Transcript
Welcome to the Kickass life podcast with Bill Parsons your how to guide to living a meaningful and courageous life by mastering your health wealth life meaning and relationships and now your host bill Parsons
Everybody welcome to Kickass life my name is bill Parsons and in this episode we’re going to talk briefly about our comfort zones and getting out of them you know most people research shows are not really happy with their lives or where they’re adding their lives in many ways whether it’s their relationships or their health their finances their faith their friendships their family you know I I think that there’s the and I talked about this in other episodes what I call the five.
And I think if we if we get these five’s right correct if we manage these parts of our lives more effectively the rest of our lives really become pretty easy to live because the rest of the stuff is kind of minutia it’s the small stuff. But most people major in minor things they spend their lives doing the little stuff the minor stuff the stuff that doesn’t really matter and I think they do that for a couple of reasons. But one of them I think it gives them a sense of accomplishment you know they have their To Do List for the day or they have the things they want to get done and they they tackle the little things first so they can scratch these things off their list but by the end of each day what’s happened is they’ve left the big things. The important things the things that matter in their lives, the 5F’s is what I call them, those things are left undone unmanaged and if we’re not managing the biggest components the biggest pieces, the most important parts of our lives, well then we’re really not living probably very good lives or high quality lives.
And that’s the whole point of the Kickass Life Podcast is to help people make better decisions find ways to live lives that are more impactful more meaningful have more purpose behind them are driven by decisions that they make that drive them towards their ultimate purpose and meaning in life because I think when it’s all over and at the end of our days the little things that we thought were so important that we got angry about or frustrated over or worried about a lot of those things aren’t going to matter we’re not going to remember those but the big things the things that we should have been dealing with the 5F’s we left those things undone unmanaged unmeasured essentially if you will so our goal is to figure out what those 5F’s are right and we’ll talk about those and then we’ve got to get leverage on ourselves and Marshall our resources both our willpower and our subconscious mind so that we can start driving towards the goals that we have in those big 5 areas by creating habits that support those areas you know.
The 5F’s are finances right fitness family flourishing if you handle your finances you’ve got those under control you’ve got your fitness your health under control you have your family and friends your relationships under control you have a strong faith-based background whatever that might be for you for me it’s Jesus Christ but whatever that might be and then you are constantly growing you’re flourishing right you have a growth mindset you’re pushing toward constant and never ending improvement you’re reading books and taking courses and listening to podcasts and watching videos and pushing yourself to grow and learn more and connect diverse pieces of information together so we’ve got to manage those 5F’s right fitness family finances faith and then flourish if we do those five things right I think everything falls into place if you want to add a six one or this would be for me on the 2nd tier because if I’m doing those five things effectively I think the 6th 1 occurs automatically but maybe not so we’ll throw it in there and I think that’s 620 is fun I think our lives life is filled with pain it is I mean to be alive is to experience and suffer pain physical pain emotional pain psychological pain the pain the pain of grief the pain of pain right the pain of physical ailment there’s all kinds of pain out there so our goal should be to set our lives up in such a way that we’re reducing the amount of friction that we deal with in every area of our lives and creating the smoothest path we can for ourselves to achieve those meaningful purpose driven goals that we have but to do those things we have to push ourselves out of our comfort zone now I’m telling you like everybody else you know I have a comfort zone you know whether it’s my environment or you know that my relationships or my financial situation my fitness my health whatever it might be we all have comfort zones I have mine and when I know that I need to push myself outside them because I’m either I’ve either stagnated and I’m failing to grow any further I’m starting to get a little here’s another F for you right I’m starting to get a little frustrated in whatever area of my life it might be I don’t know what that is.
