From Chaos to Clarity – How to Reset Your Mindset and Elevate Your Emotions

From Chaos to Clarity – How to Reset Your Mindset and Elevate Your Emotions

Eric: [00:00:00] The notion of having a disciplined mind and having a solid footing when it comes to how you manage your emotions is fundamental to living a rich

Rob: life. I believe that I’m doing something significant, therefore I embrace the hard work, way different how you’re going to approach it, and of course in the first, where you believe it’s just all hard work, it sucks, this is the only way I can get it, you’re going to fail.

Fight against that. You’re going to press against that. And you’re usually going to fail.

Eric: We spend so much time in our head. Why not make it a nicer place to live?

Rob: Hey, welcome to the live and richly podcast. So glad that you are back with us again this week. And I’m so excited about this episode. We have, I think some core kind of a fundamental. Absolutely. Critical pieces. One of them is radical self acceptance. Another one is the whole idea of mindset and being able to [00:01:00] have the right mindset to approach whatever it is that we’re approaching.

We’re going to talk about that today. We’re going to dive into the importance of mindset. What are some of the different concepts, some of the limiting beliefs that maybe hold us back from really living our best life and just focusing on a bunch of stuff, but maybe start Eric, by talking about why is.

Mindset’s so critical and so important.

Eric: We’re actually going to be dealing with a couple of the elements today. So definitely mindset, which is represented in the model that we use, the elemental model represented by water. But we’re also gonna be touching a little bit on a heart set, which is emotional, your emotional life.

Cause these two things, your thoughts and your emotions think of I don’t know how important is this? Why does this matter? When’s the last time your mind got you into trouble? You’re. Thoughts got out of hand and got you in trouble was the last 45

Rob: minutes ago,

Eric: right before we started recording or your emotions got the better of you.

Like the notion of having a disciplined mind and having a solid footing when it comes to how you manage your [00:02:00] emotions is. Fundamental to living a rich life. Because if our internal world, if we are not skilled at managing our internal world, then no amount of external success or whatever will really be meaningful because we have a storm going on inside.

So we’re going to talk about some of the skills and let’s face it in the world of sport, in the world of business. They’ve understood this stuff for a long time. Let’s just take sport for a second. You can have the most highly trained fit athlete and they lose on game day because of their mindset, because their emotions were out of whack.

So the business world and the sports world has understood this for a very long time. This is the work that we do with leaders. We’re going to be talking about some of the. fundamental strategies that we use with our clients to help them elevate both their heartset and mindset.

Rob: A lot of this for us is of course, been the personal journey that we’ve been on and what we’ve been working through.

It’s all from books, Rob, it’s all from books. But it does translate into the work that we do with entrepreneurs, with business owners with. leaders. And [00:03:00] we we really had the honor and the privilege, I think, of experiencing so many different types, different industries, different types of leaders, different personalities, all of that.

And yet we can almost trace back to not maybe every client, but most clients suffer or struggle with. Self talk with negative self talk from time to time. Talk about the impact that self talk has on the pressure that entrepreneurs, but all of us face and put on ourselves.

Eric: I heard it said one time that like we talk to ourselves all the time.

Why not make it more positive, right? Another saying I read recently was we spend so much time in our head. Why not make it a nicer place to live? There’s this notion of our self talk is the story we tell ourselves about who we are, how we’re showing up in the world and how the world functions. And the problem with that is if it’s a lot of it is skewed on a narrative that we’ve created.

And [00:04:00] we were all familiar with the concept of, perception is reality. And some people might argue that, but the reality is what you perceive is what you create. Regardless of what your intent is, for example, you might communicate something to me and your intent is just to communicate some information.

But maybe I’ve got, I’m having a bad day or I’m in a bad headspace. Maybe, the dog made an accident in the kitchen that morning, or I’m pressured because of a deadline waiting for me at work. Or I had an argument with one of my kids or whatever before. And all of a sudden.

Your harmless, intentioned message comes my way. I perceive it to mean something else. I am not responding based on your intention. Your intention was well meaning. You’re trying to communicate something very clear. And all of a sudden I attach, I create a narrative in my head about what’s going on.

So self talk and the narratives we tell ourselves shape the reality. What I like

Rob: about using the word. Create there that we create the narrative. What that suggests is that it’s fully [00:05:00] within our control. It’s fully within our ability to choose what it is that we’re creating. I, I was reading a book recently where this was a reminder.

It’s certainly not a new concept to me, but it was a great refresher or reminder literally in the last couple of weeks where somebody, this person we create all of these negative scenarios and then we’re anxious about them. We have just as much ability to create the most positive. And yet when people create positive.

Scenarios as they’re thinking others are all you’re living in the clouds, your heads in the clouds. You’re being, like you need to be more realistic. Both. You can’t predict the future. Both are right. So the ability to create and retell the stories that you’re telling yourself in a positive light.

is within you to do.

Eric: That’s right. That’s right. The acronym fear. We use it all the time. False evidence appearing real. In other words, something happens, you you’re, you perceive it to be a certain way. We’re going to talk about how to move [00:06:00] beyond perceptions and false narratives. We’re going to give people some tools they can use to push past that stuff.

But I, I don’t remind my clients when I’m doing this work is that nature is stacked against us in this. On this front. Yeah. Our amygdala is where the fear, the fight or flight response is based out of. It is the body’s alarm system to signal something bad is going down. It is your survival mechanism, right?

