Humble the Poet
Appearances
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
Humble the Poet: Transform Your Relationship With Anxiety (6 Strategies for Overthinkers
So I heard a really interesting quote, which was anxiety is when your intelligence grows quicker than your courage. And oftentimes when we're younger, we accomplish amazing things that we don't know we're supposed to be afraid of it. We don't even know we're supposed to be afraid of playing on the street or what have you, what the stresses are.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
Humble the Poet: Transform Your Relationship With Anxiety (6 Strategies for Overthinkers
You may have accomplished something where the odds were against you, but you didn't know the odds. So you didn't feel that anxiety. So when our intelligence grows, Now, all of a sudden, our imagination is being used to invent threats, right? To detect threats, things that may or may not happen. And then that holds us back from actually acting. Because the triggers are our amygdala.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
Humble the Poet: Transform Your Relationship With Anxiety (6 Strategies for Overthinkers
We have a little tiny part of our brain the size of an almond called the amygdala. In the book, I call it our survival brain. And it's like a very...
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
Humble the Poet: Transform Your Relationship With Anxiety (6 Strategies for Overthinkers
under trained but loving bodyguard that wants to protect you from everything but his definition of danger is uncertain unrecognizable unfamiliar uncomfortable and these we know aren't things that are actually dangerous struggle isn't danger challenge isn't danger but when we come across that we're going to speak ourselves out of it so it's really important to understand this kind of idea that we need to feel the fear and do it anyways resilience
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
Humble the Poet: Transform Your Relationship With Anxiety (6 Strategies for Overthinkers
doesn't feel good when you're being resilient. When you have to be resilient, when you have to be strong, it's not going to be a great feeling. And that's okay. Building resilience, voluntarily doing difficult things may not be a good feeling, but that's okay. Because we're not here to live a life without suffering. We're here to see our own potential and see how much we can endure.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
Humble the Poet: Transform Your Relationship With Anxiety (6 Strategies for Overthinkers
And again, it's not about putting yourselves in uncomfortable and dangerous situations. It's about realizing that life is chaotic. Life is random. Most of it is out of our control. Let's stop tensing ourselves by trying to hold on to everything. Let the chips fall where they may and trust ourselves that we can handle whatever's coming our way.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
Humble the Poet: Transform Your Relationship With Anxiety (6 Strategies for Overthinkers
Don't say I'm anxious. Say, I feel anxious because. And that allows you to be a human having an emotion and trying your best to figure out why. Sharing your anxious feelings in a way that you don't identify with them. That invites connection. And now we can talk about it. And once we start revealing it, that's really the first step to healing.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
Humble the Poet: Transform Your Relationship With Anxiety (6 Strategies for Overthinkers
I think the first thing is be super, super nice to yourself. You know, imagine eight-year-old you is dealing with these complex adults with their emotions and they grew up at a time where emotional intelligence and being able to communicate an emotion wasn't a thing. So you're...
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
Humble the Poet: Transform Your Relationship With Anxiety (6 Strategies for Overthinkers
Coping mechanisms and your survival mechanisms, your mental health tried its best to adapt the best it could with your limited eight-year-old, nine-year-old brain. And then those coping mechanisms became habits. And then as adults, we continued those coping mechanisms, even though we have access to more helpful ones.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
Humble the Poet: Transform Your Relationship With Anxiety (6 Strategies for Overthinkers
And instead of looking back and being like, well, I'm a product of all this trauma or I'm a product of I made all these poor choices and now I'm stuck in this habit loop. Just be like, look, my mental health has always been on my team. It's always been helping me. Now we just need to upgrade it.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
Humble the Poet: Transform Your Relationship With Anxiety (6 Strategies for Overthinkers
With family, I do view them as the ultimate boss in this world of anxiety because it's like they can push our buttons because they install the buttons. Yeah, I love that point. And there's that. And I always think about even in my household where I have a lot, I get along with my family great. Just stepping into my childhood home brings up anxious feelings. Oh, I can relate.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
Humble the Poet: Transform Your Relationship With Anxiety (6 Strategies for Overthinkers
It reminds you of versions of yourself that you don't want to remember. And I think the idea that really helped me realize this was like, if you learn the lesson, you won't be afraid of the test. So I think what ends up happening is when we have these feelings, again, these are signals. It's like the smoke detector going off.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
Humble the Poet: Transform Your Relationship With Anxiety (6 Strategies for Overthinkers
Instead of pulling out the battery, ripping the smoke detector off the ceiling, putting a piece of tape over the light, let's look for the smoke, you know? So when we're at home, And these anxious feelings start coming up. This is an opportunity for us to start exploring and figuring out what it is. And it's simple as feeling the feelings, you know?
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
Humble the Poet: Transform Your Relationship With Anxiety (6 Strategies for Overthinkers
And maybe in the moment, it may not be the best time for you. So do whatever you do to soothe. You know, if you got to go and look at your phone, please do what you got to do. Look at your phone. If you got to go distract yourself, if you got to medicate, you got to go have a cigarette, whatever you normally do, cool.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
Humble the Poet: Transform Your Relationship With Anxiety (6 Strategies for Overthinkers
But the next day when you're well-rested, you've had a glass of water, you're hydrated, you're You know, you haven't read a bad text message, a bad email yet you're in a good place. Voluntarily go back into that. Maybe pull out a journal and be like, what is it about my family situation that's there? And now you're in a good place to peel back these layers and voluntarily lean into a trigger.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
Humble the Poet: Transform Your Relationship With Anxiety (6 Strategies for Overthinkers
And once we lean into it, that's the way it's actually going to heal. And then once it heals, we'll have room for something new to come. It's never going to be, I've healed and I live happily ever after. We don't live this linear life. It's a cycle. And as you said, like you thought you can handle stuff until something new came. That's not a failing on your part.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
Humble the Poet: Transform Your Relationship With Anxiety (6 Strategies for Overthinkers
That's the next level for you to build that strength. And then as you, as you come out of that, which I've definitely seen you have, and you've come out much more wise, much more strong, much more compassionate, much more kind to yourself and other people. now something new may come, a new curve ball may come. And as you continue practicing your swing, you'll be able to handle that as well.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
Humble the Poet: Transform Your Relationship With Anxiety (6 Strategies for Overthinkers
And that's what I believe our mental health should be. It should be this confidence that, hey, it will be hard, but I'm not afraid of hard. Having a hard day does not mean I've experienced trauma. Having a person that is difficult to be with doesn't instantly make them toxic.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
Humble the Poet: Transform Your Relationship With Anxiety (6 Strategies for Overthinkers
You know, we've got to this point where mental health awareness has increased, but we may have swung the pendulum a little too far where now we've created identities out of these things. Let's not create an identity. It's okay. Things are going to be challenging and let's train and trust ourselves to handle it. And that's only going to come through practice.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
Humble the Poet: Transform Your Relationship With Anxiety (6 Strategies for Overthinkers
I think immediately in terms of managing them, you know, before we worry about growing through it, the magic word is going to be boundaries. And I think what's important is we define boundaries in a way that matters. Boundaries is teaching people how to be with you and your boundaries can be universal. For example, I can have a boundary.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
Humble the Poet: Transform Your Relationship With Anxiety (6 Strategies for Overthinkers
Listen, if you were going to remind me of my age and that I haven't gotten married and had any kids yet and that, you know, I'm not living out my purpose in life, then obviously I'm not going to call as much, mom. You know, but if anybody else does that, it's going to be the exact same thing. It's teaching people, say, listen, this is how I expect to be treated.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
Humble the Poet: Transform Your Relationship With Anxiety (6 Strategies for Overthinkers
I'm not telling you what to do, but if I'm not treated this way, I probably won't be around here. And this is what my, I'm setting a standard and I'm really teaching you how to be around me. And I think boundaries at the end of the day is saying, I care about you so much that I want to improve our dynamics.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
Humble the Poet: Transform Your Relationship With Anxiety (6 Strategies for Overthinkers
And I think that's a really important thing when it comes to family because that's the hardest place to set up boundaries because everybody is so used to it. And I'll be completely honest, when somebody has hit me with boundaries, it was uncomfortable for me. You're so used to things being a certain way, sudden change for anybody is not going to be comfortable.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
Humble the Poet: Transform Your Relationship With Anxiety (6 Strategies for Overthinkers
And we have to approach this with a lot of grace, grace for ourselves and grace for other people. So I think boundaries is generally the first place. And then also having context and just being like, look, They really did try their best. When I worked with a therapist, they were always reminding me, listen, your parents were in survival mode.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
Humble the Poet: Transform Your Relationship With Anxiety (6 Strategies for Overthinkers
They may not have been the most emotionally nurturing, but they were trying to put food on the table. They were trying to make sure you were good, you were safe. And they're like, that's what they were doing. That's all the tools that they had. And I think it's really important because what I realized, especially in the last year is,
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
Humble the Poet: Transform Your Relationship With Anxiety (6 Strategies for Overthinkers
The kinder and more gracious I am to myself, the kinder and more gracious I can be to other people. And vice versa. The more I put in effort to be more understanding and kinder to other people, the more effort I can put to be kinder and more gracious to myself. And that's removing judgment, which takes us back to courage through curiosity.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
Humble the Poet: Transform Your Relationship With Anxiety (6 Strategies for Overthinkers
Absolutely. I think it's not even guilt. I think I've realized over time, it's people pleasing. It's abandoning ourselves for somebody else. I think true guilt is, is when we abandon who we are based on our own values. You know, let's say you were having a bad day and you spoke to somebody that you cared about in a way that you don't normally do.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
Humble the Poet: Transform Your Relationship With Anxiety (6 Strategies for Overthinkers
And then a little bit of time goes by, you're like, I really wish I didn't do that. And that's guilt. To me, that's authentic. That's a great definition. That's betraying who you authentically are. Now the idea of like, oh, well, I'm speaking to Jay and he keeps bringing up these things I don't want to talk about.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
Humble the Poet: Transform Your Relationship With Anxiety (6 Strategies for Overthinkers
but I really don't want to let him down and I don't want to make him upset because he doesn't hear from me anymore. That's me trying to absorb your pain. That's me thinking, because a lot of us do that in childhood. We absorb other people's pain because we don't believe in their resilience either. Like, well, I can handle it. I'll handle their pain. I don't want to make my mom upset.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
Humble the Poet: Transform Your Relationship With Anxiety (6 Strategies for Overthinkers
I can handle her pain. I'm robbing you of the resilience that's going to come from you dealing with that challenge. And I'm betraying myself, increasing my own anxious feelings. And so I think what we really need to do, and I have a quote in the book, you can't guilt a caterpillar into becoming a butterfly. You know, we can't speed any of this up.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
Humble the Poet: Transform Your Relationship With Anxiety (6 Strategies for Overthinkers
So I really think sometimes when we use this word guilt, it really goes around us romanticizing some of these things. But really what it is, it's people pleasing. It's wanting people to like us at the expense of us ever actually experiencing any real love. Establishing boundaries and then honoring your own boundaries, that's being your best friend. That's protecting yourself to a level.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
Humble the Poet: Transform Your Relationship With Anxiety (6 Strategies for Overthinkers
And as I said, this is just the beginning to manage it. At the end of the day, the secret here isn't to avoid these people. It's to open a dialogue, open more vulnerability, build the connection, figure out where they're coming from, and strengthen the relationship accordingly.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
Humble the Poet: Transform Your Relationship With Anxiety (6 Strategies for Overthinkers
If not, we don't want to get to this point where anybody who presents any type of struggle or challenge for us, we just continually cut them off from our lives. Because this is just us rearranging our life to make it easier. No, we got to lean into the challenges, but just immediately the boundaries got to be the first step.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
Humble the Poet: Transform Your Relationship With Anxiety (6 Strategies for Overthinkers
When we start talking about the specifics of like, I have anxious feelings around my job, anxious feelings around my appearance, what we're still saying is, you know, it's anxiety around things out of our control, anxious feelings about things that remind us of previous danger, anxious feelings about things that feel unfamiliar. And I think these become the headings that we can connect on.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
Humble the Poet: Transform Your Relationship With Anxiety (6 Strategies for Overthinkers
If I'm vulnerable with you when I share a vulnerable story, I'm generally going to be nervous about it because I'm afraid that you're going to judge me. And I'm sure your listeners have been in that situation. But the vast majority of the time that we're vulnerable with somebody, we're inviting them to be vulnerable with us.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
Humble the Poet: Transform Your Relationship With Anxiety (6 Strategies for Overthinkers
In the book, I talk about this idea of my friend in Berlin inviting me to a spa. And I was excited to go to this spa. And I'd hurt my shoulder dragging a a broken suitcase and we're on, we're on the way to the spot. He goes, I love how open-minded you are. And I was like, why are you thanking me for being open-minded?
