Life is Unpredictable: How to Control Your Response When Everything Goes Wrong - Episode 136

There's a very, very big win on this topic today, but it's going to require that we allow ourselves to change the way that we perceive, to change the meaning of things. Remember, we all have this sense making machine and we're all just by nature, meaning makers, meaning seekers, meaning makers. We always have to make meaning of things. Today, I'm going to give myself permission and you can follow suit to not have to give things meaning and also choose what meaning. Have you noticed that the world that we live in has been doing most of the thinking for you? That your beliefs, perceptions, reactions, fears and doubts have been shaped by unsolicited outside noise? How easy it's been for you to slip into that default sleepwalking mode and label it as life and reality. Yeah, that ends here. Welcome to the Make Sense with Dr. JC podcast. This is your opportunity to start thinking for yourself, reclaim control and step back into that role as the shock caller and dominant force of your own reality. It's when you change the way that you look at things that the things that you look at begin to change. So let's wake up, let's rise up and let's make sense of why and how shift happens. Make sense. Great morning, humans. Great morning, world. Welcome to another edition of the Make Sense with Dr. JC podcast. This is Life is Unpredictable and it's about how to control your responses when everything goes wrong. In that moment, what does it even mean to say that everything has gone wrong? We know that that's a perception as well. So there's a little bit of a hint of where we're going to go is sometimes even the idea that everything is going wrong. And we're trying to navigate that and create a proper and healthy and dream supportive, goal supportive, things that matter most supportive way. Maybe the first mistake is that we created a perception that everything's going wrong. Happening's happen, but they don't have to break us, especially if we change the way that we look at them. This is going to be a conversation about various topics and they're really, really hot topics. And I don't know if any of these resonate with you, but we're going to talk about emotional resilience. We're going to talk about mental clarity and obtaining mental clarity, stress management. I don't know if anybody here, there's any value in learning some stress management tools or even nervous system regulation. What does that mean to you to regulate your nervous system? We're going to talk about nervous system regulation as well as self regulation, which is kind of the same thing. And we're going to talk about this idea of reaching and obtaining inner peace. Now, when I say inner peace, I don't define what inner peace is you do, but those are the things that we're going to talk about. And all of these things are going to be accomplished by learning to choose what deserves your time and what does not. So I want you to start thinking about that. What and who deserve your time and what and who do not. So we've all heard of this phrase, shit happens. It's actually one of the most popular umpire stickers that was ever created. But what if we kind of for fun today, for funsies, what if we today just softened that a little bit and reframed it? That's what we're allowing ourselves to do in this moment is not take our conditioned program responses and let them and the world call the shots today. We're going to say, well, I'm going to look at it a different way today. So what if we look at that idea of shit happens? We soften it a little bit to a different type of a truth. And that would be life happens and then we die. That's true. We're not calling it shit. We're calling it life. Same meaning, however, different response, different physical, mental and manifesting response. So I found that that subtle shift, changing your words, changing the way you look at things, that alone is the first step towards calming the body and the mind and the nervous system. And it also helps reduce things like chronic stress and promoting mental clarity. And that's what I want to talk about today. So there's a very, very big win on this topic today, but it's going to require that we permit ourselves to change the way that we perceive, to change the meaning of things. Remember, we're all just by nature, meaning makers, meaning seekers, meaning makers. We always have to make meaning of things. Today, I'm going to give myself permission and you can follow suit to not have to give things meaning and also choose what meaning. That you're going to give something outside of your knee jerk reflex. So we're going to acknowledge that happenings happen, happenings happen. So that's kind of like what shit happens means. And we'll go into the happenings and how abundance and emotional resilience becomes available when we stop fighting what was never asking for our permission in the first place. Pause for a second on that statement. This is crucial before we go any further. What if we took the time today to consider the things in life that happen that don't ask if we're OK with it first? Think about all the things that occur in your life that don't require your approval. There's a lot of them. How about your heart beating right now? How about your breath? Until I mentioned that they weren't asking you. They weren't saying like, Hey, is it OK if I breathe? There's an old saying that life sucks and then you die. In many ways, if you have any sort of a stoic strain of DNA in you, it's true. Life does suck and then you die if you want to call it that. But what that saying is, is that for the most part, life is challenging. When we say life sucks and then we die, it's kind of true. But we get to reframe what that means. But it's also dark. It's a little dark to say that. And honestly, it feeds the mindset