It developed when man, humans lived out on the savannah and when they went out to hunt every day. They were both the hunter and the hunted, right? And if a sabertooth tiger showed up, you wanted that amygdala going off going danger, Will Robinson, get the hell out of Dodge. I combined a whole

Rob: bunch of weird analogies there.

That’s called analogy soup. Analogy soup. Do,

Eric: But the right, like you want it to be working in those types of situations in life threatening situations. It’s your amygdala that signals you need to [00:07:00] either stand and fight and it’ll release all the necessary endorphins and whatever adrenaline and everything else into your body or those same chemicals used to give you the energy to get the hell out of a dangerous path.

The problem is as we evolved when’s the last time you ran into a saber tooth tiger? Not often. No. The vast majority of the events that take place in our lives that knock us off center are not life threatening, but our nervous system is indicating that it’s life threatening. Yeah. So you, we have a negative bias to almost everything that happens.

I was asked the question, you were actually there, we were doing a conference for a client of ours and somebody asked, the question how do you keep from jumping to conclusions and making these wrong assumptions? And I said to them, assume that the very first, your very first analysis of what’s going on.

Don’t trust it. Hold on really loosely because it’s not it’s probably a construct of your own making.

Rob: Yeah. And we know this. One of the wonderful things we are living in an era where neurology and [00:08:00] the, the study of the brain has advanced so much, we know that we can reprogram that part of the brain.

One hundred percent. And that the ability to rewire it, because again, For its initial purpose, no longer needed. And so we’re able to rewire that to even be looking for positive and to be looking for the good it just takes, it again, has to be deliberate to be able to do that in order to be able to do that reprogramming.

Eric: A recent study showed that before you can blink or in the time, sorry, in the time it takes you to blink. That’s a very short amount of time. Your amygdala is four times faster than that. Sending signals to your brain that you’re in danger, or that this is harmful, and that you need to protect yourself.

Again, when we think of approaching things from a more holistic perspective, nature is working against us. But you can, through the work that we do with our clients, and through And we’re not the only ones doing this. We’ve learned these models from all kinds of reliable sources. There’ve also been very meaningful in our healing journey and [00:09:00] our growth journey.

You can begin to program the brain to be less reactive. And that doesn’t mean turning off your alarm system. You want the alarm system to stay functional because if you are in harm, you’re going to, you’re going to need it right to help you. But it’s learning to discern what’s happening and not jump to conclusions or make those assumptions.

Right.

Rob: Yeah. Yeah. And I remember hearing this long time ago. This is probably 10, 12 years ago when we first started to be introduced to some of this is the idea that, if you’re the brain can filter out so much noise and all of that, if you’re sitting in a coffee shop and all of a sudden there’s the squealing of tires and the smashing of glass, you want that part of the brain to jump and go, there’s a car crashing through the front and to get you to safety.

Yeah. Most of the time, that’s not the case. And so how you bring the focus in and again, rewire that we so much of the rewiring comes out of the self talk. A hundred percent. That we have and shifting our language around that. I’ll give this story and I’d love your input on this cause it’s interesting.

So I think it was [00:10:00] you, I’m going to give you credit for this, whether. No, it was probably

Eric: Harvard.

Rob: Yeah, maybe either you or Harvard. Really challenged the idea of one of the most popular phrases that people use, and that is the phrase, it is what it is. And I think it was you that I first heard this from, but I’ve embraced this.

No, it isn’t the correct isn’t the correct phrase is not, it is what it is. It’s, it is what we make it to be.

Eric (2): And

Rob: I have a client. So a client Jeff listens to some of the episodes two sessions ago, this was a favorite thing that he would do. It is what it is. So two sessions ago, I said to him, all right, I’m going to challenge that.

Here’s your homework. The only homework I’m giving you between now and our next session is you are not allowed to use that phrase. Every time you say that phrase, you need to quickly say it is what I make it to be. And if you don’t then you have to do five burpees. Okay. Cause this guy, and now he’s in the best shape of his life.

So we get on the call this time, just this past week, we get on a call and I said to Jeff, I said, [00:11:00] all right, so how did you do with your homework? 60 burpees. And he was telling me how, cause he loved that. And he said, he was telling me how he even was with a bunch of friends out doing something. And he went, it is what it is.

And they went on and he went. Damn it. And then all of a sudden we’d started doing, what are you doing? And he told him his coach made him do five burpees. It’s, but it was, it was a fun way to say, even that phrase, it is what it is completely, you have no power. And so that talk, the language we use is so critical.

It’s

Eric: so important. It is what it is. I get. The what’s behind it is I think when it originally probably, I don’t know this for sure, but I’ve had people fight me on this and so I’ve given it a lot of thought. And I think what it’s meant to convey is that it’s a sense, it’s a statement of acceptance of reality.

So this, it is what it is there. I can’t change the circumstance. I there, I may not have control over what’s showing up on my doorstep right now, but most people, when they use it. Even if there’s a measure of [00:12:00] acceptance going on, there’s a measure of just giving up going on at the same time. Two people can go through the same set of circumstances and they go through it very differently.

Yes. Because the person who says, it is what I make it they’re not fooled into thinking that they can change the circumstance itself. Because again, a lot of what’s happening may be beyond their control, but what they’re saying is I can change my approach to it. I can change. And create the reality, my perception and how I’m going to walk through this.

If I if I’ve got a mindset that this, all this is always happening to me and all there is, there’s life again, kicking me to the curb. And again, if I’ve got a negative, my life, even the fuck my life, like that’s a very negative, that’s very negative self talk that is a breeding ground for for doubt for lack of self confidence for bitterness for resentment, for all kinds of mental health issues to begin, perhaps over time to develop.

