Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
Escaping the Drift - The Weekly Drop: Embracing Life's Unfairness
Fri, 8 Nov 2024
Growing up, my kids would often hear me say, "Life isn't fair, and that's okay." This week, I unravel the complexities of fairness and how it can trap us in a victim mentality. Inspired by Mark Manson's bold ideas and Robert Sapolsky's evolutionary insights, I share how acknowledging life's inherent unfairness can actually be empowering. We look at fascinating studies involving capuchin monkeys, showing that our sense of fairness is practically wired into us. But here's the twist: by shifting our perspective, as Viktor Frankl suggests in "A Man's Search for Meaning," we can turn life's injustices into opportunities for strength and growth. As we close this episode of Escaping the Drift, I want to extend my heartfelt gratitude to each listener who has journeyed with us. Your support is invaluable, and I encourage you to continue engaging with our community at escapingthedrift.com. By signing up for our mailing list, leaving a review, or simply sharing our podcast with friends, you help us spread the message of self-empowerment even further. I'm eager to continue this conversation with you next week, as we uncover more strategies to break free from the constraints of a victim mindset and take control of our lives. 💬 Did you enjoy this weekly drop? Tell us all about it in the comment section below! ☑️ If you liked this video, consider subscribing to Escaping The Drift with John Gafford ************* 💯 About John Gafford: After appearing on NBC's "The Apprentice", John relocated to the Las Vegas Valley and founded several successful companies in the real estate space. ➡️ The Gafford Group at Simply Vegas, top 1% of all REALTORS nationwide in terms of production. Simply Vegas, a 500 agent brokerage with billions in annual sales Clear Title, a 7-figure full-service title and escrow company. ➡️ Streamline Home Loans - An independent mortgage bank with more than 100 loan officers. The Simply Group, A national expansion vehicle partnering with large brokers across the country to vertically integrate their real estate brokerages. ************* ✅ Follow John Gafford on social media: Instagram ▶️ / thejohngafford Facebook ▶️ / gafford2 🎧 Stream the new Weekly Drop here: Listen On Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/7cWN80gtZ4m4wl3DqQoJmK?si=2d60fd72329d44a9 Listen On Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/escaping-the-drift-with-john-gafford/id1582927283 ************* #weeklydrop #johngafford #fairness #victimmentality #empowerment #lifesinjustices #selfempowerment #evolutionaryperspective #purpose #suffering #adversities #strengths #mailinglist #community #podcast #support #gratitude #personalanecdotes #control #takingcontrol #constraints #motivations #strategies #breakfree #notgivingafuck #thesubtleartofnotgivingafuck #escapingthevictimmentality #findingpurpose #transformingadversities #growth #injustices #life #review #sharing #website
Chapter 1: What is the main message about life's fairness?
From the podcast that gets you from where you are to where you want to be, escaping the drift, this is The Weekly Drop with Jon Gafford. No matter what platform you're watching or listening to us on, make sure you like, subscribe, and comment. And now, The Drop. Back again for another weekly episode of The Weekly Drop, man. My little solo pod coming at you to help you.
Chapter 2: How can we escape the victim mentality?
And a lot going on this week. This week... of people not happy, man. A lot of people not happy. A lot of people are happy. A lot of people are unhappy. And if you go on your social media and you head down the feed, I seem to see a lot of the same kind of message, which is it's not fair. Life is not fair. How could this have happened? Life's not fair. I'm a victim to everything in my circumstances.
It's not fair. Well, that's what I want to talk about this week is how to escape from that victim mentality of fairness. And I wanna let you know, first of all, if you're listening and you're a person that says it's not fair, don't be offended because it is programmed into you to feel that way. I'm gonna explain why in a minute. But I wanna kinda talk about the idea of fair.
Chapter 3: What lessons did John learn from raising his kids?
And in my household, raising my two small kids, not small kids anymore, now 17 and about to be 15, from the time they were little, Every time something wasn't fair in an argument over a video game or what movie we were gonna watch or a bag of popcorn, my response was always the same, which is this. There's no such thing as fair. Fair is where you buy cotton candy and ride rides.
Fair doesn't exist because I wanted to program my kids to not see the world as something that was happening to them, but rather as something that they were happening to. And the first book, obviously, if you're going to talk about this subject, that you've got to go to is The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck by Mark Manson.
Chapter 4: How does Mark Manson's book relate to fairness?
Because in that book, it's really just the entire book is emphasizing that life is inherently unfair. And the sooner that you kind of come to grips with that and realize it, the better off you're going to be. Because once you're free of expecting everything to be fair, you're no longer going to be constantly disappointed when it's not.
and instead using that energy to focus on things you can control, instead of lamenting on in your car, crying about the injustices of the world, that is what leads to real empowerment. Now, again, if this is you, if you're somebody that sat in your car and cried into a TikTok video over the election this week, it's not your fault. You are genetically predisposed to this.