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
Humble the Poet: Transform Your Relationship With Anxiety (6 Strategies for Overthinkers
And then I realized he mixed up the word spa with sauna and we are going to an all nude sauna. And I'm about to see, and this is the longest friendship I've ever had. I've been his friend since we were three. So I'm about to see him naked and a whole bunch of other people naked in Berlin. And the voices, and I realized I wasn't afraid of being naked.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
Humble the Poet: Transform Your Relationship With Anxiety (6 Strategies for Overthinkers
I was afraid of being judged and afraid of standing out, afraid of not understanding a custom, how this was going to work. I'm in a different continent. And the first thing that helped was admitting to him. Because he had just propped me up saying, you're so open-minded. I love that you're willing to do this. I didn't want to let him down. My people-pleasing started to come up.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
Humble the Poet: Transform Your Relationship With Anxiety (6 Strategies for Overthinkers
But I'm like, look, now that you've clarified what this is, and this is not just a candlelight massage, I'm very nervous. And his response was, I'm nervous too. And we strengthened the connection. And it wasn't the easiest experience, but we got through it. And it was a funny story. And yet I realized every... thing that makes us interesting is a challenge that we've made ourselves go through.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
Humble the Poet: Transform Your Relationship With Anxiety (6 Strategies for Overthinkers
And I think the first step, again, and I'm always going to say this is the first step, it's not the absolute solution, is going to be sharing your anxious feelings in a way that you don't identify with them. I'm encouraging people, and I got this from Mel Robbins, don't say, I'm anxious. Say, I feel anxious because. And that allows you to be a human having an emotion,
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
Humble the Poet: Transform Your Relationship With Anxiety (6 Strategies for Overthinkers
and trying your best to figure out why. I feel anxious because I'm about to be naked in front of you and a whole bunch of other people in this country, and I don't know if people are gonna judge me or what have you. And I think that invites connection. And if you get, and someone else will be like, oh, I feel anxious because I don't know if I have job security.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
Humble the Poet: Transform Your Relationship With Anxiety (6 Strategies for Overthinkers
And now we can talk about it, and once we start revealing it, that's really the first step to healing. You know, Jay-Z said it, he goes, you can't heal what you don't reveal. And we all know there's a value to this because every single person has felt super stressed in their brain about how much things they have to do. And then they write down a to-do list and it's like three things.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
Humble the Poet: Transform Your Relationship With Anxiety (6 Strategies for Overthinkers
And they're like, why did that feel so heavy in my brain? It's just getting it out is important. And we are, again, in a society that structures a lot of individualism, a lot of isolation. We need community. It's not, as I said, it's not about cutting off Your friends who feel anxious. Everybody feels anxious. And we probably shouldn't label them as our anxious friends.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
Humble the Poet: Transform Your Relationship With Anxiety (6 Strategies for Overthinkers
However, if they decide to cling on to the identity and they're more interested in proving how hard life is versus looking at it as an opportunity to improve from it, then that definitely is a friendship worth reevaluating.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
Humble the Poet: Transform Your Relationship With Anxiety (6 Strategies for Overthinkers
I honestly believe he had lived in Germany for eight years at that point, born and raised in Canada, across the street from me. He's of Jamaican descent and he had gotten married and they both moved to Berlin together. And I guess maybe eight years of him not speaking English every day. But it was most definitely, I remember it vividly.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
Humble the Poet: Transform Your Relationship With Anxiety (6 Strategies for Overthinkers
I'd taken one of my parents' suitcases back then because this is when I just started traveling. And, you know, my parents bought, you know, like six pieces for like 30 bucks, like cheap. Don't buy cheap luggage. There's a reason. And the wheel broke off and I was in London and I was dragging it up the stairs from the tube. And I had pulled a muscle in my shoulder and I was so excited for a massage.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
Humble the Poet: Transform Your Relationship With Anxiety (6 Strategies for Overthinkers
And he said, I remember, he's like, yeah, we're going to go to the spa. It's going to be great. It was definitely him not speaking enough English for eight years. And it ended up becoming a situation where, you know, now it's a great story, but all the emotions were there. And it didn't get easier the moment I was there. The longer I stayed there, the more my body was able to trust.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
Humble the Poet: Transform Your Relationship With Anxiety (6 Strategies for Overthinkers
Okay, this is the thing. Again, and this is the big thing. Our brains will understand this immediately. Our bodies have to catch up. And the way to reinforce it with our bodies is through practice. We have to practice this. We can't just hear an inspirational quote once and be like, all right, I figured it out. We have to practice.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
Humble the Poet: Transform Your Relationship With Anxiety (6 Strategies for Overthinkers
Definitely. Go to a naked spa. But definitely, yeah, do the things where you're like, I can't do this. When you voluntarily do something that you think I can't do. It's the same as sitting in the cold, which you did. Sitting in the cold, definitely one of those things. And even that, what I've realized too is like, you know,
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
Humble the Poet: Transform Your Relationship With Anxiety (6 Strategies for Overthinkers
Got to go to Poland, got to train in the cold, you know, at the invite of Lewis Howes. And the irony of that was like, you know, sitting with Mike Posner in the ice for 10 minutes, freestyle rapping, feeling like I'm the most resilient person ever. Fast forward six months ago, I am in a sauna with Lewis and we're just chatting. He goes, do you want to take a dip in the pool?
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
Humble the Poet: Transform Your Relationship With Anxiety (6 Strategies for Overthinkers
Because I didn't keep practicing. There's a value to the practice. But if you don't keep practicing, in terms of having self-compassion, that's okay. I used to be able to sit in the ice for 10 minutes. Now I can take a cold shower for three seconds. But I can get back there through practice. My dial just went back the other way. And I think that's really important. We have seasons.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
Humble the Poet: Transform Your Relationship With Anxiety (6 Strategies for Overthinkers
Seasons where we can be more resilient and build more resilience. And then we have seasons where it's like, no, I'm just in survival mode. I can just do the bare minimum. And I think that's absolutely okay. I agree. Yeah. We create so much extra tension with these expectations we have of ourselves and it doesn't help.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
Humble the Poet: Transform Your Relationship With Anxiety (6 Strategies for Overthinkers
It's great to be here. Thank you so much. That was an awesome intro.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
Humble the Poet: Transform Your Relationship With Anxiety (6 Strategies for Overthinkers
Absolutely. The big lesson that we were taught when speaking with children was address the behavior, not the student. So if a student was doing something that they shouldn't be doing, you'd be like, hey, that choice, I'm not a fan of that choice. Can we crumple up that choice and throw it in the garbage? You, you're a great person, but I can't see how great you are when you make that choice.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
Humble the Poet: Transform Your Relationship With Anxiety (6 Strategies for Overthinkers
And I realize when we speak to ourselves, we're still speaking to a little eight-year-old inside of us. There's an inner child there that needs to be spoken with love and grace. And it's not coddling. It's actually realizing that we have to be our own best friend. We have to be our own biggest advocate and view it through the lens of, is it helpful?
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
Humble the Poet: Transform Your Relationship With Anxiety (6 Strategies for Overthinkers
Is it really helpful, especially for folks who are like self-employed or trying to do things? Is it helpful to continually guilt yourself to do stuff? Do you get better results that way? Is it taking you where you want to go? Or can we have the conversation of like, hey, okay, you know what? You were making a lot of progress working out. You know, you were seeing great things happen.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
Humble the Poet: Transform Your Relationship With Anxiety (6 Strategies for Overthinkers
And now all of a sudden you got to go on tour. And now it may be eating room service and it may be sleeping in different time zones. And that's okay. That's what this requires. And then we'll get back to the other stuff. And that's totally good. And for me, it's always like, hey, maybe one more game of FIFA before we start. And then for me, the big one was like, hey, let's go back in our history.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
Humble the Poet: Transform Your Relationship With Anxiety (6 Strategies for Overthinkers
You've been humble to poets, self-employed for about 15 years now. Have you ever played too many video games and messed up? Did you ever mess up a deadline? Did you ever mess up an opportunity because you played too many video games? No? Let's trust us. Let's trust ourselves. Go back into your own history and let that be the support and to speak to these words.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
Humble the Poet: Transform Your Relationship With Anxiety (6 Strategies for Overthinkers
Because a lot of these voices are not ours. They sound like us. They were ghostwritten by other people. These criticisms were somebody else. And they just sound like they're our voice. And we give them value. We don't have to believe everything we think. Because those thoughts are often there just to keep us in stasis.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
Humble the Poet: Transform Your Relationship With Anxiety (6 Strategies for Overthinkers
It's like, well, we're going to try to scare you, guilt you to stay where you are. Because if you try something new, we consider something new dangerous. And it's not.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
Humble the Poet: Transform Your Relationship With Anxiety (6 Strategies for Overthinkers
and you know it's the idea that everything needs to be perfect because we're afraid and one thing that we do to try to counter this fear is have control so it should become the language perfectionism perfectionism gives us the illusion of control but the reality is perfectionism isn't about making things better it's about finding flaws easier so we what we start to do is constantly look for flaws and that way that keeps us from having to do stuff
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
Humble the Poet: Transform Your Relationship With Anxiety (6 Strategies for Overthinkers
right so a lot of this the same way I'm saying curiosity is courage in disguise a lot of this is fear in disguise you know what it really what we're really just addressing is the fact that we're scared and here's the thing it's okay to be scared and what I would encourage anyone to look at is like maybe the step you're trying to take is just too big
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
Humble the Poet: Transform Your Relationship With Anxiety (6 Strategies for Overthinkers
and maybe we gotta break it down into something a little bit more manageable, into baby steps. And if those baby steps feel too big, let's do micro baby steps. Then let's do micro baby tiptoes. Let's keep going smaller and smaller until that next step feels manageable. Because the only thing we have to do is know what that next step is and try it.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
Humble the Poet: Transform Your Relationship With Anxiety (6 Strategies for Overthinkers
And I think this goes back to having grace for ourselves. And this is why we overthink. Again, it goes back to this idea that we're so afraid that we're going to trick ourselves to think that we're solving a problem by constantly running it on a treadmill and going through a loop. And now we're just inventing new problems to solve them. And all of that results in nothing.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
Humble the Poet: Transform Your Relationship With Anxiety (6 Strategies for Overthinkers
