Mark: The old saying 'sticks and stones may break my bones, but names will never hurt me' is one of the biggest lies we were ever told. Michelle: Oh, absolutely. It’s a complete fantasy. I can still remember things said to me in third grade with crystal clarity. The bones healed, but the words… they stick around. Mark: They have a half-life, don't they? Today, we're exploring why words, and more importantly, the feelings they create, are the most powerful forces shaping our reality. Michelle: I’m ready. This feels like a much-needed emotional tune-up. Mark: And that's the central premise of a really vulnerable and powerful book we're diving into today: Be the Love by Sarah Prout. Michelle: Right, and Prout isn't just an author writing from an ivory tower. This is someone who has lived through extreme hardship—from being a single mom on welfare in Australia to surviving domestic violence—and built a million-dollar business. Her story gives these ideas some serious weight. Mark: Exactly. She argues that transforming your life isn't about ignoring the pain, but about using it. Which brings us to our first big idea: this concept of our self-worth having a hidden architecture, one that's usually built on some pretty shaky ground. Michelle: I’m picturing a house of cards. What do you mean by architecture?

Mark: Prout suggests that our core beliefs about ourselves are formed in these small, seemingly insignificant moments in childhood. She tells this incredibly relatable story from when she was seven years old. She'd just moved to Australia from New Zealand, felt like an outsider with her accent, and was at a prestigious school. Michelle: The stakes are already high for a seven-year-old. Mark: Immense. And a popular girl named Emily is handing out birthday party invitations. Sarah is just praying she gets one. She remembers a time before when another girl with a similar name was called, and she jumped up by mistake, and the whole class laughed. The shame was still fresh. Michelle: Oh, that’s a gut punch. Every kid has felt that terror of being left out, that desperate need to be chosen. Mark: And as Emily is handing them out, one by one, Sarah's anxiety is just skyrocketing. Finally, her name is called. She gets the invitation, and she says it felt like she’d won the lottery. But looking back as an adult, she realized that moment, and dozens like it, built a lifelong pattern of seeking external validation. Michelle: So that's why we get so invested in getting the promotion or the 'like' on social media? It's the adult version of the birthday invitation? We’re all just waiting for Emily to call our name. Mark: That’s the core of it. And Prout has this beautiful, if slightly terrifying, metaphor for what happens when we build our lives on that foundation. She calls it 'coastal erosion.' Michelle: Okay, explain that. How does a birthday party connect to coastal erosion? Mark: Years later, in her early twenties, she was in a toxic marriage, feeling her sense of self just dissolving. She was driving with her then-husband along the Jurassic Coast in England and saw these derelict houses perched right on the edge of crumbling cliffs, about to fall into the sea. Michelle: Wow, what a visual. Mark: And it hit her. She felt a kinship with those houses. She realized that the constant, repetitive waves of criticism, of feeling unseen, of seeking approval and not getting it, had eroded her own foundation. Her self-worth was that house, about to collapse into the ocean because it was built on unstable ground—on the need for someone else's approval. Michelle: That is such a powerful image. But isn't that a bit dramatic? A house falling into the sea versus not getting a party invite or having a bad relationship? Mark: I think that’s her point. Individually, the waves are small. A single comment, a rejection, a failure. But over years, the cumulative effect is devastating. It’s a slow, steady erosion of your connection to your true self. You forget that you can be the source of your own validation. You start to believe you are the crumbling house. Michelle: And you feel broken. I get that. So many people feel fundamentally broken. What’s the way out? Do you just build a new house somewhere else? Mark: Well, this is where it gets interesting. Prout says you don't just move. You have to go back to the site of the wreckage and start the work there.

