April 28, 2021 • 32 mins
This episode is all about when life feels entirely out of control. Previous episodes have focused on learning to live life through the lens of "discovery." The problem is that when life feels upside down, "life as discovery" is meaningless. What first needs to happen is to stop drowning! This episode is all about how to patch the gaping holes of life so we can get our boat afloat again.
Please consider supporting this podcast:
- Give monthly (as little as $5 a month) on our Patreon Page - https://www.patreon.com/ltr
- Give a one time gift through Venmo at @mattboettger
- Give a one time gift through PayPal here - https://paypal.me/mattboettger
Things Discussed In Episode (some links may be affiliate links where I receive a small commission for the recommendation) :
- Boundaries Updated and Expanded Edition: When to Say Yes, How to Say No To Take Control of Your Life by Henry Cloud and John Townsend
- Decisive: How to Make Better Decisions in Life and Work by Chip and Dan Heath
- The Paradox of Choice: Why More is Less by Barry Schartz
- The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing by Marie Kondo
- Living the Real, Episode 9: Making Molehills out of Mountains
- Financial Peace University by Dave Ramsey
- The ONE Thing: The Surprisingly Simple Truth Behind Extraordinary Results by Gary Keller
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Matt Boettger (00:00):
When I was in college, this is about 20 years
ago.
I had this incredible desire towant to learn jujitsu.
Now this was really cool, supercool martial arts, and wanted to
do it just because I thought Ijust wanted to be cool and I was
working out if I'd be the nextbest thing.
So I thought I'd Sanfordjujitsu.
The problem is that it's bestnot to start with jujitsu.
(00:21):
Number one, it's a reallyintense martial arts.
It's better to start with Akido.
So I started with Akido.
And it bored the heck out of me.
And I went to one or two classesat the university of Nebraska
Lincoln on a Akido and quit.
Now, the reason why a keto is soimportant is because they
believe that you needed to startwith a good sense of defense
(00:42):
learning, how to defend yourselfbefore you can get into jujitsu,
which is more offense.
And that just bored me.
I didn't really want to do it.
So I quit it altogether.
Now I know many of us right nowhave had a difficult past three
months, six months, 12 months,16 months, 24 months.
It has been a difficult road fora long while.
And you may not be on the orderof like depression, but you
(01:05):
definitely don't feel fulfilled.
And I learned a new word aboutthis in the past week.
That really exemplifiessometimes how I've been feeling
as well.
I bet many of you are feelingthe same way and that's a word
languishing.
You don't feel like you'retotally depressed.
You don't feel really happy.
You feel a little beaten down alittle bruised.
(01:25):
The world seems a little lost inits color.
You may feel Haggard, which Ilove that word, but you don't
necessarily feel depressed.
And sometimes the best thing todo at this point in time is stop
and get some life Akido lessons.
I know more than anything as,you know, if you've listened to
my podcasts, all about us, happyinto life, or then life
(01:45):
happening to us in living withthis principle of discovery,
learning to discover life as ouradvocate and not our adversary.
But sometimes we need to start alittle bit for that and just
build a good defense mechanism.
And now I don't mean put updefenses around people that
might be necessary.
I'm talking about a soliddefense that gets you back in
(02:05):
the driver's seat of life.
And this Epic is all about thebuilding blocks to the pursuit
of seeing the world again, asour advocate and not our
adversary.
And so sometimes we need to justtake a step back shore up our
fences.
And then begin to move forwardin life.
So this episode is all about thethree tools that I want to give
(02:27):
you to keep you out of harmsaway.
In life.
So let's get going.
Are you living the most reallife possible?
I ask myself this question allthe time.
Most of the time, the answer isI just don't know, but sometimes
(02:47):
the answer is definitely not.
This is why I have this podcast.
I'm Matt and welcome to theshow.
Two small things.
If you get a chance, pleaseleave a review like on Apple
podcasts and also check out mywebsite, live in the real.com
where I offer lots of resourceson how to live the most real
life possible now on with theshow.
(03:10):
Okay.
So let's get right into thesethree life tools.
Now, the way I see it as likethis, you need to get a life
umbrella.
Number one.
Two, you need to get a lifeguard, rail, and need to get
some life insulation.
These are the three tools youneed.
If you really need the shorterfences, because he feels like
life is just like a tsunami armyovertaking you right now.
(03:33):
My oldest son has been obsessedtsunamis he's right now,
coloring, tsunamis, right.
And left of him, screaming on anIsland while tsunami comes his
way.
So it's on my mind.
And so when life feels likethat, it's time to figure out
how we actually get the watersto subside from our life a
little bit.
So we can take stock of where weneed to go in our own life.
And so it's neat.
(03:53):
It's a neat concept to thinkabout us happening to life, or
then life happening to us.
But when you feel like you'redrowning, that's not necessarily
the first thing you're thinkingabout.
You just want to get out of thedang water.
So I want to give you threetools.
Tools are now if you'resuffering right now in any way
by which you're just like, I amjust in a day luge and I need
just to get.
My head above water, wasn'tlisten up because this can
(04:14):
really, really, really help youthese through is, are these
things I've been thinking aboutfor, well over two or three
years, and it's been on my mindthat I wanted to develop them.
And I thought, why not?
Why not development here in thecontext of this episode?
I know there's a lot here.
You might want to take notes ifyou can't take notes or drive in
no big deal, because in the, andboil it down for you to
hopefully make this a simplejourney for you to really get
(04:36):
those waters at Bay.
So let's look at these threeideas, these tools you need in
your toolbox, you need anumbrella is a guardrail, need
some insulation.
And if you can have at least theperspective of these three, and
if you can at least try to focuson one or two of these at a time
to build this arsenal.
That helps you be able to keepthose harms out of your life.
(05:00):
You're going to find yourselffeeling lighter and freer.
So let's start with this idea ofgetting a life umbrella.
What does this mean?
So the purpose of a lifeumbrella is the way I see it is
it protects us from the world,right?
Just like an umbrella.
You put it over you when therain comes and it filters out
the rain, but yet you can stillsee the rainbows outside, smell
(05:20):
the fresh air.
You can still smell the rain.
You're not being saturated andgetting cold by the rain.
So the purpose of the umbrellato protect you from the world,
why?
Because you deserve to be theprotagonist of your own story.
It's important to have anumbrella for your life.
A particular story in my mindreminds me of back in my day,
(05:41):
probably before I was evenmarried.
When I would go on long roadtrips, I would constantly think
about, okay, if a car came myway directly, head on how could
I divert my car away from ahead-on collision without
hitting another car.
So I'd be constantly looking atways by which I could ditch out
in a safe way.
Thankfully, I never had to usethis particular skill in my life
(06:03):
directly, but I think it came.
To be an advantage.
One day when I was recentlymarried, we're heading on a long
road trip to Notre Dame to seemy niece's wedding.
And it was about 10 30 at night.
And we're going to cross toNebraska.
I've been Nebraska is flat whenthree deer just came out of
nowhere and interstate IAT andinstinctively, I was able to
(06:25):
Dodge all three and cut right inbetween them without hitting
them whatsoever.
I've always wondered was that my10 or 20 years of constantly
surveying my surroundings, thatled to this benefit of not
hitting a deer and having somuch damage or causing harm to
my family.
Who knows.
