November 14, 2023 • 33 mins
When you think about your life do you see absence or abundance? Sometimes the problems of our days add up to distract us from the fact that we have a lot more blessing than curses. Let's talk about how to reframe our perspective to focus on what's going right in our lives vs what's going wrong. Is it easy? No, to be honest. But it is worth it.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:20):
Welcome to the Motivation Report. I'm changing up, I think
in the beginning of the last one, just because that's
how I always started, I said, this is the motivation Report.
I don't really want to do that anymore. I don't
know why that became the thing that I had to
say that before the music. So as we roll into
the new life of this show, there's a new logo.
(00:42):
I don't know if you noticed. It's a lot of
fun I realized as I posted the last episode and
it came out. A couple of people screenshot and we're
very excited. But at the same time, it reminded me
that the logo is still a picture of a cocktail
and a pair of glasses, and the cocktail is no
longer appropriate. I don't this isn't Also, I don't want
(01:05):
people thinking that this is like now going to become
like the Sober Cast. But you know, it's an element
of my life that's important to include, and you know,
a picture of a booze is probably not in alignment
with my brand, as thin and inconsequential as that brand
may be. Anyway, I had mentioned on the last episode
(01:27):
that there was sort of a topic and a theme
that I wanted to get into which is here, We're
ready for it. It's seeing absence when you actually have abundance.
I knew that I wanted to. I've been thinking in
this space for a while. I think more in reaction
to other people's seeing absence as opposed to abundance, and
(01:50):
my sort of reactionary opinion not to them, but internally
thinking why is this person so upset about something that
on paper or in life, you know, is pretty meaningless.
That isn't to be rude, I think, or like shit
on other people's feelings, but you know what I mean,
(02:11):
when at work or even amongst friends or whatever, it is,
somebody's really upset about a thing that like a handful
of other people are like, I just don't know why
this is such a problem for them, And of course
it's tied more directly to what's going on with them personally,
I think, than what the actual slight is. But today,
(02:36):
and I think what became the motivation for me to
finally put these words down was that I experienced yet
another rejection that is kind of par for the course
in a lot of industries, but in the entertainment industry
in particular. I would be amazed if you were someone
(02:58):
who did not experience and a disproportionate amount of rejection
in your pursuit. That kind of comes with the territory
that it's almost like ninety nine percent of the day
is no And maybe you get that one. Yes, I
used to live in that hole for a really long time,
and I would repeat that like a sad little mantra
to myself. I would say, ninety nine percent of my
(03:20):
life is rejection. And I became really bitter and sad
and jaded, and I drank a lot more because of that,
and I could never climb out of that space until
I learned how to sort of reframe the rejection piece,
that kind of defeatist attitude into one hundred percent of
every day is opportunity. And some of these platitudes, I
(03:44):
know are hokey, right. A lot of people, even me,
when I was struggling to accept that I wanted to
quit drinking, I would hear some of this stuff and
I would just be like, fuck off, you know, one
day at a time, okay, Like I'm suffering, and the
fact that you're trying to make me feel better means
that then I won't be able to suffer, and then
(04:05):
who will I be? The suffering kind of becomes the identity,
as opposed to the identity being always malleable, always adaptable,
always growing and changing. That's I think the valuable way
to look at your identity. Not I'm sad. Everything sucks.
My life sucks, and I guess that's it. I just
(04:27):
have to accept this shitty life. A lot of people
do that. It seems like almost more people than not
live in some variation of absence versus abundance. And getting
this phone call was tough. I thought things went really
well and the person was very kind. It was not
(04:50):
an unprofessional, it was not mean. Was just one of
those things where yet again the stars did not align,
It didn't sync up. It wasn't a good fit for
for them, and I guess, you know, by extension for me,
I also want to know that the person who's potentially
going to be working with me is excited to work together.
Is you know, you want to know that there's that
(05:11):
mutual benefit, mutual benefit, mutually beneficial relationship. There's like a
lot of people are like, oh, everybody in Hollywood just
want something from somebody else. I mean kind of and
that's just life. That's not just la I get so tired.
Everybody just wants something from somebody, don't you. What do
(05:32):
you want from your friendships? What do you want from
your romantic relationships? What do you want from your dog? Attention, love, affection?
Everybody wants things, and that's perfectly all right. So this
attitude of like, oh, I just want to I just
want to make friends with people who don't want anything
from me, that doesn't exist. Ideally, your wants a line
and you can give freely to one another. That's what's
(05:54):
called a healthy relationship. And so this was not going
to be that healthy working relationship. Not that it would
be unhealthy, but it just again, it wasn't a good fit.
So I immediately went into my little hole and I
got sad, because, yes, the amount of rejection feels brutal,
(06:16):
it feels never ending, and it feels it can feel
soul crushing. But there has to be something on the
other side of it. If I choose sort of that
tired old easy path of ninety nine percent of my
life is rejection, what are then, what are the opportunities
(06:36):
for me for the rest of the day. If I
decide to live in that space what how will I
get the most. I had this call at eleven o'clock
in the morning. The call ended at eleven fifteen, So
then I have the rest of the day in front
of me. And if I choose to see only the rejection,
(06:56):
see the absence, see what I'm not getting, then I
miss all of the things that I could get, all
of the things that I could learn, see, think, feel
all of the abundance that life has to offer. And
I the first thought that came to my mind was
(07:16):
I need to record. I need to talk about this,
work it out in real time. You know, I'm learning this,
I'm going through it, passing it on to the people,
seeing what everybody else who's listening thinks about this kind
of thing, because I think it doesn't. My pursuit is specific,
but there is a universal feeling of rejection. I think
(07:37):
for a lot of people, maybe it's dating, Maybe it's
you're not getting that promotion, you know, maybe it's fill
in the blank. We all feel that those pangs of
sadness when we get the rejection letter or the no,
or the maybe next time. Because we have to be
(08:00):
the person to build ourselves up enough to go for
it and to take the risk at the potential reward,
and then when we don't get the reward, there is
that feeling in that sense that well, what was the
fucking point Why did I do all this in the
first place? If it didn't really matter? But it did
matter because you're not the same as you were a
(08:25):
month ago, even a week ago. If let's like, you know,
the first call I took up for this was a
week and a half ago, and there was a lot
of work that was done in between, and I learned
a lot, and now I have some additional things as
a result of doing this work that can benefit me.