that keeps people in things like fear, overwhelm and stuck in some sort of a way of, we'll call it toxic productivity. What do you think of those words? Toxic productivity, does anybody here ever catch themselves involved in some toxic productivity? What does that mean to you? To me, when I say toxic productivity, it means doing things. Thinking that they're important that are toxic. It's like self sabotage. It's almost masochistic. Do you ever catch yourself doing that? But if we allow ourselves to change the frame of all of this, instead of saying shit happens and we call it life happens and then you die. Well, because we do die. Something just fascinating occurs in that moment. And what happens in that moment is the judgment drops, the assessment of how well you've done, what your projection is, the meaning loosens. And we begin to see movement instead of punishment. I don't know about you, but I catch myself punishing myself very often. Does anybody else ever catch yourselves punishing yourself? Let me read something. The House of Flow says this toxic productivity doing shit we prioritize because of a hidden trigger that we subconsciously labeled as needful. That's good. Let me read that again. Toxic productivity. That's what toxic productivity means to the House of Flow. It means doing shit we prioritize because of hidden triggers. That's the conditioning, the program that is not ours. We've acquired it from Mother, Father, Teacher, Preacher and from society and from our life experience thus far triggers something that we subconsciously labeled there's the meaning as needful. So if you are involved in this toxic productivity and you don't know it, it's because just like House of Flow said, it's been labeled by you as needful. That's important as part of it. As you do, you know that sometimes we are in this state where we're going to say, I'm going to just be authentically myself. And even in that moment, the authentic version of ourselves is toxic. And we don't even know it because as long as we're being authentic and true to ourselves, then it's OK. Well, only if you just turn a blind eye to it. We have to allow ourselves to change the frame to life happens, right? Because the real issue here isn't that things happen. That's not the issue because if we recognize that things happen, if happenings happen, no matter what, that's not the issue. Because if you make that the issue, well, you're going to need a lot of tissue for that because that's a lot of issue. The issue is what we do after they happen. You know, if you look at the dichotomy of control, what do we control? We don't control the happening. We control our perception and our response to it. So let's consider some things that happen without running themselves by you first, just to make sure that we're all clear on that. You guys notice the thing about cuts, right? Cuts heal without our help and without our permission. Eyes see, noses breathe. Now, you could consciously decide to breathe right now. You could take command of your breath. But before that, it had nothing to do with you. Hearts beat. And here's the real, real important distinction. Thoughts think. Hmm. Think about that for a second. Whether you like it or not, your brain does what it's supposed to do. It thinks. So wait a second. The brain thinks without my consultation first. What does that say about your thoughts? If you have a thought right now and you don't know that that is just your brain doing something and you could just switch into observation mode and say, oh, hello, brain thinking. You know, the Buddhists very often will just say thinking. That's their way of separating themselves as a participant. And taking ownership of thoughts and just saying, oh, that's my brain, just like my heart beats and my nose breathes and my eyes see. That's my brain thinking. Do you know that your thoughts are happening? Meaning they don't ask you what you think before they think. So isn't it interesting to just acknowledge that sometimes when we have a thought and it takes command and it hijacks us, it doesn't need to happen. Your brain processes what, 40 to 70,000 thoughts a day and we somehow just find our way to like grab on to one or two of them and make a day out of it. I hope that that landed. From a neuroscience and psychology perspective, these are automatic processes, meaning they happen automatically, self-regulating systems. They're designed for a reason. They have a purpose. They're designed for well-being and survival. Do you know that your body is working on things to help you survive right now? Like breathing without asking you. So all I'm doing is giving you the opportunity to separate yourself from trying to control things that you don't control. And those would be happenings. They're no different than the sun rising. Anybody here control the sun? I always looked at the idea of taking on a friend like a true friend. You know, I have a couple of really true friends like shout out to my friend, Jim quick, he's who I consider my best friend. And Jim is like the sun. No matter what, he always rises. And that's where trust falls into place. So the sun rises, tides shift. And here's another one, clouds pass. And we could even say that apples fall. Those are happenings. But there's also another one to throw in there. People gossip and criticize. Like you might think that you're attracting stuff like that right now, but that's a happening. Just like the thoughts, just like the heartbeat, the eyes, the apples falling. All of those things are happening without your OK or assistance. So that's what's funny about when we try to control happenings. They don't need our assistance, but we kind of like want to control them. Don't we? So this brings us to an important distinction. And I want to share something with you first. Let me first lend some clarity. That's our community, clarity before