Sit & Talk: The Blinking Line

We use the “blinking cursor on a blank page” to show how our days get written and why we keep copy-pasting yesterday’s stress into today. We break down how thoughts drive emotions, emotions drive actions, and how taking ownership of your response changes the story you’re building. 

• the blinking line as a daily clean slate and a choice point 
• copy and pasting frustration, sadness, and anger from yesterday into today 
• thoughts shaping emotions, emotions driving actions, actions creating outcomes 
• how we give other people and circumstances the “pen” without noticing 
• reacting vs choosing, and why “they made me mad” gives away control 
• controlling your response when you can’t control events 
• writing the day on purpose instead of drifting 
• small intentional choices compounding into the story of a life 

Thank you, VTU, for joining us on Sit and Talk. I look forward to seeing you right here next time on Sit.

https://aarondegler.com/

Transcript

Welcome To Sit And Talk

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Thank you for joining us on Sit and Talk. If this is your first time sit and talk each week, we join our live call as we discuss a different mental conditioning topic that will make us stronger mentally. So let's join our live call as we get started. Maybe some of you use Google Docs or really any kind of maybe it's even on if you go to your notes and you go to a new note. Or even when you go to text and you start a new text. Probably not on the text, I don't think there's a line, but on Google Docs, on your notes, there is a blanking line that is just waiting for you to type something in. So I use Google Docs a lot. For me, I use it all the time. Everything I create, all the different programs, all the different talks, everything is all on Google Docs. And so every time I pull up Google Docs and I hit the little plus symbol to start a new document, it comes up totally blank and has blinking line. Or if you open up your notes, it's waiting for the input you're going to put in. And really, what does that blinking line represent? Sometimes I have had times where I'm going to write a fit by Friday and I turn on the computer or go to Google Docs and the blinking line is there. And sometimes it can be very frustrating for me because sometimes I can't think of anything. I do better now because I plan for the next week, so I already know what's going to be written and all that. But there were times when on a Sunday I might sit down to write Fit by Friday and have nothing. No idea, no thought. So that blinking line could be very frustrating to me because it wasn't giving me any hints. You know, sometimes now, if we have a blinking line and we can't think of anything, what can we do? We can have kind of an idea and say, hey, chat, GPT, give me some ideas. What is some ideas for this? But prior to that, it was just a blinking line. And so it could be really frustrating, but because that blinking line is waiting for me to create something, it won't do anything unless I push a button on the keyboard. It won't, I mean, it will do nothing and it'll keep blinking. So as we think about that blinking line on a clean, fresh page, that's kind of how our lives look like. I mentioned in Walk and Talk this week John Maxwell. If you haven't ever heard of John Maxwell, he's written close to a hundred leadership books. Basically, he took all the leadership principles he teaches, he took out of the Bible. He took from the Bible. He was a preacher, then he felt like he could do a lot of good sharing the word in the secular world. So he does that. But he said one of the best gifts he ever received was from his assistant. And she gave him a book that said the greatest story ever told. And he opened up the book and it was all blank pages. And it was the greatest story ever told because it was all blank pages, and it was waiting for him to write his story. And so that blinking line, that page, is really what our life looks like. When we open up a brand new day, it's like clicking on the Google Docs. Now, there are, you know what, sometimes there's some things that on my treadmill workouts, I do the same, they some of them have the same format, doesn't have the same workout, but the same format. So it like has the title, it'll say treadmill, it'll have the title of it and the date. And so a lot of times, almost all the times, what I do is I copy from one before and I paste it onto the new one. And so when we start out the day, you know, don't we do that sometimes? We start out a new day and we start out with a blank page. We will start out with a blank page, but don't we sometimes take from the day before and copy and paste? And sometimes it's copy and paste some of the things we didn't like. Some of the things we copy and paste the frustrations to the next day. We we copy and paste some of the sadness to the next day, we copy and paste some of the anger to the next day, we copy and paste all kinds of things from the previous day. But the thing is, no matter what we copy and paste, we started out with a completely blank page. There's nothing on it until we created. So what does that mean? So that means each day we bring the day before with us. We create, we're creating that page. We're taking from the day before and beginning to create that page. Um, but still, regardless of you copy and pasted, you wrote new, it starts with a blinking line. And is our choice that we bring that stuff from the day before? So, really, when we wake up, it's a completely clean slate, it's a blank page. So we have a fresh start, new opportunity, but yet we bring some of that stuff with us, and um we'll kind of talk about what do we do with that blinking line. Um, with that blinking line, we get to write the story of the day, and sometimes we take some of those things from the day before. Why? Because sometimes, isn't it just easier to? I mean, because quite honestly, it's easier for me