Transcript
GE_UR2OrXNg • Take a Breath, and DO THIS to SELF SOOTHE in SECONDS When Something Upsets You
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Kind: captions Language: en how do you make it stick your biggest enemy is you hey everybody today's episode is brought to you by impact theory university's own business decision making workshop if you're a business owner looking to scale your company i can help i've created a four week intensive workshop that's going to give you the decision-making strategies that you need to scale your company it's the exact things that i use to take quest to a billion dollar exit and it's exactly what i'm using today on impact theory that's allowed us to grow by 400 in just the last two years if this sounds like something that would be beneficial to you and your business i want you to go right now to decision.impacttheory.com to apply once again that's decision.impacttheory.com you can apply today all right i'll see you on the inside [Music] hey everybody welcome to another episode of impact theory today we are going to be talking all about self soothing now this is something that i discovered early in my business career was the thing that separated me from a lot of other people was it wasn't that i didn't get upset about things or that i didn't get hurt or you know have something ding my self-esteem it was that all of those insults would happen i would have my reaction but i would be able to very quickly soothe myself get my head back in the game and in the beginning it was you know before i really started working on it it might have been three days or longer where something would upset me and i would stay upset i would think badly about myself and i would really spiral out of control and lose a lot of time to being in that negative space and over time i realized this is not effective like if i'm trying to accomplish a goal and i spend three days worrying about some comment that somebody made or some mistake that i made or if i embarrassed myself i just thought i'm never going to get where i want to go once i factor in how much time i spend being traumatized by something so i want to get this window as narrow as i can and now my goal it's not always what i achieve but my goal is to get the amount of time that i spend emotionally derailing on something because something upset me to get that so quick that i spent so little time in that suffering that people don't even see it register on my face so i went from three days to a day to a few hours to an hour to a couple minutes down to when i'm at my best it not even registering on my face and when you can dial yourself in like that then the world is your oyster everything begins to open up because you're able to very quickly recenter yourself get refocused on what your goal is and then at the end of the day taking action that actually moves you towards that goal in a meaningful and expedient way that's what we're after that's how you really make extraordinary things happen in your life but so many people are either looking outward trying to stop people from hurting them offending them upsetting them making sure that they never take risks so that they can't fail so that they're not embarrassed that's their mo for dealing with those emotional insults instead of saying hey i'm going to point only two thumbs of myself and i'm going to figure out what i can do to not be a slave to my emotions to not let things upset me and that sense of emotional resilience and not to weaken the effect of this you want to get to the point where nothing knocks you off course where you were just completely centered now of course i'm not there i don't know many people who are but the closer you can get to that ideal the more effective you're going to be in your life all right question number one what is your self-talk when you have a substantial and bitter failure like not meeting an important deadline for your goals and realizing you're actually far behind all right this is one of those separating factors when people realize that whenever you do anything other than take on that responsibility yourself you are either permanently delaying the realization or temporarily delaying that such that you're unable to make progress the goal of taking on the responsibility is not so that you feel badly about yourself it's not so that you wallow in that bitter defeat or embarrassment or whatever it is so you recognize the truth of the following statement i'm not good at this yet or i have not succeeded at this yet or i made this mistake but i'm never going to repeat it it's the sense of the how temporary that failure is how temporary that embarrassment is and there is a phenomenal phrase that i use all the time that i invite you guys to make yourself talk which is a buddhist phrase this too shall pass this too shall pass that's the good and the bad it's one of the most transformational ideas that i've ever come across nothing good will last nothing bad will last and therefore focusing on what you can do to relish the moment what you can do to take joy in the pursuit of progress what you can do to take joy in any moment just having that moment that you're alive that there's air in your lungs that you're able to pursue that you have these goals like all of it is so improbable just being alive being a human like when i think about man the number of people that died tragic deaths when they're young and the fact that i've made it to 45 is crazy and so i want to relish that so in this being in this defeat in this loss i'm only looking for the opportunity what can