Hey Better Babes, welcome back to Getting Better. I'm Jonathan Van Ness. And today we're talking about

something that can feel a little cringe, can feel a little, who's got time for that? But really,

it's the lifeblood of our human experience. And that's belonging. What does belonging mean?

What's the value of belonging? And what happens when you feel like you no longer belong?

To talk about that today, we have Morgan Birch, who is an NLP master practitioner, an inventor

of the scene method, and an all-around incredible person. Let's get to our conversation.

Morgan, how are you? I'm incredible. Welcome to getting better, Queen. I'm so happy to be here. Me too. And I feel we hear authenticity and we hear a connection so often. And I think for a lot of people in their personalities, that might just be like an automatic tune-out. Like, what does authenticity mean? What does connection mean? Like, get away from me.

I don't have time for this. Yeah. But you say in your work that it's one of the most important things that we have in life and that our culture has duped us into thinking that it's not. Why do you say that? Most of us were raised that in order to get connection, what you do is, you notice what the person needs in front of you.

And then you be that or you do that.

And what you do in you notice what the person needs in front of you. And then you be that or you do that. And what you do in that process is the opposite of authenticity.

You're abandoning yourself. And when you do that, to whatever degree I abandon myself to connect

with you, I will resent you. And I am duming the person that I love the most to be my villain and to be the person

who hurts me. So our culture dupes us into either being authentic, which is this thing that

you don't care about anybody, you don't need anybody, I'm isolated, that's how people envision

it. Like I don't care how you respond to me, I'm being authentic or connected and people envision

that as, I'll sacrifice anything

for you. I love you. I'll do anything for you. If you do that, you don't get connection and you

don't get even true authenticity because we're relational creatures. So when I become most authentic

is when I am most accepted by the person I'm talking to. Because I'm

relational and so are you and so is every human and it's not bad to need people. It's human to need

people. And authentic connection is putting those two together. So our culture dupes us into thinking

you can be one or you can be the other. And sometimes you're lucky to get both. You need both to have either. Some people think authenticity means like I'm just being true to

...