to copy and paste those three things treadmill, title, and date, and change a couple things. It's easier for me to copy and paste on the new page than type all those things out again, and and we're kind of guilty of that too. Well, I didn't want to deal with that yesterday, so I copy and paste it on today because I said, Well, I'll worry about that tomorrow. So I copy and pasted it. And but yeah, don't we get frustrated at our days sometimes because we go, Well, it's a day like yesterday? Because maybe we copy and pasted some of our attitude from the day before and brought it to the new page. Maybe we copy and pasted some of our sensitivity, some of our feels from the day before, and copy and pasted it to the new day. But we're always writing today's story. You know, how do we write that? We write that through our thoughts because everything starts out with a thought. We've talked about it all, we talk about all the time, how everything starts with a thought, and we write it through our emotions, and our emotions then create through our actions. Because a lot of times, think about if you're sad, what are your actions? You may not talk a lot, that's that's an action. Maybe you have a frown, maybe you're sad and you cry, maybe you're angry and you say not so nice words. Those are actions. So emotions will usually create actions, almost always they create actions. Because, and if we start at that, our thoughts will shape our emotions. What we're thinking begins to shape how we're feeling. That's our emotions, it's how we feel, how we get our feels. And then our emotions drive our actions. And then what do our actions do? Our actions create outcomes. So, but it all started with a thought. So when you say so-and-so made me mad, they didn't make you mad, unfortunately. That's what we say because it makes us feel better. It has to be somebody else's fault. But really, it's how we internalized it and how we thought about it and how we took it that made us mad or made us sad or made us happy or made us angry. But it starts with a thought, which creates the outcome through the emotion, through the uh actions, creates the outcome. So the story we're we are writing today is written by what we think, what how we feel, and what we do. And who's in charge of how you think? You. You who's in charge of how you feel? You and who's in charge of what you do? You so who's in charge of the blinking line? You but how many times do we, and I asked this another day. So probably a lot of you have a calendar because everybody's busy. If I asked you if you're busy, nobody would say, I'm not busy at all. I got all the time in the world. Most of you are gonna say, all of you will say, I'm busy. Chances are you have a calendar. It might be the old-fashioned kind, you know, that you write everything down on. It might be on your phone that you type everything on. Have any of you ever said, you know what? I don't want to deal with my calendar for the next two weeks and give it to somebody else. Hey, will you just fill up my calendar for me? Whatever you want, just do it. I don't care. Have any of you ever done that? Probably that's a big negative, that's a negatory ghostwriter. But yet, how many times do we say, hey, here's the keyboard? Go ahead and write the day out for me. Or here's a here's a legal pad. I got a big day, so I'm gonna give you a legal pad because it's a long day. Um, if you don't know a legal pad's bigger than normal paper, you hand a legal pad and you say, Hey, here's a pencil. Hey, I'll even give you a pen if you feel wild. And you go ahead and write my day out. Because if it's written in pen, that's I mean, there's no changing it once it's written in pen, um, unless you got a lot of white out. But none of us would probably do that, right? But we do that all the time because we let somebody, when we internalize something, we let them control how we think. We let them control how we feel. And how do we why do I say we let them control? Because we think they have the control. And so we're really giving them the pen or the blinking line that says, hey, go ahead and write my day for me. Would any of you write a sad day? I'm really pumped about being sad today. Like, man, I can't wait to wake up and be sad all day long. No. Would any of you say, I cannot wait to get out of this bed to just be furious mad all day long? I'm gonna be furious at the stoplight, at the the checkout person at the store, at my spouse, at my dumb car, at my dog. I mean, nobody's gonna wake up and and do that. And but we let other things influence that and write that for us. But none of us would intentionally write that. And so as we wake up, we have to be aware of the moments we have. So we do that by when we wake up today, when you wake up tomorrow, when you woke up today, when you woke, wake up every day. We all have a story that will be written today, regardless of whether you're conscious of it or unconscious of it. Every one of us will have a story written today. Guaranteed, at the end of the day, your page will be full. And and that's not optional. That there's no option to leave a blank page because it will be written, I guarantee it. So we have to be aware of who gets to hold the pen or pencil today, or who gets the keyboard today, who's in charge of that. Um, so we have to think, are we choosing our thoughts? Because we already talked about who's in charge of those. I'm in charge of my thoughts. So are you choosing to be in charge of your thoughts, or are you reacting to everything around you? So reacting is he or she made me upset, this made me irritated, this made me late. How many yeah, you know, or are your emotions leading you? Or are you leading them? So when you if have you ever been to to maybe go buy something, and have you ever heard of if you really want it, and it's maybe it's a little higher purchase. Have you ever heard of leaving it there and thinking about it and coming back and getting it? Yes, why is that?

