Jen Li 0:01
The heart of humans podcast explores the secrets to building flourishing relationships. We demystify the elements of desire, trust and love by interviewing conscious lovers and providing reflections to help you create the relationships of your dreams.
Today we have a guest and friend of mine back Patel, who is a coach in leading a unique consulting coaching and support community called gentle parents unite. He is helping parents uncover limiting beliefs to honor their relationships with their loved ones. He co hosts the gentle parents unite podcast with Shri Jai Johnston to cover all things parenting, and his words have even been shared by my tween idol, Atlantis Morissette. All of our learned beliefs begin from home. So I am honored and pleased to introduce my guest, that that Patel on to the show. Welcome to the show the back. Thank you, john,
Vivek 1:04
I'm so happy to be here. We've known each other and had a really deep, respectful relationship for for many years. And I appreciate you sharing your voice with the world.
Jen Li 1:15
Thank you. My experience with you has been nothing but love. And I'm so excited to hear more about the the beautiful program that you've created. But before we get there, I'm interested to know, what does home mean to you?
Vivek 1:34
Yeah, that's a beautiful question. You know, I think of I think of a child just born. And in the moment they're just born, or let's say even the moment just before they're born, they do not have any labels for anything, they do not have a sense of all the separation between things, when they look around, they don't know that's a chair. And that's a picture. And that's a couch. And that's a plant, they don't know those things. All of it is just one sea of one sea of sand sensation. And because they don't have any labels, there's this sense of deep belonging with everything, that they're an integrated part of everything. They're an integrated part of this system that they that they see. And, and they don't see a sense of separation, they don't feel a sense of separation. And there's that original consciousness that's so present in babies. And for me, the sense of feeling home is an environment, a relationship, an exercise, a practice, an attitude, a thought, a feeling, any any experience in life, that helps me touch into that original consciousness, and supports it, and embraces it and makes it safe and nourishing for me to operate from that place. And that's certainly the you know, the founding principle by which I curated the environment in my home with my kid was that it would always be a place where her her deepest truth was honored and, and supported.
Jen Li 3:15
so beautiful, so beautifully put, could you could you tell me the story of how you got started teaching conscious parenting?
Vivek 3:25
Absolutely. It actually started when I was, I would say three years old. And I was brought up in a very, let's say, mainstream thinking household, especially with my dad. So lots of punishments and getting spanked a lot. And, and I'm sure he did it, because he thought that was the best way to do things. But we know now that it isn't. And so I remember at one point, I was three years old, and I can still see it. So clearly, john, when I'm when I picture it in my mind that I'm on the land and going downstairs, and I'm over his knee. And he's spanking me for doing something. And and you know, what can a three year old do that deserves a spanking a three year old is just always going to be a three year old, you know? And and so then I'm experiencing this and then suddenly I have this almost like an out of body experience, where I was floating above the scene, and I was watching the scene. And I saw me as a three year old and I saw him as a I don't know how old he would have been 30 something year old, late 20s, early 30s, I guess. And I saw him hitting me. And because I was in this kind of detached perspective, I could see that it I could see the experience of it being two humans engaged in this file exchange, and three years old, at three years old. I saw it so clearly and I knew was wrong, I knew it was fundamentally wrong. And the phrase came to me that day and it never left me that one day, I'm going to be a dad and I'm going to do it differently. And, of course, my life being brought up that way, went through all sorts of all sorts of journeys, you know, I being brought up coercively I ended up becoming defensive and angry, and, and an acting out in all sorts of ways. Because, you know, my one liner is the one Alanis Morissette actually shared, the one liner, his kids are not acting out, they're reaching out. That's right. Yeah. And so there's a part of me inside that was reaching, reaching, reaching, but couldn't find anything. So I ended up falling in with a bad crowd and getting involved with all sorts of illegal activities and all sorts of dangerous stuff. And, and violence and crime, and my whole life was just like spiraling. Wow. Yeah. And for sure, I would either be in jail or dead right now. If I kept going in that direction.