But I think of that as anumbrella reality by which I was
able to protect myself, myfamily from an external threat.
(06:48):
And so this is what an umbrellais and our life symptoms that
may be going on in your ownlife.
That made me think, okay, youknow what?
I do need an umbrella.
I need something by which canprotect me from life and keep me
from the harm yet.
Be able to see the good thingsaround me in life symptoms, like
feeling like a victim.
(07:09):
Increasing suspicion around you,critical of opportunities.
Ah, that's not going to work outfor me.
Lack of control.
If you have a sense of this, andmaybe you need to equip yourself
with a deeper umbrella, becauselife has beaten and bruised you
so badly that you just don'tfeel like you can have much say
(07:31):
in life.
So you need to find a way toobtain some umbrellas.
So what kind of like types ofumbrellas do we have to take on
to help us get back in controlof our life?
Boundaries is one.
Sometimes we are because of ourlack of boundaries, we really
insert, or we allow harm to getinto our life.
Particularly in relationships,but not seeing how this is not a
(07:53):
good idea.
I shouldn't date this person.
I shouldn't get to be a friendof this person.
I shouldn't go out tonight withthis person.
We let those boundaries go.
And then we allow the world tohit us and blindside us, so to
speak situational awareness.
Setting alarms, another type, ifyou've been one of those types
of people by which you just endup saying, you know what, when
this happens, I'm not going todo anything else.
(08:14):
So you make some just kind ofgeneral statement, but then you
end up just doing it.
You keep going and I'm just,tonight I'm only gonna have one
slice of pizza, right?
And then you end up havingseven.
You never stay true to yourcommitments.
Then you need to maybe inserttriggers in your life to keep
the world from really infectingyou.
Decision-making discernmentcommunication, man.
Communication can be the bane ofour existence when it comes to
(08:36):
the outside world.
Not speaking clearly to thepeople around us, which causes
problems, not understandingexactly what the person needs
before us, which again, causesproblems.
These are the types of umbrellaswe can actually undergo to keep
us from allowing life to be ouradversary.
So let's look at a couple ofthese actions we can take let's
(08:58):
look at life filters, forexample.
One way, I like to think of thisas like life filters, like back
in the day.
I remember when Gore-Tex, when Iwas a kid, it was like the
coolest thing in the world,which is like this material you
could put on as a coat and itwas breathable.
You could actually have themoisture, leave your body, but
the rain never got in.
And since then more other kindof technologies have advanced
along the way.
(09:19):
I think of it like that lifefilters of like life Gore-Tex by
which the good stuff can stillpermeate come through.
We're not putting up walls inour life.
Those are boundaries.
So we're allowing the good stuffto come out and see the good in
the world in others.
But of course, putting thefilter, keeping that, which is
toxic out.
And those boundaries are soincredibly important that we
(09:40):
never at one of the greatestrules.
I think for boundaries, as Ilearned is that we never
compromise our values withsomeone, but we're always called
to compromise our preferences.
Even that alone can helptremendously.
That filter allows us to keepthe bad stuff out.
When somebody's asking us tocompromise our values and
(10:00):
imposing their values upon us,without hearing us that doesn't
know what's red flag, that thisis the thing in the world that
we don't need a toxicity, but ofcourse the preferences are
always willing to negotiate.
You may value health.
You'd be value nutrition.
How that's expressed can benegotiated.
You may want to eat all organicand the most spent stuff in the
world, but maybe that he's beena Goshen, how one lives out a
(10:24):
healthy lifestyle while stillsupporting the value of health
and nutrition.
I believe in principles, havinga set of principles in our life
are like good filters that allowthe good stuff in your life to
come in and keeping the bad crapout.
And if we don't live byprinciples and we allow life to
happen to us in such an, arandom way that we become beaten
(10:47):
down by it and not allowing thebad stuff to stay out.
When I think of principles now,ultimately I'm not asking to sit
down and just write out everypossible principle for your life
to help keep the world at Bay.
Ultimately, these are lifelessons that have from
experience, not just from themind, it's about encountering
(11:08):
some dynamic in your life andyou realize, Oh man, that didn't
work.
That didn't work at all.
Why?
Because this happened and that Ididn't like this and then this
bad there's something there.
I could have learned a lifelesson, then you make it a
principle and he added to yourlittle diary or journal by what
you begin to live from that afew things that come to mind for
me when it comes to my umbrella,those life filters that keep the
(11:30):
bad stuff out, be radicallyopen-minded as a principal.
We closed down and stuff.
We don't allow the opportunityfor the world to teach us and
grow us.
Another principle that I love isevidence gives hope, the vote.
Why is it so important for me?
How many times in my datinglife, when I was single, that
had this blind hope that thisperson would really be the one
(11:53):
for me, of course, likeeverything that I was doing with
them or a lot of things to dowith them.
Ah, I just don't like this.
I can't really connect with thisperson, but I kept having hope,
but the hope wasn't an evidence.
It was just some blind hope.
And this principle is reallyimportant to keep us in good,
healthy relationships thatevidence gives hope, the vote,
(12:15):
not blind hope, but evidence,which then leads to another
vote.
That fear gets a voice, but nota vote.
We work through our fear and notover our fear.
The fear is real talks aboutthis again, in a previous
podcast that is important.
It opens the door tovulnerability, but it doesn't
get the vote.
It doesn't tell us what to do,cause that paralyzes us, that
(12:38):
doesn't allow us to live life atall, allows the world to impose
itself upon us.
So I hope you get this idea ofthe principles that are so
important that are not meant foryou to craft them all in one
sitting, but only to keep anopen notebook with a blank piece
of paper calling lifeprinciples.
And there's a life comes yourway and you learn something from
it, write it down, may it be afilter for you?
(13:00):
So the next time it doesn'thappen again.
And that's what the umbrella isfor another type of umbrella I
mentioned was setting alarms.
Another way of staying istriggers this idea that
sometimes we can end up sayingwe're not going to do something,
but then we end up doing it overand over and over and again, and
we cause harm for ourselves.
But putting in a trigger that istimely.
(13:22):
And measurable to help you setthe alarms in your life to know
that, okay, I've reached beyondthe limit.
Now it's time for me to make anew decision.
Couple examples come to mind.
You may want to transition to anew career.
I have six months of X, monthsof living expenses.
I need to save.
And once I get there, I'll havethe green light to move to a new
career, then maybe you want tomove to Korea, but it's going to
(13:43):
be a big salary difference, butyou want to set yourself up for
success so that you can stillhappen to life.
So you set a trigger foryourself.
When I had X amount of moneysaved after X months, whatever
may be, then that's the greenlight for me to move to this new
career because I can do it nowwith courage and with safety,
maybe you're trying somethingnew.
(14:04):
You're trying to make a newcareer, being an entrepreneur.
And I'm allowed this much tospend without receiving any
income.
Once I get to that money spentat nothing come in and I must
stop for two weeks andreconsider what I'm doing.
I've been down that road, or youjust want to spin and spin and
spin and keep thinking.
I'll tell you, I'll keepinvesting, investing, investing.
They will get better, but itdoesn't.
(14:26):
Do you see me by triggerspointing things and we'll help
you so that life doesn't have tohappen to you in this way.
Communication, another one.
Seeking clarity before engaging,understanding their intentions,
their expectations ofcircumstances, and assuming less
how many times that we justassume so much about the other
person and that just causesdifficulties in life.
