Episode Transcript Welcome to Find Your Grit, conversations to make us 1% better every day. Where do I begin? We all in human nature find something to distract ourselves to just be busy when really busyness is just a to-do list that we find ourselves consumed in that we cannot get out of. We just, we want to feel comfort with being stressed out because really the root of it is why are we stressed out in the first place? And a lot of people that are confronted with this question do not ever find an answer because they're not comfortable going into that room. 01:00 with every picture and every video themselves and all their failures and all their traumas to look at them with no emotion. They cannot look at it objective. They have to look at it with everything attached and all that feeling, you know, in that moment at the same time. And a lot of it is like when you're going at a very high speed, it's almost like being handcuffed to the back of a bus that's going 60 miles an hour. Now you have two options. You're on a skateboard, you're handcuffed to the back of a bus, and now if you jump off, 01:30 It's filled with corpses. You're just gonna get dragged and dragged and dragged. But yet if you find a way to uncuff yourself and then slowly that pace starts to go down from 60 miles to 50 to 40 to 30 to 20, you have to be able to understand that perspective is that balance. It's being able to find that success is not what we're actually fighting for. We're fighting for distractions. So success is actually realizing that if I uncuff myself, I'm able to keep out of my own pace. My own pace is what... 01:59 is what gives me success. That's the whole point. It's understanding that this high geared, high pace role that we all lived in, or that we all live in now, that's five lanes of traffic going as fast as we fucking can and trying to get to the same spot as quick as we fucking can is for no purpose of no accomplishment. There's nothing behind that. It's just something that we look at as success, but yet it is a distraction. You know, finding... 02:29 to find gears in life and finding to be able to find balance is very hard, especially when you apply empathy and you apply compassion to your life. Because when you find those things, you don't need to consume yourself with the empathy that you give to others, meaning that you can love and respect someone without giving them love and empathy that you've learned to find yourself to give yourself, because without taking care of yourself, you cannot take care of others. So if I give empathy, 02:58 and love to my partner or to my children or to my parents, then I'm giving them a job title way past their pay grade. And if they drop the ball on that, then I get hurt, then I get burned up. And then guess what? I am now dragging behind that bus with my handcuff, tied around it, and I'm just dragging full corpses. The thing is, you gotta do what you gotta do to survive. But when you survive, you understand that there's some things that work. 03:25 some things that are substantial, some things that are worth hanging on to, but majority of them aren't. They're external. It's the internal of your house is what you try to take care of. So the external that everybody focuses on from social media marketing, from trying to market your life and how good it is, comparables to other people, you realize that they never let people inside. And so if you choose to focus on the exterior, 03:50 You'll choose that lie over and over and over again by such a fast-paced life and all these other external stresses that aren't real that you just hypothetically give or delusion or hallucinate what success means. It's not real. It's a mirage, but you look at it because it's never something that you can actually grab. It's not tangible. You're just looking at it to be, it's something that stresses me out, but I'm comfortable with the stress, but I'm never going to succeed at it. 04:20 So I'm always gonna be a little bit resentful. I'm always gonna be a little bit angry and I'm gonna be looking at the world against me. See, fuck that. That's not success. That's not happiness. Fair perspective is understanding that balance is coming from redefining success and what that means. Because if it's working really fucking hard and you're trying to numb that shit out and you're trying to exaggerate what it means to be able to be a parent and what it means to be able to be a good partner. 04:47 Well, if what you're doing isn't that and you have to find something external to be able to find that shit internal, then guess what? Your success is fucking false. It's an illusion. It's not obtainable. You're not going to be able to achieve it. You have to dig deep. You have to be able to be okay with opening up that can and going to that room and saying that all those pictures and all those feelings and all those traumas and all those failures, all those things that weren't deserved that were given to me at a young age. 05:17 that defined who I was, it doesn't fucking matter. Those things are there, they don't change. How you look at them does change. If they're hanging up on a wall, I bet you, my last dollar in my pocket, many of us struggle with those pictures and videos up on those walls that give us those worst feelings of regret or failure or neglect, or do not need to be hung up on a