Jen Li 6:04
Oh, wow. I had no idea. Yeah, I do not actually envision or even expected anything of that nature and knowing you today. That that's something.
Vivek 6:19
Yeah.
Jen Li 6:19
So what what was the point where you said that this is something that I can, that atch can actually benefit people, if people were to see how this affected me as a child and how this could affect other children?
Vivek 6:36
Yeah, exactly. That, will you you answered the question in the question, right. It's, it's because I know how it affected me. And I've seen the result of doing the opposite on my daughter, and that makes me so passionate about it. And when my kid came along, I took all of that rebellious energy, and I channeled it into my parenting. And I rebelled against the mainstream paradigm, and I rebelled against the punishment and rewards mindset. And I rebelled against the idea that we have to have authority and control over our parents over our kids. I just rebelled like a rebellious teenager. So I was. So if you see that, there's videos of me, in those old days, I'm like, my hair is wild. And my beard is like halfway down to my belly. And my eyes are wild. And I'm like, because I'm going against me, I'm 28. Now going against all of society's main ideas, you know of how to treat kids. And, but I was so passionate about it, because I know the pain of the other, I remember what it's like to be 13 I remember what it's like to be 16 I remember what it's like to be three, you know, my heart breaks for those little ones when I when I see them not being honored for who they are.
Jen Li 7:50
I'm just having a moment because you bring me back to me when I was a kid to being punished and not feeling really connected to my parents. So you're really speaking to, to the same experience?
Vivek 8:12
How does that how does that affect you today? Gen as an adult, in your relationships and your relationship with yourself?
Jen Li 8:18
Yeah, it's really funny because I had a big breakthrough this weekend, this past weekend. And it was around my shame around failure. My parents hid their divorce from their family. Oh, they couldn't bring it to their family. And growing up, we played a charade. Almost like an act like nothing's wrong. There's nothing there's nothing to say. And then our I don't want to make it a cultural thing. But yeah, there was a cultural component to it, where it was taboo for our parents to be divorced. Wow. And I struggled through connecting with myself through high school. And I hid all of my failures, because I feel like it was never good to show people your failures. So Wow, that's how it affected me.
Vivek 9:25
Wow.
Jen Li 9:27
What is what is your opinion on shame?
Vivek 9:30
I'm so glad you brought shame up, Jen. It's something that I've been thinking a lot about lately. Certainly in my own life from experiencing that whole punishment dynamic, like you were talking about, and the embarrassment of mistakes, and not being able to own our mistakes. I mean, shame has, shame seems to be integrated deeply into the parenting dynamic. And that's because, you know, we've been handed down this idea that you cannot change without shame, a shame has to be part of it. I mean, in the in the I do workshops in self empowerment workshops in prisons with my mother,
Jen Li 10:10
you do workshops in prisons with your mother.
Vivek 10:12
That's correct. Wow. And not since COVID. But prior to that for almost 10 years, every week, it's really her program. And I'm her assistant. And the two of us go in there. And, and I share my past, you know, I told you about my past a little bit. And they can really relate to me because my past is very similar to their present. And, and then, and my mom who's an incredibly loving, empathetic, wise, powerful person. She shares the same kind of philosophy that I share with parents, she shares with them. And the main thing she works on is helping them face and love and eradicate their shame. Most people would say they should feel shame for what they did. But the thing is, that shame perpetuates the cycle of their choices, it doesn't help them improve their choices, because they're run from the shame. And I talked about the difference between shame and remorse. Because remorse is, remorse is a kind of pain that comes when we know we've done something that's out of alignment with our values. And we do that sometimes, right? We make mistakes, we act out of align with our values, we might hurt somebody. And because we know we're connected to that person, because we care about that person, and we feel bad that we hurt them. And that's a beautiful thing. That's a human thing. That's not shame. Shame is a pain that makes us run away from self knowledge. Because it hurts too much. It hurts in a way that we have to protect ourselves, it hurts in a way that we have to become defensive. Every single person who gets defensive in an argument and happen I mean, if you spent five minutes on Facebook, you'll see it 100 times every single person is responding to their inner shame, their inner fear, you know, and because that's why I always say that when we're when we're when you're when you have two adults talking together, you actually have two adults. And then you have to enter four year olds to enter tenure roles and to enter 16 year olds, and you have all these, you have all these inner children battling it out with the adults, and it's just a complicated mess. Unless you're have two adults that are both aware of the of those inner voices, and then then take ownership and responsibility for them. And then you can have a beautiful interaction. That's one of the things about shame is when we take responsibility for ourselves and really, in a really loving, gentle, caring, but honest and courageous way. Then we can remove shame from the equation and we don't need shame to change. Change does not require shame.