(14:50):
Decision-making a couple ofgreat books have come up that
I've read.
That's really helped me asdecisive by chip and Dan Heath.
The paradox of choice by BarrySchwartz, a powerful things that
if you have a tough time makingdecision, you feel parallel.
We'll pick up a good book, learnyourself with good decision
skills so that you can allow thegood stuff of life in, in
(15:12):
filtering the bad stuff out.
So that's the umbrella.
It's an indispensable part ofour arsenal to get our good
defense are our life Akido so wecan begin happening into life
again.
So the second tool then is theguard rail, right?
So now you have the umbrella,but by which it's you being
(15:32):
protected by life, the guardrail is protecting you from you.
Why?
Because we typically prefershort-term gains and wins, which
leads off into long terms, debt,regret, and loss.
We need things in our life tonudge us towards shooting for
beyond the immediate and whatprovides us lasting value.
(15:54):
We need things in our life toprotect us from going down the
path that will not provide thatROI, that return on investment
on career and relationships.
Now, when it comes to putting upguard rails in your life, this
is where I shine this.
I noticed when I was trying tothink of stories of my own life.
This is where I have the moststories.
I feel like this is my strongsuit.
(16:15):
The umbrella in the insulation,not so much I need to work on,
but this is my strong area.
My wife would joke with me allthe time that we would clean.
I'd always clean in the contextof phases.
Phase one is done to the toilet.
Then I do the mirrors phase two,and then phase three would be
the floors.
And I've always taken phases.
Why?
Because it helps me be able tobe motivated that I'm making a
(16:35):
step forward in something.
I'm reaching my goal.
I'm keeping a narrow focus andshe always laugh about it, but
it always kept me motivated.
And that is like a guard rail.
It's these things that protectyou from you to keep you from
being distracted or overwhelmedand then want to quit and
something that you want to do,right?
You can be your greatestadversary or advocate.
(16:57):
And for me, cleaning is not thatfun.
So breaking it down in phasesmotivates me to accomplish
something that needs to be doneand makes it exciting for me.
Calendaring.
I remember when we were newlymarried, we were having a half
time concept being sucked intochores and all these
responsibilities during theweekends, which is probably
mostly all my fault because I'mthe one who's driven to get task
(17:20):
management done.
My wife likes to enjoy life.
And finally we decided, you knowwhat, let's break down every
Sunday, the next two to threeweeks and plan them out in
advance and always start withthe most important things.
Relationships exercise, datenights and plan all those.
So they're there the fun stuff,man.
Those were the best months wewere having great weekends and
(17:42):
they're all full of fun thingswe'd like to do.
And world being responsible whoknew this is you protecting you
from you by having a plan.
So symptoms of needing a guard,rail, unhealthy relationships,
one bad career.
After another feelings ofdrifting through life.
Shiny object syndrome, movingfrom one thing to the next and
(18:04):
just liking it, but neveraccomplishing anything, lack of
purpose in your life.
So if you're feeling this, thenmaybe it's the guard rail that
needs to be brought up anelevated.
And how do I get a guard in mylife to keep me on those, that
path that I want to be on andnot fall off the guard rail to
something that's just a tangentand doesn't provide me the value
(18:25):
I one down the road.
So types of really instrumentsyou can use to build a good
guardrail would be quite avision for yourself.
What do you want, where do yousee yourself five years from now
create a concrete plan foryourself that has objectives and
goals and striving for habitsthat resembled that kind of
(18:46):
person who accomplishes thatkind of end in that kind of
vision, create a plan and aschedule for yourself and put
those important things as rocksin.
In the first round ofcalendaring, these are the guard
rails that keep you focused onwhat you want to do.
Concrete things that you can dowith this, create a plan every
(19:09):
Sunday, before the Monday beginscarve out your week.
What do you want to accomplish?
Were the three big things thatyou would love to accomplish?
They're like, Oh my gosh.
If I got these three thingsdone, there would be huge wins
for me.
They don't have to big.
You could be like, just callingthat college that you're
thinking about going to, andjust seeing about whether it be
a good fit for you looking intoan online class, just seeing how
(19:33):
much it might cost finding afree webinar, looking for class
on communication.
Just start writing that book.
You wanted to write for fiveminutes, carving out 30 minutes
a day to just write to startsmall.
So we have the umbrella.
And we have the guardrail and wehad the tools to be able to
build a good umbrella and thetool to build a good guard rail
(19:55):
in your life.
The last one then is theinsulation or the buffer.
I love this one.
It's one of my favorite ones,even though I suffer from this
one, the purpose of this as thesoften, the impact of life, why
when we are running thin, we canno longer see life as a moment
of opportunity.
(20:16):
Connection promotion.
But rather we see it as a threatto our life stability.
So we shift to preservationmode.
And so we approach it withguardedness and increased
suspicion.
When we're running thin, wecannot be the protagonist of her
own story.
We can't discover that, whichthe world desires us to be
(20:39):
because we're in survival mode.
A story about this goes back tothe very beginning of our
marriage.
When we first got married, weincurred a lot of debt together,
mostly all educational debt thatwe had to combine in our
marriage.
The first thing we did isattended this place called
financial peace university, nota place, but an online class by
(21:02):
Dave Ramsey, highly recommendedto really get us in the same
language.
And the same system to deal withour finances, to pay off as much
debt as humanly possible with alimited income we had.
And it was really important.
One of the first steps was tobuild a thousand dollar
emergency fund.
It wasn't six months, which wereally would love to have, but
(21:23):
when you have that much debt,you just put a thousand in for
now because Lisa, then you havea little buffer.
So if an emergency happens, yougot a thousand dollars to deal
with it.
And just getting to that pointwas so alleviating for us,
knowing that we had this littlestock pile of cash and
everything bad happened.
We could use it without a blinkof an eye because it's not for
anything else, but for a realemergency.
(21:47):
So symptoms we're running sothin in our life.
Are you feeling guarded overreactive, critical, negative
anxious, overwhelmed out ofcontrol.
If you're feeling any of these,and man, you need to add some
insulation to your life, theareas of insulation to focus on,
of course, financial, right?
(22:08):
If you're strapped thin goingfrom paycheck to paycheck or
can't even meet your bills,there's no way you can deal with
life.
You've got to fix that, create abuffer, be able to deal with
that so that you can deal atleast with emergencies.
And there's emotional.
How Ms feels so intensely thatwe're constant exhausted, we're
afraid or we're scared oranxious.
(22:28):
Or angry resentful.
And these emotions just tap theabs the energy of us to the
point where we can barelyfunction and we become
over-reactive or thoughts out ofcontrol of rumination.
And there's no space foranything else.
And we're just tapped then.
So we can't connect to anybodyelse.
(22:49):
Or people pleasing because we'rejust so run down with our own
negative thoughts.
We're afraid of loss everywherethat we just spend the rest of
our moments, other people justtrying to keep them right.
Instead of just being with themand in the relationship.
Another one is time.
The third one, we're runningfrom one event to the next one
appointment to the next one,mean to the next, with no buffer
(23:10):
in between us.
And we're exhausted and we'rejust driving as fast as we can
to the appointment just in NYCLAtime.
And we see some in the side ofthe road who really needs help.
