we want others to do, right? All of our efforts to stand up, and protest, and speak out, are to try to get other people to choose different thoughts. And that is a really good starting place for all of us, to recognize. When I noticed how hard it is for me to change my thoughts about people, and think loving thoughts about them, that is an opportunity for me to understand how hard it is for them to change their thoughts and to change their opinions about other people.

Our brain insists that our opinion as it is, is correct, is right, is true. And notice how badly it wants to hold onto the thought that "You can't love them." And I want to suggest that their brains are holding so tightly to those exact same thoughts about you, or others. And so perhaps this gives you a place to start to recognize that in our shared human experience, every one of us thinks we're right, and every one of us has room to grow in the way that we love each other. It's like, I understand why it's so hard for you to love, because in this moment, I see how hard it is for me to love you.

So, you get to feel how you want and if you want to feel love you can ask yourself, what do I need to think, to feel love even now? What is my work to do to feel love? Like if they didn't have to change at all, and loving was entirely up to me, cause P.S. it is, what is my work to do? Where do I have room to grow? Byron Katie says "When they attack you, and you notice that you love them with all your heart. Your work is done right." And so, the work is not done for any of us, we all have room to grow. When you take the responsibility for how you feel, instead of giving it to someone else because of how they behave, then you can better see your power to choose. To choose your thoughts about them, and maybe you don't want to choose love, but it will be powerful to see that you are in fact making a choice, your choice not theirs. You get to love if you want, we certainly don't have to.

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Okay, number two, I think it's really helpful to know that our brains hate to be wrong about anything, even things that don't matter. Just last night one of my kids was talking about how they thought the moon landing was a hoax, and that it had been faked, right? We all spend a few minutes going back and forth arguing the points about the shadows, and the atmosphere, and the technology to beam it all back to Earth, and the flag waving. All the points that I'm sure you've heard and even though it literally doesn't matter what each of us think about this, I found myself getting tense about it. I found myself trying to make my kids think like I did, my brain did not want to be wrong.

And when other people have a differing opinion it automatically makes us wrong on some level, and we naturally resist this as humans. And so, I think it can be really helpful to recognize that this is just the default setup in the brain. There is a right, and a wrong, and your brain always thinks you are right, that automatically makes someone else wrong. That's always the setup, right? And we have to be aware of this going in, we have to know that this is how our brain has it set up, because with this setup there is no room for curiosity. And if we're going to choose curiosity, enough curiosity to listen, and understand another human being, we have to set aside our idea that there is only one right, and only one wrong even if in the end we decide to disagree. Disagreement doesn't mean one person is right, and one person is wrong. Disagreement simply means that the views don't line up, that they aren't the same. You can ask yourself how would it change things for me if I didn't make it mean that one of us had to be wrong?

Okay, next, I want you to notice also how dangerous it feels to drop our judgment, and our resistance, and our dislike. Even though none of these feelings feel good. Notice how our brain really doesn't want to give them up, and how it tells you that if you give it up then they're going to get away with something, or that they're gonna be allowed to be mean. Here's the thing, they are allowed. Holding onto our judgment, or dislike doesn't prevent them from being mean, it doesn't bring them to justice, it doesn't make it right. It just feels like judgment, and dislike inside of you. As humans, we want to control so much, we want to control all the bad things in the world. We want to control the pain, and the hate, and the wrongness, but we can't even control it in ourselves.

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We can't even eliminate all the hate, and judgment, and wrongness inside ourselves. So, a number of years ago I remember one time after church we were sitting around the table eating lunch, and my daughter had been like so upset by a comment that somebody had made in one of the meetings. A comment where she felt like the person was like disparaging some other members of the congregation, and judging them, and saying that they had done it wrong. And my daughter was like up in arms about it, she was like, "She shouldn't judge them, she was out of line, she had it wrong!" And we all kind of agreed. And then, suddenly, I could see it. There we were sitting around our kitchen table doing the exact same thing that my daughter had been so upset about, right? We were judging this woman for judging someone else. And so in addition to noticing how hard it is for us to be wrong, notice how in an effort to make things right, we end up mirroring the very behavior we don't approve of. It can be really insightful to ask yourself, in what way am I mirroring the exact behavior I dislike in others?

