Transcription
In past videos, I've talked at length about how to get through a divorce, get past it, how to learn to accept the things you can't control, appreciate the things that you have left, identify your attachments, and learn to forgive; as being sort of the four main pillars for resolving any kind of major transition or problem you have in your life. Today, I want to break down just a little bit and really get deep into some of the, uh, the details of this stuff, because I think it's critically important to understand. Um, so let's talk about problems and transitions and things we have no control over.
So by now, most of you are old enough to recognize that life basically runs in cycles, where you have cycles where you're going through a transition or a problem, to a cycle where you're resolving that problem or adjusting or adapting to that transition. So inevitably, you're either coming out of a problem/transition, going through a problem/transition, or about to go into a problem/transition, or you're on the other side where you have resolved a problem and have adapted to a transition and are now starting the cycle over again. This is just what life is. And the problems and transitions that we face in life are not really problems; they're not the bugs, they're not the—there's not an error in the system. This is the point of life; this is what actually happens to everyone. Doesn't matter how rich you are, how good-looking you are, how smart you are—all this is going to happen to you, no matter what. The sooner you accept that this is your destiny, that this is going to happen, the better you're going to feel.
It's been my experience that lots of people experience enormous amounts of anxiety and even depression because they can't get their heads around this idea that life is about dealing with problems and transitions and then resolving them and moving forward. And until you get your head around that, and you are, um, anticipating the next problem and transition, or when it comes, it doesn't catch you by surprise, or at least you are in a mental state to realize, okay, so I've got to start my resolution process here; I've got to start my transition process here—it won't shock you. Because these are the things that give life texture. This is why I think we exist—is to resolve these things, to move on, to grow, to become better people. The more you resist this experience, the more pain you're going to have. So the first step is, is to accept the idea that problems and transitions happen to everyone. It's not personal; it's not not about you; you're not a—you didn't do something wrong. This is just life; this just the way it is. Don't take it personally; this is just your version of it, and you're going to have to work your way through it, just like all the rest of us. So hopefully that'll alleviate some anxiety and even resolve some depression, because I think if you realize this is happening to everyone, you don't feel so much like you're screwing up, like you're the one that's, you know, the one that's not figuring it out. No, you're figuring it out just fine; we all are. We're all just doing our best trying to figure out. And the sooner you understand that and you can accept that these things are going to happen, the better off you're going to be.
Uncertainty is the essence of human life. People resist uncertainty more than just about anything else. Um [Applause] People cling to the past, to the ideals from the past, because they're afraid of what the future holds, because the future always has uncertainty, and the past is always filled with things that we can identify. So if uncertainty makes you anxious or gives you feelings of, of, um, despair, don't let it. Uncertainty is, again, not a bug; it's a feature. This is what life has is about. If you don't embrace uncertainty, it will make your life very difficult; it will, it will make you—you're miserable, really; it'll crush you. You have to learn to embrace the uncertainty that comes with, with daily life.
When I was in the insurance business, um, we ran an insurance agency that had—and we were a very large insurance agency with, um, you know, someone in the ballpark of $30 or $40 million in premiums. We had grown from a very, very small agency of like, really just one policy, and that was my mother's policy. So we had grown from this tiny little agency to this really huge agency, and there were a lot of other agencies in our neighborhood or in our, in our region that we were competitors with, and a lot of these other agents were super smart guys. These guys really knew their business when it came down to insurance, but they struggled to adapt to the uncertainty of the markets and the way the industry worked. In the insurance business, you have no control over the prices the insurance companies are setting their prices, and you have no control over the weather, the loss ratios that happen; you have no control over your competitors. You can only control what you can do. And so many of our competitors struggled to adapt to that philosophy: is control what you can control and don't worry about the rest of it. If you focus in on those things that you can control, you can be very, very successful and achieve your goals. You may have to adapt your goals to the condition, but you can continue moving forward in a direction that serves you well.
