- Hi, my name is Eileen Crispell. I am a storyteller, writer, wife, older mom, architect, and a shaman. I help people heal and empower their souls. I saved my own life by applying medical medium information and I've been applying this information in mind in my family's life since 2012. - Hi, I am Aimee Jones. I'm an autism mom, a home educator, a noted gardener, a near-death experiencer, living a plant-based lifestyle, and I help people heal their souls as a shaman. I've been following medical medium information ever since 2015, and mine in my family's life has changed dramatically since. - Hi all, Aimee and Eileen here, and we actually have a special guest with us today, which I will talk about in just a minute. But we're just gonna, I wanna let you know that we're going to be bringing some other people on our podcast. We're gonna be bringing on some of our own family members. We're going to be bringing on some people who've been through our coaching program to talk about their transformation and their experience with the kind of things that we talk about. And we're gonna be running a contest, you'll hear about it soon, to invite a few people on, to be on our podcast with us and ask us anything. (laughs) So bring it on, we'll talk about it on the podcast. Any of you who feel like brave enough or you wanna come on the podcast with us, we would, that's a sweet spot for Aimee and I, and we would love to have you on and just show you how the process works. So stay tuned for all of that. But today we have our special guest is my 17 year old son, Maximilian, who we call Max. And, you know, when we were just about to start, I said to Max, just be yourself. And Aimee and her brilliance said the following, Aimee. Yeah, so I said, and it's funny because I was actually just thinking this last week, which is probably why I said it. But when I was a kid, you know, sort of Max's age, people would give you this brilliant advice and they'd say, be yourself. And I just used to think, what is this thing that they're talking about? What is the self that they want me to be? Well, what does that mean? Just tell me what I'm supposed to do. And I didn't think that it was actually, I didn't think it really genuinely had any meaning to it. I didn't think it actually meant something. I thought it was just something cute someone said to sort of say, you know, like a kind of good luck kind of thing, (laughs) which is really funny now, because this is what I was thinking about it, because we talk about weekend, week out here on the podcast and in the work that we do daily, we're talking about being yourself and what that means for you and discovering that for yourself and letting go of all the layers that life puts upon you so that you can really come to that place of being yourself. And I would have loved to have been 17 and known what that meant. It would have saved me a whole lot of trouble in my life in the next sort of decades that I would live out. But here we have Max who has kind of lived a very different perspective and knows what it means to be himself. So when Eileen says to Max, just be yourself, there's probably something really valuable in that for him. So we think Max. Max, welcome. What do you think about the statement be yourself? How does that make you feel? - Agreeing with Amy here. It always does sound, sometimes it's like a nice, cute, see thing to say to be somebody's confidence while sometimes it's hard to actually think about actually a true and important statement that is. I think a lot of people don't really acknowledge that. - Yeah. Do you feel like you know who you are at 17? - No. I am quarter of the way there. - Yeah. Do you feel like-- - That's a good stop. - Yeah, it is a good start. So-- - Because you're young. - Not to put on you on the spot, but as I, you know, observing as your mother, I see who you are in my own view. But, you know, you and I talk a lot about mythology. - Yeah, I feel mythology is really important to me. It now allows me to get a different perspective on things and not so much older perspective, but a perspective of like, well, these stories have been told hundreds and hundreds of times because if you look to all the other mythologies, they're all the same stories being retold. And I feel like that's very interesting to kind of just take that and then put that to life in general. And just to see like, well, in all these stories this is how it happens in reality, it tends to actually mimic that sometimes. - Yeah, that's a really wise thing to say. That's, you know, I love that you, not only you enjoy the stories and you sort of require lots of knowledge around mythologies, but you kind of think about these stories have been told hundreds of times and there's purpose and there's reason in that and it takes on that deeper, deeper meaning for you. - And it's also another thing that is very interesting to observe is how would they actually cross over and connect 'cause a lot of people think, well, mythologists don't cross over. There's no like comic book where Zeus and Thor get together, but what you actually have to pay attention, but these example to the notice this is with Norse mythology. In Norse mythology, as you see the Christian influence in the Vikings increase, you see their stories change. Loki becomes from just a prankster and mischievous to more evil and more malicious. And so you can actually see how where these stories crossed over, which is very interesting to see. But you have to actually pay attention to notice that if you're blind, not blind, blind, but blind to what's there, you're never going to notice like little small details like that. And I would find that very interesting. - That is really interesting. Just that little bit you've given us there. My mind's a little bit blown. So you're tracking kind of what's been happening historically, geographically, politically, historically, like you've kind of got that and it's recorded there in stories and the way stories are handed down. - All that going to that, that's also a really good way to see like what the culture and what people were like at the times that these stories were told because you can see just because it influences the stories. So as like just going with that example of Loki, like before the Christians had come to interacting with the Vikings, Loki was not the hero. He was the one like, sure, it was Loki's fault. All that happened, but he's still the one who fixed it. And then it went from, well, I'm going to fix it to, I'm going to cheat on my wife. I'm going to do all this other stuff that is very like