Seeing the silver lining is not a super easy thing
to do, depending on the size of the rejection or
(08:48):
the size of the pain that's being caused. Not always rejection,
but the absence that's felt or seen. Sometimes that's loss
of life. But what I mean when I say say
we see absence instead of abundance is that most things
in life that don't go our way are not that
(09:08):
big of a deal. In fact, they don't matter as
much as we make them matter. But I don't think
that people have done the work myself included, to understand
the difference to rebound with positivity instead of misery, because
that misery is comfortable and it's easy. It takes zero
(09:30):
work to feel bad about yourself, zero effort to just
be sad. It takes a lot of work to find
those positives, to see the abundance instead of the absence.
Then it can be super, super frustrating, especially when you're
on the other side of that, when you're dealing with
somebody who that is their attitude and you're trying to
(09:51):
either talk them up or explain to them that, like, listen,
this is not the problem that you're making out of it.
Couple weeks ago, totally separate situation, but had a call
with somebody for some work I've been doing, and they
were not pleased at some of the decisions that I
(10:12):
felt needed to be made in order to save costs.
This is work that's being done pro bono, basically with
the intent that the working relationship will be mutually beneficial
and we will both do well in the future. But
at a certain point it becomes difficult to invest as
much time, energy and effort into something if it's not
(10:35):
either paying you or giving you the reward that you
need to motivate that work. And so I thought it
was important that there'd be a conversation about recalibrating some
of the working boundaries in order to save money and time,
because since it has not made money for anybody involved,
(10:57):
it is costing us to do this work. For everybody,
even the people who are on the other side of this,
it's costing all of us our time, and time is valuable,
very valuable, and so on a cale explained why we
needed to make some adjustments to the to the relationship,
and the person was very displeased, and when told what
(11:20):
the true value of this work would be if it
was simply an hourly job or a day gig or
whatever it is, there was a sense of disbelief. Le oh, really,
that's what it costs, and it was I had to
go silent. Have you ever had those moments where I
(11:42):
think it's better than saying the wrong thing? You just
you shut down a little bit because you're upset and
because you're angry and you don't want to say the
wrong thing. This is better if you have to shut
down instead of saying the wrong thing. I recommend it,
and I just listened, and because I kind of couldn't
(12:03):
believe the perspective, the more I understood where they were
coming from. It had been four or five months worth
of work done, many many episodes, content created, graphics, all
kinds of design things. We're talking hundreds of hours of
work at this point for zero dollars. And when the
(12:28):
person was confronted with changing that working relationship, they were
not happy because what they saw was something that was
being taken away as opposed to what they had in abundance.
They had hundreds of hours of work done by people
for them for free, to create something that only benefited them.
(12:51):
That when we said, listen, this is not functioning at
this level, we have to change this, they didn't like that.
People when people get accustomed to really nice things happening
to them where they don't have to do anything for it,
it doesn't cost them anything, and as soon as you
take it away, they're like, what what do you mean?
You're not gonna do this for free? And I and
(13:14):
I got frustrated because I understood that what this person
was doing was seeing absence and not seeing abundance, because
there was a whole fuck ton of abundance. I'm still
a little upset about it. If you can't tell there
was a lot a lot done, and the attitude was
it felt you know, I don't this doesn't seem fair,
(13:34):
this is but this is, this is what I want. Okay,
you don't always get what you want. That includes me,
That includes the conversation I just had today where I
didn't get what I wanted. But how would it also
benefit me if I then took an attitude with that
person that told me no, the person that rejected me.
(13:56):
Sometimes I get mad and get frustrated, but there is
still courteousness, politeness, there's still a willingness to say, how
could we make this work? A desire not to burn
bridges because I don't know. Maybe five years from now
that person and I will have a working relationship, and
if I behave like a dickhead and piss them off,
(14:21):
it's over. And then I run the risk of them
relaying this information to other people. Don't work with him.
He's hard to work with. And so the most effective
strategy to come out of this was to understand that, yes,
the no is hard, the rejection is hard, the loss
is hard. Like I mentioned last week, it's not we're
(14:44):
not afraid of change, We're afraid of loss, sort of
loss of this potential, the loss of the identity that
got wrapped up in all this work. There is that
feeling of absence, but what replaces it is stopping down,
taking a deep breath, and understanding that your life is
(15:10):
full of great things. Abundance is inherently built into the
lives that we live, so much so that it is
the easiest thing to take for granted. I'm sure that
I mentioned this to some degree years ago when I
started this podcast. It's been I looked, and I think
(15:31):
it's three and a half years ago i posted the
last episode. I am amazed that some people are still
around and still listening. But you know, it's good to
have those subscribers. I like dropping little surprises in people's
inboxes when new episodes come out. I am sure that
I talked about this sort of reframing in the past,
and it's very similar. It's kind of the same thing.
I lost sight of it because of my drinking and
(15:53):
a lot of other things, and I've been working on
getting it back. And now that I think I've been
putting all that effort into getting that back, to meditating more,
to drinking more tea, to just trying to be in
the moment, to understand that most of the problems in
our daily life do not matter if they are not
(16:15):
costing you anything in terms of your money, time well being.
But it feels like they are. That's probably a meaningless
problem that's us responding to in a negative way because
we have anxiety and stress about a lot of other things.
In fact, it's usually compounding of all those tiny little
problems that make our lives feel like we have one
(16:38):
massive problem. More and more people are like, why is
there so many people with anxiety these days? It's like
it's always been there, we just now are willing to
talk about it, diagnose it, get on medication for it.
