[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign the podcast for those who find themselves immersed in adversity and choose to write their story instead of having others write it for them. I'm Drew Duraney and I'm your host. Today's guest is Marlene Shaw. Marlene Rose Shaw is a therapist, coach and self help author. She has helped thousands of people find courage to be their true selves so that they can embrace life to the fullest and have deeply rewarding relationships. Enjoy the show. Marlene, it's so good to see you.
[00:00:45] Speaker B: Hi, Drew. It's really, really good to see you again.
[00:00:49] Speaker A: You know, it's funny because I always like to thank the person who introduced me to my guest, Pat, because there's always, there's a, there's always a good reason why that happens. And it was, it was Mari Le V from Estonia who introduced us and had you and me on her, on a, on her show live to talk about life, you know, men and women and relationships and stuff. So I thank Mari Lee for introducing us and it got us to here, which is, I think there's a reason why this happened. And so I thank her and I thank you.
So another reason why I wanted you here is you've gone through some interesting stuff in your professional life and you are certainly who I call woman number three. And I get into that a little bit here. You know, I believe that when we're young, we're kind of taught that life is going to be linear. And it's not a malicious teaching. Our family wants us to succeed and they tell us if we do A plus B plus C, you're going to get to D. And we believe it and we do the things. And for the most part, life is linear until it's not. Something will happen in life that'll kind of move us from that straight line to more of a circuitous route. And we have an opportunity to make a decision, do something differently. And when I get to this, women number one, woman number two, woman number three, what I mean by that is woman number one may be that woman who has all these blind spots and doesn't notice anything different and just lives that life the way she believes others want her to. And she doesn't change anything. And then she has a lot of regrets on her deathbed. Then there's woman number two who notices all these different changes, yet considers herself a victim and says, this is life happening to me. It's other people's fault. I can't change this. I'm not doing anything differently. I have no control. And she lives her life the same Way with the same ends up with the same regrets on her deathbed as woman number one. The difference, though, is she has more of a heightened self awareness and she's, you know, woman number three. And, you know, we can be all three of these women or men in the same day, depending on our mindset and our awareness. But woman number three is why you're here. Because I believe woman number three is the woman who sees the same stuff that woman number two did, yet sees it with a different lens. She says, that's not a barrier. That's not life happening to me. That's an opportunity to do something different. That's life happening for me. I'm going to take that as an opportunity and a challenge to be a better person. And she does something about it and becomes somebody different who she wanted to be. And then there are minimal, if no regrets on that deathbed.
So I'd love for you to go as far back as you want, personally or professionally, and grab onto that defining moment or that light bulb moment. Could be big, could be small, could just be something that changed your mindset, that helped bring you to be the relationship and confidence therapist you are and the human being you are now. So I'd love to hear that, I think.
[00:04:10] Speaker B: Sure. I think, you know, I got so used to living this woman number three as you described, Drew, that it's just become natural to me. So to even stop and think about not being like that and to have to define something of as beginning to be like that is strange for me because I think as therapists, you know, we live, we live our message. And, you know, I, I'm a great believer in, in things. And sometimes life is challenging and things come along and, and sometimes it's easy to say, yeah, this is a great lesson. And sometimes you have to kind of pause a bit and say, yes, I'm remembering now that this is a great lesson, but I've been doing this work for a very long time now, and I, I absolutely, absolutely love, love, love what I do. And in seeing, you know, helping thousands of people because I work with clients one to one, but I also have, you know, I go on podcasts, I write books, I've got a YouTube channel. You know, I've done courses, so there's lots of people out there that I've helped. Maybe not on a one to one basis, but, you know, in other ways.
And if in all that time.
[00:05:26] Speaker A: A question, though. So when, yes. When do you think in your life you thought you wanted to become a therapist and help people Become more confident and. And have better relationships. How young do you think you were?
[00:05:39] Speaker B: It's a funny. It's a funny one. Yeah. Because I think, you know, there are defining moments when you're at. For example, I went to university and some of the courses that I was doing there were. Were extra courses that you could just pick and choose which ones. And I was drawn all the time to therapy type courses. So that was an indication to me, I think, you know, as a child, I didn't have the easiest of childhoods. And I think that little girl was always thinking, I want to suss out these human beings. Why are they behaving like this? So you could say that was a defining moment.
I remember having a tutor back at. Went to night school in my 20s. I was a single mom.
[00:06:24] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:06:25] Speaker B: And didn't you know, I was divorced. I was only about 24 at the time. 25. And I went to night school and did psychology course. Just generally hadn't been to uni or anything at that point.
[00:06:40] Speaker A: Right, right.
