Unlock the secrets to mastering the intensity of your pursuits and the sharpness of your perspective, forging them into the unbreakable foundation upon which your highest ambitions will not just stand, but soar.
Discover how to harness the vigor of your endeavors and the perspective you adopt, shaping them into the bedrock upon which your aspirations can firmly stand.
===> Join the weekly newsletter and get your free copy of 5 Steps to Becoming a High Value Man
Unlock the secrets to mastering the intensity of your pursuits and the sharpness of your perspective, forging them into the unbreakable foundation upon which your highest ambitions will not just stand, but soar.
Discover how to harness the vigor of your endeavors and the perspective you adopt, shaping them into the bedrock upon which your aspirations can firmly stand.
===> Join the weekly newsletter and get your free copy of 5 Steps to Becoming a High Value Man
This is the High Value man Conversation Podcast, a show dedicated to the mission of building high value men, men that are courageous, committed and uncompromising in their pursuit of greatness.
Speaker 2:You run the day and stop having them run you. Monday get better. Tuesday, get better. Wednesday, get better. Everybody's good when they're not tired. Champions is when they're tired. That's when the real champions come out. The next day get up, get up, get up, get up, keep going Win. I'm going to win as far away from these dreams as you think you are.
Speaker 1:One great man means a great family, a great neighborhood, a better city, community, state and the world. The question is. The question is if not you, then who? The number one predictor of crash landing the plane, the thing that's causing problems, struggle, unnecessary strife and probably more pain than anything else in the world is when you don't control these two things.
Speaker 2:The answer there is attitude and effort. I assume at this point we're recording, we are recording. I love so, guys. This is, this is just how unedited we are. We've been having conversation about this, just fluid dialogue, and so aaron's obviously talking to me and I'm not even realizing we're recording. We're just gonna keep having our conversation. Yes, number one predictor, within any given scenario, of how you're going to show up and the given outcome is the things that you can't control, which are your attitude and your effort?
Speaker 1:Yes, and so we've all been in stressful situations before, and if you haven't been in one, well, you're hiding under rock and you're going to be in one at some point. It's going to show up in your business. Leads aren't going to come in, marketing is not going to go the way you want, you're going to have a struggle in the marketplace. Competitors are going to show up. It's going to show up in your relationship, most certainly, whereas you're going to feel like you're facing a lot of headwind. And if you, as a captain of the ship or the pilots, like we talked about in our last episode, you can either freak out and, like, hit the panic button, pull the rip cord, or you can crash, land the plane, which causes a whole lot of unnecessary pain, trauma and problem because you don't manage your attitude and your effort in times of stress and chaos.
Speaker 2:I love that. So this is literally one of my favorite conversations to have in most any given sphere. It really is. I love that we've taken this journey in season three to dust off and really become to understand who we are as individuals, what we're made of as far as our needs in our life, all the different parts that help us make the decisions in life that we make really give us an understanding of why we've become the who that we are. And this is foundational, foundational. And it's all based on research, which I love, because I certainly have my opinions, but when I can also lean on research, it helps me understand that, okay, I'm going in the right direction. Yeah, so attitude and effort are huge. And and uh, you've got a great quote here by by Victor Frankl.
Speaker 2:This is between stimulus and response, there is a space. I love that because space means time. So between stimulus and response, there is a space. I love that because space means time. So between stimulus and response, there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.
Speaker 1:Yes, so it's in that space. In that space that victor frankl wrote a book called man's search for meaning, phenomenal book. Every man should read it. But in that space is where you intersect the attitude and the effort of your design, not your default.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I love that so why is attitude and effort so important for us? It's important for everybody, but primarily we're talking to men. We are men, so we'll focus on that. Why is an attitude and an effort understanding it, knowing what it is, knowing we have control over it and why is it so important?
