The Freedom of Being Misunderstood (And Not Giving a Sh*t)

Hello, and welcome back to episode one, season six of Masterful Listening. I'm so excited that this is actually happening that I finally sat down to record this very special episode because it's been over a year since I took a pause with the show. I am not gonna go super deep in this episode about the details of what happened in my life. I will do that more at some point. But I just want to say thank you so much for being here and thank you so much to everyone who's continued to listen to the show this whole time without me posting any new content. Uh overall, I'll

just quickly say I had a year that really challenged me in a lot of ways. I was dealing with a sick parent. I was dealing with a huge move. I was dealing with a lot of life circumstances that were not very fun. And I know I'm sure anyone out there who's listening has been through their own very challenging time. And so I took a lot of time to go inward, be with myself, and not uh express outward and share as much. But I'm back and I'm so excited. I'm actually live from Guatemala at the moment. So sometimes you might hear some birds or some dogs. Just

notice that. Again, this is a listening school, so it's all a practice. And what does it mean to listen when sometimes there's a noises in life? You know, sometimes it gets a noisy. So, with that, I actually want to dive right into the topic and I want to invite you into a moment that I recently had that actually showed me, like, you know what, this is gonna be the topic of episode number one, because I wasn't really sure what to start with. So, again, the episode is called The Freedom of Being Misunderstood and Not Giving a Shit. It's something I've been thinking a lot about. I

don't know about you, but for me, wanting to be understood, like wanting to really feel like I connect with people, like they get me, has been a desire I've had pretty much my whole life. And I have often felt very misunderstood, and it's really bothered me. But I gotta say, one of the things that's uh shifted now that I'm in my 40s, I just turned 41 about a week ago, is this whole relationship around being misunderstood. And I think it's such an important experience, and it's deeply tied to masterful listening. So here's what happened. About maybe a week or two ago, probably about two weeks ago,

I was in town walking through this little town that I live in, and I was with a new acquaintance, and as we were walking through this basically, the town has like one street. I saw up ahead there was a person, and this particular person was the one person this whole time that I've lived here that I've had a negative experience with. I had an interaction with this person where I felt they were extremely rude to me, just like gave off really negative dark energy, and it really freaked me out, honestly. It does not happen very often, but when that kind of thing happens to me, I

feel it, I notice it, and I pretty much just removed myself from the situation. And since then, I've seen this person pretty much every day because it's such a small little town, you kind of see everyone, but I just do not interact with them. One thing I've learned is, you know, when you feel really dark energy from someone, you don't gotta figure it out and deal with it. You can just not interact with it. That's maybe another topic, but that's a little bit of context. So I see this person, I'm walking with my friend, and I hear her say, Oh, let me introduce you to someone

really great. And I'm like, oh God, she's about to introduce me to this person who I know who I've had this really crappy interaction with. So I'm already, I'm like right there. We're walking over. So I just take a deep breath, I come over, and she says, you know, this is Fatlana, this is whoever it is. And I just politely say hello and I just stand there quietly. I don't engage much, I'm just kind of neutral. And uh then I walked off to get my coffee. So it was an interesting moment, right? Because I thought to myself, okay, I have this new acquaintance. Clearly, this acquaintance

likes this individual. And clearly I've had a very negative experience with this individual. So, like, do I tell her that? Do I go ahead and share this negativity, or do I just let it go? I don't need to like everyone that everyone likes. And frankly, we've all probably had a crappy day where we put off some weird energy, right? So there's just, you know, who knows what the right thing to do. What I, though, decided to do is practice something that I just heard about a week before that I loved, which is called wise restraint. Wise restraint. I heard that term on a podcast, a Taoist

podcast that I love. This guy does these really short little episodes. His voice is amazing. Gosh, I don't remember what it's called, but I'm literally gonna look it up right now and mention it because I mean, I don't know if it's the smartest thing as a podcaster to send people to another podcast, but I'm gonna do it. Yeah, it's called Life Wisdom by Words of Taoism. Incredible. So this man mentions this idea of wise restraint, right? And I'm someone who hasn't always practiced restraint so much. I'm usually someone who overshared, just typically growing up more, I'd say, in my 20s and most of my 30s as