not okay in the Christian faith. And, but you can see those influences kind of get put into the story of Loki because originally that's not what he was. So it's always very interesting to see that. - So as to see as his mom, I find it interesting that at 17, he's really not sure what we mean when we say be yourself. And yet this is pure Max, you know, if you don't haven't picked up on this yet in some of the writing that I do, he actually inspires me in a lot of my writing. He helps me out, he'll tell me some story or, you know, we'll just be talking about something and he goes, oh, that's like this in Greek mythology. And he'll tell the story and I'll be like, I gotta go write about that. You know, so he, it's funny. My mother told me when, you know, she had five kids and she said every single one of my kids were born different. And I understood what she meant once I had only two of my own. They just came in who they are. And I suppose, you know, be yourself is a process that we learn who we are. And at 17, I tell my kids, you know, they just don't have enough frame of reference yet out in the world to know how they're different than other people, but they are different. And everybody has their own genius in this world. And we hit very early, right? Right on the early on, Max is genius and his interest. And I, you know, one of the stories I tell about him is that Max, how old were you when we went to the universe? The museum, was it the Museum of Natural History? - It was the Met. - The Met. - I really know the story you're thinking of. - Yeah, you tell it in your words. - I want you to tell it in your words and then I'll just point out. - Well, how old were you? - That was maybe 10. - Eight to 10, somewhere in that range. - So he was reading, what was this, the series you were reading? - I was reading the sequel series to Percy Jackson. - Percy Jackson, kids books. And, but there's a, they're all based in mythology. Greek mythology, Roman mythology, am I right? - The first Jackson book, Greek and Roman, which is almost the same, but slightly different. - So he's 10 and I take him to the Met and we were just in the entry way, taking off coats and gonna put them in the, you know, give them to the coat person. So we're not dragging our coats around. And there's a huge statue there and he turns around and he goes, oh, that's the, what was it? - Athena Parthenos. - Athena Parthenos. And I was like, how do you know that's the Athena Parthenos? He goes, I just do, from reading these books. Like he'd never seen it before. And I was like, how can you know that? So we walked over and it was, he was right. And I was like, that's just some kind of inner knowing, inner genius that he was born with because I could read those books and never know that was the Athena Parthenos. But I think at 10, you don't have this, you know, frame of reference to understand that this natural genius you have, other people have different geniuses, but not that one. And most people would not walk into this mat at 10 years old and from 20 feet away, know what that's a statue of and know the story behind it. But he did. - I'm gonna add a little bit to that story for anyone who knows history. They know that the Athena Parthenos was destroyed and no one knows exactly when, but it went missing after the siege of Athens by the Roman Empire. When the Romans invaded Greece and all that, they had the statue went missing. And it was not actually a statue of the Athena Parthenos. It was both a replica 'cause they wouldn't put the real statue there, but a replica of a replica statue of the Athena Parthenos. But it was supposed to be similar or as designed by the same person who designed the Athena Parthenos. And the key features is one, Athena with her signature, like Roman almost, not really Spartan, but typically it shows like that Spartan helm. She often has her hand out, like, actually you can't say me, but I'm holding my hand out with a palm off. And typically Athena would be carrying a winged angel on her hand, which represented Nike for a victory. And then she has either a spear or a shield, I don't remember anymore. On her other side, where she's either holding on the ground. She's holding on the ground either way. I don't remember if it's a spear or a shield. I think it's a shield. And then there's a snake around the shield. - So it's fascinating for me to watch his filter on the world because he really just sees this everywhere, every book, every movie, every video game. You know, he can just extract from it. That's from Greek, that's from Roman, that's Norse, that's Biblical. And he, as you can see, takes this into history and of, you know, what was going on in the world when those things were happening. Like I happen to find this stuff fascinating. It's where he and I connect. But what an interesting filter to have on the world, especially in these times that we're in, to see the history and all of that. - Yeah. - Sorry, go ahead. - Well, I was gonna say I'm a little blown away at your, 'cause I've met you on screen, Max, but I haven't really been able to dive into your set of genius like this. And I'm a little bit more quiet than usual because I'm taking it in. And I don't quite know what to say. But it's really amazing to see. And going back to what Eileen said about, it's surprising to hear you say, I'm not sure if I know myself of, you know, maybe 25%. I think that's probably about spot on, though, for a young person because the backdrop of life provides the opportunity for you to discover things about yourself. And you are in this place where you are just gathering all that information about yourself right now. But this is amazing. So you have this great interest that you can see that how information is so influenced by the time that it's in. So you probably bring that headspace to life today, like, and look at how very influenced we are in terms of the stories that we tell ourselves or the stories that we hear based upon the kind of social, cultural, political, geographical context in which we live as well. - Yeah. I'll add one more interesting quick thing about the Athena Parthenos is that the reason when the Romans, I think it was the Romans, invaded Greece and Athens, the reason they took and destroyed the statue is because of the symbolism of the staff due to the Athenians. It was based, so basically showed their patron guys, Athena, holding victory, outreaching in her hand, which was a symbol of just like courage and victory and stuff. And when they sacked Athens, they came in, they took the statue, basically taking their