[00:06:40] Speaker B: And the teacher was an Open University lecturer. The Open University in the UK is a sort of a. An organization where it's kind of. They used to call it like distance learning.
[00:06:51] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:06:51] Speaker B: It's kind of just before the Internet days.
And she said, you're great at this. Why don't you go and do a degree? And that woman changed my life. And that was a defining moment for me because I didn't think that I could do that sort of thing. I didn't think I would be the sort of person who would go to university.
[00:07:11] Speaker A: That's a beautiful. So that's a beautiful message. You had somebody who saw something in you.
[00:07:16] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:07:17] Speaker A: And didn't just see it.
[00:07:18] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:07:19] Speaker A: And that. Yeah, that's a big moment.
[00:07:21] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:07:21] Speaker A: Great.
[00:07:22] Speaker B: And you know what? I tracked her down about 25, 30 years later.
[00:07:27] Speaker A: Oh, my God.
[00:07:27] Speaker B: I tracked her down and thanked her.
[00:07:30] Speaker A: Oh, that's beautiful. That's beautiful. I was going to ask you that because that's a wonderful thing to be able to have that opportunity. Because I've asked that to people before. They say, no, that person passed away before I got a chance to. That's a wonderful story. Thanks for sharing that, Marlene.
[00:07:44] Speaker B: It was, it was. It took me weeks, but I found her and it was. It was very meaningful.
[00:07:49] Speaker A: Beautiful.
[00:07:49] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:07:49] Speaker A: So after taking that course, then. Yeah. What happened after that?
[00:07:53] Speaker B: I just went on and on and did more and more postgrad trainings and, and courses and. And placements and, you know, practicing in different organizations, getting lots of information, lots of Training, lots of education, lots of experience, and then went on to work with couples and supervise other therapists and do all sorts of different modalities and, and so. And it's just been a journey ever since. But in all that time, Drew, in all that time, I absolutely, truly have come to believe that we are here to evolve.
[00:08:30] Speaker A: To evolve.
[00:08:31] Speaker B: All my own personal life and all those thousands of people I've helped and all those clients I've worked with, I have come to. I have come to truly believe that we have a, a purpose to evolve, that we, the things that happen to us in life are there for us to grow from if we choose to.
[00:08:52] Speaker A: I love if we choose. If we choose to, because we have choices. And I'm very drawn towards you being a relationship and confidence therapist because what I've seen in my life and in my practice, that in order to have it be in a healthy relationship, you need to be confident in yourself and confident in the couplehood and how the strengths and weaknesses of each. Please share how you combined those two things, the relationship and the confidence piece, to help so many people.
[00:09:28] Speaker B: Well, it's. To me, it's, it's all, it's all one, as you've just described. And actually, you know, in this book, I'm just writing my fourth book at the moment, Courage to Be you, which is the same as my YouTube channel, Courage to Be you. And actually, what I'm saying in the book, and I think it's really important is that we all, every single one of us, start out as people pleasers in our childhood and it's normal and it's natural to be people pleaser.
[00:10:01] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:10:02] Speaker B: That we learn because when we're children, it works.
It's a good idea to avoid conflict and rescue people and give and change and do as we're told and not say no and be a good little boy or a good little girl. Because it's survival. It's because it means that we get sheltered, we get cared for, we get fed, we get loved, we get validation, we get cuddles, we get all the things that we need as children. And so of course it works. And of course we learn to do it.
[00:10:33] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:10:33] Speaker B: And so I think this thing about, you know, people pleasing being a bad thing. I think we need to get away from that and recognize that it's not. It's just phase one of life.
But then when we get into the grown up years, it doesn't work. And then we have to start learning to reframe and come towards our relationships in a Different way. Yeah, a more adult way.
[00:10:56] Speaker A: And that's, that's. That is aligned with the whole idea of growing up being told life is linear because the more people pleasing you do, the more the straight path in life is because you're avoiding conflicts. You're right. And then we come to a point in life where we're like challenging that people pleasing tendency.
Most of those behaviors are often misconstrued as being nice.
[00:11:22] Speaker B: And once they don't work.
[00:11:23] Speaker A: No, it doesn't. And as an adult once challenge it, then the linear part of our life starts to change. Change. So.
[00:11:30] Speaker B: Exactly.
[00:11:32] Speaker A: This is fascinating.
[00:11:33] Speaker B: Yeah. We can't be our true selves if we're. If we're actually living in the shadow. You know, sometimes I, I think everybody is going around living their lives through the lens of everybody else.
[00:11:43] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
[00:11:44] Speaker B: Worrying about what everybody else thinks of them.
[00:11:46] Speaker A: Y. Absolutely. So how do we be in this crazy world? How do we become more authentic, therefore become more confident, therefore to have stronger relationships, to have.