Jen Li 12:46
Yeah, yeah, there there's definitely a belief that shame is required for some type of some would say moral obligation or some type of boundary. But you know, like, that's where I posed the question. Is there anywhere you believe shame could be a positive force.
Vivek 13:11
That's why I bring up the difference between remorse and shame, right? Shame is always a problem. Because shame is not solution focused. But remorse which is the genuine natural feeling bad about something that you did is a beautiful thing. And I think people who often can get caught up in forgetting that we have that natural compass within us you know, what when I feel when I feel that that remorse that pain, I think of it like a like a compass, pointing me to something to look at pointing me to something for me to learn pointing me for something to pay more attention to right so I think that remorse is a beautiful thing. Just like fear is a beautiful thing. But But fear that has fear that has like fear for my life, trauma attached to it, you know, then the survival mechanism that I create, they actually harm me later on. Wow. And so and so fear with trauma attached to it is like it's like remorse with trauma attached to it. It becomes shame.
Jen Li 14:21
Yes. I get that. Yeah. Wow.
Vivek 14:26
That's the first time I've said it that way. I have to remember that one here with trauma attached to it and, and remorse of the trauma attached trauma attached to it. Yeah,
Jen Li 14:36
that is so salient. I really get that. Yeah, yeah, there's definitely the stickiness that lingers after punishment or after even punishing ourselves. For for feeling out of out of touch or hurting someone.
Vivek 14:56
Yeah.
Jen Li 14:58
That's really interesting because it Still, it still is a trauma that lives and pervades our everyday life.
Vivek 15:07
Yeah.
Jen Li 15:09
Wow.
Vivek 15:11
You know, the other day I was, I was taking a walk off and I'll, I'll take walks around just around the block. And I'll go live and I'll go live while I do because I love going I love going live and just sharing my thoughts just talking about what I'm learning because I'm always learning something. So when I share with people, I feel like it's, it's doubling the effectiveness of my learning. And, and so I was walking, I was walking just outside my house. And there was this father there with his two kids and one was like to the little girl is too so cute. And the little boy was like around four and, and they're just taking a leisurely walk and all sudden the girl stops and she bends down. She's looking at this pine cone, she's playing with the pine cone. And her dad says it's time to go and I'm maybe I'm across the street and maybe a couple houses down. So I'm like, you know, maybe like, I don't know, 100 feet away, but like not too far. And, but far enough that we're I wasn't in their space in any way. And so she's bent down, she's picking up the pine cone, she's looking at it. And I don't know what she was doing picking up the seeds. And that says, Okay, it's time to go. Come on, honey, it's time to go. And then he said, Okay, fine. I'm leaving, and I'm leaving you behind. And the look on this little ones face that fear. And like the sense that she was doing something terribly, terribly wrong. And this is such a normal thing parents do, right? I'm leaving now. I'll show you the three, whatever it is. Sure. And I telling you, Jen, in that moment, my inner two year old, the hurt two year old was activated. And I said, I said to the girl, I immediately I said to the girl, sweetie pie, there's no way your daddy would leave you he doesn't mean it when he says that. You have nothing to be afraid of honey, I know it's scary to hear an adult your dad tell you that he's gonna leave you walk away from you. But he would never do that because he loves you, honey, he's not going to do that. Am I right? That he would never do that, right. And he looked at me like, like a deer caught in the headlights. And it was kind of like, it's kind of like he hurt himself because he didn't get angry or defensive at me, which was beautiful. Actually, I was very impressed. He went down and he picked up his kid, she kind of like, you know, like, scrambled into his arms. And she was kind of looking at me the whole time. And then I would wave and she would wave. And as they were walking down the street, she kept peeking at me. And we ended up deciding to I'm just gonna walk the opposite way to them because I wanted to give them a space after that. And they walked away. And in my heart, I just, I just could really feel that sense of how the smallest moments like that. Most parents would just think that's just a normal moment. For me, I saw. So clearly the imprint that was being laid on on this young girl's subconscious, you know, how that's gonna affect her self image, how that's going to affect her relationships in the future, how that's going to affect her sense of her own courage. You know, shame destroys our courage, it destroys our creativity, it destroys our relationship with ourselves. And, and we spend the rest of our lives trying to make up for it, you know?
