How to Release Victim Mentality with Kyle Smith

Jennifer Norman:
Hello beautiful humans. Welcome to The Human Beauty Movement Podcast, your source for hope, healing, happiness and humanity. My name is Jennifer Norman. I'm the founder of The Human Beauty Movement and your host. This podcast is here to guide you on your journey of self love, empowerment, soul alignment and joy. With each episode, I invite beautiful humans from all corners of the globe to join me for open conversations about their life lessons and the important work that they are doing to help heal humankind. Take a moment now to subscribe to this podcast so you don't miss an episode. I'm so glad you're here, joining me for today's show.

Jennifer Norman:
Our guest today, Kyle Smith, knows that struggle intimately and has turned his pain into a powerful path to healing. Kyle Smith is a clarity consultant, mindset specialist, and the creator of NLSE Neuro Linguistic Somatic Experience. Combining story work and breath work, Kyle helps wellness seekers break free from the patterns of negativity, self doubt and trauma that hold them back. Kyle's own journey is one of courage and reinvention. After years of undiagnosed depression, he found clarity and fulfillment through his own healing work. With over a decade of experience in health and wellness, Kyle now specializes in identity transformation, self talk, mastery, and moving forward from life's toughest challenges. When he's not empowering clients, Kyle explores his passions, human behavior, philosophy, journaling, plant medicines, and self actualization. His life principles from persistent self betterment to being a sovereign savage servant, inspire those around him to live with purpose and impact.

Jennifer Norman:
In this episode, you'll learn the transformative power of NLSE and how it combines story work and breathwork to unlock clarity and emotional resilience. Practical tools for overcoming negative self talk and reframing limiting beliefs and why Self Doubt Betterment isn't about fixing what's broken, but about revealing your authentic self. So get ready to gain clarity, inspiration and actionable strategies to move closer to your best life. Let's dive into this empowering conversation with Kyle Smith. Welcome Kyle. I'm so glad to have you on the show.

Kyle Smith:
Likewise. Thank you very much for the introduction.

Jennifer Norman:
You are so welcome. I want to know what inspired you to create the Neuro Linguistic Somatic Experience. How did your own journey shape this development?

Kyle Smith:
The big pivot point that I had was in 2016 because I refer to my life before World's Toughest Mudder after World's Toughest Mudder, and that was an event that I did. And a lot of aha moments came from that experience. Prior to that, I did not have that much respect. I didn't have that much love, compassion, that much care. And I purposefully removed self from all of those because I believe that if we're giving it to ourselves, then the other world's going to get it. And it's just care. It's not self care because we're ignoring half of the equation. It's just care.

Kyle Smith:
And I had very little of much of that.

Jennifer Norman:
Were you not a nice person?

Kyle Smith:
Honestly? I was nice. I was nice person with poor decision making.

Jennifer Norman:
Ah, yes, yes, yes. Been there.

Kyle Smith:
And I didn't like who I was becoming. I didn't like where I was going. I didn't like how it was impacting the world around me or how I was influencing the world around me.

Jennifer Norman:
What was a poor decision? Tell me about a poor decision.

Kyle Smith:
Well, I would say at that point in time I was drinking more, so I had less, less inhibitions and would not make the best decisions with my relationships. There we go.

Jennifer Norman:
Okay. Yep, fair enough.

Kyle Smith:
And that had obviously negatively impacted other people. And I found myself in a point where I was more fearful of the individual that I would become if I kept on going down this route. And I did not, like, I was not comfortable and I did not feel abundant in my state of being at that time. So I wanted to change that. And so from there, prior to this, because a part of is breathwork, and breathwork I adopted earlier on, and then that's just been a consistent practice of mine since for about nine to 10 years. So that's been a tool that I've been using all through this time. And then afterwards, when I finally made that decision, made a post, as I'm sure most folks can relate to on the Facebook, they may have seen it where it was asking for help. It was seeing who had ideas or methods that they went to help themselves out.

Kyle Smith:
And I wasn't picky. So I went counselors, coaches, therapists, anybody that had an insight. And so from there got to try out a couple different things. I figured out what things were more that worked better than other things and refine that process and develop myself through there. And then last year when I started my podcast, I had a guest on and he worked as a catalyst character for this whole story. His name is Ryan Sprague and I saw him on the Aubrey Marcus podcast and he was talking about cannabis and intentional use of cannabis and developing the person along with the cannabis. I thought that was cool. So So I was like, I want him on my podcast.

