Welcome to the Multidimensional Intelligence podcast, I am your host, your trusted voice of transformation. Clifton's Pettijohn join me as I engage in ingenious conversations with top creators from around the world who have embraced their dimensions of intelligence within their professional, personal and spiritual paths of transformation. Hey, what's up everybody? Welcome to the Multidimensional Intelligence podcast where I lead conversations helping each and every one of us begin to explore the dimensions of our own personal intelligence. My name is Clinton Pettijohn, I am your trusted voice out, transformation and clarity. I teach creators how to transform their lives through the clarity of embracing their best selves. So I want to thank you for joining me on today tonight. Whenever you're listening, before we get started, you already know what's up.

Let's do our breathing exercises, take a deep breath in, hold it, breathe out, let's do one more time. Take another deep breath in, hold it, breathe out. Doesn't it feel so good? Don't you feel lighter? Don't you feel freer? Don't you feel present? That's the whole purpose of the exercise to pull you from your past to pull you from the future, the possibilities of the possibilities of the future and bring you present where we can merge those three energies together, creating that synergy that is your best self. Why is it your best self? Because your best self is your present self? I'm not worried about you creating a better self, are working towards a better self. The reality is that when we aim to work towards a better self. We always end up disrespecting the greatest version of ourselves and that is our present self, that is our best self.

I posted a status on facebook and instagram and that status stated, some people did not abandon you, Some people did not do you wrong. The reality is that some people have a different belief system and values than you have and we have to learn to allow people to be the way that we want the freedom to be who we are are to be. We want that freedom to be able to be all right, that's what it stated. And I know some people misinterpreted what I said, they thought I was attacking somebody. Now this was for me, this is something that resonated with me. I have a song I listened to and that song is called Father by Demi Levada. Okay. And then the Levada throughout this song, she begins to go on a journey about the relationship of her father after her father had passed. And um you know, she basically says, you know, I hope that having gives you a second chance, you know, she's talking about all her personal experience and her personal interpretation of who he was and who he was to her, but now, you know, she's hoping that having gives him another chance to be the greatness that he was and I often listen to it at times because I've been very transparent about my father and my in my relationship.

Um and sometimes that song kind of resonates with me, but at the same time it helps me to free those emotions, It helps me to free those emotions. Well, today, as I was listening to it, I begin to think about it from a relationship standpoint. I think about it from a relationship standpoint, not just with me and my father, but the relationships I've established over the years depending on variety of relationships that I've established over the years. Some have been situation ships. A lot of them have been situational matter of fact, some of the relationships that we have defined as relationships as we go throughout life will understand or attached to situations, there are clauses in those relationships but that's a whole another topic, we're not even talking about that. But what I want to ask you is in your current relationship or relationships, do you have the freedom to be, do you have the freedom to be exactly who you are?

Or do you find yourself at times backed in a corner having to be somebody else because you're just trying to make that relationship work now I am not doing this episode to cause people to break up. I'm not doing this episode to cause people to block and delete and unfollowed people but I'm called I'm doing this episode or presenting this episode because I wanted to cause many of us to have the uncomfortable conversations that we keep running from. That has called some people to miss nights of sleep. They have been able to sleep at night or whatever it is they have to do to soothe that ache in that pain within because they know that they're our conversations that need to take place or are very uncomfortable, but they know the result of those conversations as well. And some of those conversations do not need to happen first. Externally, they need to begin to happen internally.

So my first question is, are you able to b B to B? Are you able to be who you are in your current relationships? Okay, now, my second question is, do you allow people to be who they are in your current relationships? And the reason why I asked that question, I think that is the most important of those questions and many of us will go right beyond that question because the reality is we're going to have to face the reality. We're going to have to face the reality that we don't even allow ourselves to be in our own presence. Uh huh. We don't even allow ourselves to be in our own presence in that post that I posted. I use the words values and I use the word belief system. Some of us are honest about our personal belief systems and our personal values because they contradict what we have presented to other people because many of us honestly have presented uh what we feel other people want us to be or what it is that they need and we don't want to express anything that goes against that because we kind of don't like to rock the boat.

