Hello and welcome to another episode of the Mark Gross podcast coming at you with a solo episode

where it's just moi.

But even in saying that, I actually think of an English teacher that I had once, who really,

I got to say, was an asshole.

However, I remember once I raised my hand at the back of the room, and this was a lesson

worth that class in and of itself.

And before I answered the question, I said, I just wanted to say, and the teacher said to me,

don't ever start a sentence with that because you minimize everything you say after that.

So, you know what? She might have been a little hard on me. Actually, she was incredibly hard on me.

However, that lesson in and of itself was a beautiful one.

So if you do start your sentences with just, or I just wanted to say, or it's just me,

it's not just you. Bring all of you. Don't minimize yourself in your words prior to showing up

or to expressing them. It's interesting because in doing that, we're trying to not

take up space, not too much space, not be too much, not be too loud, not overwhelm someone

protecting people from their own experience of us. But in that, we turn down our light, we turn

down our shine. And we don't do any service to the

world from that perspective. We don't do, we're such a disservice to the world, but also ourselves.

And it's interesting because the whole premise behind that is to not be that big, because we're

afraid if we are, we will, one, make make people uncomfortable but that will lead to likely

experiencing rejection and abandonment but by staying in a shrunken state we are living in a state

of rejection of our fullest self of our fully expressed self and it doesn't you know i don't want

to minimize where that comes from because the pathology is usually back to our

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