We don't even stop and bother tohelp them pay is not necessary.
And of course we're late for anappointment.
We don't have the buffer or theenergy I have all the time in
the world, maybe, which I don't.
(23:30):
But.
I have no energy.
And so you need the sleep, thenutrition, the exercise.
This is where we need toinsulate and buffer our life to
be able to then weather thestorms more easily.
When I look at each one of thesejust quickly, I think of
financial, we just talked ofsetting up an emergency savings
at a thousand dollars to build aweather, those storms, when it
(23:52):
comes to things in our life, allthat clutter, be quick to get
rid of things and very slow toadopt them.
I'm thinking of Marie Kondo.
And I love her approach to thesimplicity and getting rid of
the clutter of her life becauseit clutters our mind and our
emotions and our thoughts, andbe careful because once we
possess something, it becomes somuch more valuable to us.
So be careful the things we takeon there's this great study, and
(24:15):
I forgot what it was, a punishedSean.
So I can find it by wish theywere offered a$10 bill and
before they received it, theywere given the opportunity to
negotiate and do something elsewith a$10 bill.
And they were much more free togive it away and do something
else.
But then once you were given the$10 bill, just holding it,
create a whole other ball gameof possession by which then
those same questions of givingit up and do something else with
(24:36):
it.
You were like six times morelikely to keep it and not give
it up just because he possessedit.
There's such a psychologicalconnection
with
possessing something to be careful about
what we possess.
So human thinking about thiswith our thoughts.
Be careful in possessingnegative thoughts because once
you have them, they're so muchmore difficult to let go
(24:59):
emotional thoughts, how to dealwith this.
Enter into prayer, meditation,journaling, and spinning moments
each morning, entering intoself-reflection to be able to
then not remove those thoughts,not remove the emotions.
But to better equip yourself tobe a bystander of those
emotions, right?
Not to get over the fear, but towork through it, allow it to
(25:22):
still be a party, but then itdoesn't have the vote.
It simply remains the voice.
And of course that voice getssofter and softer and softer.
The less we touch it.
Grab a hold of it.
Time, add space to yourcalendar.
People don't go from one to thenext, with little margin, but
add double the space betweenmeetings and appointments that
(25:43):
give you time to be able to getthere slowly prepare way in
advance free.
Go to appointment.
Don't take a shower 20 minutesbefore you have to go an hour
and a half.
Allow yourself to enjoy and bepresent to life as it happens.
Don't rush through it.
Enter into deeper leisure.
Try the unscheduled method,which I've tried.
(26:04):
I love by which you do your bestto have a free calendar for the
next two or three weeks.
Of course you have appointments.
You have to keep and work andthose kinds of things, but you
then fill those things up firstwith the most important things,
I'm going to go out with afriend.
I'm going to call a friend onthis day.
I'm going to go out on a datenight.
Then I'm going to have self-careevery morning, every day, every
evening, during this particularpoint in time.
(26:25):
And it's in the calendar, I'mgoing to do this hobby take on
this hobby on this Saturday.
And it's in the calendar so thatwhen somebody says, Hey, are you
busy Saturday at noon, you lookat your calendar and you say,
Oh, I'm going to go fishing bymyself.
You don't say that out loud.
Of course you see in yourcalendar and you say, ah, gosh,
I'd love to, but I'm busy.
Can we do it next Saturday?
So you keep your date withyourself.
You keep the priorities.
(26:47):
How many times have I said tomyself, I'm gonna do this on
Saturday.
I don't put it in my calendar.
And then I forget.
Just because life.
And then somebody asked me to dosomething on Saturday.
I say yes.
And I don't remain committed tothe things that
I
want to do.
Of course you can stillrelinquish and not do that thing
on Saturday that you have thefreedom.
At least you have the freedom tosee what you're committed to and
(27:07):
say yes or no to it, all thesethings help.
So you have all of this at yourdisposal and umbrella and all
these tools, guard, rails, andall these tools.
And then a buffer and all thesetools, and it sounds
overwhelming, but don't beoverwhelmed just your way there.
I love that word.
Ooh.
To slowly focus on 1% bettereach day, the goal is to live a
(27:32):
more real life, which means lessreactionary, more life has
discovery, more contemplativelife has gift.
So that life is our advocate andnot our adversary.
Realizing that we are a gift andwe cannot give what we do not
see we have.
And if we're busy and we feellike life has happened to us, we
don't see the value of who weare.
(27:53):
We can't give that gift.
And the person, it isindispensable to be able to put
these things in place so we canbe fully present to the
relationships around us.
So how are you going to do it?
So pick one area that resonatesmost with you, is it the
umbrella?
Is it the guardrail?
Is it the buffet for me, I'mreally good at the guard rail.
But I really could use a lot ofhelp and umbrella and buffer.
(28:15):
So I think I want to do morewith the buffering for the next
month.
Then pick one sub area thatresonated with you umbrella.
Was it boundaries that resonatewith you?
Situational awareness, settingtriggers or alarms communication
skills.
Decision-making discernment.
Maybe it wasn't umbrella, but hewas guardrails.
(28:35):
Was it?
I need a vision for my life,man.
I need to get a plan for mylife.
I need to see, to get a schedulegoing.
Or a buffer.
I need to get my finances.
I need to put something where Ihave a little bit of buffer.
Cause I'm so stressed everynight about what bill might come
up next, my emotional thoughts,the rumination, I need to send a
(28:56):
control the time, the energy,right?
Pick one of these sub areas andthen pick one thing.
One thing to increase in 1% eachday.
And here's my, before I let yougo, the one thing by Gary
Keller, a book that reallychanged and shifted my life.
I'll put in the show notes, goget it.
(29:17):
I think you'll just absolutelylove it.
Yeah, because one thing is this,what's the one thing you can do
such that by doing it,everything else will be easier
or unnecessary.
See, that's your goal?
All the seems overwhelming, butif you can find one thing that
ends up having so muchcollateral advantage to other
(29:37):
things in your life, then you'rehitting so many more birds with
one stone example for me is theumbrella.
For me, it's umbrella andcommunication.
My one thing by focusing oncommunication for the next three
months, it allows a lot ofwasted my life by me not
communicating effectively mydesires or seeking clarity from
(30:00):
other people which leads tofrustration.
What will this happen?
This will filter out an enormousamount of toxicity from the
world around me.
Keeping me on track becausemiscommunication takes me off
the rails in a huge buffer.
As it taps my emotionalthoughtful energy, it can even
(30:21):
lead to less sleep.
So for me, by focusing on thisone thing, communication, I end
up not only buffering something,I get a guardrail and even get
my umbrella.
For me, this is a big, one thingthat I want to focus on for the
next three months.
So what is your one thing forthe next 30 days?
What are the next one thing thatyou can focus on?
(30:41):
Read a book to help you on it.
Journal about growth, make atask to do one small thing each
day to improve upon it.
Again, go back to episode nine.
If you needed some extra help,right?
Talk about making mole Hills outof mountains.
Where I tell you how you canimprove on something easily by
putting a small little system inplace to Uber, your way into
(31:02):
seeing a world that has yourbest interests in mind, have a
wonderful week, and I'll see younext episode, take care and.
Bye-bye thank you for listeningto this episode of living the
real.
If you want to check out moreinformation, go to living the
real.com and sign up for mynewsletter.
