MINDSET TOOLS From My Rock Bottom | Rich Roll Podcast

[Music] the Rich Roll podcast hey everybody welcome to another monologue episode of the podcast my third and what appears to now be an ongoing Series in response to your enthusiasm for the previous two okay let's set the scene it's 1998 and I find myself coming too I'm nauseous wildly hungover confused trying to ascertain the nature of My Strange whereabouts scrambling to fill in memory gaps my skin clammy stuck to plastic sheets and a bed that I don't quite recognize my surroundings are entirely unfamiliar but none of this is abnormal like most alcoholics I had grown accustomed to waking up in strange places wallowing in that very specific dark and private shame and then in this moment it hits me this dawning realization that the countless bad decisions the errant Behavior the disconnection from self and my absolute inability and at times downright refusal to change despite so many attempts to stop simply could not figure out how to stop drinking a condition of both body and spirit that had really left me broken alienated from my friends it left my family fractured I was in this state in which I was unemployable really incapable of being honest utterly hopeless entirely alone desperate in this condition of not understanding how to live and wanting to die and all of it all of those emotions all of those decisions and behaviors and actions had all conspired I was realizing in this moment to deliver me to this foreign place we casually call Rehab but let's be honest it's more aptly described as a mental institution and despite degrees from Stanford and Cornell Law School and this idea that I harbored that I was some kind of intelligent person the truth was pretty inescapable my best decisions had now led me to a certain form of insanity I ended up spending a hundred days from Spring to Fall in that institution which was a treatment center nestled in the bucolic Hills of Rural Oregon and it was an experience that quite frankly saved my life and taught me this really powerful new set of tools for living it gave me hope it lifted me out of this permanent midnight to coin of phrase from the great writer Jerry Stahl and provided me with a foundation upon which I could rebuild this very broken life of mine and it ended up birthing an entirely new one the very beginnings of the extraordinary life I enjoy today started on that first day and here I am this husband who's been with my partner for 23 years I'm a father I'm a stepfather athlete author podcaster and an entrepreneur who now shoulders responsibility for the lives of the people I employ how did this happen more importantly reflecting back on that it was an experience that set in motion this journey that I've been on towards greater self-actualization that made all of the things I just mentioned possible to begin with a journey that of course I continue to pursue to this day with extreme imperfection I might add and I bring the story up simply to illustrate that change is possible I don't consider myself gifted or particularly special in 1998 I can tell you that I was convinced that I could not change not that change would be hard but that change was impossible for me and yet here I am but my story is not unique I've seen it repeated a thousand times over and because of what I do for a living I'm on the receiving end of countless emails letters and messages from people all over the world regular people sharing openly and with courageous vulnerability their stories of personal change amazing tales of transformation far more extraordinary than my own all of which leads me to one conclusion no matter how lost how confused how alone or how desperate you may be or feel there is always hope there is always help if you seek it what I'm saying is change is possible transformation is within your grasp always and for so many reasons I've come to believe that it's your Birthright to grow we were born to evolve it's something that's imprinted on our DNA it is our mandate but there is a caveat and it's a powerful one at that and it's captured in this saying that's often repeated within 12-step communities and it goes like this change isn't for those who need it it's for those who want it translation it's all about willingness now one of the first questions I was asked when I found myself in this treatment center after sufficiently drying out was and this was asked to me by a counselor rich do you want to change now most people provided they are even slightly sane would respond of course of course I do look at my life it's a disaster help me change please but only a mentally deranged addict like myself would need to take a pause before answering to consider the options hmm on the one side we got a lonely painful Craven life enslaved to substances that's inevitably going to lead to incarceration harming myself harming others and probably death or on the other hand here's this life that you can have joyous happy and free huh I don't know man I gotta think about that luckily I ended up opting for door number two but many don't those people die earlier than they should I've been to a lot of funerals but for some reason I was blessed with that willingness a willingness born out of a desire to survive I suppose but also pain this pain that was so severe it eclipsed the very real fear that I held about change any kind of change about letting go about surrendering about asking for help and being open to actually receiving help I think that pain saved me but the point I want to make is that you don't have to be in pain to change you don't have to hit rock bottom in order to make alterations to your life pain makes it easier of course but the truth is that