Mine goes haywire when I let these little things build up,
I think much like anybody else's. And we're also just
(16:59):
culturally things are different. We're constantly bombarded by shit text
messages and you know, social media and screen time and
stream I don't. There's been studies that have said, I'm
not educated enough to tell you exactly who, so you
could prove me wrong if it's true. But I did
read a study once that say, like our brains are biologically,
(17:21):
evolution is not up to speed with how fast we're
going we can't really comprehend the world that we're living
in and building for ourselves because shit moves too fast,
and I think we can understand these things hypothetically, so
we continue with progress. But everybody seems like a wreck
(17:43):
all the time. This anxiety problem. Why is everybody's suddenly
so anxious? Because like thirty years ago, the most wild
thing that we could imagine was like this big gray
cell phone that you could make a call from somewhere
else without a wire. Oh may unbelievable arcade games, what
Super Mario Brothers. Like just within the past thirty years,
(18:06):
that's been this boom of anxiety inducing things. And it's
easy to lose sight of what's going right in our
lives because we get distracted by our anxiety compounding the
things that we feel are going wrong. And that is
the old point that I remember making a long time
ago that I've had to relearn from myself, as if
(18:28):
you think about what's going wrong in your life, the
list is usually pretty limited. It's a couple of things
that you can usually pinpoint. If you're being honest, you're like, well,
this person was a dick to me. This person said
they weren't happy about this. This person rejected me. Okay,
I mean, you go on as long as it takes.
(18:48):
Give the list, write it down, and then look at it,
and then ask yourself how many things are going right
in your life? And don't be a shithead about it,
because this is what I did for many, many years,
and it put me in a hole, drinking myself to
death because I became a little shithead about it and
I thought nothing. I used to feel all happy and
(19:11):
positive about stuff, but now it's just like nobody wants me.
And I got carried away with the bullshit side of
things and truly lost sight of the abundance of my life.
I only get one life. I don't really believe in reincarnation,
and I'm not a religious person necessarily, so I have
(19:32):
no idea what's going to happen after I die. So
as far as I'm concerned, this life is very precious
and very important to me. And unfortunately, in the grand
scheme of things, it's very short. So what the fuck
am I doing wasting my time with other people's problems
(19:52):
and with my own attitude about my problems. Is that
how I want to spend my time? If time is valuable,
Seeing nothing but absence, focusing on all the things that
are going wrong in my life. Because here's the Sometimes
I suppose could feel like the trite, kind of pedantic
(20:13):
version of motivational speaking, which is like, just look around
you at this beautiful world. I can understand how that
stuff feels meaningless. But unfortunately, from my perspective, what I
have to offer you is that it's true. It is
unfortunate that we have to find small blessings in big problems.
(20:36):
But it's true. You do. I know how exhausting and
horrible that is, because I've been there looking for big
solutions to big problems, and I have to remind myself that,
just like little problems add up to feeling like a
big problem, a lot of little incremental blessings, a lot
(20:59):
of little things in abundance create a grand life in abundance.
What do you like what's going right in your life?
Break it all the way down to things that are
simple and silly, like green grass clouds, a television, not
even the show on it, just the TV itself. I'm
(21:20):
looking at mine right now. It's nice, you know, it
can play things for me. I had there's a picture frame,
a nice picture of a friend of mine, some decorations,
A candle, A scented candle. I love a scented candle.
There's a little dried lavender. Sometimes I break it off
and rup it between my fingers. Smell that scenter lavender
makes me happy. Books, you know, posters, A window. I
(21:42):
love a window. Let's air in and out. You can
jump out it if you needed to escape somewhere. You know,
you climb in it if you're eighteen and you're coming
over to your CRUSH's house in high school. Sounds so dumb, right,
but it's all true. Sorry. Wish that there was like
a way that I could say, you know what, instead
of looking for the little things that are going right
(22:04):
in your life, here's a million dollars. I would love
to do that. I would love that to happen to me,
but it's not happening. I'm still a paycheck to paycheck person,
chasing this fucking dragon that keeps burning me to death
every time I try to catch it. And instead of
giving up, I know that one day I'm going to
(22:27):
I think a lot of people would be like, isn't
that the definition of insanity? Doing the same thing over
and over again, expecting different results, but you know that
it's a chipping away as opposed to, Oh, this is
actually killing me. I think that's sort of the insane thing.
The drinking was that right? If I could just find
a way to level this out, keep doing it until
it makes sense that like this is the amount that
I can just live a healthy life with. No it's
(22:49):
killing me. It's literal poison. I was dying. But when
it comes to my dreams, my career, my pursuit of
what I want, I'll take the small wins. Fuck yeah,
I will, because what what else am I gonna do?
Beat myself up? Tell myself to quit? I mean, I
(23:12):
think that's a lot of us end up quitting something.
Some things that's actually okay to quit. We can talk
about that later. Sometimes you gotta quit because it's bad
for you. But if you live your life from perspective
of only seeing absence and not abundance, what is really
(23:32):
going right? Who can you call? Who can you talk to?
I was super stressed a couple of weeks ago, and
I tried to Now, in this new phase of my life,
do a lot of breathing exercises and meditation. I will
do with like sound bath playlists on Spotify, and just
those like the Bulls or whatever they are on you know,
(23:55):
they hit the balls. I couldn't. I can't explain it
to you. I'm not that sophist. It's nice, though, and
it works for me, so it is what it is.
I put this on some sound bath sounds and drop
into my little space and understand that all the things
that were causing me stress were meaningless. I have food, air, water,
(24:22):
shelter that's somewhere to live. I have a loving spouse, friends, dog,
I have my creative pursuits. I have things I'm very
proud of. The list goes on and on and on,
and I only have, at the end of all this
one single life. And if I'm going to waste any
(24:43):
time doing anything, it's pursuing my wants, hopes and dreams,
even if they don't work out, because at least I've
put my energy forward in the right place and I've learned,
and I'm still two steps forward, even if it's sometimes
taking one step back, and I'm one step ahea at least,
But if I get wrapped up and all the things
(25:03):
that are going wrong and all the absence I see
and feel, I'm going to spiral, and I'm going to
shut down, and I'm not going to learn anything, and
I'm going to be miserable, and I probably self medicate,
and then I'll be more miserable, and then I'll wonder
why the medication that I'm using isn't helping me, because
it's a symptom of the larger problem, which is I
don't know how to stop down and understand that the
(25:26):
absence that I'm seeing isn't real. It hurts a little bit,
it's real in an infinitesimal way. But when you do
strip things down and you start to pile them back
up with the abundance of your life. What I felt
very clearly, and I heard myself say to myself in
(25:49):
my meditation state, even your problems are icing on the cake,
like good for you, man. You get one life to
live and you all these things going right in your life.