Again, you spend so much time in your head, why [00:13:00] not make it a nicer place to live? And what we’re talking about here is not toxic positivity. that you pretend like life isn’t showing up. No, I think that is as, as unhealthy as having negative self talk is having what I call an escapist type mentality that refuses to deal with what’s actually going on.

Again, I come back to Ben. We love Ben Bergeron’s model of the realist. The realist is able to look at a situation. Head on and see the challenges, but also embraces, what are my options? What are the things that I can do? What are the things that I have control over and then take self determined action, right?

Yeah.

Rob: And to that positivity, I’ve got a friend right now. I’ve had many conversations in the last little while around. It’s like you are continually just burying your head in the sand rather than recognize and solve and deal, and so there were some situations that came up and their avoidance was just too well there was avoidance, it was, I’m going to avoid this.

And hopefully it goes away and it’s Oh, guess what? It didn’t go away. It only got worse. So we know that talk, talk about the tone and the [00:14:00] content of so much of our, of the self talk or the negative, the language is how we really, how we are speaking to ourselves and especially for entrepreneurs, I don’t know if entrepreneurs are harder on themselves than the average individual.

They certainly have higher expectations. There’s certainly those higher expectations. How do you start to notice for you specifically? How do you differentiate between when you’re challenging yourself and pushing yourself to, to more potential or greatness versus when you are, going, you, yeah,

Eric: I love that.

So for me, it’s the difference between. Inquiring about what’s going on in my, my, my inner life versus accusing and it’s a very different tone criticizing. Accusing has a very different tone than inquiry and curiosity. If I’m trying to process a hard moment or a hard conversation or some emotion.

That is showing up because someone said or did [00:15:00] something. My previous self would have my pre earlier version of me earlier beta version of me would have been Oh, come on. Deshaun, if you were if you were better, you wouldn’t be feeling this way and come on, don’t be like, it’s accusing, it’s critical, it’s demeaning as opposed to, I wonder what’s.

That’s about I wonder why I’m feeling this. I wonder what’s behind those thoughts, right? Like the ability to distance myself a little bit. And for me, a telltale sign, although recently that’s begun to shift a little bit because, as I’m in a season of I’m really pushing myself, but in a probably the healthiest way I’ve ever I spent many years pushing myself, but pushing myself to achieve.

But that was often an escape from the pain that was going on the unresolved stuff in my own heart. And so I was trying to write a wrong. I was trying to check the boxes. And again, the wrong I was trying to write was me because I thought I was flawed. So I was looking for something in, in purpose and pursuit of my passion.

Having gone through a lot of healing and there’s always more healing to [00:16:00] do, I found myself now circling back to passion. I’m more on purpose. I’m more on point than I’ve ever been. And I’m conscious of I’ve got limited time and I want to make as much of an impact as I can. But I say all that to say that for me, one of the telltale signs is which name do I refer to myself as?

Cause for the longest time, If I use the word Dasha in my self talk, be conscious of when you speak to yourself that way, because usually when someone’s calling you by your last name, think of anyone who did that with fondness. Usually it was Dasha. Like for me, it was either my mobile. My parents used my full name when they said Eric Roger Dasha.

I knew I was in shit, right? Like I was really in trouble, but in other people outside of my family, it was the last name. And I came to recognize that when I refer to myself. internally and say, come on, Dasha, that I’m typically accusing, not inquiring. And when I approach it from Eric, I wonder what’s behind that.

What’s going on for you? What, why are you thinking that what’s behind it, but not in an accusatory way. It’s with just curious compassion, as the Buddhists would say to understand, to get present. And [00:17:00] I think this is where a lot of leaders. I know this is a major struggle for leaders. I think it’s a major struggle for just most human beings is the inability to get present to what’s going on under the hood.

And so rather than getting present to it, we try to bury it. We try to ignore it. And in doing so, we literally just stuff all that stuff down and try to muscle and hustle our way through. It will catch up to you in time. But I think for me, the telltale sign, now there is a positive version of Deshaun that shows up.

Yeah. Come on, Deshaun, you can do one more. Come on, Deshaun, you can do it. It’s a, that voice now is a coaching voice. It’s a passion

Rob: voice. And I think I think of David Goggins, who’s written a number of books and in his second book, Never Finished that’s the whole premise of he talks about when he refers to himself as David and when he talks to himself as Goggins.

Goggins is his. Motivation, inspiring come on, exactly that. Come on, Goggins, one more mile. Come on, you can do this, right? It’s that anytime we use [00:18:00] language that we would never say to a five year old to we, the way we wouldn’t speak to our, the five year old version of ourselves, and you’ve shared that story on more than probably a couple of times on the podcast of that conversation with Sherry, if you can’t say it there, don’t say it now,

Eric: right?

Now I would say that again with the, I would shift that now to say that yes, don’t use that mean, cruel inner critic voice with yourself. That’s not going to serve any purpose. But I also think that there is now, like I said, this version of Dasha that shows up for me now, that is like the coaching.

Oh, absolutely. It’s like I’m coaching myself. Say, come on, you can do this station, but it’s not critical. It’s I’m, I might not say that to a five year old cause a five year old. It doesn’t have the tools, the skills, the experience, right? But when I know that I’m capable of pushing myself beyond that, then that voice kicks in, but it’s an encouraging voice that calls me higher, not one that makes me feel worse.