Speaker 1:Foundationally, because you can't control most things. You can't control your circumstances, you can't really control your thoughts, which we were talking about like thoughts pop in pink elephant oh there, it is Like in your brain just pops up and shows up. If you know that you can't control all of your circumstances and you can't control your thoughts, there has to be something that you can control, and the only thing that you can control is the attitude, the direction of where your nose is pointed in that plane analogy and the effort that you put forward in that positive direction.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and so many and we're not eclipsed to this. I mean this is for you and me, as well as for listeners is we all have needs in our life to attempt to control things. We want to control our environment. That's not you Shots fired Our attempt to control our environment in some regards, control how our life is working, control our finances, control our relationship, control our children. We have a need in our life to have some sort of certainty. Yes, and we go back to previous episodes, we talked about the difference between certainty and novelty and all of us land on some fluid scale if we need something fresh in our life versus we need the ability to know that we understand what's going to happen. We have some foresight. That's the certainty side. We all have a need for certainty in our life and that often, often, often plays out in our attempt to control things in our life. And that often, often, often plays out in our attempt to control things in our life.
Speaker 2:And there are many things that, when you talk about thinking is that's out of our control. You can say all day don't think about a red apple, don't think about a red juicy apple. Don't think about an apple. Don't think about it. Stop. Don't think about a red apple, and all of you are thinking about a red apple. It may be me thinking about the specific red apple that you like. Again, that's our thinking. If we could control our thinking, we could simply decide, aaron, that I'm not going to sin anymore, I'm not going to fall short, I'm not going to be tempted by that, I'm not going to do that anymore, and the decision would happen once and we'd never think of it again.
Speaker 1:So our thinking is not in our control, but what we do with it is in our control, and what I love about that is not saying that you let your thoughts run rampant. It's the moment that a non-positive trajectory of your thoughts pops into your mind, and so you get some wind in your travels towards your destination and the negative thinking pops up. It means you don't let it run rampant. You literally put something positive in there, which is your attitude, your effort. You pause, you choose to respond with tools rather than just letting it go wherever you want, and so thinking is one of those things that's going to happen, because research says that five percent of our entire mind is our consciousness, which means 95 of our entire brain is unconscious or subconscious thought.
Speaker 2:That's the part that's out of our control, and so the mass, mass, mass, majority of all the neurons firing in our brain, we we're not, we're unaware of them completely. Yeah, so we were talking earlier about dreams and how those formulate. No one decides to have a dream. No one decides really what's coming in and out of their brain. Now, the things we choose to be influenced by. Yes, so we have a part of that. Yes, but the part of that you, that you this is where attitude comes in is you can't control your thinking. You can control what you do with it. Yes, that's really the key. That's the real big takeaway on where attitude plops in.
Speaker 1:Yeah, a hundred percent. And I love this because, you know, just, I think so many people are just letting their thinking run rampant. And our pastor talks about this. He's got a model think, be too. And so what you think about will affect your being and what you're being will essentially affect your doing. And so it's this, this triad. He teaches in triads think, be too. But if we recognize that and it says biblically like we have to hold captive the thoughts as they pop up, we recognize that we don't really know where some of these thoughts come from, but it's in the recognition that a thought is unproductive, that we choose to intercede with the right attitude and right effort.
Speaker 2:Yeah, which comes back to you can't control your thinking, but you can't control what you do with it. So I just think about I mean, I'm a man, I'm 40 years old and I live in an area where there's lots of attractive people and so, as a 40 year old who's delightfully married, nuts about my life I'm going to see attractive people when I'm out and about and where my social media is going to be there, so I can see someone find them attractive and go about my life, not think more about it. I give I give that a moment of my focus and I go on about my life. That is my natural thinking. If I went off the rails with that and started to think about, maybe more about what the individual looks like, maybe with the clothes off, maybe what it would be like to be with him, that's when our thinking can take hold of us. But having those thoughts is not a negative thought in order to descend. It's what you do with it. And again, that's all based on our attitudes. Our attitude, just to give you a definition of what attitude is. Our attitude is what you do with what you think and how you feel. So I'll say this again Our attitude is what we do with what we think and how we feel in any given moment of our life.
