You are listening to My Freedom Grove podcast with Gretchen Hernandez, episode 62

Welcome to My Freedom Grove podcast. The all inclusive podcast that teaches mindset and business tools. We'll help you rise as your authentic self. Be unshakable with your emotional freedom and unstoppable in achieving any goal and living your purpose. I'm your host, Gretchen Hernandez. If you want to put your mental health first in life, relationships and business, you've come to the right place.

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Hi, my strong friends. So if you live in the United States, you know, that this past week has brought a whole lot of snow storms. In fact, in Texas, everything froze over and people were out of power and out of water for several days on end. It was unprecedented. It was like something that had never been seen before in Texas. And the infrastructure definitely couldn't withstand a storm like that.

But I think that all storms come into our lives to show us how far we've come.

There was a lot of resilience that happened during these storms. And it also showed where some of our infrastructure needed to get improved for something like this. Our world is evolving. Mother nature is evolving and it's bringing us a lot more harsher weather conditions. And so now we need to adapt and evolve what we have so that we can still live here on this planet.

One of the other things we need to evolve as is as a culture. And how we handle these big things that happen.

So as I'm watching this unfold on TV, because I don't live in Texas, you know, I'm out here in sunny, California. We just have our fires and our earthquakes and floods. So I'm watching the blame game happen again.

So when we have a national disaster like this, we can focus on the problem of trying to help resolve that problem of getting the electricity back on. Or I guess in this case, thaw out the state first and then get the electricity in the water back on. Or we can choose to not be evolved and just sit there and do a blame game. And that's what I was seeing. And blaming happens. That's a defense mechanism. It is out of the 26 different psychological defense mechanisms, shifting of shame is one of them.

So blame is exactly what that is. It takes the shame off of one person's plate and reassigns it to somebody else. In this case, nobody wants to see our friends down in Texas suffer. There's a lot of shame and feeling that we can't do anything to help them, right?

It might not be our capability, our knowledge, our skill set, our resources, whatever it might be. So we want to try to get that shame off of our plate, right? So there's lots of different ways that we can handle that. But shame shifting of taking that responsibility and shifting the shame onto someone else's plate is a common, psychological defense mechanism. And that's exactly what I saw happening a lot in the news. What was happening was they're shifting the blame and all of this energy onto a Senator for that state. But here's the thing. The management of a state is on a governor's shoulder, not a Senator's shoulder.

Like everybody can play a part in trying to help, but really the management falls onto the governor. Any of the power stuff goes to the power companies. The water stuff goes to the water companies and, you know, taking care of your own family... that is your own personal responsibility. Yes, it's nice, if other people can help you, like, it's a grateful thing, right? When someone else can help you.

Enter the Scapegoat

But the effort that I was seeing put out there, was to blame this one Senator. And that brings up the concept of scapegoats. A scapegoat can be that path of least resistance, right? So if you're trying to shift the shame somewhere, then whoever is willing to take that shame. Or it's easier that they have that shame because so many people are directing all of the shame at that one person. They become the scapegoat.

Like I was thinking back to when all of the fires were happening in California. And I didn't see anyone talking about Diane Feinstein. She's one of our senators out here in California. I'm a big fan of hers. I never saw her name come up once because we weren't necessarily looking for a scapegoat. We had our governor, Gavin Newsom, stepping up and he was trying to manage everything.

And I'm sure the governor of Texas was also stepping up and doing stuff, but we didn't see anything about that. Because there was already a visible person that was being blamed for other things. So it made it so much easier to just decide to blame that person for this too.

Diane wasn't being blamed for anything. So she wasn't even in the public eye for anyone to decide that the wildfires or managing any of the aftermath was her responsibility. And I'm definitely not saying that it was, I'm just pointing out that there was a scapegoat phenomenon that was happening here.

When we decide to use a scapegoat, it diverts our attention away from the true responsible party.

And this can happen in all things, not just in politics or managing natural disasters. We can have this happen in our work life, our personal life, and in our relationships.

Making a Growth Threat Go Away

Having a scapegoat is also a way of making a growth threat, go away. Every day we're presented with growth opportunities. But instead of seeing them as opportunities, we might see them as a threat. So someone that's presenting that opportunity to us, we might want them to go away. So we start blaming them as the scapegoat, and then they go away. And then we don't have to have that growth opportunity. We can stay in our comfort zone.

There's this great book called Our Iceberg is Melting. It definitely shows how all of this works. It's about penguins. They're given these great human personalities. And one penguin was able to see that a big change was needed. Like the iceberg was actually melting. He saw a crack in the foundation.