Mark: And that feeling of being eroded, of being 'broken,' is exactly where the second big idea comes in. Prout argues that this is the starting point for real magic, which sounds paradoxical. Michelle: It does. It sounds like the opposite of what most self-help books say. They usually start with 'You are perfect! You are whole!' Mark: Right. But Prout’s philosophy, which she calls "Feel, Heal, and Reveal," starts with the messy part. She reframes the popular Law of Attraction idea. It’s not just 'thoughts become things.' She insists that 'feelings become things.' Your emotional energy is the real engine. Michelle: Okay, I need an example of that in action. How does a 'bad' feeling become a good thing? Mark: She shares a story that is brutally honest. She describes a night where her business was struggling, life was stressful, and she just lost it with her husband, Sean. She was screaming, pushing him, blaming him for everything. It was a moment of pure, toxic, uncontrolled emotion. Michelle: That sounds like the opposite of 'being the love.' Mark: It was. But she says that violent outburst became a deal-breaker. It was so ugly, so painful, that it forced her to stop. It was the rock bottom that gave her three gifts. The first was Feeling—she had to finally own the rage and pain she was feeling instead of projecting it. The second was Healing—she realized people who are hurting, hurt others, and she had to take responsibility for her own trauma. And the third was Revealing—once she made the decision to change, a new path forward was revealed. That raw, negative energy, when she finally faced it, became the catalyst for her entire philosophy. Michelle: This is where some people get skeptical, though. It can sound like you're blaming the victim. If our feelings create our reality, are you saying people in bad situations are 'manifesting' it through their negative feelings? Mark: That's the key difference in her approach, and it’s crucial. It's not about blame. The 'Feel' part is about acknowledging the pain without judgment. The 'Heal' part is about taking responsibility for your reaction to the pain, not for the pain itself. You didn't cause the storm, but you are the captain of your ship and how you navigate it. That's where the power is. Michelle: So it’s not about pretending to be happy. It’s about what you do with the unhappiness. Mark: Precisely. She even tells this hilarious story from when she was a rebellious teenager called the "Vomit Fairies Incident." Michelle: The what? Please tell me more. Mark: She and a friend hated the popular cheerleaders at their school. So they mixed up this disgusting concoction of dog food, milk, cornflakes, and cheap aftershave to create fake vomit. They put it in the cheerleaders' mailboxes with a note that said, "Have the Vomit Fairies visited your house yet?" Michelle: That is so wonderfully, horribly creative for a teenager. Mark: It is! But her point is that this was just misdirected emotional energy. She felt unseen, she felt like she didn't fit the mold of 'perfection,' and that feeling came out as this bizarre act of aggression. The feeling itself wasn't wrong, but her expression of it was. The feeling was a signpost pointing to a wound, and she was just vandalizing the sign instead of reading it. Michelle: I love that. The feeling is a signpost. So many of us, I think, spend our lives vandalizing the signs. We overeat, we pick fights, we scroll endlessly on our phones… all to avoid reading what the sign actually says. Mark: Exactly. And her whole book is a guide to learning how to read those signs with compassion and then using that information to navigate toward a better place. It’s not about avoiding the mud; it’s about realizing the lotus flower grows from it.

Michelle: So, when you put it all together, it's not about positive thinking at all. It’s about emotional honesty. You have to feel the 'broken' parts, understand their architecture—the coastal erosion from your past—and then consciously choose a different emotional frequency to live in. Mark: Exactly. And that's the real work. It's not about slapping affirmations on a mirror if you don't do the work underneath. The book is popular, and I think it’s because it gives people permission to be messy. It’s highly-rated because it feels authentic. Prout’s core message is that your greatest pain can become your greatest power, but only if you're brave enough to face it, feel it, and then consciously decide to Be the Love you wish to feel in the world. It’s an active, ongoing process of emotional alchemy. Michelle: It’s a verb, not a noun. 'To be the love.' I like that. It feels empowering. It’s not something you wait for; it’s something you do. Mark: And it starts small. It’s not about suddenly becoming this beacon of pure love. It’s about the small choices. Michelle: That feels like a good place to leave it. Maybe the first step for anyone listening is just to notice one recurring negative feeling this week—not to fix it, not to judge it, but just to get curious about its architecture. Where did it come from? What is the signpost trying to tell you? Mark: A beautiful and practical takeaway. Get curious about your own emotional architecture. Michelle: Thanks, Mark. This was a really insightful one. It feels less like self-help and more like self-archaeology. Mark: This is Aibrary, signing off.