Mastering the Mindset

Stop Being Afraid

January 29, 2024 Darius Dotch
Mastering the Mindset
Stop Being Afraid
Show Notes Transcript Chapter Markers

Let's dive into the contrast of the human experience. No matter how calm on the surface we may be, if someone was to take a closer look they would see the true rollercoaster we're riding on.  Whether it's from our own doing or from life handing them down to us, the lows of life are a required part to experiencing the highs. Never forget, the lows are only temporary. What you do while you're there is extremely important. Let's talk about it!

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Speaker 1:

Alright and welcome back to another episode. Thank you so much for being here. If you are listening on a podcast platform, I would love it if you could leave me a review. That really helps me out, as well as if you're listening to me on YouTube. Please like and subscribe to my channel. Also, if you're on YouTube, I Apologize because right now you're not seeing any video.

Speaker 1:

I was having some technical difficulties which I will have fixed by the time the next episode comes out, so unfortunately you only get audio and not visual. But the message is still important, the message is still the same and let's go ahead and jump right in. Today. Let's talk about the contrast of the human experience of life, and we're gonna talk about how we need to make sure that we're not going through life in this mediocre Soso area, this middle-of-the-pack Spectrum, that kind of energy right in any aspect of our lives, and I'm gonna tell you what I mean by that in a second.

Speaker 1:

But first I want to talk about this podcast I was listening to the other day. It was an interview between Ed Milet, who was a life coach I follow, and he was talking with this dude by the name of Colin O'Brady, and Colin O'Brady is a very strong person. Now I'm not talking about muscles, but mentally well. Actually, he actually is physically strong. He's done a whole lot of physical challenges, broken all kind of world records and stuff. But the thing that's most fascinating to me about him is he is the first man to trek across the Antarctica, and when I say trek, I mean trek. He did this Unassisted, meaning he didn't have no vehicle, no dogs, no snowmobile. He packed up all his food and supplies for about 60 days and he pushed his own sled across Antarctica. Can you imagine Not only the physical challenges from having to push a sled and being in extreme cold weather, right, doing something that nobody's ever done and on top of that, the mental challenge being alone for 60 days, having to keep yourself in the right mental space to even want to continue to stay in the game, stay consistent at doing something that you don't even know if you can do, you didn't even know of you, or survive? That took a really strong mental effort 60 days and make me think about my physical journey, which is way less extreme.

Speaker 1:

But one of the things I've been doing lately, as as of the past three years, is I've been running outside a lot. Obviously it's not ideal during this time of year, although I have been tempted because it has been warm right For those of you who are not in, minnesota is unusually warm here in January. It's like mid 30s, up to low 40s, I think, which is unheard of, usually is, at the very least, below freezing. It's usually bitter cold and it's my least favorite time of the year. It's just cold and dark and it's below zero a lot, and right now we hardly have any snow, which is crazy. Anyway, I've been running outside. It's part of my workout plan. I try to go to the gym three times a week Monday, wednesday, friday and on Tuesday or Thursday I go for a run around the lake. And look, if you knew the old me, the way I Hated running like that was never an option for me.

Speaker 1:

That long distance running Nope, my lower back always get tight. I feel like it takes too long right and, depending on where you're running, the ground might not be Absorbent enough and your shins start to hurt she in splints and it just feels like it never ends. And before I would only run Like a mile and then be done. Now I'm running almost two miles each time. The lake by my house is about 1.8 miles. And Listen, the lower back pain still there, my muscles still get tight, my lungs hurt because I'm tired as hell. It also has a few heels I have to run up and one of those heels is a monster like. It is Long's not not an extreme incline, but it's long. I've had to guess. I would say it's about a hundred fifty to two hundred yards long, which makes that run even harder. And as many times that I done ran that like it never gets easier. Well, it never gets easy. I'll say that it never gets easy. And every single time I get to a certain point around the lake and my mind Wants to stop and it makes my body hurt even more. And I think, if I just stop for five seconds, just five seconds, it ain't that big of a deal, it ain't that big of a difference. Till your workout. It's just five seconds.

Speaker 1:

I, and every time I have to dig deep, I have to remind myself that hey, you've done this before, that it's moments like this that's going to help me achieve my goals in life. It's moments like this that are going to help me achieve my goals in life, because if I decide to stop, every time, something gets hard, how in the world will I ever do it on a larger scale? It's something that's truly important, with a challenge that's way tougher than this. At least, this challenge is self-inflicted. I chose to come out here and run, but what's going to happen if I'm just living my life, trying to build the life I want, and then things happen that's not in my control. What am I going to do then?

Speaker 1:

And I have to dig deep mentally to just keep running right, and I think to myself that if I could just keep putting one foot in front of the other, I'll eventually get there, just one after another, and on those days it's really hard to make it around. I have to count. I have to count each step up to 20. I break it down every 20 strides One, two, three all the way to 20, 17, 18, 19, 20. Okay, that's 20, 20, more One all the way to 20, and boom. And I keep going, breaking it down mentally into 20 stride chunks, and I don't stop running, I just keep on counting to 20. And by doing it this way, it makes me only have to pay attention to what's going on in front of me. I'm not looking at how far I got to go to make it all the way around. I'm not thinking about where I am compared to where I have to get to, only the next 20 steps in front of me and you already know where I'm going with this.

Speaker 1:

This applies to several areas of life. I talk about that a lot on here all the time breaking your goals down or breaking your tasks down into smaller, more manageable steps. And here in Colin O'Bray to talk, it really reminded me that it's important to be able to tap into your mental capability. And he was talking about if you were thinking about your life and every aspect of your life on a scale of one to 10, with one being the worst your health, your relationships, your business, your career, whatever it may be. He says, if you don't have any ones in any aspect of your life, you can't ever have tens.

