Summary
Joe explores how the feeling of “I don’t belong” is a trained defense mechanism from childhood, not a reflection of present reality. When we were young, our essential selves were rejected, and we learned that not belonging protects us from feeling that rejection again. He identifies three strategies people use to prove they don’t belong: provoking rejection (annoying people, testing boundaries), disappearing (hiding, becoming invisible), and subtle superiority (positioning yourself as better than others, typically from having highly critical parents).
Joe argues that perfect belonging doesn’t exist anywhere—not in marriage, not even in deep meditation. The real question isn’t “do I belong?” but “am I being myself?” He shares a story of a corporate client who committed to being authentic at work every day. She got fired—but described it as “the best possible way to be fired.” Being herself meant people could trust her, and the question of belonging simply evaporated. When you’re in alignment with yourself, the world rearranges around you: people who don’t accept you leave, people who do arrive, and belonging becomes irrelevant.
Key Concepts
- Feeling like you don’t belong is a trained defense against rejection
- Being yourself causes the world to arrange itself around you
- Subtle superiority is a form of not-belonging defense
- Disappearing is a strategy to avoid the pain of rejection
Key Quotes
“The reason that we feel like we don’t belong is because then we might not get hurt.”
“There’s no way that any of us in today’s world can’t find a sense of belonging. And yet, when you’ve defined yourself as an outsider, what you’re doing is you’re finding that you don’t belong in every situation.”
“There is no such thing as perfect belonging. We don’t perfectly belong anywhere.”
“It’s great to be fired for being myself is the best possible way to be fired.”
“There’s a native reward for being yourself. It is that you stop thinking about whether you belong or you don’t belong.”
“Am I in alignment with me right now? That’s all that happens.”
Transcript
It’s an amazing thing when we are hanging out and doing retreats. You’re going to often find the person very quickly who’s like, “Oh yeah, I don’t belong here. I’m on the outside.” At the end of any of our weeklong retreats, everybody knows they belong. But people will come in with that sense of, “Oh, I don’t belong.” That, you know, is historic. It has nothing to do with where they are today. They will feel that feeling of not belonging no matter where they are, which is weird when you think about it. There’s no way that any of us in today’s world can’t find a sense of belonging. And yet, when you’ve defined yourself as an outsider, what you’re doing is you’re finding that you don’t belong in every situation that you go to. You might have a new family, a wife that you married and kids, and you feel like you don’t belong there. Or maybe if you’re lucky, you feel like you belong one place, but you don’t belong in all these other places. But what’s actually happening there, the reason that we feel like we don’t belong is because then we might not get hurt. When I was a kid, I think I was like 13 years old, I had a green mohawk. I just didn’t belong. I didn’t belong in my family. I didn’t belong in school. I didn’t belong anywhere. And so I was out to prove it. I was going to annoy people to prove I didn’t belong. I was going to look away to prove that I didn’t belong. I was saying, “Will you love me if I do this? Will you love me if I do that?” And that’s one way to do it. The other way to do it is just to disappear. See, nobody sees me. I don’t belong here. Nobody gets me. I don’t belong here. That’s another way people do it. But all it is is just a training. We’ve just been trained that you’re not going to be accepted here. And then we turn that training into I don’t want to feel that pain again. If I think I don’t belong, that I don’t have to feel your rejection. And not like rejection, oh, I’m not going to have a date with you or I’m not going to do business with you, but the rejection that you received when you were young, which which was basically who you are essentially was not good enough. And so that feeling we’re avoiding by constantly going around and proving that we don’t belong. There’s many ways in which we do it. We’ve covered two already. One of the ways, like I said, is that we are going to say the things we are going to annoy. we are going to prove to people that that that we don’t belong that they don’t accept us. The other way is to hide. But the third way that people go about proving that they don’t belong is that they are constantly in their mind saying, “Oh, I’m a little bit better. I know. I know. I got this. They don’t got it.” That’s typically comes because you had highly critical parents and you’ve cut out your emotions. And so the only way that you protect yourself is to go, “Oh, I’m better.” And you can tell that it’s a form of protection because it doubles down when you get attacked. If you feel like someone’s attacked you, then you immediately start judging them, start going into better. And that’s another way of feeling like, “Oh, I don’t belong.” So the question then, of course, is okay, if I’ve been trained that I don’t belong, what happens and what do I do to get to a place where I actually feel belonging? And this