When it comes to anxious feelings, you can't think your way out of them. You have to act your way out of them. There is something brilliant about Nike saying, just do it. It really is, just do it. It really is, feel the fear and do it anyways. And again, these are catchy lines that we've heard a million times. Our body isn't going to immediately accept them.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
Humble the Poet: Transform Your Relationship With Anxiety (6 Strategies for Overthinkers
We have to start small and practice that every day. For five minutes, I am going to just do it. I do jujitsu. And it was really interesting because this actually helped. And probably because I was in a physical situation, I'm rolling with somebody who has many more years ahead of me. And we're rolling. And in the middle of the roll, he goes, you're thinking too much. It's OK. We all make mistakes.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
Humble the Poet: Transform Your Relationship With Anxiety (6 Strategies for Overthinkers
And instantly it was like, okay, stop strategizing. Just trust whatever I'm doing, knowing that I don't have a chance against this guy regardless. But what he was addressing was the pauses and the avoidance that I was doing in real time. And now when I'm sending a text message, sending an email, making a request, I keep hearing his voice. It's like, stop thinking so much.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
Humble the Poet: Transform Your Relationship With Anxiety (6 Strategies for Overthinkers
We all are going to make mistakes. The fear is the mistake. I might say the wrong thing if I ask Jay for this favor. Let me reread it and proofread it 45 times. Let me run it through ChatJPT. Let me do all of these things. And it's like, what we're just doing is ruminating to avoid the discomfort. And what we're really saying is, this is hard. I don't want to do it. And that's OK. This is hard.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
Humble the Poet: Transform Your Relationship With Anxiety (6 Strategies for Overthinkers
I appreciate you having me back then. It's always been amazing.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
Humble the Poet: Transform Your Relationship With Anxiety (6 Strategies for Overthinkers
I don't want to do it. That is a normal human feeling. But we have to go through that in order for us to grow. We'll start by being kind to ourselves and be like, it is hard, let's take a break, but let's address it. And sometimes it might be like, hey, we'll do it first thing in the morning when we're the most fresh, that concept, swallow the frog, we'll do that now. Or it could be like, hey,
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
Humble the Poet: Transform Your Relationship With Anxiety (6 Strategies for Overthinkers
Maybe this is too big of a step. Maybe today, step one is this. And that really, and it is a reflection, and I'll go back to the people that we're around. If we're around people that we can share this stuff with, and they speak to us with that same level of grace, which is like, no, you did a lot today. It really matters. And I remember this in the beginning of my career.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
Humble the Poet: Transform Your Relationship With Anxiety (6 Strategies for Overthinkers
100%. And it really signaled to me how hard I needed to work. And it was always this idea that if I wasn't working hard enough, she may think less of me. And then fast forward during the pandemic, I remember this having a call. And she's like, look, like your only job right now is like stay healthy and stay in a good place. Don't try to be productive.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
Humble the Poet: Transform Your Relationship With Anxiety (6 Strategies for Overthinkers
We've been signaled that we need to be productive all the time. There's honor in suffering. There's honor in burning out. It's a badge of honor. And it's like, it's not a badge of honor. It's a warning sign that we're abandoning ourselves by doing too much, especially in a society that we live in where the word enough doesn't exist when it comes to our productivity.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
Humble the Poet: Transform Your Relationship With Anxiety (6 Strategies for Overthinkers
So it's really important to surround yourself around people who are doing the same work, can have the same language, even if you're the first person to start these conversations. When you're kinder to someone else, it will encourage them to be kinder to you as well.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
Humble the Poet: Transform Your Relationship With Anxiety (6 Strategies for Overthinkers
Absolutely. As I said, it's not coddling.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
Humble the Poet: Transform Your Relationship With Anxiety (6 Strategies for Overthinkers
You don't want to go to the gym today. You don't want to work out with the trainer. Let's just go for five minutes. And if you don't like it, you can go home. And then once you get in, you know, it's going to continue. And I'm definitely like that where it's, you know, I'm doing all the mental gymnastics. Oh, I ate and it's only been 43 minutes. I can't go to, I might throw up on somebody.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
Humble the Poet: Transform Your Relationship With Anxiety (6 Strategies for Overthinkers
I can't, you're making all these excuses. And then the graceful voice is like, hey, just show up. Try it out for a couple of minutes. If you don't feel good, sit against the wall. We see people doing it all the time. And the truth is, and then I go back to my history, you have always not wanted to go. You have never regretted going.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
Humble the Poet: Transform Your Relationship With Anxiety (6 Strategies for Overthinkers
Even when I've gotten hurt, I didn't regret going. And I think that's the really important thing when it comes to this grace. We're not coddling ourselves. We're being our best friend and we're encouraging ourselves to do it. And you're absolutely right. And this is how I would like us to view mental health the same way. Let's train it. Let's constantly...
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
Humble the Poet: Transform Your Relationship With Anxiety (6 Strategies for Overthinkers
pick things that are different, the same way you're lifting a heavy weight to tear your muscles and then have them heal to grow bigger.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
Humble the Poet: Transform Your Relationship With Anxiety (6 Strategies for Overthinkers
Let's continually put ourselves in challenging situations, whether it's a cold shower, whether it's holding a yoga pose, whether it's doing, you know, calf raises until you start feeling the burn, any type of movement, any type of challenge where your mind is like, I can't do anymore. Like, hey, let's just try to stay in a little bit longer.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
Humble the Poet: Transform Your Relationship With Anxiety (6 Strategies for Overthinkers
Let's do these things because this will help build resilience. And it's one of the things in addition to creating connection in addition to practicing that we do. And we realize like, I don't want to do it. Totally understand that you don't want to do it, but try it and see how you feel afterwards. Because just like working out, the harder the workout, the easier the day.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
Humble the Poet: Transform Your Relationship With Anxiety (6 Strategies for Overthinkers
And let's apply that to our mental health. Let's treat our mental health like a muscle. The more we work it early, the easier the rest of the day will be.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
Humble the Poet: Transform Your Relationship With Anxiety (6 Strategies for Overthinkers
I think when I started this journey, it was really about meeting people where they're at. And I think now that mental health is like mental health awareness has really become normalized, it may have gone a little bit too far with people identifying with certain things that they're struggling with. And it's like anxiety is not a problem. It's not a disease. It's not dandruff.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
Humble the Poet: Transform Your Relationship With Anxiety (6 Strategies for Overthinkers
It's not a condition that we have to deal with. It's a signal. It's here to help us. And what we need to do is reevaluate our relationship with it. Right now where we're at is we medicate, avoid, and distract. And all of those are understandable coping mechanisms. They help us in the moment. They help us feel better. But none of that in the long term is going to help us become better.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
Humble the Poet: Transform Your Relationship With Anxiety (6 Strategies for Overthinkers
I think the first thing, most definitely, and I love that you talked about school and how that was our world. The classroom or maybe the size of school was our world. And that made a lot of sense for maybe, you know, up until the last 20 years. Social media has expanded our world where now we are endlessly being exposed to people who are living lives completely different from us.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
Humble the Poet: Transform Your Relationship With Anxiety (6 Strategies for Overthinkers
And now we're comparing ourselves to that. And so when we hear the cliche line comparison is the thief of joy, we're constantly stealing our joy by spending time on social media and comparing ourselves to people. And we're not even comparing ourselves to a real thing. We're comparing our behind the scenes to this highlight reel of what we put on social media.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
Humble the Poet: Transform Your Relationship With Anxiety (6 Strategies for Overthinkers
So the first thing I would say is reduce the amount of exposure you have to compare yourself to other people. I would definitely make efforts to reduce my social media consumption. That would make a huge thing. I think also the more we commit to understanding who we are, the more we start to realize that we need to design and develop a life for ourselves.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
Humble the Poet: Transform Your Relationship With Anxiety (6 Strategies for Overthinkers
I think currently we're just trying to deal with life. And I think as we commit to a mental health journey and voluntarily doing challenging things, we start to develop life and we start to understand what matters to us. For you, for me, as we go through these different challenges, we're like, wait, this is the shoe that fits me. This is the one that doesn't.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
Humble the Poet: Transform Your Relationship With Anxiety (6 Strategies for Overthinkers
Oh, I can afford the fancy sports car, but I realize that really isn't for me. But I definitely want to make sure I have a great hot tub. I want to definitely make sure I have, you know, I have a friend who just sold a company and I was like, oh, what are you going to do? He goes, I'm going to get my mom a personal trainer so she can open a jar until she's 90.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
Humble the Poet: Transform Your Relationship With Anxiety (6 Strategies for Overthinkers
And it's like, this is someone who knows his priorities. That's the first spend with the money. And that only comes through self-awareness. Self-awareness comes through paying attention to yourself and collecting information. That's going to come when we have these anxious feelings. These are revealing things. You know, triggers are a roadmap. They're telling us where the work can be done.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
Humble the Poet: Transform Your Relationship With Anxiety (6 Strategies for Overthinkers
So we have to abandon these ideas that like, oh, trigger warning. I have to avoid my triggers. oh, I have to constantly be in a safe space. That's just us rearranging life to never gain. And we're denying ourselves that self-awareness. So I really think self-awareness is going to be the first thing. So now, and again, this is not going to make it all go away.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
Humble the Poet: Transform Your Relationship With Anxiety (6 Strategies for Overthinkers
I still get jealous when I see people on social media. I think the other thing we have to realize is envy helps us understand what authentically matters to us. Let's say, for example, I watch your show regularly. You got a couple of guests on. Then all of a sudden, a certain guest comes on. And let's say Rick Rubin comes on. I'm like, oh, I am so jealous. I wish I was in the room with Jay.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
Humble the Poet: Transform Your Relationship With Anxiety (6 Strategies for Overthinkers
I wish I knew this was happening. I wish I could have called Jay. I wish I could have stood in the corner when I had that. What that is doing is that's not a bad thing to experience. That's teaching me that, okay, something that Rick says matters to me. So I should go deeper into that because it's teaching me what's important versus if you have another guest on, who am I? Oh, that's cool.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
Humble the Poet: Transform Your Relationship With Anxiety (6 Strategies for Overthinkers
But I'm not really excited about that. So I think there's something there that I think is really important. And I think the other thing that's really important is realizing, are we trying to catch up or are we trying to improve? Are we trying to keep up with other people?
