The Conscious vs. Subconscious approach to my ex-wife
Transcript
Introduction
The battle between the conscious and the subconscious mind. I’m going to talk about that right after this.
About Yoel
Hey everyone, I’m Yoel Farkas so grateful to have you on my YouTube channel, I am the author of Recover From Your Divorce In Four Steps, The No-Fluff Method For Divorce Men By A Divorced Man. I’ve also recently published How To Be A Winning Man In Your Marriage. I’m a mentor and coach for men. And today I’m going to talk about the battle between the conscious mind and the subconscious mind.
Being vulnerable about imperfections as a coach
I’m going to be very vulnerable with you today. Because there’s been something that’s been on my mind for a while, which is my approach to my ex-wife. And I wanted to get open about things that I’m struggling with in terms of my relationship with my ex-wife. Now, as a coach and a mentor, something that I want to do is be a model for my clients be a model for anyone who’s watching this video, that includes you, anybody who reads my books. And being a model means to, in a certain sense, do things right, which doesn’t mean that we have to be perfect, or that we always do the right thing and never make mistakes. In fact, a big part of success is to make mistakes and learn from our mistakes. But at the same time, when I know I’m doing something that I shouldn’t be doing, and I’m doing it anyways, then that sends sort of an internal mixed signal inside my mind, which I’m going to get into in a moment. And that’s been causing me to be sort of off balance, not centered, not have that sort of harmony, within myself.
Animosity and anger towards ex-wife
And I came to this realization at my recent therapy session with my therapist, I call her therapist, that’s not really a good term to describe what she does, she does so much more. But just for simplicity, I refer to her as a therapist. But in any case, in speaking to her this past Friday, I was really trying to understand why it is they have so much sort of animosity and anger towards my ex-wife, even simple dealings on a day to day basis have become very challenging. And that’s not to say that this makes her an angel or that everything she’s doing is correct. But what I’m looking at is myself my part and things, why is it that I’m having these visceral reactions, why am I not willing to sort of let go of the things that she does or says that get me upset, and really implement in my own life that which I talked about, and which I coach and mentor for other men. And by the way, this isn’t something new when I was an attorney in my previous life, so to speak. A lot of times, I would give advice to my clients as to how they should approach various legal challenges in their business and their lives. And it was funny, a lot of times, when I would have similar situations arise, I would not do the very thing that I would advise them to do. Except back then I didn’t have the same awareness that I’m grateful to have now, in terms of understanding myself. And I wasn’t going to therapist regularly like I do now. And this is another reason why therapy is so important. I’m going to talk about that in another video.
I never wanted to be divorced and she took away my family.
But for today’s purposes, I really want to get into a revelation that I had at this past meeting with my therapist, which is that she asked me why is it that you’re having these responses? What do you think is the cause of it? And what is your sort of reaction to her. And I’m not proud of this. But what I shared with her was that in my mind, my ex-wife, and again, this is going to make me sound like a victim, but I just want to be very vulnerable and open to you know what I’m experiencing, in my mind, what I said to her was that, in my mind, my ex-wife took away the family life that I had envisioned myself having. I never pictured myself being a divorced man at the age of 41. I’ve got five children, I never wanted this for my children. I wanted to be a married man, I wanted to have that stability, of married life. And she took that away from me. And the other thing I was saying was that not only that she take that away from me, but she doesn’t have the approach towards me like I have towards her. She’s sort of, again, this is the way I see things and I’m explaining to you what’s going on in my mind, I see her as, you know, being happy and her life is going on. She didn’t have to move out of her apartment, I had to move apartments, I’ve had to build a new life. I lost the car in the marriage to her, I gave her the car. You know, there’s all sorts of things that are happening in her life. Whereas I’ve had to build from scratch. And in my mind, being that sort of nice person and allowing her to sort of dictate all the rules. I just haven’t been willing to do that.
She doesn’t get to dictate when to be “nice”! Focusing on HER!
Okay, so for example, I did notice that in a few instances, she’s tried to be somewhat more civil are nice or whatnot. Although again, during the divorce, when it was really going down, things were really, really difficult. But at this point, I noticed that she wanted to speak on the phone, for example, where she never wanted to do that in the past. And in my mind, it was like, I just cannot let that happen. Because she doesn’t get to dictate when she’s going to be nice and when she’s not going to be nice. It’s all about her. Do you hear how everything that I’m focusing on is about her? It’s “she does this, she does that”. And I’m not going to let her do that I’m not going to let her get away with it.
The difference between the conscious and subconscious mind.