victory, their hope, their freedom, their symbol of power, and they destroyed it. And then Athens just after that crumbled and the Romans wiped through. - It's not so different from what we go through today in this world, does it? - No, it is not that different. - Max, I want to ask you something else 'cause you went to LA with me when we... - Yeah, I did. - We went to the medical medium event in LA together. - Yep. - And at first he said, "I'll go with you, "but I want to sight see, I want to see LA. "I've never been to California." So we made it a three day trip and he agreed to go to the event with me if I took him sightseeing. And then, I'll let you put this in your words, but then he came to the event. And I think he wound up really enjoying the event, I think more than any sightseeing and really learning a lot, maybe a little bit about himself, a little bit about his mom, a little bit about the medical medium community. Do you have anything to say to that, Max? - This is gonna sound very guarded, but I think it was, but it's not meant to be. I think it was a very interesting experience. And that's my genuine thing. It was, I think it's the right words for this. It was very, very, very fascinating to see actual people that Anthony and my mom have gone to efforts to helping and all of this, it wasn't, 'cause I've only heard of these people's names like briefly and staff and barely retained them. I don't have a skill for remembering names. Just shocking, giving them much of like mythology. And I can remember all those names. And it comes to actual people I've met. No, you never remember. I'm like, so I've known you for three years. What's your name again? - Yeah, embarrassing moments, but it was very, very interesting just to see faces to all those names and just all of that. It was... - I think what he's being a little careful with is I think his statement was somebody something like, "Oh, it's not just my crazy mom." - Yeah, I'm trying to be a little careful here. - Yeah, it was my original statement with something like that. - But it's real, there's lots of people doing it. It's not just some strange thing my mom knows about. - It's not some weird niche thing that there was thousands of people there doing the same thing she was, which was very, very, very interesting to see. - Yeah, yeah, I bet it brought it to life for you in a whole different way. And healing has been a large part of your life because your mom's brought it into your family for a number of years, not your entire life, I wouldn't suppose, given you're 17 now, but... - I was actually gonna ask Max this because some of the, one of the large reasons that came to find medical medium was because of a medical injury that Max had when he was little. - And because of that, I joked saying I saved your life. - Yes, we have a joke because I wouldn't have found if it wasn't, I wasn't searching for him and it wound up saving my life. So he takes responsibility for saving my life. We do joke about that. - You owe me. - I owe you, yes. And I do talk some about his healing journey because I don't tell family stories unless they're up for me sharing them publicly 'cause healing, as you all know, is a very private journey for most people. And when you put it out there in the public, people can twist it. And it's difficult to put healing stories out in the journey, but every time I ask Max if I can share any part of his story, his answer is... - Go ahead. - If it helps somebody please share is usually what he says to me. So he's sort of willing to be here and talk about this. Do you remember life prior to medical medium information? - Yeah, that's an interesting question. Well, that depends on to what degree you're talking about. Are you talking about, do you remember life when I didn't do medical medium stuff or do I remember life before we even knew about this? - Both. - Well, I definitely remember life before I started doing all medical medium stuff 'cause I didn't start like eight or something like that. No, I may have been like 10. But I really, really start. Like I did other stuff like I would do so, I would do some times I'd have lemon water, but I wouldn't do a lot else. - You did it more than, this is interesting 'cause you did more than you think 'cause I was in charge of food. - Okay, that is true, that is true. But I'm just gonna point out, like I wouldn't consistently know that I actually do now, do have salary and all that. - I think what you're describing is the age in which you took some self control in what you do. - That's a good way of putting it. At that time, I didn't take control. It was just, if I put it in front of me, actually, that's an untrue statement. Back then I was incredibly kicky eater. If you put food in front of me, it was not a guarantee I would eat it. She was choosing what brands within by pick against I was eating. And so I was healthier. And so I just kind of learned and how to avoid all the really not so great stuff. And then eventually when I started taking more control of that, I just kind of kept with it. And then I took the extra steps and tried to put stuff on it. - Well, so you all know, I never forced anything on my kids. You know, of course they were immersed in it because I was using it and my husband was living that way. But they chose themselves when they became vegan. They chose, I was cooking hamburgers for them while I was vegan. Like I wasn't gonna force them because I sort of had this understanding that anything you force upon a child they just simply rebel for the most part. And especially. - I can say if you try to get me to do something like tells me you have to do this, I will not do it. Like you said, hey man, I think you'll like this book. I will go to ridiculous lengths to never read that book. - Correct. I knew what I was dealing with, right? So, and I think in my perspective, it was important that he came to these decisions anyways. But what I did do is motivate. The big one in our house is, you know, he'd have a little celery here or there. And I told him I'd give him $100 towards a Lego if he did celery juice every morning on an empty stomach for 28 days. Is that right? Yeah. - Um, it wasn't a hundred dollars, but. - It was. (laughs) - I don't think it was a hundred dollars. I was like, does I remember what Legos said I got? I'll check its value, one second. - Not right now. Let's stick to the story. - You got me going on a tangent now. I mean, no, actually how much I was. - So what happened, you know, from my perspective, I remember you actually struggled with that choice for a little