Episode Transcript
Think meditation is hard? Do me a favor, take a slow deep breath in and now breathe out. Congratulations. You just meditated. Hi, I'm Krystal Jakosky and this is Breathe In, Breathe Out: a weekly mindfulness and meditation podcast for anyone ready to own their own shit and find a little peace while doing it.
Hello and welcome back to Breathe In, Breathe Out. I'm Krystal Jakosky. Fire alarms are fabulous until they're not. They quietly sit up there on the ceiling or high on a wall. They watch over us. They keep us safe. And then before they're unable to continue doing their duty. They let off this most annoying high-pitched shrill beep. And the challenge with this, the shrill beep is that it's not steady. It beeps. And then 30 seconds later, it beeps again. And then a little while later, it beeps again. And you have this maddening, frustrating time trying to figure out which fire alarm is beeping and trying to change the batteries.
And more often than not, these things go off in the middle of the night. Absolutely. You are curled up in a delicious, warm bed. You're so thrilled. You may have been sleeping and kind of jolted out of a really deep sleep. And that beep just wakes you up and you really want to just kind of rollover and nudge somebody else and make them be the one to go track down this beeping that just will not shut up. And you really hope that you don't have to get the big ladder from out in the garage or wherever it's stored to reach this annoying yet so perfect device that just keeps you safe.
I recently endured the situation. Honestly, I did, and then my mom did and it was kind of funny that I was enduring it. And then my mom had to drove me nuts. And I was so frustrated because you'll lose sleep when you're dealing with it. And yet, as I was doing it, I realized that this is kind of like life. And I know that that sounds weird. Bear with me and I will explain it. And, and I hope that you'll find a chuckle or two. While we go through this, we are brought into this world as these little beautiful, perfect humans. And we are raised by people who hopefully love us and nurture us and take care of us. And they teach us in this path that they know, and that they heartfelt believe is true. This path that they have chosen. And they have followed when we do something that they don't really like.
They squawk. And this squawking encourages us as young children to do a course correction and come back into alignment because we don't like the squawking of our parents. And therefore through this squawking and through this feedback, we learn our boxes. We learn how we're supposed to live, what we're supposed to value, what we're supposed to believe. These are the values and morals and understanding of our parents that we then learn. It goes both ways. Kids squawk too every time they come up against a rule that they are not fond of. And they would really rather have a change. They're going to test it. It is a constant battle. Who's going to win out, stretching, learning the boundaries, figuring out why the rule is the rule where it needs to go. Do I agree with the rule or not? I guess I'll agree with the rule while I live with my parents.
But as soon as I'm out of the house, I'm going to live my own life and do my own thing. Sometimes we simply adopt the mannerisms. It's the easiest path of least resistance. Other times there might be a lot of squawking going on in that household. You might have parents and children really just kind of butting heads because the parents have decided this is their box. And that's what they pass down to their children. We all have to find our own way. We all have to figure out what do we believe? What do we agree with? What do we want to stand for? Where are we at in life now, as we grow up, we adopt those values of our parents because we learned that that is the right way to be. Once we leave the house, now we have this shift to do. I really want to agree with what I learned growing up, say, you go to college and you are meeting all of these fabulous new people and having all of these wonderful experiences.
What if they don't necessarily go in alignment with the beliefs and understandings that your parents brought you up with? Do you have conflict? Is there an internal squawk going on for you? Because all of a sudden, now wait a minute. My parents may have believed that, but I'm not sure I feel the same way. And I think I want to change it, but you have a squawk. Do you go with what you've been raised with and what your parents believe or do you go with this new alignment that's in your heart? That's a completely different thing. How do you go against your family and not only your family but your parents learned it from their parents? And they learned it from their parents and they learned it from their parents. So it's, it goes back. It's not just going against your parents, but it's like going against your entire family.
When you decide that you don't necessarily agree with some of the morals and beliefs and thoughts and, um, actions that you were brought up with, and then you have to go home, you know, you're out in the world and inevitably we all go home, whether it's for a holiday or a birthday or just to visit because we miss home. And once you get home, you have these new values. You have these new ways of being, you've started to break out of that family box. When you go back home, do you put yourself right back in? Do you willfully take those sides back and put the lid on and pretend like you have not changed at all? Or do you willingly open up and say, Hey mom, Hey dad, I have learned so many great things out in the world and I want to share it.