Kyle Smith:
I want to talk about his philosophy. So chatted with him, had a great podcast, asked him if he knew of anybody who'd be a guest, a good guest. And he recommended Kimberly Kesting and Mark England. And Mark England is the founder of the Enlifted Method. E N L I F T E D and that's where the story work aspect. So I was playing around with my words, understanding how words and how we speak to ourselves and converse with ourselves and how we rebuttal our thoughts that I started getting in there and I was like, okay, the words really have something. I know there's something here. And then there's NLP, which is going up into the stories and the words as well.

Kyle Smith:
And then story work came in. And then I utilized story work and breathwork together to develop analysis because I found that those two things were the things that helped me turn my problems into my passions.

Jennifer Norman:
Got it. So let's break this down a little bit because you mentioned NLP, which some people have heard about Neuro Linguistic Programming and Somatic, which is more about getting into the body and feeling into... a lot of people talk about somatic therapy or somatic healing. Healing, like getting into the crevices of your hips and things that are, you're holding in your shoulders or sometimes it's restricting your breath because you're stressed and you're kind of in fight or flight or and like ready to pounce. So it sounds like this is something relatively new that you've kind of created over perhaps the past year in terms of a culmination of your own experiences, your own therapy and healing practices, and then kind of combining it and putting it together with plant medicine, story work, breath work, all of those things to create what you call NLSE is that righrt?

Kyle Smith:
NLSE is the breathwork plus story work. And it can work with other parts. So for example, if it's cannabis plus breathwork plus story work, it could also be sound healing plus breathwork plus story work. It could also be variety of things. And I purposefully made it to be holistic enough that I can integrate and supercharge with other modalities, other practices.

Jennifer Norman:
Very cool. So let's talk a little bit about storytelling and that whole idea of the stories that we create in ourselves or the things that we have that we believe about ourselves or about other people and how that plays into where people might feel stuck. Can you describe how you kind of perhaps get into a story and maybe create a new story for someone?

Kyle Smith:
Totally. If it's creating a new story that's going future setting or it's going into the past to like make peace with something. For many folks, the resistance to doing things oftentimes from a consistent theme. So a theme could be a real, a fun example. I like thinking of where I think most people can relate to is a friend of theirs is dating 10 different people, but they're the 10 same person. And with that we have consistent similar themes with our stories. And when I say stories, it's experiences, moments and times. It could be things that hurt, haunt, taunt, annoy.

Kyle Smith:
It can be celebrating the progress and the wins that we have done because we oftentimes forget about that. We forget how we're winning. So we focus on how we're losing. And then from there it's developing stories to work with targets and goals and a plan in order to feel what it feels like to do it. And so when someone's having a resistance to something, I ask them questions where one would be. Where did you feel this sensation for the first time? Oh, it was seven years ago. Okay, so that was seven years ago. Does it go any further back? Yeah, I remember this story when I was in grade school.

Kyle Smith:
This is actually a personal story of mine when I was in grade school. And the teacher said that if we were able to finish our, our work early, we'd be able to go outside and finish the day on the playground. So I stood up and tried to corral everyone and inspire everyone to work harder so that we can get out faster. And total rejection, total rejection. And so that would be a story that had a theme throughout my life where I had the fear of rejection. And that created resistance in my present in order to prevent me from progressing towards what I want to do. So by going into that story, writing that story, and then being able to, there's a process for it, share it so it's easier. This first step is to title it and write it.

Kyle Smith:
And then you write it conversationally. Proper grammar, as if you're talking to another person. Err on the side of more detail rather than less detail from there because. And that first step, most people don't do that. They keep the stories up in their head and in the head there is an infinite amount of space. There's not a period and there's, there's not a start and there's not an end. And so when we actually take it from our brain, from our one dimensional brain to our two dimensional, when we're actually on paper, for example, and we're writing it out, we create distance, both literally and figuratively from our mind so we feel less intensity. So then from there, even people doing that, they'll recognize, they'll notice a difference in their state of being.