is where it gets a little bit weird. It gets weird because there is no such thing as perfect belonging. Like we don’t perfectly belong anywhere. Even in a deep meditation with yourself and the sense of self evaporates and the body, the sensations in the body start evaporating. It’s like is that really a belonging? I’ve been married happily now for over 20 years. I love my wife. Is there perfect belonging? Is there a perfect match? There’s never such a thing. There’s no place where somebody can know us completely, not even ourselves. So, what’s the that deep belonging that we’re looking for? That’s really the question that you have to come to when you realize that this feeling like you don’t belong is just something that you’ve been trained into. So how does this resolve this idea that there’s belonging or lack of belonging that whole thing just evaporates and the only way it particularly evaporates is when you are yourself when you speak your truth and you are okay with whatever the results are. So I have a great story about this. I was working with somebody who was high up at one of the big companies, but they weren’t a CEO and and so they could get hired and fired and they were worried about that. And one day they came to me and they said, “Oh, you know, I’m thinking about quitting and I’m wondering what do you think? Should I keep my job or not keep my job?” And I said, “Oh, I don’t think that’s the question. You know, I think the question is who do you have to be in your job to be happy with your job?” And if you answer that question and you act that way, you might get fired. You might leave. Who knows? It’s okay either way. But what I do know is the next job that you find will be one that accommodates who you are. It’ll be one that accepts who you are. And you will walk into that job being who you are rather than being what you think people want from you. So she did it. She just every day said, “These are the things that I didn’t say yesterday that are true to me. I’m going to say them today.” and she was just full of courage. She said, “Yep, politically there’s a consequence, but I don’t care. Yep, I might make enemies, but I don’t care. I’m going to be myself.” And it first started very defensive. Like she was herself, but there was a defense to it. There was a way in which she was protecting herself. There’s a way she was putting herself above. And she started to let that drop and just started to be herself. So if something hurt, she said, “Ouch.” If she was offended, she said, “I was offended.” If she disagreed, she disagreed, but she didn’t do it with any kind of punch. She just was like, “Oh, yeah. I see it a little bit differently.” And maybe she’d ask some how what questions like we do in the connection course. And she just started to be herself. And she got fired. I have to say I was surprised cuz it’s like 80% of the time they raise through the ranks. They do a lot better. But this is one of those 20% cases where she got fired. And I remember talking to her and I said, “Well, what what what what is that like for you?” She goes, “Oh, it’s great.” I was surprised again. I was like, “What?” And she was like, “Yeah, it’s great to be fired for being myself is the best possible way to be fired.” What she learned in that experiment was that people, if she was herself, people could trust her. There was no more I’m on the outside. There was no more I’m better than. There was no more I’m hiding. There’s no more I’m pushing to see if you still love me. It was all just her being her. There’s a native reward for being yourself. It is that you stop thinking about whether you belong or you don’t belong. You just think about, oh, am I in alignment with me right now? That’s all that that happens. And when you consider that, when you go, “Oh, am I alignment with me?” eventually the world starts arranging itself around you. Maybe you get fired like my client. Maybe you get a raise. Maybe you get a promotion. Maybe you find yourself in a different country. But the world starts to align itself to meet you where you are. The people who don’t like who you are leave. The people who do like where you are who you are come. And all of a sudden, you have a world where you can be yourself. You don’t have to manage yourself. There’s always evidence that we don’t belong. But if you’re being yourself and that’s what you’re checking in with. You’re listening to yourself and saying, “This is how I want to be.” Then eventually that question just fades and the only question that’s left is, “Hey, am I acting in alignment right now? And if not, what do I have to do to get into alignment?” So if you’re really interested in going deeper on belonging and that means really understanding yourself, a great way to do that is to be in connection with yourself. And so we offer the connection course and we offer it maybe six, seven times a year. It’s a great course. It’s really fun and it takes the intellectual understanding that we do on podcasts and and videos and we put it into the body through real life experiments where we really get to experience what it’s like to be more deeply connected with ourselves, to be more of ourselves and what it’s like when we’re not and how out of alignment feels. And we get to do it with each other. And we get to do it in a way that we solve the problems that we’re having today in the course.