So there was a time when we had lost the ability to write with one of our biggest insurance carriers, their standard lines of car insurance and home insurance, and so we had to find alternatives very, very quickly. And at the time, we did not have a lot of alternatives, but we managed to do it anyway, and we grew exponentially during that time by opening up new markets and by finding new clients and, um, becoming creative. We were able to maximize that problem and turn it into an opportunity that helped grow the business in ways that it never would have if not for the initial problem. So sometimes problems hide in them not just a solution but an advantage, an opportunity, something that you can do that will help you succeed in ways that you can't imagine.
So when you're thinking about your divorce or whatever transition you're going through—job loss, it doesn't matter—you have to think of it that way, like in this there is, is not just a solution but an opportunity to be better. And if you can grasp that opportunity to be better, you can master your life. And then when these uncontrollable events, these problems and transitions occur to you, they won't throw you off; you'll—it'll trigger that, that light in your head: you go, hey, there's an opportunity here; there's something I've got that will turn this into a profitable situation for me, on either a financial level, emotional, whatever, you know, opportunity, unities for occupations, for starting a business, finding a new partner—whatever it is that you desire in your life, all these problems and transitions are just opening new doors to new opportunities. If you cling to the past and you say, this is the way we've always done it, this is the way it's always been, this is the way it should be, you're going to get crushed by life; life will steamroll you, because that's not the way the world works; that's not the way the universe works. The universe is always expanding, always moving to something new and better, and if you cling to the past, the universe will leave you behind; it'll leave you there, and, uh, yeah, that, that leads to frustration and depression and, oh, you know, you just kind of get lost in life. So don't let that happen to you.
So when I was younger, I used to really enjoy, um, playing video games on, on computers, and, um, one of the cool things about some of these video games is you would be discovering a new map or a new location, and that map or location would be under fog or darkened out, and you would only discover what was there when you went to that place. You had to physically go there to explore it. And I see life being very much like that: life is a game of discovery. Um, it helps sometimes to think that there is an enormous amount of knowledge available to us in the universe. We, as a human race, have a fraction of that knowledge, just a fraction, a fraction of a fraction. And you, as a single person, despite all the things that you think you know, have a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of a fraction—you know so little about what's actually happening in the universe that you have to just assume from a very humble position that you know nothing, because there's so much that you don't know. And if you take that perspective, you take that understanding of your life as—you know so little—that every single day is an opportunity for you to discover something new, and you move throughout the world with a mindset of learning and understanding and discovery, it changes the way you view your life.
So when a problem or a transition or some unforeseen event occurs in your life, it's rather than a, a time to, to be in panic or in shock or upset or whatever, it's like, take a minute and go, hm, isn't that interesting that happened? I wonder what that means? How can I use this information to move forward in a new direction? Or how can I take what's happening here and learn something better, a better approach? Always be curious about what the next thing is. If you allow the events that occur to you in your life to trip you up and to make you wish for something that had been, been in the past, you're never going to grow; you're never going to learn; you're never going to move forward. And the whole point is to move forward. When you stop growing, you know, it's like fruit on a tree. Once the fruit is ripe, yeah, it, it falls off and it dies. So long as you're still growing, you're not ripe, and if you're not ripe, you're not going to fall off the tree. So the whole idea here is to stay growing, stay strong, and continue discovering new things all the time. Use every opportunity as an opportunity for growth; it's not a disaster; it's just a new way of looking at the world; it's a new way of, um, learning to shift your perspective to find the opportunities that exist under these conditions; that's all it is.
It really, really helps if you have an overarching mission for your life, even a mission statement. And I've talked about this in other videos, but when you have a mission for your life, it provides context for everything else that happens. Your mission should include physical, emotional, psychological, intellectual growth, emotional growth; it should all be—it should be encompassing as much of that as possible. And the mission can incorporate different aspects of your life as well. Um, the overarching mission that you have is to be of service to others, particularly those people that you care about most in your life. And it, that, um, that mission is not necessarily charity work either. I mean, you can have a mission that provides service to others and is profitable financially to you. The money that you get from being of service to others is secondary; the primary focus is to find a way to be useful to the world, useful to the people that you care about, useful to your community, useful, um, to those people that depend on you. If you can do that, if you can have that kind of a mission working for you, your life has meaning. And if your life has meaning, when things happen, when uncontrollable events happen in your life, the context that you have from your mission provides meaning to those events, and those events will fit neatly into the puzzle or the mosaic that is your life. And if you can see it from that perspective, you can take advantage of everything that happens. But if you don't have a mission, when these events happen, they seem random and out of order, and you don't know where to move forward from the place that you are now.