well. Uh there's definitely many versions of me that would have just straight up told this new acquaintance, like, actually, no, I don't really like this person. This thing happened. But I just decided to stay quiet. It didn't seem like a smart thing to do, or like a wise thing to do, or just like it just didn't seem like the right thing to do to talk shit about someone who someone clearly respected and admired. So I just didn't make a big deal out of it. I just kind of let it go. And a little bit later that day, she brought this person up again, and I could

feel like she was trying to get more info out of me, kind of bringing up what they look like. Because this person has a very um, I'm gonna say, unique, kind of intense look, covered in a lot of tattoos, which, you know, if you've seen me, I'm covered in a lot of tattoos. So there's no judgment. But the point is, this is someone who has a very fierce, intense look. And that is not the problem I had with them. My problem was separate. But when I felt like she kept kind of bringing it up, I said, you know what? Honestly, I had a pretty negative interaction

with them. And so I just didn't really want to engage and I didn't say anything because I didn't think it was useful. To which she said basically she doesn't appreciate being lied to and that she could read energy anyway, so she could tell that I, you know, had a problem with them. And uh, you know, okay. I wasn't really sure what to do with that. I don't consider not sharing something, lying. But it was the next comment that really got me, which was basically like, you know, I can tell that we have different core values. So kind of it's probably better that we just like we're

acquaintances, not friends. Now, here's the thing. At this point, I was feeling the exact same thing in a way. Not about the core values, even, but just about I didn't really feel comfortable being myself around this person. I didn't like that my choice to hold back on sharing negativity was taken as lying. I didn't like that this person was now assuming core values of mine without asking me what they were and actually without showing any curiosity about what had actually happened with that person, right? There was none of that. And it felt very uncomfortable. And I noticed, wow, this is another moment where I feel really

kind of misunderstood, kind of judged. And I really just felt it in my body. It was like this discomfort in my chest. Like, that's the thing. Part of masterful listening, and I want you to consider this, is like our bodies react, right? Like, if we're having an uncomfortable interaction with someone, we can feel it. Chest gets tight. Sometimes my heart started racing, and I was just like, what do I do here? There were different options. You know, I could have responded and started typing a bunch of information about, well, you don't know about my values, and here's what really happened, and blah, blah, blah. I didn't

do any of that. I just kind of paused and realized, A, I don't really have a desire to be friends with this person myself based on my experience with them. B, uh I've just really liked this idea of wise restraint, right? Like I don't think we have to tell people anything, positive or negative. I don't think we owe people information necessarily. And I certainly did not feel curiosity from someone. I actually felt a very quick judgment. And it really made me think about listening, right? Because again, I said this in the trailer of the show. I think I've said this a lot in a lot of

the seasons. What we say is not what's heard, and sometimes what we don't say can very well be misinterpreted in a million different ways, right? Because that's the whole thing. Like we've all had all these situations in life, all these things we've lived through. We have all these stories, we're all listening through our own lens. And the reality is that, oh my God, we're not really hearing or listening to what's being said often. We're just listening through our own often trauma. You know, this makes me think of this time I was 16 years old, and um I had a boyfriend for about a year, and we

were, you know, really in love. And it was a serious relationship. I mean, as much as a 15, 16-year-old relationship can be. And then I broke up with him. I felt kind of suffocated, and he was very, very, very, very upset. I mean, so angry. He literally at one point said something like, I will never even look at another redhead again. And for like the next 10 years, I tried to not reconcile and get back with him, but like make an effort to reach out, try to just uh have some sort of connection, friendship. No, nothing, not uh this person like hated me. And I thought,

