Soul Sessions by CreativeMind

Did your parents raise you to fail? The impact of parenting styles.

April 19, 2022 Debra Berndt Maldonado and Robert Maldonado PhD Life Coach Training and Personal Transformation Experts Season 5 Episode 107
Soul Sessions by CreativeMind
Did your parents raise you to fail? The impact of parenting styles.
Show Notes Transcript Chapter Markers

What can research show us about parenting styles and how effective or damaging they are to a young child? Explore the different styles and how your self-concept was developed through interaction with your family and culture. In this episode we discuss:

  • Are strict parents limiting their children in adulthood?
  • Helicopter parenting and the impact on child’s self-concept
  • Spare the rod, spoil the child. Does it create terrible, selfish adult?
  • What has more influence on a child’s development nature v. nurturing environment?

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Did your parents raise you to fail? The impact of parenting styles.

SPEAKERS

Debra Maldonado, Speaker, Robert Maldonado


INTRO  00:00

Welcome to CreativeMind Soul Sessions with Debra Berndt Maldonado and Dr. Rob Maldonado, founders of CreativeMind. Explore personal growth with us through Jungian psychology, Eastern spirituality, and social neuroscience in a deep but practical way. Let's begin. 


Debra Maldonado  00:25 

Welcome to another episode of Soul Sessions. We’re continuing our series on Did your parents really screw you up, a case for and against. This week we're trying to answer the question “Did your parents raise you to fail?” We're going to discuss parenting styles, which are so fascinating. I can't wait to pick your brain about it.


Robert Maldonado  00:51

Let's review a little bit because this series is meant to build on previous episodes. We started out with genetics, we know genes play a big, huge, giant role in who we are, and what we become, and what we're capable of because of it. It is our IQ, our personality, our body, the way we look.


Debra Maldonado  01:20

I think, because we're social creatures, what we look like, how we fit in, how we don't fit in.


Robert Maldonado  01:27

In the first episode we talked about genetics and a bit of epigenetics, which is another component, we'll have to do a separate episode on it. In the second episode, we talked about environment and culture. Culture to a lot of us is invisible because we're swimming in it. When you're in it, you don't see it, you see it as the proper way to do things, courting, marriages, child rearing, language, food, everything.


Debra Maldonado  02:10

For me it was career. Most of us grew up in a working class family. Even if you're an executive, you work for someone else, you get a paycheck. When you go on to become an entrepreneur, it seems that this is another culture you're introduced to.


Robert Maldonado  02:30

Often you don't see your own culture until you travel and experience other cultures.You see they do things differently.


Debra Maldonado  02:41

I was saying about entrepreneurship, I moved to Colorado, all my new friends were entrepreneurs, and my other friends back in New Jersey were workers. It was like “They can make their own hours!” It’s always good to explore other environments and expand our mind. But a lot of conditioning happens when we're really young. It's implied, it’s not even something we decide. It's something we’re just surrounded with and don't even question.


Robert Maldonado  03:11

There's a term in multicultural psychology called “cultural encapsulation”, where you're encapsulated in your own culture to where you can't see outside of that. Anything outside of that doesn't make sense to you. Therefore, it doesn't register as important. Anyway, those were the first two episodes. Now we're talking about more granular approach to what went on in the family.


Debra Maldonado  03:43

Specifically, the interaction between child and parent.


Robert Maldonado  03:48

I did a lot of developmental psychology early on in my training, the movement was always towards younger and younger. When I started, 6-7 years of age was thought to be really crucial, a turning point, it was like a mark where after that things got easier, or it wasn't as important, it wasn't as critical. But the movement was always moving it forward to younger and younger years, because we understood all those early years are really important, the brain is designed to absorb every little detail of information.


Debra Maldonado  04:50

How early are we talking, Rob?


Robert Maldonado  04:52

From birth? It got to the point where from the day you're born, and even maybe before, from the time you're born, you're able to lock into people's faces and read their emotions.


Debra Maldonado  05:10

I love those experiments they do with babies where the mother is looking at the baby. If she doesn't smile and looks with no emotion at all, the baby freaks out. They're so in tune, they recognize people, even if a baby's sleeping, they can sense it's the mother or someone else holding them.


Robert Maldonado  05:32

Incredibly powerful imprints that we receive early on just from being around people.