But it could be a relationship it could be my finances aren’t where I want them to be it could be my fitness isn’t where I want it to be it could be all of those if you’re not managing 1 you typically aren’t managing the others not always but a lot of times if you’re not managing one of the five apps you’re probably not managing any of them to some degree and so you have imbalance in every area which can create some real frustration and when we when we deal with that frustration that’s when we know we have got to push outside our comfort zone we’ve got to do something that’s going to push us outside our comfort zones into some pain because growth is pain isn’t it I mean it just that’s the reality if you want to put on muscle you’ve got to exercise lift weights do resistance training do conditioning of all kinds and all of that is going to create a little pain you’re going to have muscle soreness right? You’re going to you’re going to have the the actual physical pain of doing exercise if you haven’t done it in a long time. You know a little bit of the pain changing your diet not eating the food you want to eat but eating the food the food you know you have to eat or even reducing your caloric intake gonna cause a little pain there right so we know that all growth is outside that bubble of our comfort zone and the second we push ourselves out of that bubble of our comfort zone we are going to meet resistance whether it’s emotional resistance physical resistance right it’s mental resistance of ourselves resistance from other people our family our friends right who knows we’re going to meet pain we’re going to meet resistance it’s going to pop up it’s going to try to pull us back into the bubble and tell us we don’t need to grow things are they’re fine just the way they are and you might have momentarily convinced yourself that that’s the case but then a couple weeks a couple months the frustration begins to mount again for you and you’re feeling stuck and you need to get out of that and you know that you do and as a result of that you’re beginning to feel this frustration
So what do you do you create some plans you make a list you design what you’re going to do and then you step outside that comfort zone and immediately what do you do you hit the wall of pain the wall of resistance the wall of ridicule all kinds of stuff but what we have to realize is most of that has absolutely no real impact on us unless we let it have impact we have got to make the decision decide right to cut off all other paths and decide that this is important to us we’ve got to get that leverage on ourselves to make these changes because we got whether we know there’s going to be resistance and there’s going to be pain on the outside as we try to climb that metaphorical mountain towards our our goal which is driven by our purpose and our mission right so we got to know there’s going it’s going to be there it’s going to show up we need to figure out a way to get leverage on ourselves to do that when I when I train transit employees right when I’m teaching bus operators subway operators airline employees you know you name it anybody in the transit industry when I trained them with the roadworthy communications program the number one thing I spend time talking about virtually regardless of the program I’m teaching whether it’s leadership or whether it’s team building or whether it’s tactical communication or de escalation or conflict management or effective communication for leaders or any of the courses that I teach I always start with mindset because it’s all here it’s all in our mind it’s the schemas and the paradigms the beliefs the values all that stuff we carry inside our head which is driving us to behave in certain ways so exposing those things and then learning to manage them and measure them is critical all of this everything we’re talking about requires that we step outside our comfort zone we’re learning new skills learning new ways to think learning new ways to create plans so that’s going to require some discomfort on our part we have to figure out how do we get leverage on ourselves to get through that dip in the road right to deal with that resistance
Because the resistance seems like a lot seems like it’s formidable it seems like it’s a a force to be reckoned with but in reality when we deal with it when we actually confront it and we’ve got some leverage right we’ve got the and the leverage is going to be the why why are you doing this why have you decided to start exercising and change your diet why have you just started to decided to start managing your money more effectively why have you decided to learn better communication skills to build better relationships you got to know your why because when you’re out there and you’re doing the battle that it requires to push through the resistance and the obstacles that are going to be in your way you got to know why you’re doing it because if you don’t have a big enough why right Frederick Nietzsche put it this way he basically said if you have a big enough why you can endure anyhow you’ll be able to go through whatever the resistance is if there’s a big enough motivator leverage to push you through the resistance that’s just the fact if you don’t have big enough why if it’s really not something that’s a burning fire inside of you that’s propelling you motivating you driving you to make these changes and stay the course then it’s really going to be easy to abandon the mission and go back to the old way because believe me the comfort zone is sitting there waiting for you to return to it to plop yourself back into your easy chair to flip on the television just start scrolling the social media feed just start eating the junk food just start doing all the destructive behaviors you know have led you to the place where you you had this overwhelming frustration that you knew something had to change so in the next episodes we’re going to talk about some tools you can use visualization right is a major tool for that how to create a compelling future for yourself how to rehearse dealing with the challenges how to anchor in success how to build really powerful habits that you can put into place incremental steps small changes in behavior that will drive you out of your comfort zone keep you on course on that true north course headed towards your ultimate goal which ultimately