[00:11:58] Speaker B: Therefore. That's. That's right. And I think, you know, it's very much about learning how to not do the people pleasing thing anymore. But it's not about sort of stopping some errant behavior. It's more about finding balance and reframing and. And learning to live more adult lives. And in the book I took a lot about, I use, there's a therapy called transactional analysis, or TA for short. I took a lot about that in the book. And that's about the parts of ourselves that are, you know, we have a child part, we have an adult part, we have a kind of a parental part. And actually if we can recognize that it's the child within us that's people pleasing, it's the fearful child that is doing all that. And all the issues that we come up in, against in our relationships, it's when, when we've got problems and challenges, it's the child, it's the inner child. And if we can learn to soothe that inner child, access that part of us, that, that lovely parental, nurturing parental part of us, we can soothe that inner child. And then we can start putting into practice things like boundaries. And guess what? They'll work.
[00:13:09] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:13:10] Speaker B: Because we're not coming from fear anymore.
[00:13:12] Speaker A: Very true. You know, and our inner child is always inside of us. And, and once we're told we're an adult, we tend to not listen to that inner child. And so, you know, many, many people don't know what people pleasing is. They've heard of it. Could you describe Some behaviors that are really, are accustomed to being considered people pleasing so that the audience can say, hmm, I do that. Let me rethink that.
[00:13:38] Speaker B: Yes. And I'm sure you, everybody in the audience will relate to that because we all do it.
People pleasing is when we put other people's needs, opinions and desires before our own.
So there isn't a balance there. So for example, when we say yes and we give away all our time and energy when we really want to say no, but we, we don't know how to actually have a conversation with that person and fairly offer, yes, I will help you, but within the limits that I have, within the energy that I have. People pleasing is when we avoid conflict. So we'll just go along with somebody, we'll agree with somebody. We'll, we'll go along with their choices.
We'll adapt ourselves to whatever they want us to be.
We won't speak up. That's that all of those things are people pleasing over giving, rescuing somebody.
We tend to do that quite often parents will do it with their teens or, you know, we'll, we'll sort of rescue them.
So anything that basically is not a balanced relationship. So stopping people pleasing is not about swapping, putting them for putting you or putting you for putting them first. It's about a balanced relationship. It's about a grown up, balanced adult relationship.
[00:15:17] Speaker A: You know, and I love that because more often than not people are told that in relationships you need to compromise. When we compromise, both parties are losing something. I like to say collaborate instead of compromise. Right. Common goal, work together, get there without each one of you losing. And, and I think that that plus getting rid of comparison, we compare ourselves too much to others. If we can eliminate comparison and collaborate rather than compromise, I've done it and my confidence has improved.
So what do you think about that?
[00:15:57] Speaker B: Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, you know, it's very much about taking ownership of our lives.
[00:16:04] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:16:04] Speaker B: I think, you know, it's, it's saying, I'm taking responsibility for my happiness instead of expecting somebody else to provide my happiness for you, for me. And that's what we do when we people please, you know, I'll do this for you and then you'll like me because it's that child within who's saying, please, please don't abandon me.
[00:16:23] Speaker A: Right.
[00:16:23] Speaker B: Yeah, that's what it's about. And so when we learn to love ourselves, then we, we don't need that.
[00:16:30] Speaker A: No. And, and you know what's interesting and somebody had mentioned this to me and I thought A lot about it. This is recent that subconsciously when you're a people pleaser, it's sometimes it's like malicious in. Unintentionally malicious because if you like somebody and you don't think they're going to like you authentically for who you are and you put a mask on and become somebody different so they like you and then you realize this person is really not the person you should be with and you start to become your authentic self. Then they're like, why are you changing? And if you're honest and say, well, I'm not, I've always been this, I just pretended, that's like. So you lied to me that you maliciously changed who you were. So I liked you. It's something to think about because it does go pretty deep, the people pleasing. Whether it's malicious or not or subconscious or not.
[00:17:24] Speaker B: Yeah. It's just, it's just our vulnerability really. It's our, it's that child self. You know, we play games with each other. We just, we just don't want to be rejected.
[00:17:34] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:17:35] Speaker B: And we don't want to be abandoned. And it's about that, that's what it comes down to. And if we can learn to love ourselves and provide that for ourselves, we don't need it from some, somebody else, then we can have more grown up relationships with them.
[00:17:48] Speaker A: Yeah, it's so true. And you know, it really shouldn't, I don't like to say the word shouldn't, but a distinction between men and women. We both want the same thing.