bit. You're like, I really don't want to drink celery juice, but I really want that Lego. - Yeah, I think it was, it was very hard to do that 'cause I still find celery juice absolutely disgusting. In some ways, I just can't manage it. I tend to have a very sensitive stomach and sometimes it's just too much. - Right, there's been an issue you've had your whole life. - Yeah. - So what happened when, oh, so go ahead, sorry, go ahead. - On to the thing, I think some of the motivation that helped is that you had already ordered the Lego set I wanted and it was in a cabinet, which I could go look at the entire time and see, I don't remember that part. - Tortured me 'cause I couldn't do anything with it, but it was right there and I needed that thing. - So you drank celery, you started out like an ounce or two? - Yeah, it was like an ounce or two a day and like, you slowly worked me out and now I do like a full, is it 32 ounces I do now? - You do 32 ounces every day. And I don't have to motivate you anymore because why? - Although I wish you would. - Yeah. (laughing) - But what happened a couple of weeks into drinking celery juice? - So that's one of those things that, so I'm trying to get the right word to this. I did notice some changes, but I'm just gonna state this here, that it was one of those things where it was, I noticed anything at the time and I certainly didn't notice really anything afterwards necessarily, it was more just after that, that it started to click that, oh, I'm different now. Like a year afterwards, I would never have done that a couple of years ago, like this is new for me. - Mm-hmm. - When you started being less picky about food? - I started being less picky about food. I actually let people cut my hair. - Yep. - At the time I had really long hair, it was just in front of my eye, why am I putting my hair in front of my eyes? You know, we can see me again. I keep, I wouldn't, I was kinda looking down the entire time, I had hair covered in my face, I wouldn't look anyone, couldn't acknowledge anyone. - You didn't like to look people in the eye, you like to come to me. - Right, it was two weeks in that you came to me and you said, 'cause we had pulled you out of school and we're homeschooling you. - That went on homeschool? - Yep, that's why we could do it every morning 'cause you were being homeschooled. - Right, yeah. - But two weeks in, you came to me and you said, "Mom, I want to cut my hair and I want to go back to school." - I do remember that kinda on the school part, I don't know what I was thinking homeschooling was so much easier. Well, it had its ups and downs. We're getting up in the morning, which is something I really like now. It was a lot easier, I could sleep in really till I were wanted, I was like eight, so I didn't sleep in, I was up with a cracker dawn, horrible choices. But yeah, I was like going with this thought originally. - Sorry, this happens sometimes, I'll just be talking about something I'll completely forget what I was just talking about. - That happens to all of us. - Yeah, we're just thinking of that thought. - It's just interesting to me to hear your version of what went on as an eight year old versus what I was seeing in you because you also had some OCD things that were, like do you remember when you'd go to bed at night and you had like, I don't know, five or six blankets and we'd have some-- - I don't know how I suffered or so many blankets that's really cool. - And you'd lie down and you'd make me smooth them over you in a certain order before you could go to sleep. And that's one of the things I noticed, you just started going to bed and didn't care about your blankets anymore. - I do remember that kind of, I remember one day, like I never noticed that and then like one day I-- - Yeah, oh yeah, you came to me and you're like, oh, hey mom, I don't care about my blankets anymore. - Yeah, I remember like, I woke up with him like, wait, I haven't asked her to do my blankets and like, almost a year now, like-- - Yeah, yeah. - I don't, wait, what did that happen? - Well then you see-- - And there was this small stuff like that, I think for the most part, like there wasn't anything like a huge thing, like I got laser eyes or something like that. It was more just small little things that I didn't notice until like much later 'cause they were just so small, but there were so many of them. - Right, at some point you said to me, it felt like your world went from 2D to 3D. - Yeah, it almost really felt like that, 'cause it felt like the whole world was like two dimensional, there was just faces and they were all flat, emotionless, and then I started doing the sour juice and something clicked and everyone had dementia to them, like they weren't just people, they were people who had their own issues, their own problems, their own things, they were walking through, and it was scary at first a little bit because it was just so different. - Yeah. - Yeah. - That must have been scary for a sensitive person to suddenly then allow yourself to pick up on all that sensitive information that you, so you must have had to have a process of how you then handled that world. - I see that in my kids as well. - Oh, I had a heart, I don't need room to go, I had a way of handling it, I don't think I handled that well sometimes. - Well, I think one way, we know this from a medium of information, let me see this in my kids. And this information is specific to autistic kids as well, I don't know if it's in my kids, but one way is throwing yourself into a zone of genius. It is throwing yourself into something and learning all about it and having that passion topic or three of them, how not necessarily just one topic, but it's just something that you hold on to and you become sort of hyper focused on that. So you're not hyper focused on all this extra information because when it first happens, so when I say a process, I don't think you had a process in place. I think you put, but I know that you have got yourself into a good place where you are in mainstream education, you're handling all of that every day and moving yourself through life in a really great way. - Actually, it's very interesting you say that because I never actually, this is one of those things that I'm just like noticing. My, okay, this is only partially true, I guess, my hyper fixation on mythology and stuff like that didn't really start until I started working on like celery juice and taking care of myself. And then that's kind of when my brain woke up and I was able to just learn information that struggling like this