Speaker 2:That creates our attitude and the effort part. And go back to the episode we just we just released. Before this we talked about thrust and whatnot, but that being the effort, so effort's the other piece that we can't control. Our effort is the action that we don't or do put behind our attitude. So, going back again to the plane analogy, we can have a positive attitude about something If we're willing to put effort behind it, or massive effort behind it.
Speaker 2:The trajectory of our life in that scenario will go up. We will see positive ROI on those choices. If you have a negative attitude, then you're going down at some point. Your effort behind it is going to decide how quickly you get there. Yes, 100%. Just the realization that there are many, many things in life we think we can't control, that are completely out of our control. But again, what we do with our thinking and again it comes back to what we choose to be influenced by, the voices we choose to listen to it's all based on our attitude, what we bring to the table at a given moment good or bad circumstance is based on our attitude and the effort to show up and put action to it.
Speaker 1:I love that too and I just want to keep really landing the plane on this plane analogy because it works so well for me and I feel like when I get a revelation, the more that I can speak it out, talk it through. It allows it really to anchor my biology so I can actually utilize it right. Jesus spoke through parables and metaphors and it allowed you to really make it a personable story and a lesson in revelation, rather than being something so hard to grasp. But if you think about a plane, the plane is in the air, flying towards a direction, a vision, a trajectory, and the positive attitude keeps the nose above ground, because you're fighting against natural forces. So you're fighting against the principle of gravity which is going to pull you down Our thoughts.
Speaker 1:By nature, because we are security seeking creatures, we're always looking for problems, we're looking for what could go wrong.
Speaker 1:You can think of that as like gravity, and gravity is not necessarily a bad thing but we're looking for things to go wrong because, by nature, safety and security, while it's a woman's primary need, it's also a man's need. I want to make sure that I have a roof over my head, that I can see where I need to protect or provide or intercede, fight off the saber-toothed tigers. We're always looking for problems. We're always, and I don't know what the statistic is, but I would venture to guess that probably 70% of our subconscious thoughts throughout the day are looking for problems, just by nature. It's what's been our evolutionary advanced tool, and so if we know that we're always looking for problems, we have to be vigilant with making sure that there's a positive attitude and forward thrust. The second you take the reins off the steering wheel and you let the plane fly itself, then, natural gravity, the negative thoughts are starting to compound and the nose starts to point below the horizon, and you don't even need effort to nose dive plane.
Speaker 2:You'll land, you'll, you'll hit the ground at some point, or mountain Jesus.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So if you don't, if you know that you don't even need effort to like, crash, land the plane, you have to also, by nature, know that you have to apply positive effort towards positive thoughts.
Speaker 2:Otherwise, you're just going to crash. I love that you mentioned. That just just takes me down the road of just people that have poor attitudes and how much you know? People just desire to be around you. If you have a crap attitude, you have more on that we all.
Speaker 1:We all know the Eeyore, the negative, nancy. Uh, you know the person in our circle that is constantly finding reasons for things not to work. And what are they ultimately create? They create more reasons for people not to like them, love them, trust them. For things not to work, for businesses to fail, whatever it is, because they are speaking out literally what they're going to attract.
Speaker 2:Yeah, again, tony Robbins. You'll hear a lot of his quotes If you listen to us. Focus goes where energy flows. So if I'm focused on the negatives, I'm focused on the downside of things. I'm going to be looking for things my RAS, my reticular system back there is going to be looking for reasons to tell me that I'm right.
Speaker 1:Yeah, same thing as a pilot right you think about. You're focusing on a negative horizon native outcome. Where are you going to drive the plane?
Speaker 2:It's absolutely true. And so, if you have a grasp on that, I truly can control only two things in my life my attitude and my effort. Get a grasp of that, your attitude and your effort. Then you have the ability to realize that, in any given situation, you can choose to respond or you can choose to react. So most people talking to you yes, most men, most people will react. We don't have forethought, we don't have visions on on. Maybe I need to be aware of this, maybe I need tools for timeouts. Yeah, absolutely true.
