Dirty Chai with Chio - Ep 2 - How 90s Fairytales are sabotaging you

The speaker discusses the influence of fairy tales and 90s TV shows on our perception of success and relationships. They explain how these stories shape our subconscious beliefs and expectations. They analyze the hero's journey template in fairy tales and how it portrays men as brave, wealthy, and devoid of emotions, while women are portrayed as beautiful, helpless, and in need of rescue. The speaker argues that these narratives can hinder personal growth and lead to unrealistic expectations. They emphasize the importance of self-awareness and authentic work to challenge and change these subconscious beliefs. The speaker acknowledges that fairy tales also have positive aspects, but highlights the need for children to distinguish between fantasy and reality. They conclude by discussing the impact of these narratives on modern relationships and the need for a shift in societal norms. Zither Harp hello hi welcome to this week's episode of the dirty side podcast with me your host Chiyo and here we discuss ideas stories and thoughts that all together lead to holistic professional and personal success this week's episode is based on a thought that came to me possibly two years ago in the shower and I remember thinking somebody else must have thought of this this must have clicked and I would have wanted to think that I was having a unique moment of cleverness but the more likely and realistic reason is that I was at an intersection where I had read Eckhart Tolle's the power of now Eckhart Tolle's a new earth I had read Greg McKeown's essentialism and I had also just gone through professional training via my my employer that was centered around understanding the reticular activating system of the brain and how it filters information for our sanity and consequently a huge subset of the information on which we make our daily decisions is not on in the conscious part of our brain so we have a conscious part of our brain that makes active decisions daily that processes things daily as we go through life but the larger part of our brain is the unconscious bit where more decisions than we realize are made from a place of efficiency you see if you if your brain had to process everything that you see and hear on a daily basis you would go crazy because you receive so much input from everywhere from the wind on your skin to the color of the cars passing by to the various sounds coming from the various things happening all around you there is not enough sanity in you or in me to process that amount of data and how the brain has worked around that is whatever it works out quickly it creates a shortcut and that information gets stored in the subconscious then when you receive data that fits any of that information that's already in your subconscious it's processed without you even knowing it right when you see a green light you don't have to think about it what you need to do is already stored in your subconscious when you hear a child crying and you don't have a child what you do about it is already stored in your subconscious you are unlikely to even hear it whereas a newborn mother is operating the mother of a newborn who is also essentially a newborn mother is operating from a place that is entirely different and their subconscious has filtered different information the reticular activating system is then the filter between your subconscious and your conscious brain allowing only what it considers pertinent information for what you are doing through to your conscious brain for active processing so there I am in the shower and all this information comes together in my head and my brilliant idea was good God 90s TV shows and fairy tales ruined me surely they did and the more I thought about it the more excited I got about this idea and I thought I need to talk about this with someone I need to talk about this with someone and so I reached out to the one friend with whom I would mentally spar from time to time and I said dude I had this idea and his response was bro I'm in the streets I don't want to talk about hard things which was fair and so I left it but I couldn't let go of the idea and when I started the podcast I thought this is something I have to explore and something I have to think about and a conversation that needs to be had because two years later I've actually researched it and I've worked out that a I wasn't the first person to have this idea to in-depth research has been done on the impact of the things we watched so fairy tales are just one these are the things that we watched in the formative stages of our lives but when you think about it we receive a lot of input and a lot of guidance on how life is supposed to be from the things we watch and read when we are younger and in our formative years so let's talk about fairy tales specifically because they make for an easier example to illustrate what I'm trying to say and when you think about fairy tales I would like you to think about them in the context of the information that I gave at the beginning of the podcast you see the reason we have these discussions is not to criticize the system for the sake of criticism we want to use information to make us more self-aware and when you are self-aware and aware in general you have actually won half the battle to doing something about it you see if you don't understand it you can't change it so let's talk about understanding how what we have watched what we continue to watch and what we continue to input in our brain is impacting our perception of the world in general what we get what we expect to get and what we accept so fairy tales the fairy tales typified by Joseph Campbell's the hero's journey this is something we know the hero's journey something we know from everything from Cinderella to Braveheart the hero's journey is this in that narratology or comparative mythology the hero's journey is the common template of stories that involves a hero who goes on an adventure is victorious in a decisive crisis and returns home forever changed there is a departure there is an initiation there is resistance and there is some sort of divine intervention and help and then eventually there is success