before, I really started doing celery juice all that. I could barely read like it was just a struggle to read and all that stuff. And then I started working on myself and boom, boom, I could read, I could do stuff and my brain just kept going and going and I was able to process much more. - It's fascinating to hear his perspective because before celery juice, when we would read to him, it was King Arthur and it was mythology kind of stuff that he was always interested. I've never heard him say this before that his ability to read helped that his inner genius grow. And that's what happened actually at that time too. He just started reading everything. When I pulled him out of school and I remember, 'cause I realized things weren't going well at school and nobody had told me, nobody in the school had informed me things weren't going well. And I sat down with him just to see what he knew and didn't know and we had a couple hours of meltdown and I realized he couldn't read. And so part of what the celery juice did and why we were focusing on, one of the first things I did when I homeschooled him is teach him how to make medical medium healing broth. And we talked about the herbs and what they were going to do to his body. He makes really good healing broth. He's a really good cook and it helped keep him-- - I'm an okay cook. - He's really good. He does that-- - Okay. - And it connected him, so he had a real disconnect between his brain and his stomach and really couldn't come to healing foods. And so teaching him how to cook, teaching him intellectually what these foods were doing to them helped to reconnect sort of his brain and the stomach. And then we added celery juice and some blueberry juice and that started to do some real healing and all of those things started to align up together. And so it's interesting for me to hear him say, oh, that's when I really started reading and I could more focus on those things that I was interested in and I have a genius in. It's really interesting to me to hear so much of the healing story focusing on the brain stuff 'cause I know you've healed other issues as well, Max. And I know that was also a focus in your healing journey. But it's the brain stuff that I find really interesting because the brain is where the soul hangs out and the soul is who you are and we're talking about be yourself and what does that mean and who are you and all of this kind of stuff. And it's the brain stuff that helps you, those healing milestones with the brain that help you to sort of make sense of the world. Yeah, find your place and figure out what it is you're gonna be doing and then bring your layer of genius and have it help you navigate the crazy world we live in today. And celery juice is kind of phenomenal. We had a story with my, when we went on lockdown, we had my daughter and my son and my daughter came, well, obviously they're at home and I said, right, celery juice every day now 'cause you're here. My son that said that to me, he goes, "Mom, since I'm at home, I'll do it every day." I think I had them on it kind of like three times a week prior to that. And I was like, here's my opportunity. I am never letting this go. And so we kind of, we did the celery juice. We did it every day and my daughter started to speak. Now she wasn't non-verbal, she spoke to us at home, fine, she went out of the home, she was mute. Like she just didn't speak to people. She would speak to some friends a little bit quietly, really just one, two friends. But then she started to speak, even my sisters who lived close by so she saw them regularly, but she didn't speak to them. So she started to speak and that was amazing watching her being able to sort of open up like that. So, and that was the only change I've made whereas bringing in celery juice consistently. So the things that can do for your brain is really incredible. So I love hearing your version of that and what that really meant and what that looked like for you. - Yeah. It's one of those things that I never really, I was always just too silly and kind of just too busy to actually really sit down often and say, well, what did that actually do for me? Like where would I have been if I hadn't? And I have thought about that enough. No, I would have not liked where I was. But yeah, I don't know. I've never really actually just fully thought about it, find out at all through it. - And I think, you know, we're talking about this from the 17 year old perspective and, but I think these are issues that everybody healing has, like consistency, I struggle with consistency, but when I am consistent, I can see the difference. I struggle sometimes. I forget all of the things I've healed and that are better 'cause I'm focusing on what's next. And I sometimes I'll sit down and go, oh yeah, you've healed this and you've healed this and this doesn't happen anymore. And it was sometimes it's a slow enough process. It's not this overnight thing. So we kind of forget, oh yeah, where would I be had I not done that? I think these are just normal healing, normal things that we all experience when we're, when we're using this information to try and heal. - And life is full of these like sliding doors moments as well as that where, you know, you take this path and you get on that track. And I think, you know, Max, what you're explaining is that these pivotal moments in your life that enabled, I don't know, like reading to open up for you, which enables you to like to get into the mythology topic, which enables you to maybe handle your world in an easier way, but it also gives you this other sort of life skill and it gives you a bit more of a reason for life, you know, having a passion is such a wonderful thing for, particularly for a child to have. And life is full of these sliding doors moments. Like you say, you saved your mom's life, which you should definitely bring up every birthday and Christmas when shopping's going on. - Well, it was something I typically will sometimes say, like I saved your life, get out and tell me it never works, but it's always supposed to try. It's like, I'll go get that video, get it, you mean? - No, no, no, no, I saved your life. - You can't die now on that one. - You can still know, the answer is still no. - Yes, I saved your life, come on, you all be. - No, exactly, life's full of these sliding doors moments where you kind of do something or you don't. So you never necessarily realize the full consequences of your actions. I personally think that one day somehow, maybe not day on this earth, we will sort of see the magnitude of our choices