Awakening Love After Childhood Trauma: A Journey of Healing

KATHLEEN: Hello everyone and welcome to the journey of an awakening spirit. This is Kathleen Flanagan, your host and we are streaming on the Bold Brave TV Network. Today we have Paul Zolman here. We are going to be talking about awakening love after anger from childhood trauma. First we are going to do sound where we're gonna bring in love, happiness and balance.

KATHLEEN: Paul Zolman is the international best selling author of the Role of Love, but the true author of love is God in his wisdom. He placed us in a variety of circumstances that require us to find our way back to his pure love.

KATHLEEN: What qualifies me to speak about love, my childhood experience of the opposite of love from the austere beginning and the distaste it formed inside of me. I searched and eventually created a method that transformed my life from anger to loving everyone. Growing up in a family of abuse, physical touch became my preferred love style. Only because of the regularity.

KATHLEEN: I could almost count on it. It was consistent. I came to think that was that what was the way to express love? But deep inside I knew that was a twisted belief. I wanted a better life for myself, which is why I created a paradigm shift that works in this.

KATHLEEN: You'll find what helped me move from a childhood boot camp of abuse to being a person who loves everyone and can find good about anyone in any circumstance. This is truly the role of love. I hope you join us.

KATHLEEN: Welcome Paul. I'm so glad to have of you here.

PAUL: What a pleasure to be with you.

KATHLEEN: Why don't you tell the listeners a little bit more about your story and what caused this wake up so to speak and going from abuse and anger to love as a new way of being.

PAUL: Kathleen, I thank you for that. I want to start back with my grandfather. He was, born in Indiana and married, had nine children. Soon after that ninth child was born, that grandmother passed away and he made some decisions in a critical time frame that he didn't realize that you should not do that when you're making, when you're in a crisis or something, should not make major life decisions.

PAUL: Well, he made a decision to sell the farm and he made a decision to sell all the equipment of that farm too. When people came to pick up the equipment, what happened was that?

PAUL: He also said something like this according to my uncle who was one of these people, he said, and would you like this child? And would you like this child? And would you like this child until systematically that grandfather gave all the children away? Except for one.

PAUL: What a horrible decision. He took that one child, Benjamin with him to Montana, found a school teacher that had never been married, married her had 10 more children of which my father is number six. So 19 children.

PAUL: My father, Kathleen was born in 1922 when he's 10 years old. In 1932. This grandfather passes away. So now you have 19 abandoned children and you have the financial crisis of the Great Depression. 1932 all this compounded together, just created more of a crisis situation that became crisis management rather than a plan to management. All these things, all all put together.

PAUL: Kind of made it a, a hard situation for my father. At 10 years old, he kept going back to school for a little bit, but he only graduated from eighth grade. He became a truck driver. That's how I knew him when I was growing up. I'm number 10 of 11 children. So generationally, my father improved the generation. He didn't have 19 children, Kathy.

PAUL: I've done a little bit better myself. I only have eight children.

KATHLEEN: Hey, we're making progress.

PAUL: We are making progress. I'm not so sure it's progress either because now my children, Kathleen only have three. I want more grandchildren. I thought that was the whole deal that we have children so we can have grandchildren. They're the best.

PAUL: I love it. As I'm growing up and my father is a truck driver. He is gone during the week and he comes home on Friday, every single Friday. I love this about my father, every single Friday, he takes my mother on a date.

PAUL: He's not very creative about it. It's always the Maverick Bar and it's always over alcohol. I can imagine I was never there. But I can imagine my mother and father after any couple would, over a period of time would be away from each other. They're saying, well, how was your week? How was your week?

PAUL: They're disclosing what happened? I can imagine. My mother starting at the oldest, which is a boy, starting at the oldest and going right down the line. By the time my mother gets to number 10, my father's been annoyed, annoyed, annoyed, annoyed, annoyed, he's ready to blow. And I'm number 10.