i learn what can i do from this and all of it will pass however bad this feels it will pass it is a neurochemical state it is transient by nature and the only way to hold on to it is to rehearse it to go over it again and again and again and that's the only way to make that stick now why on earth my friends would you want something negative to stick so why would you rehearse it why would you go over it and overwritten over it so in the worst moments of my life the moments of deepest shame regret failure fear anxiety i'm saying to myself this is going to pass i will not feel this way forever and knowing that i'm not going to feel that way forever allows me to begin the process of not feeling like that it is the first step on the journey of feeling better now when you get good at that you can reduce the amount of time that you stay there to next to nothing but it starts with recognizing that there is an impermanence to pain and it's critical to focus on that and then the last thing i remind myself is i can always get better i will learn from this and move on all right next sometimes i worry if i self-soothe i might overstep and become too complacent with my mistakes and don't actually learn from them for numbing that pain or discomfort that could lead me to grow how do you self-soothe without comforting yourself to the point of losing your drive what a brilliant question this is so smart all right this is what i call the advanced class we are now in the advanced class this is some nuance [ __ ] you've got to be able to hold two competing ideas in your head all right so critical life lesson number one was realizing this too shall pass and that there is joy in that impermanence then critical lesson number two is that i'm holding two competing ideas in my head and that is critically important important idea number one it's good to feel the pain i need that because that's going to give me the motivation that i need as you so aptly point out to actually do something about it okay part of the reason that mistakes failure is the most information data stream you will ever encounter is because when you fail you feel pain and pain triggers areas of the brain around memory and focus so now i'm really looking at this thing and i'm committing it to memory now as long as i'm not pointing all my fingers at other people all these people this the world society whatever culture is victimizing me okay if i don't do that and instead two thumbs pointed right back at this guy then i'm reminded oh yeah i'm in control i could do something different get a different result so i want that sting i want to know i tried something and it didn't work because i want to trigger focus and memory and i want to look at what i could do differently next time to get a better result because i know while other people are laughing at me i'm laughing back at them because on a long enough timeline i can be anyone at anything because i can self-soothe i don't need it to be somebody else's problem i don't need to point fingers at other people i don't need to blame the culture i don't need to blame society i don't need to blame anybody other than myself and even that word doesn't have power over me it doesn't make me feel badly about myself yes i am the cause of this problem inasmuch as had i done something different i would have gotten a different result now that makes me feel empowered so now i'm in this powerful loop of taking on the responsibility saying i can do something different i can change this i can get a better result but i wanted that sting of like really staring at my inadequacies really looking at and analyzing my failure and then i know the competing ideas right this hurts with next time i'm going to be better and i'm not going to sit in that pain for very long because i understand while i need a brief moment of pain if i spend too much time there i'm going to get lost in the pain and i'm not going to do what i need to do which is improve so i never allow myself to wallow in that suffering i want it but i want it briefly just enough to trigger the action now how do i make sure that i walk that fine line by one very simple thing a rule in my life that says i only do and believe that which moves me towards my goals so if believing that i need to beat myself up and suffer and realize that i'm a loser if that was going to move me towards my goal which is fulfillment at the highest level of course there were times where you're going to slice that up and it's going to be what are the exact things that i need to do to reach fulfillment but as an over level goal i'm trying to reach fulfillment i'm trying to live a joyful life okay that's the point of fulfillment if it were going to bring me joy to sit and wallow and what a loser [ __ ] i am then i would do it but the reality is that it doesn't it works just enough to get me moving but once i'm moving now i need to remind myself of all the potential that i have that that's a step in the journey of improvement that improvement is a foundational pillar of human happiness that i need to be making progress in order for me to attain fulfillment that to get fulfillment i've got to build a set of skills really hard that there is a subconscious process in my brain rewarding me for doing hard things so here i am i'm doing one of those hard things getting over that problem so i don't stay there i don't allow myself to stay in the negativity and the pain and the suffering but i do leverage it to get myself moving now if you're going to err on either side err on the side of over soothing yourself because let