If you want to support thispodcast, you do that at
patrion.com/ltr as well as onetime.
(31:26):
Payments at Venmo and PayPal inthe show notes.
See you all next episode.
Take care.
Bye-bye.
When I was in college, this is about 20 years
ago.
I had this incredible desire towant to learn jujitsu.
Now this was really cool, supercool martial arts, and wanted to
do it just because I thought Ijust wanted to be cool and I was
working out if I'd be the nextbest thing.
So I thought I'd Sanfordjujitsu.
The problem is that it's bestnot to start with jujitsu.
(00:21):
Number one, it's a reallyintense martial arts.
It's better to start with Akido.
So I started with Akido.
And it bored the heck out of me.
And I went to one or two classesat the university of Nebraska
Lincoln on a Akido and quit.
Now, the reason why a keto is soimportant is because they
believe that you needed to startwith a good sense of defense
(00:42):
learning, how to defend yourselfbefore you can get into jujitsu,
which is more offense.
And that just bored me.
I didn't really want to do it.
So I quit it altogether.
Now I know many of us right nowhave had a difficult past three
months, six months, 12 months,16 months, 24 months.
It has been a difficult road fora long while.
And you may not be on the orderof like depression, but you
(01:05):
definitely don't feel fulfilled.
And I learned a new word aboutthis in the past week.
That really exemplifiessometimes how I've been feeling
as well.
I bet many of you are feelingthe same way and that's a word
languishing.
You don't feel like you'retotally depressed.
You don't feel really happy.
You feel a little beaten down alittle bruised.
(01:25):
The world seems a little lost inits color.
You may feel Haggard, which Ilove that word, but you don't
necessarily feel depressed.
And sometimes the best thing todo at this point in time is stop
and get some life Akido lessons.
I know more than anything as,you know, if you've listened to
my podcasts, all about us, happyinto life, or then life
(01:45):
happening to us in living withthis principle of discovery,
learning to discover life as ouradvocate and not our adversary.
But sometimes we need to start alittle bit for that and just
build a good defense mechanism.
And now I don't mean put updefenses around people that
might be necessary.
I'm talking about a soliddefense that gets you back in
(02:05):
the driver's seat of life.
And this Epic is all about thebuilding blocks to the pursuit
of seeing the world again, asour advocate and not our
adversary.
And so sometimes we need to justtake a step back shore up our
fences.
And then begin to move forwardin life.
So this episode is all about thethree tools that I want to give
(02:27):
you to keep you out of harmsaway.
In life.
So let's get going.
Are you living the most reallife possible?
I ask myself this question allthe time.
Most of the time, the answer isI just don't know, but sometimes
(02:47):
the answer is definitely not.
This is why I have this podcast.
I'm Matt and welcome to theshow.
Two small things.
If you get a chance, pleaseleave a review like on Apple
podcasts and also check out mywebsite, live in the real.com
where I offer lots of resourceson how to live the most real
life possible now on with theshow.
(03:10):
Okay.
So let's get right into thesethree life tools.
Now, the way I see it as likethis, you need to get a life
umbrella.
Number one.
Two, you need to get a lifeguard, rail, and need to get
some life insulation.
These are the three tools youneed.
If you really need the shorterfences, because he feels like
life is just like a tsunami armyovertaking you right now.
(03:33):
My oldest son has been obsessedtsunamis he's right now,
coloring, tsunamis, right.
And left of him, screaming on anIsland while tsunami comes his
way.
So it's on my mind.
And so when life feels likethat, it's time to figure out
how we actually get the watersto subside from our life a
little bit.
So we can take stock of where weneed to go in our own life.
And so it's neat.
(03:53):
It's a neat concept to thinkabout us happening to life, or
then life happening to us.
But when you feel like you'redrowning, that's not necessarily
the first thing you're thinkingabout.
You just want to get out of thedang water.
So I want to give you threetools.
Tools are now if you'resuffering right now in any way
by which you're just like, I amjust in a day luge and I need
just to get.
My head above water, wasn'tlisten up because this can
(04:14):
really, really, really help youthese through is, are these
things I've been thinking aboutfor, well over two or three
years, and it's been on my mindthat I wanted to develop them.
And I thought, why not?
Why not development here in thecontext of this episode?
I know there's a lot here.
You might want to take notes ifyou can't take notes or drive in
no big deal, because in the, andboil it down for you to
hopefully make this a simplejourney for you to really get
(04:36):
those waters at Bay.
So let's look at these threeideas, these tools you need in
your toolbox, you need anumbrella is a guardrail, need
some insulation.
And if you can have at least theperspective of these three, and
if you can at least try to focuson one or two of these at a time
to build this arsenal.
That helps you be able to keepthose harms out of your life.
(05:00):
You're going to find yourselffeeling lighter and freer.
So let's start with this idea ofgetting a life umbrella.
What does this mean?
So the purpose of a lifeumbrella is the way I see it is
it protects us from the world,right?
Just like an umbrella.
You put it over you when therain comes and it filters out
the rain, but yet you can stillsee the rainbows outside, smell
(05:20):
the fresh air.
You can still smell the rain.
You're not being saturated andgetting cold by the rain.
So the purpose of the umbrellato protect you from the world,
why?
Because you deserve to be theprotagonist of your own story.
It's important to have anumbrella for your life.
A particular story in my mindreminds me of back in my day,
(05:41):
probably before I was evenmarried.
When I would go on long roadtrips, I would constantly think
about, okay, if a car came myway directly, head on how could
I divert my car away from ahead-on collision without
hitting another car.
So I'd be constantly looking atways by which I could ditch out
in a safe way.
Thankfully, I never had to usethis particular skill in my life
(06:03):
directly, but I think it came.
To be an advantage.
One day when I was recentlymarried, we're heading on a long
road trip to Notre Dame to seemy niece's wedding.
And it was about 10 30 at night.
And we're going to cross toNebraska.
I've been Nebraska is flat whenthree deer just came out of
nowhere and interstate IAT andinstinctively, I was able to
(06:25):
Dodge all three and cut right inbetween them without hitting
them whatsoever.
I've always wondered was that my10 or 20 years of constantly
surveying my surroundings, thatled to this benefit of not
hitting a deer and having somuch damage or causing harm to
my family.
Who knows.
But I think of that as anumbrella reality by which I was
able to protect myself, myfamily from an external threat.
(06:48):
And so this is what an umbrellais and our life symptoms that
may be going on in your ownlife.
That made me think, okay, youknow what?
I do need an umbrella.
I need something by which canprotect me from life and keep me
from the harm yet.
Be able to see the good thingsaround me in life symptoms, like
feeling like a victim.
(07:09):
Increasing suspicion around you,critical of opportunities.
Ah, that's not going to work outfor me.
Lack of control.
If you have a sense of this, andmaybe you need to equip yourself
with a deeper umbrella, becauselife has beaten and bruised you
so badly that you just don'tfeel like you can have much say
(07:31):
in life.
So you need to find a way toobtain some umbrellas.
So what kind of like types ofumbrellas do we have to take on
to help us get back in controlof our life?
Boundaries is one.
Sometimes we are because of ourlack of boundaries, we really
insert, or we allow harm to getinto our life.
Particularly in relationships,but not seeing how this is not a
(07:53):
good idea.
I shouldn't date this person.