Speaker 2:And we end up choosing to react to scenarios. And when we react, our fear comes out, our our sadness comes out. It typically it simply manifests in anger. It can also manifest in in retreating. So we may just say, hey, I'm going to back out of this. As he pulls the airplane, I'm out of this crap, I'm leaving, you are all on your own, I'm out. And you pull the record and jump out of the plane and hope that you know your parachute takes. Yeah, that's a point of quitting. That's also reacting to a scenario versus responding. So responding is okay, this sucks, this was really difficult, this hurts.
Speaker 2:I have fear wrapped in this, but also, in faith, I'm going to choose to respond correctly and choose to respond well. That's a character build. It really is a character. It's a character revealing part of us to choose to bring our best, to have a good attitude and bring great effort.
Speaker 2:I can't tell you how many times and I know you guys are with me on this how many times I've come home and just been exhausted. Just something happened in the day and maybe I had, I had a couple of losses in the day, and I come home and I really just I just want to be left alone. I just don't want to be bothered. I don't want to take care of my wife in our house and pick up after my kid and prepare dinner and do all these things. That's a choice I can make, but that's reactive. Responding would be no. I'm grateful to have a home and have a wife and have a family and I'm not going to bring them my leftovers. So I'm going to choose to have a great attitude. I'll walk through the threshold of my door and put massive effort in, even if I'm running on a 20% battery at the end of the day, because I've given the marketplace 80 and I'm still going to get the best part of what.
Speaker 1:I have left. Yes, and here's the thing about that too If we go back to the plane, the effort to maintain flight at altitude is significantly less than the effort that it takes to get off the ground. Yes, and so if you crash land the plane because your attitude and your effort goes to crap, you're like f this, I'm pulling the ripcord, I'm gonna crash land, I will get out of this. Fine, I'll just start over again. You're gonna take it's gonna take significantly more positive attitude to restart and significantly more resources and effort to get off the ground, get back to the altitude that you work for, and this is, this is.
Speaker 2:This is a statistic that I'm going to pull out of my backside, so we'll just run with it, because I'm saying it, but for for what? And what I've experienced in men is men who decide that I'm going to get divorced and who decide, well, this business venture didn't work out, I'm going to go try something new. Yeah, and any given scenario that's like those. It typically takes them. Now, if they get their life right, get around people who are positive, have a vision, get their attitude corrected and are willing to put effort, that it takes 10 years before you see that man fly again. So, even if this, even if the weather's in front of you, even if there's difficulty, even if it doesn't look like it's going to work out well, choosing to have a great attitude and choosing not to rip cord and just quit will save you from essentially becoming a 10 year overnight success because you'll have to do things really well for 10 years before you start to see a real ROI.
Speaker 1:So good you know. Also on that same thing, to the statistics, for everyone throws that's the statistic out there that 50% of marriages end in divorce. Well, that's actually inaccurate. It's your first time marriages, there's only a 30% chance of divorce and it's actually a lot lower if you pray and you do some things that are Christian and biblical based. But your second marriage jumps from 30% to 50 to 70%. Third marriage jumps to above 70%. So every time you crash land the plane, you're not only creating more effort and energy to have to get the plane off the ground, but you're actually making the your whole flight pattern a whole lot more difficult not that you can't accomplish it, but it's going to take you 10 to 100 x more effort, more time, a lot more positive in order to make that a substantial and satisfactory experience.