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
Humble the Poet: Transform Your Relationship With Anxiety (6 Strategies for Overthinkers
And what it is, we just have to pay attention to what anxiety and anxious feelings are trying to tell us. And the big thing with that is changing our relationship in a way that makes us not think like, oh, because I'm having anxious feelings, I must be weak. Something's wrong with me. Nobody else is dealing with this. It's like, no, you are absolutely normal. for having anxious feelings.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
Humble the Poet: Transform Your Relationship With Anxiety (6 Strategies for Overthinkers
And I think very often, and going back to our families, it really often isn't to, we're not doing things to make our family happy. We're doing things to keep them off our back. And I think there's definitely this when it comes to being out here, going to events, dressing up.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
Humble the Poet: Transform Your Relationship With Anxiety (6 Strategies for Overthinkers
All of this is like, are we doing this to even stand out at the party or are we doing this to make sure we don't feel irrelevant, that we're falling behind? And I think paying attention to that will challenge us to go back to what are our unique values? What are the things that we actually care about? And the more we discover that, the more we can share that with people.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
Humble the Poet: Transform Your Relationship With Anxiety (6 Strategies for Overthinkers
And for me, that also brings me into the thought of the gap between fitting in and belonging. We create so much stress trying to fit in. And we have to wear masks to fit in. And that is definitely going to feed anxious feelings.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
Humble the Poet: Transform Your Relationship With Anxiety (6 Strategies for Overthinkers
Instead, if we have a better understanding of who we are, if we're constantly exploring this universe inside of us, we know who we are and we can find people that we feel comfortable being around where we belong. There's a quote in the book that I say, everybody is a social butterfly and maybe you're just in the wrong garden.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
Humble the Poet: Transform Your Relationship With Anxiety (6 Strategies for Overthinkers
And I think that's really important versus the self-identifying of I'm socially anxious. It's like, or you're just in a room with the wrong people.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
Humble the Poet: Transform Your Relationship With Anxiety (6 Strategies for Overthinkers
You know, if you really enjoy Dungeons and Dragons, go in a room full of people who play that game. All of a sudden, there won't be as much social anxiety as you may feel if you're in a room full of people who work in finance or full of Hollywood stars. And I think that's a really important thing is like, go where you belong. Focus on where you authentically belong.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
Humble the Poet: Transform Your Relationship With Anxiety (6 Strategies for Overthinkers
And that requires a depth because it may not just be like, oh, well, I'm South Asian. I should be around South Asians. It's like, no, who am I? You know, I enjoy art. I should be around more folks who love art. I enjoy MMA. I should be around more folks who love MMA. I enjoy playing certain video games. I should be around people who play those games.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
Humble the Poet: Transform Your Relationship With Anxiety (6 Strategies for Overthinkers
The deeper you understand yourself, the more you can share. And it's really important because we want to be seen. We want to be heard. But the only way we can authentically be seen and heard is if we show people who we authentically are. And you can't be yourself if you don't know yourself.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
Humble the Poet: Transform Your Relationship With Anxiety (6 Strategies for Overthinkers
And to start, that's the first idea we have to understand, treating ourselves with grace, that this is completely normal. And then once we get there, we can start this journey going from managing it in helpful ways and then also growing from it. We don't want to just keep soothing anxiety. We want to gain strength through paying attention and understanding what it's trying to tell us.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
Humble the Poet: Transform Your Relationship With Anxiety (6 Strategies for Overthinkers
Absolutely. And it goes back to the idea of judging. Again, we start to judge, which is a language of fear, and we start to limit. We're like, oh, no, I've met three people at this party. This isn't my crowd. And also for folks listening who are thinking, well, what about, you know, I'm at work or I have to wear a certain mask to survive those places. I completely understand.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
Humble the Poet: Transform Your Relationship With Anxiety (6 Strategies for Overthinkers
And the best way to counter that is when you're done with that, go to a place you belong. We all have to be in places and we all have to play the game to fit in. Sometimes it's not, you know, we have to survive and that might be part of the game. But then to counteract that, to avoid burning out by doing that, go ahead and be in a situation where you belong. Be with your people, be with your tribe.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
Humble the Poet: Transform Your Relationship With Anxiety (6 Strategies for Overthinkers
And again, it still starts internally by figuring out who you authentically are.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
Humble the Poet: Transform Your Relationship With Anxiety (6 Strategies for Overthinkers
I think for me specifically, it's this idea that when the idea in your head doesn't match the idea in front of you, like our expectations of life don't match the reality. That's kind of what we define as unhappiness. And I think that's an opportunity to, A, on a lower vibration, feel sorry for ourselves and reaffirm that life is so challenging, life is so difficult.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
Humble the Poet: Transform Your Relationship With Anxiety (6 Strategies for Overthinkers
But there's also an opportunity to grow. Once we let go of that idea, I'm like, well, there's something to grow from here. So when our heart is broken, when everything that we thought was is no longer the case, whether it's a broken relationship, whether it's losing something you care about, losing an identity, losing money, whatever it may be, there's an opportunity to grow in there.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
Humble the Poet: Transform Your Relationship With Anxiety (6 Strategies for Overthinkers
It's like now you're, oh, now we're paying attention. All of a sudden things aren't moving forward.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
Humble the Poet: Transform Your Relationship With Anxiety (6 Strategies for Overthinkers
according to plan and now we're actually focused and we're present and we're paying attention to things and there's a lot of opportunity there versus just assuming everything was going to be on autopilot this idea of the happily ever after you know these linear ideas it's like no we're going to continually be in these cycles and anticipate things happening and everybody listening knows how transformative that first heartbreak was whatever it may be and how much resilience can come from
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
Humble the Poet: Transform Your Relationship With Anxiety (6 Strategies for Overthinkers
The moment it happens, you're like, I can't be here anymore. I can't deal with this. And then as time goes by, we start building resilience from it. And then all of a sudden, we are a much more rounded, three-dimensional version of ourselves now. Because of it. These hard times that form us and formulate us as people.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
Humble the Poet: Transform Your Relationship With Anxiety (6 Strategies for Overthinkers
And this is why it's the idea of like, look, obviously I don't want to have super heavy days every single day, but I got to be able to trust myself to deal with them or at least try my best to deal with them. And at the very least, not sabotage myself by not sleeping enough, not eating the right food, not drinking enough water, not hanging out with people that give me energy.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
Humble the Poet: Transform Your Relationship With Anxiety (6 Strategies for Overthinkers
And I think that there's something important there. So I always look at it, especially as my life has progressed, where it's like the things that are breaking my heart right now are absolutely out of control. The people that I care about who have health issues, there's nothing I can do. I catch myself avoiding messages regularly.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
Humble the Poet: Transform Your Relationship With Anxiety (6 Strategies for Overthinkers
getting updates on some of these folks because it just, it breaks my heart to think about. And it's like, this is me avoiding because it's so overwhelming. But I speak to myself with grace and say, look, it's overwhelming. Let's get you back to where you got to get to. Let's feel better. And then we're going to lean into this.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
Humble the Poet: Transform Your Relationship With Anxiety (6 Strategies for Overthinkers
We have to lean into this because there's going to be some growth that comes from it. The fact that this impacts you so much, it's a sign that you care. And that's beautiful because we need to care about more things in this life.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
Humble the Poet: Transform Your Relationship With Anxiety (6 Strategies for Overthinkers
There was something beautiful I heard from a scientist on Instagram. I don't remember her name. She said, you know, life is not beginning and ending. Life began once, you know, and we're all a part of it. We don't have a life. We are life. We're a drop in this ocean.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
Humble the Poet: Transform Your Relationship With Anxiety (6 Strategies for Overthinkers
And I think there's something really beautiful about that, which is, you know, this is, depending on your beliefs, this can be a vacation from not existing. And we can choose this existence to be whatever we want it to be. And I think for me, it's been realizing, and I actually have a tattoo on my chest inverted so I can read it in the mirror. It says, at any moment, you're dust.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
Humble the Poet: Transform Your Relationship With Anxiety (6 Strategies for Overthinkers
And it was inspired by a friend who had said it, but another friend, and I specifically remember where I was when he said, he goes, our problems are only real because we forget we're going to die. And when we think about all of these things, we're zooming in so much into our lives, but it's like, we've heard the cliche, will this matter in five years, 10 years? Will it matter in 90 years?
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
Humble the Poet: Transform Your Relationship With Anxiety (6 Strategies for Overthinkers
Will it matter in 200 years? Are any of us making it out of this alive? And I think there's something really beautiful about that where it's like, we can only enjoy a movie because we know it's going to end. You know, if it was going on forever, if it was one of those TV shows that go on forever, we may not appreciate it as much. It's the finite-ism of it.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
Humble the Poet: Transform Your Relationship With Anxiety (6 Strategies for Overthinkers
And I think that has to do with life as well. In the book, I make a lot of jokes, and one of the big jokes is the secret pill to get rid of anxiety. I make up a joke about it, but at the end, I'm like, the actual magic pill is remember you're going to die. When you're in these moments that just feel completely overwhelming, if you can remember not just with your brain, but with your body,
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
Humble the Poet: Transform Your Relationship With Anxiety (6 Strategies for Overthinkers
that you were going to die. And we have so many examples of that in history with people who have experienced near-death experiences and then have thrived. Because they realized, I'm here for a deeper purpose. I'm here for a bigger purpose. I survived, you know, 50 Cent survived nine shots and all of a sudden thrived in his career. It's like, that's the worst it can get, me not existing.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
Humble the Poet: Transform Your Relationship With Anxiety (6 Strategies for Overthinkers
So let's go. It's no longer fear of embarrassment, fear of rejection, fear of not being seen. Because some of these are the things that we just forget. We're living creatures that won't be here forever. And I think reminding yourself of that is really important. And there's a Buddhist and Eastern philosophy around that.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
Humble the Poet: Transform Your Relationship With Anxiety (6 Strategies for Overthinkers
Make it your goal to remember your mortality five times a day and watch the quality of your life improve. Allow that. Make that part of the mantra. Make that part of the daily affirmations that I won't be here forever. Pick the year that you know, like in the year 2235, neither of us will be here forever.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
Humble the Poet: Transform Your Relationship With Anxiety (6 Strategies for Overthinkers
Okay, let's remember that when we're worried about sending a text message and not getting a reply, or when we're worried about putting ourselves out there and potentially getting rejected, or when we're worried about anything else. And I think that's really important. This isn't to minimize anybody's problems. It's to minimize the unnecessary stress that we may come with that.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
Humble the Poet: Transform Your Relationship With Anxiety (6 Strategies for Overthinkers
And then we can realize that the stress isn't holding us back. The stress can actually stretch us to reveal our potential of who we can actually be. Pressure builds diamonds.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
Humble the Poet: Transform Your Relationship With Anxiety (6 Strategies for Overthinkers
We can really become something beautiful and massive from this when we no longer view challenges as an attack on our existence, but instead an opportunity for us to grow, for us to thrive, for us to increase our capacity to not only be amazing to ourselves, but to be amazing to other people.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
Humble the Poet: Transform Your Relationship With Anxiety (6 Strategies for Overthinkers
Absolutely. And I think because even now, we have these concepts of like legacy. You know what I mean? Like there's also this stretch of like, oh, I want to be alive after I'm not alive. And it's like, these are stories that we're being told that we think are important.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
Humble the Poet: Transform Your Relationship With Anxiety (6 Strategies for Overthinkers
And I remember seeing an interview with Alex Ramosi where he spoke about like, when's the last time you thought about the Queen of England? You know, she was really popular and then she passed away and we're not thinking about her on a, we don't need to have legacy. You know, let's enjoy what we have while we have, the only thing we have is the present.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
Humble the Poet: Transform Your Relationship With Anxiety (6 Strategies for Overthinkers
Especially when we speak about Eastern philosophy, especially for people listening here, it really is us having to unlearn a lot of the stories that we were told. We were told these linear stories, do this, do this, do this, get over this hump and then everything will be smooth sailing. It will be happily ever after. You can ride off into the sunset. Everything will be great.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
Humble the Poet: Transform Your Relationship With Anxiety (6 Strategies for Overthinkers
And it's like, no, there's always a day after. happily ever after. And instead of wishing for an easier life, let's work towards being able to hold more weight because the weight's going to keep coming. And just as you're working out, 15 years from now, the amount of effort you put working out will have to increase just for you to maintain where you're at.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
Humble the Poet: Transform Your Relationship With Anxiety (6 Strategies for Overthinkers
So it's the same thing with our mental health. Right now, our avoiding, our distracting, our medicating is us maintaining and by all means maintain. But at some point, we want to get to the point where we're actually growing from it. And that's going to require us leaning into things being more difficult, having more difficult conversations, acknowledging difficult realities like our death.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
Humble the Poet: Transform Your Relationship With Anxiety (6 Strategies for Overthinkers
Yeah, what I'm promising in the book is I'm not promising to cure anxiety. I'm promising to cure the despair around anxiety. And the despair is when we feel hopeless because we don't think we have options. So this book is full of options to better understand anxiety, And to go from managing to striving and growing and becoming stronger from it. And because we feel hopeless, that's where we stop.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
Humble the Poet: Transform Your Relationship With Anxiety (6 Strategies for Overthinkers
I just want to thank you. This is also a moment of closing the loop for me because you gave me a beautiful blurb on the book, but it was because I was brainstorming the ideas to you over dinner and you were having authentic reactions to them. And it was like this journey for the last two and a half years writing this book
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
Humble the Poet: Transform Your Relationship With Anxiety (6 Strategies for Overthinkers
There's also just these moments of you coming to visit in New York, us having a meal, us having fun.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
Humble the Poet: Transform Your Relationship With Anxiety (6 Strategies for Overthinkers
Playing a lot of FIFA. And just for the record, I want everyone to know, Jay is the most frustrating person to play FIFA with because whenever you score on him, he'll congratulate you. He'll be like...
