Stop Doing This IMMEDIATELY!

This one is straight to the point. We all do these 2 things. These 2 things limit our happiness. Let's talk about what those things are and how to stop doing them so we can have a better life. We deserve that.

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

All right and welcome back to another episode. Man, thank you so much for being here. If you are listening on YouTube, please go ahead and like and subscribe to my channel. If you are listening on a podcast platform, you know what to do. Please leave me a review. Those help me out Very good, very well, so let's go ahead, just jump right in.

Speaker 1: 0:22

So the title of this one is pretty straightforward with what I'm going to be talking about today. But before we dive in, let me just say life can be a beautiful thing. When things are right, we enjoy life to the fullest and it's a beautiful thing. And it's summertime right now A lot of folks starting to take vacations. You end up being by the water a lot. That's one thing I love about summer is being by water and being outside. I'm in a kickball league and a softball league right now and I'm loving both of them.

Speaker 1: 0:47

So life can be amazing, and we all know life can be hard as well. We all been there. You've been through some things in life, some hard things, stuff that make you look back and say, damn, I don't know how I made it through that Right. And what I'm going to talk about today is the fact that we, majority of the time, when we go through the bad times, when times get tough, we are the ones that can make it tougher on ourselves. It don't have to be as tough as we make it. We get stuck in the past and do all the regretting, and we get stuck in the future and we worry, we give ourselves unnecessary anxiety about what might be coming up next, next week, next month, the possibility of problems, and you better believe all of these things can contribute to life just being that much harder. And life is crazy enough as it is right. Things are always changing. Every time you look up, something didn't happen, some tragedy, some mass shooting, some murder, some accident, some scandal, some crazy new law, somebody died. There's always something going on. And on top of all that, we still have to think about our own happiness and fulfillment and try and keep it all together. Hell, we still got to pay bills. I feel like, after all the stuff we've been through as a country, there should be some kind of bill forgiveness program because, my god, this economy right now. Anyway, there should be some kind of bill forgiveness program because, my God, this economy right now. Anyway, we should be making things easier on ourselves, for ourselves. Don't you think you deserve that? Right, I think you do, so let's go ahead and dive in and let's talk about these two things that you need to stop doing immediately to be a happier person.

Speaker 1: 2:24

So number one and I already kind of touched on a little bit but stop regretting the past. By regretting the past, you're keeping yourself stuck in the past. Way too often we let the past determine who we become in the future. Let me say that again, we allow the past to determine who we become in the future. Right, we let the past have way too much weight on what we do with our lives moving forward. So many of us just can't go into the future without bringing the past with us, and we all have regrets. Things we did, decisions we made, things we didn't do, opportunities that we missed, mistakes we made. Now, one mistake I recently made.

Speaker 1: 3:02

So I just had a big performance in St Cloud and I spoke about this on here a few episodes ago. This is actually my first episode since that performance, but I got to be the headliner for the city of St Cloud's Juneteenth celebration, which is crazy to think about for me the fact that I get paid to perform my music. I'm literally living a dream right now. God is good my music. I'm literally living a dream right now. God is good. And for the second year in a row, I was also giving a vendor space to sell merchandise. And for the second time, I made Juneteenth themed t-shirts with my logo on it, and I'm hella proud of these shirts. I think they look dope and people always compliment me and the folks I sold them to always tell me that the shirts get a lot of attention whenever they wear it. Oh, oh, yes, uh, I forgot to say I also dropped my EP the same day.

Speaker 1: 3:51

So I dropped my EP. I was the headlining performer and I was selling t-shirts with my brand on it, which is a whole nother kind of regret, because I can't do that again. I have this problem where I think I'm Superman or something and I can do all this stuff Right and trying to be able to promote it all. Trying to be able to promote it all and get ready for it all. Like, come on, dutch, you think you can just do all that on one day. I literally should have planned Excuse me, I should have planned for that to be at least a month long thing. I should have been prepping and promoting my performance and T-shirts and then do the same for the EP, which would have my anxiety and stress levels way down, way lower, because, oh my God, anyway, that's not the point I'm making right now. Still a regret, but not the one I want to highlight right now.

Speaker 1: 4:38

So last year the shirts did amazing. I ran out of shirts. I only brought about 13 with me I'm sorry, not 13, 35 with me and the biggest shirts. I only purchased a handful of them because I figured they were too big and nobody was going to want them. Wrong, people kept asking me for the big sizes and I didn't have them. So this time, this year, I'm like, okay, I'm going to be ready. I doubled the amount of shirts that I bought and made. Oh yeah, I made them all by hand. Thank God, I had help, but it still took us three days and we were exhausted. So this time I was ready. I had my shirts ready, a bunch of bigger sizes. This time I brought 70 shirts. I doubled what I did last year and guess what? I only sold three shirts Three.