Speaker 2:So quitting never works, yeah, never works, yeah, ever. And so again, just reminding yourself that in the midst of any given moment, in any given scenario, what can I control? My attitude, my effort, I'm going to have a positive attitude regardless. Make that a core value of yours. It was for me for five or six years. I had to make sure that I had a positive attitude as a core value, and the only reason for me that I made it a core value is because it's something in my life that I wanted that I didn't have, so that's why it was a value. It was like I'm going to value these things. So, when, when, when crap hits the fan, okay, I'm going to remember I'm a positive attitude guy. A positive attitude guy, yeah, and uh, I got to the point now attitude in any given scenario. So it doesn't have to be top of my list, and now it becomes more natural. But you have to flex that muscle for a while. Yes, for sure took a lot of effort. Yeah, shocking anyway, take effort, yeah, take effort, so that really gives us the ability, men to to not have to firefight so good.
Speaker 2:So many of us have spent season after season, year after year, decade after decade, firefighting and we wonder why. Why is this happening to me? Why is this always my case, moving from problem to problem instead of glory to glory? Yeah, why is my hand? Why do I get a crappy hand? Every time I get a bad hand, I end up having to firefight these things crisis to crisis. And I'll tell you, if you're willing to be honest with yourself, be truly transparent with yourself, it's based upon your attitude and effort. In those things, bad hands are given. I mean, it's just true, life happens, but what you do with it is what you can control.
Speaker 1:True, and I would argue too that if you have a piss poor attitude, you're going to be dealt shitty hands, a hundred percent. You're just going to get more of the like, the bottom of the deck, lower opportunities because you're flying at a lower altitude as opposed to everyone else that has chosen. No matter what the storm is, I'm going to have a positive attitude, I'm going to put forward maximum effort towards the trajectory, but if you keep crash landing the plane you're just going to have like you're going to have lower del pants for sure and and this is just this is just an age-old saying.
Speaker 2:That I mean you attract who you are, and so if you're around lots of crappy people, guys, it's time to look in the mirror. You're probably not living to your full potential. You are attracting who you are, and so if you're around lots of crappy people, guys, it's time to look in the mirror. You're probably not living to your full potential. You are attracting who you are. Thing about that is, it doesn't have to be that way for the rest of your life. You can choose to make those changes now and it will attract higher value people, higher value men, higher value opportunities, higher value finances, higher value homes and marriages. When you choose to take control of your attitude and your effort. I love that. So Albert Einstein says that weakness of attitude becomes weakness of character Zing. So over time, if you continue to have a bad attitude, your character will follow. That. I'm not saying that's who you are now, but if you're not willing to take hold of your effort, I'm sorry.
Speaker 1:Your attitude in a given moment it will become part of who you are, yeah, and when it becomes part of who you are, that's an identity piece and then becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Speaker 2:You will dig a pit and you will jump in the bottom of it. Yeah, absolutely true. And so this takes me back to a moment that I had with my. My daughter was two years old. Any of you out there with kids you probably have a scenario like this. You probably remember as well. But she was two years old and she was in the midst of her. I called her terrific twos. I spoke over my daughter. She's going to have terrific twos. So if you have children under young, do not call them terrible twos. If you call them terrible twos, subconsciously you'll be expecting them to be terrible, and you know what they're going to be.
Speaker 2:My sweet daughter had terrific twos, but as a two-year-old she was throwing a fit, as a two-year-old might, and I caught myself in a moment. We have a house that has a couple hallways and one of the hallways leading to her bedroom. My little two-year-old was just throwing a tantrum and I felt myself get heated up. I felt anger come on me, my tone changed and I started to yell at her. So I'm having an argument with my two-year-old as a man in his mid-30s Very delightful moment for me in retrospect as a man, but I realized in that moment that I was reacting to my two-year-old. I was becoming the two-year-old, I was mirroring what she was doing and I'm glad that I caught myself because I completely changed. I took a pause, I completely changed. I changed. I took a pause, I completely changed. I went down the hallway. I got on my knees I said give me your hands. So she gave me her hands and I held her two little sweet hands. I looked at her eye to eye because I'm down here on her level. I started to speak to her and be calm, and then I pulled her in and I embraced her and I held her One.