man, if he ever meets a redhead, like it's just it's tainted. Like, not because of anything she did, but because of me. Because again, sometimes we have a crappy experience with a redhead, and then every redhead is gonna be viewed through some lens of negativity. That's just one example, right? Like, I hope he's moved on, and that's not still true. I don't know. The reality is we this is what we do. It doesn't mean we're bad, but it that's what makes listening so important and so challenging, right? When we have our own experiences, traumas, stories, it is very hard to actually be in a certain moment

with someone who then triggers an experience, a feeling, and not respond from that past. This is like a really interesting psychological phenomenon. If you've been to therapy, you might be familiar with this idea, but we're often not actually responding to what's happening. We're usually responding to whatever part of us has been uh damaged, traumatized, triggered by something in the past that's coming back up again, right? So again, I don't know the history of these two people, you know, that I uh my acquaintance, and then this other person that I had a negative experience with. I don't really know much information about either of their lives, but

I know myself well enough at this point, and I understand the idea of listening well enough to know, wow, that was just a situation where, yeah, this person completely misread me. She doesn't know me at all. She's barely spent any time with me, but she chose to judge me based on what I didn't say very quickly, make an assumption about my values, and that is something that I'm not okay with. And it was super cool because I was very uncomfortable that night. Like my body felt bad. I kind of also emotionally felt sad because my birthday was coming up, and I kind of was like, oh,

I made a new friend, and I'm like, well, no, not anymore. But still, it was like I'm not leaving myself, I'm not abandoning myself. I'm not gonna question my own integrity, my own values just because somebody else is. And that was a big deal because I've spent so much of my life having very poor boundaries. And when someone else would misunderstand me or say something about me that I didn't like or I wasn't sure was true, I would often let it go to my head and be like, wait, am I like that? Are those my values? Am I not this or that? And it caused me

so much pain. And I want you to consider have you had pain because you felt misunderstood or judged, or someone said something about you or your values that you're just like, uh-uh, like that doesn't really align with who I thought I am, right? I think these things happen all the time, and that's why it's so important to actually know who you are. Like, do you know who you are? Do you know your values? Like, really? Like, when was the last time you took some time to actually check in on, wait, what are my values right now? Because that's what also came up for me. I thought,

you know, when was the last time I actually did a values exercise with myself? As a coach, I do this with my clients all the time. But I thought, what are my values? And I'm like, you know what? I think wise restraint is gonna be one of my values. I don't want to be someone that talks shit about anyone negatively, especially to someone new, I don't really know. It's not like an old friend that I called and vented to because I had a rough moment. Like, that's cool, that's different. But I actually absolutely like the idea of like saying less, especially negative stuff, especially when you

don't have too much data. And if someone doesn't like that, that's just a sign of misalignment. That is not a chance for me or an opportunity for me to then doubt my own values and think, oh no, I'm not worth being friends with. No. Yeah, our brains have something called a confirmation bias. I want to bring this up. It's some interesting neuroscience. And essentially, the idea is our brain is looking for that which it already believes, right? So if someone has a story about you, for example, if someone has a story about me that says, oh, she, you know, didn't share what she's actually feeling. That's

not cool. She's a liar. Their brain will scan everything to find support for that story. Just notice that. Have you ever had like an amazing day? You woke up feeling super happy and suddenly you're walking outside and everybody's smiling, and suddenly you're like, I got a free latte, or oh, I got this, or I got that. Like you're kind of in love with the world because you yourself feel in a state of love. Could also be the other way. Have you ever just like woken up, had a really crappy day, felt really down, and suddenly like everyone's frowning, crappy shit keeps happening. We literally look to

confirm whatever bias, whatever story we have about other people and about life. That is why trying too hard to be understood by anyone else is very dangerous because it's kind of like an uphill battle. Most of the time, it's a battle against a mind that's already most likely decided something about you, kind of like perhaps my ex has an assumption about like every redhead he's met since me, just because like he had a really crappy experience of heartbreak with me, right? Again, I want you to consider how is this resonating for you? Right? Can you relate to what I'm sharing? Have you ever felt like I'm

