I've been on a journey of enlightenment since I left my wife about a year ago. Sounds gay and academic, but it is true. I knew my relationship was crap. I knew my ex wife wasn't going to change. I wanted to be happy. So I left.

But that was only half the story. I had work to do on me, both in relationships and in life in general. And since then I have been on a relentless tare to figure out how and why I got to the point I'm at and how I'm going to change and improve. I work on this every day. And it hasn't been easy.

I've come to learn something very, very important. We are all the products of our inner voices, our self talk. What we tell ourselves becomes reality because that self talk - good or bad - controls our thoughts, behaviours, motivation, mood, etc. Want to improve your life ? Start with fixing your self talk.

So what the hell does this have to do with RP ? Most of us didn't fall into our troubled relationships by accident. Our self talk guided us there. And most of us aren't even aware of what our self talk is telling us. It is one thing to master the tenants of RP externally, that is to practice the RP basics, do the work, etc. But it is another to have the self talk of a true RPer. That takes much, much longer to attain.

I'm reading a fascinating book called The Insight Cure: Change Your Story, Transform Your Life. The basis of the book is to figure out the "story" you have, ie your self talk and change it. According to the book, until you change your self talk, you can't really change your behaviour and thus performance. In real life, changing your behaviour may induce changes in your self talk through experience, but that is the long way to accomplish the goal. The real crux of the matter is what is your self talk and where did you get it from ? Once you understand that, you see the folly in it and you can fix it.

This turns out to be an incredibly fawking interesting and useful experience because it forces you to look at your history and family of origin. This is where your self talk came from. And if you ended up on MRP, it probably isn't as healthy and positive as you would like to believe.

For myself, my father is a successful businessman. But my mother rules the home with emotional manipulation. Not overt, emotional outburst manipulation. But subtle, almost hidden manipulation. My mother is Mother Theresa herself, always suffering and we need to suffer alongside her. This is a learned behaviour pattern on both her part and ours. It was instilled in us as children and we blindly live it out.

My father is a successful business man that my mother "puts up with". He is emotionally strong, honest, loyal, hard working, etc. Somehow my mother has brainwashed him into thinking he is a lesser man that she "puts up with". If my father put a little work into himself, his SMV would be much higher than my moms. And yet she is the center of the relationship.

And it turns out that if I look at my dad's parents (my grandparents) a similar theme was present in their relationship. And if you look at my dad's brothers (my uncles) they all have similar relationships with their SO. Shit starts to make sense now.

So until recently I've been living my life thinking that I'm somehow a lesser man that some woman might "put up with". Why ? Because that is what my self talk taught me. That is what I learned in the home I grew up in. That is what my mother instilled in me - I better suffer and I'm lucky to have what I have. I shouldn't even bother to wish for more. WTF !!!! It is like the worst crab bucket ever.

My father is a pretty decent, accomplished man. There are many lesser men out there. But he has no game. Not that he couldn't have game, it is just turned off. He is basically spineless in his relationship with my mom. He didn't teach me anything about women or sex. He didn't even teach me how to shave properly, because he didn't really know. He taught me a lot about business. He gave me an example of being loyal, hard working, no addictions, etc. But he also taught me how to not stand up for myself in relationships. That is where my self talk came from. That is how I got to MRP.

Actually, it goes one step worse than that. When you grow up in family with bad patterns, their influence doesn't just magically end when you get married. It continues and in fact, probably gets stronger if you allow them to influence you. In my case I can point to several instances where I was on the right track to making things better but was advised by someone I thought knew what they were saying from life experience, that later turned out to be horrible advice. Not only didn't I get good advice, I got bad advice.

Life is what it is. I'm not blaming anyone from my past for this. They did the best they could. Nobody was out to harm me. I got what I got. What I do from here on is my responsibility. I could wish for a better history than what I got, but I can't change that.

And so for me, that is where the journey to improve begins. Who gives a big hairy fuck, right ? Well, it turns out to be a very important point to get to. Because until you figure out what your self talk is telling you, you can't figure out if it is good or bad and you can't change it And that is a scary thing considering your self talk is unconsciously running your life.

To be continued. Figuring out your self talk is one thing. Changing it is another. This eventually leads to frame. Stay tuned.

PS: I don't give a fuck what you think ! LOL.