And this person's being a dick to you, What a
luxury to have this person be a dick. Their problem
(26:12):
is therefore sort of not a real problem for me
because I don't care. And what I'm gonna do is
I'm just going to do the work. I'm going to
soldier on and I'm not going to let it weigh
me down because another person's absence or fear or anxiety
doesn't have to be mine. If you ever get that
(26:33):
work call or email, not ever. I mean, it's like
everybody's deal, your manager, anybody, somebody else's stress becomes your stress,
and then you're like, my boss is pissed, and I'm
fucked now, because when they're not happy, we're not happy.
And that's terrible because a lot of our paychecks and
well being come from this kind of relationship, which is
not a great relationship. But it could be said that
(26:56):
you could do your job and then just leave it
at the door because that person's deep down problem, which
is that they manage stress and anxiety very poorly, and
they usually manage their team and their workplace very poorly.
You know a good leader when they are able to
balance that kind of thing, and sometimes you do see
(27:18):
them under stress and under pressure. And it's not that
they're always cool, it's just that you get that energy
from someone who's a good leader that you know they're
going to be fine. That's why you trust them. Someone
who's a good leader exudes that confidence of man even
when they're underwater. They just hold their breath. They learn
(27:39):
to hold their breath for two, three, four minutes. They
tread water as long as it takes. There's just always
that feeling of knowing that that person's going to come
out on the other side of this, and that can
be you. Even if you're not in a managerial position,
you're not management material. Everybody's management material. I remember a
(28:03):
manager at the Gap. One time when I worked at
the Gap, this old lady came in. She wanted to
try on clothes and we were supposed to close in
like five minutes, and I was like, that's fine, just
come back here, use the dressing room. She was not
not rude whatever. She's like, can I try this stuff?
And I was like yeah, whatever. And my boss, my manager,
was so mad at me, and he was like, we
don't do that, like right before we close, and I
(28:27):
was like why, we're still technically open. It's like yeah,
but then we have to wait and it delays everything.
And I was like, well, I don't know. It's this
old lady and she wanted to try on some clothes.
It's probably gonna be fine, but okay, you know, like
if that's if that, if that your perspective, I'm not
gonna do that, but I hear you. I understand that
this bothers you. And a couple days later he comes
(28:51):
back and he goes, hey, I want to apologize. I
overreacted and you were just trying to help that lady.
And I was like, cool, man, we're good. I'm not
always the person that takes that high road. But in
a second, and this is like fifteen years ago, but
in that moment, I was like, this lady needs help.
Let's just give it to her. Solid let her try
out some fucking clothes. Well, we're folding, we can close
(29:12):
the doors while she's still here. It's fine. She just
needs You're gonna get her money if she buys something.
Isn't that how business works? Isn't that what you want?
So didn't it never occurred to me that that was
a problem and that person it was a big problem
for my manager. But upon reflection and probably my attitude
of being like, yeah, man, that's not a real problem,
it really doesn't matter. In fact, in the end, you're
(29:34):
helping somebody, gives the perspective of oh, yeah, that's right,
that wasn't a real problem. So that's your homework. Assignment.
I don't love to give out homework, but as we
work and try and do these things together, when you
wake up tomorrow or even today, you finish listening to this,
(29:54):
I want you to just take some deep breaths. I
heard something like if you do like third big deep
breaths in a row, yoga breathing or something. I don't
have all this information. It's just what I hear, so
you can't always trust me, but I think it's helpful
because when I do it, it is you just take
several deep breaths over the period of a couple minutes,
(30:17):
and it like fully just resets your whole body and mind,
just the influx of oxygen and the paying attention to
the rhythm of your breathing, the sort of patience and distraction.
It ends up proving to focus entirely on your breathing,
which is why it's such a hugely important meditative practice
(30:38):
creates that room for you to chill the fuck out,
which is very important sometimes when we're getting stressed and
beating ourselves up over things that don't matter. So that
is that is your homework. When things seem to be
going poorly, I want you to chill the fuck out.
(31:00):
I want you to take some deep breaths literally, do it,
not metaphorically. Take a deep breath, man, no, no, sit down.
Take some deep breaths, like twenty of them bat minimum.
Spend three minutes thinking about this. Think about all the
things that are technically going right in your life. Ask
yourself the question and answer it honestly, and don't be
(31:25):
rude or stubborn about it. Your favorite thing in the
world could be it like Charlie, my dog. Favorite thing
in the world tennis ball boom easy, best thing in
the world in him. If you've drawn a ball, God
is the happiest guy in the world. So maybe you
like a tennis ball. I don't know. Start small and
build up from there, and I think that you will
(31:46):
start to understand that your life is full of abundance.
There is so much going right for you that your problems,
in comparison, the absence that you feel, is largely not real.
We can reserve some of this for a later date
when we talk about things like loss of loved ones.
(32:07):
These are sort of different problems. What I think I
wanted to unpack and talk about today was kind of
the incidental day to day stuff with life that at
the end, it's those kinds of things that at the
end of the day we feel like we need a
drink or we need something because I got to forget
about all my problems when you could honestly just forget
about all your problems without the drink, because those problems
are forgettable anyway. So you've got your assignment. Thank you
(32:29):
for spending a half hour or so with me today.
Hope this has helped. If it has, you can leave
a rating and review there. On the old Apple podcasts,
I'm at Will Sterling Underscore on all the socials If
you want to hit me up there questions, comments, concerns,
topics you'd like to discuss. I'm an open book. Take
care of yourself, take those deep breaths, love yourself first
(32:53):
and other second, and understand that your life is not
full of absence. It is. Four other buttons.