And that’s really a function here of what I call the conscious mind. Okay, so the mind consists of two different parts. There’s the conscious mind, okay, which involves things like upbringing, conditioning, the influences, those are the that’s the part of the mind that we think about on a daily basis when we make actual decisions. For example, a conscious mind decision would be something such as, you know, what am I going to have for breakfast? What am I going to wear today? What am I going to do as a part of my day, these are conscious decisions that we make. The other part of the mind is the subconscious mind. Okay, so you have the conscious mind here, and you have the subconscious mind. The subconscious mind are things that are happening internally, which we are not even aware of. And that can be trust, things like inspiration, love, kindness, etc., all the sort of positive aspects of our mind that we are not necessarily attuned to, we can tap into that, and ways to do that include meditation, and really reflecting and contemplating. But a lot of times, it’s just sort of working in the background, okay, part of what the conscious subconscious mind does, as well as, for example, we go to sleep, you know, we’re still alive, right? The blood is still pumping. That’s the subconscious mind that’s doing that. Okay. But we’re not always aware of it. And what we are aware of is our conscious mind. And what’s happening is that we’re letting our conscious mind a lot of times overpower the inspiration and love and kindness, that’s part of our subconscious mind.
Subconscious Mind Begging me for the truth
So as I was sharing with my therapist as to what it is I’m experiencing, when I’m angry at my ex-wife, and I’m having sadness, and hurt, and loneliness and isolation. That’s a part of my conscious mind. That’s all a part of my conditioning, how I’ve been trained to react to certain things. But I realized that my subconscious mind is begging me, my subconscious mind is saying, Yoel, that is not the truth! The truth is not the way you’re looking at things. The truth is not about punishing her or making her feel bad. Besides the fact that it doesn’t matter what I do, I’m not going to change how she’s going to respond to react to certain things anyways. But it’s not about her, it’s about myself. And the truth is saying, when you let go, you’re freeing yourself, the truth shall set you free as the saying goes. When you’re punishing her, what you’re doing is you’re punishing yourself.
An epiphany on what I would coach others to do on YouTube.
And I had that sort of epiphany. It may sound obvious to many of you listening. But for me, it was really, it was really an epiphany, because, you know, I said to her [therapist], I just have to imagine myself doing a video on this. Imagine I was doing a video on how to deal with the ex-wife. And imagine I told my clients, and I told everybody who’s watching everybody who’s listening to this, you know, what you should do, you really have to punish your ex-wife, you have to be nasty, you have to be angry, you have to be sad, you have to not let her get away with things. And I was laughing because think about how ridiculous that sounds. But that’s how I’ve been reacting to certain things because of my conscious mind and what my mind is telling me and, you know, telling me what to do, what to say and how to react. But the challenge is really listen to what the subconscious mind is saying. And I know that the subconscious mind is telling me this because I feel it a lot of times, it goes by feelings. Okay, so the mind. You know, it’s interesting, my therapist pointed out that what a lot of times when I say things that come from the mind, I’ll point to my head. But when I say things that come from the subconscious, I’ll point to my gut, I’ll point to my gut instincts, what am I feeling? Tony Robbins talks a lot about, you know, different sensory activities that different people have. Some people are visual, some people are more kinesthetic, they go by sense of feeling. Some people are touch. I’m that kinesthetic type where I go by feeling. And I have this sort of feeling that my reactions to my ex wife have not been right. But I didn’t know what to do, because my mind is being so powerful. And that’s what I talked about before at the beginning of this video, when I say that it’s a battle between the conscious mind and the subconscious mind because my conscious mind is telling me how to react to things based on how I’ve been brought up and how I’ve been conditioned. Whereas my subconscious mind feels the truth feels that sort of energy and it’s begging my conscious mind to wake up and start getting in alignment with the subconscious mind.
Conditioning is not about blaming.