Debra Maldonado  05:41

How about that one video where the mother is singing the Rod Stewart song, a sad song. The mother was singing it, and the baby would cry. They don't understand verbal language yet, but they understand the emotional language. I think that’s something to think about too. What emotional language are our parents giving us without words, without saying anything? What messages are we getting?


Robert Maldonado  06:22

Let's use the parenting styles they use in psychology, just as a take off point because nobody really fits these styles to a tee. There's general combinations, and parents go through different phases where they might use different styles.


Debra Maldonado  06:42

A young parent may do one style, then when they get older, they become more lax with their children, because they have ten, they're not giving that attention to the first child. So authoritative?


Robert Maldonado  06:56

The first one is authoritative. The parent definitely sets boundaries with a child, the parent is the authority. They demand respect, they demand things from the child, but they're also caring and nurturing. They're not just about strict discipline. When I used to work with families, a lot of the mistakes parents would make was right there. They thought “If I'm easy going, if I allow the child to do as they please, I'll be a better parent, the child would be a better child.” That's not what happens. The child craves discipline, structure, boundaries.


Debra Maldonado  07:57

I never heard that. When we first met, you were working with kids. When you said that, I thought that was interesting. Because my father was super strict, so I thought “Wouldn't it be nice to be flexible?” but you're saying that children feel safer with the boundaries than if everything's open because they're not old enough or mature enough to create their own decisions or boundaries?


Robert Maldonado  08:25

It's almost like letting the kid drive. At first it would be great, I'm going to drive the car. But they realize very quickly, they don't know what they're doing. If you're giving them the ability to drive, meaning to be in charge of the household, they start to feel insecure and a little bit crazy, a little out of control.


Debra Maldonado  08:51

Is it the inexperience? They don't have the experience to make the right decisions yet. The parent, an authoritative has wisdom, and the child trusts that wisdom.


Robert Maldonado  09:05

They will test the boundaries and that's natural.


Debra Maldonado  09:11

There's this other one that sounds similar.


Robert Maldonado  09:15

This is the authoritarian. It's very different, although they sound similar. Authoritarian means it's all about discipline, but the care and comfort element is not there.


Debra Maldonado  09:33

It's like a drill sergeant, a lot of military parents, or even parents who didn't grow up with emotional nurturing, demand respect, “I'll give you something to cry about”, no emotion, no nurturing. In a way, boundaries to an extent, a real rigid type of parenting.


Robert Maldonado  10:00

People, kids or adults I've seen, that grow up in that kind of household, often have problems with authority, with cops, teachers.


Debra Maldonado  10:14

Or they marry cops or teacher. I've seen that with my clients, they have an issue with an authoritarian parent, but they end up being attracted to the same type. Not because they choose it unconsciously, it’s like it matches their chemistry.


Robert Maldonado  10:35

We'll talk about how we respond to these things as we go along. The other one is neglectful.


Debra Maldonado  10:44

Is that a parent who abandons the child?


Robert Maldonado  10:49

Not necessarily abandons but maybe they're simply not emotionally available. They're not responsive.


Debra Maldonado  10:59

“I’m watching the TV, I'm working”, someone who's really busy with their career. What about divorced parents where the father's traveling, he doesn't intend to be neglectful but he's absent.


Robert Maldonado  11:14

There was a big study done a few years back that followed kids of divorce throughout their lives. The findings were stunning. Incredible residue follows you the rest of your life unless you do inner work. The other one is the permissive parenting style, which is “do whatever you want”. The parent may be loving and caring, but there's no rules, no boundaries.


Debra Maldonado  12:00

Could it be like young parents who say “Jimmy, what if you put your toys away and go to bed?” and Jimmy's like “I don't want to”, and the parents are like “Okay.” More passive, wanting let the child be, do what he wants versus almost like a fear of the authoritarian or being an authority.


Robert Maldonado  12:23

The parent wants to be the friend of the child, not the parent. Kids need structure, they need guidelines, rules, etc. These kids often end up being very insecure adults because they're anxious. They don't know where the boundaries are.


Debra Maldonado  12:46

There was no guidance or wisdom. Sometimes they're the people that feel like they don't respect any authority at all times. Then the overprotective parents, that's helicopter?


Robert Maldonado  13:02

It could be, they're trying to bulldoze the world, make a path for their kid, make sure everything works out for them. They end up showing up at the kid’s school and getting involved in everything the child is doing. It sounds great that parent should be so involved in their kids’ lives. But kids need to make their own mistakes, they need a few bumps on the head. They need to sort it out amongst themselves in order to learn those life lessons they need for life.