So

Rob: it’s interesting. And we can, we’ll get into a lot of this throughout our conversation. It’s the beliefs that we hold that will [00:19:00] then drive the language that we use, right? And they’re tied in together, obviously language. Precedes relief, but it’s how those tie in together. And so exactly there, when the belief is I’m no good, Deschamps is a negative teardown, defeated, right?

When the belief is I’m rising to my potential, Deschamps is coaching. So Exactly. It changes when you change the, I love that

Eric: you cannot rise above the level of your belief. Yeah. That is the context through every, it’s the filter that every message, every event, every circumstance passes through. And so again, regardless of what the intention was, even if the intention from the other person, the other group, whatever it was good and pure and meant to encourage you like, you’ve got this filter.

That, that pollutes it pollutes every message that comes in and makes it mean something else. So negative self talk is often rooted in very unhealthy beliefs about who you are and what you stand [00:20:00] for and your abilities. That often goes back to often family of origin issues and early experiences that shaped your view of yourself in the world.

And we are not therapists, like that’s not our work, although we use a lot of therapeutic models in our work to help leaders get unstuck. But I will say probably one of the best investments both for speaking to leaders for a second leaders carry a lot of pressure, right? They have to make more decisions on a given day than the average person.

They carry more weight on their shoulders. than the average person. And they’ve chosen that life especially the entrepreneurs that we serve and others. They’ve chosen that life, but that life comes with an extra measure of complexity, right? And so probably one of the best investments you can make is to do some inner work to under to, to one, identify and dislodge the false narratives that you’ve created that are constantly showing up in your life.

Think of those filters again. No matter what happens, you can be successful. You can build a great company. You can have the big [00:21:00] house and the big car and the cottage and the boat and the admiration of all your friends. And even the admiration coming in gets polluted by the filter of belief and you can’t actually embrace it and enjoy it.

Because there’s something inside of you telling you’re not good.

Rob: Because at the core, an entrepreneur is so focused on the results and then they might go deep enough to then say, I’m going to look at the actions I need to, what do I need to do in order to get those results? We rarely. Until unless it’s through therapy or through that that self reflection get to what do I need to do with my, what do I need to change in my beliefs in order to change my actions in order to change the results?

Eric: Yeah we call it the be, do, have principle, right? Most people entrepreneurs especially, but I think most human beings are focused on what they want to have. I want to have better health. I want to have. A nicer car. I want to have a better career. I want to have healthier relationships.

We’re focused on the have part. But we often [00:22:00] don’t, then we don’t dig deep enough to say, okay if I want to have the following, what are the things I need to do? So there’s the do equated. There’s a have, and there’s the do. What are the things I need to do to have the things that I want? There’s a great saying, I just posted on it several weeks ago now, but again you don’t.

You don’t need more motivation what you need is more discipline, right? If you want something, then you got to get after it, right? You got to get into action. Your why has to be backed up by your work. And if you’re not willing to do the work and you’re not willing to everything you want is on the other side of discipline and self directed action.

That’s easy to say. It’s much easier. It’s one thing to say, I want this, so I need to do that. But in order to do that, here’s a deeper question. Who do I need to become to do the things naturally that will get me what I want?

Rob: And I think that’s the difference between when people hear someone just say, you’ve got to, you got to do right right away, you can get accused of hustle culture,

Eric (3): right?

Rob: And that’s why, [00:23:00] again, okay, let’s go a little deeper. Cause if you go to beliefs are never hustle.

Eric (3): Right.

Rob: Because I love that you use that word. I don’t even know if you did it intentionally, but you said when you come to what do I, who do I, what do I need to be? And then you said to naturally do.

That’s right. And that’s, there’s no hustle when you say, so the doing comes naturally out of the belief or the becoming. Which allows you to get to the results, which is again, contrary to hustle culture, which is just work, no matter how uncomfortable, not much you hate it, no matter what, right?

And no, no change who you are and that actions will always be natural

Eric: Or get present to who you are, figure out who you really are and adjust if you need to but like for me, like I’m not afraid of hard work, like I never have been now I’m a recovering over performer, so that’s something I’m always keeping in.

But I’m not afraid of a hard day’s work. Why? Because I believe deep down that I’m here to make a difference that, that I’ve been placed here among many others, but that I’m a voice to bring a positive message to [00:24:00] this world and help people show up and enjoy and live a richer life. Because I believe that the things that I do the vast majority of them don’t feel like work.

They don’t feel like a chore. They don’t, you don’t have to, I don’t need someone. Looking over my shoulder to say, Hey, you’re going to get this done. No, I’m self directed. I’m taking self directed action because what I do to get what I want to have is a natural outflow

Rob: through it. And if the belief is the only way I can get this is through hard work versus I believe that I’m doing something significant, therefore I embrace the hard work, way different how you’re going to approach it.

And of course, in the first where you believe it’s just all hard work, it sucks. This is the only way I can get it. You’re going to. fight against that, you’re going to press against that, and you’re usually going to fail at it.

Eric: Yeah. A hundred percent. I was had a meeting not long ago with a leader who’s thinking about doing some work with us.

And it was interesting. We spent, we had a one hour lunch meeting. We spent probably 45 minutes talking about work dynamics and some of the things he’s experiencing and how he wants to build his business and some of the challenges. And then the conversation shifted near the end and it [00:25:00] clearly, he was trying to inquire about some of the other work we do with helping leaders.

Do the kind of work that we’re discussing here. He said to me at the end of the conversation, he goes, Oh, I hate it. When the best part of the conversation is right. When the meeting’s over, right? I said we’ll just have to do lunch to come back. We’ll have to just do lunch again. But he looked at me as I was describing some of this work we do with teams and some of the work we do with leaders.