action. When some of you are signing up for our substack signal newsletter that comes every day, that's about in a small fashion, but very powerful, giving clarity to yourself as a present before you take action. I think that we make that mistake. Make sense. Academy is where we do the real work. People that want to work directly with me at a cost that's less than what you'll spend on food today per month. That's what that's for. It's about clarity before action. So for today's conversation, a happening, just the actual definition, is simply an occurrence that takes place without your say or contribution. That's important without your say or your contribution. It means I hear what you're saying, JC Dragon. I hear what you're saying, unsolicited criticism, but I haven't made up my mind about it yet. That's where we'll get into the sorting filter. So we're defining happening, an occurrence that takes place without your say or contribution, weather changes, time passes, your heart beats, someone has an opinion, a delay shows up. That's a happening as well. Anybody here ever get into like inconvenient traffic? That happened to me yesterday. I drove 10 hours to drive my son back to school and I'd gotten some traffic and I got upset about it. Isn't that funny? Just like the sun, traffic rises as well, doesn't it? A delay shows up, a loss occurs. There's a tough one sometimes. A misunderstanding unfolds. I don't know how to explain this, but I like when misunderstandings unfold because I know that I don't control it and I look at it as an opportunity to initiate some of my stuff. This sheds light on the common concept and conversation when we go up to somebody and say, what's happening? How do you answer that question? We say, what's happening? And although this question is typically asking the person what's going on in their life, just take a moment there to ask yourself how you would answer that question. What's happening? And note what they explain and when it is referring to as something that is either within their control or what's happening without their say so. If I say what's happening, you'll probably tell me what's going on in your life. And very often say, oh, man, things are tough, things are good, but I'm excited about this. Very, very rarely do you define the present moment. So the next time somebody asks you what's happening, you don't have to do this, but you're allowed to. Now that you know about it, you're allowed to just tell them how you feel right now, which is how we started this conversation. What's happening, JC? Well, at the moment, I'm feeling a sense of gratitude and the fog and my fatigue have lifted because I'm here in the pocket with my friends and I'm talking about something that I'm very passionate about and I'm grateful. If I didn't think like that and somebody says, what's happening? I might just give them the whole deal. And typically for whatever reason, we like to default to the victim's status and explain it that way. So what's interesting about happenings in general is that they're all neutral. This is really, really cool. When a happening happens, the things that we don't control that don't ask us for permission or ask for our contribution, they're neutral until we enter them and participate with them. There's your choice. The whole concept of cognitive distancing, which is, hmm, is to also distance yourself from the stimulus. Victor Frankl's work in a man's search for meaning, one of the greatest books ever. He just talks about the fact that the whole game is one in between the stimulus and your response. And if you don't space yourself and give yourself time, which is what the interface response system teaches people masterfully, your response will be your knee jerk reflex. What we're saying here is that a happening is neutral. It doesn't have a meaning yet until you give it a meaning. So do you see the value in saying, hmm, noted, don't know what I think about it yet. Don't know if I'm going to even give you what I think about it yet. This might seem like arduous, but you get good at it. The people in the Make Sense Academy do this on the fly. This is where emotional mismanagement or management becomes a problem. I got this from a mentor of mine. What's the true cause of disease in our world? Emotional mismanagement. Peel back all problems to their core. And I believe that it is emotional mismanagement. So what we're talking about here is reclaiming control as the dominant force and the shock caller to your emotional management, but it's going to require that you change the way you look at things. So participation doesn't always need to look dramatic. What we're saying is you don't have to refrain from participating in becoming involved in happenings, but it doesn't always have to look dramatic. Does it? Sometimes it's subtle. Sometimes we can just have an opinion and hold it inside. I see that happening at family gatherings all the time when somebody talks about politics or religion or, oh, God, so much fun to watch that. Could be just replaying a moment or worrying. Sometimes people are worried and you don't even know they're worried. When we add meaning to it, engaging in negative self-talk or carrying concern throughout the day. Now, I'm not going to tell you that I never carry concern throughout the day, but I am going to tell you that I'm conscious of it and I look to catch myself drifting into that position. And it's only when I catch my drift that I create the space to shift. So from a nervous system regulation standpoint, this is where self-regulation collapses when we don't space it. And decision fatigue sets in. Do you know what decision fatigue is? Is when you get to that place where you just go, I don't know. I don't even know. Hey, what's wrong? You seem upset. I don't know. Oh my God, I'm having an anxiety attack. What triggered it? I don't know. There's so many