me tell you all the achievement in the world is going to be absolutely [ __ ] meaningless if you had to beat yourself into emotional oblivion to get yourself to take action so remember the point of all of this is a joyful life when you hear me talking about how hard i work that i focus on my inadequacies all of that i do it in a way that elevates me that makes me feel better about myself that brings more joy to my life because i never feel trapped by who i am today i feel completely liberated by the fact that i can become someone better tomorrow by putting in the work today so it's just that little bit of suffering to get yourself moving a little bit of focusing on the pain that you [ __ ] up that you could do better that you expect better but then it's on to focusing on progress putting in the work and being proud of yourself for doing that i love that question next for some of us new to self-soothing what is the core definition and what effect is it supposed to have on us what is happening in our body okay the actual neurochemistry of what's happening in your body i don't know well enough to put it back to reiterate it but i will say this for sure you have an element of serotonin in terms of how you feel about yourself so you want to be re-anchoring yourself around a very anti-fragile idea shout out to nasim taleb so fragile ideas of pride would be something like being smart being right being worthy being good being intelligent anything where you can encounter somebody that's more than you they are more worthy they are better or just even if it's yourself that you fail on something you're like oh my god like i could have done that so much better right so it could be you versus you it could be you versus somebody else but when you value yourself for being right for instance the number of times you're going to be wrong is way too frequent to be a sustainable way to draw your self-esteem but you must have self-esteem from something so if you use something that's anti-fragile and you say okay i'm taking an anti-fragile approach to this so i see myself as the learner so the very thing that i value myself for is my willingness to face my inadequacies and get better the very thing that makes me feel good about myself is not being right it's not avoiding mistakes it is not being perfect it is in the face of the fact that i will make mistakes and that i am not perfect that i keep going i learn i grow i try again i don't allow other people to stop me i don't allow myself to stop me i don't allow my failures to define me okay now we've got this anti-fragile framework now as we think of ourselves like that we're getting that serotonin boost okay we're feeling better about ourselves we have a a better vision of what the future can be the future can be better okay so now we just have a more joyful frame of reference okay it's positive it's optimistic and i can't emphasize optimism enough the absolute need that you have to be optimistic about your future it is [ __ ] critical and let me tell you even if nothing in your life has ever given you reason to be optimistic i'm telling you starting right now you must be optimistic now we can hear you asking why tom why do i need to be optimistic if everything in my life has been a kick in the face because if you were wise you were adopting my rule to not allow yourself to do or believe anything that holds you back or moves you away from your goals now i'll say about yourself is probably not going to do or believe anything about yourself that's going to stop you from achieving your goals because you don't want to be disconnected from reality that's a whole another video but for right now you're not going to allow yourself to have a negative vision of your future or a negative vision of who you are at some fundamental level you have the ability to change now once you have that's a very expansive emotion okay now serotonin i will tell you to go listen to neuroscientists on that jordan peterson has an amazing breakdown there's somehow controversy around this whole thing about lobsters but it gives you an idea that when you win at something when you move up that competence hierarchy you get this lift in serotonin which makes you feel better about yourself and your station in life now if we know that serotonin is tied to our station in life how you view your station in life becomes as important as the objective reality about your station in life so you want to make sure you're not adding fuel to the fire if you are over here [ __ ] up all the time routinely routinely routinely and you're getting these shots in the face you don't want to make it worse by saying all right because i've messed up historically i'm always going to mess up i am a [ __ ] up and therefore nothing good is ever going to happen to me okay now you're just 10xing the suffering there you want to take an expansive view i can get better anti-fragile sense of self-esteem around being the learner around improving and getting better yes it may take time yes it may take you more time than it takes other people fine then you get a double helping of serotonin for being the kind of person that sticks with it even though it's harder for you that's the only logical way to approach it because it creates that expansive nature okay so that's number one number two is dopamine so when you are going after a goal when you are trying to recontextualize yourself take that learner approach now because dopamine is actually about anticipation okay it isn't the reward itself your dopamine levels are at their highest when you're moving