Okay, the last thought I want to give you is the idea that if you can't get all the way to love, sometimes it can be very helpful to drop into compassion. And we can get to compassion easier, when we try to understand someone else. So, I want to share a little story to illustrate this and see if that will help explain what I mean. So, my grandfather recently passed away, and at his funeral my uncle Kelly spoke about his life, and he said that when he was growing up my grandpa wasn't really warm and loving, right? He didn't have a lot of heart to heart talks with his kids, and sometimes he had a temper. And my uncle Kelly said, that when he grew up he sort of felt ripped off, right? Like his dad should have been different in so many ways, and he should have loved him better. And after he grew up he talked to my grandpa about this, about his feelings of disappointment in the father that my grandpa had been. And he said that after he got done talking that my grandpa told him "I didn't have a dad." His father had died when he was 10 and he had grown up poor, and hungry, and he had had to support his mom, and all his brothers, and sisters from a very early age.

And my grandpa told Kelly, "I didn't have a dad. I don't even know what dads are supposed to do, or what they're supposed to say, or how they're supposed to love. I just knew that we never had anything. And I was hungry, and it was so hard not to have the things we needed. And I knew that when I was a dad, I would provide for my kids, I would provide for my family, and that whatever they needed, I would make sure they had it." And Kelly said "You know as my dad said that to me, I could see how I always had had what I needed. When I needed a new mitt, there was a new mitt. When I needed money for school, there was money for school. He had provided everything I ever needed, and after that I never thought that he should have been any other dad than he was. He was doing exactly what he knew to do, and he had been amazing at it."

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In that moment my uncle understood the way my grandfather thought he planed all of his actions. And it gave my uncle compassion, and grace, and understanding for my grandfather. So Byron Katie teaches that "If you thought like they did, then you would feel like they do." And it's true! The people you don't agree with, don't do what you do, because they don't think like you think. And the only problem is that we think they should. We think they should do it like we would do it. We think they should think like we think, but we're wrong about that. They think like they think, and their brain has a good reason for doing it. And the more you can understand that every person's actions are coming from their thoughts and feelings the more compassion you can have for them. We are all just humans thinking, and feeling, and acting, and making a mess of it. We are all here navigating Earth life, and sometimes we have really ugly thoughts, and those create terrible feelings, and terrible actions. And you can understand that, because it happens to you too.

This is what it means to be human. And it doesn't mean that we don't work for change, and it doesn't mean that we don't hold people accountable. And it doesn't mean we stop trying to persuade, and teach, and offer alternative ways of thinking. But when we do all those things from love, we get to change our experience. And we get to feel better as we work, and strive, and understand, and offer, and persuade. And that allows us to take pride in our own actions, because they are fueled by love.

The hardest work we do as humans is love, not just because our brains want us to categorize, and rank, and see others as dangerous. Love isn't our default setting, it's a choice, and I want to offer to you that your word is not to just say, "Well I don't like them. I don't like the people who are intolerant." Don't just say that you're thinking thoughts, and you can't change them, recognize that you get to choose how you think about others. You get to choose to think differently than your brain's default settings, and it isn't easy. You have to require yourself to think those thoughts, you have to expect yourself to think thoughts that create love, and question the ones that create intolerance even for the intolerant. As you increase your tolerance, even for the intolerant, you increase the amount of tolerance in the world at large. You can increase it in your home, and in your neighborhood, and in your congregation, and in your city, and in our world as you increase love for every human. Even those that your brain wants to say are less than you in some way.

You increase tolerance when you choose to change the way you think about other people, not because it comes naturally, or easily, but because your choice is the only one you get to control. And if you want more love it is 100% available to you. And that my friends is 100% awesome! I love you for listening and I'll see you next week.

Thanks so much for joining me on the podcast today. If you want to take the things that I've talked about and apply them to your life sign up for a free coaching session at aprilpricecoaching.com This is where the real magic happens and your life starts to change forever believing your life is 100% awesome is totally available to every one of us. And as your coach. I'll show you exactly how to do that so that you can truly love your Earth life experience the way things are is not the way things have to stay.

And that my friends is 100% Awesome!