INTERMISSION  13:48

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Debra Maldonado  14:44 

The last one is power struggle. Can you describe what that is?


Robert Maldonado  14:47

Power struggles often take place especially as kids get older, but I've seen some very young. It happens anywhere along the line from early on to teenage years. It becomes a power struggle for control, like who's in charge?


Debra Maldonado  15:07

Would that be parents that have problems, they're alcoholics or drug, or they're depressed? Then the child has to be the parent, would that be a power struggle? Or is that completely different? That would basically be a neglectful parent?


Robert Maldonado  15:29

That can happen in any of these where you get a role reversal. The child becomes a parent because they have to. If the parent is drinking, or they're depressed, or they're not doing the parent role, often the child has to take it upon themselves to set rules, boundaries for themselves.


Debra Maldonado  15:54

A lot of times the oldest child, especially the girl, the parents work, so the mother assigns the oldest girl, “You're in charge of your younger siblings.” She's taking care of the household, no one's taking care of her. That would be a neglectful parent, but then she could end up having that weird dynamic with her parent, because “you're not taking care of me”, maybe that's where the power struggle would come in?


Robert Maldonado  16:22

It's a great disservice to the kid because you're stealing their childhood. They don't have the opportunity to be kids, because they're taking on responsibility for the parent. Often if the parent is sick, it is just the necessity.


Debra Maldonado  16:45

A lot of times, it's out of their control. They have lots of kids, or the mother's parent is sick, she's taking care of them and everyone else, she just needs extra hands. Or there's a child that has a disability that the mother's caring for and they have to take care of, like splitting the work. There's a lot of different scenarios where it's not necessarily intentional, but because of the circumstances in the family.


Robert Maldonado  17:13

These are fairly normal. You go down the street, any house, you can see these phenomena, or these parenting styles all over the place.


Debra Maldonado  17:31

This isn't dysfunctional, any of them aren’t dysfunctional, it's just styles. What we're saying about did your parents raise you to fail, which one of these is great for success or not?


Robert Maldonado  17:52

Ideally, it’d be the authoritative parent. Because in that scenario, the parent has the authority. That's how it should be, the parent should be the parent, the child should be the child. It engenders a respect for authority, rules, structure, respecting boundaries. It makes for a secure child. If you talk about attachment theories later on, that's where it comes in, the child is learning proper attachment patterns.


Debra Maldonado  18:38

You say that it would be but it could also limit someone because an authoritative with overprotective combo might be like a scale or a spectrum.


Robert Maldonado  18:53

These are just examples. There's a whole literature on abuse, what happens when there's an abusive parent, but that's a whole other topic. These are fairly common and fairly normal.


Debra Maldonado  19:14

Any of these could be abusive in some way. Extreme authoritarianism, neglect, or permissive, “Do what you want, I don't care”, overprotective can be abusive as well. These aren't necessarily right or wrong.


Robert Maldonado  19:36

A lot of it is from culture as well, handed down from the culture.


Debra Maldonado  19:42

In your dissertation, you talked a lot about multicultural disciplines and parenting. What you realized is that a lot of things that seemed normal for some of the psychologists of a certain race, were not typical for another race.


Robert Maldonado  20:01

Talk about cultural encapsulation. This is just one example. In some cultures, the kids sleep with the parents, in the parents’ bed. In other cultures, that's considered a no-no, somehow inappropriate or leading to problems. Often psychologists would see and interpret that as dysfunctional, but it's part of the culture. It's normal for them from their worldview, from their perspective.


Debra Maldonado  20:42

When I grew up in New York, those of you in Jersey, Queens, Manhattan, Brooklyn, you see these families, the son or the daughter is still living with the parents, especially the son. A lot of times they move across the street and all live together. There's other cultures where it's like “I can't wait to go, I need to move to California, get out of here.” There's that entanglement with the parents at older age.


Robert Maldonado  21:14

Spanking as a discipline also comes in. We mean normal spanking as a discipline, not abuse. It's part of some cultures, and in other cultures it's not.


Debra Maldonado  21:30

In other cultures it's like “Jimmy, would you like to put your toys away?”, that asking permission. We can take both extremes.


Robert Maldonado  21:39

As if this wasn't complex enough, because of the genetics every child is going to interpret the parent style in their own unique way. Some children will respond really well to any of these and say “That's great. I'll manage it. I'll handle it. I can deal with this.” Another kid will have a problem with it.