wall. Take them down, take them down. 05:48 You're fighting demons that aren't actual demons. They're not there to hurt you. This world is not against you. There is no evil in nature. If I see a fawn get eaten by a coyote, it's because the coyote wants to feed the family. It's not because it's evil. There's no resentment towards that. There's no evilness behind it. It's just nature. So we are the only mammals in this world that have consciousness. This might sound a little woohoo, but the truth is, is that 06:18 If you apply consciousness and what it is with fair perspective, then you understand that everybody's going through life in their own movie and their own lens and their own view and you are trying to do the same. So if you compare someone else's movie to your movie, that's unfair. As much as you want to believe that you're going through the same movie, it's not. It's directed by two completely directors and you're going with two completely different main characters and the narrative is completely different. Find what that means to you. 06:46 create the narrative, you can change the narrative, you can watch the same movie 5 times and then focus on the secondary character and make a completely different movie and analysis of it. So what does that mean? Perspective is how you live life. That's how you move forward. That's how you unlock the handcuff from the back of the bus. Don't get dragged. Don't feel like you need to jump off, make any dramatic change. It's fair perspective. 07:13 Even when life gives you feelings of though, you just can't control them. Emotions spike. And I never really understood what PTSD meant until I understood what that meant. The meaning that like when emotions, your physical heart rate, just everything just goes up. But mentally you're like, I'm fine. Like I'm cool. I'm not anxious. I'm not stressed. I'm not gonna punch a hole through a wall. I'm not gonna rip down a door. I'm not gonna hit the bottle. I'm just gonna... 07:42 like go through it, but you're like hyper vigilant of everything. It's like adrenaline just got shot into your stomach. Something triggered that emotion and that emotion was found when you were maybe young or maybe of a traumatic incident, maybe something that usually you cannot distinguish or determine exactly what it is. So then you get lost and you're like, why do I feel this way? And then you get in a rabbit hole of I feel I'm abusing myself from 08:09 the person I was abused and now I feel bad that I'm abusing myself because of it. It's like an everlasting loop that we live into. It's disgusting. It's a parasite. It's pollution. It's not how we get through life. You have to understand to stop that is realizing that I'm okay for feeling these feelings, but I can stop them at any time. I can unlock that cuff from the back of that bus at any moment. 08:34 Just by realizing that I'm okay not going at this crazy fast pace that all these emotions are hitting at one time and they're going to bottle up and explode. I'm okay with taking one step at a time with realizing that my perspective is something but my emotions are a little bit different. Two different narratives. What's in my head? What that voice inside of my head, that narrative that's talking is completely different than what my body is telling me. Completely different. And my heart tells me yes, but I have anxiety. 09:05 Well, and then my answer then is no, but it's something I wanted to do. It's something I feel left out of not doing. Well, guess what? You just missed out. That gives you anxiety. Now, if your mind says yes and your heart says no and you do it, guess what? That gives you anxiety. There's there's no answer to it. If it's a what if or why am I or how am I? The answer usually is no. The bottom line, don't question it. If your mind says yes and your heart said yes, fucking do it. If it's a bad result. 09:35 fucking learn from it. If it's a good result, then guess what? You just accomplished something. You know, you just took another step forward, but that's the only way you're going to take steps forward. And usually you have to be uncomfortable to take those steps forward. That's not comfortable. It's not comfortable at all to dive deep into those thoughts. It's not comfortable at all to say that like, I have to bring up my past and my root causes of who I am and what is done to me to be able to get through them. It's not comfortable at all. 10:04 But that's why the rare, the unique, the minority of people find this sense of happiness. It's not money. Their view of success is not the house. It's not the car that they drive. It's nothing external. It's everything internal. So when people say the saying, live life for the simpler times, live life simple, you know what that really means? 