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
Humble the Poet: Transform Your Relationship With Anxiety (6 Strategies for Overthinkers
great job that was an awesome goal he'll still beat you but he'll do that so it's like you can't even like talk crap to him it's so frustrating to like play somebody who beats you but doesn't hold space for crap talk instead he'll just like oh let's watch the replay of that goal you got on me that was so good and then he'll score five more goals on me and it's so it's extremely frustrating and but one thing that you said the last time we played is I had music playing I had the volume down
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
Humble the Poet: Transform Your Relationship With Anxiety (6 Strategies for Overthinkers
And then you're like, this feels different. So we turn the music off and we put the volume on the game. You're like, oh, I like this. This gives me the right type of anxiety. What I realized is while writing this book, I just have all these milestones of having all these different hangouts with you and running these ideas with you. And then I feel like today, having this conversation with you
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
Humble the Poet: Transform Your Relationship With Anxiety (6 Strategies for Overthinkers
Having the book in your hand right now, it's this full circle moment which kind of closes the loop. And I think it's that journey. It really is that journey that matters less than, oh, I have a book out now and I have to worry about how the book does. It's like, no, I got to have so much fun doing this with some of my favorite people. And you definitely are one of those people.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
Humble the Poet: Transform Your Relationship With Anxiety (6 Strategies for Overthinkers
So I deeply appreciate you for being endlessly supportive of this and all my projects, man.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
Humble the Poet: Transform Your Relationship With Anxiety (6 Strategies for Overthinkers
it's made so easy and digestible and i think that's what we all need right now the world's complex enough you talk about that in the book family life it's all complex enough we don't need growth to be complex yes especially now with change it's just please remember the change isn't the enemy us resisting this change is is what's going to give us more anxious feelings the change is going to happen regardless change is a promise it's a constant
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
Humble the Poet: Transform Your Relationship With Anxiety (6 Strategies for Overthinkers
Wherever you are in the world, we're all experiencing a lot of change and that's okay. And if it gets overwhelming, that's also okay. But please, the more we resist, the tighter we hold against it, the more that we're just doing damage to ourselves. It's not going to be helpful. So let's embrace the change that's happening. Be curious about the change because that's where our courage can be.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
Humble the Poet: Transform Your Relationship With Anxiety (6 Strategies for Overthinkers
And a lot of the tension that we carry comes from resisting these emotions. It's not the emotions themselves. Anxious feelings aren't harming us. Resisting and avoiding these anxious feelings are what's actually doing the damage.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
Humble the Poet: Transform Your Relationship With Anxiety (6 Strategies for Overthinkers
So I love the idea that curiosity is courage in disguise. And what we realize is often when we have this kind of dualistic thinking, this is good, this is bad, this will help, this will hurt, that's us limiting our scope, as you said. And that's us being judgmental. And the only antidote to that is to be curious, is to ask more questions, to explore the gray between the black and white.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
Humble the Poet: Transform Your Relationship With Anxiety (6 Strategies for Overthinkers
And as we start doing that, more options arise. And we also start to realize often the fear that I'm dealing with is related to a story that I've told myself. But I can only do this or I've gone so far. I've climbed this mountain and now people would see them a failure if I have to climb all the way back down to find a new mountain.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
Humble the Poet: Transform Your Relationship With Anxiety (6 Strategies for Overthinkers
So I realized keeping our mind open, keeping our hearts open requires curiosity. And that really is what courage is. And often we think this is a light switch. We think, you know, either I'm confident or I'm not confident. I'm going to fix this or I'm not. And it's like, really? No, it's a dimmer. And it's not simply a failing on our part.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
Humble the Poet: Transform Your Relationship With Anxiety (6 Strategies for Overthinkers
If we start to feel like this, we live in a society that really encourages us to, okay, well, if this is difficult, let's rearrange our lives to avoid it. A personal story, for example, this book was inspired through one of our conversations when I was reaching out to you to come on the podcast for the last book. And I explained that I feel a lot of anxiety around asking for help.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
Humble the Poet: Transform Your Relationship With Anxiety (6 Strategies for Overthinkers
And you said many beautiful words to me to help soothe that, but I didn't address the fear of rejection I had. I didn't address any of that. And then I caught myself saying, well, you know what? Maybe this will be the last book and I'll never have to ask for a favor again. That is not healing. That is me rearranging my life so I don't have to face the thing that is giving me anxious feelings.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
Humble the Poet: Transform Your Relationship With Anxiety (6 Strategies for Overthinkers
And there's no growth in that. That is me temporarily managing it because I'm going to have to ask for help. And what we have to realize is these challenges are an invitation for growth. Our triggers are an invitation for growth.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
Humble the Poet: Transform Your Relationship With Anxiety (6 Strategies for Overthinkers
There's an opportunity here for us to not only deal with them in a healthy way, but then also to grow through them because all of our growth happens outside of our comfort. And that's a really interesting thing where I realize, okay, I can feel better by avoiding asking for help, or I can be better by leaning into this and being okay with that.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
Humble the Poet: Transform Your Relationship With Anxiety (6 Strategies for Overthinkers
And that's exactly how we should look at mental health. I think right now we're looking at mental health like it's this very fragile crystal that we have to protect from the world. And like, oh, I'm going to avoid this person to protect my mental health. No, our mental health is a tool. It's a muscle. It's what allows us to deal with struggle. Struggle isn't the enemy. Struggle is the vehicle.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
Humble the Poet: Transform Your Relationship With Anxiety (6 Strategies for Overthinkers
that makes us more resilient, that makes us more emotionally strong, that makes us more self-aware. Every time we have a negative experience or we get triggered, we're giving ourselves data. That data is a gift for our self-awareness so we can better understand who we are. And it's just like you said, if you want to help me move a couch,
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
Humble the Poet: Transform Your Relationship With Anxiety (6 Strategies for Overthinkers
Working out at the gym and voluntarily lifting heavy things will prepare you for that. It's the same thing with our mental health. We have to voluntarily put ourselves in uncomfortable situations. We have to challenge ourselves on purpose voluntarily. So when challenges find us, we're more resilient. We're more confident. We'll feel more safe to deal with that stuff.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
Humble the Poet: Transform Your Relationship With Anxiety (6 Strategies for Overthinkers
Definitely not drama, but I think the name of the podcast, On Purpose. When you discover your purpose, even if you devote 15 minutes to like digging in and picking up as much weight with that purpose as possible, that's going to energize you to a level that most of us never experience until we figure out that thing that matters.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
Humble the Poet: Transform Your Relationship With Anxiety (6 Strategies for Overthinkers
So it's really not about adding drama to our lives, but it's really about carrying as much weight as we can to see how strong we can be. We can only get stronger through struggle. And if we voluntarily put ourselves in stressful situations, and it can be even like, think video games. We're not going to buy a video game if it's easy. We want there to be a challenge.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
Humble the Poet: Transform Your Relationship With Anxiety (6 Strategies for Overthinkers
We want to fall on our face, get back up, and try again. And it's the same thing with life. This is how our batteries get charged. It comes through choosing to do hard things voluntarily, on purpose, and that can be anything. For some people, it could be a specific art, it could be drawing, it could be working out, it could be jujitsu, it could be any type of challenge.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
Humble the Poet: Transform Your Relationship With Anxiety (6 Strategies for Overthinkers
And this is gonna charge our batteries so much more than a two week vacation lying on a beach doing absolutely nothing.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
Humble the Poet: Transform Your Relationship With Anxiety (6 Strategies for Overthinkers
I think it's recognizing that, A, we're wired for a world that we don't live in anymore. So we are getting way too much stimuli. We're comparing ourselves to way too many people. We know way too many people. You know, we're really wired to be in much smaller communities.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
Humble the Poet: Transform Your Relationship With Anxiety (6 Strategies for Overthinkers
And bringing up this concept of confidence, I think, is really important because it goes back to that idea that it's not a light switch. I like to think about reading. We didn't not know how to read and then one day know how to read. We started by learning the alphabet, learning the sounds, two-letter words, three-letter words, four-letter words, until we could all read big, complex novels.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
Humble the Poet: Transform Your Relationship With Anxiety (6 Strategies for Overthinkers
That was like a 14, 15-year journey. We may not have realized that was happening because it was in school. It was fun. We may not have had a choice. We had to go anyways. But as adults, the thing is... All of our growth came from doing the struggling with a book when you were reading it. Now, as we become idols, we avoid all these things that are struggling.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
Humble the Poet: Transform Your Relationship With Anxiety (6 Strategies for Overthinkers
And it's really reevaluating our relationship with difficult things and challenges. And it's absolutely correct. Both motivation and confidence, they don't come before action. You can't wait till you're motivated to do something. doing something will make you motivated. Doing something will make you confident.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
Humble the Poet: Transform Your Relationship With Anxiety (6 Strategies for Overthinkers
And this also brings up a really important idea that as we have this conversation, this is really going to hit people logically like, oh, that makes so much sense. That makes so much sense. But for the body to really believe this, you can't make sense to the body. You have to practice this.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
Humble the Poet: Transform Your Relationship With Anxiety (6 Strategies for Overthinkers
You know, if I asked you to stand up and fall backwards and I say, I'll catch you, your brain might be like, I trust him. Your body is still going to be a little bit nervous. Let's say I catch you. And then I'm like, let's do it again. You'll be a little less nervous, but you're still going to have some nerves. We might have to do it 15 times for your body to completely trust the process.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
Humble the Poet: Transform Your Relationship With Anxiety (6 Strategies for Overthinkers
We have to practice. Practice makes progress. And we have to get out of this binary of like, I can't do it or I'm perfect at it. I can't do it or I've mastered it. We have to just continually be on a journey and celebrate the progress that comes from that. And that progress is what builds our confidence. And slowly turn up that dial because that's the only way it's going to happen.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Humble the Poet on How to Stop Anxiety and Find Inner Peace | EP 595
coming up next on passion struck all we need in our lives is a direction and orientation no matter how specific no matter how vague if we know where we're going that in itself reduces our anxiety if you put someone in the middle of the desert and they have no idea where to go their anxiety is going to go up just say hey head north that will reduce their anxiety we need a little bit of clarity we need a little bit of direction
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Humble the Poet on How to Stop Anxiety and Find Inner Peace | EP 595
So it was important for me to start it where I felt I was already meeting people. My big question that I was asking myself as I was writing this book, because I wrote it selfishly to address the anxious feelings I was having around circumstances in my life, it was what does a white belt and anxiety look like? What does somebody who just, we all have anxious feelings.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Humble the Poet on How to Stop Anxiety and Find Inner Peace | EP 595
Not all of us have realized it yet. And my question was just like, how do I meet somebody at the very beginning? And it was this idea that we're viewing anxiety as some sort of condition. I have in that same chapter, anxiety is in herpes. It's not dandruff. It's not a condition that you need to cure. It's a signal. It's like hunger or something that we need to pay attention to.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Humble the Poet on How to Stop Anxiety and Find Inner Peace | EP 595