Welcome to the Motivation Report. I'm changing up, I think
in the beginning of the last one, just because that's
how I always started, I said, this is the motivation Report.
I don't really want to do that anymore. I don't
know why that became the thing that I had to
say that before the music. So as we roll into
the new life of this show, there's a new logo.
(00:42):
I don't know if you noticed. It's a lot of
fun I realized as I posted the last episode and
it came out. A couple of people screenshot and we're
very excited. But at the same time, it reminded me
that the logo is still a picture of a cocktail
and a pair of glasses, and the cocktail is no
longer appropriate. I don't this isn't Also, I don't want
(01:05):
people thinking that this is like now going to become
like the Sober Cast. But you know, it's an element
of my life that's important to include, and you know,
a picture of a booze is probably not in alignment
with my brand, as thin and inconsequential as that brand
may be. Anyway, I had mentioned on the last episode
(01:27):
that there was sort of a topic and a theme
that I wanted to get into which is here, We're
ready for it. It's seeing absence when you actually have abundance.
I knew that I wanted to. I've been thinking in
this space for a while. I think more in reaction
to other people's seeing absence as opposed to abundance, and
(01:50):
my sort of reactionary opinion not to them, but internally
thinking why is this person so upset about something that
on paper or in life, you know, is pretty meaningless.
That isn't to be rude, I think, or like shit
on other people's feelings, but you know what I mean,
(02:11):
when at work or even amongst friends or whatever, it is,
somebody's really upset about a thing that like a handful
of other people are like, I just don't know why
this is such a problem for them, And of course
it's tied more directly to what's going on with them personally,
I think, than what the actual slight is. But today,
(02:36):
and I think what became the motivation for me to
finally put these words down was that I experienced yet
another rejection that is kind of par for the course
in a lot of industries, but in the entertainment industry
in particular. I would be amazed if you were someone
(02:58):
who did not experience and a disproportionate amount of rejection
in your pursuit. That kind of comes with the territory
that it's almost like ninety nine percent of the day
is no And maybe you get that one. Yes, I
used to live in that hole for a really long time,
and I would repeat that like a sad little mantra
to myself. I would say, ninety nine percent of my
(03:20):
life is rejection. And I became really bitter and sad
and jaded, and I drank a lot more because of that,
and I could never climb out of that space until
I learned how to sort of reframe the rejection piece,
that kind of defeatist attitude into one hundred percent of
every day is opportunity. And some of these platitudes, I
(03:44):
know are hokey, right. A lot of people, even me,
when I was struggling to accept that I wanted to
quit drinking, I would hear some of this stuff and
I would just be like, fuck off, you know, one
day at a time, okay, Like I'm suffering, and the
fact that you're trying to make me feel better means
that then I won't be able to suffer, and then
(04:05):
who will I be? The suffering kind of becomes the identity,
as opposed to the identity being always malleable, always adaptable,
always growing and changing. That's I think the valuable way
to look at your identity. Not I'm sad. Everything sucks.
My life sucks, and I guess that's it. I just
(04:27):
have to accept this shitty life. A lot of people
do that. It seems like almost more people than not
live in some variation of absence versus abundance. And getting
this phone call was tough. I thought things went really
well and the person was very kind. It was not
(04:50):
an unprofessional, it was not mean. Was just one of
those things where yet again the stars did not align,
It didn't sync up. It wasn't a good fit for
for them, and I guess, you know, by extension for me,
I also want to know that the person who's potentially
going to be working with me is excited to work together.
Is you know, you want to know that there's that
(05:11):
mutual benefit, mutual benefit, mutually beneficial relationship. There's like a
lot of people are like, oh, everybody in Hollywood just
want something from somebody else. I mean kind of and
that's just life. That's not just la I get so tired.
Everybody just wants something from somebody, don't you. What do
(05:32):
you want from your friendships? What do you want from
your romantic relationships? What do you want from your dog? Attention, love, affection?
Everybody wants things, and that's perfectly all right. So this
attitude of like, oh, I just want to I just
want to make friends with people who don't want anything
from me, that doesn't exist. Ideally, your wants a line
and you can give freely to one another. That's what's
(05:54):
called a healthy relationship. And so this was not going
to be that healthy working relationship. Not that it would
be unhealthy, but it just again, it wasn't a good fit.
So I immediately went into my little hole and I
got sad, because, yes, the amount of rejection feels brutal,
(06:16):
it feels never ending, and it feels it can feel
soul crushing. But there has to be something on the
other side of it. If I choose sort of that
tired old easy path of ninety nine percent of my
life is rejection, what are then, what are the opportunities
(06:36):
for me for the rest of the day. If I
decide to live in that space what how will I
get the most. I had this call at eleven o'clock
in the morning. The call ended at eleven fifteen, So
then I have the rest of the day in front
of me. And if I choose to see only the rejection,
(06:56):
see the absence, see what I'm not getting, then I
miss all of the things that I could get, all
of the things that I could learn, see, think, feel
all of the abundance that life has to offer. And
I the first thought that came to my mind was
(07:16):
I need to record. I need to talk about this,
work it out in real time. You know, I'm learning this,
I'm going through it, passing it on to the people,
seeing what everybody else who's listening thinks about this kind
of thing, because I think it doesn't. My pursuit is specific,
but there is a universal feeling of rejection. I think
(07:37):
for a lot of people, maybe it's dating, Maybe it's
you're not getting that promotion, you know, maybe it's fill
in the blank. We all feel that those pangs of
sadness when we get the rejection letter or the no,
or the maybe next time. Because we have to be
(08:00):
the person to build ourselves up enough to go for
it and to take the risk at the potential reward,
and then when we don't get the reward, there is
that feeling in that sense that well, what was the
fucking point Why did I do all this in the
first place? If it didn't really matter? But it did
matter because you're not the same as you were a
(08:25):
month ago, even a week ago. If let's like, you know,
the first call I took up for this was a
week and a half ago, and there was a lot
of work that was done in between, and I learned
a lot, and now I have some additional things as
a result of doing this work that can benefit me.