10:31 When you're able to find happiness internal, you're able to look at something as though you're at a stoplight and a bird just lands right on the hood and you're able to look at it and go, holy shit. There's a blue jay right on top of my hood at this stoplight. What are the fucking odds of that? All of my thoughts that were negative or all of my day just goes to pause. It pauses, it stops. And I focus right on that bird. And I think, man, what are the odds? 11:01 Like what is the coincidence that it lands right on my hood? Now if I were to attach that to my personal life, my grandmother who passed away loved Blue Jays. And after she shortly passed, I had a Blue Jay hit the front of my hood at a stoplight and it lasted there for almost 30 seconds. Half a minute, it just stood there. I could take pictures of it. But I was like in paralysis. I couldn't move. I was just, I was... 11:31 just starstruck, I was like, what the fuck is happening? But yet I was living in a simpler moment. So finding those simpler moments or why people say get 1% better every day is because to me, 1% better every day is focusing on simpler wins. Why people say focus on the smaller goals to be able to get the bigger goals is because for the day I would look at that and say, I was able to take all my bad thoughts and put them away. So guess what? That makes me happy. 12:00 happiest thoughts that I have are no thoughts. It's not thinking negative and every negative thought has a purpose so then every failure that I have isn't failure it's just learning experience. So I'm redefining these words as I'm trying to mature through life as I change my perspective. So changing my perspectives lets me have the self-confidence to know that no matter what happens in life I'm okay. I've already been through it. I've been through the fucking pits of this of the fucking mud. 12:27 I've been stuck, I've felt suffocated, I felt like I was self-cutting myself, and the person opening up the door was saying, how do you think this makes me feel when you're the one holding the fucking knife? I felt the same way when I went through all my surgeries, back to back, three ACL reconstructions, when sports and fitness was the only way for me to find my way to fight my demons, my self-worth, my ego, my self-confidence, and yet when I was taken away and I was... 12:55 I was only able to look externally, I chose the wrong thing. So then I stepped foot into the wrong path to realize that that isn't the way I have to create my own. Sometimes it takes going barefoot, running on a gravel road with a couple pieces of glass to realize that I gotta get a little bit calloused up to find my own path, a path that isn't traveled, a path that you are defining, that you are paving that road. Imagine a thousand people walking in the same direction going to the edge of a cliff. 13:25 but six people out of that 1,000 turn around and look the opposite way and they start walking the opposite way. Well, what they're looking at is a blue sky. What they're looking at looks like a jungle. It looks like something of paradise, just an oasis. But those six people are not looking at one another. They're so far spread out that they're just doing it because they realize that this is not the way. Out of 1,000, six, turn around and look. 13:52 and say, now, you know what? I have no idea. I see no paved road. I see no direction going forward, but I know what I'm striving for is something deeper and something better. So I don't give a fuck if I have glass in my foot. I don't give a shit if I'm running barefoot and I'm bleeding to my calluses. I don't give a shit. It's meant for something. This pain is meant for something. Then guess what? What you're striving for is already success. You've already became successful by looking for success. 14:22 You've changed your perspective. You're not following the sheep. You've chosen to be the lion. Take the way out. Look the way the opposite. Understanding that the detour is where you find the scenic routes. That's where you find openings. That's where you find pleasure into breathing and finding simpler moments into life. You're enjoying your kids. You're enjoying your family. Taking care of yourself is how you take care of others. Giving yourself self-worth is how you give worth to others. That is life. 14:52 You're not living paycheck to paycheck by ignoring and deflecting a busy, busy, busy life to be all stressed out because you're getting a high off of it. You're getting a high off of your self-destruction. How about that? If you're working at a high intensity job and you get paid real well, guess what? I bet you my last dollar that you're looking for every vacation coming up soon. I bet you my last dollar that you're planning every vacation. 15:20 You're saying, ah, this is all worth it. These 13 hour days, I'm getting paid real well, but my life is fucking miserable. My fucking health is horrible, but I get a high off of it because I'm struggling through it. I want to get a high off of this shit. Well, guess what? All those vacations that you're planning seem really fucking good until you get there. And when you get there, what are you thinking about work? So the funnest part is about the journey. It's about almost planning the whole entire trip until you fucking get to the destination. 15:48 Okay, apply that and amplify that to life. It's the same fucking thing. Success is understanding that in the middle ground of you planning for it, that's where you find the happiness, that's where you find success, that's where you find purpose and self value. It's understanding that the same destination is for everybody. We're all gonna hit the end of the cliff. Do you wanna choose a thunderstorm and a fucking hurricane to go through to get there, or do you wanna choose to go through life by taking a scenic route? 