and the choices we don't make as well. - Because I think that's a part. - I'm just sorry, on that, I somewhat hope that and also somewhat dread that. I feel like that would be a very scary experience, just to see all the wrong choices you may have made in your life. I think that would also be incredibly beautiful just to see all the choices you made that helped somebody else. Like one day you sat down, some of you was feeling lonely, you said a nice word. I feel like that would be incredibly awesome, but that second part just scares me. - Well, what I would say to that is that I think that depending on your beliefs, I happen to believe that it would always be done in a place of compassion because, you know, I think we're answering to compassion at the end of it. So I would have a lot of trust. - From the mistakes versus continue to repeat them. That's also different. - Yeah, and we are supposed to mess up, aren't we? That's kind of, you know, that's the game we're in. - It's in all of those mythology stories, right? - Oh, I'm getting them on. - Well, it is kind of depends on what you call, messing up. And it also depends on what you call consequences. - Yeah. - Yeah. - Like, yeah, the best example, I'm gonna use Greek mythology, Greek mythology is hard 'cause it's always hard to find something that's not wildly inappropriate. Is Chronos eating his own children? Were there consequences for that mistake? He was scared that he would have children who were powerful enough to overthrow him. So he decided, you know what? I'll eat them when they're babies. Well, his wife gets annoyed by that and hides one of them. Well, that son grows up to be Zeus who winds up causing Chronos to regurgitate his fully grown siblings and they wind up killing him. And I'm like, there were consequences for that, Chronos. Your children, they're going to kill you. - It's just genius. - I think actually the concoction they use to cause him to regurgitate is, it was like a concoction of horseradish and mustard or something like that. - Interesting. - Wow. - I love that. - We know go to a day here where he's, we're not hearing something like this that is just so relatable and it's-- - I also grant myself a knowing completely useless facts that I will never need to know in my life and they're just weird. Like that the platypus is the only venomous mammal and just random stuff that there's no need to know this in your entire life. Unless you're stuck in Australia being attacked by platypuses, then that's a different story. - Maybe he needs to go to jeopardy and win the family some money. - Yeah, I'm not that good. I'm not that good. I do know some random shit, but not that good. - It's just really, I hope that today people hearing you, Max, and hearing like how you make sense of the world as a young person with all the kind of layers that life puts upon us but alongside your healing journey. In fact, that is something I wanted to ask you. How do you find it? So my kids are younger, they're 10 and 12, you're 17. How do you find it as a young person who's more out there in the world, more independent than like what my kids are? I bet it gives you a head start to have a sort of sense of who you are, but I'll also bet there's some challenges to living a specific way. - Do you have any wisdom on how you navigate that? - It's hard, it's what I'll first say. But I think actually when it gets the hardest is around school and stuff, which is understandable, I guess. But like I'll see all these kids and I'm trying to think of the best way to say this nicely and the best way of saying this, but like so that we're given an assignment. The assignment is teacher lingo bullshit, like sorry for swearing. It's very hard to understand what they're saying and it's just like all this buzz words and all this stuff that it's like, okay, I'm looking at this and I'm like, well, this is stupid. This doesn't actually make sense. What are you asking? I know what you want me to say, but I don't know what you're asking here 'cause you are not clear on your instructions. But all my classmates are so heavily drugged on Adderall and stuff. They don't notice that the questions are bullshit and they just answer them 'cause they know, they still know what they're trying to answer, but they're not actually reading the questions. They're just plugging in the answers 'cause that's what they've been trained over all these years to do. And they're not actually functioning. They're just, they're on autopilot. They're not actually doing anything. And that gives me an advantage. I think it also is a disadvantage because one, I don't want to say I'm alone, but I'm like in that classroom, I'm the only one who's paying attention to what's going on. I'm the only one who's asking actual questions. Like, what do you mean by, by I can't think of an example, or just like some ridiculous question, like that doesn't make any sense. Please restate that. Like, you're the teacher. You should actually make a question that makes sense and it's understandable. I shouldn't have to ask ChatGPT what you're asking me. And ChatGPT should not actually be confused what you're asking. But when you've confused in AI, that says something. - But so the students are on autopilot. - They're on autopilot. They're not functioning. So that gives me advantage 'cause I, not smarter, but I'm smarter, I'm more aware of what's going on. But because of that, I have to deal with all those awkward social interactions and stuff with all these people who are just really out of it. Like the most awkward one I saw was when I was on the esports team at my school, which is for people who don't know, it's a competitive video game playing against our schools and stuff. There was this kid, he says, "Oh, my anxiety is real. "I have ADHD and anxiety is really high right now. "I'm gonna go take some Adderall." He takes them Adderall and then he was just shaking under the decks for the next hours and he was feeling out of it. I'm like, "Dude, what are you doing to yourself?" You're so trained that you can't deal with your own anxiety or your own ADHD, that you just are medicating yourself. You're self-medicating yourself and you're in shell shock under the desk. You're in high school, dude. - It's really sad. - And you're hunkering under the desk, shaking. - That's really sad. - Everyone else is looking at it like nothing's weird. - And people are looking at you like you're weird 'cause you drink celery juice and drink heavy metal detox movies and you're saying no to them. - I mean, I don't let them know that shit. - But you're saying