towards something when you think you're about to win that's when dopamine really spikes so if dopamine is the anticipatory reward that keeps you moving and going after things that excite you getting this more expansive version of yourself of your future possibilities then not only elevates your serotonin but it gets you excited from a dopamine perspective and now it's like oh man i'm anticipating getting better and i'm feeling better about myself so this is why we want to self-soothe that's probably pretty close to the neurochemistry of what's happening that's certainly a great description of how you're going to feel right expansive feeling better about yourself optimistic about your future you're getting the dopamine hits of the excitement of moving towards something anticipating a future reward that is why you want to self-soothe i hope you guys are enjoying this episode which is brought to you by impact theory university's business decision making workshop with nine full-length classes and weekly live case studies with me the business decision making workshop is a hands-on approach to honing your abilities to scale your business i'm gonna be in there with you working through your hardest problems so that you'll be able to master how to overcome any impediment by getting the most foundational way to think through novel problems and that my friends is exactly what you need to do if you want to scale your company and have the kind of crazy success that you've always dreamed i promise it is possible this is teachable this is something that you can learn it is a process that you can deploy against your business and be able to move confidently forward just go right now to decision.impacttheory.com to apply do not delay my friends spots are limited again go to decision.impacttheory.com and apply today i'll see you guys on the inside [Music] i often see self-soothing thought of in a reactive sense i.e stress happens then you self-soothe are there any methods you use to proactively self-soothe when you know a stressful event may be approaching yes so here we go proactive self-soothing is really all about the management of your biology okay so i wish this wasn't so because i find it so tedious and so boring but the reality is that the vast majority of your neurochemistry has to do with if you've been listening to me for a while you know what i'm about to say your diet your diet what you eat what you drink what you take in all of it matters so much i'll even say lifestyle might be a better answer so your diet is a huge portion of it but your exercise routine is also critical so if you know you have something stressful coming up i'm going to recommend get your diet on point beyond the scope of this video to go into that but i'll say really quickly whole foods just eat whole foods things that look like it looked when it was walking around or like it looked when it was in the ground okay if you stick as close to that as humanly possible you're going to be headed in the right direction then the next part is getting your exercise right so actually working out pushing yourself and then even more important than the exercise is meditation so you're you can actually change the structures of your brain by meditating let that land you can change the s the physical structure of your brain by meditating you become more emotionally resilient you become more able to focus on a task over long periods of time a lot of really fascinating things happen when you meditate so if i were trying to preemptively self soothe that's exactly what i would do diet exercise and sleep that's a critical part and then meditation word and then get your rules in place get your beliefs in place if you haven't read my 25 beliefs that everybody should adopt if you want to be successful and be able to rapidly self-suit you can download that for free at impacttheory.com or you can just type into google tom bilyu belief system it will pop up all right how do you maintain a healthy balance between self-soothing and turning to others for support or upliftment so as not to become emotionally isolated all right healthy relationships are a critical part of the human experience if you truly want to live a joyful life you need to make sure that you have close loving relationships if you don't currently have close loving relationships do not pass go do not collect 200 immediately address that in your life if you need to start somewhere and you have no idea where to start man go to a soup kitchen do whatever but get out with other people start connecting to people do something some kind of way join a join a facebook group join a club virtual or in person whatever weird interest you have i promise there are other people out there that have that same interest this was so 10 years ago maybe more 15 years ago when i learned about furries which i still i'm surprised is the thing but it is a thing and the fact that even pre-internet there were entire groups of people that would meet up and this is their thing i thought okay if there's people that are into that no shade man if that's your thing that's your thing but if there is a convention's worth of people that are into that then there is a group of people for every interest no matter how niche so find your people connect that is hugely important and then don't look for other people to carry you but having people in your life that support you that and this is the easiest way to explain this from my wife i say i'm not looking for sympathy okay i don't want you to feel bad for me empathy that would be amazing i want you to