Seeing the silver lining is not a super easy thing
to do, depending on the size of the rejection or
(08:48):
the size of the pain that's being caused. Not always rejection,
but the absence that's felt or seen. Sometimes that's loss
of life. But what I mean when I say say
we see absence instead of abundance is that most things
in life that don't go our way are not that
(09:08):
big of a deal. In fact, they don't matter as
much as we make them matter. But I don't think
that people have done the work myself included, to understand
the difference to rebound with positivity instead of misery, because
that misery is comfortable and it's easy. It takes zero
(09:30):
work to feel bad about yourself, zero effort to just
be sad. It takes a lot of work to find
those positives, to see the abundance instead of the absence.
Then it can be super, super frustrating, especially when you're
on the other side of that, when you're dealing with
somebody who that is their attitude and you're trying to
(09:51):
either talk them up or explain to them that, like, listen,
this is not the problem that you're making out of it.
Couple weeks ago, totally separate situation, but had a call
with somebody for some work I've been doing, and they
were not pleased at some of the decisions that I
(10:12):
felt needed to be made in order to save costs.
This is work that's being done pro bono, basically with
the intent that the working relationship will be mutually beneficial
and we will both do well in the future. But
at a certain point it becomes difficult to invest as
much time, energy and effort into something if it's not
(10:35):
either paying you or giving you the reward that you
need to motivate that work. And so I thought it
was important that there'd be a conversation about recalibrating some
of the working boundaries in order to save money and time,
because since it has not made money for anybody involved,
(10:57):
it is costing us to do this work. For everybody,
even the people who are on the other side of this,
it's costing all of us our time, and time is valuable,
very valuable, and so on a cale explained why we
needed to make some adjustments to the to the relationship,
and the person was very displeased, and when told what
(11:20):
the true value of this work would be if it
was simply an hourly job or a day gig or
whatever it is, there was a sense of disbelief. Le oh, really,
that's what it costs, and it was I had to
go silent. Have you ever had those moments where I
(11:42):
think it's better than saying the wrong thing? You just
you shut down a little bit because you're upset and
because you're angry and you don't want to say the
wrong thing. This is better if you have to shut
down instead of saying the wrong thing. I recommend it,
and I just listened, and because I kind of couldn't
(12:03):
believe the perspective, the more I understood where they were
coming from. It had been four or five months worth
of work done, many many episodes, content created, graphics, all
kinds of design things. We're talking hundreds of hours of
work at this point for zero dollars. And when the
(12:28):
person was confronted with changing that working relationship, they were
not happy because what they saw was something that was
being taken away as opposed to what they had in abundance.
They had hundreds of hours of work done by people
for them for free, to create something that only benefited them.
(12:51):
That when we said, listen, this is not functioning at
this level, we have to change this, they didn't like that.
People when people get accustomed to really nice things happening
to them where they don't have to do anything for it,
it doesn't cost them anything, and as soon as you
take it away, they're like, what what do you mean?
You're not gonna do this for free? And I and
(13:14):
I got frustrated because I understood that what this person
was doing was seeing absence and not seeing abundance, because
there was a whole fuck ton of abundance. I'm still
a little upset about it. If you can't tell there
was a lot a lot done, and the attitude was
it felt you know, I don't this doesn't seem fair,
(13:34):
this is but this is, this is what I want. Okay,
you don't always get what you want. That includes me,
That includes the conversation I just had today where I
didn't get what I wanted. But how would it also
benefit me if I then took an attitude with that
person that told me no, the person that rejected me.
(13:56):
Sometimes I get mad and get frustrated, but there is
still courteousness, politeness, there's still a willingness to say, how
could we make this work? A desire not to burn
bridges because I don't know. Maybe five years from now
that person and I will have a working relationship, and
if I behave like a dickhead and piss them off,
(14:21):
it's over. And then I run the risk of them
relaying this information to other people. Don't work with him.
He's hard to work with. And so the most effective
strategy to come out of this was to understand that, yes,
the no is hard, the rejection is hard, the loss
is hard. Like I mentioned last week, it's not we're
(14:44):
not afraid of change, We're afraid of loss, sort of
loss of this potential, the loss of the identity that
got wrapped up in all this work. There is that
feeling of absence, but what replaces it is stopping down,
taking a deep breath, and understanding that your life is
(15:10):
full of great things. Abundance is inherently built into the
lives that we live, so much so that it is
the easiest thing to take for granted. I'm sure that
I mentioned this to some degree years ago when I
started this podcast. It's been I looked, and I think
(15:31):
it's three and a half years ago i posted the
last episode. I am amazed that some people are still
around and still listening. But you know, it's good to
have those subscribers. I like dropping little surprises in people's
inboxes when new episodes come out. I am sure that
I talked about this sort of reframing in the past,
and it's very similar. It's kind of the same thing.
I lost sight of it because of my drinking and
(15:53):
a lot of other things, and I've been working on
getting it back. And now that I think I've been
putting all that effort into getting that back, to meditating more,
to drinking more tea, to just trying to be in
the moment, to understand that most of the problems in
our daily life do not matter if they are not
(16:15):
costing you anything in terms of your money, time well being.
But it feels like they are. That's probably a meaningless
problem that's us responding to in a negative way because
we have anxiety and stress about a lot of other things.
In fact, it's usually compounding of all those tiny little
problems that make our lives feel like we have one
(16:38):
massive problem. More and more people are like, why is
there so many people with anxiety these days? It's like
it's always been there, we just now are willing to
talk about it, diagnose it, get on medication for it.