Speaker 2:Biologically, that helps our children's nervous system regulate when they can be in contact with a regulated adult. So when our children get hyped up, it's easy for us to say go to your room, put them in timeout, get away from me, when that's the exact opposite of what science says our children need. Our children need for us to be drawn close to them. They need to draw close to us, they need to be in proximity with us. If we're healthy and we're calm, we can be on their level and embrace them. That will help regulate their own system. What a gift. So the one, the message about that is.
Speaker 2:I've chosen that moment, that I have the opportunity, in any given moment, to be a mountain or a mirror for my daughter. It's a mirror. It does nothing more than just reflect the scenario. You're yelling at me, I'm going to yell at you, you're going to get hostile with me. Let me get my gloves, I'll be right back. Or I can choose to be a mountain. To be a mountain is to respond to a scenario.
Speaker 2:What I love about mountains, aaron, is from a great distance you can see them. They're majestic, they're beautiful. On a given map, you can pull up a map, find where there's mountain ranges, set your GPS and drive to one. It's going to be there, it's consistent, it's not going to move on you. You get close enough to a mountain. You know, realize it has jagged edges. It took a lot of tension and beating and pain to be formed into the weather it has and, but yet it's still there.
Speaker 2:What I love so much about the thought process between a mountain or a mirror is a mountain Some of you can count on. Yeah, it's going to be there. It's not moving, it's unmoving, it's consistent. Who it is? A mirror is something that's just reflecting this given scenario, and so that comes down. Just let that mountain or mirror reflect for you that you have the opportunity to respond or react in any given scenario. That's all based upon your attitude and your effort. So John Maxwell says you may. People may hear your words, but they feel your attitude. So good People may attitude. So good people may hear your words, but they feel your attitude, yeah. So choose to be a mountain, choose to respond and see if you're, the car has even dealt. Don't start to a little better yeah, I love that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, your, your attitude, your perspective, your lens of what's in your hand will change the trajectory of not only your life but the lives of all those around you. All right, so we're talking um, you know, deep on this on the only two things you really have control over man. Attitude and effort allows you the ability to respond and become and be the mountain the mountain that is unmoving, that is structured, that is sturdy, that is predictable, that is just how a man needs to be.
Speaker 2:That is essentially masculinity at its core is to be really the mountain in life. You'll create certainty. You will create certainty for yourself. You'll create certainty in your home. You'll create certainty for everyone around you. When you choose to respond to the amount yeah, and what?
Speaker 1:I love about this too is the idea that as you create certainty, you're fulfilling a need for yourself, and so most men, I'd say, have a very high need for certainty. Like control is just part of how we structure. We build order out of disorder. And if we go back to the previous episode, we talked about the six human needs. They all are in a fluid scale certainty, uncertainty, significance, belonging and then we've got contribution and service right. So these are your six human needs, all very fluid. Certainty is essential for everybody. We all want certainty. But if we recognize first and foremost we can't control our thoughts that's not very certain. And we can't control most circumstances that's not very certain. But what we can control, or we can flex the muscle, is our attitude and our effort. That fulfills the need. And then it becomes a very fun game of like I'm in control of every situation.
Speaker 2:I'm in yeah, that's very true. This is an off topic, but it's not really the scenarios where I'll get in a conversation with men and they get all worked up. The quickest way to lose respect with another man is to be that man. When life happens, when things don't feel good, when you're uncomfortable and you see a man's top fly off, he's just exposed himself, he's lifted his dress and said this is who I am, and really it's out of fear or sadness. That's typically what it comes down to. That's right. So you want to be a masculine man, be unmovable, be unshakable, be the mountain. Be the mountain that you know that you can be and respond instead of reacting.
Speaker 1:So, okay, all right, let's break this down into some practical, tactical, strategic tools that men can do in in domains of stress and chaos. So they have an opportunity, they recognize they're facing a headwind and they're starting to nosedive. Attitude goes out the window, effort maybe starts to drop off. Like what are some things that men can do to reclaim the trajectory of the life? Well, this is so important. I'll lean on zigzagler here because I think it's great. He says your, not your aptitude determines your altitude.