like saying something to someone and it's just that's not what they seem to be hearing? Like you're in different stories. How often are we actually in a different story with someone? I think it happens all the time. Like I've actually stopped in the middle of a conversation and been like, wait, hold on. Here's what I'm saying. What are you hearing? Because I literally feel like we're in a different story. It's like kind of a fun experiment to do where at the end of a night you can ask whoever you're with, like, hey, like tell me about this the story you were in tonight. I mean, it's

a really fun experiment, actually. So do that as homework if you'd like, especially if you feel a little uncomfortable. Because you could be really uncomfortable and the other person has zero idea and is having a totally different experience, or vice versa. So again, it's an interesting thing to consider, right? And just the whole thing around us and our connection and relationship to other people is super important, very tied again to masterful listening, right? Because, you know, I'm sure you've heard people say, like, oh, you know, like, don't care what other people think. Yeah, sure. Like, in theory, it sounds great. Oh, you know, don't care what

people think. I think we're all pretty much wired to care what people think. I think it takes a lot of work to care less about what people think. So, in my world, what I practice and what I recommend practicing more as another masterful listening skill is not about not caring what anyone thinks, but actually caring about what certain people think. Like, find the people you admire, find the people you care about, find the people who care about you. I always say when you're gonna ask feedback from someone, make sure it's the right person because you can get all kinds of feedback, all kinds of people have

an opinion. And often people who've never even done the thing you're trying to do have all kinds of opinions. Those are not the people you want to be listening to. Those are not the people you want to be caring about, what they think. There's a million trolls out there, right? Like I could post content and I think it's amazing and helpful. And somebody could again hear it through their own twisted, weird confirmation bias. And what I said is not what they heard. I do not want to waste a second of my life thinking about what that person thinks. But the people who I admire, who are

smart and interesting and who've done the things I'd like to do, who I respect, who I know care about me, I think it's actually really great to care what they think. I think it's great to learn how to listen to what they think and perhaps get feedback from them, right? And more than that, you still gotta really be grounded in what's real and true for you. Because even someone who you really care about, who really cares about you, could say things to you that are just wrong, that are their own opinion. Own bias. And so, right, there's a lot here. But it really starts first with

knowing who you are, with knowing what's important to you, and with just practicing in our conversations in general, whether they're with someone we like or we don't, whether they're with someone we respect or we don't, whether they're with someone who we've asked feedback from or who's just given it unsolicited, which I always recommend don't do that. Right? Because it's those moments in the conversations that are actually where we practice this skill of masterful listening. So let me give you one tool or just like one way of thinking about it that's gonna help. It's this idea of responding versus reacting. Okay. Right. And this could be a

cool practice, right? So imagine you're in a moment and someone said something or not said something and it feels a bit tense, right? Like you feel your chest tighten up, or you feel your heart beating, or you get, you know, like a message from someone and you just like want to respond really fast. The first thing to do is just to pause, notice that, notice your body speaking and listen to it. I find that whenever I feel my heart beating fast, that is the sign to take a deep inhale and a really long exhale. That literally is a very simple way to reset and ground your

nervous system. Just three deep long breaths can make a world of a difference. Let's do one right now as a practice. Inhale through your nose,

exhale out

as long as you can. The longer the exhale, the better, especially if you feel a bit overwhelmed. So, again, if you notice yourself with a fast heart rate and you want to respond, or you want to react, take a couple breaths with a long exhale. Because responding can be very intentional. Reacting is usually not, is usually when we get in trouble and we send the really long message and then we're like, oh, why'd I say that? Or we say something really kind of crappy and we're like, why'd I say that? Right. So just notice you could say to yourself, do I want to react or do