Mine goes haywire when I let these little things build up,
I think much like anybody else's. And we're also just
(16:59):
culturally things are different. We're constantly bombarded by shit text
messages and you know, social media and screen time and
stream I don't. There's been studies that have said, I'm
not educated enough to tell you exactly who, so you
could prove me wrong if it's true. But I did
read a study once that say, like our brains are biologically,
(17:21):
evolution is not up to speed with how fast we're
going we can't really comprehend the world that we're living
in and building for ourselves because shit moves too fast,
and I think we can understand these things hypothetically, so
we continue with progress. But everybody seems like a wreck
(17:43):
all the time. This anxiety problem. Why is everybody's suddenly
so anxious? Because like thirty years ago, the most wild
thing that we could imagine was like this big gray
cell phone that you could make a call from somewhere
else without a wire. Oh may unbelievable arcade games, what
Super Mario Brothers. Like just within the past thirty years,
(18:06):
that's been this boom of anxiety inducing things. And it's
easy to lose sight of what's going right in our
lives because we get distracted by our anxiety compounding the
things that we feel are going wrong. And that is
the old point that I remember making a long time
ago that I've had to relearn from myself, as if
(18:28):
you think about what's going wrong in your life, the
list is usually pretty limited. It's a couple of things
that you can usually pinpoint. If you're being honest, you're like, well,
this person was a dick to me. This person said
they weren't happy about this. This person rejected me. Okay,
I mean, you go on as long as it takes.
(18:48):
Give the list, write it down, and then look at it,
and then ask yourself how many things are going right
in your life? And don't be a shithead about it,
because this is what I did for many, many years,
and it put me in a hole, drinking myself to
death because I became a little shithead about it and
I thought nothing. I used to feel all happy and
(19:11):
positive about stuff, but now it's just like nobody wants me.
And I got carried away with the bullshit side of
things and truly lost sight of the abundance of my life.
I only get one life. I don't really believe in reincarnation,
and I'm not a religious person necessarily, so I have
(19:32):
no idea what's going to happen after I die. So
as far as I'm concerned, this life is very precious
and very important to me. And unfortunately, in the grand
scheme of things, it's very short. So what the fuck
am I doing wasting my time with other people's problems
(19:52):
and with my own attitude about my problems. Is that
how I want to spend my time? If time is valuable,
Seeing nothing but absence, focusing on all the things that
are going wrong in my life. Because here's the Sometimes
I suppose could feel like the trite, kind of pedantic
(20:13):
version of motivational speaking, which is like, just look around
you at this beautiful world. I can understand how that
stuff feels meaningless. But unfortunately, from my perspective, what I
have to offer you is that it's true. It is
unfortunate that we have to find small blessings in big problems.
(20:36):
But it's true. You do. I know how exhausting and
horrible that is, because I've been there looking for big
solutions to big problems, and I have to remind myself that,
just like little problems add up to feeling like a
big problem, a lot of little incremental blessings, a lot
(20:59):
of little things in abundance create a grand life in abundance.
What do you like what's going right in your life?
Break it all the way down to things that are
simple and silly, like green grass clouds, a television, not
even the show on it, just the TV itself. I'm
(21:20):
looking at mine right now. It's nice, you know, it
can play things for me. I had there's a picture frame,
a nice picture of a friend of mine, some decorations,
A candle, A scented candle. I love a scented candle.
There's a little dried lavender. Sometimes I break it off
and rup it between my fingers. Smell that scenter lavender
makes me happy. Books, you know, posters, A window. I
(21:42):
love a window. Let's air in and out. You can
jump out it if you needed to escape somewhere. You know,
you climb in it if you're eighteen and you're coming
over to your CRUSH's house in high school. Sounds so dumb, right,
but it's all true. Sorry. Wish that there was like
a way that I could say, you know what, instead
of looking for the little things that are going right
(22:04):
in your life, here's a million dollars. I would love
to do that. I would love that to happen to me,
but it's not happening. I'm still a paycheck to paycheck person,
chasing this fucking dragon that keeps burning me to death
every time I try to catch it. And instead of
giving up, I know that one day I'm going to
(22:27):
I think a lot of people would be like, isn't
that the definition of insanity? Doing the same thing over
and over again, expecting different results, but you know that
it's a chipping away as opposed to, Oh, this is
actually killing me. I think that's sort of the insane thing.
The drinking was that right? If I could just find
a way to level this out, keep doing it until
it makes sense that like this is the amount that
I can just live a healthy life with. No it's
(22:49):
killing me. It's literal poison. I was dying. But when
it comes to my dreams, my career, my pursuit of
what I want, I'll take the small wins. Fuck yeah,
I will, because what what else am I gonna do?
Beat myself up? Tell myself to quit? I mean, I
(23:12):
think that's a lot of us end up quitting something.
Some things that's actually okay to quit. We can talk
about that later. Sometimes you gotta quit because it's bad
for you. But if you live your life from perspective
of only seeing absence and not abundance, what is really
(23:32):
going right? Who can you call? Who can you talk to?
I was super stressed a couple of weeks ago, and
I tried to Now, in this new phase of my life,
do a lot of breathing exercises and meditation. I will
do with like sound bath playlists on Spotify, and just
those like the Bulls or whatever they are on you know,
(23:55):
they hit the balls. I couldn't. I can't explain it
to you. I'm not that sophist. It's nice, though, and
it works for me, so it is what it is.
I put this on some sound bath sounds and drop
into my little space and understand that all the things
that were causing me stress were meaningless. I have food, air, water,
(24:22):
shelter that's somewhere to live. I have a loving spouse, friends, dog,
I have my creative pursuits. I have things I'm very
proud of. The list goes on and on and on,
and I only have, at the end of all this
one single life. And if I'm going to waste any
(24:43):
time doing anything, it's pursuing my wants, hopes and dreams,
even if they don't work out, because at least I've
put my energy forward in the right place and I've learned,
and I'm still two steps forward, even if it's sometimes
taking one step back, and I'm one step ahea at least,
But if I get wrapped up and all the things
(25:03):
that are going wrong and all the absence I see
and feel, I'm going to spiral, and I'm going to
shut down, and I'm not going to learn anything, and
I'm going to be miserable, and I probably self medicate,
and then I'll be more miserable, and then I'll wonder
why the medication that I'm using isn't helping me, because
it's a symptom of the larger problem, which is I
don't know how to stop down and understand that the
(25:26):
absence that I'm seeing isn't real. It hurts a little bit,
it's real in an infinitesimal way. But when you do
strip things down and you start to pile them back
up with the abundance of your life. What I felt
very clearly, and I heard myself say to myself in
(25:49):
my meditation state, even your problems are icing on the cake,
like good for you, man. You get one life to
live and you all these things going right in your life.