right in the end is serving the whole reason you’re here you know I know many of us know all of us know that to get to where we’re going we can’t keep doing the things we’re doing because if that was going to be a successful strategy we would already be there we know there has to be change change requires pain that’s going to have to push us the change is pushing us out of our comfort zone into the growth zone and that’s where we’re looking to get into that growth zone you know we do transit training all over the United states my goal is to ultimately affect how these bus operators subway operators airline pilots you know airline employees other transit professionals you know frontline supervisors and managers on the transit platform I want to really transform their thinking tricks or techniques or hacks to just get a little better at communication I want to fundamentally give them the tools to step outside their comfort zone and transform themselves you see the transformation I guess if you want to sort of in pictorial form and sort of when you take a square and turn it into a circle that’s a transformation OK when you take a square and make it a bigger square or a smaller square that’s change we’re looking for transformation we’re looking for something that’s transformative that really you know shifts the way people think which is going to shift the way they behave not just at work on the bus or on the subway or on the platform not just dealing with customers you know behind the counter but it’s going to shift how they think about everything the way they behave all the time their attitude towards life and work how they treat other people how they all of those things are critical and they all require a major shift in mind which is outside the comfort zone of the way we’ve been thinking all these years so it all requires a really high level of change to get to where we want to go we can’t keep doing the things we’re doing we’ve got to get out of the comfort zone the number one thing is to create the plan know where it is you want to go right and have a pretty pretty clear specific goal in mind and all that is is the target that may shift over time that may even change but at least it’s it’s it’s drawing you towards something that matters to you then we construct the you know the sub goals to get there the habits that will get us to the ultimate goal and those habits we’re talking about those are the major comfort zone shifts the habits eating an apple instead of a snicker bar right going to bed early instead of staying up late reading a book instead of scrolling through social media like taking an online course you know all kinds of these are all going to require shifts in the way we think and to to step outside our comfort zone so in in episodes to come we’re going to talk about how do we get that leverage so we know where we want to go we know what the target is we’ve created some some some shifts the habits that we know are going to lead us to where we want to go but how do we when we when we get to that resistance and it’s not just going to be one time we’re going to meet resistance over and over and over and over again because we’re constantly and never ending improving work it’s the the Japanese philosophy of Kaizen growth constant growth that’s going to require that we’re constantly morphing constantly changing right there’s an old saying if you’re ripe you’re rotting if you’re green you’re growing you always want to be growing which is going to require that you begin to make your new normal constant change which is part of life embrace it and take charge of it and own it as opposed to trying to be and instead as opposed to being drug into change because eventually change is coming you want to be on the on the on the front wave of that change which means you’ve got to create those habits which are going to be a little uncomfortable in the beginning when the resistance pops up how do you use some of the mental tools of visualization or self hypnosis or self talk or the change in focus or Physiology to keep yourself moving forward so that you don’t let the resistance stop you in your tracks or push you back or you know the sirens right lure you back to the safety of the comfort zone which in reality is not a safe place because if you’re staying in one place and not growing that’s not a safe place to be you’re going to be very poorly prepared for a future that’s coming and the only way to do that is to constantly be growing outside your comfort zones so in future episodes we’re going to talk about how to get that leverage how to lay out those plans and how to get where we want to go so hopefully this was helpful for everybody listening to Kickass live podcast you can also catch us on YouTube on our videos you can go to rdrwctraining.com or you can go to the kickoff life podcast which is on apple and Spotify and and the episodes will all be there and we’re constantly posting new episodes or you can go to our bctraining.com and the episodes are there along with the blog post of the episodes that we have and lots of resources that you can use I look forward to seeing you in future episodes
Hey everybody welcome drew the Kickass life podcast my name is bill Parsons and in this episode we’re going to talk about the struggles that we face and I know at the time that we’re dealing with those struggles those setbacks maybe what you would define as a failure or a challenge in our life whether it’s a health challenge right it fits into the one of the 5F’s it may be a financial challenge financially times are very tough and I think going to get tougher you know we are going to this this country as a result of making lots of bad spending decisions and and printing money like there was no tomorrow there’s going to be a financial piper pay for that and unfortunately you and I are going to be the people who pay the piper so I I totally understand financial struggles that people be having I’ve had them right so you know whether it’s a financial struggle maybe it’s a fitness a health struggle maybe it’s a relationship challenge right maybe it’s maybe it’s a faith struggle you’re struggling with your faith you know maybe it’s a flourishing challenger you’re stagnant you don’t seem to be able to make any growth even when you try or you just don’t seem you’ve hit that peak you’ve hit that plateau where man you’re doing things and you think you’re doing the right things but man you’re just you don’t you’re not seeing the growth what we have to know that we’ve got to do the work right we’ve got to do the freaking work and we can’t we’ve got to stay the course we can’t get off the path and allow ourselves to be lured back into that comfort zone like we talked about in the future in a previous episode we can’t allow ourselves to be lured back there again