Debra Maldonado  22:07

Overprotective for example, “I feel so safe, my mom is always there for me, she's always looking out for me, my dad's going to beat up the bully, he's gonna stand for me. They help me make decisions about where I go to college.” Or the child that's permissive, “They give me so much freedom, they let me be who I am.” But I want to mention that how the parent decides this style, could be partly genetic, but also they learn their style from either how they were reared or the opposite. If you had an authoritarian parent, you may say “I'm going to be permissive because I didn't like that growing up.”


Robert Maldonado  22:53

You get all kinds of combinations. Then you have two parents often, hopefully. Often one will have one style, and the mother or the father will have another style.


Debra Maldonado  23:09

The authoritarian and the permissive. Like “Ask your father.” “Mom would let me have it, but not dad.”


Robert Maldonado  23:16

In working with families, I notice that when the parents are not in sync, they haven't reached balance or agreement on how they do discipline, the child is really confused because they don't know where the boundaries are. They don't know what to expect as far as the parents’ reaction to their behavior. It always works better when parents talk about it.


Debra Maldonado  23:48

You see this happen with people that don't talk about it. The kid asked the mother because the mother would let him do it. Then the father finds out and asks the mother “Why did you tell him, that's not something I would do.” Then the kids in the middle of their disagreement of what that decision was. I want to talk a little bit more about the power struggle, that’s intriguing to me. What do you mean by power struggle? Is it that the kid doesn't respect the parent as an authority, who's in charge here?


Robert Maldonado  24:29

If we think of the family in animal models, there's always a leader, the alpha, the pack leader. Or the hierarchy, somebody has the ultimate authority in the household.  If the parent is challenged by the child or the growing adolescent or whatever age power struggle is taking place, they're not able to hold on to their power, the child wins. I've seen households where it's a little kid that runs the whole thing. That's not a good situation. They've given a lot of power to a 4-5 year old, the household is in chaos.


Debra Maldonado  25:26

You worked a lot with kids with disabilities and challenges.? Do you think that sometimes parents are more lenient to those children or maybe spoil them a little more because of their challenges?


Robert Maldonado  25:39

Both ways. Somebody gets more attention, more energy, time, etc. because they have special needs. But often they can be more neglected, more abused because of the challenges that stress the parent, especially if they don't have resources and help.


Debra Maldonado  26:12

A lot of times, when we're doing personal development, we look at our childhood, everyone talks about your childhood and your relationship with your parents, people try to re-litigate their childhood. They're constantly trying to wrong the parent. Because you were the authoritarian or because you were so neglectful, now I'm burdened with this issue. We want to have a discussion about how we can take back our control. If you blame your parents that they put you in this early life situation, I'm the way I am, you can live that way the rest of your life, you're basically stuck in your pattern. You think it's hard baked, it's set in stone, and you can't really change it.


Robert Maldonado  27:05

That's part of the Jung's work, this idea that what we build in our family system is a persona. A persona means a role, like an actor playing a role. It works well for us because it gives us something to do, a way to identify ourselves, to distinguish ourselves from others and give us direction in life. This is the role that I'm playing, I'm the studious one, therefore, I'm gonna go to college. The other one is creative, she's gonna start a band. Those activities are often built into persona, the roles that we play. But he's saying, that's not who you really are. That's an important function of development, the family and the culture help you in developing your persona. You can model yourself after one of your parents or both of them, or your siblings, or teachers. But at a certain point, Jung says, you have to go inward and find your true self. That's what he called individuation.


Debra Maldonado  28:28

Before we do that, we have to understand, I want to back up just a minute, how we choose to respond as children. The parent is one half, they are a certain style, then how this child responds to it. It's an instinctual choice the ego makes for them, it's not even conscious to the child. But if there's something instinctual about to survive, and feel secure, “this is how I should be”. If the authoritarian parent is very strict, maybe loud and angry, maybe I'll just play by the rules, because that's what is going to keep me safe. We do get conditioned to be submissive to authority, not to challenge authority.


Robert Maldonado  29:28

We go back to the 40-40-20 principle we talked about, which says that about 40% of our behavior is from genetics, another 40% is from the environment and the culture, the things we've been talking about. But then there's 20% that's left up to chance, to do what we want to do with it. 40% which is our genetic inheritance, determines a lot of how we're going to respond to these given parenting styles. Because if I'm mellow and easygoing, intelligent and I adapt, I'm gonna survive in any of these situations, I'm gonna make it. If your genetic endowment is that you're rebellious, you're hyper, you fight back easily, or you rattle easily, then any of these situations might be challenging for you. You're going to resist, therefore not have a very good family experience, regardless of how good your parents are.