It's just because our genders are different doesn't mean we don't want to be valued and loved and all that. So we're all vulnerable. We're all, you know, that inner child who doesn't want to be rejected. And I think that especially for men, and this is a little, kind of like stuff you and I talked about when Mari Lee had us on is men need to realize it's not a weakness to accept that you need help or that, you know, it's, it's okay not to feel good about yourself. Let's work on it. You know, and, and there's a lot there that, that's accepted for women to behave a certain way and not accepted for men and vice versa, that we need to change.
[00:18:37] Speaker B: Change.
Oh, so it's so true. And actually, you know, to, to, to allow ourselves to be vulnerable, male or female, and to let other people know that is a huge strength.
[00:18:51] Speaker A: Absolutely.
[00:18:52] Speaker B: You can't, you can't do be much more Strong than to say I'm feeling vulnerable.
[00:18:57] Speaker A: Absolutely, absolutely. So tell us more about the book when it's coming out and, and the impact you believe it can have on somebody when they sit down and read it.
[00:19:08] Speaker B: I'm frantically writing away at the moment. I'm at that stage where it won't be much longer. Just getting up very early every morning. Loving it.
[00:19:18] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:19:19] Speaker B: And so it won't be very much, very much longer. I would say within the next couple of months. And yeah, it's, it's, it's in line with all the work that I do with my clients.
[00:19:32] Speaker A: Beautiful.
[00:19:32] Speaker B: And have been doing for a long time. And from the YouTube channel as well. I have tons of videos on there that are all about the things that we've been talking about today.
[00:19:41] Speaker A: Absolutely, absolutely. Well, I, I certainly believe the audience has captured the essence of Marlene Rose Shaw and they're going to want to get in touch with you. So folks, one way of getting in touch with Marlene, and it's Marlene, not Marlene Marle. Marlene is her website. Find Courage Me. All right. And I do recommend also going to YouTube and it's courage to Be. You subscribe to that. It's. I've watched some of those videos. They're phenomenal and they.
At least one video topic will resonate with you at some point. So, so go there and scroll some of those.
Marlene, before we end, I have two final questions for you.
[00:20:33] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:20:34] Speaker A: Want to give you the opportunity to put your, your imagination cap on and you're sitting down with 7 to 10 year old Marlene and you want to give her advice about life. What are you going to tell her?
[00:20:48] Speaker B: I would tell her that she is absolutely awesome.
I would tell her that she's wonderful, she's fantastic, she deserves all the happiness and all the joy. I would build her up and I would allow her free child to come out and play. Because we talk about the inner child as the adapted child, you know, the worried child. But there's also a free child side of us and I would, I would encourage that side of it to be at that age to just be a kid and be creative and inspired and joyful.
[00:21:25] Speaker A: I love.
[00:21:26] Speaker B: And just really let her know how amazing she is.
[00:21:28] Speaker A: Yeah. And, and I, I love that distinction between the free child versus the adaptive child.
99.9% of us go to the adaptive child.
That free child's still inside of us. Guys, last question. Switching hats now. You're sitting down with young Marlene, the young businesswoman entrepreneur, and you want to give her advice about business.
What are you going to tell her?
[00:21:55] Speaker B: I would tell her you don't have to do everything by yourself.
Go out and get help and support and enjoy the journey.
And again, you're awesome. Just trust the process.
I tell her less is more. You don't have to keep working and efforting.
Take, take some time to step back and learn. What I now know is that less is more. And sometimes we have to step back and allow the creative flow to come to us rather than trying all the time.
[00:22:31] Speaker A: I love that. I love that.
I want to thank you for not just coming on. I want to thank you for coming into my life, becoming a friend and a colleague. And I want to thank you for doing what you're doing. What you are doing to help others is providing a tremendous value because when we can heal relationships or enhance relationships through the confidence building, just having stronger, it creates a stronger world and we need that. And so thank you for doing what you're doing.
[00:23:03] Speaker B: Marlon, in well, thank you, Drew. I'd just like to say before we finish to your audience, you know, don't be hard on yourself about this people pleasing stuff. Don't be hard on yourself about the struggles and the challenges you have. It's all part of the journey of life. That's what you're here for. And at some point, at some age, somewhere along the line, we start to change and we evolve and we grow and it's all cool, wonderful.
[00:23:31] Speaker A: That's a great way to end this. Everybody, you go out and take care of yourselves, please.
Thanks so much for listening. If you enjoyed the episode, please subscribe and give us a review to help others find it.
I'd like you to answer this question. Are you living the life you want to live or are you living the life others want you to live? I'd like you to think about that for a second because I strongly suggest you live the life you want to live. If you want to learn more about what I stand for and my services and how I'm able to help many men get out of their own way, please go to my
[email protected].
feel free to also email me at Drew profitcompassion.com I'd love to have a conversation with you. Take care of yourself and choose to write your own story instead of letting others write it. For.