understand what i'm going through now here's how it plays out i said to her in the beginning if ever i'm knocked to my knees i don't want you to get on your knees with me put an arm around me cry with me and tell me everything is going to be okay it's not what i'm looking for and even worse i don't want to do all that and then tell me yeah all of this sucks and it [ __ ] and life you know life's a [ __ ] sandwich and every day is another bite people used to say that all the time when i was a kid that was like the [ __ ] tacoma motto drove me crazy what i want my beloved wife when i'm knocked to my knees which will happen i'm going to extend a hand i want you to show that you understand what i'm going through but i want you to pull me back up help brush me off and remind me of what i'm capable of so that i can soothe myself refocus remember that i'm the learner and get me pointed back in the right direction that to me is the difference between empathy and sympathy don't cry for me help me get back in the fight so surround yourself with people that are like that don't look for them to carry you having people that remind you of what you're capable of having people remind you of what you're capable of becoming that's rad that's dope [ __ ] surround me with people like that and i'm about it but i don't just want somebody to cry with me it's not going to take me where i want to go next how do you soothe when you know you have a very long and hard routine of work ahead of you for days on end and the dread creeps into your mind all right [ __ ] let me tell you right now life is about having reservoirs of strength now you have to earn that with yourself and it is going to start incredibly small but at the end of the day let me give you a notion that is going to serve you well my friends attack the [ __ ] hill attack the hill attack the hill attack the hill don't fear the hill don't whine about the hill don't go into the hill like oh god this is really going to suck come on [ __ ] let's get after this [ __ ] this is why one of the things that i look for if you want to work at impact theory let me tell you right now every single person at impact theory better be a hardcore [ __ ] hcmf i am only looking for hcmf if you are not hardcore if you are not prepared to push through something i don't want to be around that i want to be around people that attack the hill i want to be around people that are like yo this is my chance now let me assure you that's a defense mechanism for how much it sucks sometimes to go through that [ __ ] i don't seek it out i don't want that stuff in my life but when it comes i'm gonna david goggins that [ __ ] i'm not here to [ __ ] around like you've got to want that you've got to be prepared to find some switch in your mind that you can flip that even though 10 seconds ago you didn't want it now that it's coming what does jocko say good this is going to be hard good good you've got to find a way to channel that to attack that to suddenly get that level of aggression in your soul and man look at the chills this is one of those things my life has been a series of figuring out how to toughen up okay that was not me in high school i was not tough in any way shape or form and getting into business i realized was constantly getting kicked in the face and i had two choices get the [ __ ] out of business or learn to toughen up now the gym as much as i hate it gave me a lot of that pushing through those extra sets when it burns to dig deep within yourself to realize you can push and now even thinking back going back earlier than that i was almost 200 pounds at the age of 15. in fact i was 200 i was 198. i ran cross country my thighs would rub together so much during a race that they would bleed i would have bloody thighs at the end of a cross-country race for the first three years well i guess i'll i'll give you the full story you're number one of cross country my sister's friend was on the team and she was three years older than me and i had a crush on her and i was six foot almost at that point 200 pounds and built like a football player but i hated football because it hurt and she said oh you should run cross country and i was like yes i should because i want to be around you and so i did cross-country my first year she graduated i was like this sucks i was the slowest person in the league not my high school in the league i was the slowest we did a league match i came in dead [ __ ] last so i was quite literally the slowest person in the league she leaves i'm like i'm the [ __ ] out peace and then people on the team were like no no man you're super inspirational you should stay because i would go to the end of the race and i would cheer people on and i was like oh man it's somebody giving me positive feedback all right [ __ ] it i'll i'll run again so i end up running all four years but the first three years inside i'm doing it just to be liked i'm doing it because people are telling me that i'm inspirational and the fact that i've got the bloody thighs and i keep doing it and even though i'm the slowest person in the league blah blah blah like i show up so all right cool and then finally my senior year i was like i want to see if i can get better and this is i don't remember the exact sort of beginning the first brick that i lay of mindset but this was this would be one of the early ones and i decided okay i'm going to try to get better and now instead of thinking that i was cool for just showing up i was like let me push myself and realizing that and this is where the phrase attack the hill comes