PAUL: I felt like I had the brunt of all that my older brothers did and it was just one of those things. It was either the belt or it was a severe spanking. So that type of abuse happened in the childhood.

PAUL: It was verbal, and it seemed like it was just that mental capacity or incapacity to and lack of education to pass things on, lack of good decision making, passed on for my grandfather. It may have even started long before that grandfather because we kind of pick up what our parents teach us.

PAUL: My brothers and sisters, most of them have been educated now and gone through college, received college degrees. In this generation, it's just different for my siblings and myself. I had that residual anger, Kathleen of that childhood for a very long time up until about age 35. I just kept blaming my father for all awkward situations that I had, whether it was in public.

PAUL: I found I had that stack, stack, stack, stack, stack, all those annoyances until you get to a time that I'm fed up. It's time to blow and then you go back down. I really feel like that, that was one thing that one coping mechanism, so to speak, that my father passed on to me. I didn't like it.

PAUL: In that moment of age 35 I realized I'm responsible for my own life, my own decisions. My father Kathleen had already been dead for seven years here. I was 35 years old. I'm still blaming him for all those social things, all those things going wrong in my life. I realized I can't blame him anymore. I just can't continue to blame him.

PAUL: I decided and I remember distinctly making this decision, I don't want to be angry. I said it in that way and coming from a negative background, that's a perfect statement for a negative person to make. It wasn't gonna help me to say it like that. It was like 22 double negatives. If you multiply a negative number against a negative number in math, you get a positive result.

PAUL: It wasn't working in relationships, it wasn't happening. Speed forward a little bit. Now I I've got my eight children and after 23.5 years, I believe this anger and these fits that I was having from time to time actually were contributory to the demise of my first marriage after the eight children. After the divorce, I had primary custody of the five remaining children in the home.

PAUL: With that. She would have one weekend, I'd have the one weekend with the children and I had them the rest of the time. When it came to the time that she had them on her weekend, I had plans. What I was gonna do, I was gonna do Destination Dating.

PAUL: What that is, I find that a woman for online that lived in a different city and I lived in a different city. We choose a city we'd meet, we'd have a date and then we go home and it was fabulous. I went to Jacksonville, Florida and Daytona Beach, Florida, Atlanta, Georgia, Cabo, San Lucas, New York City, Salt Lake City, Las Vegas, Phoenix, Kansas City, Nashville.

PAUL: All these places was having a great time in my life. I did it for about a year and a half, spent over $10,000 just on all that travel and didn't find anybody to date. I thought I had a line on someone down in Phoenix. So I moved there.

PAUL: Bad idea. But it was a bad idea. Didn't work out. So, here I am all alone in Phoenix, my wife or my ex wife at the time, had decided that she was going to go back and move with her parents and she wanted to take the children with. There were three children left in the household. This is about 3.5 years after the divorce.

PAUL: There are just three children now left in the household. She wanted to take them with her. I thought this would be a great opportunity for those last three to really get to know their grandparents, which they didn't know very well. I thought these people are really good people. So I relinquished primary custody to her. I'm all alone. Absolutely alone.

PAUL: I get a call from my older sister and I'm kind of that thorn between two roses. I had an older sister and a younger sister. You can understand why my father would be so angry now because he valued women. He took his wife out every Friday night that if I look cross eyed or anything at my sisters, I was in trouble because I'm right there in the middle and it was just bad.

PAUL: My older sister calls and says I have a neighbor that I want to introduce to you. I said sister, I'm seven hours away from you. Why would I want to get to know your neighbor? I've done all this Destination dating. It doesn't work and she said, oh, come on, just like big sister said. At number 10 of 11 you got to do what your oldest siblings say.

PAUL: You don't really have a lot of say. In fact, Kathleen, to emphasize that a little bit. I was the remote control for the TV, during the day, whatever, those old, however they want the channel changed on the TV. I'm the guy walking up to the TV, to the next channel. That's kind of the way the situation was.

