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The topics and opinions expressed in the following show are
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solely those of the hosts and their guests and not
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those of W FOURCY Radio. It's employees are affiliates. We
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be directed to those show hosts. Thank you for choosing
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W FOURCY Radio.
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Welcome to to Ask Good Questions Podcasts, broadcasting live every Wednesday,
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six pm Eastern Time on W four CY Radio at
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W four cy dot com. This week and every week,
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we will reach for a higher purpose in money and life,
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as well as a focus on health and wellment. Now,
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let's join your host, Anita bell Anderson, as together we
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start with Asking Good Questions.
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Welcome to the Ask Good Questions podcast. My name is
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Benita bell Anderson, and I'm so happy that you're here today.
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We have got a very very important topic today, and
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so I would like to welcome to the podcast stage
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Attorney Paul the Lowry. Did I say that right? I hope.
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Yes, he did, good job.
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Okay, yay, So welcome Paul. Paul is coming at you
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from Arizona, from Phoenix, Arizona, and I'm actually coming at
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you from Hawaii. I mean, most people by now know
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that I'm on the Senior Mission and so I'm in
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Hawaii for a year doing a mission for my church
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with my husband. But I am having a great time
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doing these podcasts from my home base in Hawaii. So, Paul,
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I'm going to tell everyone a little bit about you.
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What I have learned was that your father had accumulated
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about twenty eight million, seriously twenty eight million by investing
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his military retirement income wow in penny stocks. Penny stocks.
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So when Paul inherited this, everyone was lost to estate
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taxes and most of the rest he lost for a
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variety of reasons. So he's shaking his head. Yeah, Paul
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is an estate planning and probate attorney who regularly works
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with people struggling with the same thing. So, Wow, you're
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going to get the insight story today. So, receiving a
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financial windfall a lot of times means that people then
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continue to make poor choices with it. And basically what
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we know is that it typically takes about five years
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before people can emotionally adjust to a major life change
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like that. So and also, Paul has written a book
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about this called Lasting Wealth, Revolutionary Method for Family Wealth Transfer.
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We have a bonus downloads section on my website that
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is where you can find if you want to go
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find the information about Paul's book, then that's where you'll
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be able to find it. So welcome, Paul.
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Good to talk to you, Benita, Thanks for having me.
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Yeah, so, well, why don't you first tell me what
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inspired you to focus this your legal practice on inheritance
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and wealth transfer. I mean, it's kind of like, oh,
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I think I want to You know, this is an
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area that a lot of people get messed up, don't they.
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Yeah, I'm not sure exactly why I think I have it.
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I think I have a deeper answer to that. I'll
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tell you kind of superficially. The answer is that I'm
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not sure if enjoy is the right word, but I
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can't imagine doing anything else. So I like the intellectual
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challenge of it, and I like connecting with people when
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they're going through one of the most challenging times of
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their lives. So it kind of gives me, I'm able,
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It gives me a chance to use my skill of
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thinking outside the box and coming up with creative solutions
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and connecting with people and trying to help them through
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the process.
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Well, yeah, I'm hearing a lot of purpose in that,
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which is what we all need. We all need some
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purpose and everything. Yeah, and at that point, people need
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a good attorney. Having gone through a terrible divorce a
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long time ago, now you need a good attorney when
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you're facing stuff that you have no experience with.
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Right, So.
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What in your so in your experience with this challenging area,
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why can a sudden inheritance of be more overwhelming than
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exciting for people?
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Well, it's a It forces a paradigm shift. It's a
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form of trauma. So getting married is a form of trauma,
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it is, I mean, it's a paradigm shift. Or graduating honestly,
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think about well, think about professional athletes who who get
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a big contract and then within a couple of yeers
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there in bankruptcy, Like, well, how did that happen?
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I wrote a book about that.
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Okay, there you go, okay? Or or people who win
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the Olympics, uh, and then within a year they're obese
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and alcoholic and depressed and suicidal, Like what's going on there?
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Like shouldn't they be happy? But but it's a it's
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uh boy, there there's no quick way to summarise this.
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But I let me let me approach it from one angle,
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because in order to really understand, in order to really
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answer your question, I need to look at it from
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different angles. It's kind of like, what's the story about
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the blind people going up to an elephant and you know,
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one touches the tail and one touches the leg and
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different other things they describe totally different things. Well, so
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it's a little bit like that. But what I what
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I could say is so getting a getting a sudden
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inheritance removes the need to work. And I think a
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lot of people, well, let me let me back up,
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Like Jordan Peterson says, we're meant to walk up hill,
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like we're meant to struggle a little bit. And it's
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like riding a bicycle. You can't just you can't just
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ride a bicycle standing still, like you can't just sit
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on it. You have to be moving forward. You have
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to be pushing. And and what a sudden major inheritance
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does is it removes all the necessity for going to work,
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for struggling to pay the bills and all this kind
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of stuff, and all of a sudden, it's like like
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a person's life grinds to a halt, and then you're
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left with, well, what are you left with? You're left
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with what people say, Oh, you should do this, and
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you should do that, and and trying to find answers
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outside yourself, which are never fulfilling. By definition, you can
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never find the answer for your purpose or fulfillment outside
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of yourself. Ever, it has to come inside, come from inside,
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and if you've never figured that out, like people can
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go their entire lives. People do go their entire lives
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without even thinking about this question, just because they just
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work and work and work, and then on the weekends
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they do something and get drunk or whatever, and then
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they die. But all of a sudden, like if you
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can take a break, I mean, that's a shock.
