Speaker 1
So at first, as harsh as identity, I think behavior is born of identity and your values. So as you begin to shape your values, which were a decision, as you begin to shape your identity, which is a choice. And you craft it going back to the last question. As you begin to do that stuff, I think that over time, your emotions to a given situation will change very dramatically. So that's, that is an important thing to recognize. And then I think that by developing your self awareness, by understanding that you're having an emotion, processing it in real time, saying, Okay, I'm having this emotion. What is this emotion? What is the cause of this emotion? And really at the cause level being willing to admit when it's insecurity, pettiness, jealousy, whatever the case may be, being able to really, truly admit whatever deficiency and adequacy, just general lameness that exists in your personality. Like if you're willing to be honest about that, then you can go, okay, what is it that I'm lacking or believe I'm lacking or whatever that's causing me to have this cascade? And if you can nip that in the bud by changing your identity, your values, whatever, your belief system, all the things that make that up, because you want to change that because you think that whatever emotional state you're having is disempowering, then you can diminish the amount of time that you experienced that. And the idea being to start recognizing the emotion very fast, recognizing what it is, the cause and addressing that cause through what I call the mental pachinko machine, which is a belief system of things that take a negative belief and insecurity, jealousy, pettiness, whatever, and turn it into something positive, getting very good at that. And my goal with myself, and I'm definitely not 100% of this, but I've gotten so much better over the years, is to not even let that emotion register on my face. So I may feel it, but so quickly, the pachinko machine takes over and I flip that negative thing into something positive. So that's very important. I think that humans can get insanely good at that and you will be shocked at how many emotions you can get control of and flip or use them as a trigger for an empowering behavior. So you may have an insecurity, that's the emotion, but you use that emotion as a trigger to trigger an empowering behavior. So I'll give you an example, maybe a slightly weak example, but when I'm at the dentist, that should hurt. Even when they numb you, like even if they're just cleaning your teeth, that should hurt. And I hate this such a weird pain. So I find that that pain triggers this like desire to recoil, to get out of there, to curl up on my mother's lap and cry like a baby. But I use that very negative emotion, which does not make me feel good about myself, to literally lean into the pain to open my mouth wider. And then in doing that, that makes me feel proud of myself that I'm not shying away from pain, that I'm not slinking away from it. And if I'm willing to do it on something that is obviously positive, make sure that you have healthy gums and teeth. And I will do it in other areas of my life where it's also empowering. So that is one example. I don't know why that one came to my mind right now. But that's one example of ways that you can flip something that starts as this negative recoil, want to get away from and turns it into something empowering. All right. Next question. Nicole Page, YouTube, what are your thoughts and suggestions on creating better communication and relationships, i.e. getting over the fear of confrontation and being able to hold the people around you to a higher standard? It's interesting. At the beginning of that question, I thought you were talking about intimate relationships, which is not necessarily what you're talking about. So fear of confrontation. How would I get over that? So part of that fear is coming from, you have a vision of yourself that you're worried will be diminished because you will either be unable to convince people of your point of view, or you'll be unable to look cool, or they're going to browbeat you into submission or whatever it is that's causing that fear of that confrontation. And I would say instead of trying to come out the other side of a confrontation looking cool or being right or any of that, go into that confrontation with a desire to find out what is really true, what is really optimal. There may be a realization about yourself, which is, hey, maybe I'm not good at making my case and maybe I need to focus on getting better at that. And so if that's the thing that triggers your insecurity going into that, and that's why you have a fear of confrontation, go into it telling yourself, and this is one way that I've addressed this literally in my own life, instead of thinking, oh, I need to perform well in this, I'm going to go into this as practice. So hey, if I totally mess this up and embarrass myself and I don't think of the cool things that I wanted to say are the very convincing things that I would have said, and I think of them an hour later, which is very common, I'll just go in and remember, this is practice, I'm going to try maybe a new technique, maybe that new technique is simply lowering my anxiety levels. So I'm going to go into this, I really don't want this confrontation, fuck this sucks, I don't want to do this, but I'm going to go into it, and I'm just going to practice getting out of the sympathetic nervous system into the parasympathetic nervous system. So as that fear of confrontation kicks in and my heart rate starts speeding up and my breathing gets irregular, I'm just literally going to, hey, this conversation isn't about winning the argument, this conversation is about practicing, calming myself down, diaphragm breathing, staying aware of my thoughts, not answering too fast, and you know, trying to give a fast answer instead of a thoughtful answer. So in going into practice, those things, I find that the fear of anything, whether it's confrontation or just general anxiety, is going to be lowered. So I think that that's really, really helpful.