PAUL: So you can relate, I guess.

KATHLEEN: Oh, I totally can relate to this. I come from a family of seven. So I know.

PAUL: Yeah. There you go. So, I said, well, I'll start emailing her. What kind of relationship can you build with the email?

PAUL: I didn't think there'd be anything there. We started emailing but she was an excellent writer, this neighbor, my sister, excellent writer. After four or five emails, I'm thinking this is kind of interesting. She's really a good writer and I thought I'm gonna ask her a question. I'm gonna ask, well, how many times have you been married?

PAUL: Yeah, it takes a while to get up, work up to that, to ask those kind of questions. And so, I thought, well, as I'm doing that and waiting for the answer, getting really excited because I just, well, what if she doesn't write back and that sort of thing she writes back and she says, counting the five that are buried in the backyard.

PAUL: I thought I got a live one here. I got somebody that has a little bit of personality.

PAUL: I thought this is somebody worth pursuing a little bit. So I moved up close to where my sister was just to pursue the relationship. Yeah, after I visited a few times, but then I moved up there and we started getting more serious. Now it's time for Big Brother approval.

PAUL: Number 10 of 11, I gotta have that too. I travel 300 miles north with this woman and we go into my brother's house and the first thing my sister-in-law does is pull her aside and say the only emotion that the Zolman family learned growing up was anger.

PAUL: At first I did not. I said that it made me mad and I thought, oh, I'm busted. She really nailed it. I thought from from that moment if there's any way to change that image of the Zolman family now was the time I had the the opportunity to do that.

KATHLEEN: We are talking with Paul Zolman and he has one funny story. It wasn't funny at the time. I know that, but boy, he's got a great sense of humor telling it today. I am looking forward to you continuing on when you finally meet your woman friend and how that unfurls with your family.

KATHLEEN: They're just angry.

PAUL: Well, Kathleen, it was really interesting experience. I realized that I needed to change that attitude of the family, but not even project that perception into the future. I had to stop that perception and become more loving to present more of loving approach.

PAUL: I really like an analogy. The other day, I was out walking and I found a stick and one side of the stick is really smooth and perfect spot for your hand. It's about the size of a walking stick, about 3.5 ft long, other side of the stick though it has some little points on it.

PAUL: Oh knots, knots here and there. I call this the naughty side of the stick. And then this one the nice side of the stick just like Santa Claus. I'm sure Santa Claus has a stick like that. You probably wondered where you got your presence from. It's from the naughty and nice stick. I realized that this, this culture of anger was on the naughty side of the stick.

PAUL: It includes the humor and include the put downs the sarcasm. All that is really kind of a culture of itself. Vocabulary, everything on that naughty side of stick. I said I really need to whitewash or clean up my vocabulary. Learn loving languages instead of languages that put people down, help learn the language that would build people up and bring them up in how they feel about themselves.

PAUL: But how I feel about them too, quit sending out those barbs, quit sending out those type of things that would put people down and make them feel bad at you at and may, even if it's funny at their expense. I thought that's really kind of an angry culture.

PAUL: I realized that when I learned the spectrum or when my sister kind of highlighted where I was on the spectrum, I'm on the naughty side of the stick, kind of makes you squirm. If you're on the naughty side of stick, you don't want to be there. I did not want to be on that side of stick.

PAUL: I realized I had three choices that I could continue to blame someone for my choices and it's their fault. I don't have to change if I can blame someone, it's their fault and they're the ones that have to change. I don't move on the stick there. I stay in my same spot as I continue to blame. It's the victim mentality. It's their fault.

PAUL: That's one choice. Second choice was I could become more angry. That wasn't even an option, did not want that. The other choice was just to become more loving. I started reading the color code and the five love languages and it really settled on the principles of the five love languages. This is why Dr. Chapman was a reverend as a pastor.