because there is no there there you know the future is created in the present against the backdrop of the past so even though in this moment I’m dealing with whatever struggles anxieties fears worries and we’re going to talk about how to manage those things because I know it’s tough believe me it’s really easy for your mind to want a future pace to go out into the future and find some **** to worry about believe me I totally I get it because I I’ve done it too and I have to sit back from it and realize this is where my faith comes in you know I hand it all to God I’ve got to because I don’t I control only a few pieces I can control my thoughts which is if I’m worrying engaged in anxiety you know stress fear I’m not controlling my thoughts they’re controlling me I’m allowing my mind to run amok you know and get into this the dark shadowy areas shift that might happen and you know most of the things you and I worry about are things we have no power to control you know for me we’ve got to learn to let that stuff go and I’m not saying it’s easy it’s simple but it’s not easy to do because it’s a lifetime of doing it this way we have been taught by our family to stress and worry about all this stuff right that’s out there most of which we have 0 power to control the things we do control I know in many ways don’t seem like big things but they are if you can control your thoughts right because your mind man it wants to whiz all day long you flip it on you let it just run around in your head and it’s running this cassette tape of 70 thousand thoughts a day and negative or dark or not so productive about yourself other people in the world it’s really easy to start to let that stuff right that dialogue in your head then begin to affect what you’re focusing on now you begin to focus on ohh what if I go bankrupt what if I look what if I I get sick and die
or or I have a major medical illness or somebody I care about dies or I lose them or they get ill right I I don’t seem to be able you know I’m having all these challenges where’s where’s God when I need him right so we begin to question our faith and and then as a result of that the flourishing part that just stops doesn’t it I mean if you’re out there worried about your finances and your fitness and your family right and your faith and you’re struggling with all these things because you’ve let your mind run amok man the flourishing just the brakes get put on that because there’s no way you’re growing in a positive way in one of the five areas that we talk about right while worrying about those all at the same time I mean they they sort of are diametrically opposed to each other so learning to manage this mental process is and it’s just it’s critical and one of the things we have to realize is that the struggles that we have they tend to define us don’t they they tend to become who we are you know Jim rohn used to put it this way he said when we when we fail we tend to ponder when we succeed we tend to party and he said you always learn more from pondering than you do partying and boy that’s the truth and learning to reframe the struggles that we deal with every day and that’s a critical piece of getting that all important leverage on yourself you know there’s been lots of times in my life whether it’s a business issue or relationship or a financial one even some pretty major health issues in my life where I step back you know and you shake your head and you think man I think I I thought I was doing everything right
I was making good decisions I had a plan in place you know I wasn’t executing perfectly nobody does but and then things just kind of fall apart around you and you that’s where you start to struggle a little bit with your faith right you think man why did God let this happen those are of course they’re all the wrong questions we’re asking ourselves but when we do that we start to drive the dialogue in our head in a very negative direction which then begins to really narrow our focus lens down on just the bad stuff in our lives which then begins to affect our Physiology if you remember the state management pyramid that I’ve talked about in other episodes or if you’ve ever been to one of my seminars where i talk about deescalation or tactical communication or team building leadership and i do a lot of this in the transit industry right buses subways we do a lot of transit training and in those so the idea would be to stop yourself from in mentally and emotionally crashing in the 1st place realizing that you have power over certain things the things you do have power and control over control those things control your thoughts control your emotions control choices that you make and control the actions that you take make sure that the decisions you make the actions you take the thoughts you’re having the emotions you’re experience are all driving you towards your ultimate good even when you deal with setback with challenge with resistance we have to look at it as you know for me one of the things I say to myself when I don’t get the outcome I want in areas of my life God’s delays are not God’s denials maybe I’m not ready for this challenge maybe I’m not I think I am I think I’m up to it but believing in God I know that he knows whether I’m up to the challenge or not so as a result of that you know I got to step back and instead of asking myself why this happened I need to ask myself what can I learn from this experience where’s the opportunity here what can I do to make this better you know I’ve got to ask myself better questions because then I’m going to get better answers out of my subconscious mind out of my brain if I ask the wrong questions why did this happen to me why do I fail right why do I have to face these challenges unfortunately life is challenged life is risk life is filled with pain we’ve got to accept those facts and then operate within them knowing the best laid plans of mice and men go astray.