And I'm just going to, I'm just going to be me. It's not easy to do that because you've got this box. And because your parents are still in their box, there's this squawk, the issue that you need to deal with the change and the challenge, the lessons that you learned growing up, society, religion, even the mentality of the area that you were raised in contributes to the kind of box that you are now learning to deal with learning, to fight with learning, to change, choosing to either accept them wholeheartedly as your own or shift and choose something different. A few weeks ago, I talked about perspective and this comes in here too. This is, I mean, this is something that I just want to bring up because while we believe that our parents had that box and that they just willingly chose into the box their parents gave them.
That's probably not true. If you took a moment and you checked in with your parents and ask them, I'd be willing to bet that your parents said no, no, no, no, no. My parents did this and I didn't like it. So I decided I was going to do it differently. Your parents have absolutely gone through the same challenges that you have just in their own different way. They've accepted the box that they have chosen. So they learned from their parents, some of the things that their parents had, they absolutely agreed with and they adopted as their own. And in adopting them as their own, they decided that they would pass those things on to you. So those items happen to be the ones that come back through generations. However, there are other ones that your parents were like, I feel a little bit different. So I'm going to do this instead of that, if you have the opportunity and you go back and you talk to your parents, you might be surprised at some of the boxes that your parents said, you know?
Sure. And I think I want to change that when I grow up. So take a minute. And if you need to pause this, then go ahead and pause this. But I want you to just take a minute and do a little bit of journaling. So in this moment, what are some of the life values and the beliefs that you learned, and you are very proud to emulate. What are some of those actions and beliefs, morals, then I want you to think about what are some of the beliefs and values that you have really struggled to accept? You have struggled to emulate them and bring them in as your own. And the third thing that I want you to really think about for a second is: are there things that you have already made peace with and have either fully embraced them and brought them in or fully let them go saying I do not need that to be a part of my life.
So if you need to take a moment, pause this, go ahead and write them down or journal. And then come back.
I stand in both places, going back to the challenges that we have to live. And then our parents having taught us. I stand in both places. I am a mother of two fabulous boys. So I was that youth learning, stretching, growing, trying to become something different, something new fighting against the borders, trying to be my own person and really having my, my parents had to squawk so much. I tell you, I look back and I squawked a lot, and my parents squawked a lot. There were challenges. I was that youth. I was that just struggling to find myself and understand myself and find some peace and be true to myself. I'm also that parent and I spent countless hours praying, hoping, striving to teach my children, trying to help them find their way.
So yes, there were lots of things that I did not agree with that my parents taught me. And so I made my own truth. And then I taught my children and my children while they learned that they are now both living their own truth and their own truth may be very different from the truth that I taught them from the truth that I raised them with because that is what they need to do. The energy that goes into life from either one of those perspectives is immense. And we often only see it from our own perspective. We don't really have the opportunity to stop and try to take in the other person's side or what they're thinking or why they believe the way that they believe. It's very normal as a human to try to understand why the rule is the rule. What is the reasoning behind it?
What is the purpose behind it? If the purpose was so that so-and-so didn't get hurt, but I'm a totally different person. Maybe I won't get hurt and I should go ahead and try this rule. Anyway. Maybe I should just go for it. As a parent, the job is to instill morals and values into these little souls that are brought into this world. And our hope as a parent is that we're doing a good job, that we raise fabulous people that are able to contribute to life and humanity in a really positive way. Our hope is positive. I don't think any parent wakes up and has a kid and says, okay, now I'm going to teach my kid to be the most challenging and hateful person ever. That just doesn't happen. Parents want their kids to succeed. So they give you rules and regulations. And we end up trying to test the boundaries.