It's something that when it's tuned correctly is one of our greatest gifts. It's on our team. And it was really important for me to recognize that all of us are dealing with way more than we should be dealing with. And I wanted to approach that with grace and respect. So the reader understood that, look, we're all in the same boat. Let's go on this journey together.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Humble the Poet on How to Stop Anxiety and Find Inner Peace | EP 595
I'm still on the journey and I'll forever be on this journey. And if we go through it together, I'll take the first steps by being vulnerable and open about it. And let's see if we can improve together as a collective.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Humble the Poet on How to Stop Anxiety and Find Inner Peace | EP 595
I think just a general statement about us as a species is I think our outside world has evolved and changed significantly quicker than our biology has. We're not even biologically designed to consume some of the colors that we're seeing. These colors don't exist in nature. There's a super normalness to them when we experience them.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Humble the Poet on How to Stop Anxiety and Find Inner Peace | EP 595
And if you think about the world that we live in, which is post-industrial, super modern, this is a world that's existed for maybe 300 years. And we as a creature in our form, we've been around for maybe 50 to 100,000 years looking the way and having the biology that we do. And For the majority of human history, we were always in smaller communities.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Humble the Poet on How to Stop Anxiety and Find Inner Peace | EP 595
We were in communities of probably 50 to 150 people. And we developed programming that put the needs of our village over ours, understanding that rejection would have led to our death, understanding that we are part of something greater than us. And then a lot of our modern day problems relate to the fact that we still have the software, but it doesn't work. when you have a million people.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Humble the Poet on How to Stop Anxiety and Find Inner Peace | EP 595
You can figure out who the coolest kid is in your middle school if you got 300 kids, but you can't figure out who the coolest kid in Manhattan is if there's 11 million people here. And that does something, that discombobulates our ability to process information.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Humble the Poet on How to Stop Anxiety and Find Inner Peace | EP 595
And what happens with that, and you include this concept of for the needs of the economy, we're being pushed towards a culture of hyper individualism. I think the first thing that I would love to say to the audience is, Understand your need for authentic connection with real people in real life. It's a non-negotiable. We need each other. We need each other.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Humble the Poet on How to Stop Anxiety and Find Inner Peace | EP 595
Not that we want, we need each other and it's our responsibility to create these connections. And it's really important to understand that modern society has provided us with fast food options. Just like eating fast food. If you're hungry, you can eat fast food. And it'll be quick. It'll be cheap. It'll be easy. And obviously it'll be really delicious because of all the flavoring they put in.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Humble the Poet on How to Stop Anxiety and Find Inner Peace | EP 595
But if you eat it long enough, you start to realize, wait, I'm still lacking nutritional value. We can't replace nutrition with something that's just delicious. And we have fast food versions of connection being on our phones. We have fast for dating apps, watching television, living through a screen. These are fast food versions of things.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Humble the Poet on How to Stop Anxiety and Find Inner Peace | EP 595
people encouraging us to feel sorry for ourselves, self-victimhood, that is pretty much developing a fast food connection with yourself saying, nobody understands what I'm feeling except for me. And it scratches, temporarily scratches that itch for connection. And what we have to understand is community, authentic community is really important.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Humble the Poet on How to Stop Anxiety and Find Inner Peace | EP 595
And I cite in the book, just even the way we have urban planning, the amount of lanes between where you live and across the street determines how often you'll cross the street to even see your neighbor over there. And this is the part that's important. When we have connection, we build more empathy. We have more opportunities to be seen. I'm fortunate here in New York City.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Humble the Poet on How to Stop Anxiety and Find Inner Peace | EP 595
I have a really cute puppy. So when I'm not with her, people aren't looking at me. But when I'm with her, everybody remembers her. And that encourages a lot of different conversations. A lot of local businesses know her. For her, every day is Halloween. She's walking into stores, getting free candy, free doggy treats, etc.,
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Humble the Poet on How to Stop Anxiety and Find Inner Peace | EP 595
But I think from this concept of us building connections and needing each other, it's really important that we prioritize connecting with people in ways that feel authentic to us. We, we often try to fit in and we often have to, maybe we have to fit in that work. We have to fit in that school. We have to fit in certain social circles.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Humble the Poet on How to Stop Anxiety and Find Inner Peace | EP 595
But figuring out where we authentically belong will give us a feeling that we'll scratch so many itches that we won't find ourselves spending too much time chasing these fast food distractions.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Humble the Poet on How to Stop Anxiety and Find Inner Peace | EP 595
Absolutely. And piggyback off that they have to be built and maintained. If you build a bridge between you and someone else, you got to clear the debris every now and then. There's going to be ruptures that are going to require repair. And again, we're in such a predicament where all this convenience is being provided to us and sold to us.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Humble the Poet on How to Stop Anxiety and Find Inner Peace | EP 595
that when we hit these moments of challenge we're like well i can just swipe right and find a new date or i can just go hang out with another friend and it's something that i don't blame anybody for feeling Because it's a challenge. Whenever we hit a roadblock, there's an option of either getting some grit and pushing through or just bouncing off of it and moving on to the next thing.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Humble the Poet on How to Stop Anxiety and Find Inner Peace | EP 595
And in a world where everything is becoming hyper-disposable, it makes us feel hyper-disposable and it makes others feel hyper-disposable, which again, severs connections or minimizes our motivation to build a connection with others.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Humble the Poet on How to Stop Anxiety and Find Inner Peace | EP 595
Absolutely. None of our greatest relationships will have a happily ever after. There's always going to be a day after. And that day still requires more work. And oftentimes we've just been signaled by
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Humble the Poet on How to Stop Anxiety and Find Inner Peace | EP 595
content that was designed to entertain us but now we think it's there to inform us that no you just find people you just find that friend and you guys are best friends for life and no work is needed there'll be no ruptures or you find your soulmate and you guys will just be perfect and happy and have no issues or you find that perfect job or you find that perfect place to live and there's no the only promise is change we're constantly changing and that's okay it's anticipating that change and being okay with the challenges
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Humble the Poet on How to Stop Anxiety and Find Inner Peace | EP 595
that come from that change. We can't avoid challenges because those are the gifts that allow us to grow and become more resilient.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Humble the Poet on How to Stop Anxiety and Find Inner Peace | EP 595
Oh, I think the first thing I had to unlearn. Is that anxiety is not my enemy. Anytime that I have anxious feelings, I'm not under attack. And I think also recognizing that anxiety to say my anxiety, I have anxiety. I think that wording is not helpful. So I think recognizing things through the lens of, is this helping me or is this not helping me? So I stopped judging things as good and bad.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Humble the Poet on How to Stop Anxiety and Find Inner Peace | EP 595
So instead of saying my anxiety or I have anxiety, now my base sentence has to be, I feel anxious because. And this requires me then to go inwards to figure out what's happening. I feel anxious because I'm about to miss a deadline. I feel anxious because Someone didn't reply to my text message. I feel anxious because Team Canada might be losing this hockey game, whatever it may be.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Humble the Poet on How to Stop Anxiety and Find Inner Peace | EP 595
But I think giving understanding anxiety is the most misunderstood emotion that we have. And one of the most intense, giving that I feel anxious and not labeling myself as I am anxious allows me to separate myself from my emotions, understand that they're not permanent, understand they're not tattoos on my forehead, labeling my identity. And that goes for the positive and the negative emotions.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Humble the Poet on How to Stop Anxiety and Find Inner Peace | EP 595
I feel happy. I feel scared. And for me, that was probably the first step in going through all of this and then recognizing some of the signs of anxiety and trying to make sense of them without getting too scientific. We have the polyvagal theory, which is our safety, fight or flight, freeze, and sometimes fawn.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Humble the Poet on How to Stop Anxiety and Find Inner Peace | EP 595
And understanding this idea too was like, hey, I can logically understand that I shouldn't be in danger now, but my body is responding in a totally different way. And for me, a lot of that learning came from doing jujitsu. In the book, I talk about doing jujitsu. And the reason I think jujitsu was a great teacher for me, it's because you roll with people.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Humble the Poet on How to Stop Anxiety and Find Inner Peace | EP 595
You're rolling, and jujitsu was grappling, or as I like to call it, professional cuddling. And you're rolling with somebody that you know holds no malice towards you, but the moment they grab you and get an arm around your neck, your body starts to panic. And it shows you a big separation within you between how your body responds to something and how your logical mind can.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Humble the Poet on How to Stop Anxiety and Find Inner Peace | EP 595
And very often when we are flooded with emotions, it's not our logical mind. It's not the prefrontal cortex that's responding. It's our survival brain. It's our amygdala. And what we're really trying to do to improve how we feel is to close that gap of reacting to something and converting that to a response and the inconvenient truth of that. And I've been learning this a lot.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Humble the Poet on How to Stop Anxiety and Find Inner Peace | EP 595
is that you can't talk yourself out of anxiety but you have to you can't think your way out of it you have to act your way and a lot of that comes through voluntarily putting yourself in situations that make you feel anxious when you're in a great place and so for me that's required understanding this concept of triggers and realizing that triggers aren't my enemy again another cultural concept that we have is don't trigger me that's triggering this is a trigger warning and it's like
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Humble the Poet on How to Stop Anxiety and Find Inner Peace | EP 595
The truth is a trigger is a roadmap. The trigger is revealing where we need to do the work. So for example, if I'm walking down the street and I walk by somebody and they're wearing a fragrance and the fragrance is the same fragrance that maybe an ex-girlfriend wore mine. She hurt me. That fragrance is going to trigger a pain. It's going to trigger an anxiety.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Humble the Poet on How to Stop Anxiety and Find Inner Peace | EP 595
Now in the moment, I feel when we do feel these triggers, we should be kind to ourselves. And be like, all right, whatever I need to do to get over this. Do I need to grab my phone, doom scroll? Do I need to smoke a cigarette? Do I need to distract myself, avoid Medicaid? Whatever I need to do, fine. In that moment, do it.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Humble the Poet on How to Stop Anxiety and Find Inner Peace | EP 595
But later, when you're in a good place, when you've hydrated, when you've had a good night's sleep, when you're in a good place, now let's voluntarily go back into that trigger. Let's journal about it. Maybe let's go to a department store. Let's smell it. Let's re-identify what that is and what that means to us. And this is the work that I realized it's voluntarily putting yourself in that.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Humble the Poet on How to Stop Anxiety and Find Inner Peace | EP 595
So, you know, back to jujitsu, somebody wrapping their arms around my neck made me freeze. Then doing enough jujitsu, them wrapping their arm around my neck would put me in fight or flight. Now that I've been doing jujitsu for a couple of years, my heart rate doesn't change. I stay calm and I can stay logical in those situations and be like, oh, he's trying to choke me. Does he have it?