PAUL: He said that they reconciled to the life of Jesus Christ. Well, I did my own reconciliation and they actually did that really attracted me because I'm Christian. I wanted that type of lifestyle. Anyway, did not know how to get from point A where I was anger A for anger big A two point B to that loving side of the stick, the nice side of the stick.

PAUL: As I read through the book and I read the book four or five times, I did not get it. You mean to tell me Kathleen that if I guess what your love language is and I cater to that, we're gonna be buddies, Doctor Chapman. That doesn't sound like love at all.

PAUL: Who am I to say what love is from where I came from? But that didn't sound like it, it didn't work for me because I'm a bad guesser. It wasn't working for me. The second thing that Dr. Chapman had didn't work either. He said, well, if you take this survey, then you can find out what your love language is.

PAUL: Then what, what do I do advertise? Hello, Kathleen. I'm gifts. What do you have for me today?

PAUL: Awkward. I'm done with awkward. I've already been on awkward already. I don't need more awkward in my, or in my family. I thought, you know what? I have an idea even as dysfunctional as our family was growing up, what pulled us together was the games just having games together. Sure. There are still the put downs, there was still the competitiveness.

PAUL: You can imagine 11 children at a table and trying to, you're passing the food around and hoping that there's some left at the end with your number 10. You're hoping that that it comes back and you get something and you take enough for two servings because you don't know that you're ever gonna get second. It's that kind of thing. It's just that kind of family you and you can relate with, with seven.

PAUL: That just didn't work for me either, just like that. The survey and the guessing, but the games were fun. I thought, what if I made this a game? I contacted Dr. Chapman and asked him, are you licensing those little icons, those little pictures that you have of the different love languages. You licensing that?

PAUL: His attorney wrote me back and said, no, we're not doing that at this time. I was grateful, because they're 30 years old and they're kind of antiquated. They're really, ugly, they're just flat out. I didn't like it. I contacted an attorney, local attorney and he said that, he's a copyright attorney. Intellectual property attorney is what I needed.

PAUL: He said that theory like the love languages is not copyrightable application is so the way you present it is copyrightable. I thought, well, with that information, I can make my own little pictures of representing the love languages and then make it into a game. That's what I did. I put the pictures on a cube like this.

PAUL: There you have an hourglass on a hand representing time, a server holding a plate represents service. These are all pictures. You might note that there are no words at all. This one is two hands put together to make a heart and then like a comic strip of a conversation flyout, meaning the words from the heart. Those would be the words, the two hands put together for touch.

PAUL: Then the last one would be the gifts, five love languages, six sides on the die. I had to create a new side for the sixth side. This one surprised me. Kathleen, there's just two instructions you roll the die every day, whatever comes up. That's the love language that you practice giving away all day, that day, all day to everyone.

PAUL: I was single when I created this. I did not have a significant other as Dr. Chapman says, you should practice it with a significant other. I didn't have one. I decided, well, who am I gonna love? I said, well, I just love everybody and actually it's worked out a whole lot better because what I was looking for was a character transformation.

PAUL: That was something that you have to practice almost every single minute to get to the point that it's a habit now.

PAUL: That worked really well for me not to have that significant other as Dr. Chapman to practice on, but you have to practice it to everybody. I came in contact with what I found Kathleen is that people would light up when they lit up.

PAUL: I discovered what their primary love language is or a secondary love language. No longer do I have to pause the relationship and say, excuse me, could you take this survey? So I know how to love you.

PAUL: Awkward. We're done with awkward. You don't have to do that anymore. It's over. So, this way you're watching and just taking mental notes of what people like. As you do that. You'll find that people like words, they like the compliments. Everybody likes the compliments and people light up that way.

PAUL: Some people won't, but they'll like something else. As you're rolling the die over a 30 day period, you will have gone through giving away all five love languages, all five. So that you know, them backwards and forwards, you become what I like to call a love language, linguist, sexy title.

PAUL: I know you want it. Everybody wants that title so you can have it. The second thing that happens is that by giving it away, you can see it when it comes your way and respond appropriately. It gives you that peripheral vision that you didn't have before.