We test the boundaries because we have to find what's true for us. We live in a Superbowl unique time. Everyone is trying to define exactly who they are and what they want to be, how they want to live. They have these boxes from their past the defined spaces that a human is, quote, supposed to operate in husband and wife work or nurture teacher, student, race, religion, gender. They're always to keep us divided and separated me versus you. Male versus female. I don't believe these roles work anymore. I don't think that it's the tradition is dead and gone. I think that we're creating new ones and we're trying to figure out who we are and how we fit in or don't. We may not fit in those boxes anymore. No one. While we were told the boxes and we were taught the boxes and we accepted them and we were raised in them, nobody actually taught us how to change it for ourselves. Nobody actually taught us how to say, you know what? I get it. And I appreciate the values that you raised me with. And I need to find my own way, that internal discomfort that says you need to change. And maybe this moral or value or belief is not for you. It may be a challenge to go against your parents because you understand how solidly they believe, what they believe, and how much they clean onto it. And yet you personally and individually, you need to be true to you.
We are all learning. We are all growing. What truly matters is what's inside and who you are. You have to get right with yourself before you can even remotely hope to help somebody else. And as long as we're pointing fingers at other people saying, you, you, you, we are failing to take responsibility of me. If I don't like that box, I have to change that box. And I cannot say that somebody else is putting that box upon me because I choose to stay within it. Or I don't. I have to make that decision. I have to make that choice. We sit back, we look at our lives. We look at what we've learned. We look at where we've come from, what we've done. And sometimes we are absolutely in love with it. And it's, I would even say that we're in love with certain aspects of it.
We're in love with this. And we're in love with that. And yet we would like to change this. And we would like to change that we would like to be more loving and accepting of absolutely every human being we would like to not care at all about sexual preference or color or just religion. Not none of that. We would like to just embody unconditional love and acceptance across the board. Well, how do you do that when you haven't been taught it? How do you do that? When you haven't been brought up in a space that nurtures that loving and acceptance, it really comes down to you. Where do you stand? Where do you reside? What brings you peace? What brings you joy? How are you most real and authentic with yourself? Like what is right for you? Don't blame everyone else. Don't point fingers at everyone else. Look at yourself, look at where you came from and where you are at this point in time. Are there things that you love? Are there things that you would love to change? Are there things that you embrace and are so very grateful for? And there are things that you look at and say, you know, that's just really ugly. And I'd like to see what I can do to make it better.
You don't have to accept the box and you don't have to reject the whole box. Either. You have every right to just choose. It's like a buffet. You get to go through that line and you get to pick the things that really appeal to you. And you get to pick the things that really make you like they resonate with you and they make your heart feel wonderful. And you get to leave the rest. I'm not going to force you to eat your vegetables. I may encourage it next week. We're going to talk more about boxes next week. We're going to go just into more of an understanding of those around us and how we accept where we're at while granting permission to other people right now. I just want you to understand, and I want you to grasp the change. I want you to hear the change and the opportunity and the shift.
What is real for you? What feels good for you? What brings you the most joy and peace? If you're doing an activity that really doesn't feel right. If you're treating somebody in a way that just feels out of alignment, stop, just because you learned it doesn't mean you have to move forward with it. You get to change. So do you want to cut some windows in the sides of those boxes and be able to see out, keep some of the structure and yet let's get rid of that, and let's get rid of this? Or do you just want to obliterate the entire box and say, "oh, hell no, I am here"? And I am wonderful. And I'm going to live the life that most authentically represents who I am and how I feel and the way that I think in life, I'm not giving you permission to treat other people like crap.
I'm giving you permission to be you always their permission to own your own beliefs, the permission to choose what path you take permission to live in a way that feels right and good for you. Not somebody else's life, not somebody else's beliefs, not somebody else's demands. It's you, you have that choice. Nobody can force you to make another decision. Nobody can force you to choose out of the box. Nobody can force you to choose into the box. You choose whether or not you are going to continue where you're at. And some of us are absolutely happy where we're at. Some of us absolutely love the box and love the protection and the guidance and the structure that it gives us an absolutely. I am so proud of you for saying, this is where I am, and this is how I feel. And this is the way I want to live. I applaud you for being in such a space where you are so honoring and accepting of you and your life and the way that things are for those who really want a shift and want to change and want to know that it's okay. I am telling you that it is okay. It is okay to find your truth. It is okay to find what resonates it is okay. To step out of the box and find something that is more authentically you than you have ever been before in life.
I hope this moment of self-care and healing brought you some hope and peace. I'm Krystal Jakosky on Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube and I hope you check us out and follow along for more content coming soon. I look forward to being with you again, here on Breathe In, Breathe Out. Until next time, take care.