things it could be that we get decision fatigue. And that's about regulating your nervous system. It's the moment that you lend your two cents to something without having somebody ask you to see a happening happens and it's not saying, what do you think about this? You think that it's asking you that, but it's not asking you for your two cents or your emotional attachment or your need to be right or control something that's uncontrollable. You've heard me say it before, but trying to control something that's uncontrollable is the same thing as trying to drink water with a fork or teach a goldfish to climb a tree or build an airplane in the sky. It's impossible. And we spend a lot of time trying to do the impossible. So we don't suffer because something has happened, my friends. We suffer because we choose to. In Buddhism, they talk about the story of the two arrows. And remember that the first arrow that gets shot at us is the one we don't control. The second arrow is the one we pull back and shoot ourselves in the foot. That's our response or our reaction. We're looking to control that. So we don't suffer because something happened. We suffer because we choose to suffer. We suffer because we choose to participate in the happening. So imagine that there's a knock at your door. I don't know, does anybody have friends that like you don't want to come over or even family members, right? But when the knock is at the door, that's the happening. Seems that there's someone knocking at the door. It's neutral. It's just a knock at the door until the moment that you open the door and let the person in make sense. So here's another. Let's say someone offers you a gift. So if I offer you a gift and there's different ways of offering you gifts. If I offer you a gift, that's the happening. It's not until you receive the gift and unwrap the gift that it gains your participation. If someone offers you a gift, taking in mind that that gift is sometimes some sort of unsolicited criticism, it's like, I'm not accepting gifts. Well, I'm accepting some gifts, but not all gifts. Breaking news. I don't care. That's a message to the universe and to everybody that I cross paths with and all happenings to say, before you think that I'm just going to go along with everything, I'm not, I'm going to let myself think about it first. If someone offers you a gift, if you don't receive the gift, who does the gift belong to? Newsflash, them, the gift givers, the universe, all of those things that offer us things, happenings that we didn't ask for. They own them until the moment that you receive them. So you see why this is so important. Can you see how our programmed, conditioned mindset that's being programmed primarily by outside forces, mother, father, teacher, preacher, all our life, the society that we're living in, evolution, natural selection, all of that stuff, has taught us to accept all gifts and feel like we need to give it meaning and get involved in it. We don't. We don't. So when you say, hmm, that's also this opportunity for you to remember, you don't need to have an opinion about stuff. I don't think it's possible for you to like not have a thought and a feeling and an opinion, but you can catch yourself doing that. And remember, your thoughts, opinions and feelings are happenings as well. You can catch yourself doing that and just, hmm, on those two, you can just, hmm, everything. And here's an important nuance that builds emotional intelligence and inner peace. There's a big difference between evaluating a happening and absorbing it. Isn't there? Evaluating is the active process of neutral awareness. If I'm just observing something or someone and it's neutralness, that's called neutral awareness. I'm aware of its neutralness, meaning I don't have to know what it is. I don't have to give it meaning. I don't have to say I'm going to take that on today. I might feel and think that I do, but I know those are happenings as well. Absorbing it is when we take emotional ownership of it. And that's what we're looking to stop. So here's an important distinction. Sometimes things aren't happening for you. They're just happening. Now I've learned that's a huge shift. If I think that things are happening to me, I've learned to say, well, maybe they're happening for me. Everything happens for a reason. So listen to this statement. Take it to the next level. Sometimes things aren't happening for you. Or to you, they're just happening. Isn't that fun to recognize that a happening is happening whether you notice it or not? It's when you notice it and you give it meaning and you absorb it emotionally that you get involved. Maybe it's just a happening. Do you know that there's something happening outside of your home or your car, your workplace right now, outside of your train of thought? You have this amazing sense making machine and perception gathering machine, but it's not picking up everything. There's a whole bunch of things happening right now without you knowing it. So why do we not have to have opinions about those? Only the ones that we perceive. Interesting game to play, right? This alone provides a powerful shift for us today. So think about this. Clouds up in the sky. What do clouds do? They pass on by. They're not the sky. If you're looking at the sky and you see clouds, the clouds are not the sky. The clouds are things in the sky that are passing on by. So what's the analogy there? Thoughts, comments, events, disruptions. Those are clouds. We're looking at it that way. Maybe I can look at thoughts, comments and events and disruptions, let down setbacks, criticism, inconveniences. I'm going to choose to look at those as clouds right now. They move and they pass on by just like a wave comes to a peak and it recedes on the shoreline, they pass unless we decide to become them. The moment that we think that the clouds are the sky, we