He's trying to get everybody... All of the old penguins to:

1. Acknowledge that the iceberg is melting.

2. Accept that we're all going to have to change the way that we do things. And that also includes like changing our personalities a little bit and how we are treating people.

So this one penguin is seen as like this growth threat. Because people are so comfortable in their old way of doing things. They don't want to change. Like all of this old stuff was always working, but the problem was that the iceberg was melting. Like it was going to melt and all of the penguins were not going to have a home anymore.

So you have that one early adopter penguin, who's saying :Hey, there's a problem here."

Like you guys need to do stuff. Instead of the penguins all embracing that one and saying, "Oh, thank you for pointing this out. Yes. Let's try to figure out a way instead. "They wanted to get rid of that one penguin. So they were throwing all sorts of shame that thing penguin's way, trying to make the penguin go away. That penguin became the scapegoat.

The shame shifting was happening from the old penguins onto the new penguin. That one penguin became the scapegoat for all of the shame, right? Nobody likes to go through change and change the whole way of life. It brings up all sorts of insecurities. So instead of them feeling that shame or even taking on that growth opportunity, they shifted the shame to the other penguin, making that penguin, the scapegoat.

That penguin then takes on all of their shame, right? Cause they're saying things to try to create that shame. So poor penguin starts having insecurity and doubt and depression and is thinking about giving up.

But he cares so much about his fellow penguins, because the iceberg seriously is melting, that he keeps at it and he ends up having phenomenal growth because he had to learn all about change management and how you get early adopters on and then how you influence people. So that eventually he gets all of the penguins on board.

They're all going through the growth journey. And they're all finding a new way of doing things, a new way of life. And they all end up evolving. But that one being one penguin had to be super strong to make all of that happen.

So the difference was he had to turn that shame that he was feeling and realize that there was never any shame that he had to work with.

He could see all of it as a growth opportunity of "how do I figure out how to influence these people or how to present things in different ways so that they get it right."

If he had stayed grabbing onto that shame, he would have just given up and just went back to bed and slept. So who wants to feel shame? Right? Shame doesn't feel good. Shame makes us want to go back to bed and not do anything.

How to Use a Simple Children's Game for a Mindset Shift

So I started thinking about this as like a Shame Hot Potato game. Because in reality, it's a Growth Hot Potato game.

Let's start with it as a Shame Hot Potato game. So that you can see what I mean. So imagine that you have 20 people in a room and they're all playing a game of Hot Potato. So I don't know if you got to play this as a kid, but basically the potato is supposed to be really, really hot. Nobody wants to hold on to it because their hands can get burnt from it. So they try to toss it to the next person and that person, they don't want their hands burnt, so they send it to the next person. And whoever ends up dropping the potato is then like out of the game, like they lost. Or if someone holds onto it for too long, obviously their hands get burned.

Now in the childhood game, the potato was never hot. In fact, it was usually a rock or a beanbag or something, But the concept was there. So imagine this being a Shame Hot Potato. Nobody wants to feel shame. It feels really, really bad. So we're always trying to just offload that to the next person. That's where all of the blaming comes in. It feels really good to shift that shame, the responsibilities, anything that goes along with it, onto the next person, right? Because then your hands don't have to burn.

And who in their right mind would actually want to hold onto the Shame Hot Potatoes, right? It hurts. What if you found that one person who would hold onto it though, so that you didn't have to? That was there holding their hands out, like "yeah, throw me all of your Shame Hot Potatoes." You could toss it at them and not have to worry about it coming back ever. Right? Because in the game everybody continues tossing it. But what if you found that one person who you threw the potato to and they're like, "yep, that's my potato." And they held onto it. That becomes your scapegoat.

It gave you relief. In fact, you kind of liked this person for taking the shame on for you. So you decide, you know, I might give them more of my Shame Hot Potatoes. They don't ever say no. So what if more Shame Hot Potatoes came into the room. If that one person in the room was willing to hold onto the Shame Hot Potatoes, maybe they'll hold on to all of them.

So here you go. You've got 20 people playing the Shame Hot Potato game. Whole bunch of new potatoes come in. And what if everybody in the room started to realize that there's one person who was willing to hold on to all of those Shame Hot Potatoes? Of course, they're all going to be throwing that Shame Hot Potato at that one person. That's the scapegoat. That's the path of least resistance. Everybody in the room gets instant gratification from not having to hold onto that shame anymore. They found that one outlet.

We see this happen. Even in business culture, you hear of toxic environments. You might even start to see it where they find the one person in the group who is willing to take the shame hot potato. And then everybody in the group starts throwing shame hot potatoes their way because it makes the other people in the group feel pretty good.