Speaker 1:

But we're so afraid of the ones that we live life in the fives every single day. And look, I don't know about you, but I'm not interested in no damn five. Okay, that's lukewarm, that is average. And why are we choosing to live in the fives? Just because we're afraid of the ones, even when the ones don't necessarily mean that it's this devastating blow that it lasts forever. The ones could be something that we know and go kill us and it's over and done with as soon as it happens. And we're still afraid of it. We can't be too afraid to just call our shot and go after something because we're afraid, right, and we build up this story in our heads that we could potentially quote unquote fail. And when we fail, that's going to be that one, one of those dreaded ones. Because what we do is if we fail at something, we make it mean we suck. We make it mean that everybody's judging us. We make it mean that we're not capable, we're not worthy. We make it this conditional thing that we're at failure. But the reality of it is those ones are fleeting. They don't last forever.

Speaker 1:

You got to have the option and the experience of having to fail or misstep. Oh, you have the opportunity to bounce back, to bounce back to get a 10. Because we know life can just deal you once. You don't even have to do it yourself Once. Get dealt to you every now and then. And you may or may not believe that everything happens for a reason. I personally do. But one thing I think we can all agree on is that, no matter what happens, we have the option of creating that meaning behind it. We get to determine the meaning out of any experience that happens, and we do Because we are meaning, creating means. We do it all the time. We make things that happen to us mean something.

Speaker 1:

And what I want you to take away from this episode, or one of the things that I want you to take away, is that if you're at a one season right now, or even if you're having a one moment at some point in your day or some point in the future, recognize that this is a requirement to have that one, to be able to have the contrast of the 10. That when you look back to where you used to be, when you have those moments of reflection when you overcame something that was really really hard, that high, that contrast is so much more enjoyable. It's higher than it would be if you never got low. Maybe you're dealing with death, maybe you're dealing with financial hardships, maybe you're dealing with relationship and love challenges. Your career might be in a dark place.

Speaker 1:

Just remember that it's temporary, that it's going to take some real mental strength to get you through it. That, no matter what, you can always lean on yourself, even when you don't think you can make it. You know that you have been through some hard times, some dark times, and you made it through that and back then you probably wasn't even focusing on trying to use it to strengthen you. It just made you stronger. You look back and say, damn, I didn't came a long way. Damn, I don't know how I got through that. Damn, I'm a better person because I went through that. So imagine how I was gonna feel if you make a conscious decision to actively work on yourself during these moments, right now, to allow us to strengthen you mentally to push through it, even when nobody else knows your struggle, because we all been there, right?

Speaker 1:

Sometimes you go through things mentally that you can't even explain it properly, your explanation and the way you put it into words. It don't even do it justice. And when you make it to the top, when you make it through to the other side, you're gonna be at that 10 and I don't ever wish of one on anybody. Okay, but there is a power in recognizing that which, when you're in that one moment or in a one season, understanding that you will get out of it. Now I might not feel like you will. But you will get that 10 and if you change the perspective why you're going through it, that 10 is gonna be much higher, because there's always things we can learn from the ones life deals you wounds.

Speaker 1:

Sometimes you have to actually allow yourself the opportunity to have the potential to get a one, and that means calling your shot, doing something where you don't know what the outcome is going to be. Maybe you're afraid of failure, which probably means you're afraid of people watching you fail, thinking that that's gonna mean something about you or that that other, the way they will think about you, is gonna change. But if you ain't willing to risk Having a one, you're gonna risk going through life living at a five. Right, and we pretend that we're okay with that. We pretend we do, but I know that you're not okay with that because you don't listen to a podcast Called mastering the mindset.

Speaker 1:

If you think I'm good, I think I want to just live life at a five, this is nice. I'm okay having a so-so marriage, so-so health, kind of sort of going after my dream, but only when it's convenient, when I feel like it. No, and look, I'm not telling you that you have to have this huge fire lit inside you that you need to be this productive machine and just get it Done every single day of your life. That ain't realistic. That's not what life is about. Life is about the contrast. If you have some areas in your life that you don't feel good about Del, these are the five areas. Any day could be that day you decide to do something about it. You can change things. You don't need to wait for a new year or your next big birthday to make a change Again.

Speaker 1:

Recognize that the ones are required to get the tens, that the journey you own. It ain't this smooth ride with no bumps. That is actually a roller coaster and you can get to a place mentally where you can just buckle up and embrace the ride. Don't be so terrified of having the one that you never risk anything Right. You'll never put yourself out there. You'll never ask that person out. You'll never buy that plane ticket and go to that place and be in the room with those people you need to be in. You'll never actually try and grow that business. You'll never make that investment on yourself. You never find a better career. You won't have the full experience of life. And who wants to get to the end of it all and be like, well, I never got close to my dreams, I never got to experience what I truly wanted, but hey, I didn't feel any pain, I didn't fail. No, you want to get there and be like, whoo, now that was a ride. I really did that. I really made it through that and I had some amazing moments and I had some extreme lows, but that was a hell of a ride. I showed up.

Speaker 1:

So if you're in that one season, maybe you have to just look down. Take it 20 steps at a time, one step at a time. Just put one foot in front of the other and worry about that next step, that next Important one, the most important one. You can't make it to the top without taking that next step in front of you. You can't skip the steps, you can't To get to wherever you're going. If you add a one to get away from that one, you're gonna have to take steps. So why not take them in the best way possible on to the next, on to the next. We can't focus on the steps way down the road, whatever season that may be headed your way, that incline, that cliff. What if you just focused on what's right in front of you. Don't be too focused on the fear of the one and only live in the fives.

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