become them. So this is where cognitive reframing becomes a daily habit rather than a concept. Just making this distinction right now, if you're enjoying it, it doesn't mean that everything changes. This is a habit that we have to practice. So when we teach in the Make Sense Academy, when you read my book, you'll learn the interface response system. But it's not until you put it in practice, which means practice the action step of doing it every day that you start to get good at it. But it's something that you have to practice every day and saying, hmm, is the way that you give yourself a chance to practice. So I told you before that I'm fascinated with all human behavior, even things that are an attack against me or a tough time. Why? Because it's an opportunity for me to practice this stuff. So this is where cognitive reframing comes into place. So remember this, one of the core tenants of our community and our Make Sense Academy is this. This is Wayne Dyer. If you change the way you look at things, the things that you look at begin to change. Here's one of the most valuable tools that you'll learn from my book and in the Make Sense Academy, one of the most powerful tools that's called the sorting filter. So this is about rewiring your mind and transforming your life. And it's something I call the the sorting filter. And it's a simple but profound way to pre-qualify. So this is the tool. You could understand this, but still your program condition response responds before you even know it. You just have to learn how to catch the feeling and the thought of it and question it and dispute it. So it's simple but profound. And it's a way to pre-qualify a happening before it hijacks your energy, focus, or emotional bandwidth. So that's what this is. It's a tool that you arm yourself with just like awareness itself that changes things forever and it's a quality control system. Do you have a quality control system? I'm not talking about your opinions. Do you have a quality control? Because sometimes our opinions get in the way of a breakthrough, don't they? I'm talking about something that lets everything come into your field of perception, but a system to run it through something to determine if it gets your attention or not. That's what the sorting filter is and we teach people how to do that. So we program the sorting filter just to give you an idea to ask questions like this, does this deserve my attention? Do I want to devote some of my freedom to this? Does this serve the present moment? Does this require my response? Is this something that I should engage in or a cloud to let pass by? Imagine if you ask those questions. My favorite question to ask is what else might be true? And that's how I look at the cloud of my thoughts. So from a peak performance and well-being perspective, most exhaustion that we experience doesn't come from life itself. It comes from poor filtering. That's why we teach the sorting filter exercise. We feel compelled to participate in everything. Mention that before. Why? Why do we have to have an opinion about everything? I mean, I'm not here to judge, but there are certain people in my family that are glued to the TV set, watching a very, very specific tailored version of the news as if they need to participate in it. And they hate me because I don't watch TV. I don't watch that stuff. I watch movies and stuff from an observer standpoint, but I don't have an opinion on things and drives people nuts. And what they don't understand at the dinner table is that they really are angry. Not because I don't have an opinion, but because mine's different than theirs. Because if I did have an opinion and it was adverse to them, they would be even angrier. Do you need to participate? It's a good question, but you know what, Alexi? At the end of the day, you're either going to make that decision. Do I need to participate? And you're going to make it based on what society has taught you or what you think. Make sense? So my book isn't about controlling life, by the way. It's not about controlling life itself. It's about reclaiming the only thing that we control. And that is our perception and our response to life. In closing, I want to let you know that my book and the work that I'm doing, it's going to be a roadmap for people who feel easily distracted. So pay attention if this is you easily distracted, easily overwhelmed, maybe stuck in some sort of a pattern of chronic stress or trapped in some sort of burnout cycle. Man, I've been in that so many times. That's why I created the book. People who want practical tools, maybe actionable steps and strategies and intentional daily living. I teach a whole daily routine. The whole idea is to arm and equip people with control and clarity before the world gets noisy, because the world's noisy because it's full of happenings. The world is a happening and it's not asking you for permission. At its core, this stuff teaches you how to slow the moment down just enough to choose wisely. I like the idea of choosing wisely to live with awareness instead of reaction and choose clarity, like I said, before action. And why? Because happenings are going to continue to happen. They're happening right now, whether you're aware of them or not. As soon as you take yourself away from this conversation and devote your focus and attention elsewhere, you're going to start noticing happenings. What are you going to do with that? Because that's where freedom lives. Make sense? That's it for today. To support the Make Sense with Dr. JC podcast, be sure to subscribe, like and share, as well as follow the Make Sense sub stack for free daily quotes, live streams and blogs. And remember, learning without action is just another form of distraction. If something hit home and you learn something today, give it away. That's the only way it's going to stay. See you next time. Make sense.