And here's this one person who starts to deteriorate from all of the shame.

And then they can just add more shame hot potatoes onto that person's plate. It's the path of least resistance. They get that instant gratification to feel better. But what becomes of the person that's holding all of the shame hot potatoes?

Well, it depends on how that person interprets the potatoes.

If they saw all of those potatoes as shame hot potatoes, they're going to experience a lot of emotional pain, maybe even to a dangerous breaking point.

But have you noticed that they all break?

Some of them do. Some of them, you can see their spiral downward and it's pretty heartbreaking.

But what about the ones that don't? That seem to just totally thrive on this? How does that make any sense? Well, it goes back to how they interpret those potatoes. If you see it as a shame potato and you have a whole bunch of them, yeah. It's going to take you in that downward spiral. But if you, as that scapegoat, maybe you weren't really a scapegoat. Maybe you saw this as a great opportunity that all of these potatoes were Growth Potatoes.

That you knew...they could throw you all of these challenges because you can continue to evolve and grow, build up your capability, your knowledge, your strength, and you become the strongest person in the room.

So think about it. If all the potatoes that were tossed into the room were Growth Potatoes, and everyone tossed them to you. That could be a huge treasure chest worth! Treasure feels great!.

Shame on the other hand kind of feels like poison. So of course, if you saw these as shame hot potatoes, you're going to feel pretty awful. No one wants to eat poison.

But a growth potato... A growth potato is like $50,000. If you knew that a potato was worth $50,000 to you, there's no way you'd want to toss it.

Personal growth and change are our Growth Potatoes. They're the 50,000 bucks just sitting there waiting for us.

Growth Responsibility

An event can happen in life that requires change and personal growth. Basically a truck load of potatoes can come and get dumped in your yard. You didn't order these potatoes, but they're there. They're your responsibility you get to do with them what you want.

Now for my friends, that need some concrete life examples, Here's a few. So these are the potatoes that are getting dumped in your yard.

1. Change in Company Direction.

So it could be an employer that changes the company's direction. And when they do that, that requires your task to change to something that you haven't done before. Now you're a novice, you're not the expert anymore, or it changes to a task that you never signed up for, but this is the employer's change of direction. That's the potatoes that ended up in your yard, whether you wanted them or not.

2. Covid safety precautions.

How about the COVID exposure risk? Lots of us are facing that. Now we have jobs or we have errands that we have to run, and there's still a COVID exposure risk. That's a whole lot of potatoes that are showing up in our front yard.

3. Extra house members.

Here's one that can happen at any time in our life. It's not unique to our situation this year. This is when additional family members get added into your household, or maybe it's roommates that get added in. Maybe you have a new blended family that brings in extra kids that you hadn't necessarily signed up for. These are all potatoes that get dropped off in your yard, your responsibility, it's your area. Now you have all of these extra people.

4. Natural disasters.

That's happening quite a bit lately. All of the damage that can happen to your house. And the taking care of yourself and the other people or the other animals in your house. All of that... Whole lot of potatoes dumped on you. It's your responsibility. It doesn't feel good, but it's still your responsibility.

5. Difficult people

How about when difficult people show up in your space? So say you're at work and you have difficult people that show up. This is your space. Those are some potatoes that just got dropped off. This is your responsibility now whether he wanted it or not.

6. New, uncomfortable or difficults tasks as a Business Owner.

And the final concrete example is when you're a business owner and you're faced having to do some uncomfortable tasks that you haven't had to do before. Or maybe there's an impossible thing that you have to try to figure out so that your business can be viable. Those are a whole lot of potatoes to deal with too.

When you see this truckload of potatoes dumped into your yard, you get to decide, do you want to see these as Shame Potatoes? Or do you want to see these as Growth Potatoes? One is poison. One could be like 50,000 bucks. They can be anything you want them to be. Either way, they're going to be there.

Now our human nature of course, is to see them all as shame potatoes. Then we either try to play the shame hot potato game, or we eat that shame potato and feel awful. Just like we just ingested poison.

What if we worked on our perspective to see everything as a growth potato? That every potato, when we do something with it, can turn into 50,000 bucks or whatever treasure's important to you.

You know, I love to think of us as Redwood trees. If we do something with the growth potatoes, we as Redwood trees grow taller and get stronger. We build our knowledge and capability. We become resilient because we know how to work any potato that comes our way.

Keep or Donate?