Speaker 1: 5:28

When I tell you, I was hurt and the regret set in and all the coulda, woulda, shouldas got so loud in my head and I was down. I'm talking down. It felt like failure and I had to do some internal work on myself and on my mindset because I could let that just completely discourage me. Right? Or I can look at this differently because, like I said, I'm damn sure proud of the shirt. It's a great shirt. So guess what? Next year I don't gotta make a single damn shirt, it's already done. All that work is done. And I still sold some shirts because the performance was on a friday and juneteenth was on a wednesday. So I made half my money back already. And now next year I have so much more time I can dedicate to other things, like promoting it and to my performance. And, like I said, I still got paid to perform. Right, I got paid four times the amount I got in previous years because I was a headliner, so definitely made my money back. I didn't take a loss, I still came out ahead.

Speaker 1: 6:34

But was I trying to hear that in the moment? Hell to the no, no, no, no, no. And here I am with a whole podcast about changing the way you think and how setbacks are just part of life and how you overcome them. And I was right in the middle of it and I was still hurt. And, yeah, we could look at the past and say, damn man, I could have did way better. I could have did so much more and you've heard me say this before on here but in the past, in those moments, you did the best you could at that time with what you had, with the knowledge and the circumstances and who you were in that moment. It was the best you could do with what you had.

Speaker 1: 7:12

Hindsight is easy. It's easier to look at something you did five years ago and say, yeah, I wish I wouldn't have done that. I wish I would have did that. Different Things will be different. It's easier to have more knowledge today, right now, five years later, and wish you did things different. And that's natural right, because you didn't have the knowledge you have now back then and even if it was a scenario where you knew better in that moment and you still didn't do better, well, now you have the opportunity to look back at it and you didn't have the opportunity to look back at that mistake you knew you shouldn't make back then.

Speaker 1: 7:45

Again, this is natural, it happened. If it could have happened any differently, then it will have, but it didn't. Lessons have to be had and we have to improve and get better from it. If it happened, it had to happen that way. If it happened, that means it had to happen that way. So relieve yourself of that.

Speaker 1: 8:04

Easier said than done, yes, but we got to understand that dwelling on the past and on your mistakes and the things you messed up or didn't do it holds you back from moving forward and it takes you out of the present moment. And if you're not in the present moment, do you really think you can be doing the best you possibly can? Probably not, which means that dwelling on the past can hold you back from possibly having a better future. So again, learn from that event. Learn instead of dwelling, instead of regretting. Learn from it. Ask yourself what can you learn from it? What were you supposed to bring with you for the rest of your life? What are the things that's supposed to make you wiser? Use those mistakes to improve yourself and your life. We know we can't change the past, so why get caught up in wishing you can change it? We can control our response to it, right? So that's number one. Stop worrying. Worrying about the past, the second thing we should stop doing number two, and you probably can see this coming, but it is, stop worrying about the future.

Speaker 1: 9:03

The future is unknown and because of our human nature oh boy, that just scared the hell out of me. I'm recording where, I'm getting ready to record some videos, and I got my lighting set up and one of my lamps fell over and that, whew, ok, yep, and I'm a keep this in here too. I could. Normally I would edit this out, but you know it can't all be perfect and I'm a show y'all my mistakes too, anyway. So, like I was saying before, I got the hell scared out of me.

Speaker 1: 9:40

Because of our human nature, we naturally don't like the unknown. To our animalistic nature, to our animalistic brains, the future is seen as a danger. It's something that goes all the way back to the times when we lived out in the wilderness and lived in tribes before civilization. The unknown was dangerous. Especially out in the wilderness there could be dangerous animals, dangerous landscape. If you venture too far off from your camp, you can get lost and separated from your tribe. You could settle in an unknown land and experience a famine. Right, the unknown was very dangerous. So your brain wants to solve the unknown. And to do that, what your brain does is it tries to project into the future and see all the ways it needs to protect you so you can plan ahead, so you can be prepared for it and take certain actions or lack thereof to stay safe.

Speaker 1: 10:30

And that's a lot of energy. Fun fact your brain is the organ in your body that uses the most energy. It only weighs two percent of your entire body weight, but it uses about 20 percent of your energy every day. Now think about that for a second. And I know you can relate to this, because all of us at some point have been mentally exhausted. Even if all you're doing is sitting in front of a computer all day, staring at a screen, your body is barely moving. But by the time you're done, how you feel Drained, tired. Why? Because your brain is working and working, and working and it's using all that energy and it makes you tired, right? Another good example have you ever been in a relationship and you and your partner have those big arguments, right? I'm talking about the arguments that last for hours, days. Again, that's draining. And your body ain't using a lot of energy to talk, to argue, right, it ain't a workout, you ain't jogging, but at the end of the day, you better believe you mentally drained.

Speaker 1: 11:30

And in theater it's the same way In rehearsals after our brains, after using our brains to be creative and thinking on our feet and diving into the world of the play, the character doing scene work, using all that focus and energy on something like that, we need breaks and the best directors they know this, they know, they understand and they look at the clock and they say okay, so we still got like 45 minutes left of rehearsal, but you know what we good, it's better for us to just call it a day. And what they understand is that this does a lot for us. That 45 minutes that the actors can be able to just turn off their brains, to just leave off where we were and come back to it later, that really can make a difference in the overall rehearsal experience, which will make the actors that much more energized. It'll make us have that much more of a better overall experience of the play, of the production, and I've used this stat on here before and I love bringing it up every time I can, it up every time I can.