change is always within your grasp if you can summon the willingness to ask for it and again and most importantly receive it when given so back to the story me and that counselor Rich do you want to change yes I do great he says then you only have to change one thing what's that I say he says everything yes everything and all I could think in that moment was everything what does that even mean after the break I'll explain we're brought to you today by Roka glasses are not something you normally think about as a piece of performance gear which when you think about it is kind of insane because you can't perform at your best if you can't see well the Geniuses at Roka basically rebuilt eyewear from the ground up no matter how active you are or how much you sweat these things never slip or fall off your face they're super durable they look awesome and they've got tons of super classy modern styles to choose from I've been rocking rokas for about four years at this point I love them I'm a big fan of the Hamilton style and gloss black that's this Frame right here as well as clear or I guess they call them vintage on the website and if you want to try them out for yourself you can do that right now and unlock 20 off your order with the code richroll roca.com or you can click the link in the description below okay back to the show [Music] welcome back okay so how do you change one thing when that one thing is everything well after 25 years of attempting to answer this very overwhelming and sort of Zen cohen-like proposition I have learned a few things I've got a few thoughts which are challenged to articulate without coming across as super reductionist but with the understanding that this may sound pithy I'm going to try and I'm going to begin with the idea that you have to do it one breath at a time you have to do it one thing at a time one hour at a time one day at a time and you have to bring to that experience a certain presence an intentionality a focus placed squarely on just trying to make a better choice every time a decision is presented to you beginning with the smallest most mundane low risk decisions that greet you every day and then building from there most days are one step forward one step back some are no steps forward two steps back but every once in a while you get one step forward and no steps back a brick laid on the foundation and tomorrow another opportunity this process often means taking something called contrary action what does that mean contrary action well it means asking yourself what have I historically done what do I typically do or want to do or feel impulse to do in this type of dynamic or situation and then what is the typical outcome of that historic Behavior now if you're living thinking and behaving out of Integrity in other words out of alignment with your values with what we can call for purposes of this talk your higher aspirational self with what you know deep down to be right and correct for you then I suspect that outcome is generally not great an outcome that moves you away from the result you seek away from the person you aspire to be an outcome that also often produces drama conflict angst and sometimes even downright chaos now ask yourself what would insert person of Integrity you admire do in this situation or perhaps better yet what would the best version of yourself the grounded calm mindful sane person the person you wish yourself to be the person you would be proud to be do in this situation contrary action means doing that instead that is the essence of contrary action now the rub the funny thing about contrary action is that it will generally feel like the exact wrong thing to do hence the word contrary because your typical reactive sub-optimal response is a neural pathway that has been deeply fortified and reinforced from a lifetime of reflexive repetition by definition the contrary action will instinctively strike you as completely wrong contravening every impulse sometimes every fiber in your being about how you should behave in that moment but this moment is your moment of truth a moment maybe even a millisecond in which you either do what you've always done or you summon the adequate presence of mind the awareness to actually do something different no matter how uncomfortable or counter-intuitive it may feel and sometimes precisely because of how uncomfortable or counter-intuitive it does feel until it doesn't until slowly bit by bit invisible to your senses perhaps even to others this new neural pathway begins to take root and from that over time the emergence of a new habit until one day that new habit is wrote a healthier more aspirational new default response to a certain dynamic or externality that may in the micro seem absolutely inconsequential yet in the macro when repeated over the course of years or decades with extreme consistency in patients these contrary actions build upon each other they create a momentum a compound interest guaranteed and FDIC insured to alter the trajectory of your life in positive ways you cannot possibly imagine or predict this process also means again and no way around it asking for help despite any overwhelming belief in your ability to manage and solve these issues on your own or your resistance to bothering others with your baggage you need to invite others in you need to bring them in so they can help identify your reflexive recurring thought and behavior Loops that are invisible to you and help you construct healthier responses this requires being open requires being honest and vulnerable with a few people that you trust by Outsourcing your decisions to them before making them and then and and this is the part that really gets often overlooked