I want to respond? Pause, take a couple breaths, and then check in with yourself. Right. I had two examples recently in my life where this whole react versus respond thing was so present. I was in a conversation with someone who was very uh passionate about what they were saying, and we kind of had a disagreement, and I said that I saw something differently, and this person got kind of heated, and I just continued to stay really calm and focus on my breathing. And the more calm I stayed and the more steady I was, the more this person got more and more angry and escalated until they

just stormed off, screamed, and was like, I can't do this anymore. And I just kept quiet and stayed breathing. And yeah, my body felt kind of uncomfortable, but I was like, I'm so proud of myself. I didn't allow myself to get hijacked and triggered back, which I think often when people get in like a triggered state, they kind of want to like spar. And I was like, Yeah, no, I'm not gonna do that. I've spent so much time in my life doing that. There's like nothing that's gonna come out of that that I believe is really useful. And not only did I not engage and I

kind of stayed cool, but there's some version of me that would have, I guess, like a little bit in like a people-pleasing kind of way, or like not wanting to be not liked or not wanting to be misunderstood, would have like reached out and tried to smooth things over. I didn't do that either. Now, if this person ever wanted to come to me and have a conversation, I'm a hundred percent open. But I think part of being okay being misunderstood is like letting things be, even if they ended off kind of negative or someone storms off, doesn't mean I gotta fix it. Because the fixing it

would have come from this place of what I want this person to like me. You know what? I want to like me. And I think because I do like me more, I don't feel like I gotta say something nicer or send an extra nice emoji or try to like sugarcoat stuff just to like be liked. I had another situation recently where someone literally said, fuck you to me in the middle of a conversation where they got triggered. And I mean, that is a pretty, I don't remember the last time that ever happened, and I just took a breath and noticed like, yeah, this person is in

charge of dealing with their own emotions and triggers, not me. Right? We cannot take responsibility for other people's triggers. It is our responsibility to deal with our own triggers, our own experience of life. And sometimes things are tough, sometimes we react, and it's fine, right? It happens. Then you get the chance to clean it up if you want, which is a great thing to do, right? We always have a choice, we gotta choose our choice, but it is so cool when you can choose to respond and not react. So I want you to practice that the next time you kind of want to like write a

message really fast when you're pissed or get really angry and yell, you know.

So much better to just say, you know what? I'm a little triggered right now. I'm gonna walk away. Can we continue this later? Yes, that is like masterful listening mastery. Right? So yeah, I want you to start thinking about who are you gonna care about? Who's you know, worth giving a shit about? Right? Whose attention, whose uh opinions do you want to care about more? And still, even if those opinions somehow show that like you're not understood by that person or you don't agree, can you know yourself well enough to not let that totally derail you? Because I'm telling you, something like this, this what happened

to me a couple of weeks ago with this person would have derailed me, I think for days, weeks before. And I spent like two hours kind of reflecting on it and was uncomfortable. And then I thought, well, this is a great topic for the show. And then I went to sleep, and then I woke up and I didn't even think about it, which was so rad, right? And I didn't send another message to try to smooth things out or convince anyone to be my friend or get them to like me. Cause again, I realized I like me, and there's something that's such a freedom, like oh,

in not needing to be liked and not needing to be understood. And it doesn't mean that I want people to dislike me and that I want people to misunderstand me. I really feel like the right people just show enough curiosity and enough masterful listening where they will like us and understand us more, right? I think those people are out there. And I think it's rare to have those connections, which is why practicing this skill is so important, right? Like staying who you are, staying in your own energy, in your own knowing of like, no, this is who I am. I'm not gonna let the world tell

me who I am, I'm not gonna let this person tell me who I am. I know who I am. And check in with yourself on that. You know, sometimes we show up in a way that it's like, yo, I wasn't being who I really like myself to be. And when that happens, great, good job noticing that. You can always apologize, you can always learn a lesson, you can always try better, right? None of us are perfect. And if we want to clarify things with someone, if we want to try to be more understood, sure. I'm not saying those are bad things, but I'm encouraging you to

not need to be understood and seen and liked in order to be okay with yourself and like yourself. And the cool thing is, this is a very learnable skill. Like you could get better at this. I actually have a friend, uh, shout out to her. I doubt she's gonna doubt. I'm gonna just say her name is Alex. And uh, I was thinking about her recently because uh I moved from California last year. And so I haven't seen pretty much anyone in my community there. And I've been friends with Alex for like 15 years. She was one of the first people I met back when I moved

to San Francisco. And Alex and I would have the most epic fights. I mean, talk about uh reacting, right? We're both like very big, uh opinionated, bold personalities. And we would get into these like crazy text fights that just would go on and on and on, and then we'd be like, okay, we're not talking anymore. But then we kept talking. One time we actually literally got in a physical altercation, which I'm not suggesting anyone does, but I'm just saying, like, we, oh my gosh, it was like heated. And this would happen for a long time. Then we'd kind of like make up and fight, make up.