And this person's being a dick to you, What a
luxury to have this person be a dick. Their problem
(26:12):
is therefore sort of not a real problem for me
because I don't care. And what I'm gonna do is
I'm just going to do the work. I'm going to
soldier on and I'm not going to let it weigh
me down because another person's absence or fear or anxiety
doesn't have to be mine. If you ever get that
(26:33):
work call or email, not ever. I mean, it's like
everybody's deal, your manager, anybody, somebody else's stress becomes your stress,
and then you're like, my boss is pissed, and I'm
fucked now, because when they're not happy, we're not happy.
And that's terrible because a lot of our paychecks and
well being come from this kind of relationship, which is
not a great relationship. But it could be said that
(26:56):
you could do your job and then just leave it
at the door because that person's deep down problem, which
is that they manage stress and anxiety very poorly, and
they usually manage their team and their workplace very poorly.
You know a good leader when they are able to
balance that kind of thing, and sometimes you do see
(27:18):
them under stress and under pressure. And it's not that
they're always cool, it's just that you get that energy
from someone who's a good leader that you know they're
going to be fine. That's why you trust them. Someone
who's a good leader exudes that confidence of man even
when they're underwater. They just hold their breath. They learn
(27:39):
to hold their breath for two, three, four minutes. They
tread water as long as it takes. There's just always
that feeling of knowing that that person's going to come
out on the other side of this, and that can
be you. Even if you're not in a managerial position,
you're not management material. Everybody's management material. I remember a
(28:03):
manager at the Gap. One time when I worked at
the Gap, this old lady came in. She wanted to
try on clothes and we were supposed to close in
like five minutes, and I was like, that's fine, just
come back here, use the dressing room. She was not
not rude whatever. She's like, can I try this stuff?
And I was like yeah, whatever. And my boss, my manager,
was so mad at me, and he was like, we
don't do that, like right before we close, and I
(28:27):
was like why, we're still technically open. It's like yeah,
but then we have to wait and it delays everything.
And I was like, well, I don't know. It's this
old lady and she wanted to try on some clothes.
It's probably gonna be fine, but okay, you know, like
if that's if that, if that your perspective, I'm not
gonna do that, but I hear you. I understand that
this bothers you. And a couple days later he comes
(28:51):
back and he goes, hey, I want to apologize. I
overreacted and you were just trying to help that lady.
And I was like, cool, man, we're good. I'm not
always the person that takes that high road. But in
a second, and this is like fifteen years ago, but
in that moment, I was like, this lady needs help.
Let's just give it to her. Solid let her try
out some fucking clothes. Well, we're folding, we can close
(29:12):
the doors while she's still here. It's fine. She just
needs You're gonna get her money if she buys something.
Isn't that how business works? Isn't that what you want?
So didn't it never occurred to me that that was
a problem and that person it was a big problem
for my manager. But upon reflection and probably my attitude
of being like, yeah, man, that's not a real problem,
it really doesn't matter. In fact, in the end, you're
(29:34):
helping somebody, gives the perspective of oh, yeah, that's right,
that wasn't a real problem. So that's your homework. Assignment.
I don't love to give out homework, but as we
work and try and do these things together, when you
wake up tomorrow or even today, you finish listening to this,
(29:54):
I want you to just take some deep breaths. I
heard something like if you do like third big deep
breaths in a row, yoga breathing or something. I don't
have all this information. It's just what I hear, so
you can't always trust me, but I think it's helpful
because when I do it, it is you just take
several deep breaths over the period of a couple minutes,
(30:17):
and it like fully just resets your whole body and mind,
just the influx of oxygen and the paying attention to
the rhythm of your breathing, the sort of patience and distraction.
It ends up proving to focus entirely on your breathing,
which is why it's such a hugely important meditative practice
(30:38):
creates that room for you to chill the fuck out,
which is very important sometimes when we're getting stressed and
beating ourselves up over things that don't matter. So that
is that is your homework. When things seem to be
going poorly, I want you to chill the fuck out.
(31:00):
I want you to take some deep breaths literally, do it,
not metaphorically. Take a deep breath, man, no, no, sit down.
Take some deep breaths, like twenty of them bat minimum.
Spend three minutes thinking about this. Think about all the
things that are technically going right in your life. Ask
yourself the question and answer it honestly, and don't be
(31:25):
rude or stubborn about it. Your favorite thing in the
world could be it like Charlie, my dog. Favorite thing
in the world tennis ball boom easy, best thing in
the world in him. If you've drawn a ball, God
is the happiest guy in the world. So maybe you
like a tennis ball. I don't know. Start small and
build up from there, and I think that you will
(31:46):
start to understand that your life is full of abundance.
There is so much going right for you that your problems,
in comparison, the absence that you feel, is largely not real.
We can reserve some of this for a later date
when we talk about things like loss of loved ones.
(32:07):
These are sort of different problems. What I think I
wanted to unpack and talk about today was kind of
the incidental day to day stuff with life that at
the end, it's those kinds of things that at the
end of the day we feel like we need a
drink or we need something because I got to forget
about all my problems when you could honestly just forget
about all your problems without the drink, because those problems
are forgettable anyway. So you've got your assignment. Thank you
(32:29):
for spending a half hour or so with me today.
Hope this has helped. If it has, you can leave
a rating and review there. On the old Apple podcasts,
I'm at Will Sterling Underscore on all the socials If
you want to hit me up there questions, comments, concerns,
topics you'd like to discuss. I'm an open book. Take
care of yourself, take those deep breaths, love yourself first
(32:53):
and other second, and understand that your life is not
full of absence. It is. Four other buttons.
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