And I could tell there was this curiosity in his eyes and a hunger for it. And I don’t know his personal situation and of course would never share it on the show, but I don’t even know what his, we didn’t get into that, but I could tell I’ve seen that look. before because, and I know that look because I had that look for most of my adult life when I was searching for some inner peace and some escape from the darkness that I felt inside and the low self the low self worth that I had you’ve heard me use the language, the deep self loathing like that’s gone now, that’s gone.

And but he asked me at one point, he goes does this stuff actually work? Does it actually work? And I looked at him and said, I have never been happier in my own skin. I have [00:26:00] never felt more on point in my life. And I’ll tell you this, I still get rocked. It takes a lot now though, to knock me off my rocker.

It takes a lot to knock me out. That doesn’t mean I don’t feel doesn’t mean I don’t have moments of doubt, whatever else. But when I talk about getting like my bounce back rate even significant things that happened that before might’ve caused a tailspin for months. Now it’s two, three days, boom.

And I’m back in the saddle. Processing what’s happened, learning from it, adding that to now my knowledge and experience to be even stronger next time.

Rob: People are hungry for this and I, you share that story. I working with a new leader executive leader, not new leader. He’s been around leadership for a long time, but he hired me as a as to do some executive leadership coaching.

And he oversees a team of about 20 people. And he’s got some new hires that came in and we talked about onboarding, how he’s You know, bringing in these new leaders into the team. And, and we, anyway, as we’re talking through this session, about halfway through this session, he says, I got to tell you something.

He said, I’ve got, I’ve hired a coach for each of these [00:27:00] new. And he says, my thinking was I wanted a different coach for every person so that, he says, I’m realizing the mistake in that. He says, I’m really regretting that we didn’t meet a month earlier. And he goes, I’ve got six month contracts with these two other coaches with these two.

He says, as soon as that done, would you be willing to take on these two leaders as well? And I’m like, of course, because he. He recognized that what he needed was somebody to help him shift the thinking, the mindset to change the beliefs rather than just work on outcomes.

Eric: Yeah. A hundred percent.

It’s to me, it’s like to anyone who’s listening to this episode, whether you’re a leader or not, whether you’re an entrepreneur or not, really, this is a human thing. It’s not a just a leader thing. It was just, we have a particular passion because of our work with leaders and entrepreneurs. There’s a notion of, I don’t know if you’ve ever seen a high rise go up.

They clear the lot, perhaps in an inner city block. And of course before they do that, they put up all these barriers, right? Usually big wooden barriers. You can’t even see what’s going on. And what they’re doing when they’re doing that is one, they’ve [00:28:00] demolished whatever was there before.

Then they put up these barriers and what do they do? They’re building a high rise. What do they do first? They go down. They go down. Yeah. They go down. And the taller the high rise. Yeah. The deeper they have to go. The more solid the foundation needs to be to make sure that building is solid.

And actually for a long time you see no progress. You might work by like walk by this worksite for months and months and months on your way to work and back home and whatever else. And you’re like what kind of progress are they’re making? They’re making progress, but it’s not visible yet to the naked eye.

It’s not visible to the casual onlooker. But then all of a sudden, when the foundations are right, watch how fast that building will come up. The frame goes up and everything like it’s amazing how quickly, once they get their foundation straight. I think the problem with most of us the challenge is we’re wanting to build the high rise, but we’re not willing to do the foundational work.

And I think sometimes you, you need to be prepared the more meaningful you believe your [00:29:00] work is. The more you need to spend time on your foundations to build something that will last so that you can build the high rise that’s going to be that beacon you hope it will be to the world, whether that’s providing a news product or service is going to be a game changer, whether it’s just going the distance and being a great dad and a great partner and a great friend, whatever your goals and your aspirations are, they’ll be limited by your foundations.

And what we’re talking about here is when we’re talking about your beliefs, your self talk, All your self talk is a reflection of your beliefs. Yeah. And most of us it’s not a really complicated formula. There’s probably four or five scripts that run your life for five negative beliefs that run your life.

One of mine, I was fatally flawed. Deshawn, you are fatally flawed. I don’t care what people see on the outside. They see Joe Smiley. They see a guy who encourages and tries to help people, but you’re buddy, you’re fucked up. You’re just fucked up. Beyond recognition, and that’s just who you are, and that’s just how you’re always going to [00:30:00] be like you.

I had the same one. Everyone who gets close to me leaves me. That was another one, right? So I’m not lovable that I’m useful, but not lovable. So I’m useful to have in your corner because I’m the kind of guy that will. I’m not afraid of hard work. I’m not afraid to help. I’ll roll up my sleeves and do what’s necessary.

So useful to have in your corner if you need that help, but I’m not lovable. So I had a four or five superscripts that ran my life and until I was able to deal with those I describe what I’m currently experiencing this season of my life is. My third great awakening, the second great awakening is what led to the start of this show.

It was a period of deep healing that was built on earlier work that I had done, but something landed for me early 2022 and the Living Richly message and movement came out of that. And you were part of that journey, an important part of that journey. So many conversations that we had that was part of me even wrapping my head around what was going on and the Living Richly message emerged.

Now, I [00:31:00] find myself circling back. I’ve circled back to not moved away from that.

Eric (3): No, but

Eric: that work has fundamentally shifted my foundation fundamentally changed the way that I see myself and see the world. And now I’ve circled back to passion and purpose and making a difference and leaving the world a better place.

But I’m not writing a wrong I’m not trying to check a box anymore. I’m living truly out of who I am.