PAUL: Most people are low myopic, they can only see what they like as love. But this way you see, oh they're loving on me. It's not my primary love language, but I can respond appropriately. Now you have understanding you have a better communication because you're Multilingual as it relates to love languages.

KATHLEEN: When you did that, did you just watch your anger start falling away because you gained more clarity about yourself and how people are? Is that part of what caused that? You're bringing more love in, but there's still anger. Anger takes a while, especially when you're talking the generational anger that you had.

KATHLEEN: I'm curious about, like dialing in just a little bit more because I know that you had, this woman was coming in. Did you practice on her? Did your relationship move forward with her? Did it not go forward? Did you just say no, I need to keep working on me for a little bit longer.

KATHLEEN: Share that a little bit because I think what you have is really cool and what a beautiful way to really change how you perceive yourself in your life. But there's still more that you're not sharing yet.

PAUL: You're really perceptive, Kathleen. No wonder you're so good at what you do. I love that question. Thank you. You're absolutely right. That's what happened for me is that I still had the anger even though I did end up marrying that woman that I took to my brother's house, but I still had the problems and it still flared and she felt she was very sensitive and it just didn't work out.

PAUL: After four years, we divorced. I'm still single but all during that time I'm trying to work on trying to love better and I don't know if she didn't see that I was trying, I wasn't trying hard enough or whatever it was. I just wasn't getting rid of the anger until I realized what it was that I was being annoyed at what other people were doing.

PAUL: I was annoyed, I was trying to make a decision for someone else trying to overlay my expertise or my understanding on someone else when it's their life, their choices and whatever they're choosing to do, it was annoying me and I said that's not even my lane. What am I doing?

PAUL: Why am I being annoyed at what they're doing? It's their life. What do I choose to do? What am I going to do? How am I going to do that? It became more of what I was focusing on and it became really easy with the die because what I was saying before was what's wrong with them? Why are they doing that?

PAUL: Now, after rolling the dice, I'm saying, what's right with that person? What can I love about that person? Two different directions of thought. What's wrong to versus what's right? I was so busy, Kathleen focusing on what's right with that person. What can I love about that person? I completely forgot to be annoyed.

PAUL: Absolutely forgot. Instead of stacking now, instead of stacking those annoyances on top of one another, I wasn't getting annoyed at all. But now I started stacking kindnesses. What happened was really magical because it, these love languages. I found to be very basic pieces of love, very basic.

KATHLEEN: I have to tell you, I had a realization when you said that when you were working on getting over your anger, you kept looking at what was people annoyed you and the things that kept compounding.

KATHLEEN: I sat there and thought that's what I do too sometimes. As I'm working through my anger and it flares sometimes what caused this to flare up? I never really looked at it that it was just an annoyance and then how I can go down a rabbit hole because I did that this weekend, I went down a rabbit hole over something and I got over it.

KATHLEEN: Finally, God, please help me to understand this and see the bigger picture because we have to do that. I didn't like being in that kind of anger because my feelings were hurt. Instead of letting anybody know my feelings are hurt.

KATHLEEN: I'm gonna be this mean person. I didn't want to do that. I love what you said about changing that perception and then using the die. If I had something like that I probably would have gotten out of it way sooner than just stewing in it, so to speak. Please continue.

PAUL: Yeah. Absolutely. I don't think it's the die that's really doing it. But it's the whole idea that you're setting a theme for the day to love a determination to love. These annoyances, I found that as I'm stacking annoyance on top of annoyance, on top of annoyance, it's almost like they are stair steps to that angry flash.

PAUL: You contrast that now, now that we're stacking with rolling the die, we're stacking kindness on top of kindness on top of kindness on top of kindness. Where is that leading to?

PAUL: That's what I'm saying that these love languages are really, really basic. Everybody should know that five, all five love languages to better communication, better communicate in the world, to your family, to your friends, to your loved ones, to everybody.