If a truckload of potatoes, each worth like $50,000 were to be dumped in your yard, would you play the growth hot potato game? Nah, here's all these potatoes. They're worth $50,000 each. Now, am I just going to give them all away to somebody else? Sure. You could do that. You're spreading the wealth, right? Everybody else gets to learn and grow, and they get that $50,000 for every potato that they learn and grow with. And if you gave it all away, you have none of those opportunities. You'd have none of that growth. You'd not have any of the $50,000 that came from any of the potatoes. It's your choice. You can give away all those potatoes and watch everyone else around you grow and prosper. But my guess is that you would eventually start to have some regrets.

What if You're the Scapegoat?

So let me talk to all of my scapegoat friends out there. I've been a scapegoat most of my life, although I never really realized it. Other people would play the shame hot potato game with me. And I was taught as a kid, always think about other people's feelings. I didn't want them to feel the pain of the shame hot potato. So I would just voluntarily accept their shame potato.

I became super strong at carrying around all of the shame from all of those hot potatoes. And everybody around me was really appreciative that I would take it off their plate for them. They loved me for it even. They could feel nice and light in their emotions. And yet my plate was sitting there pretty heavy. Full of all that shame from all of those hot potatoes.

Now, in order to survive, I couldn't handle holding on to all of that shame, right? Shame is going to cause a lot of negative emotion. That downward spiral, it can incapacitate us. So I turned a lot of those shame potatoes into growth potatoes and did some amazing things with them. I saw everything in my life as a bunch of growth potatoes.

Even the difficult people that have come into my life at times. I wanted to use shame against myself like "Oh, it's something about me that has brought these difficult people into my life" and to feel really, really bad. Or I could start to turn that around. And I had to. Because people can only handle so much pain and shame in their life. If you want to survive, you're going to have to learn how to grow in those environments or else you get out of that environment. So I chose to learn how to grow with each difficult person.

It's like, okay, well here's a new opportunity. What's this new difficulty? How is it that I can change how I see the situation? Or learn how to adjust and work with this person? So that we can eventually get to a really great relationship, instead of one difficult person and one person being sad?

So let's pull all of this back to my scapegoat friends. Cause you know, I love you guys. Other people are going to think they have a bunch of shame potatoes. We may want to help them get out of pain by allowing them to toss those shame potatoes to us. We can choose to keep those as shame potatoes and internalize the pain ourselves.

Or we can do two other options.

Accept the Shame Potato, turn it into a Growth Potato for yourself

We can see those potatoes as growth potatoes, collect them from ourselves and then grow tall, strong and resilient, which is going to feel great for us. The problem though, is that we could start to outgrow the relationship. So if we think of us as those strong Redwood trees: we're super tall, we're super strong. And the person that we took those potatoes from, they're a sapling right next to us. And so that in itself, that dynamic of a sapling next to a Redwood tree, that starts to kick up a whole bunch of extra defense mechanisms from that sapling. Because then they start to feel bad about themselves by standing next to us as a Redwood tree. So that's where the second option comes in.

Teach Others to See Shame Potatoes as Growth Potatoes to keep for themselves

This is teaching other people how to see the potatoes as a growth potato instead of a shame potato. It's not the easiest thing to do. I mean, first we have to be able to see whatever that potato was, that truckload of potatoes that came into the yard. We have to be able to see the growth opportunity that's available in it. And then, how do we start to communicate with other people when it's their truckload of potatoes? To help them see this as growth potatoes, not shame potatoes? There's a skill and an art in that one.

But when they see it too, they may not want to give those potatoes away anymore. Or they might come and start offering it to you. But because we know that this is a growth potato and we want them to also grow and be able to stand beside us as a strong Redwood tree also, we might say "No, that's your growth potato, because I really want this for you. I want you to be strong. I want you to be capable. I want you to be resilient and to be able to make your own money out of this."

Then once they have seen it, once they've realized that it's a growth potato and the opportunity that's there for them, they can get excited about it. They end up growing and evolving. They end up becoming that tall, strong Redwood tree. And now you have a relationship where it's two strong Redwood trees standing side by side. No defense mechanisms. Each tree is fully self-sufficient can withstand anything because they saw enough of the growth potatoes instead of shamed potatoes.

All right, my friends, I know kind of a strange concept. Seeing this as a hot potato game of life, but it is. It's a Growth Hot Potato game. If you want to talk with me more, I invite you to reach out to me, set up a 30 minute consultation call. We can talk about what's going on in your life. The load of potatoes that have been dropped off in your yard or how you can help other people to see these potatoes as growth potatoes.

Go to my website www.myfreedomgrove.com\contactme. And there's a way that you can schedule some time with me and we can talk about whatever's going on in your life. Whatever potatoes are showing up for you. All right. I hope you have a great week. I'll talk with you soon. Bye-bye.

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