Kyle Smith:
They'll notice a shift. Then the step, second step is to read it out loud and solo. Is totally cool, still works. Reading it with someone or reading it to someone, that supercharges the experience because you're sharing your heart. Then from there, step three, because most folks are reading quickly through the first, the second step, to hold that air up in their breath or up in their chest. When the breath is high and tight, they're good to fight. Low and slow, good to flow, like what you mentioned earlier. And so people will hold their breath up in their chest so that they don't feel what they're reading. So they hold their breath and they try to read through it pretty quickly.

Kyle Smith:
Some folks try to go like motor mouth style where they try to go as quickly as possible. And then I say, no, no, no, no, slow it down. That's ridiculous. Step three, read it 30% slower or 70% your normal rate of speech. And what this does is it forces our breath into the belly. Because we are not going to be able to hold our breath while reading slower. It's going to eventually force a breath in and something else. If it's an intense story or if it's an intense emotion that that story is inspiring, we'll have ourselves a physiological sigh.

Kyle Smith:
So if you've ever been crying really, really hard, or anyone's been crying really, really hard, or watch someone, you'll notice a they're crying, crying, crying. And when people are reading the story slower, that gets into the body, so we get to move the emotions around because the story is going to evoke a certain emotion as we go through each one. And then the final step, step four of the four step process is to read and breathe. So at every period, the occasional comma and sometimes and insert a breath. So an example, when going back to the last reference, when I was in grade school, the teacher said that if we finished our work early, we'd be able to go out to the playground to finish the day. And at each of these steps, step one, step two, step three, step four, ask yourself these questions. Describe the vibe. What am I feeling? What are the emotions that are coming up? Where do I feel this in my body? And on a scale of 1 to 10, where does the intensity land? The intensity is not negative or positive because we can have an overwhelming amount of joy.

Kyle Smith:
We can have an overwhelming amount of sorrow. So it's a 10 out of 10 subjective to the individual. Just what they've based off previous experiences.

Jennifer Norman:
Wow, that is amazing. And I love all of the rhymes that you put in there to help people remember all of the different steps.

Kyle Smith:
I don't know how much of that is for other people to remember and how much of that is for me to remember.

Jennifer Norman:
Well, if it's for you, then it's pretty much for everyone because definitely a very good way for everybody to remember certain things. And it's interesting because I know that we have all heard about the things that we keep up in our heads, and then every time we ruminate on them, we create a new story and we create a new wound, if you will, in the mind, getting it down on paper in a very limited way. A lot of people say, like writing a memoir or even journaling and those sorts of things help, but this goes even beyond that in that you're not just keeping it to yourself. You're actually training yourself to have that emotional disconnection and to really cathartically release it from the body in a way that I think a lot of people don't even think about or recognize that they're storing it and they're holding it in and it's impacting them physically. And it could create neuroses or illness and all of these other things that can just travel with you for the rest of your life. I love how you also said that, you know, you're dating 10 different people, but it's the same person. Because so many of us loop when we haven't resolved something in our lives, then we're looking for that same emotional connection or that same hole to fill within our hearts that we haven't filled ourselves. And we're recognizing that we're constantly looking for that and we're making these choices depending on the thing that you're not giving yourself.

Jennifer Norman:
You're looking for other... in other people, and it's just going to continue for the rest of your life until you recognize, like, hey, you can do it yourself.

Kyle Smith:
Totally. It's when we realize that we are the common denominator in our problems. It's so true and something that you said there as well. I wanted to touch on where it was a disconnect from the story. I would say that it's less of a disconnect and more so of a processing of unmetabolized emotions or an integration, because we're not disassociating with it. We're not allowing it to have power over us, because disassociation, it's going to come back right there.

Jennifer Norman:
Excellent. And I mean, you talk a lot about defeating the victim mentality. And so this can be quite a lot of that. Because the victim mentality is a story that we're telling ourselves that everybody's out to get us, or this always happens to me, or I'm never going to be X, Y and Z. You probably from your story... And a lot of times we don't even recognize where these seeds are planted in our childhood because there's so many experiences that we have. We just kind of amalgamate everything and just create a theme that like that theme and say, well, I'm the victim here. Other people have it so much better and I have to work so, so hard to get this much where other people don't have to work as hard to get whatever it is that we tell ourselves about how we limit ourselves.