PAUL: You should know these five love languages. It's basic and why I'm saying it's basic because these are the stair steps I've discovered that would bring you to compassion, to charity, to sympathy, to empathy to forgiveness, even to intimacy. This brings you up to that level that it takes kindness to get there.

PAUL: It takes stacking these kindnesses one on top of another to get to that point. Very similarly as it was for anger and these annoyance, whatever it was, those annoyances that would stack up and take you to that angry flash. These love steps or loving kindnesses that you're sending out.

PAUL: Now take you to the different steps that higher law of love, that deeper and more profound love that you can get there. But you have to practice, practice the love languages to get there. I think they get through there.

KATHLEEN: I found that, in the last couple of years when I decided to really dial in and move through more anger, I've been working through anger my whole life so I understand exactly where you're coming from and you have, I thought I had problems, you had way worse.

KATHLEEN: No, no, nothing offensive. But you know how we, I never look at it. I always think somebody has it worse than me. I've never really taken on a total victim role of, poor me because I never bought into it. When I would see that I still have these tendencies of getting angry or frustrated it was really bothering me.

KATHLEEN: It was ok, you got to stop and look at what's going further on inside of you. What I found is that when I started laughing more, finding more joy in my life because it's always there. I never pay attention because my attention is someplace else.

KATHLEEN: When I decided to change my focus change, my self-image, how I'm perceiving life, looking at things that are more fun because my partner laughs at everything and I'm like, what is he laughing at? I've always paid attention to him because he finds joy and people love to be around him.

KATHLEEN: He is one of the nicest guys on the planet and, and he's definitely a gift from God because this girl, I don't know how I managed to bring him in other than I chose that I wanted to change and be a better person. Because of that, it brought that in and we help each other and in that. That's what I found is by changing my perception, made a big difference.

KATHLEEN: Then I saw how my outer world was changing towards me too. People were liking me and I'm, what do you mean? You like me? You're not supposed to like me. I don't even know what that means because I had kept people at a distance my whole life to protect myself.

KATHLEEN: I used my anger to protect myself because I am incredibly sensitive and I felt everything and I would cry all the time. I used to be told I was a cry baby because that's all I knew how to do was just let it out. I cried, I cry all the time now, but not because I'm being hurt. But, things touch me, things move me, my heart's opening the compassion, things like that.

KATHLEEN: I have that sensitivity that I'm allowing the world to see that softer, kinder, gentler side that I have protected my whole life. I think with the die that you talk about what do I want to focus on today?

KATHLEEN: I want more peace in my life and everything comes up where you're not peaceful. But that's the point. God delivers what we need to learn by giving us these so called obstacles. I feel like if I want to feel more worthy and deserving, well, God is not just going to put a wand on my head and make me feel more worthy and deserving.

KATHLEEN: He's gonna put situations in front of me to find my worth and value how to find that peace inside of me in chaos and that's how it works. Then having the tool that you have, it makes it something tangible that people are using. I think that's a great way.

KATHLEEN: What a beautiful way to start changing your perception and being nicer because you're practicing a particular love gift. I can't say I know everybody's gift. I don't know what mine is. I don't know what my partner's is. I think he likes more of the touch thing. He coos when there's more touch going on, it was like, oh, you're cooing.

PAUL: Just watch them light up. I think that's the key. I think there's one more thing that we just kind of glazed over a little bit that I, what helped me understand just that self-actualization of what describes the behavior that I'm doing right now.

PAUL: When I realized what word describes the behavior that I'm doing right now, I think, what would be the opposite of that word? For example, if I was being sarcastic, what would be the opposite of sarcastic and I would put actually sarcasm on the naughty side of the stick. I know we had a discussion about this. That's really funny.

PAUL: Sometimes it can be very funny and sometimes in a joking way, but sometimes it's not, sometimes it's not that funny and, even that those, it's like a barb and it would be on the naughty side of the stick when you contrast that and think of what would be the opposite of that.