And then a couple of years ago, we got in another one. And at that point, I think I was just like, uh-uh, no, I can't. Like, I'm gonna actually disengage. Cause you know, it's easy to say, like, okay, I'm done talking and then keep sending messages versus like just stop, pause. And we took quite a long pause, I think a couple of years. And then she reached out and we reconnected. She'd done a lot of work on herself. I'd done a lot of work on myself. We were both able to take responsibility for our own reactions, our own triggers. And it's amazing. We're still we're great

friends. We have an awesome relationship. I think we've worked through so much. And interestingly enough, when I was thinking about her recently, I realized she's the one that was with me when we kind of came up with this idea of masterful listening together. And so, shout out to Alex because she reminds me always that just because you do have conflict with someone doesn't mean that that cannot turn into an incredible relationship, a wonderful friendship. She's someone that I admire because I've seen her take responsibility for her own side of things. I do my best to do that right. So that's the thing. I think the people

who are worth caring about care about us. They show us that they're willing to do their work. They take responsibility. And I think if we all tried to A, listen a little better to ourselves and allow ourselves to be wrong about ourselves too. Right? Like I might have thought that, oh my gosh, if this happened and someone really misunderstood me, I'd like freak out and be really upset. And I didn't. I surprised myself here. And I was like, damn, I've really done a lot of work on this. I'm really proud of myself. I didn't lose myself because someone else didn't see me the way I wanted.

Hell yeah. Good job. Good job, me. And good job, you, right? If you're still here, if you're listening to this, I know that you're someone who wants to, you know, discover a version of yourself that's the best listener, probably the best version of you, whatever that means. And that's awesome. You're doing the work. And that's really all we can do, right? We can just keep doing the work. So yeah, I turned 41 here in Guatemala. Pretty much I was all alone with my dogs, and I didn't feel lonely because I would really rather be alone than uh be annoyed and uh feel lonely around other people.

And uh I'm very grateful for all these experiences that are again showing me where I still have to do work, where I've done the work. And ultimately, I really do believe that the most important work is not even like loving ourselves, but it's liking ourselves, which is actually the topic of episode two. So I hope you tune in for that. And I hope this was helpful. I hope this encourages you to spend more time on understanding yourself than on needing to be understood by anybody else because it's probably not even gonna happen and it's not even about you. That's the thing. Most of the time when

people misunderstand us or just like don't respond to us in the way we like, it's not even about us. They're probably in their own head thinking about something else because they're not masterfully listening. So they should probably listen to this show so you can send them this episode. All right. Uh, I think that feels pretty complete. Uh, what else? Anything else? Oh, yes. Uh, if you liked the episode, share it, subscribe, send it to someone else who's awesome. And um I'm also going to attach some cool new resources that I've worked on this year. I came up with an incredible free listening PDF with some awesome

tools. And then in about a week or so, very soon, I will be launching an ebook, like a master or a masterful listening guide, which I'm very excited about. It's basically been 10 years in the making and it's like 80 pages, and it's like every tool, a lot of them I've covered on the show. So check that out. Please support that if uh you resonate with that and if the show has been helpful. Again, whether you're a new person or you're coming back, thank you so much for listening. And really, super duper shout out to those who continued to listen even when I wasn't posting anything.

I'll talk more about my pause this year. I'm really glad to be back. I hope this was useful. And if it is, write to me. Let me know. Did you like it? Would you like? Okay. Um, bye. See you next time.