You know what I'm saying? We don't like to rock the boat or we don't like to stir up trouble or we don't like to have those confrontations that are necessary to free ourselves into free other people. So I guess that's a two part question. Are you able to be you in your own presence and then do you allow others to be you around you? Are you a safe space? Are you honestly a safe space? I want us to really think about that and I don't want you some of you gonna feel he's attacking me No baby. I'm talking myself through this thing because the reality is I have been a safe space to many people. Many people see me as a safe space. Maybe people just start talking and they tell me all their life story and I love it because I know that there has been things that they have held on for years. So I love the fact that they're able to come and get that release. But what I had to ask myself is are you able to come to yourself and allow yourself to be that releasing point without you judging yourself.

And the reality is sometimes I'm not sometimes the freedom to be that I extend to everybody else. I haven't always extended it to myself and then I have to look at it as well as as well as have I extended it to the people that I feel are closest to me and that I feel um I got to use this word, I feel have some type of obligations to me because of of the type of relationship that we have in my holding people to expectations and obligations and my holding people to expectations and obligations. Because then that becomes situational. Now, I know we say because we have to we have to have these standards and I agree you should have those standards, you should have your standards and your expectations, but you better make sure that you're meeting your standards and your expectations because then that's what you will attract.

And then if you're not getting your standards and expectations from somebody, you have to give them the freedom to be themselves instead of trying to twist their arm, manipulate them, scheme and whatever you attempt to do to cause them to give to you what it is that you want. And when you do that and and they they become so programmed to give you what you want, you're going to have to face the reality that one day you're gonna come head to head with that situation and when you come here to hear with that situation, you can't be ready to just attack them and attack them. No, you have to begin to turn around and look at that void inside of you and look at the way that you move inside of you or the way that you navigate inside of you to see if you have manipulated this system. One of the things that I learned early about me in life is that I have the ability to persuade people so they can go positive or negative because I can manipulate you to get you to do what I want you to do or I can persuade you to do what you know what I feel, listening, what I feel is best for you.

I can persuade you to do what's best for yourself. You know I know that I have that nature. I know I had that ability. I have a very soothing voice. I have a very calm nature. I have a very welcoming nature. Have a fatherly nature of that uncle, you know what I'm saying that you can confide that. I know that well early in my life I learned how to manipulate and I learned who I could manipulate. I even remember being on the phone at times back in the day. I had T mobile. Right? Remember you had the five, you all remember the five with T Mobile. T mobile was really owned or something then like that. You could call them any time text so many times. You know it's when we had free nights and weekends back then some of y'all might not even know about that. But yeah, we had free nights and weekends back then, but I remember having t mobile and every time my phone came out, I wanted a new phone that was just me. I've gotten a lot better with that now. But every time a new phone was released, I was on it.

Yo I was on it and I kind of learned how to work the system, okay. I learned how to work the system and I could call make up a story. Yeah, yeah. I'm telling you, You were not going to outline me. You, I was the greatest line that I knew. There was nobody on this earth that could outline me now. I have met some in my life that that I don't understand the lies they tell. That's a whole another story. But I was the greatest liar in the world I owned that I own that I owned, that is part of me, You know what I'm saying? That's that's what I was I would call when the phone was coming out and I would figure out a story to tell. And by the end of that conversation, I'd have a new phone on the way without having to pay for the upgrade it. I'm telling you guys. I did this for years. I did I did this for years, but here's what I understood, I understood based upon the person that was on the phone if that was the person I needed to talk to or not, because I knew I knew the makeup of the people that I could manipulate.

I knew it, I knew it from the Voice, I knew it from them, uh their communication, I knew it from their knowledge of everything. I knew the ones that I could manipulate. And some of us, that's how we learn to move in life. It's kind of like a survival mode. You know, and if you've ever been a person that had to survive or told yourself, you had to survive, if you don't come out of that mode, you will find yourself navigating life like that in every area of your life and you'll be doing it subconsciously. So you won't be really establishing relationships in your life, you'll be establishing situation ships in your life. And listen, there are some situation ships that are good. There are some situation ships that are great. They find you, you find out they're beneficial. They both give you what it is that you need at that moment. But with all situation ships, 95% of the time when I can say with me when it came time to me wanting something different or me wanting something more, I was not able to get that out of that situation ship.