they think you're weird because you're saying no to the pizza and the pizza party. - Yeah. - But they're under the desk, shaking from too much Adderall and anxiety. And so it gives you an incredible perspective actually. - But it's also very awkward and hard to deal with. - Yeah. - Seeing all these people who are killing themselves, they're killing themselves and then looking at me like, "What are you doing? "Why are you taking fruits and vegetables? "Isn't that toxic? "Well, they're shoveling into redos." I'm like, "Well, mostly chemicals you're eating there." Like, how do you actually look at the labels on those things? - Yeah. I mean, you wouldn't be able to do what you were doing if you didn't know yourself. So, you know, let's go back to what you said at the beginning. "Oh, I don't know that I know myself so much." I mean, you're kind of very near the beginning of your story. You're 17 and you, you know, you've got a lot of life to go and live. And so your story and your sense of who you are is supposed to change and it will change and it will grow. But you must have a really good grounding in that to be able to be in one of the most brutal environments that a child is really, anybody's gonna go through is the judgment of school, particularly like high school. You know, it's really, kids are very unforgiving. They're very quick to pigeonhole you and not show a lot of compassion for people. So you wouldn't be able to do that if you didn't have sense of that. - Yeah. - I think with what you're saying, I'll probably do have a fairly good sense of who I am. It's more just about where do I go with this? Like, here's what I'm interested in. Here's what I like. Here's what I know. Here are the skills I have where, how can I deal with this? - That's exactly where you should be at 17. I keep telling them just figure out the next right thing to do. Don't worry about 10 years from now, just worry about a couple of times. - 10 years from now to be important. - Yeah, but you'll figure it out. So that's just the game of trust. - Okay, the person who can do, go through the experience that you just explained. In school, watching your friends take Adderall and freak out and can still say no to the pizza and come home and drink your heavy metal detox smoothie, we'll figure it out. That means you've got the fortitude and the skills to figure it out and to get yourself through situations. But it's time that will give you that experience. To give you that self-knowledge that you can work through what comes your way. - And you got from seven to 17. So history tells us you'll get from 17 to 27 just fine. You know, you're kind of-- - On work. - Yeah, you don't know what it's going to look like. - There are these maps like variables there that we can't have. - But they were in the last 10 years, right? That's life. - Yeah, there were some definitely some variables ever seen variables in the last 10 years. - That's what we signed up for. And that's what you'll have it thrown at you. And you'll just have a better standing to handle it and to find yourself where you need to be. So I think it's really, it's really fascinating talking about a challenges, challenges you face because that's often, I was speaking to a client recently and she was like, I don't think I really know what, you know, she's sort of my age and she's like, I don't really know what I'm about. What I'm doing is a highly, highly professional person. You know, she's a barrister, like really highly professional. But she didn't really have a sense for herself. And I just said, she told me this really difficult story. She'd been feeling, I was like, there you are. That's you, that's you right there. That was you who made those good choices in that difficult situation that would have broken a lot of people. And so I think it's knowing where to look in order to find that information about who you are. And I think you're right in it. You're in that juicy time of pumping up against people. Yeah, and then you have to kind of, what I would say is you also have to give yourself some space for like the weight you're carrying. You know, it's a lot. And I'm sure at some point you'll have people turn around to you and say, well, why aren't you shaking under a desk? What are you doing that's different to me? And, you know, these are the places where you're kind of world placed to go and save someone else's life. You've done your mom, who's next on the list? - There you go. - No pressure. - No pressure on you. - Yeah. Well, that's interesting that you say that 'cause that actually kind of brings up something that I was kind of the continuation on to like some of the stuff with school and stuff is, I think probably what is the hardest part for me is seeing all these people who are, let's just seem to go past like the people who are addicted at all. Let's people do people who are just really sensitive and they never got, they were just told they'd shove it down and not deal with it. And now they're in high school and they're overwhelmed and they're being teased by these kids and they don't know how to deal with it. I've tried, like there was a kid last year, I kept trying to help him. And I'm like just saying like, no, that's not okay way to handle this. Like, try this way. Or like, okay, you've been teased. Don't, you know, get up, you know, fuck you to these hairy class and what storm out of the classroom, big class. (laughing) We can bleep that out probably. (laughing) Like, don't do that. Like, challenge them. Say like, yeah, I know. And let me go back to stuff. Typically, and at least this is when my experience in Vermont and stuff, people are too, I want to say nice but nice isn't the other thing. They're too, the environment is so like, oh my God, you don't want to be mean. You don't want to be toxic. You don't want to be anything. So that people aren't mean, but they're insincerely nice to a point where you realize, oh, they're making fun of me, but they're pretending to be nice and my friend. Like I'll say, oh hi, how are you? I love you, you're so great. Like, yeah, this guy's the bomb here. I was like, okay, but no one actually talks like that. And you don't talk like that. You only talk like that to me. I know you're making fun of me, but I can't challenge you on this because you seem sincere. I see you're being rude to me. And the five times where I'm the bad guy. Yeah. And if I do that, I'm the bad guy 'cause you were trying to be nice to me. And so that makes it really hard. I'm like, yeah, 'cause he was being insincerely nice. You can't go up there and just challenge