and then there is a return of a changed person the hero's journey as coined by Joseph Campbell is wonderful and is used as the template for most fairy tales here's where I think it has contributed negatively there are many ways in which it has contributed positively maybe let me start there let's start by appreciating creativity let's appreciate the fact that it allows the it allows for the creation of things like Star Trek and Marvel Marvel movies and DC plus movies which I don't like as much but you know it allows for actually everything from what's that movie about stolen cars that just keeps giving birth to itself fast and furious every movie every kung-fu movie every boxing movie creed all of these movies are based on the same template so that template of the hero's journey has given us people to root for has given us the ability to hope has given us creativity and art and has given us immense pleasure and enjoyment over the last few decades here's where I think that it may have and it may have sabotaged us on an unconscious level the hero's journey looks like a young man who is typically wealthy brave and tall setting out to go and achieve this thing of supernatural strength is it any surprise at all that we live in a generation that despises the ordinariness of daily success yet that is truthfully speaking what modern-day success looks like if you can have a happy life if you can have an ordinary life that doesn't have strife that doesn't have financial difficulty that gives you peace and where all you have is enough you have truly succeeded in the modern world but in every hero's journey that we have ever watched there is nothing but disdain for the ordinary we seek and we pursue aggressively the extraordinary and I can't help but wonder if some of that had something to do with the five people who went down in the Titan to look at the wreckage of the Titanic why would you pursue that kind of extraordinary at that price then there is also the idea that the male character that is going out on this journey is three or four dimensional at best right they are brave and they can only be brave they are not allowed to not be brave they're not allowed to be afraid they are strong they are wealthy remember every fairy tale features a prince or a king it is never an ordinary person falling in love with another ordinary person the prince is brave strong wealthy and handsome interestingly he's also typically tall these are all the qualities that the prince is allowed to have then the only emotional range that that prince usually has is anger or generally hero being heroic right they don't have a range of emotions that they are permitted if they fall in love with a woman it is generally either as fuel for their bravery or fuel for their anger in Joseph Campbell's theory he breaks down the hero's journey into 17 parts and a woman features only as a temptress that is the only got as a temptress on the way to the outcome shocker anyway so now we've got men who are brave strong rich handsome and nothing else right they have no emotional range and they are very angry if we take a look at the modern world right now those of us who grew up watching these things a lot of us although not enough I in therapy to deal with those very things I hesitate to speak on the journey of men as as though I have been in their shoes but I can certainly speak as an observer of men and I see how often the typical man struggles with expressing their emotions struggles with having a range I see often how women expect men to be brave in the face of danger I don't know why they wouldn't be afraid either I don't know why they wouldn't be allowed to be afraid either and I'm not saying that they should hide with you or whatever it is I'm just saying it could be an option who said that it's the man who must go and face the murderer right it's the journey of the hero that has taught taught us that who has said that a man shouldn't cry we are dealing with trying to change a script on men expressing emotion that's not one-sided it's not just men trying to figure out how to express emotions it's women learning to do more than pay lip service to saying they want a man to be expressive because there are many times I've heard women say oh yeah yeah men should be more expressive and then be completely shocked and actually horrified when their own man cries or expresses emotion in that way that is because our template our subconscious says no and remember the way the RAS works is your conscious brain can form a thought it can say I am brave and I am strong but your subconscious knows what the truth is and you can't trick your subconscious and when you create a cognitive dissonance between your subconscious or what your subconscious believes and what your conscious brain is saying all that happens is the system autocorrects and auto adjust that cognitive dissonance resolves itself and usually it resolves itself in favor of what the subconscious believes this is why you need to do authentic work in order to be able to authentically change because authentic work leads to a change of the subconscious thought whereas superficial work results in poorly planted superficial affirmations that never really take root isn't it amazing how many of these self-development things have very very strong religious connotations a lot of these things could have come from the Bible but anyway then that's the one side of fairy tales which it which deals with the men the other part of the of the fairy tale the second half of the fairy tale story is the female character the female character typically is stunning absolutely beautiful is it any surprise then that if every story features a stunning woman and a gorgeous man who is tall that is the measure of beauty that we use today the woman is also fragile and helpless right because she needs a brave man to protect her the woman is soft tends to be kind preferably poor or abused which creates a suitable scenario for a man to come and rescue her and generally will then be bestowed upon wealth and a title when the right man rescues her you see growing up seeing that and hearing that and seeing that and hearing that in our formative years I believe is a big part of the reason