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Humble the Poet on How to Stop Anxiety and Find Inner Peace | EP 595
Is his elbow in the right place? And to me now it feels much more like a game. And it's the same way you throw a kid in the swimming pool. They're going to freak out the first time. Enough exposure allows their nervous system to be like, hey, I'm not in danger. And a lot of times that we feel anxious is because Our survival brain says, hey, this rhymes with something that might be dangerous.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Humble the Poet on How to Stop Anxiety and Find Inner Peace | EP 595
And its definition of dangerous is so broad. Anything new, anything that kind of looks dangerous, anything that potentially harmed us in the past. And it really is the work that we have to do is to be like, hey, let's voluntarily put ourselves in these stressful situations. We talked about Wim Hof earlier. That's all he's encouraging us to do. Put yourself in some really cold ice water and
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Humble the Poet on How to Stop Anxiety and Find Inner Peace | EP 595
and watch your brain freak out, but stay in long enough until your brain's like, wait, we're not going to die. This is okay. And it builds resilience. It's not magic. It's a nice, simple concept of, We have to be nicer to ourselves, but at the exact same time, we have to voluntarily put ourselves through stress.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Humble the Poet on How to Stop Anxiety and Find Inner Peace | EP 595
And I think what I realized is, especially as a school teacher, is when we were kids, somebody else was in charge of putting us in these uncomfortable situations, in these new situations. They packaged it to be fun, but this is how we learned how to sound out letters and read. This is how we learned how to do math. This is how we learned almost every skill.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Humble the Poet on How to Stop Anxiety and Find Inner Peace | EP 595
But then as we become adults, we start to avoid anything that feels uncomfortable. And then that's when our growth almost becomes very stagnant. This is an opportunity for us to self-parent and self-advocate and be like, Hey, let's voluntarily find difficult things to do regularly. And that's how we train our resilience.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Humble the Poet on How to Stop Anxiety and Find Inner Peace | EP 595
So when hard things and challenging things find us, we're more prepared to deal with it. A healthy nervous system isn't a calm nervous system. It's a prepared nervous system. We need to be prepared. We don't need to be Zen all the time. We need to be prepared and allow our emotions to be expressed the way they need to be expressed at the appropriate times.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Humble the Poet on How to Stop Anxiety and Find Inner Peace | EP 595
So I'll say it bluntly. The world is a dumpster fire. It's not your fault. And there is nothing wrong with you for feeling anxious while existing here, okay? It is not a feeling to feel anxious in this current modern world that we're in. This is not your fault. And I think very often we internalize our challenges like, oh no, no, I should be able to handle this.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
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Everybody else around me is doing so well. And it's no, we're all trying our best to deal with this dumpster fire of a world. And it's really important to understand that it would be odd if you were completely emotionally regulated in this type of world.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Humble the Poet on How to Stop Anxiety and Find Inner Peace | EP 595
We are not designed for the amount of noise, the amount of light, the amount of stimulation, the exposure to bad news, the exposure to information, the exposure to different opinions.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Humble the Poet on How to Stop Anxiety and Find Inner Peace | EP 595
echo chambers and all of this on a regular basis this is not what we've been designed for as a species so it's going to be overwhelming it's going to be feel heavy it's going to feel challenging and it's going to constantly trigger our survival brain the amygdala to think that there is danger just around the corner so i think the first thing is to give yourself grace and understand this is not your fault now even though it's not your fault
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Humble the Poet on How to Stop Anxiety and Find Inner Peace | EP 595
it's still definitely your responsibility and you have options to make it easier or more difficult. And I think the key messages that I would put even before you have to read this book is like, hey, drink more water, get more sleep, be significantly nicer to yourself and hang out with people that make you feel good about yourself and allow you to be who you are authentically.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
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These are four options right there that will take some of that weight off your chest and some of that weight off of your shoulders. So when you deal with stress that you can't avoid, like your job, like raising your children, like navigating the landscape of what our society is, you have a little bit more bandwidth. You have a little bit more gas in the tank.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Humble the Poet on How to Stop Anxiety and Find Inner Peace | EP 595
And I think that's the important part, which is recognizing what's in our control and what's not in our control. We can't control so many of these outside factors. And it's very challenging for us to control some of the inside factors. So a lot of it needs to start with being kinder to ourselves. One word that I would highly recommend we divorce ourselves from is the word should.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Humble the Poet on How to Stop Anxiety and Find Inner Peace | EP 595
We keep saying, I should do this. I should do that. We're just creating tension by using that word. Let's replace it with the word could. I should wake up earlier. Let's change that to I could wake up earlier. I should eat healthier. Let's replace that. I could eat healthier. I should go to the gym. I should make more money.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Humble the Poet on How to Stop Anxiety and Find Inner Peace | EP 595
All of these things, every time we tell ourselves who we should be, we are creating tension by not allowing ourselves to accept who we are. Self-love is accepting us as we are, warts and all. Think about the person you love the most. You could probably write a whole list of their imperfections. None of that disqualifies them from love. It's the same thing for us.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
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For us to have a connection with ourselves means we need to accept ourselves. So shitting and saying we should be doing this and Phil Noseworthy is the man that put me into this idea. He said it funny. He goes, don't shit all over yourself. All the shitting isn't happening. And I think it's a beautiful way to look at it where it's just like, just let go of that word.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Humble the Poet on How to Stop Anxiety and Find Inner Peace | EP 595
let go of that word should catch yourself every time you use it internally and externally and question why why should i two and a half kids in a picket fence why should i find a life partner as soon as i graduate university why should i believe what this politician is telling me and i think it becomes a lot more interesting when we start doing that because it encourages an internal dialogue that i realize begins this infinite journey inwards
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Humble the Poet on How to Stop Anxiety and Find Inner Peace | EP 595
And what it'll allow you to do is to make a lot more improvements on how you feel on the inside. And it'll lead you down a journey of equanimity and equanimity just means prepared, managed. Thank you. Thank you.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Humble the Poet on How to Stop Anxiety and Find Inner Peace | EP 595
Thank you so much.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Humble the Poet on How to Stop Anxiety and Find Inner Peace | EP 595
something that we can orient ourselves towards. And then we just enjoy the journey, understanding that that journey is going to have its highs and its lows, its easy days, its very difficult days. And who we become through going through that is the only thing that matters.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Humble the Poet on How to Stop Anxiety and Find Inner Peace | EP 595
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Humble the Poet on How to Stop Anxiety and Find Inner Peace | EP 595
Yeah. So in 2010, I decided to walk away from my stable career as an elementary school teacher to pursue my creative itches at the time. I thought I was just a mediocre teacher. And when I was creating art after work, I was known as the tough one, the guy who was getting everyone to work extra hard and put in the extra hours. And it really helped me differentiate. Oh, maybe I'm not lazy.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Humble the Poet on How to Stop Anxiety and Find Inner Peace | EP 595
Thank you.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Humble the Poet on How to Stop Anxiety and Find Inner Peace | EP 595
I'm just doing the wrong thing. And I realized it was one of the first instances where I was able to give myself grace through observing myself and picking up on my patterns and being my own cheerleader to encourage myself to pursue a life that felt more authentic. And it was definitely not the easiest leaving a job and starting from scratch as a creative.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Humble the Poet on How to Stop Anxiety and Find Inner Peace | EP 595
Thank you. Thank you. ,,,
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Humble the Poet on How to Stop Anxiety and Find Inner Peace | EP 595
I'll feel guilty. And I think that guilt is the authentic guilt that we probably need, which is, Hey, that's not you. Let's correct that. I think what ended up happening now is being weaponized. A lot of our emotions have been weaponized via manipulation, via generations and generations of practice where our families
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Humble the Poet on How to Stop Anxiety and Find Inner Peace | EP 595
But definitely it was one of the largest turning points in my life where now as I live and have such unique, beautiful experiences, I wonder what if you didn't pull that trigger? You hadn't done it.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
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There's a quote in the book that says, your parents know how to push your buttons because they installed them. And guilt and shame become some of the biggest weapons. There's that level of manipulation.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Humble the Poet on How to Stop Anxiety and Find Inner Peace | EP 595
So I think for us, it's realizing that we have to be our own best friends and we have to just recognize that the guilt that we think we're feeling is really us doing an old practice of trying to metabolize other people's pain. I don't want to let John down. So I'm going to put myself through more pain So he doesn't feel it. And it sounds noble. John's a resilient person.
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And John can deal with me saying, hey, I can't make this interview today if I'm not feeling well. Or we have to realize that it's not helpful to take everybody's stuff upon us. And also recognize, as I said, you can't guilt and shame a caterpillar into becoming a butterfly. There's a process there. The same way that you can't rip open a caterpillar in a cocoon to help it become a butterfly quicker.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Humble the Poet on How to Stop Anxiety and Find Inner Peace | EP 595
So that definitely is one of those moments in my life that really changed everything, not just in my external world, but also in my internal world in terms of how I viewed myself and how I treated myself.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Humble the Poet on How to Stop Anxiety and Find Inner Peace | EP 595
Its muscles wouldn't have developed and the wings won't fly. So it's recognizing how often guilt and shame are used and becoming observant when you hear politicians using it, when you hear public figures using it, when you hear your family using it, when you start to realize that, hey, there's an internal dialogue that uses it for me too.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Humble the Poet on How to Stop Anxiety and Find Inner Peace | EP 595
And you realize, and I learned this a lot being an educator, working with little kids. It's you have to speak to them. You have to motivate them. Hey, buddy, see, you haven't done any work yet. Let's get to work. Because you can't just keep using guilt, shame, and fear on them.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
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and realizing that look when we're talking to ourselves we're talking to a scared child within that inner child and the goal here is to be effective and helpful i'm not talking about what's right and what's wrong or what's ideal versus what's not ideal i'm talking about what's actually effective what's going to get you the results and for me it's the same thing where it's like okay i got to go to jujitsu today but i'm not feeling good and i have the conversation with myself like hey are we
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
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Just because we don't want to go, or are we actually just not feeling good? And I can trust myself to have that authentic conversation and be like, Hey, look, man, we have a good history with each other. Let's do that. And I think about that as a self-employed individual being like, Hey, we've been self-employed since 2010. Let's look at our patterns.
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Have we ever missed a deadline or messed up work because we played an extra video game or we went out to watch a movie or we spent time with friends? No, we haven't. So we're not going to guilt or shame ourselves if we do it today. And I think. Collecting information about yourself and using that to pick up on your patterns as self-awareness, which I think is an important practice.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
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And it allows you to be nicer to yourself. And when we're nicer to ourselves, we'll get more results. It will give us the results that we think guilt and shame will get us. And this is really important because the guilt and shame will increase the tension, which by default will increase the anxious feelings. And the goal is
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Humble the Poet on How to Stop Anxiety and Find Inner Peace | EP 595
is to feel anxious feelings less so we only feel them when we absolutely need to.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Humble the Poet on How to Stop Anxiety and Find Inner Peace | EP 595
There's nothing wrong with you for feeling anxious. It's completely normal. It's like goosebumps. It's like hunger. It is a normal part of this. It is just an emotion. We have to do a lot more work to manage. Anxiety isn't anything we need to cure. It's just like hunger. You don't cure hunger. You manage it. And if you're feeling hungry, you don't ask yourself what's wrong with me.
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I'm feeling hungry. And also we've also had those moments where we feel hungry. And it wasn't actual hunger. Food wasn't, maybe we're actually dehydrated. Maybe we were actually stressed. Anxiety works the same way. We may feel anxious. And the secret to addressing and managing anxiety is to feel it. Anxiety is a signal.
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Imagine anxiety, you're driving in your car and the light turns on and it says low tire pressure. That's a signal to check your tire pressure. When you check your tire pressure, maybe it wasn't low. Then we're like, oh, something must be wrong with the signal. Let's address it. Or your tire pressure is low. You put the air in the tire and you won't feel that signal anymore.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Humble the Poet on How to Stop Anxiety and Find Inner Peace | EP 595
However, we are living in a society that says, instead of feeling your feelings, let's medicate. Let's avoid. Let's distract. So pretty much we live in a society that's telling us, hey, if you see that low tire pressure monitor in your car, just put some duct tape over it. If you hear your smoke alarm go off, don't look for the smoke. Just put some duct tape over it or take out the batteries.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
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That does not solve the problem. That's putting a bandage on a bandage. Let's feel our feelings. And unfortunately, resilience, when we practice resilience, it's not a warm, fuzzy feeling. It's a very uncomfortable feeling. For those who are listening right now, an easy day at the gym wasn't a good day at the gym. It's the same thing with life.