I shouldn't get to be a friendof this person.
I shouldn't go out tonight withthis person.
We let those boundaries go.
And then we allow the world tohit us and blindside us, so to
speak situational awareness.
Setting alarms, another type, ifyou've been one of those types
of people by which you just endup saying, you know what, when
this happens, I'm not going todo anything else.
(08:14):
So you make some just kind ofgeneral statement, but then you
end up just doing it.
You keep going and I'm just,tonight I'm only gonna have one
slice of pizza, right?
And then you end up havingseven.
You never stay true to yourcommitments.
Then you need to maybe inserttriggers in your life to keep
the world from really infectingyou.
Decision-making discernmentcommunication, man.
Communication can be the bane ofour existence when it comes to
(08:36):
the outside world.
Not speaking clearly to thepeople around us, which causes
problems, not understandingexactly what the person needs
before us, which again, causesproblems.
These are the types of umbrellaswe can actually undergo to keep
us from allowing life to be ouradversary.
So let's look at a couple ofthese actions we can take let's
(08:58):
look at life filters, forexample.
One way, I like to think of thisas like life filters, like back
in the day.
I remember when Gore-Tex, when Iwas a kid, it was like the
coolest thing in the world,which is like this material you
could put on as a coat and itwas breathable.
You could actually have themoisture, leave your body, but
the rain never got in.
And since then more other kindof technologies have advanced
along the way.
(09:19):
I think of it like that lifefilters of like life Gore-Tex by
which the good stuff can stillpermeate come through.
We're not putting up walls inour life.
Those are boundaries.
So we're allowing the good stuffto come out and see the good in
the world in others.
But of course, putting thefilter, keeping that, which is
toxic out.
And those boundaries are soincredibly important that we
(09:40):
never at one of the greatestrules.
I think for boundaries, as Ilearned is that we never
compromise our values withsomeone, but we're always called
to compromise our preferences.
Even that alone can helptremendously.
That filter allows us to keepthe bad stuff out.
When somebody's asking us tocompromise our values and
(10:00):
imposing their values upon us,without hearing us that doesn't
know what's red flag, that thisis the thing in the world that
we don't need a toxicity, but ofcourse the preferences are
always willing to negotiate.
You may value health.
You'd be value nutrition.
How that's expressed can benegotiated.
You may want to eat all organicand the most spent stuff in the
world, but maybe that he's beena Goshen, how one lives out a
(10:24):
healthy lifestyle while stillsupporting the value of health
and nutrition.
I believe in principles, havinga set of principles in our life
are like good filters that allowthe good stuff in your life to
come in and keeping the bad crapout.
And if we don't live byprinciples and we allow life to
happen to us in such an, arandom way that we become beaten
(10:47):
down by it and not allowing thebad stuff to stay out.
When I think of principles now,ultimately I'm not asking to sit
down and just write out everypossible principle for your life
to help keep the world at Bay.
Ultimately, these are lifelessons that have from
experience, not just from themind, it's about encountering
(11:08):
some dynamic in your life andyou realize, Oh man, that didn't
work.
That didn't work at all.
Why?
Because this happened and that Ididn't like this and then this
bad there's something there.
I could have learned a lifelesson, then you make it a
principle and he added to yourlittle diary or journal by what
you begin to live from that afew things that come to mind for
me when it comes to my umbrella,those life filters that keep the
(11:30):
bad stuff out, be radicallyopen-minded as a principal.
We closed down and stuff.
We don't allow the opportunityfor the world to teach us and
grow us.
Another principle that I love isevidence gives hope, the vote.
Why is it so important for me?
How many times in my datinglife, when I was single, that
had this blind hope that thisperson would really be the one
(11:53):
for me, of course, likeeverything that I was doing with
them or a lot of things to dowith them.
Ah, I just don't like this.
I can't really connect with thisperson, but I kept having hope,
but the hope wasn't an evidence.
It was just some blind hope.
And this principle is reallyimportant to keep us in good,
healthy relationships thatevidence gives hope, the vote,
(12:15):
not blind hope, but evidence,which then leads to another
vote.
That fear gets a voice, but nota vote.
We work through our fear and notover our fear.
The fear is real talks aboutthis again, in a previous
podcast that is important.
It opens the door tovulnerability, but it doesn't
get the vote.
It doesn't tell us what to do,cause that paralyzes us, that
(12:38):
doesn't allow us to live life atall, allows the world to impose
itself upon us.
So I hope you get this idea ofthe principles that are so
important that are not meant foryou to craft them all in one
sitting, but only to keep anopen notebook with a blank piece
of paper calling lifeprinciples.
And there's a life comes yourway and you learn something from
it, write it down, may it be afilter for you?
(13:00):
So the next time it doesn'thappen again.
And that's what the umbrella isfor another type of umbrella I
mentioned was setting alarms.
Another way of staying istriggers this idea that
sometimes we can end up sayingwe're not going to do something,
but then we end up doing it overand over and over and again, and
we cause harm for ourselves.
But putting in a trigger that istimely.
(13:22):
And measurable to help you setthe alarms in your life to know
that, okay, I've reached beyondthe limit.
Now it's time for me to make anew decision.
Couple examples come to mind.
You may want to transition to anew career.
I have six months of X, monthsof living expenses.
I need to save.
And once I get there, I'll havethe green light to move to a new
career, then maybe you want tomove to Korea, but it's going to
(13:43):
be a big salary difference, butyou want to set yourself up for
success so that you can stillhappen to life.
So you set a trigger foryourself.
When I had X amount of moneysaved after X months, whatever
may be, then that's the greenlight for me to move to this new
career because I can do it nowwith courage and with safety,
maybe you're trying somethingnew.
(14:04):
You're trying to make a newcareer, being an entrepreneur.
And I'm allowed this much tospend without receiving any
income.
Once I get to that money spentat nothing come in and I must
stop for two weeks andreconsider what I'm doing.
I've been down that road, or youjust want to spin and spin and
spin and keep thinking.
I'll tell you, I'll keepinvesting, investing, investing.
They will get better, but itdoesn't.
(14:26):
Do you see me by triggerspointing things and we'll help
you so that life doesn't have tohappen to you in this way.
Communication, another one.
Seeking clarity before engaging,understanding their intentions,
their expectations ofcircumstances, and assuming less
how many times that we justassume so much about the other
person and that just causesdifficulties in life.
(14:50):
Decision-making a couple ofgreat books have come up that
I've read.
That's really helped me asdecisive by chip and Dan Heath.
The paradox of choice by BarrySchwartz, a powerful things that
if you have a tough time makingdecision, you feel parallel.
We'll pick up a good book, learnyourself with good decision
skills so that you can allow thegood stuff of life in, in
(15:12):
filtering the bad stuff out.
So that's the umbrella.
It's an indispensable part ofour arsenal to get our good
defense are our life Akido so wecan begin happening into life
again.
So the second tool then is theguard rail, right?
So now you have the umbrella,but by which it's you being
(15:32):
protected by life, the guardrail is protecting you from you.
Why?
Because we typically prefershort-term gains and wins, which
leads off into long terms, debt,regret, and loss.
We need things in our life tonudge us towards shooting for
beyond the immediate and whatprovides us lasting value.
(15:54):
We need things in our life toprotect us from going down the
path that will not provide thatROI, that return on investment
on career and relationships.