PAUL: What comes to mind for me is somebody being genuine, somebody being authentic, somebody being true. When you can contrast those 22 traits with the antonyms and the synonyms might be of that, I realize that I want to be more on the genuine side of the stick on more authentic than I do want to be sarcastic.

PAUL: You start moving toward those character traits as you learn them and you'll get it like you said, one line upon line precept on precept here a little there, a little, just a little bit at a time. Thank goodness that God provides it to us in that way. We can't be overloaded with how, what a horrible person.

PAUL: We are all at one time and we're not horrible. We're not really horrible people. I would say that most people, it's funny that we'd focus on what's wrong with that person and look at that 10 or 20% of that person. Maybe they do have faults. Maybe they do have weaknesses as everybody does. Why focus on that?

PAUL: Why magnify that whatever you magnify is gonna get bigger. Why do you want that weakness in them to get bigger? Why would you be even be looking at it? Because guess what? You're looking at their weaknesses, what's gonna happen to you? They're gonna right, look back at your weaknesses and then tear you apart too.

PAUL: Why would you even start that? Why would you even do that? It's just stop in your tracks. Realize what you're doing. Have that self-actualization come to Jesus moment if you will, whatever you want to call it, just look where you're at right now, find out what is the opposite of this behavior and then you'll find out which side of the stick it's on the naughty side or the nice side, stick, stay to the nice side of stick.

PAUL: That's gonna help you do that 1% per day. You don't have to do it all in a day, but just that 1% per day.

PAUL: But for me, it was almost as if I was ignoring anything that possibly couldn't, aggravate me or annoy me ignoring that while I'm rolling the die because I was focused hyperfocus on watching what I could love about that person. What is good about that person tried to train my mind now to focus on that 80% or that 90% that's good in that person rather than that, that, 10 or 20%. That's not.

KATHLEEN: I believe that if we, the people on the planet actually did that, what we're going through wouldn't be happening anymore.

KATHLEEN: If we're not going to be looking at the color of your skin or your religion or whatever is going on with a person because we all have it and I think people are just so terrified of being vulnerable that it's easier to put out this front because look at the garbage that's on TV, with these reality shows.

KATHLEEN: That does something that brings out your insecurities, in my opinion because I won't watch them. When you see little commercials, why would you put yourself through that? Why would you do that to yourself?

KATHLEEN: Because that is belittling yourself. It's shaming yourself. You think it's all about the money and it's not. You're going on national television to show, look at me, I'm totally screwed up.

KATHLEEN: Let me just compound on that. I sit there and think what you're saying is so right on the money because when I started focusing on more of what's happening with people.

KATHLEEN: Somebody could be having a bad day in the grocery store. The checker could be really bitchy about something and instead of taking it and she's taking it out on you.

KATHLEEN: Not that she probably intends to, just smile back or be compassionate and say, I hope your day improves because you don't know she could have a child, a sick kid at home or hospitalized or her mother passed away or something. You know what I mean?

KATHLEEN: If we just show compassion, I think that would make such a huge difference in how we treat each other and we come back more into a godlike creature where love is expressing instead of anger and hate and frustration and jealousy and whatever else is out there.

KATHLEEN: Is there's anything else that you would like to share with the audience about everything we talked about or have any insight or any recommendations? How you could help them? Also how can we get a hold of you?

PAUL: Thank you, Kathleen. There is one more thing that I want to talk about. We're talking about languages here and whether it's an angry language or a loving language, I want to talk about the Sanskrit dialect in northern India from that Sanskrit dialect. We get some great words. We get like the word Nirvana, which is really kind of coming to yourself. We get the word karma. But the word I want to talk about today is Namaste.

PAUL: Namaste is hands are put together at the end of a yoga class and the person is bowing their head and then they say Namaste, it doesn't mean, hey, y'all class is over, you can go home now, doesn't mean that. It really has a kind of a sacred meaning in that, dialect and in that Southeast Asia area that it's a greeting, but it's a very sincere and sacred greeting.