Jennifer Norman:
Can you tell us how this could help somebody defeat victim mentality?

Kyle Smith:
Absolutely. I'll start with the definition of victim mentality. That way we have a reference point to work from. Because I believe that the word is victim mentality has been close to a buzzword, if not a buzzword, and it's ambiguous. There's not like a definition to it outside of now. And the victim mentality is an acquired personality trait in which a person tends to regard himself or herself as the victim of other people's actions, even in the absence of clear evidence. A victim mentality depends on a habitual thought process and attributions. So the victim mentality, in saying that, is a habit.

Kyle Smith:
It is a practice similar to how to the victor mentality is a practice, is a habit. And I believe that we'll find ourselves in the stuck and suck every once in a while, and we'll believe ourselves to be the victim every once in a while. I believe that when the victimhood or the victim mentality becomes a part of our character, it is how we see ourselves and through that we get something from that. So it could be affirmation, it could be sympathy, it could be pity, it could be whatever sort of thing that someone could be receiving by behaving as a victim. And another thing that I would say is that the victim mentality, being something that's habitual, it's something that we're doing ourselves. And that is different than when someone has actually experienced something and has been victimized in the moment in time. There's the moment in time where someone's truly has possibly been a victim. And then anything past that we hold on to and we are self inducing our own issues.

Kyle Smith:
And so when we get to explore the stories, when we get to think about our thinking and we start to filter out the information, then things just open up, things become more clear and we create more space. And when we create that space, or when we declare the mind to make room to throw the party, what we have then is the ability to build up the victor mentality. Because it's hard to build up ourselves up into the person we want to be when we're still attached and dependent on the person we see ourselves to be in the moment. Remove the clutter, create the space and decide who you want to be or who you are. Because it's the stories. If we're not coming up with our own stories for the person that we want to be, then we're going to adopt stories from other people. And this is predominant in childhood because we have our main caretakers and those caretakers are exporting their information into our minds. And that's our only frame of reference for a solid chunk of time.

Kyle Smith:
And then from there, depending on the stories, they could either help us or harm us. And if we have stories that harm us or help us, we are still a duplicate of that person. So it's taking what we want and rejecting what we don't want. Receive what resonates, let go of what doesn't. And that way you also honor the person that you were inspired by. Every story, every behavior that we've adopted from another, we honor that person by continuing on with that. And then from there it creates that openness, that ability to be able to flow and to see things and create stories that are our own and that create meaning in our lives. Because if we're just taking stories, we're just duplicates.

Kyle Smith:
We're just duplicates of other individuals. And then that is also... That can have some wear and tear on us as well.

Jennifer Norman:
So how then, once somebody recognizes, okay, perhaps this victim mentality is something that I have like inculcated into my philosophy of who I am and how I operate. But yet I don't want to be this way, I want to escape this. Do you take them through the NLSE experience so that they can essentially move from victim mentality to victor mentality?

Kyle Smith:
Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. Because our habits are inspired by a story. And when we dive into the stories where someone perceives themselves to be the victim and we dive into that story and we integrate it, then the identity of victim mentality washes away. So through the process as a side effect, it's just recognizing I am actually pretty awesome and I can do some pretty amazing things. So it'd be going through the same process. Alleviate the intensity, go into the mind and explore it.

Kyle Smith:
Decrease the intensity of the stories and then that'll increase a lot of feel goods during the session and also afterwards.

Jennifer Norman:
A lot of times, people will look at specific time points that have a lot of, I guess like visceral emotion. And those are the things that they remember. And they will discount or discard a lot of those experiences. Experiences that are contrary because they don't line up with that story that they've been telling themselves. Is part of the process to essentially uncover and reveal some of those other facets of their experiences. To say, hey, well that's not true because look at this and look at that and look at that. And so it helps to build up almost this deniability of that victimhood and create more of a sense of accomplishment or victory that they can then attach and take forward totally.

Kyle Smith:
So there's not too much investigation into the story itself because our memories are a reconstruction. So in psychology, memories are not considered an objective thing. There's most influenced by our present state of being. So how we're feeling in the present, is it either going to inspire us to have a positive or negative outlook on the past. So the stories are the important to the individual. And when we go through the same process, we don't need to dive into the stories because the feelings that are associated that we're trying to alleviate, those are what's hitting. So we don't need to explore the story itself. To think of all these details that you would in psychology.