why women today have to do a lot of work to first of all overcome the tiara syndrome and the terror syndrome is pretty much that idea that someone is going to come and put a tiara on your head and then make your dreams come true it manifests in that way in the in the romantic sense but it also presents itself in the workplace in the workplace it presents itself as women who work exceptionally hard keep their head down they over prepare they pass all the tests they never put their hand up they never say I'm doing great they never say promote me they never say hi this is what I'm doing and I think this is what you should do for me because they are waiting for someone to come and say oh darling well done here's a tiara for your head the tiara syndrome I came across in Sheryl Sandberg's Lin in but I know that she didn't come up with the concept initially it it's it's worth researching and hearing more about it and understanding more about it because once you understand it again awareness is half the battle you'll understand that there's not a particular failing on your part that makes it hard for you to step up and ask for promotion there's not a particular failing on your part that makes it difficult for you to step up and say please can I have a raise there's a reason why those things make you anxious because your subconscious is saying this doesn't align with the template that we know and if you want to change the template that you know then you need to do genuine work put yourself in the presence of people who have gone and faced the tiara whether virtually or or in person by way of mentorship or by way of reading or by way of the internet that's what the internet is for to bring you closer from people who can check to bring you closer to people who can change your paradigm seek them out and change your paradigm you see softness and kindness are great qualities but they are poor qualities where they have no boundaries you see often the princess is portrayed as saving the world she doesn't need to have any boundaries she's not a leader she's waiting for someone to come and lead her the problem with all those things is those things are great now in the modern world except that you need boundaries right and you never saw anyone or female character enforcing those boundaries without the help of a man there's also the fact that typically the female character is poor thinks Cinderella or abused or somehow handicapped in some way pending the arrival of her rescuer this for me manifests in a lot of ways but one of the ways I remember what that stands out in memory is when I had just finished varsity I think I was in my first year I was working but it was my first year of employment and we all went to visit a varsity mates mother and we were we were chatting so a mate and I were chatting and the aunties were chatting on the other side and we were talking about potentially buying houses I didn't have to send to buy to rub together but I had ambition and the aunties stopped what they were saying and they listened to us are you guys talking about buying houses and we said yes and she says but you don't even have husbands I mean do you really want to intimidate your husband's potential husband's away by buying houses don't do these things wait until you're with someone and then you can do these things together and I think that is one of the manifestations of this hero's journey paradigm right that a girl is not meant to do anything you're not meant to do anything concrete massive leader like until you have someone to lead you and the someone to lead you can only be the male Prince partner who is rich and handsome and tall who has come to rescue you these are the same women that we do the ones who have the script are the same women who we put out in today's world and say you have equal rights use them and this is why so many girls are still saying yeah but no one's willing to mentor me or yeah but but I get into the room but I feel like I feel like people are pushing back on my authority because no one has said to us authorities used to take right you have to exercise the leadership muscle you have to flex the leadership muscle in different ways and work out which style is yours you have to figure it out and here's the kicker no one is coming to lead you in it and no one is coming to give you a tiara for doing it you see how the prince doesn't get a tiara you see how the prince doesn't get a pat on the back and told well then this is what he is supposed to do the real trick to this to this thing is that you are now supposed to play the prince and the princess without anyone ever telling you that that's what happened and so we trip ourselves up with these unconscious scripts because we are trying to have one foot in the one script and the other foot in the newer script and it's just not working because it's creating a cognitive dissonance and the reason why it's producing different results in different people is the people who have done the work that has changed the script might experience the same struggle but they come out still as leaders and the people who haven't done the work to change the script experience the same struggle but remain in they do not grow as much they remain bound by the subconscious chains so while I'm here ruining your childhood I just want to say that nothing's wrong with fairy tales and I looked at a paper from India and they talked to over 20 schools and leaders of schools and they discussed this concept of the impact of fairy tales on children and there are many positive traits to it the positive traits are the ones that I mentioned in the opening right and this article I'm just moving some things around so that I can grab my copy of the article this article is so detailed and covers so many schools that it's worth noting that all of the things I'm saying are valid but so are all the positive things about fairy tales it's just that when children receive the script they don't know how to distinguish between the reality of the world and what they are seeing on TV and for most of us there is no discussion later in life to say oh you know when you saw love portrayed as walking into the sunset with your prince there's a part that comes after