from my cross-country coach when you're coming up on a hill and it already hurts and your lungs are burning and your thighs are bleeding hill's not an exciting part of the race but there's something about channeling aggression of having that gear of not only feeling nice pleasant courteous but being like [ __ ] this hill i'm going after this hill and even though it's an inanimate object i'm going to beat it up and so you would run faster up the hill and you would just feel that sense of like anger and attack mode and just that aggressive impulse and so often people push back on that and that's one thing in my personality that people don't like and i'm always sad when people rule that out as a a tool that nature has given you jordan peterson gave me a really interesting idea and i don't know if he's right about the language interpretation of the word meek but in the bible and i am not religious but in the bible they say the meek shall inherit the earth it always rub me the wrong way it's like why the [ __ ] would weak people inherit the earth and peterson's interpretation is that the ancient word that we have translated as meek actually carried the connotations of being a hardcore [ __ ] but keeping your sword sheathed so you know you can fight you know you can attack but you don't but if you've ever noticed that people that are truly skilled fighters they just kind of move through the world differently because they know they could fight if they needed to so there isn't that anxiety of will this become a fight there is a confidence that they could step into that moment we can all have that psychologically you're going to have it physically if you're willing to train to fight but you can still have it psychologically and that is to realize that you have to be willing to charge at something in your life you have to be willing to face fear pain failure embarrassment and when you're prepared to endure suffering that all of a sudden the the question mark of what you will do in that face of suffering goes away and when the question mark around suffering goes away and you know i will endure this i will do whatever it takes within my code of ethics but within my code of ethics i'll do whatever it takes to achieve my goals i will endure any amount of suffering to grow and to get better to uplift myself and other people when you know that about yourself and it started small and you earned a little more credibility and a little more and a little more and you show up and you attack another hill and another hill and another hill when you know that about yourself then you begin to understand that aggression is powerful you just don't want to wield it all the time for the most part you want to leave your sword sheathed but to know that you have a sword and that you know how to use it is unbelievably liberating so when the dread creeps into my mind that i'm about to do something hard i remind myself that i'm a hardcore [ __ ] and i will endure whatever i must in order to achieve my goals and i've proven it to myself time and time and time again and in the beginning when i didn't believe in myself and i had not yet earned it i believe that i could earn it start small get strong and over time you will be startled at how strong mentally physically emotionally you can become and that my friends is the perfect note to end this on because i'm telling you you can become extraordinary it will take time it will take persistence will take growth will take getting stronger but it is possible it is possible to believe in yourself to fail and know one thing above all else i'll learn from this and when you learn from it and you grow and you get better you'll realize on a long enough timeline i can beat anyone at anything and even if that's a lie it's an empowering lie and i'm gonna do and believe that which moves me towards my goals and let me tell you even if you can't beat anyone the reality is most people give up and as long as you don't give up and you keep stacking that wisdom and those victories and that emotional resilience all of a sudden the hills that used to seem insurmountable become very easy to attack and all of that is what's running through my head when i need to self-soothe and it will be there for you if you put in the work alright everybody that's it speaking of things that will help you get better if you haven't already be sure to subscribe and until next time my friends be legendary take care thank you for watching this episode which again was brought to you by impact theory's very own business decision making workshop if you guys are ready to take your business to the next level by investing in yourself and learning the first principles of business then i want you to take action right now and go to decision.impacttheory.com to apply i promise you i am giving you every piece of information that you will need to overcome any obstacle that your company is facing to stare down problems that will arrive a year five years after you take the course this is the strategies of business decision making that every successful entrepreneur has to learn to deploy against their company if they want to grow all right guys i promise it will deliver 10x the value of what you pay for it and if it doesn't i'll give you your money back no questions asked you know me i live in the public eye there's nowhere for me to hide this is me trying to give as much value as humanly possible i really think this class will be transformative and i hope you will sign up and i will see you in the next live class alright guys take care and be legendary