Why? Because that's not, that was not the established rules of the relationship of that situation ship. So in order for me to get that I had to manipulate, but it never felt fulfilling because I understood I wasn't organically getting that I was manipulated, using my manipulative powers to get what I wanted at that moment, but it wasn't giving me what I wanted because it wasn't organic and I knew it wasn't organic, therefore it just wasn't doing for me what I wanted it to do for me, because the reality was I was looking externally for something that I needed to do for myself, for myself, for myself, for myself. So I wasn't being a safe space for me. I wasn't being a safe space for those that I was holding to a standard and not allowing themselves to be exactly who it was that they were. Have you ever found yourself um in a relationship or um, you've known somebody for years and then you find out what they did something and you'd be like, man, I never knew they were capable of doing that.

I never saw that with them. The reality is that you never solve them, whether it's because they felt like they had to hide themselves from you or you just didn't want to see them. You wanted to see them the way that you wanted to see them and many times when we want to see things or people the way that we want to see them, it causes us to create scenarios that never really happened, that never really happened and it causes us to forget some of the things that did happen and we become emotionally tied to the scenario that we created, that we don't even allow ourselves to be open to the possibility that the way that we're replaying it in our hearts and replaying it in our minds. Never even, never even, never even I said even never even happened.

It never happened that way. And if we're ever going to free ourselves to be, then we're going to have to go into the internal cage that we have people locked up in. Whether it's our parents, our siblings, x is people that don't even know, they're our exes, our current relationship, our friendships, whatever it is, we all have somebody locked up even ourselves, you're gonna have to free yourself from that cage. Some of us have uh sometimes when it comes to my body, I don't talk a lot about this, but when it comes to my body, I realized I have this more dysmorphia um the way that I see myself sometimes, uh, everybody doesn't see me that way. And, and it's mainly because, you know, I eat a little bit put on a little bit weight or a little bit of weight to me that we're here talking and I don't like what I see as much, but I never like it enough to go to the gym, like I need to, but I just really don't like what I see, Not just even that there has been times, even I'm a very confident person.

Uh and how I look. I love to do mirror work. But there are times and spaces where I don't love to do mirror work, I'll be honest. I don't like the way that I look. I don't like the shape of my face. I don't like when I gain weight, I gained it in my face. I don't like to take pictures. It shows up for me in spaces where I don't like to take pictures. So I go on trips and people can post pictures and you not not even know that I'm there because I won't even get in the picture because I just don't like the way that I look in that picture at that moment. You feel what I'm saying? The dysmorphia. The physical dysmorphia. Well, there's some emotional, there's some psychological dysmorphia is that we have, even in our own lives as well where we don't see things the way that they actually are, the way that they actually are. We might have the the thought that everybody hates us and and and nobody wants to listen to us and people didn't like me growing up and people have these thought processes, processes of me growing up, all of that can tie into the mindset.

You know that dysmorphia manifesting itself through ourselves. Uh not seeing things clearly. Not seeing things clearly. And we have to begin to go into that internal cage. And I'll be honest with you, you have to start with yourself. You have to free yourself from that cage before you can free anybody else from that cage. Because here's why if you don't free yourself from that cage, even though you start to let people go, you will begin to draw them back into a new cage or that same cage because you haven't freed yourself from that space. So you are still living and creating and breathing and thriving from that same space. So you have to begin to have these uncomfortable conversations with yourself. You have to begin to have these uncomfortable experiences with yourself. You have to begin to walk yourself down memory lane and then begin to say, okay, now remove the cloud of judgment, remove the disdain that I have for these individuals.