Speaker 1: 12:23

But, statistically speaking, psychologists wow, psychologists, psychologists, psychologists found that only 15% of the stuff we worry about actually comes true. Only 15% of the things we worry about actually come true. That means 85% of the stuff we stress over and worry about don't even come true. And check this of that, 15%, 12% of that is never as bad as we actually imagine. So that means that only 3% 3% of the things we worry about will actually happen.

Speaker 1: 13:00

Think about that. Think about all that energy we waste worrying about things. How many times have you worried, yourself sick about something? How many times have you lost sleep or worried for days and days and days about something? You didn't realize it back then, but you were literally wasting your time. We waste our time worrying about things. 85% doesn't even come true and only 3% of the time it actually happens as bad as we imagined. I like those odds. Worrying is literally a waste of energy, a waste of coffee, a waste of time. We worry about the future and most of the time that thing never comes true. And we've all been there and we've all been there and worry about something and we scared about it. And then, when the time comes for us to actually have the moment we worried about, it don't even happen the way we thought it up and we say whoo, I'm glad that's over. I worry for nothing Right Now.

Speaker 1: 13:52

I told y'all I had a great performance up in St Cloud, but I'll be honest and tell you that I was worried. I was worried that I might not have a good performance, that folks wouldn't like my music, that I might not be able to perform well enough. Now I did do the work beforehand and reminded myself that one, the music is good. People always tell me they like and love my music. Two, this is going to be my fourth time performing there and the only difference was that my set was 30 minutes instead of 15. And three, of course, I'm a good performer. Yes, yes, yes, yes. But again, we've all been there.

Speaker 1: 14:28

It's a waste of energy and a waste of time to worry about things that more than likely won't happen. That breeds anxiety. It puts your body through way more than it needs to. So let's stop this. Let's be aware of when we start to project our thoughts into the future. Right, like the old folks say and I say it too, because that's where I get it from, but they say I'll cross that bridge when I get to it Be more present, focus on the moments right now. Our brains love to live in the past and in the future. Your brain is all over the place, but where is your body? Right here, in the present moment? So focus on bringing yourself back to this moment when you feel yourself worrying about the future.

Speaker 1: 15:10

Focus on the here and now. What do you need to do here and now? What are the things that are important? That bill that's coming up in a month, a few months? Ok, what can you do now? Ok, I could focus on how I can find ways to make more money. I can figure out if I need to borrow some money from somebody. Okay, I can work on making that bonus at work. I can look up ways to make money online. That's what I can do today. But worrying about that bill that's due in a few months and only focusing on all the bad things that can happen if you don't pay it. That ain't gonna make the bill go away. That ain't gonna get you any closer to being able to pay it. Wait, that ain't going to get you any closer to being able to pay it. But this moment, right now, you can use it to figure out, to figure it out to work towards getting it paid. So stop focusing on the future and stop focusing on the past. It happened. You can't change it. You can only grow from it and be better prepared for it in the future. So that's what I got for you today.

Speaker 1: 16:06

Thank y'all so much for being here. Like I said, I did drop my EP. I put links in the description of this podcast. I put a link for Apple Music, spotify, youtube and Amazon Music, hopefully in one of those platforms you use. If not, email me and I'll personally send the link to whatever platform you use. I am on all platforms. So thank y'all again.

Speaker 1: 16:27

I'm going to leave you with a song from the EP. One of my favorite ones is called Flight to Chicago. Fun fact, I wrote this song on the plane on the way to Chicago, where I started it on the way and then I finished it on the way back. I had a performance out there some months ago and I was feeling creative, so I'm like you know what I'm going Anyway. So that's what I got a show in Chicago, just boarded a plane, a TSA agent just told me good luck, they'll never say that I don't work the hardest. It's God. That's my witness. I made it a promise to me that if they don't fear me, I'll make sure they hear me, and that's why I'm turning shit up. Ay up like Delta, up like.

Speaker 2: 17:20

Jumpman logos.

Speaker 1: 17:38

I'm out to dump, we'll be crowned, yeah.

Speaker 2: 17:39

I told you, I'm turning up Up like a flight, up like a flight, up like a flight. I'm turning up like a flight, I touch down. We turning up like a flight, up like a flight to Chicago. Yeah, I took a flight to Chicago.

Speaker 1: 18:04

Yes, I like Chicago.

Speaker 2: 18:05

Unfortunately, I think we might have a problem because we some bears and you trying to talk to me like we some cubs. Oh, we'll be right back. I promise to hold my liquor but I can't promise to hold my tongue. Ayy, but I'm in Chicago for work. I'm too focused, I don't have the time to have fun. I'm in the city with niggas. Be flexing and pull out the guns. That's not a con. Taking it high. You ain't wanna get high as I possibly can.

Speaker 1: 18:38

I'm not talking blunts they know I'm taking it serious and that's on period, like it's the time of the month. Don't act like I turned my back. I can't help it that I'm in the front.

Speaker 2: 18:47

Up like a flight. Up like a flight. Up like a flight. I'm turning up like a flight. I touch down. We turning up like a flight, up like a flight to Chicago. Thank you.