Chapter 5: What does evolution tell us about our sense of fairness?
The evolution of fairness is a real thing. There's these like, even monkeys, right? There's a study that was done, they call them Kapuchkin monkeys. Sorry, that's kind of a tongue twister after I just got off stage for two hours.
But Kapuchkin monkeys, and they did a study where they put two of them out there and had them do a simple task and then they would give each one of them a little slice of cucumber. Well, after they got used to getting the cucumber, then what they started doing was giving each one of them a grape.
Now, it didn't take but one or two grapes before the other one lost its monkey mind and started freaking out and screaming because it was like, hey, in its little monkey way, that ain't fair. I'm doing the same thing. So through evolution, this has been programmed into you. And the book Behave by Robert Sapolsky is talking about the sense of fairness through evolution developed
Chapter 6: How can reframing injustices empower us?
in small tribes as a way to be equitable with resources. For example, we're a small tribe in New Guinea. There's only so much grain. I get some grain, you get some grain. We all get enough grain to survive and it becomes this equitable sharing. And that's fine in a small tribe island type environment. But in modern society, it just doesn't work that way.
And expecting things to always be fair and equitable is just not normal. You're just setting yourself up for complete and total success. Now, a good way to overcome this, if this is something that you may struggle with, is reframing those things, reframing that injustice. You know, I just did a podcast that just, it's gonna get launched up next Tuesday with Barbara Majewski.
Chapter 7: What examples illustrate turning adversity into purpose?
She is constantly on the Today Show. She's been on Fox and Friends. She's a television personality. And in that interview, we talked about her purpose and her big why, which was her brother, was born with a neurological issue that is going to require him to have care for the rest of his life. And she did not look at that situation.
A lot of people look at that, you know, as well as me, you know, she's the oldest, she's going to, you know, she takes this responsibility, but she uses that not as what has the world done to me, but she says, that's my motivation to go serve. You know, I can protect not just my brother, but all of the other people that have this, that are like my brother in the world.
Chapter 8: How can personal responsibility transform unfair situations?
You know, my buddy John Driscoll Hopkins of the Zac Brown Band came down with ALS, which is terrible. And a lot of people would have just gone into a shell and given up, but that's not who my dude is. He's still on tour with the band. He started Hop on a Cure, which is a fund looking for a cure for ALS, trying to not just help himself, but help everybody struggling with that disease.
He looked at it and said, I'm going to take this and take this unjust situation and transform it as my opportunity to grow and help others. And in A Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl, they talk about finding purpose in suffering and reframing it into strength. And sometimes some of the things that...
Are your biggest adversary, are the things that are bothering you the most, are the things that you perceived as these injustice in the world can become that fuel to drive you to something greater? You know, you've got to take, it's got to become a personal responsibility to see unfair situations as a chance for personal development rather than as obstacles.
And, you know, one of the simplest things I ever heard to start you on a path of overcoming this stuff, one of the easiest things I ever heard was my buddy Kent Clothier said this, talking about choosing responsibility over looking for injustice and fairness, which says shifting from complaining and unfairness to taking responsibility for your own life. And the easiest way to do that is this.
Here's a real simple technique that you can use to start this out. which is you can simply stop saying, I can't. Stop saying I can't. Eliminate that from your vocabulary and change I can't to I choose not to, because that becomes empowering. You know, when people are like, oh, I just can't lose weight. No, no, no, you choose not to lose weight. Oh, I can't get all my work done.
No, no, no, you choose not to get it done. And when you start reframing it in that, where the onus and responsibility of your personal success falls solely on your shoulders, Well, that becomes empowering. That's something you can do. And if you want a book on that, dude, Extreme Ownership by Jocko Wilnick is all about that.
It's probably the Bible about personal responsibility and taking extreme ownership of your own shit. You know, you've got to take it. You got to be responsible for your own actions. You got to stop pointing the finger and start pulling the thumb. You know, if you look at the core values of a bunch of my companies, I talked about it today with the group I was speaking to earlier.
And the core value, one of the most important ones to me is we look internally for solutions to our problems, which means stuff's going to happen in life and business and everywhere else. But rather than looking first for the reason externally as to why it happened to you, look for what you could have done, if anything, to avoid it. Did I get in a wreck? Yes. Was I speeding? No.
I mean, you got to look for things that put the onus back on you because that's empowering. Because if you're walking around all day, you know, waiting for something bad to happen to you or being upset because something happened to you, there's no controls there. Like what a miserable way to walk through the planet.
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