Now show me how this really happened. Now. There are some things that that may have happened the way that you envisioned that it happened. It may have but there may be a whole different back story to it. Now. You don't have to own the backstory of other people. But you have to own what you've allowed it to do to you for all these years. Mm hmm. Yet to own it for yourself. You have to understand that people have different values and belief systems, different values and belief systems And you have to allow people to have different values and different belief systems doesn't make you better than them. Doesn't make them better than you. Doesn't mean that they they are your enemy. It just means they don't value some of the things that you value. And can I be honest with you as you begin to release yourself from that cage, I probably sound real preaching because this thing heavy to me today listen, uh but as you begin to release yourself from that cage, you're gonna find out that your values and belief system has been adopted or has been infected.

So now you have to begin and any time there is an infection now you have to begin to get the medicine to allow that infected place to heal. This is not a process. You just let's run right through it. No baby, you got to slow it down just a little teeny bit and allow yourself to sit in and you know we talked about sitting in it. You know the last episode you got to allow yourself to hell in that area. You have to allow yourself to and this has nothing to do with any body else. Hey, excuse me, wow. And this has nothing to do with anybody else but you baby, it has everything to do with you. So you might not get that apology and that's okay, apologize to yourself, recreate the scenario and allow yourself to be free, allow yourself to be free.

And as you free yourself from that judgmental space that you've resided in for so long and now you're able to breathe fresh air because the reality is we can't keep breathing. We can't breathe fresh. You know what? We can experience the essence of fresh air because it keeps being mixed with that contaminated air. But when you free yourself from that cage, you open yourself up to a new environment and now you can take that deep breath in, breathing in the newness, breathing in all of that energy, breathing in everything that is represented, bringing breathing in your identity, breathing in your ability to be breathing in your focus, breathing in the present. And you'll begin to understand that there is a new fragrance that you've never smelled or experienced before.

There's a pureness of that fragrance and the fragrance is you. And then as you let yourself out of that cage, here's what I really wanted to talk. And I'm, man, this is really, this is really heavy for me. It's really heavy for me because I realized in my life yeah, that I've held people hostage from being able to be who they are because I was holding them to my expectations, my belief systems, my values and I wanted them to adopt that because hey, after all, you need to adopt this because this is the best way to live when in reality, some of that trash, I had to drop off myself because it was not serving me and it was not me. It was what I thought everybody else wanted me to be with. everybody else wanted to hear from me. Mhm. It was my ability not to take responsibility for things that I needed to take responsibility for.

Because I would use the excuse of the adopted values for why I wasn't allowing myself to be me. And we already know we don't do the excuses here, baby. Not in this safe, this safe space. This is a space where we get rid of all excuses. Mhm hm. So free yourself and then as you free yourself, free others to be themselves. So, as I said, I was listening to the song by Demi Levada and y'all, I really love all of her music. She makes music during transitional moments of her life and her songs be so powerful. You like, I'm a lyrics man, anybody knows me. I listen to lyrics and I'm I listen to all types of genres. But when the song is void of meaningful lyrics and even if it's a metaphor filled with metaphors and similes, I have to look up, I don't mind that I will research a lyric in a minute.

You know what I'm saying? But I love all of her music. I just can feel the pain in her music. I can feel the love in her music. I can feel the freedom in the music. I can feel her own personal path that she's taken within her music. And it resonates with me. And so I'm listening to this song about, you know, her father and please go listen to it. I really really go listen to it. If you grew up without your father present, I want you to really to go look for listen to it. But as I'm listening to it, I'm realizing how I held my dad hostage to the belief system that I was taught. Excuse me man. Ah I held him hostage to the belief system that I was taught. And because I held him hostage to that belief system, I never established fully the relationship that we could have created.

Oh man. The relationship that we could have created a void of the thoughts, opinions and what I was told. Mhm. Many times we're taught that a father, son, father, daughter, mother, son, mother daughter type relationship. Or you know if your kids are non binary, those type of relationships or they should go a certain way. This is how it should go. It should go no other way. All of those systems have to be reconstructed within you, all of those systems. Because one of the things that I realized about my father is that he had the ability to be truthful without caring about what other people thought about it. Yeah. He had the ability to own it. Like he owned when I tell you he owned it, he owned the aspect of it. And I always admired that about him.