Rob: And isn’t that Kelly Flanagan’s book, Lovable, isn’t that exactly the premise that he says is that the mistake that most of us make is we try to find our calling and then find purpose in the calling versus the other way around, right?

When we learn to love ourselves radically, when we learn to again, address those scripts, when we get true to who we are then we can then live out that. That purpose. I’m sure there’s lots of people that are listening to this episode and they’re going like, okay, Eric, great, but I don’t want to build a skyscraper.

I don’t care about leaving this mark that impacts thousands and thousands of people. I just want to be happy. Yeah. I just want to, I just want to do this work. I just want to wake [00:32:00] up. Because again, it is finding and doing the work that leads to the ability to be, I dare use the word content and satisfied with who we are and where we are, then we can grow into whatever it is we’re to become.

But we oftentimes are striving for that out there, whatever that is, happiness, whatever, without first willing to say, but it all starts here. It’s not out there. It’s within us.

Eric (2): A hundred percent.

Eric: A hundred percent. Whether you want to, whether your goal in life is to paddle a canoe or own a speedboat or a cruise liner that really is a very personal journey.

Yeah. And. It, whatever journey you pick, if it’s a genuine expression of who you are, there’s no comparison to be made because each is just as valid as the other, just as important as the other, so it’s not about the size and the scope of your vision, although I will say most people sell themselves short, most people are playing too small.

Most [00:33:00] people are playing it too safe. And if you really dig down to why that is, it’s because they’re afraid and deep down, they don’t believe they deserve more than they have, but regardless of which size of watercraft is the life that you’re aiming for to build or you’re looking to build and operate out of think of.

Every superscript that you have as a hole in the hull, you’re taking in water and you’re spending so much energy trying to just stay above water, just trying to stay afloat. You bump into hat. This was my story. I bumped in. I had lots of moments of happiness and joy. It’s all my life was a void of that stuff.

Problem is I couldn’t sustain it because I was leaking, constantly leaking and constantly like hauling this negative water over the edge just to stay above water when, and I can tell you like when you’re not doing that most of the time when you’re spending more of your energy on your passion and your purpose.

And your loved ones and your relationships and the [00:34:00] things that really matter to you. You’re spending less emotional, mental energy on dealing with negative thoughts and fighting negative beliefs and being down and depressed because you think you’re not worthy and that you don’t deserve a great life.

And yeah. Think of the amount of time we spend I think of the amount of time I spent beating myself up and that energy could have spent, been spent elsewhere. And it’s,

Rob: it, I was gonna say, it’s interesting ’cause you use that analogy. I thought this is where you’re gonna go. You didn’t quite go there, but I Maybe it’s just the a you know, you’re gonna fix it now.

We’re no I’m not. It’s just actually what you said was brilliant. We’re recording this in the afternoon. Maybe I’m gonna go too deep into an analogy here but the idea whether you’re building up. A speed boat, a paddle boat a canoe or whatever. You’re right. It may be full of holes.

You got to get in the water, right? Until you put it in the water, you don’t know what’s there.

Rob (2): And

Rob: I think that there’s something to this idea that I don’t care what kind of boat it is. A boat’s purpose is to be in the water and it’s in the water that you discover. So when you get into the water, you then start to discover there’s a hole now I can [00:35:00] address it.

Oh, there, whereas when it’s sitting on dry land, the holes are still there. And we’re still, I don’t know why I might, but we don’t even, we don’t even see them. We don’t, we

Eric: don’t. And getting it into the water is the first step, but if then your next step is to moor that boat to the dock and leave it there, the boats were not meant for that.

They’re meant for the harbour. They’re meant for the water. They’re meant to be out there adventuring, but we’re so afraid to leave the sea. Safety of the shore. And again, this is the work that we do in terms of getting present to what’s going on underneath the hood getting present to what are the lies that I tell myself.

Often people will say to me how do I get present to that stuff? I’m like, it’s actually not that hard. Get start just paying attention to your self talk when life isn’t going the way you want when hardship shows up on your doorstep. Yeah. What are you telling yourself? And I don’t know.

I said, okay just start paying attention and maybe carry a little notebook around for a little while. Or even at the end of the day, reflect on what are some of the things I told myself, when when the dog had an accident in the [00:36:00] kitchen or when that coworker looked at me sideways and we had an exchange or when the boss, I felt the boss was being unfair to me.

Or when the leader says my team was just not showing up and you had negative emotions show up. In those negative emotions, sometimes again, they’ll be just aimed at other people, but often what we’ll see is the those beliefs and those superscripts will start to surface. It’s one thing to say that person’s really annoying me.

It’s another thing to say that person’s really annoying me, but you know what, that’s what I deserve.

Eric (3): Right.

Eric: It’s one thing to say, Hey, this isn’t working out. This project is not going the way that I want it to. It’s actually look like it’s going to tank to I’m a failure. Yeah. Those are big differences.

Rob: And on that, I, and I want you to. You we’ve walked through this as other episodes around this, but I think it’d be really helpful right now to talk about blue and true because I think time. Yeah. Oh yeah. I know. I think just, and I’m, of course, keeping an eye, this could be a triple episode.

There’s lots of work. I think there’s a lot we’ve

Eric: covered the first topic of what

Rob: we barely got into the water and we’re [00:37:00] still on the shore. Yeah. But there is this notion of identifying those. Thoughts to identifying the scripts, you will recognize them and what they are. Then there’s the next step, which is now making the shift in those beliefs and in those things, the way of thinking of going from one to the other.