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We can't constantly chase an easy life because we're trading our resilience. That's the price we're paying for that. And our resilience comes from voluntarily putting ourselves in challenging places. We have to go out and find challenges. So we are better prepared when challenges find us. There's nothing wrong with us for having these types of emotions.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
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The work that we need to do is just to make sure these emotions show up at the right times and they're not misfiring just because we got an awkward text message or we have a deadline and they show up when it really matters, when there's real danger, when there's real change. And I think that requires us to be significantly nicer to ourselves, being significantly more patient with ourselves.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
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Patient doesn't mean waiting around. Patience just means respecting the time it takes for things to naturally occur. You know, you can't just turn up the oven and bake the pie quicker. We have to respect time that it takes. And it's the same thing with our personal growth and understand that this is a lifelong journey. We're not going to solve this by snapping our fingers or flipping a switch.
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This is a lifelong journey. For me, this book was inspired by the anxiety that I would feel around reaching out to people. Reaching out to people and saying, hey, can I come on your podcast? Hey, can I share this book with you? I felt so much anxiety around asking because I was so afraid of rejection. And I was trying to figure out why.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
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And then you start to learn that rejection is such an ancient fear of ours because when we live in these smaller communities, rejection meant ostracism, which meant death. So when we feel rejected, when we feel left out, our ancient software is still making that feel like death. So what do we do? We avoid, we distract, and we medicate. And what I realize now is that, no, I have to lean into that.
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I have to lean into rejection. If anything, I have to voluntarily get rejected as much as possible so I can build resilience from it. And I think everyone listening can understand that. We all hate being rejected, but we all fantasize about the idea of who we would be and what our life would look like if we were not afraid of it, if we were enthusiastic towards it.
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They say some of the most successful entrepreneurs get dopamine hits through rejection. And I think that's a really interesting idea. And for me, even now on this journey of promoting this new book, I've been reaching out I've been texting, messaging people and asking them to come on podcasts and help me promote the book. And some are replying. Some have surprised me.
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Some have completely went ghost. And all the emotions that I'm feeling, all I'm doing is I'm surrendering to them. And my definition of surrender isn't giving into them. It's observing them and saying, Hey, I texted so-and-so three days ago. They would always reply to me. Now, since I've asked for a favor, they haven't replied. How does that make me feel? And I journal about it.
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It makes me feel like I'm not worthy. It makes me feel like I'm not good enough. It makes me feel like the connection wasn't authentic. And I can explore these. I can explore these feelings. Could there be any other explanations? Maybe they're busy. Maybe they have anxiety around saying no. Maybe they can't accommodate this.
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And what it allows and it has taught me is that when I'm kinder to myself and have more grace for myself, I'm kinder to others and have more grace for others and vice versa. And this was the reason this book was such an important mission for me. It started as a selfish journey to deal with the anxiety that I was feeling.
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And it helped me realize that this is the biggest problem we are facing as people that currently, and I hope it doesn't change, but anxiety currently is the biggest problem that we're facing that hasn't been politicized. It hasn't become a polarizing topic. There isn't two sides to this conversation right now.
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And it's everybody of all walks of life, no matter how you live, no matter what your political leanings are, we feel anxious feelings. And I realize if we can address this as a collective, The anxiety that you're feeling isn't an individual problem. It is a societal problem, which means it's not going to have an individual solution. It's going to have a societal solution.
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And if we as people, as individuals and a collective address this, we are going to feel better as individuals and as a collective. And I don't think there's anybody, especially in this country, feeling that we're united, that we're in a good place right now. And I think this is the first step to us feeling better in our own skin, in our own universe inside, and in the universe around us.
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Really did. And I really appreciate that. As I said, every time, this is my fourth book through the major channels. And every time it's You're always pleasantly surprised. You make a new friend and this is us now. And at the same time, it goes the other way too, where you're unpleasantly surprised by others. It's a part of the journey.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
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And as I said, it's a great practice for grace and acceptance and a wonderful opportunity to sit there and observe the chaos that goes on in your mind and in your body. When you deal with rejection, when people say pass, When people may say, oh, no, the story isn't interesting enough for us to cover.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
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It's such an interesting thing when you start to realize the differences between worth and value and understanding how this kind of this game gets played. And it's been really interesting for me through my journey of self-love and self-acceptance of recognizing how much of this journey I want to play.
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And some of the best advice I was given, and I'll share it with you and anyone else listening, is I'm just on a mission. You watch those heist movies, you watch Ocean's Eleven and And George Clooney just goes around recruiting people for the mission. That's all I'm doing here. I'm on a mission to help people better manage their emotions. And I'm reaching out to people to be a part of this mission.
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Most definitely. And it's such an interesting position to be in. Because a fraction of the job is the teaching. And if you start thinking, going back to your own memories and thinking about your favorite teachers, you don't remember much about what they taught. It's really about if they made you feel seen, they made you feel heard and how they made you feel about yourself.
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And some people have given me a thumbs up and they're like, you son of a bitch, I'm in. And everybody else is not. And that's okay. If they're not on the mission today, they may be on it later or they may never be. And I think that's completely okay. As long as I'm being authentic to what matters to me. And that's part of this.
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And I've also been in this long enough to know that we have no idea how this stuff plays out. This book is selling a million copies and it could be the worst thing that ever happened to me. It could sell 10 copies and I can be completely happy. We don't know. We don't know how things play out anymore. And I think it's a fantastic opportunity and
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surrendering, observing and adjusting my stake in the outcome. But I definitely, with all my heart, really appreciate you sharing your time and your platform with me to have this conversation.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
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And I think that was a big, valuable lesson because I went in thinking that, oh, I love learning and I want to be a lifelong learner. And this would be a great environment for that. And then I realized this wasn't just going to be a knowledge base. It was not to fill anybody's head with knowledge, not mine, not theirs.
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It was to light a fire in both of them and I. And as you said, there's talking at an audience, talking to an audience, just talking through an audience. And it really is when we introduce emotion, vulnerability, honesty, is that when we build that authentic connection, which is a two-way street, even with
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Humble the Poet on How to Stop Anxiety and Find Inner Peace | EP 595
a platform like a podcast where we may not be able to have the conversations with the people on the other end, we can still create a two-way street of connection. And I think that's the most important part for us to learn and grow with each other.
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It is really interesting because you start to realize that the structure of the school, the classroom, the clock, the hierarchy in terms of your teachers, your principals, a lot of it really feels industrial. And you start to realize you're like, oh, this is really, you're preparing children for society, but really what society is an economy.
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You're preparing them to contribute to an economy, not contribute to a community. Our communities have become so big. We live in cities of millions of people now that we can't have these deep connections with our village, with the people, even in our own neighborhoods. And what ends up happening is in school, it's about, okay, let's get these basic lessons taught.
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Let's reward people with very specific learning styles. We're rewarding behavior that works well in a workplace. We're rewarding behavior that works well for somebody who's looking for a salary in two weeks off per year. And There are so many different learning styles and people absorb the world in so many different ways.
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Some people, a simple example would be if you want to teach children two plus two is four. Some kids, you can just write it on the chalkboard and they'll get it. Some kids, you're going to have to give them a bunch of Cheerios to play with and manipulate, and they have to get that structure that way. Some people, you can just tell it to them and they'll understand.
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There's auditory, there's visual, there's kinesthetic. And when you start to fill up a teacher's classroom with 35 kids, they don't have the bandwidth or the resources to approach each individual student the way they need to be approached.
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And then you start to recognize that some of the success and the failures with individuals as they grow up really has to do with a world just not being designed for them in the way they are. And that really robs us of some of the most important things that we need, which are soft skills,
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i'm sure you recognize it too just being able to work with people making friends cooperation co-existing sharing all of these are have they have such an important value not only just a society but even if you're working your job at some point everyone's got the same resume and they're going to hire the person they want to beat see every day and
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I think we really realized that a lot of this is really based on feeding something that may not be as important as we think it needs to be. As I said, the standardized testing, the reading, and we're not updating it. We're not updating it for the fact that there's a calculator in our phones. We're not updating it for the fact that AI exists or YouTube lessons exist.
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And it's a really interesting thing that I think individual parents have to take a look at when it comes to getting, preparing their kids for the world. I think you and I have both understood in our entrepreneurial journey that You got to learn as you go and you got to constantly learn. There's no finish line. Yeah. There's no paperwork.
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And I always, the analogy that I use is the zoo in the jungle. And it's like, even when I was working in the school, I felt like I lived in a zoo. I felt like I was in a cage every two weeks. Someone gave me my food, but I was trapped in a cage. And then when I left the safety and security of a job, I moved to the jungle.
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And I was definitely more free and I could go wherever I want, whenever I wanted. But that cage that held me in was also protecting me from predators. And it was also providing me food that I had to find myself. And there was a couple of years it took for me to adjust to it.
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But I'm grateful I did because I think, and I'm sure you can attest to this again as an entrepreneur, there are no more curveballs that we're not prepared for because every day is a curveball. All we're doing is practicing our swing to deal with the curveballs of life.
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And I think in the new world that we're in, that's probably one of the most important things that we can teach younger children is resilience through challenge. And the simple idea that the world will never get easier, you can only get stronger and have them correlate that to the societies we live in where every single product being sold to us is sold in the name of convenience.
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This will make it easier to get your food. This will make it easier to watch a movie. This will make it easier for you to get from point A to point B. Not understanding that we're not just paying with money, we're paying with resilience. And then our lack of resilience is an abundance of anxiety, stress, tension. And when we have an abundance of those, then we start to lack empathy.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Humble the Poet on How to Stop Anxiety and Find Inner Peace | EP 595
We start to lack our ability to connect with other people.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Humble the Poet on How to Stop Anxiety and Find Inner Peace | EP 595
the idea the way education is currently structured it almost feels like it's sabotaging us from a mental health perspective but also from the perspective of us having even basic empathy for each other and caring about each other and hyper individualism is great for those who want to profit but it's not so good for us to be excited about getting out of bed in the morning
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
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Absolutely. And I think the important thing to recognize as well is, especially during the pandemic, how much did we rely on creativity to keep our lips above water? We were listening to podcasts. We were watching Netflix. We were listening to music, movies. These are children that never grew up creating this. And we depended on that. We depend on music when we're stuck in traffic.
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We depend on these things. And we should value them accordingly. This stuff isn't just here for fun. It is a necessary part of our system. It's a necessary part for our mental health and our ability to get through the day. And it can't just be for entertainment. It has to be storytelling because as a species, that's how we progress. We write our stories. We share our stories.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Humble the Poet on How to Stop Anxiety and Find Inner Peace | EP 595
And we learn from other people's stories.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Humble the Poet on How to Stop Anxiety and Find Inner Peace | EP 595
Because when I was going through my research, and I came across some of these activities, It's almost presumptuous to assume that somebody needs to unclench their jaw and take their tongue off the roof of their mouth, but that's where it's already at. It's just the idea of the body keeps score. Our bodies are already compensating for the stress and the tension that we're feeling.
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Humble the Poet on How to Stop Anxiety and Find Inner Peace | EP 595
And I wanted to meet people where they're at and say, look, we're all going through a difficult time. And it's important that you understand that I see where you're coming from. And I'm not here to promise you magical inner peace for the rest of your life. What I'm here to do is start a dialogue with you and address some of the despair that we all feel.
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Despair meaning the hopelessness when we think we've run out of options. This book isn't a magic pill to rid people of anxiety. This book is a book full of options that we may not have considered to manage our emotions more effectively. and navigate this world which is getting heavier and more challenging every single day.