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So well, we see it clearly with people that win
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the lottery. You know it's not inheritance money, but it's
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still the same thing, sure, the lottery. And there's so
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many examples of people who completely wreck their lives in
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the next two three years, and then they're saying things like, oh,
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I wish you would never would have happened. So yeah, well,
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what do you think are the most common emotional reactions
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have you seen? What have you seen with working with people?
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Well, I mean, if we're talking about a major inheritance
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in terms of emotion, you know that's it. And I
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think I actually gave that question to you, which means
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I should have an answer for it, but I don't really.
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So the most common for a for a major inheritance
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is it could be fear, like fear of losing it
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or because at that point it people like people are
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coming around, uh, asking for money and begging for money
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and this and that, and so all of a sudden,
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you don't know who you trust and and so like
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a certain amount of just anxiety. It just creates anxiety
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and then wanting meaning, like a search for meaning. I
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guess I don't know what that feeling is. But I'll
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tell you for myself what it was for me. And
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I'll just tell you super super fast my story. So
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I only met my father for the first time six
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weeks before he died. He had been kept a secret,
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his his his well his existence was kept a secret
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from me during my whole childhood. Now other relatives knew
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about it. My cousins knew about it, like friends at
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friends at high school even knew about it, and which
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put me in this weird position because I, like I
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had this sense, I mean, you know, kids are fairly
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sensitive and fairly intuitive, and like I had this sense
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that like I was missing something, but I couldn't put
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my finger on it. But anyway, and then later on
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when I finally found him and then he died, like
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you know, I was I was angry about the fact
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that I had never had I was never given the
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opportunity to have a relationship with him, and he had
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been kept from me. I was sad. I was ecstatic
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about having a whole bunch of money, and I had,
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you know, these ideas. I mean, I would It sounds ridiculous,
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but I would walk through a neighborhood and think and think, well,
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I could just buy twenty of these houses, you know,
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if I wanted to. And and so like, like I
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had all these emotions that were just like you throw
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them all into a blender, and that's that's how I felt.
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And I was functional only because like I was again
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extremely sad, extremely happy, extremely anxious, and afraid and angry,
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and they all just kind of balance each other out.
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So I could walk through life kind of like a
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normal person just because I had these intense emotions that
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were all balancing each other out. That's the best I
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can explain it.
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I just figured out something that's been in the back
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of my mind about something about you, and that.
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Was, oh, he's gonna.
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Stayed planning attorney, how can Latin's father lose half of
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that money to taxes? And so now will that explains it?
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You weren't in the mix right well. And so there's
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another part of this too, which is I had I've
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learned to live with a lot of shame in my life,
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and it's it's taken me a while to let go
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of that. But there was this, there was this kind
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of undercurrent of shame and I could never put my
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finger on it like it and okay, there are some
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things that happened to me that a person could be,
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you know, ashamed for, but that doesn't even explain it.
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Like there's just just this like general sense of not
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fitting in for me. And it's because well, because I
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was told one story, I was this Irish Irish German guy,
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and so I learned the bagpipes, and I played where
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I competed in Irish music, and I competed in Irish
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dance and all of this stuff. And then at the
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age of thirty five, I learned that, oh, I'm actually
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one hundred percent German, and so then you know, then
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I'm thinking, but I have an Irish name, and I've
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named my kids with Irish first names, and then I'm
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all confused and all of this stuff. So yeah, anyway,
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there is a little bit to that. But but in terms,
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you're right, I was. I'm a trained attorney, and intellectually
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I can think through all of these things. But what
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I have figured out has taken me years. But what
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I figured out out is there's there's different layers to this.
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There's different layers of reality, I guess, And can I
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kind of go off on a little tangent here because
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I think it'll okay. So I like to explain that,
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like imagined society, Okay, how do you have a fully
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functioning society, not necessarily like we have right now, but
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a fully functioning society has aspirations. Okay, they aspire to
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be whatever they aspire to be like Jesus or like
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Superman or something like, like, we have heroes that we
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aspire to be like. And then there are also underneath that,
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excuse me, let me get a drink of water here, okay.
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Underneath the aspirations you have common mora m O r e.
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S like common you know, understood values, don't still be honest,
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respect your parents, you know, kind of the Ten Commandments
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style stuff, okay, and we also don't really have that
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too much anymore. And then underneath that is the law, okay,
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and the law is supposed to be like the foundation,
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like you know, if all of that other stuff just
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goes to hell, at least you have the law and
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now and now there are segments of society trying to
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punch holes in that and get rid of that, so
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we just have complete anarchy. So but but that's that's
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really the way that like, and I'm being very general here,
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but that that's kind of the framework for a good
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functioning society. Similarly, if you're trying to organize a family
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and maybe have some money, and you want to figure
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out how to pass the money on to the next generation, well,
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the way that works the best is to have some
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aspirational things like that would be that's usually created by
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family stories like Grandpa came what I can tell the
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story about my grandparents and how they came over and
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they struggled and then my mom, my mom didn't This
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is my own thing. But my mom didn't speak English
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when she went to grade school. She had to learn
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English there because they spoke German at home, and this
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and that and all the different trials and tribulations that
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they went through and despite that, and then she ran
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away from home when she was sixteen, but then she