So you’ve it, you’ve you’re big, you love using the acronyms. We know blue is from something that we both cognitive behavioral therapy. Yup. And I know I was first introduced it in the book, the the the assertiveness book, I’m blanking what it’s called. We’ll put it in the show.

That book of every.

And then he mentions the word true in there when he talks blue, but he doesn’t actually have an acronym for true. You built out an acronym, which I love and which I use. Talk a little bit about blue to true.

Eric: So blue thoughts, turning your blue thoughts to true thoughts. So that’s the CBT language used.

From blue to true. But like to your point, they only did the acronym for blue didn’t do true. So being an acronym guy, you know how I love acronyms and formulas because that’s how my brain works and it’s how I remember [00:38:00] stuff. And I find most people say, Oh, I can hang my hat on that. That’s easy to remember.

So blue thoughts from cognitive behavioral therapy. When you are experiencing negative thoughts, negative emotions one of the first questions you ask yourself. So the letter B in the word blue is, am I blaming myself or others or beating myself Self up or others unnecessarily. And I would pay specific attention to the beating yourself up or blaming yourself unnecessarily, but also the external one where you’re perhaps being far too reactive to the people or the others involved in that situation.

That’s a sign that something’s not quite right. Am I beating, am I blaming way beyond what is this situation? And that doesn’t

Rob: take too long. Pretty easy to identify that whether they’re using last name day shop or not. It’s pretty, you, it’s pretty obvious when somebody is doing that to themselves.

Eric: Again, if you go immediately to when, and again there’s our, I want to make clear here that like the, we talked about at the beginning of the [00:39:00] show, that nature is not in our favor here because our. Our nervous system is designed with a negativity bias to help us survive. So it’s quite normal that you might go to blame and beat, right?

But if you can at least be aware of it, then you can begin to make other choices, right? So we may not be able to always control the initial response. We may feel a certain way. We may have certain thoughts fill our mind. But remember that you are not your thoughts. You are not your feelings.

Flanagan

Rob: will tell you to love that. Critic who is doing the blame game recognizing you,

Eric: your inner critic is helping you right now. So learn to work with him or her and not against him. The L in blue is looking for bad news. Are you actually looking for bad news in this situation? Are you actually paying attention to the whole story or are you zeroing in?

Deliberately to find what’s wrong. Okay. So looking for bad news that’s not going to serve you very well. The U in blue is for unhappy guessing, right? Which I love unhappy guessing. This is classic jumping to [00:40:00] conclusions that are negative, that are loaded that this person is out to get you, that this is malicious, the

Rob: whole.

story of how all this is going to go to hell and to shit. Exactly.

Eric: So this is fiction over facts, right? You are building a narrative built based on just very limited information, limited stimuli, and you’re jumping to conclusions. And usually those are unhappy. You’re making guesses about what’s happening and they’re usually not positive.

So are you engaging in unhappy guessing? Finally, the E is for exaggerating the negative. So this is different from looking for bad news. Looking for bad news is your debt, like you’re hunting for the things that are wrong, exaggerating the negative is you might be able to see some of the positive you might be able to see part of the other, the rest of the story, but you’re literally exaggerating or you’re, it’s like you’re inflating the price of the negative and you’re putting like the positive on fire sale.

Okay. Really discounting it. So anytime, if you can just check yourself along that line.

Rob: Yeah. So we’ve [00:41:00] got the beating, blaming ourselves, the looking for the bad news, unhappy, guessing, exaggerating the negative. Let’s turn that around to true.

Eric: So blue thoughts, that’s that’s happening. Be conscious that you shouldn’t.

Give a lot of weight to your current judgment of the situation because you’re not on good, you’re not on solid ground. You are on very shaky ground and your perspective is quite skewed. To go to TRUE, now TRUE takes us a whole other level and this is the acronym I I created. T stands for Testing My Assumptions.

So I am engaging in some unhappy guessing, if we just use the U there. I’m going to, I need to test my assumptions now. I need to challenge them. That might look like could I prove that in a court of law? Do I know this to be true or am I just making an assumption that it is? And the more you could, how else could we see this?

How else could we see this? What else might be going on? Is there another vantage point that I might use the power of the reframe looking at it from a different angle, right? The R then is reaching for reality, right? So if I’m testing my [00:42:00] assumptions and I’m trying to look at from a different perspective, R is reaching for.

reality. Say, okay, so if there’s some things now that I’ve tested my assumptions, there’s a bunch of stuff I actually don’t know for sure, right? They have a question mark at the end. What can I do? Reach out for reality to get informed. So do I need to have a conversation? Do I need to look into some of the facts about what’s going on here?

Doing your homework, doing your research. This is moving from fiction now. to facts. You are trying to get more facts before you pass judgment and before you settle on an opinion about what’s actually going on.

Rob: Yeah.

Eric: Yeah.

Rob: Yeah. Yeah. And that’s, I can think of example, lots of examples of that, but when it’s sometimes it’s reaching out, Hey, when you said this, I heard this but I don’t believe that’s how you would normally speak to me is that happened just recently, that happened recently, right?

And I remember Wendy saying afterwards, she said, I’m she didn’t use the word jealous, but she said, I’m so impressed with the level of conversation that you and Eric can have, that you can approach something like that, rather than jump to [00:43:00] conclusions, rather than to make assumptions, to be able to just say, Hey, this is what I heard, which doesn’t seem, it’s not in alignment with how you’d usually talk.