And no battle plan survives first contact with the enemy it just doesn’t because we tend to overestimate our skills many times we underestimate the challenges and obstacles that are going to be in our way we tend to believe we can do it faster and cheaper than we can as a result of all the challenges I faced in my life in every area of my life you can imagine when I’m looking at a project I don’t care what it’s about whether it’s finances or faith or fitness or family or just personal growth and flourishing I double the amount of time it’s going to take me so if I look at that and go my immediate my immediate mind the flash of intuition says ohh that’s going to take 30 days I double it immediately because I I know my mind I know my mind automatically underestimates the time so I tell myself ohh man bill you can do that in 30 days I know I know it’s going to take 60 or longer so I I account for that right I put it in I budgeted into my equation if I look at and go this is going to cost $60,000 I double that number this is going to cost 120 a $180,000 that way if if not if let me rephrase that when obstacles present themselves when set back occurs when resistance occurs I have a Bank of emotion I have an emotional bank over here I have a financial bank over here I have a time bank over here that’s got deposits in it so when that stuff happens when that resistance shows up I I don’t go to my bank accounts and find out that they’re empty I have accounted for an extra 30 days I have accounted for an extra $60,000
I have accounted for the emotional baggage the energy I’m going to have to expend whatever it might be that way if I don’t meet any resistance or I meet very little resistance along the way this path towards whatever goal I’ve set I am pleasantly surprised and now I have equity in the bank that I can use on other projects other ideas maybe just downtime to enjoy that 6th off which is fun but for me doing these projects is fun so I that’s why I do most of the things I do I go man that would be kind of neat that’s cool that would be fun to do out of the things I do but I gotta budget for that I gotta build it into what I’m doing because if not then I’m I’m bankrupt before I start I’m starting at a zero and now I’m digging holes so I build into that because of the struggles I faced in the past it is taught me to do those things so as much as at the moment I didn’t like the struggle I hated it man this sucks losing $60,000 sucks a relationship falling apart sucks your health failing you for some reason whether it’s your fault or not sucks but you got to kind of metaphorically emotionally physically step back from it look at it again and ask yourself where’s the lesson here what can I learn from this experience how can I recoup from this experience you know where’s the opportunity that’s presenting itself what can I learn those are way better questions than and falling into poor little old me or pity parties right we’ve got to avoid those things because all they do all feeling sorry for ourselves pity and pride parties and all that stuff we engage in all it does is prolong the struggle and enhance the suffering it is what it is this is where we are at and I have to accept that that’s acceptance right
if you want to look at it from a psychological point of view it’s sort of like acceptance commitment therapy ACT except where you’re at now by acceptance I don’t mean resignation I don’t mean you just OK and then you give up no I’m saying you just accept reality for what reality is this is where we are then you commit to making the changes and putting in the effort and doing the work that needs to be done and then you take massive focused action to pull yourself out of what it is you’re dealing with that’s always been a better strategy for me but believe me your ego your mind it immediately wants to fall back into that poor little old me and we all are susceptible to this we’ve all engaged in it me included many times but man sometimes you get hit pretty hard by life it’s really easy to step back and get pretty depressed get upset get frustrated get angry and none of that’s productive it’s just it’s not it doesn’t even feel good to go through it it doesn’t feel good you’re creating the suffering pain is part of life but suffering I believe is a choice most of the time not always but I think many times we choose to suffer by prolonging the pain by pulling ourselves through the pity party and the pride party right and the poor little me and all that stuff all it does is prolong the suffering and the pain that we’re in and then once we have decided we’ve done that long enough then we have to get back to the work of getting ourselves back to where we want to be accepting where we’re at and if we do it long enough or too long we can all we’re doing now is not only prolonging the pain and the suffering but pushing ourselves even further away from the ultimate goals that we have so it serves no purpose so the second my brain wants to run to ohh why why you why me now I step back physically and metaphorically literally I’ll take a step back physically and kind of reevaluate and look OK
I don’t like it but this is where I’m at and how I got here may or may not be 100% my fault maybe other people’s this is where I’m at then I create the plan and commit to taking the action and then I take the action it shortens the amount of pain and suffering I’m going through I learn something from the struggle the lesson which helps change the decisions I’m making in the future so now making better decisions because of previous past mistakes and struggles so our struggles define us in many ways and most of the time if we if if we allow them they can be the greatest lessons and usually are the greatest lessons we have ever learned embrace your struggles right I’m not saying you wallow in them just accept them for what they are and then create the damn plan and take the action to get yourself where you want to go it may take longer like I said if you think it’s going to take 30 days you know you think it’s gonna take 10,000 budget for 30,000 because it’s always better to be pleasantly surprised by having extra leftover than not enough to complete the job I look forward to seeing you in future episodes thank you for listening to radio free America help us keep the torch of liberty burning bright by sharing the show with a friend or family member and by checking out our website at www.radiofreeamericapodcast.com also take a second and give us a review on apple podcast until next time I’m bill Parsons