that called the marriage and it's not so easy right in the marriage this is what's expected of you and of the other person is it crazy to imagine that a person who has grown up on the script of being a prince and a rescuer would struggle very much to be with a woman who does not need to be rescued I was listening to another podcast earlier in the week I've forgotten which one and I really must credit it but they referenced a book a book about how manhood has evolved or should be evolving and how the currency of manhood has gone from money and being the prince and the rescuer to being able to be present emotionally supportive and available to partner and those are the very opposite of the qualities that a lot of our men have grown up with and when I say our men I'm talking particularly in the southern African context but I have a sneaky suspicion that it applies across my own continent and a few others and I listen I read an honest thesis by Nicole K. Breedlove from Ball State University in Indiana it was written in 1995 Nicole had this idea long before I had it and she looks at Disney fairy tales right and she breaks them down she covers 23 Disney fairy tales and she shows what they typically portray of love and romance and relationship in almost all of them the male kisses the female first in almost all of them the male rescues the female in almost all of them the male person makes the first move as far as romance is concerned in almost all of them the female sings of love and fantasizes about love in almost all of them a male praises beauty and the female expects a prince charming it's almost laughable actually and this is everything from Robin Hood, Beauty and the Beast, Jungle Book, Little Mermaid, Lady and the Tramp, Snow White, Fox and the Hound, Lion King, Cinderella, I could go on but what it does is when you when you see these things laid out like this also this is important no one dies no one dies in these things because life is not hard and the romance the romance culminates in people walking into the sunset or having a beautiful wedding and take a look at what romance and marital culture has looked like over the last 20 years we the generation that grew up on this these stories have excelled at extravagant prince and princess like weddings because that is the script that we are unconsciously following and I say all of this as I do all things for the purpose of making you more aware and once you are aware right you have taken the most gigantic of steps towards reshaping the way you look at the world and the way you approach it as a guy you might want to look at what do I bring to a relationship and is it still relevant it's not a one-size-fits-all so things are different and and relevant in different ways to the partner that you're with but you cannot apply a uniform script similarly as a woman you might want to look at how am I approaching the romance script how am I approaching the professional script am I expecting a tiara am I expecting a prince charming in the workplace am I expecting prince charming of romance and in the in the real world I quite I appreciated reading Jay Shetty's eight rules of love recently the book has for an inexplicable reason a cover that looks like a Valentine's card which is very off-putting but the content is extraordinary because it talks about how the portrayal of love and romance and relationship has ruined the concept of actual love and I think the thought I would like to leave you with is whether you have ever paid attention to what script you're following if you've paid attention to whether the challenges that you experience and the frustrations that you experience arise from the script that you're following whether you've given some thought to modifying the script that your subconscious is following and giving your reticular activating system enough information for it to understand that you are now trying to achieve a different thing therefore it can start filtering information through to you differently right the reticular activating system is that thing that that causes you to see something that's associated with you an easy example is a car if you go and buy a red Mazda for example as you're driving from that lot driving that red Mazda you will see red Mazdas everywhere that is your reticular activating system at its most prominent action right what it is doing is it's recognizing that you are now part of a new tribe a tribe of people who drive Mazdas and they're red and it's the CX5 and so it goes around picking out all the members of your tribe and showing them to you because it considers that pertinent information for you now that is how your RAS works and it works that way with everything it's such a mind-blowing concept if you decide that you like flowers it will point flowers out to you if you decide that you genuinely only are looking for Prince Charming who's tall and who's going to rescue you you are only going to look for that and you might not see other people who are attempting to give you what you are looking for but do not fit the script if you decide that though the only way you can get success is if someone puts a tiara on your head it will only give you information that lends itself to what you're looking for whether that information is frustrating or not but that's the information that's available it's not going to try and change your mind or try to tell you that this is a better option that's not its job its job is to filter according to the level at which you think and on that note thank you for joining me this week we have not the second episode on ahead I haven't quite worked out how to put my episodes on Spotify and all the other typical podcast channels but we'll get there eventually if anything if nothing I I learn I figure out things as I go but the key thing is to execute to get started and I've got started and I'm here now thank you very much to everybody who gave me positive feedback on last week's episode I'm really really appreciated it and I would appreciate it just as much if you could share this podcast episode with at least one person thank you so much hopefully this has been just that little useful to you and has given me something to think about thank you so much