You've got to get clarity about the way your life is going to be. When you can develop a picture in your mind of what your life will be like one day, or how you wish it to be, and you can think about it from all different angles, then you can start to create that vision; you can start making it real, and you can have a mission that fits into that and feeds into that on a daily basis. By having that kind of an approach to your life, it gives you control, or at least the illusion of control. You can manipulate different aspects of your life and your time and your day to achieve the things that you really, really want. And, um, yeah, and happiness comes when you're useful; happiness comes when you have meaning; happiness comes when you're moving forward and you're growing and, um, understanding that is, is critically important. And using that technique to shape your life, um, is super, super useful and valuable.
Becoming comfortable in your own skin means resolving or embracing your insecurities. Everybody has insecurities; it's part of being human. So just because you're insecure about something, doesn't matter what it is, doesn't mean you're unique or unusual or defective in any way at all; it just means you're human. The best way to manage insecurities is to embrace them; is to incorporate them into your personality. If you know you're insecure, um, I don't know, because like you got a big nose, like me. When I was a kid, when I was a teenager, that kind of threw me off, especially as it was growing in, you know. So when I was younger, there was no big nose, and then as I was getting older, this thing just kept on growing and growing. I remember looking at my father and going, oh, that's his nose, and then my grandfather and thought, oh my God, how did this happen to me? I was genetically handicapped right from the very beginning; how is anyone ever going to fall in love with me when I've got this enormous nose? And you know something, and don't even think about it really anymore until someone points it out in the, in the comments, but it's not something that I'm insecure about anymore; it's something that is just who I am; it just makes me unique; it just makes me me. And so rather than allowing it to be an insecurity, I just learned over the years to embrace it, 'cause I didn't want to get it fixed; I don't want to spend money on that. I'm not a woman, so it's like that, you know. I got a lot to offer any human being that wants to be a part of my life, and if this nose thing trips them up, then they're not the kind of quality person I need to have in my life anyway, you know what I mean? So, um, but it, it's no longer something that I, I have an insecurity about anymore. But I remember as a teenager, it, it kind of made me feel a little insecure, and, um, but I had to make a decision at some point that I had to get over it. I had to decide that it was not something that I was going to allow to prevent me from doing and having the relationships that I wanted to have. And as a result, I had lots and lots of relationships, and never did any woman that I was ever with—and there were quite a few—point out to me that she was—thought I was unattractive. No, not one. So, you know, there's somebody for everybody. So I don't let that stuff trip me up.
What it boils down to is you've got to come to a point of self-validation and self-love. You must be able to validate yourself internally on a regular basis and not look externally for any form of validation or some form of security or anything, thing like that. All of your needs, your love needs in terms of you being validated as a good, healthy, smart, productive person have got to come from within. Now, physical love and emotional attachment and all that stuff, certainly—I lost a dog—certainly has to come from—uh, you can get that from other people, but that's not—that's not the, uh, the meal; that's not the meat of the meal, if you will. That's like the, uh, the frosting on top, you know, that's like the, the cherry on top of the, the dessert. Um, the real essence of your personality and your, um, security has to come from within. If you're looking for a woman or some other external thing—a car, a house, a job, a title—whatever—if you're looking for something outside of you to validate that you're good enough, then you're not—that's—that's the answer—you're not good enough. The only way you ever get to a place where you're good enough is when that sensation of being good enough is inherent, where you just know it; you just walk down the street and you just know that you're good enough, no matter what. Doesn't matter you need to lose 10 lbs, need to lose 20 lbs, whatever it may be, 50 lbs, you know, you're good enough. It's not about the way you look; it's about who you are, um, and what you bring to the table and the way you treat other people, um, it's the way you live your life. You know, if you're a good, authentic person and you are living your life from an authentic place and you are kind and useful and helpful to people in the world, you're good enough; you're good enough, and you don't need to seek validation from outside, from any source.