Now, when it comes to putting upguard rails in your life, this
is where I shine this.
I noticed when I was trying tothink of stories of my own life.
This is where I have the moststories.
I feel like this is my strongsuit.
(16:15):
The umbrella in the insulation,not so much I need to work on,
but this is my strong area.
My wife would joke with me allthe time that we would clean.
I'd always clean in the contextof phases.
Phase one is done to the toilet.
Then I do the mirrors phase two,and then phase three would be
the floors.
And I've always taken phases.
Why?
Because it helps me be able tobe motivated that I'm making a
(16:35):
step forward in something.
I'm reaching my goal.
I'm keeping a narrow focus andshe always laugh about it, but
it always kept me motivated.
And that is like a guard rail.
It's these things that protectyou from you to keep you from
being distracted or overwhelmedand then want to quit and
something that you want to do,right?
You can be your greatestadversary or advocate.
(16:57):
And for me, cleaning is not thatfun.
So breaking it down in phasesmotivates me to accomplish
something that needs to be doneand makes it exciting for me.
Calendaring.
I remember when we were newlymarried, we were having a half
time concept being sucked intochores and all these
responsibilities during theweekends, which is probably
mostly all my fault because I'mthe one who's driven to get task
(17:20):
management done.
My wife likes to enjoy life.
And finally we decided, you knowwhat, let's break down every
Sunday, the next two to threeweeks and plan them out in
advance and always start withthe most important things.
Relationships exercise, datenights and plan all those.
So they're there the fun stuff,man.
Those were the best months wewere having great weekends and
(17:42):
they're all full of fun thingswe'd like to do.
And world being responsible whoknew this is you protecting you
from you by having a plan.
So symptoms of needing a guard,rail, unhealthy relationships,
one bad career.
After another feelings ofdrifting through life.
Shiny object syndrome, movingfrom one thing to the next and
(18:04):
just liking it, but neveraccomplishing anything, lack of
purpose in your life.
So if you're feeling this, thenmaybe it's the guard rail that
needs to be brought up anelevated.
And how do I get a guard in mylife to keep me on those, that
path that I want to be on andnot fall off the guard rail to
something that's just a tangentand doesn't provide me the value
(18:25):
I one down the road.
So types of really instrumentsyou can use to build a good
guardrail would be quite avision for yourself.
What do you want, where do yousee yourself five years from now
create a concrete plan foryourself that has objectives and
goals and striving for habitsthat resembled that kind of
(18:46):
person who accomplishes thatkind of end in that kind of
vision, create a plan and aschedule for yourself and put
those important things as rocksin.
In the first round ofcalendaring, these are the guard
rails that keep you focused onwhat you want to do.
Concrete things that you can dowith this, create a plan every
(19:09):
Sunday, before the Monday beginscarve out your week.
What do you want to accomplish?
Were the three big things thatyou would love to accomplish?
They're like, Oh my gosh.
If I got these three thingsdone, there would be huge wins
for me.
They don't have to big.
You could be like, just callingthat college that you're
thinking about going to, andjust seeing about whether it be
a good fit for you looking intoan online class, just seeing how
(19:33):
much it might cost finding afree webinar, looking for class
on communication.
Just start writing that book.
You wanted to write for fiveminutes, carving out 30 minutes
a day to just write to startsmall.
So we have the umbrella.
And we have the guardrail and wehad the tools to be able to
build a good umbrella and thetool to build a good guard rail
(19:55):
in your life.
The last one then is theinsulation or the buffer.
I love this one.
It's one of my favorite ones,even though I suffer from this
one, the purpose of this as thesoften, the impact of life, why
when we are running thin, we canno longer see life as a moment
of opportunity.
(20:16):
Connection promotion.
But rather we see it as a threatto our life stability.
So we shift to preservationmode.
And so we approach it withguardedness and increased
suspicion.
When we're running thin, wecannot be the protagonist of her
own story.
We can't discover that, whichthe world desires us to be
(20:39):
because we're in survival mode.
A story about this goes back tothe very beginning of our
marriage.
When we first got married, weincurred a lot of debt together,
mostly all educational debt thatwe had to combine in our
marriage.
The first thing we did isattended this place called
financial peace university, nota place, but an online class by
(21:02):
Dave Ramsey, highly recommendedto really get us in the same
language.
And the same system to deal withour finances, to pay off as much
debt as humanly possible with alimited income we had.
And it was really important.
One of the first steps was tobuild a thousand dollar
emergency fund.
It wasn't six months, which wereally would love to have, but
(21:23):
when you have that much debt,you just put a thousand in for
now because Lisa, then you havea little buffer.
So if an emergency happens, yougot a thousand dollars to deal
with it.
And just getting to that pointwas so alleviating for us,
knowing that we had this littlestock pile of cash and
everything bad happened.
We could use it without a blinkof an eye because it's not for
anything else, but for a realemergency.
(21:47):
So symptoms we're running sothin in our life.
Are you feeling guarded overreactive, critical, negative
anxious, overwhelmed out ofcontrol.
If you're feeling any of these,and man, you need to add some
insulation to your life, theareas of insulation to focus on,
of course, financial, right?
(22:08):
If you're strapped thin goingfrom paycheck to paycheck or
can't even meet your bills,there's no way you can deal with
life.
You've got to fix that, create abuffer, be able to deal with
that so that you can deal atleast with emergencies.
And there's emotional.
How Ms feels so intensely thatwe're constant exhausted, we're
afraid or we're scared oranxious.
(22:28):
Or angry resentful.
And these emotions just tap theabs the energy of us to the
point where we can barelyfunction and we become
over-reactive or thoughts out ofcontrol of rumination.
And there's no space foranything else.
And we're just tapped then.
So we can't connect to anybodyelse.
(22:49):
Or people pleasing because we'rejust so run down with our own
negative thoughts.
We're afraid of loss everywherethat we just spend the rest of
our moments, other people justtrying to keep them right.
Instead of just being with themand in the relationship.
Another one is time.
The third one, we're runningfrom one event to the next one
appointment to the next one,mean to the next, with no buffer
(23:10):
in between us.
And we're exhausted and we'rejust driving as fast as we can
to the appointment just in NYCLAtime.
And we see some in the side ofthe road who really needs help.
We don't even stop and bother tohelp them pay is not necessary.
And of course we're late for anappointment.
We don't have the buffer or theenergy I have all the time in
the world, maybe, which I don't.
(23:30):
But.
I have no energy.
And so you need the sleep, thenutrition, the exercise.
This is where we need toinsulate and buffer our life to
be able to then weather thestorms more easily.
When I look at each one of thesejust quickly, I think of
financial, we just talked ofsetting up an emergency savings
at a thousand dollars to build aweather, those storms, when it
(23:52):
comes to things in our life, allthat clutter, be quick to get
rid of things and very slow toadopt them.
I'm thinking of Marie Kondo.
And I love her approach to thesimplicity and getting rid of
the clutter of her life becauseit clutters our mind and our
emotions and our thoughts, andbe careful because once we
possess something, it becomes somuch more valuable to us.
So be careful the things we takeon there's this great study, and
(24:15):
I forgot what it was, a punishedSean.
So I can find it by wish theywere offered a$10 bill and
before they received it, theywere given the opportunity to
negotiate and do something elsewith a$10 bill.