Speaker 2:So your attitude, not your aptitude, determines your altitude. So you may be really brilliant, you may be really great in some areas, but if you have a crap attitude, you're not going to fly very high. So good Um, if you're, if you consider yourself king of the knuckle draggers, but you have a great attitude, you will see yourself and the people around you continue to be higher value and higher value. So what we lean on as far as some tools here is I love my brother's calling former Navy SEAL, with those guys that never actually retired. But the beautiful thing about SEALs is they are the cream of the crop when it comes to infiltration, and so I know that. He's told me these things and I've watched YouTube and things like that. How they take rooms is brilliant.
Speaker 1:It's literally the best. Let's paint the picture for this too. So we think about maybe you're not a Navy SEAL, maybe you're moving from couch potato to doing your first 5K, but ultimately, at the end of the day, the Navy SEAL represents the epitome of probably masculine control. In regards to responsiveness, these guys are doing high stress situations consistently, they're paid to do it and the level of stress and their ability to control that space that Victor Frankl talked about, where they really respond based on a chosen decision rather than a reaction.
Speaker 2:Their training is through the roof, yeah for sure. And so this goes down to them clearing houses and clearing rooms. Because they move at such a great pace and because adrenaline can run when you're in a firefight, that before they take a room, they pause. So get to the door and you'll have several guys from the team there, and as soon as they get to the door, they could easily kick the door through, but they choose to pause, and the pause is probably a fraction of a second long, but it takes them from being in a full sprint, full adrenaline, to a half pause collecting themselves, and then they take the room. How quickly can we integrate this into the opportunities of being a mountain or a mirror? So a scenario happens. You have the choice to completely just respond, just blow through the door, you know, pepper whatever's in there and probably, you know, kill off someone who's probably not supposed to be shot. Or being a mountain can be okay. This is, this is sucks. My children's losing it, my wife, my relationship is off. Right now, this business scenario is happening. No, you still take a pause. You pause to collect yourself. So part of that pause can include some of these things. One is square breathing, square breathing. Another thing that seals talk. Talk about when they take in several seconds where they'll breathe in. So squares will breathe in. They'll hold it for a couple seconds. They'll breathe out intentionally for a couple seconds. They'll hold that pause for a couple seconds. So you're breathing in and you're pausing and you're exhaling on purpose and by doing that, your limbic system will begin to relax, your, your biology will begin to relax and you'll allow the logic side of your brain to come back in this scenario.
Speaker 2:So many men enter scenarios where they're just completely flooded or emotionally flooded. Yes, and so here's a quick positive man. If you think that you are, uh, not emotional, you're lying to yourself. Half of our brain is emotion-based. Yeah, half of our brain is logic-based, but when we're in emotion, when we're in a deep emotion, the emotion side completely overruns the logic side. Yeah, so we've all made really poor, crappy in the moment decisions in our life. My hand raised for sure, thousands of times, but you don't want to do that.
Speaker 1:You can't put the bullets back in the gut. And so the second that you step into that reactive state and you enter a room without the pause, without proper tools or techniques, you just open rapid fire and next thing you know you have, you've said something you can't take back. First and foremost, you've created some potentially irreparable damage in your relationship. More so than anything, you have become a mirror for that situation in that room and you miss out on the opportunity for being a man.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, it's great. Outside the room you can have your gun on full auto. You do that for cover fire. But inside the room, when you're taking rooms, you switch to semi-auto because you want everything that you shoot to be intentional. So everything you shoot to be intentional, so square breathing is a big piece of the pause.