But I never knew. Excuse me. Never knew how to communicate my adoration for that. And I thought that in my life now, if you know me now, you you say, OK. So, your dad was like, you, I finally, you know, embraced that. I've embraced that aspect of it. But I uh as I was saying, you know, I had to have that conversation with myself in that just because we didn't have a traditional relationship doesn't mean that we couldn't have established something great. Hear me out, Hear me out. Y'all this is this is in all aspects of your relationships. Stop attempting to create relationships off of what you saw and what you perceived and what you believe to be the epitome or the uh, example of what a relationship looks like. Because many times what we see in public is not.

So but not even from that aspect, Not even from that aspect, that's from a negative aspect, but from the aspect of what if that's the way that your your relationship is supposed to be with that person, allow it to be now. I'm not saying take down and, you know, lower your standards. And I'm not saying all of that. But I am saying allow people to be freely who they are. And if you can't live with that, then okay, that's fun. But don't try to hold them hostage to who you believe they should be. And the one thing that I as I was as I was typing that status up today, I knew a lot of people would think that I was throwing off at this person and throwing off at that person or throwing off at them and it wasn't even about none of you was about me and my relationship with my father and then my relationship with my mother, my relationship with my friends, former relationships that I've had situation ships, that I've had all of those things that my mindset concerning uh relationships in general.

It was all of that coming to me and helping me realize that there were some people that I have to allow to go out of this cage. I'm doing a great job at freeing myself. I've done a great job and I've embraced, listen, The cliff that you know now you definitely didn't know two years ago, five years ago, seven years ago. And my God, definitely not 15 years ago that dude was bound all the way up. Do you hear me? That dude was off? He was a robot. He did not live his life. He just did what everybody wanted him to do and it was so uniform and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Well, I needed it though, I thank God for, but I freed myself now and today I had to free my father. As I said, I had to free my mother. I had to free them from that, that psychology that had been established inside of me.

I had the free old relationships that I thought would work out, that did not work out. I even had the free relationships because a relationship didn't work out. So I was trying to recreate a similar relationship with the next person and because I was trying to create that similar relationship, it just wasn't working. I had to free myself from all of those things. But most importantly today I just want you to allow yourself to be and then allow those around you to be and then watch everything that comes from all of that. There is too much of you to lock yourself in to the expectations of others, to the thoughts of others, to the values of others, to the beliefs of others, to others. There's too much of you to lock yourself in. The fear of what you actually believe are.

The fear of what you actually value. There's too much to you. You just gotta let yourself go and let yourself be. You have to, you have to, you owe it to yourself for it to happen. And if you have Children you owe it to them to be the example of living. Not the example of settling, not the example of anger, not the example of bitterness, not the anger, the example of fearfulness, you owe it to them for them to see you living. Because the greatest thing you can give to them is not the presence that you buy them. The greatest things that you can give to them is the environment, an atmosphere of freedom and even you allowing them to be free and who they are not trying to create them to be, whatever it is that you expect them to be or whatever dream you're still trying to live because you didn't really get to live your dream but you allowing them the freedom to be who they are within a safe environment, whether a safe environment, that's about everything, but I do want to know, have you signed up for the inner brace, your best self course?

Listen, we are bracing who we are, we are bracing who we are securing who we are internally and then we're gonna create from that space. It's a great course. You can learn more about it by visiting www dot transform you institute dot com www dot transform you institute dot com hit over there. Not too late to sign up. The year is not over. I want to emphasize that even more this year is not over. And I am determined to finish strong for myself and I'm partnering with you guys to finish strong as well. I want you to finish stronger than you've ever finished before so we can carry that momentum into the next year. We are not trying to start and create new momentum within the year. We're going to carry that momentum over as I always say, create a great day walk with purpose and by all means execute your vision and as I said in this episode for you and free those that you have locked in a cage.

Peace. Well there you have it. That's today's episode of the Multidimensional Intelligence podcast. If you want to be notified of all future episodes while having access to previous episodes, simply subscribe to your preferred listening platform. Also, if you feel inclined, leave us a five star rating and review. But those who want to remain connected to me and all things that I have going on, text me at 30 to 2089440 again. 302, 2,089,440. Until next time peace.