Kyle Smith:
For example, if you're going to see a therapist, it's just the story and the meaning that this person attributes to that story. Then at the end where we go through the four step process, I ask them, what does this story mean about you? What does the story mean to you? What does the story mean about your ability to be resilient even in the face of hardship? What does this story mean? And when people can attribute their own meaning rather than another person's meaning, then they can actually see something that they went through that was difficult as something that actually was a catalyzing moment in being in inspiring the person to be able to pursue something with that possibly or become stronger from it in general.

Jennifer Norman:
Yeah.

Kyle Smith:
So it's just not the details, it's going into the fields. Once the feels are alleviated, then that opens up the opportunity to explore what, what we want do.

Jennifer Norman:
Interesting. I would imagine that with storytelling, the language that we're using is also very important. How do you think that language shapes the way that we think and maybe choosing better words for a future state and how we kind of tease that out of the process as well?

Kyle Smith:
Absolutely. I believe that the thing that helps with our thinking the most is decreasing uncertainty and ambiguity and increasing decisiveness and clarity. And the easiest way to do that and it's words that everyone's experience probably might, could, should, might have, could have any of those combinations. Those are soft talk. Then we have solid talk. Soft talk is that ambiguous narration. Solid talk is you're speaking with solidity. It's, you know, you know it.

Kyle Smith:
And a way that I like to think of the difference between the two is if you can have a question after a statement, it's soft talk, not solid talk. So an example would be, "I might be able to make it to the party for 5pm," "I could make it to the party for 5pm,"' "I should make it to the party for 5pm," "I might be able to make it to the party for 5pm," "Perhaps I'm going to make it to the party for 5pm." Those are all soft talk words. Solid talk: "I'm going to make it to the party for 5pm." "I'm not going to the party." And so it decreases the ambiguity. And what this does for our mind is on the very low scale. I mentioned it before, like we were talking about before, microdosing gratitude. It's microdosing decision making.

Kyle Smith:
Yeah. And so when we are develop competence in our decision making, in the small things, as our decisions and our ability to make decisions expands, we can make bigger decisions and feel confident in our ability to make those decisions. And so by removing the soft talk, by removing that ambiguity, we have a consistent stream of thought. We're making decisions so we respect ourselves, we respect the other person because they're not living in uncertainty or ambiguity. Is that person going to show? Is that person not going to show? I'd rather if they just told me that they're not going to show. If they just want to say that they might be able to make it. And so when we have that decision, the decisiveness, then our thoughts become clearer too, because there is a clear difference between our internal narratives that's helping us and harming us.

Jennifer Norman:
I think that a lot of people who tend towards people pleasing or even in some cultures it's seen as rude if you're too direct. And so there is a tendency to go, oh, yes, perhaps I'll be there, or, yes, that sounds like a great idea. And leave it open versus making the hard line and saying, I can't do this or not tonight or this isn't for me, boundary setting. And that's where a lot of people have... it takes a lot of practice. For people who are used to saying, oh, well, what would it hurt? Or I'll, oh, I may as well just try to show up because that person expects me to and it'll make me seem good. And so you're giving a bit more of yourself than you really want to. And then afterwards, you might feel resentful or you're just like, not happy with that full decision.

Jennifer Norman:
So having that ability to practice solid talk and to practice clarity and decision making, those micro doses of decisiveness and solid talk is so helpful. I found that it was really, really compelling. Even certain things in language I had learned. I think that it was Jack Kornfield who had mentioned he was talking to, I think, Ram Dass. And Ram asked him, like, oh, how are you doing today? And he said, I'm too busy. And then Ram said, take the word "too" out of it and just say, I'm busy. I mean, because even that word "too" has a bit of judgment, or it has a bit of disempowerment in it.

Jennifer Norman:
And we don't even realize, like, those little tiny things that we build into the way that we feel about ourselves and our decisiveness and the small and the soft talk, shall I say?

Kyle Smith:
Totally. I really like that. And it's very true. It's amazing what one word can do in an adjustment. Like, it can reframe so many things in such an instant where it's more accurate. It's not. I like what you said there about too busy with the too. It's burdensome.