Debra Maldonado  30:50

What you're saying is, we can't 100% blame our parents, we can't 100% blame our genes, and we can't blame ourselves. Because the parents are acting out of conditioning, the genetics are acting out of their own survival triggers, and we are an ego finding a way to survive. We have this unconscious shaping of our personality. What Jung says is, it works for us to function in the world, we have a relationship, maybe we go to school, we're successful, we get a job, we start to maybe make an impact on the community. But then at midlife, we're in that same style we grew up in and the same reactions to different authority figures in our life. Think about all the people that we interact with, our boss, we project. If we have an authoritative parent, we may by default always seem to have an authoritarian boss, or a boss that's neglectful. We don't know what to do with it. All those conflicts are the conditioning that we have, it carries out to other relationships in our life. Jung’s work is about realizing that this isn't who we are. We have a choice to become our true self. What other areas do we project this parenting style? How does that impact other areas? For me, I noticed that as a coach, as a teacher, or mentor, and many of our coaches, when they work with clients, they think that whatever issue the client had with a parent tends to be unconsciously transferred to the coach-client relationship, their parenting style carries through with their clients. They could be a helicopter coach, or a neglectful coach, or an authoritative coach, or an authoritarian coach.


Robert Maldonado  33:05

Let's simplify because there's all these elements, but there's only two primary elements occurring in the individual's mind. One is the self concept. If you think about how you're born, you start to be aware of the family, you're in a family environment, you're supported, you're taken care of, that's your world for a while. Then you start to realize there's a world outside of the family. That's the other element, the self image and the world. Because everything beyond your skin essentially for you feels like outside. I'm in here in my body, my mind, my brain, everything else is outside. Those two elements are important to understand, it's me and then there's the environment, the universe, the world. Development, how we experience ourselves and how we create our life is that interaction between those two elements, the self concept and the world, the interaction between those two is what we call our life. It's our experience of it. If your self concept is “I'm not confident, I don't feel talented, I don't feel smart, I don't have authority, I don't have power to change things”, you're at a disadvantage. That stays with you for the rest of your life if you don't find a way to change it. On the other hand, let's say you feel pretty good about yourself, but you feel the world is too challenging, too difficult, or you feel animosity towards the world, you're fighting, you’re always struggling, they're trying to push back. If you fight the world, you know who's gonna win. The world is gonna win because it feels that much more powerful. It comes down to that balance of understanding that you have the power to make your life. Early on, our ego is stamped with one order and that is “above all, survive”. That's the first part of our life, how can I survive the family, how can I survive my kindergarten, my school, my first grade and develop persona, that role I'm going to be playing in the world. The other part is that message we get from our parents, are they going to take care of me, which means is the world going to respond to my needs. If those two things align, we do pretty well. But most of us have to struggle a little bit to find our way, to find that balance where we feel powerful enough to do the things that we want to do, meaning that self efficacy, self confidence. We feel the world is going to respond, to take care of us.


Debra Maldonado  36:45

The family is our main world. Then we go into the big world, we just carry the same assumptions about our self concept. With an authoritarian parent who doesn't let you have any kind of freedom, insight to wisdom, you may feel that you the world is your boss basically. You don't really have a sense of power within yourself because it's all projected onto the parent. When there's a power struggle with the parent, the child tends to carry that in adulthood, where they are always fighting, always causing conflicts.


Robert Maldonado  37:23

The bottom line is whatever experiences you had early on about yourself, the self-concept, and the world — whatever it is, even if it was good — you want to do your inner work to understand that those early experiences do not define you, it's not the end of the story. If it was the end of the story, we'd be in trouble. Because often, those experiences leave a deep imprint on our psyche. We go on through the rest of our lives carrying that, it becomes the lens through which we see the world and ourselves, of course, for the rest of our lives. When we do inner work, we're able to understand that that's just my persona. In essence, that's the role I'm playing on the stage of the world. But it's not who I really am.