Speaker 2:As a former baseball player and I don't hold on to that anymore because I'm old, but I did pitch and I remember, I remember being in moments, I mean countless moments, where the game was on the line. It was a high tense scenario and I get up to the mound but I set myself and I could just feel that I wasn't all there. Yeah, I feel you see this in pitchers now in major leagues. They'll literally take a moment. They'll step off the mound, they'll They'll collect themselves and they grab their rosin bag, but they'll give themselves a moment to just allow that limbic system to relax, to get their thought back in place, and then they'll retake the mound and throw the pitch. So it's a great way for us, in the midst of our pause, to think well, I'm going to be a pitcher right now. Rather than throwing a punch, step back, do what you need to do to step off the pitcher's mound. Love that, love that.
Speaker 1:One tool that we both practice to and this is a blameless shout out for our good friend Chris with Freedom Plunge but the ice bath. So morning routine of having an ice bath allows you to practice the pause. Because you jump in 38 degree weather or in 38 degree water, your limbic system, your sympathetic nervous system, is immediately going to fire their response, like the reaction of like get out. Like you are in a death zone. You want to get out of there. And so you teach and train yourself by stimulated stress to stay in there. Pause Okay, I'm going to breathe. I'm going to slow down the focus on the exhale. I'm going to control what thoughts I can by interceding a positive attitude and putting an effort towards the direction I want. I'm going to stay in here for four minutes, because that's who I say that I am. You're practicing in this stress so that when you get into an actual firefight and I say firefight, maybe relationship and you feel like shots are being fired at you, you've actually practiced the tools. Yeah, you got it in place.
Speaker 1:That comes down to making a decision. You decide to get in the bath? Well, stay in the bath. You decide to get in the bath? Well, stay in the bath. Don't jump in and jump out.
Speaker 2:And another great tool that both of us utilize is integral If you want to increase the value of the sphere that you're in is counsel, and being on this podcast or listening to this YouTube is certainly part of that. But counsel can look like several things. It can look like a mentor, which is somebody you've asked to take authority in your life. You're following the draft of someone's life. They have something that you want, instead of being a fool or a typical man going out to attempt to recreate the wheel. You want to take the standard of that individual. So a mentor is great.
Speaker 2:Coaching Coaching is available. With HBM. We certainly do that. We offer all this in a unique one-to-one scenario. We can build out for you the template of getting from A to B, and the other is a confidant. So you have a mentor, a coach or a confidant, confidant, someone in our life that we are truly like a. We are truly like a Barnabas to one another. We support each other. Support each other in the highs and you will hit each other if we needed to in the lows, and we'll always be there by each other. So counsel, counsel is a great, great tool to integrate into our lives. I just think about the fortune 150s of the world, the presence of the world, all these sports player. They have counsel, every sports player does not get to success.
Speaker 1:We idolize these athletes that are winning championships and games and all that stuff, but at the end of the day, they didn't get there by themselves. They'd have a team championships, games and all that stuff, but at the end of the day, they didn't get there by themselves, they didn't have a team. So they have men in the trenches that provide them input on their attitude and the effort they're putting on the field of life. They're playing and they've got coaches that are the outside eyes, the bird's eye view. They're giving perspective. They're intrusively accountable to them. Hey, listen, you didn't hit this measurement and this is exactly what we need to do to make the vision possible. Nobody does it alone. Yeah, for sure I love it.
Speaker 2:So the takeaway today, guys, is your attitude and your effort, realizing that what you can control is what you can control, and it's those two things. Also knowing that you have the ability, in a given moment, to take a pause and put to work the tools that we've given you. Don't just go in and start peppering.
Speaker 1:And if you have stop doing it. This just I just got this insight right now. I think that a future episode because there's plenty of guys that have peppered a room future episode is on the perfect apology on how to actually take ownership and accountability for the peppering that you may have done to create proper relationship rehabilitation. Huge, we'll do it. We'll do it. So it's been great with you guys.
Speaker 2:Put this to work. Put this to work. Choose to be a mountain rather than a mirror in every room that you're in, and you'll see your life continually go up. You'll take more altitude because of your attitude.
Speaker 1:Boom, much love, many blessings. Talk to you guys.
Speaker 2:We're off the podcast. Get back to the fucking mental lab.