16:15 Understanding I'm taking a path that's unpaved. I'm doing it on my own cost. I'm creating my own self-worth I'm not living paycheck to paycheck. I'm not comparing myself to others I'm not living by this social media So, you know saturation of this jaded opinion that no matter what life gives me I'm only gonna find my self-worth through others opinions. Fuck that Fuck that Find it yourself Understand that what's self-earned whatever you do that is self-earned 16:44 is going to give you back a long investment and a big return that you're going to be able to live off of, like having a lump sum of a fucking big old cash in that bank deposit to say, now my whole family can be self sustainable. That's the same way how self equity works. 16:59 Look for the long term investment, not paycheck to paycheck, not vacation to vacation. Understand that balance is not what you have to do. And even if you think that it's temporary, I just got to get through this right now to be able to have a lifestyle that's good when I retire. It's bullshit. I promise you it's bullshit because by the time that you retire, you're going to be fucked. 17:19 Find it now. Understand that I do not need to give empathy. I do not need to give the heart and soul of myself to someone else or every last bit of sweat and drip that I have and take away from my internal family, from my internal house, I only can give it out at a certain percentage or I'm going to end up burning myself up. Then you're killing yourself through the process. So then what's the money worth then at that point? You know what's priceless? Having moments of simple... 17:50 times, having moments of simple recognitions of having perspective upon having moments with your children, having a dinner with your fucking family, being outside and doing something functionally great because you can move correctly and your body doesn't hurt doing it. You don't have poor posture, you feel good, you can breathe right, you can eat healthy and you can feel amazing. That's so easily overlooked. 18:19 Find fair perspective. Understand that life and happiness is the journey, not the destination. 18:27 You know, and I might sound a little intense saying this, but I feel very compassionate saying this. Cause finding this myself is still a struggle for myself, like anybody else. And I'd be a fucking liar if I told you any differently. But it takes time, it takes effort, it takes practice, it takes consistency, repetitions, to understand that the motor skills, my subconscious needs to understand more than my consciousness. It's not what I think, it's what my body does. 18:56 I can feel completely normal and something happened and my heart rate spikes and my body's ready and it feels like I got injected with adrenaline and I'm ready to go. That's PTSD and a lot of other definitions in this world. There's a reason why your body hits that mode. Understand what you have to do to calm it down. Deep breathing, meditation, don't give a shit, just survive and get through it. And understand if you're looking at the bright side and you're changing your perspective, it doesn't matter what glass you step on. 19:25 how you're bleeding, it doesn't fucking matter. You're okay, because you're going in the right direction. The path that you're following isn't paved. You're going on a new path. There's gonna be glass, there's gonna be sharp rocks. You're gonna be barefoot. There's gonna be snakes. They might be venomous. You might find heartbreak, you might find pain. Do not steer away from that path. Do not go with what is common to other people, because those people do not find happiness, they find distractions. 19:55 They find to-do lists, they find stress to find them comfort. That is not growth. That is not success. That is worse than just getting bit by a venomous steak. That is slow death. That is black mold inside of the fucking walls. That is the silent killer. Be above that. Grow above that. Be the best you so you can be the best you to everybody else. 20:20 If you find yourself slacking on giving good love and good responsibility because you're so responsible for everybody else around you, then take some time for your fucking self. Give yourself fair perspective and once you walk that journey, don't be mad about yourself. Don't dwell on the sharp shit that you step on and the blood that drips from it. That's a part of the process. If it was meant to be easy, not only six people would be doing it. 20:47 Oh, a thousand people would be doing it. It's not fucking easy. 20:52 Be compassionate, be obsessed, be fucking in it, sleep, breathe, and eat it. That you are gonna strive for greatness and no one or nothing in this life will be able to stop. 21:06 Give yourself a smile. Appreciate your family. Give some good fucking love. Have some good moments. And understand that life and those moments are earned. 21:23 find self-worth, and then by that you find grace, and by grace you find happiness. And happiness is fair perspective. You will be successful. Life is not against you, and you're okay. 21:42 Trust me and trust the journey. You got this. 21:47 you 21:51 Thank you for listening to this episode of Find Your Grit. Don't forget to give us a follow on Instagram and Facebook at Find Your Grit. If you enjoyed this conversation and want to hear more, be sure to subscribe to our podcast on your favorite listening platform, and we will see you next time.