So is this accurate or something else? And then the other one is able to say, actually great. I’m glad you brought it up because I would never think that way. It was this and right. And now all of a sudden it’s okay, perfect. So yeah, I love that notion of reaching for the reality, testing the assumptions, and then really figuring out what’s the truth.

A hundred percent.

Eric: So if we keep going down true here, so tease testing assumptions are reaching for reality. You is understanding your. That’s a good one. What is the current state that you’re in or were in when this situation took place that you’ve now turned into some kind of narrative or are potentially turning into a narrative instead of the actual reality of what’s going on.

Understanding your state. There’s a great acronym used by Alcoholics Anonymous. It was developed by Alcoholics Anonymous to help folks with addiction issues. Get present to when they are most susceptible to a relapse, and the [00:44:00] acronym is HALT. So it’s another, I’m moving to another out, but really quickly, it means hungry angry, lonely, tired.

If I’m remembering correctly, right? Hungry, angry, lonely, tired. HALT. If you’re in any one of those states, you ever been hangry? And responded to someone in a way you wouldn’t normally have been if you’d actually been properly fed all

Rob: the time, right?

Eric: If you’re angry, if you’re angry about something else, right?

That is skewing your perspective, right? If you’re feeling maybe a period of you’re just feeling like you’re all by yourself and you’re not feeling very supportive. That is also going to skew the story. And if you’re tired, if you haven’t gotten enough sleep. Sometimes all you need is to get present to your state and you’re going to go, okay, I better not put a lot of weight into this.

I was not in a great situation here. Okay. So it’s a great little filter to pass through. The final one is one of my favorites. It’s eased in the word true is exploring my options. This is again, once I’ve done all this work, I’ve looked down the blue side to see where am I perhaps going down the wrong she going down the [00:45:00] wrong street here. And then with true, I’m beginning to test my assumptions. I’m reaching out for reality. I’m getting present to what was going on for me in that moment. What other things might’ve been impacting my perspective of what happened. And now it’s okay, what are my options now?

And I love this one because it encourages self directed action. It discourages the victim mentality discourages saying there’s nothing I can do. It discourages. It is what it is. And it encourages. It is what I now make it. So what am I going to do now? Now that I’ve done this homework what conversation do I need to have?

What action do I need to take? Do I need to just park this and maybe revisit it later? Maybe I don’t need to do anything now that I’ve done this. Yeah, but it’s getting clear then on what do I need to do? And the more you do this work, the easier it becomes to do this

Rob: work. Yeah. My, what I love the most about that is it puts ownership of everything back to, into ourselves.

Take. back the ownership of, so the notion of you made me [00:46:00] angry or you caused me to do this, or you did that. No. All this comes because you go that way. As soon as you operate out of true thoughts, you own your actions. You’re able to now, to your point, make those decisions and to be able to do this.

Eric: Listen, unless someone’s got a gun to your head, they can’t make you do anything.

Rob: Exactly.

Eric: You are choosing. Your reaction. They’re not making you. And I think that’s really important to just, Oh

Rob: my God, we have so much more and we are like literally coming up on we are so out of time right now.

And yet there’s not even half of our notes. So we’re going So, let’s just leave with one takeaway with where we’ve covered so far. Recognizing there’s a lot we didn’t cover. What would you say to that person or what’s one practice, mindset practice that somebody could embrace right now to begin to shift from blue to true?

Eric: So I would say, other than using the blue to true framework, and let’s be fair, you’re not going to be able to use [00:47:00] that when you’re in. Blue and true is meant to be used when you can remove yourself a bit from that agitated state and be a bit more calm and calm your nervous system and you can access more readily your higher brain functions, your frontal cortex, right?

Because otherwise you’re stuck in limbic and you’re stuck in your emotional brain. So it’s very hard to do fancy thinking. One of the most powerful I think. Practices is some form of reflective writing, whether if you’re not talking to a therapist or you’re not talking to someone about these issues.

That’s another way. Very powerful framework to use to start getting more present and self aware, using a journal of some sort of reflective writing to work through your thinking and work through your feelings and do some of this work sort of post event before you make any major decisions. I would say slow down on passing judgment and hold again, I go back to what I said earlier.

And what we said to that group, when they asked the question, how do we do better at this? And my response was this slow the fuck [00:48:00] down, slow down judgment, and just assume that your first evaluation of what’s going down is probably terribly skewed.

Rob: There are very few. Situations where you need to react in the moment as much as you’re a firefighter, as much as we think they, Oh, I have to respond now.

No, actually you don’t. Yeah. You really can slow down, take the time to reflect that reflection. So I 100 percent agree with you, that’s exactly what I would be encouraging people to plan a part two of this conversation. Oh my God. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, wow, right? I love we really just looked at this and said, we’re going to just go back and forth and just hear some thoughts.

And these are obviously topics that are we’re [00:49:00] pretty passionate for. And we know that so many of you that are tuning in these are things you’re passionate about as well as you’re taking this journey to living your best life. So I want to encourage you to. Take some time to reflect on some of the scripts that you might have in your life.

How might I shift the blue thoughts to true thoughts and to be able to really take control of the actions that we have in our life. Hey, we’d love it if you take a minute to go to our website, livingrichly. me. You’ll find all kinds of information there, including the 15 day challenge. Our private Facebook group.

We’ve got, I don’t know, 800 or more members in that group now. Really all kinds of people who are on this journey, just like you are. So take some time to check out that information. You’re going to see show notes there. Some of the books and other things that we’ve referenced, even in this episode, will be found at the website as well.

Thank you so much for taking the time to tune in and get out there and live your best [00:50:00] life.