Kyle Smith:
You are a slave to the busy.

Jennifer Norman:
Yeah.

Kyle Smith:
Rather than being busy, you're a slave to busy.

Jennifer Norman:
Yeah.

Kyle Smith:
It's interesting.

Jennifer Norman:
Yeah. You also talk about words as ethereal macronutrients of the mind, which to me is like, what? I've never heard of that phrase before. You have to unpack this metaphor and explain how, like, those choices of words impact our thoughts and actions.

Kyle Smith:
Totally. So very much inspired by the last 13 years of me being a personal trainer. And our food is the building blocks of our body. We have our carbohydrates, we have our fats, and we have our proteins. Those are the macronutrients. The quality of the macronutrients that we feed our body is going to impact the quality of the body itself, feeder body, quality food. We're going to have a quality body. Feeder body, negative food.

Kyle Smith:
We're not going to be living in the way that we want to. It's going to negatively impact us in some way. Words I view as the ethereal macronutrients of the mind. Because when we feed our mind quality words, we have quality thoughts. When we feed our mind shit words, we're going to have shit thoughts. And so this goes to the solid talk, soft talk part as well, where we're removing the ambiguity and we're feeding our mind with information that we're catering. We're choosing the words that we're consuming. And consuming could be thought even though it's within us.

Kyle Smith:
It could be a story or a sentence that comes up and it could have one or two effects. Could let it go and just accept the thought as it is and be like, yep, you know what? You're right. I am a piece of. When we can rebuttal the conversation, say, that's not true. I'm not a piece of because blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. These are the references.

Jennifer Norman:
Yeah.

Kyle Smith:
And so I actually change it from where it's self talk to self conversation. And once again, removing the self is just conversation. And so when we rebuttal our thoughts rather than accept our thoughts, then that also contributes to us thinking clearer and cleaner and better quality words.

Jennifer Norman:
Yeah. I actually had a guest on who talked about negating or like moving from self talk to self communication. Because communication is not only verbal, oral, it's also the way that you're looking at yourself, the way that you're just like body language. All of those things go into communication, which I thought was an interesting choice of words and one that I try to embrace going forward. It's funny because there's this, I guess it's like a little parable where there were these twin brothers that had a father who is an alcoholic and one of them didn't drink and one of them did drink. And he asked the guy who drank and he's like, I drink because my father's an alcoholic. And the other one said, I don't drink because my father was an alcoholic. And so it's like the same story, but the way that you think about it and how you are reacting to what that fact is, if you call it like that fact and then create your future based upon it, how you choose choose to react to it could be wildly, wildly different.

Kyle Smith:
Totally. I totally agree with that. Yeah. Because believe it was a Harvard study with the twins. So they researched it like did a solid chunk of research on it because it's a rare thing to be able to have twins like identical, have two different lives and explore why. And same with our stories as well. We can think of ourselves as different characters through different points in time. With many folks will see themselves as the same person that experienced the thing.

Kyle Smith:
And that's inaccurate because there's so much time between where I imagine most people have grown from the age of five and they become different people because they have different experiences after decades. Say they're like 50. And what I was thinking with that is when we recognize that we are not the same person and we can make peace with that age or that story, then we increase a nice flow. Now we're talking to a little bit more woo on this one. It increases the flow across our lifetime. And so we make peace with each of those points. And I actually like do it for each year. So who I was for each year, I'll write to them.

Kyle Smith:
I'll say, hey, I just want to say I appreciate you putting in the work for this, this and this. I know that the work that you did, the experiences you had got me to this point. I just want to say thank you. And you feel it because the energetic body is timeless. It's not time bound like our physical body. So we feel that gratitude as if we're speaking to ourselves just from a different perspective. So we can absolutely pivot and change the stories and how we feel towards ourselves from different experiences.

Jennifer Norman:
Yeah. And the same thing we can do for two other people. I remember way back in the day, I had a very contentious relationship with my mom when I was a teen. And it was like riddled with a lot of frustration and anger at the way that I was raised. And ultimately I recognized she's a human too. She went through a whole lot of trauma in her childhood. She went through World War II, frankly, and was separated from her family.