And by the way, that’s not about blame when I talk about conditioning, or, you know, my external influences that have shaped me growing up and have shaped me, not just growing up and on a day to day life, what I experienced, it’s not a blame thing. In fact, I just had this discussion with somebody very close to me and my family, where I said to her, it’s not about blame. It’s not about trying to rip apart families or blame anybody. It’s just coming to a place of understanding what you know, why is it that I react in certain ways and the first step in all this Is that awareness. And that is why I’m so grateful to be aware that how I’ve been responding to my ex-wife is not me. It’s based on how I’ve been conditioned. But that, now that I’m aware of it, now I’m on the first step towards recovering in that sense. So I, you know, I talk a lot about recovery in my book. And a lot of that recovery talks about personal development actions, things that you can do quickly, to get into a better frame of mind, which is, you know, includes meditation, exercise, diet, making quicker decisions, those are things that the conscious mind does. But the other part of my recovery method that I talk a lot about his therapy, and experiencing the pain and feelings and understanding your subconscious mind. And that’s a lot slower of a process, but it’s a lot more impactful. And I see that it’s slower, because it’s taken me quite a while to get a relatively quite a while you my divorce, official date of divorce, my 18th anniversary actually same date was June 11, 2020. So you know, relatively speaking, it’s not a long period of time, but based on all the other amazing work that I’ve been doing on myself, this part has been a little longer to catch up on, which is for me to understand what’s going on inside of my mind, okay to understand that my subconscious mind wants me to let go wants me to understand that the truth is to be loving is to be kind is to let go is to be nice, is to not let my mind dictate what my subconscious is going to do. And the way that my subconscious will change with time is to have that awareness, which I’m grateful to have, and be to slowly but surely stop letting that mind take over the subconscious start letting go of the mind.
The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle.
Now, there is a fantastic book, I talked with my therapist about this, it’s just in the background here. If I can find it, yes. Sorry for getting up in the middle here, which is The Power of Now. And it’s written by Eckhart Tolle, and he talks about living in the present. And one of the things he says is that the resistance in your way, is the way. I think he says it in a much more eloquent way that I am! But something to that effect, the resistance, that standing in your way, is the way. Okay, and I quote Steven Pressfield a lot as well. Again, I’m getting up here, where he talks about resistance, okay, that very resistance standing in our way, is how we know we’re on the right path, because we’re having so much resistance, that means that we have the ability to surrender that resistance and to move past that resistance.
It’s not about justifying what the ex-wife does.
So what I’ve been experiencing, and what I’m making myself vulnerable here and sharing with you is that resistance in the sense of how I’ve been responding to my ex-wife. And again, I want to make it clear for those of you who are, you know, who are divorced to experience a breakup, and may be asking, “Well, does that justify everything that she does, or everything that she says?” No! it’s not about justifying, it’s not about trying to explain away her responses, her decisions that she makes, but it’s about staying on my side of the street, so to speak, and really understanding that I have the power to choose how I’m going to respond to that I have the power to decide to let go.
Current approach to ex-wife based on conscious mind is absurd.
And it was a real revelation to me, a lot of times, it’s not even, you know, it’s not that I talked about this, in my book, a lot of times ideas that we come up with are not necessarily new ideas, but it’s about that sort of approach to the new idea. It’s the way that idea presents itself. And when I shared with my therapist, the sheer absurdity of what it would look like if I was to get up and do a video or sit down as I’m doing now and do a video on telling men, what you have to do is respond angrily and show her who’s boss, and really don’t let the ex-wife get away with it. It was so absurd, it made me laugh. And part of that laughter is because I know the truth. And this awareness is one step forward towards the road to recovery.
Being imperfect doesn’t mean I can’t coach others.
And I also wanted to share something interesting, which is that a lot of times people think that, you know, if they’re getting into something, whether they’re being a coach to others, or a mentor, or they’re putting themselves out there, they’re making themselves visible, that means that they have to be perfect in every way. But that’s not the case. And the fact is that I have to admit, I had a bit of fear to do this video, because what are my clients going think I’m talking about, you know, letting go and working on oneself and therapy and personal development. And here I am talking about how I’ve had angry responses and reactions to my ex-wife. But I think part of the growth and part of the development is making oneself vulnerable, is being able to express the fact that I have failures, I have things that I have to correct in myself. And that doesn’t mean that I don’t have other valuable insights to offer to other men. That doesn’t mean that I can’t offer my experiences, my strengths for other men to recover. And I have to say that, you know, part of it is really, you know, expressing it bringing it from the inside out, so to speak, not letting things stay beneath the surface. And the best way to do that is in a video like this.
The battle between the conscious and subconscious is not a bad thing.
So I hope that was a unique insight from a very personal place into understanding really what that battle is, so to speak between the conscious and the subconscious, the fact that we have that battle is not a bad thing, it’s a great thing, if we can start to be aware of it, it’s very normal to have these sort of feelings to have these inner conflicts. And that awareness is really that first step. I hope this video helped you get that to sort of a place where you can get to that awareness, and to realize that by bringing that awareness out by sharing it by experiencing that inner conflict, you can get to a place where eventually, with time, okay, you’ll get to that sort of impactful recovery in your own life. Just like I know I’m having that impactful recovery every day. It’s getting better and better. And I am so optimistic for the future and so grateful to have this forum on YouTube here to be able to share with you and we will see you at the next video.
Ending
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