in the conversation about mentorship or therapy not only do you need to hear and consider the consensus feedback but you actually have to take the action recommended you can't just hear it and then do what you want even when especially when you may disagree until the contrary action itself becomes reflexive and then of course no longer contrary but instead integral a very helpful tool when grappling with and learning how to practice this notion of contrary action is to develop the habit of pausing when agitated to avoid reacting to situations the way you always have and instead indulging a moment to First reflect in other words maybe don't immediately respond to the upsetting email until tomorrow walk away from the computer you know that's what you're supposed to do sleep on it talk it through with that trusted friend it also means another Trope how you do anything is how you do everything how you make coffee how you interact with the grocery clerk how you take feedback from your boss how you respond when someone cuts you off in traffic or what you choose to notice or pay attention to while walking down the street it means slowing down calming down and this is why consistent meditation and mindfulness practices are essential non-negotiables now whatever modality you decide to engage with through this process whether it's therapy or 12-step mentorship or even just friendship that's less important than the honesty with yourself and others that you bring to it I cannot over emphasize this enough because that Honesty is the portal to the clarity required to track a new trajectory because you can't set a course forward without first establishing an accurate map of the landscape second to this and because who you are is how you behave and show up in the world each step forward every contrary action these things build a new identity narrative that is being crafted in each moment in real time a healthier identity that becomes slowly more and more aligned with your previously dormant self-actualized potential an identity that with patients and also with toil let's be clear will inevitably lead to things you may not currently believe possible like forgiveness of self and others and making peace with your past so that past as painful as it may currently feel to confront no longer haunts you no longer holds power over how you show up in the present and most importantly no longer dictates your future of course there's much more I could say about the mechanics of change far too much for the purposes and confines of a brief monologue so let me steer away from the three-dimensional for the time being and bring this to a conclusion with a bit of Homespun spiritual mysticism to underscore a point made earlier I believe that I am here you are here we are here to evolve to grow as both individuals but also as a collective and I'm convinced of this transformation is our Birthright but again expansion isn't something we do in isolation growth is a team sport it's a muddy road that we journey together at High Noon In The Heat Of Summer because skins we desire to shed the pains we Harbor and the patterns that keep us stuck those things thrive in the dark caves of isolation but they perish in the bright sunlight of community so when we summon the courage to illuminate or place a spotlight on our flaws and our fears and our pain in the company of others we suddenly realize we're no longer alone that although the facts of our respective Lives May differ wildly there's great unity and commonality and shared Humanity in how we experience life and within that comfort and perhaps most of all hope now maybe you're bristling at the suggestion at the wounds of all of this but let's get honest with ourselves deep down repressed compartmentalized and perhaps shrouded in a protective coating of fear crafted out of this false sense of self-preservation or an illusory sense that your pain is unique to you and you alone I think we all know this to be true beyond the ego beyond the pull of the material world nests this beating this pulsing signal nudging you in the direction of growth it's like a yearning a feeling you've always had deep in your soul this knowing this strand of code embedded into your core processor that's tugging you towards greater self-actualization gnawing at you for deeper alignment between your thoughts and your actions it's not something that's rooted in logic it's not rooted in rationality and I'm not sure science can account for what you simply know to be true which is that you seek to be better and you know you can be better you may not understand it may not yet have shape or clarity but this is a reminder that this feeling that you have is real and it's powerful it's like this Meridian that defines us as human beings that unites us as a collective that represents the future self in gestation and it's something that's freely available to all who seek it anytime all the time all I'm saying is honor and respect this truth appreciate its realness and if you're listening to this and you find yourself adrift in search of a purpose make this that purpose and take that first step that first contrary action and I'll tell you what I'll meet you along that muddy Road and when you ask me so just how long is this road I'll say to you don't worry about it man just take the next step [Music] foreign [Music]

Channel: Rich Roll

Views: 49,704

Keywords: rich roll, rich roll podcast, self-improvement podcasts, education podcasts, health podcasts, wellness podcasts, fitness podcasts, spirituality podcasts, mindfulness podcasts, mindset podcast, vegan podcasts, plant-based nutrition

Id: ngjOj_Q-k3E

Length: 23min 22sec (1402 seconds)

Published: Thu Jul 13 2023