And they were much more free togive it away and do something
else.
But then once you were given the$10 bill, just holding it,
create a whole other ball gameof possession by which then
those same questions of givingit up and do something else with
(24:36):
it.
You were like six times morelikely to keep it and not give
it up just because he possessedit.
There's such a psychologicalconnection
with
possessing something to be careful about
what we possess.
So human thinking about thiswith our thoughts.
Be careful in possessingnegative thoughts because once
you have them, they're so muchmore difficult to let go
(24:59):
emotional thoughts, how to dealwith this.
Enter into prayer, meditation,journaling, and spinning moments
each morning, entering intoself-reflection to be able to
then not remove those thoughts,not remove the emotions.
But to better equip yourself tobe a bystander of those
emotions, right?
Not to get over the fear, but towork through it, allow it to
(25:22):
still be a party, but then itdoesn't have the vote.
It simply remains the voice.
And of course that voice getssofter and softer and softer.
The less we touch it.
Grab a hold of it.
Time, add space to yourcalendar.
People don't go from one to thenext, with little margin, but
add double the space betweenmeetings and appointments that
(25:43):
give you time to be able to getthere slowly prepare way in
advance free.
Go to appointment.
Don't take a shower 20 minutesbefore you have to go an hour
and a half.
Allow yourself to enjoy and bepresent to life as it happens.
Don't rush through it.
Enter into deeper leisure.
Try the unscheduled method,which I've tried.
(26:04):
I love by which you do your bestto have a free calendar for the
next two or three weeks.
Of course you have appointments.
You have to keep and work andthose kinds of things, but you
then fill those things up firstwith the most important things,
I'm going to go out with afriend.
I'm going to call a friend onthis day.
I'm going to go out on a datenight.
Then I'm going to have self-careevery morning, every day, every
evening, during this particularpoint in time.
(26:25):
And it's in the calendar, I'mgoing to do this hobby take on
this hobby on this Saturday.
And it's in the calendar so thatwhen somebody says, Hey, are you
busy Saturday at noon, you lookat your calendar and you say,
Oh, I'm going to go fishing bymyself.
You don't say that out loud.
Of course you see in yourcalendar and you say, ah, gosh,
I'd love to, but I'm busy.
Can we do it next Saturday?
So you keep your date withyourself.
You keep the priorities.
(26:47):
How many times have I said tomyself, I'm gonna do this on
Saturday.
I don't put it in my calendar.
And then I forget.
Just because life.
And then somebody asked me to dosomething on Saturday.
I say yes.
And I don't remain committed tothe things that
I
want to do.
Of course you can stillrelinquish and not do that thing
on Saturday that you have thefreedom.
At least you have the freedom tosee what you're committed to and
(27:07):
say yes or no to it, all thesethings help.
So you have all of this at yourdisposal and umbrella and all
these tools, guard, rails, andall these tools.
And then a buffer and all thesetools, and it sounds
overwhelming, but don't beoverwhelmed just your way there.
I love that word.
Ooh.
To slowly focus on 1% bettereach day, the goal is to live a
(27:32):
more real life, which means lessreactionary, more life has
discovery, more contemplativelife has gift.
So that life is our advocate andnot our adversary.
Realizing that we are a gift andwe cannot give what we do not
see we have.
And if we're busy and we feellike life has happened to us, we
don't see the value of who weare.
(27:53):
We can't give that gift.
And the person, it isindispensable to be able to put
these things in place so we canbe fully present to the
relationships around us.
So how are you going to do it?
So pick one area that resonatesmost with you, is it the
umbrella?
Is it the guardrail?
Is it the buffet for me, I'mreally good at the guard rail.
But I really could use a lot ofhelp and umbrella and buffer.
(28:15):
So I think I want to do morewith the buffering for the next
month.
Then pick one sub area thatresonated with you umbrella.
Was it boundaries that resonatewith you?
Situational awareness, settingtriggers or alarms communication
skills.
Decision-making discernment.
Maybe it wasn't umbrella, but hewas guardrails.
(28:35):
Was it?
I need a vision for my life,man.
I need to get a plan for mylife.
I need to see, to get a schedulegoing.
Or a buffer.
I need to get my finances.
I need to put something where Ihave a little bit of buffer.
Cause I'm so stressed everynight about what bill might come
up next, my emotional thoughts,the rumination, I need to send a
(28:56):
control the time, the energy,right?
Pick one of these sub areas andthen pick one thing.
One thing to increase in 1% eachday.
And here's my, before I let yougo, the one thing by Gary
Keller, a book that reallychanged and shifted my life.
I'll put in the show notes, goget it.
(29:17):
I think you'll just absolutelylove it.
Yeah, because one thing is this,what's the one thing you can do
such that by doing it,everything else will be easier
or unnecessary.
See, that's your goal?
All the seems overwhelming, butif you can find one thing that
ends up having so muchcollateral advantage to other
(29:37):
things in your life, then you'rehitting so many more birds with
one stone example for me is theumbrella.
For me, it's umbrella andcommunication.
My one thing by focusing oncommunication for the next three
months, it allows a lot ofwasted my life by me not
communicating effectively mydesires or seeking clarity from
(30:00):
other people which leads tofrustration.
What will this happen?
This will filter out an enormousamount of toxicity from the
world around me.
Keeping me on track becausemiscommunication takes me off
the rails in a huge buffer.
As it taps my emotionalthoughtful energy, it can even
(30:21):
lead to less sleep.
So for me, by focusing on thisone thing, communication, I end
up not only buffering something,I get a guardrail and even get
my umbrella.
For me, this is a big, one thingthat I want to focus on for the
next three months.
So what is your one thing forthe next 30 days?
What are the next one thing thatyou can focus on?
(30:41):
Read a book to help you on it.
Journal about growth, make atask to do one small thing each
day to improve upon it.
Again, go back to episode nine.
If you needed some extra help,right?
Talk about making mole Hills outof mountains.
Where I tell you how you canimprove on something easily by
putting a small little system inplace to Uber, your way into
(31:02):
seeing a world that has yourbest interests in mind, have a
wonderful week, and I'll see younext episode, take care and.
Bye-bye thank you for listeningto this episode of living the
real.
If you want to check out moreinformation, go to living the
real.com and sign up for mynewsletter.
If you want to support thispodcast, you do that at
patrion.com/ltr as well as onetime.
(31:26):
Payments at Venmo and PayPal inthe show notes.
See you all next episode.
Take care.
Bye-bye.
Popular Podcasts
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!
Las Culturistas with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang
Ding dong! Join your culture consultants, Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang, on an unforgettable journey into the beating heart of CULTURE. Alongside sizzling special guests, they GET INTO the hottest pop-culture moments of the day and the formative cultural experiences that turned them into Culturistas. Produced by the Big Money Players Network and iHeartRadio.
Crime Junkie
Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? Dive into your next mystery with Crime Junkie. Every Monday, join your host Ashley Flowers as she unravels all the details of infamous and underreported true crime cases with her best friend Brit Prawat. From cold cases to missing persons and heroes in our community who seek justice, Crime Junkie is your destination for theories and stories you won’t hear anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast or new to the genre, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting a new episode every Monday. If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people. Follow to join a community of Crime Junkies! Crime Junkie is presented by audiochuck Media Company.