Jen Li 18:25
Wow, when you speak. Like, I feel like you're speaking to the inner child inside of me. Because I get so emotional when you when you share that story. Oh, I'm really grateful. You know that you share that because whatever your child wants is to feel more connected to themselves and to have that courage to show to show their parents everything. I feel like wow, it's made me so emotional. I can't even express my thoughts
Vivek 19:00
yeah with you my friend. I'm with you. This is this is what the work is really about you know is is touching into those pain pain points inside of us so that we can love them.
Jen Li 19:13
Yeah, thank you so much for really connecting to the truth of what children need and what they want.
Vivek 19:22
Yeah.
Jen Li 19:23
What is one risk that you are always willing to take?
Vivek 19:32
Yeah, you know, one of my one liners is love is enough. And anytime I anytime I have a choice point in front of me a decision to make I always try and feel into what is the what is why what decision can I make here where I'm taking the biggest, the biggest gamble on love, the biggest gamble on on connection because it's The world doesn't support that, you know, the world supports protection and fear and control and correction that doesn't support. acceptance, radical acceptance and connection and deep communication. You know,
Jen Li 20:16
why do you think that is? Why do you think that is such a high? It's a high ask for people.
Vivek 20:25
I think partially, because of how we were raised, you know, I mean, I came into the whole process wanting to do it differently. And it was still such a struggle for me, you know, because I had that, that programming. And fortunately, our brains are not fixed quantities that they're, they're reprogrammable. And, and we can impress new patterns into our brains. But we come with some pretty strong patterns, we come with the patterns from our own families, we come with the patterns from our culture, like you were talking about earlier. I mean, my family's from India, there's a lot of, there's a lot of cultural history there, right. And we have the, the 10,000 years, of course of history handed down to us globally and in in that respect. And then it's reflected in the media, and it's reflected in, you know, literature, and it's reflected in all of our systems, the economic system, the education system, the correctional system, the legal system, is reflected in all of our systems. So, so how can we get away from it, it's like this huge, huge effort to get away from it, you know, and to and to choose or to choose a paradigm and to operate from it consciously, not because it's the one that's imposed been imposed on you is, I mean, I mean, for me, it's daily work, I call it the daily grind, because it requires a daily, daily work to be conscious and not fall into the dominant habit patterns. And then, and then I interact with my kid, like, where equals, like, we're both humans, and we have the same rights, and we have the same deserve the same respect. And, and it's so rare. I mean, it's, it's rare to it's, it's not, it's becoming less rare, thankfully than 23 years ago. But it's still pretty rare for parents to treat their kids. Like they're equal human beings.
Jen Li 22:29
What is one risk that you will never take with your children?