him. Like you're, that's not gonna get you anywhere. But you have to just ignore them. Because as I said, like, like why don't they pick on you? I'm like, I ignore them, they do. I just don't give a shit about what they do. Like they have no power. I'm like, you're all, they only have as much power as you say. They have. And so I kept trying to help this guy. I just deal with this. And he's like, yeah, well, no, that doesn't work. The only way to do it is just get up and yell at them. I'm like, no, that just takes as much energy for you for me as they want. The more you feed them, the more they'll keep doing it. And the entire year, they kept coming after him. And I'm like, dude, you gotta stop feeding them. And he's like, oh, but what am I supposed to do? I'm like, ignore them. He's like, but no, they'll just keep doing it. I think that was probably one of the hardest experiences I've ever had. - Well, as a since I'm yourself to be in school and trying to learn, and this is what's going on. And as far as I can tell, most of your classes all days is... - Part, I will say I had somewhat selfish reasons for trying to help the guy. I didn't really care for the guy that much, but I was trying to help him 'cause he kept disrupting my math class. And I was trying to help him. - There you go, right. - And so I'm like, okay, no one seems to be doing about this, the teacher's trying, but the teacher is a good math teacher, but also insensitive of a sense of what I can tell. And also not really good at controlling the class. Like she was a really nice woman, great teacher, but was not good at controlling the class. She could barely control it. To be fair, she said, this is one of the worst classes I've ever had. And I was talking like, class seems pretty, I can trust, yeah, this is one of the worst I've ever had. They are out of control. No one focused on stuff, but... So I was also trying to see if I can help the teacher a little bit because I feel like that probably really helped her 'cause she would always have to leave class to go chase after and make sure he was okay. And so I hope, and within that helped me learn more, so I've stopped distracting her and also helped the teacher. But then with that, this is something advice for any of you out there who might be around my age and stuff, is when you have a teacher, don't, I never had to do homework last year in math, that's only to start with this. There was homework, I never had to do it because the teacher knew I was doing it 'cause when she was doing, given up the homework, I was doing work, but I was pushing myself to do more complicated work. And she says, oh, I want you to just solve these simple equations. Well, I was figuring out how to solve equations on my own that she hadn't taught me yet. And so, and she would also say, hm, I actually don't know why that works, let's figure this out. There was one time where I was just in Desmos, which is an online graphing calculator. And I was just typing in random equations. And I somehow just managed to graph the X and Y access perfectly. I don't know how to do it. I didn't just do like Y equals those or zero or something. Like I put in some complicated equation and it just perfectly matched graph to the X and Y axis. And I'm like, well, how the fuck does this work? And we're both looking at this like, how did you do that? And so because I did that and we actually like went to their math teachers and asked them, I never had to do the homework. And so that's actually kind of a cheat code for life is engage with the teacher. And be curious and be curious, push yourself harder, get a good relationship with the teacher. And you can get out of all kinds of shit. You don't want to do that homework. - I think it's hard to do that when you're on Adderall. - It's definitely very hard to do that when you're on Adderall. - And I just want to give a caveat here because I'm not, I don't want to come across as though we're making any recommendations, medical recommendations of whether somebody needs Adderall or not, that's for your doctor to decide. And, but, you know, Max is talking about his real lived experience of drinking celery juice and living the lifestyle he does versus the kids. And he's sensitive and he's out of the anxiety. And what his, how his experience is so different from the kids who aren't living the lifestyle he's living through. - Yeah, well, I think most of our listeners are not 17. - Yeah, I'm sketching as much. - Yeah, but, you know, I think it will be really interesting to hear what it's like in a classroom for a 17 year old. 'Cause, you know, we only have the finger on the pulse for the bit that we can see, can't we? Or like, perhaps some of us have kids and some will share to different levels about what life is like for them. So I think this is really eye-opening for people because, I mean, I certainly feel, and I'm sure you do Eileen as well, but I feel really particularly drawn to kids and the work with kids and the way that, you know, the environment, the backdrop they're kind of growing up in and all of that stuff. So I think it's really-- - I've been very passionate about this subject since I was a kid because as a sensitive and aware kid, I could see that the adults didn't seem to understand the experience of being a child. And children were being called bad when they were really just in trouble. Or, you know, being abused or whatever it was. And I always told myself never forget what it's like because as an adult, I think kids are often not necessarily, you know, consciously, but they're ghosted and adults don't really understand the child's world. And then we have more kids growing up traumatized and to be traumatized adults. And somewhere that cycle's got to end. - Yeah. - Yeah. Well, it's been really valuable hearing from you, Max, and I've learned a little as well. Mythology knowledge, well, mythology knowledge, not just Greek mythology knowledge. Mythology knowledge is second to none. - Yes, thank you, Max, for joining us and giving us all a little perspective into the 17-year-old brain and soul. And remember everybody, as I said in the beginning, we'll be inviting more people on, more of our family members, more of you out there. So stay tuned and we just hope you remember today how powerful your soul is. We started Rewild Renew as a way to coach and empower others to heal and connect with their souls. The views and opinions you will hear on the Rewild Renew podcast are ours and are not meant to be medical advice. Please seek professional assistance if you feel you need it. [BLANK_AUDIO]