Jennifer Norman:
Just got married and moved away from her family and just had a lot of emotional sorrow in her younger years, which carried through in the way that she raised her children as being very controlled and kind of like a fierce, domineering kind of an individual. And I recognized, you know what, I empathize with that person that's only trying to do her best and only can do with the tools that she knows how. And it's not easy to get to that place of like seeing like a parent or somebody who you feel has maybe wronged you as human. But having that experience of empathy and forgiveness and compassion no matter who the perpetrator is, is just so healing. And it really does help to lift such a great physical, mental, emotional burden off of you so that you can be free going forward.

Jennifer Norman:
It reminds me of that phrase that you actually like to use, which is the Sovereign Savage Servant. And so I would love for you to explain what you mean by that, but to me it's kind of like going and doing that work and truly being your own person and not beholden a mindset or a victim mentality that you were before, but then going forward and just actively stewarding the new life that you're trying to create. But I'm curious what you meant when you said Sovereign Savage Servant.

Kyle Smith:
Totally. So it's a part of my own personal mission statement. And the mission statement in whole is the persistent pursuit of self betterment to be a positive contribution to human race, to be a sovereign savage servant and breaking it down with the sovereignty, independence, autonomy, not having a dependence on the external world to fill your needs and your wants, to be able to source it yourself and figuring out ways to be able to do that. To be a savage is to pursue your desires and your wants with a relentless fury. With positive intentions, of course. And servant is taking the problems I previously had that I turned into passions and helping people, helping facilitate growth in others that want to.

Jennifer Norman:
Beautiful. I actually have a tattoo that says servant. It was probably for a different reason, but we'll go there in a different podcast. So I'm curious, like, if listeners could take away one powerful lesson or practice from our conversation today, what would you hope that that would be?

Kyle Smith:
Oh, that's such a great question. Oh, I'll go with the two main ones. I said the first one would be soft talk, solid talk and write down sentences and the places you'll notice it the most is in your texts. And when you become more aware of your own soft talk. You hear soft talk everywhere else.

Jennifer Norman:
Mm.

Kyle Smith:
And that's interesting. That's an interesting experience.

Jennifer Norman:
Do you call people out on it and say, okay, are you or you're not? You know?

Kyle Smith:
Depends on the context of the situation. Sometimes I will if it's something like specific.

Jennifer Norman:
Otherwise you're coaching, you know, then yeah, it's just like, yeah, I'm calling you out on it. But do you do it any? I guess if you're in a solid relationship, then yeah, you should be able to be. I should. I see, I try not to use the word should, but there we go. I should on myself.

Kyle Smith:
You should on yourself.

Jennifer Norman:
Yeah. I say don't should on yourself. That's one of my catchphrases. But yeah.

Kyle Smith:
So then the soft talk for sure. And then if someone does the four step process, I want them to reach out to me and DM me and see what their experience is like and I'll answer any questions on it. So those would be the two things.

Jennifer Norman:
Oh, sweet. Sweet. Okay, so how can people DM you? How can people get in touch with you to let you know their experience?

Kyle Smith:
For any social platforms, I'm @dapperdudekyle. D A P P E R D U D E K Y L E.

Jennifer Norman:
You are a dapper dude.

Kyle Smith:
Thank you. Thank you. It's actually a part of a character construction frame that I have, too, whereas developing the identity. And there's the inter rival role model. And the dapper dude is my role model while Mr. Simpleton is my rival.

Jennifer Norman:
Interesting.

Kyle Smith:
Okay, and then clarityconsultant.ca.

Jennifer Norman:
Clarityconsultant.ca. Okay everyone, Kyle Smith is here to be your clarity consultant. No more soft talk, no more soft talk, we're going for solid talk. And we are going to be sovereign savage servants to our self betterment. Thank you so much Kyle for being my guest on the Human Beauty Movement Podcast today. It was so much fun.

Kyle Smith:
Thank you very much for having me. I had a great time.

Jennifer Norman:
Thank you for listening to The Human Beauty Movement Podcast. Be sure to follow, follow rate and review us wherever you stream podcasts The Human Beauty Movement is a community based platform that cultivates the beauty of humankind. Check out our workshops, find us on social media, and share our inspiration with all the beautiful humans in your life. Learn more at thehumanbeautymovement.com. Thank you so much for being a beautiful human.