Vivek 22:38
I will do everything I can to avoid the risk of curtailing her free will and her consent. And I know that's, that's, that's challenging for a lot of people, because? Because it seems like sometimes we have to, you know, and parents often will say, Oh, we have to. And it's a huge risk, it's a huge risk to just let go and trust your kids path is really like jumping off a cliff. It's a huge risk. But you asked me what risk I wouldn't take right in the parenting support space that I host with my colleagues who died Johnson that you mentioned at the beginning, that you can find by going to gentle parents unite slash membership. And we have just over 100 people in that group right now. And I do we do weekly coaching calls. And, and that means like, some anywhere between three and 10 people at a time, get on these calls, and everybody gets 10 or 15 minutes, and you ask a question, or you share something in your life that you're dealing with with your kids. And I share sujetos her coaching calls, and I do mine. So we share our perspective and some suggestions and things to try and ways to look at it based on all the stuff that you know what I've been talking about. And then, and then people, the rest of the community can type in their ideas. And then we go on to the next person. It's really beautiful. And people feel really deeply heard and seen. It's very intimate, and I love doing this work. And sometimes the kids come on with us. And because they they're around, right and we always want to be kid friendly. We never say you have to wait until the kids are asleep, the way I am with kids the way I empower them. The way I see their light and their power and their capacity and their and their inner beauty. It lights them up, you know, and kids interact with me for 30 seconds and they just want to tell me everything about their lives. And so one time recently this one kid was talking about how they're concerned about getting a new baby because the mom was pregnant and the new baby was coming and this kid was maybe three four years old. I was talking about how they were concerned about their their baby brother coming. And so when I say oh yeah, yeah, I can talk cuz I always when kids tell me anything. I I always start with empathy. I always start with empathy and gratitude. I call it the gratitude response. And the gratitude response is as soon as a kid does something says something, immediately look for something to be grateful for look for something to appreciate, look for something to validate to start there. Because when we start with a criticism, we start with a complaint that shuts them down. Right, this is part of combating shame is starting with something to be grateful for starting with something to appreciate always. And so. And so immediately, I said, all I can really see how that that that would be really hard. And I understand that. And immediately he started going ba, ba, ba, ba, ba, and he kind of ran away and grabbed a toy and started going bop, bop, bop ba and didn't want to hear what I have to say. And his father said, Hey, kiddo, really nicely, really, really nicely said, Hey, kiddo, Vic wasn't finished, he was telling you something. And I immediately stopped the father. I said, No, don't do that. He was like, What is it don't do that. As though I said this, too. And this is the risk that I won't take. I said, it's too big a risk to say that to a kid, because they're gonna think they did something wrong. And they're gonna think I think I'm more important than they are and that you think I'm more important that they are and that I don't trust their direction. Your kid gave me a very clear communicative direction. They said, I don't want to hear that. I appreciate what you said, I'm done with the conversation. I want to do this now. And I totally Am I my instinct was to start going up, pop up with the kids not to consider it an interruption. And I said to the dad, even one word of correction, like that is too big a cost for me, because I feel the cost. And if you do that, the kid won't trust me anymore. won't come to me like that anymore. And the cost is too high. So when I say, you know, a cost, and a risk is too high, it's that something that breaks, connection breaks trust, in myself, and in their relation in their relationship with me and in their relationship with themselves.
Jen Li 27:04
Yeah, I really want to dive deeper in this. And maybe we can save this for another episode. Because this was such an interesting insight, and common for so many parents. I want to end this beautiful episode with your knowledge and your experience, especially being a parent. And how in how we can create more trust? You know, and my question would be, what do we need to focus on more in the next decade?
Vivek 27:46
So I think isn't the answer. What do we need to focus on in the next decade is an inward and outward answer inwardly, to find that, to find in all the places that we're convinced of and addicted to and comfortable with coercion, and, and shift those inner patterns, and all the outside with our behaviors, in our relationships in our communication and the work that we do engaging in the systems that we engage with, to try and bring more of that non coercive, collaborative mindset. In non coercive collaborative mindset touches people's hearts in a way nothing else does. And if you want that deep relationship with your kids, nothing, no code, no coercion, or no boundaries, no punishments is going to ever bring you that deep, enduring closeness. And I think the same thing is true if we expanded out to the human race.
Jen Li 28:39
That's beautiful.
Vivek 28:39
Yeah.
Jen Li 28:40
Thank you so so much for your wisdom and your time to take, going through all the different experiences that you have to bring. And I just want to acknowledge you for being such a stand for hope. And for for all of the children inside of us.
Vivek 29:09
Yeah. Thank you. I appreciate you.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