Debra Maldonado  38:29

If the same thing keeps happening, the same type of relationships, same type of conflicts, you have to say “I'm the common denominator here.” When we were talking about this episode, we mention that there's certain parenting styles, where there's a withholding of love if you misbehave. A lot of people, especially when I was working with single people, would think “This person didn't call me, they pulled away.” They felt the same pull like a parent pulling away, that pain of “I did something wrong.” The dating tips will tell you “You shouldn't have talked about marriage on the first date”, or “You should have worn something sexier, you shouldn’t let him talk about himself”. Everything is about blaming yourself, you didn't perform or behave the right way, you're not getting the reward. We have the punishment-reward system with the world. A lot of people will grow up in a corporate environment where they have to work, and never ask for help because early on the parents said “Do it yourself, figure it out.” They never had that nurturing. All those early life experiences and dynamic between your self concept and the world now starts playing out. You have to see this like some mirrors. The first step is when you say “Why does this keep happening to me? It's a pattern.” If you feel this repeating, same old thing, it's time to wake up. It's a wake up call. I didn't notice I had patterns until I was 30. I was like “I'm starting to notice a pattern here, only men that are unavailable.” You don't even notice it.


Robert Maldonado  40:27

It's unconscious. It's that program you received early on from genetics and environment, it runs below the radar, you can't see it, you think “I'm acting”, the ego creates the illusion we're making conscious choices, we're choosing to do these things, when in reality it's that 40-40%, which is 80% of your behavior is being shaped by genetics and early environmental experiences. That 20% is chance experiences that had just happened to you. But most of it is already predetermined. You're not free when you're acting from your normal everyday pattern.


Debra Maldonado  41:24

To answer the question “Did your parents raise you to fail?” Yes and no. They raised us to succeed as an ego. However your parents raised you, your ego has a self protective mechanism that's going to build you for survival. Success is just in that mediocre average survival stand. But most of our parents didn't raise us to be extraordinary, most of them raised us to survive. Not fail, I don't know if fail is the right word, but not live out our dreams that we can imagine in our minds, extraordinary, outside of the box living, creative living and fulfillment we all crave as human beings. They helped put us in our fixed mindset but there's always more. It's not wrong. It's just not enough.


Robert Maldonado  42:30

Here's another way to think about it. Biologically, our families help us survive because they feed us, take care of us, keep us warm and make sure we survive physically. That's the first part. The second part is social survival, which they support to. They send us to school, we're going to school, meaning we're learning how to socialize. But the third one, we're on our own, which is the spiritual or psycho spiritual awareness that is not taught to you, you have to find it yourself. It can’t be handed to you. Now, religion can be handed to you but that's more part of culture, that second social element. The third one is finding yourself. It's not even midlife, it starts very early on. You have to start asking those questions.


Debra Maldonado  43:41

I think in junior high we start relieving. We're developing, going through puberty, a shift happens.


Robert Maldonado  43:52

It's those deep philosophical questions, the existential questions of “Who am I? What am I going to do about love? Am I going to be alone or find a partner? What am I going to do about God? My spirituality? What do I believe in? Is it the Big Bang or Creation or some other mystical experience?” All those questions make life meaningful for human beings. If you never bothered to examine those questions, you're only living in that second layer of life. There's nothing wrong with that, we need to survive physically and socially, but it's not the complete human being. That's what Jung is saying, that's not that totality of your true self.


Debra Maldonado  44:50

To individuate, we have to take responsibility. We could look at our childhood, we can get informed by why we are a certain way or understand that, but we don't want to look at it to re-litigate our past and blame, because for the most part, everyone's trying to do their best with what they have. Some parents have limited patience, genetic and cultural limitations. We all wish our parents can be perfect but they're not. But if we're alive today, they did something right. I wasted so much time in my younger years doing personal development, working on my stuff of family and early life, I just was putting off living. We want to empower you to take responsibility, even if terrible things happen, not to push them aside and ignore them, get informed by them but know there's 20% you're not defined by them. This is ego development, what we're talking about. But individuation is transcending the ego. That's really where the freedom happens. It's not about rearranging the furniture and making the ego better, shining up the persona. We want to step into something really magnificent and alive. We’ll see you next week on our last episode of the series, we hope you enjoyed it today. Don't forget to subscribe on Spotify, iTunes, and all those places we have our podcasts. If you're on YouTube, please click the Subscribe button, we’d love to have you notified every time we go live for our podcasts. Take care everyone, have a great day.


Robert Maldonado  46:42

Thanks for watching. 


Debra Maldonado  46:45 

Bye bye.


OUTRO  46:47

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