PAUL: What it truly means in the Hindu interpretation of it is that the God in me sees the God in you or put another way, the divine in me sees the divine in you. And really, that's what we're trying to build here. We're trying to get that mindset that watch for that divine in other people and just focus on that and help lift their day, make their day better, make their day.

PAUL: The very best day possible, what they're gonna do with that is they're gonna spread that cheer to all their circle of influence as well. That's really what we want to do. We want to make the world a more cheerful place in doing that. You can contact me at my website roll of love dot com. Role of love dot com.

PAUL: We did a play on words, I live two hours north of Las Vegas. The dice was the magical thing that was the right choice for that. But it's roll for rolling the die out and that's outside. Your role actually will change you inside.

PAUL: That's what we're looking for is that paradigm shift so that you can watch for opportunities to love instead of watch for opportunities to hate or to put somebody down role of love dot com. That's how you can get a hold of me. You can buy a bundle right now. It's a whole lot less for $29.99. You can get the book, a die a journal to keep track of what you rolled.

PAUL: Opportunities you start to love in that way and what you did about those opportunities becomes a love legacy journal for now and for your posterity be a great thing to pass down through the generations to show what was there to love in your day. What did you do about it? Just a great legacy book. But you can get that for $29.99. It's a whole lot less than just one therapy session.

KATHLEEN: I love that. What a great thing to do. I've seen people that are trying to create legacy books about families and traditions and things like that. I think this is a beautiful, beautiful way to change the paradigms and that we have been bestowed by our parents for generations.

KATHLEEN: It's time for us to break all of that and come back into the true essence of who we are, which is love and say, no, this world is crazy, I don't have to be crazy with it. I'm gonna show you another way of being and I'm going to be the light and shine my light. I think you're doing an amazing job.

KATHLEEN: You have a great sense of humor about what happened to you and thank you so much for being on the show, Paul. It was truly a pleasure to have you and I learned a lot about you myself and I have a lot more to go, as we all do, but it was beautiful. Thank you.

PAUL: Thank you, Kathleen. You're a delightful hostess. Thank you so much.

KATHLEEN: One more thing, Paul, what would be one thing that you would recommend somebody to do to make one small change in their life?

PAUL: One thing I would turn off the TV for most of the time and really monitor how much you're watching the TV, or even media, internet that for that matter, because I think that we really have have been trained by the media to look at negative things, look what this person did. That was totally wrong. And we focus on that.

PAUL: We think that's mainstream society when actually there's only a few that are committing crimes. Very few that are are doing all these negative things. They're not looking at the big picture of all the good things that are going on in the world and if there's one thing to do, just step back from the media so that you can determine who you want to be and how you want to send love out.

PAUL: Start with yourself, then go to your family, your family will go to your neighbor and go to the community, go to your state, go to the nation, the world. We really need to step it out just like that.

PAUL: Who can you be kind to today? Who can you have a better day? Like you, Kathleen, you said you thought you had problems until you met me or you thought you had a childhood that was rough until you met me. I'm so glad to be here to make your day a whole lot better. And in that way.

KATHLEEN: There was nothing offensive. I mean, no offense by that whatsoever. Paul, it's 19 kids is like, wow.

PAUL: I was absolutely not offended, but I thought it was, that's really the essence of this, that if there are people that are having worse days than you, the best way to lift yourself up and to help you get out of your doldrums that you're in is to lift someone else.

PAUL: It's not really that self-love is how you love yourself is by giving it away. I love the sound of music. Lyrics that, that Ralph sings to the van Prop sister love in the heart wasn't put there to stay. Love isn't love till it's given away.

KATHLEEN: That's a perfect ending for the show. Again, thank you so much for joining me, Paul and maybe we'll have you come back another day.

PAUL: That would be great.