Okay, John, let's see, what about pleasure? What about where do I have fun in this whole thing? And yeah, there's lots and lots of room for pleasure in your life, and I want to differentiate: pleasure is not happiness. Pleasure is a short-term experience, like rolling—like riding on a roller coaster, you know. There's a lot of pleasure that comes from riding on a roller coaster, if that's your thing. Um, recognize it for what it is; it is, um, you know, the, uh, it is—it's the sweets; it's the candy; it's the ice cream; it's the ice cream of life; that's what the pleasure is. It has very little, if any, substance; it is still to be enjoyed. The key to pleasure is to recognize it for what it is and realize that it's just for entertainment, that it has no real meaning in your life, but it is still something that you want to include in your life because it's fun and it's enjoyable. Here's the thing, though, is that there are different kinds of pleasures, and you need to be really careful about how you select your pleasures, because some pleasures we take on unconsciously, like sitting in front of the TV and shoveling food into our mouths unconsciously. So you are getting pleasure from this, but the price that you're going to pay for that pleasure in the long run is going to be extremely high. In the short run, you're going to feel shame and disgust in yourself, and sitting there and eating, you know, a bag of Cheetos and a bag of M&M's or whatever you're doing, covered in cheese dust, you know, all over the front of you, the shame is apparent, and you know it; you know it. So don't do that to yourself. That kind of pleasure has very little real pleasure to you in the long run, because—I mean, in, in the immediate term, because it's really not that good when you get down to it; it's really not that good; it's boredom. So you're using pleasure to fill your time because you're bored; that's a shitty excuse to use pleasure, because every bit of pleasure that you get in life has some price that you're going to pay for it. The healthier, more, um, enlightening pleasures in life have a very small price and can even be an investment that pays you back. So pick your pleasures very, very carefully, because pleasures like alcohol and drugs, they have a very, very high price in the short term and in the long term. So, um, be very careful about that. Overeating—high price; um, you know, having sex with women that you don't really know very well—that could have a very high price; inevitably it has a high price. So you got to really be careful with your pleasures. If you invest the time and energy into, um, paying the price upfront, say, for example, you have a good diet and exercise program, you've paid the price in advance; now you can embark on some pleasures, say, with food or whatever, alcohol from time to time, and there's no price to pay because you paid it in advance. If you take the time and energy to seek out the right kind of woman, by really dedicating your all of your faculties to this endeavor, it's going to take time and energy and money; it's going to be hard; it's not easy. If this is something you desire in your life, it's not going to be easy; you're going to have to work for it. But if
You put in the time and energy and money, and you really do your due diligence, you can achieve that. You can also fool yourself, so be careful, but you can achieve that. And by investing that time and energy now, in advance, the pleasure that comes from that relationship will be free; it'll be low cost. So be careful how you choose your pleasures; be very, very cautious around that. Recognize that just about every pleasure has a price. You can either pay it in advance, or you'll pay it on the back end. And, um, if you're smart, pay it in advance whenever you can.
Learning to accept, learning to accept the problems and transitions that come to us in our lives is critical. Everyone has them. This is not a bug; this is a feature of life. This is going to happen to you, and it's going to happen many, many times, many, many times in your life. The better you get at adapting to these things when they happen, the easier they will be. Understanding that this is stuff that you cannot control—these are things that are just going to happen, and you have very little, if any, control over them—you can control the way you respond to it, and it's in your response that your experience will be shaped.
I think I've said all I can say on this, you know, and it's getting really cold out here, so I'm going to leave it there. And I'll try my best to answer your questions in the comments. I hope you found this video enjoyable, educational. Hope you've enjoyed the, the sound of the water and the beautiful snow. I mean, it's beautiful out here; it's just freaking cold. It's like 21°, and the wind is blowing, and I think the dogs are starting to ice up, so I need to take them in. All right, you guys, that's all I got for you. Um, please like and subscribe if you enjoyed the video, and, um, let me hear from you in the comments. Stay healthy, and if you can, stay single.