SPEAKER_02 13:53

So it's not tied to your emotion, like like it's not impulsive, right?

SPEAKER_00 13:58

Because an impulsive buy is an emotional buy, it makes you feel a certain way. Oh, I gotta have that. That's the best thing. That I mean, what do infomercials do? They're they get you in the middle of the night. They get you in the middle of the night when you're kind of tired. You go, that shake weight is gonna get rid of my back bat wings. That's these things. They're gonna get that's gonna get rid of my bat wings, or that crunch machine. All I have to do is spend a little time on it, five minutes a day, it's gonna get rid of my abs. And we buy it because it's emotional, because oh, I feel bad about myself, or I want to look better. It's emotional. So are we are our emotions leading us, or do we get to lead them? And and that's the some of the choices that we get to make during the day, but we have to be aware of those. And and like I mentioned, so many times we don't write our story throughout the day. We keep kind of like when they're when they're fanning money out. That's what we're doing with a pen or pencil all day long. We're going around just fanning it out to everybody. And we have a whole uh box of bit pens that we just can't wait to get rid of and hand out because we want everybody to write our story. So we hand it over to other people, we hand it over to circumstances, we hand it over to stress, we hand it over to bad moments, we hand it out all over the place. And and how do we do that? Because maybe one, maybe you've had a great day, and one comment ruined your day. It's just like that's it, I'm done for the day. I'm gonna go go get in bed and put the covers over my head. Maybe it's one in something that inconvenienced you, changes your mood. Maybe it's just one situation that dictates your actions, and then that action can spiral into something else, and something else. So we let outside things take control of our blinking line. We let other people, other things, other circumstances, all the others take control of our blinking line, which which I don't think any of you would say would agree that I'll hand my calendar over and say, here, you schedule a day for today. None of you would want that. But yet we let those outside things take over our blinking day throughout the day. And so we have to, because we I think we'd all agree we don't want that. We don't want to give out our calendar to somebody else and let them fill it in. So if we don't want to do that, we have to say who owns your calendar? Who's in charge of your calendar? You are, you are, you you are in charge of whether you write in pen or pencil. Crazy thing. We found out the other day in walk and talk. Six out of ten people, because there's ten people here. I polled and said, How many of how many of you write in your calendar in pen? I thought it was gonna be a low number, but apparently there are a lot of sociopaths, and there was six out of ten write in pen in the calendar. That is like, I mean, if you're writing pen, that's like it's there. But then probably I think some of you white out, right? Or yes, absolutely. Yeah, and and doesn't that look messy? I'm just asking.

SPEAKER_03 17:28

No, no, so I I will I will speak on their defense that it doesn't look messy. She she did show it to me, but it is psychotic behavior.

SPEAKER_00 17:44

I mean, it was just very fascinating. You know, we've talked about learning. Sometimes you don't know what you don't know, and I thought everybody just wrote in pencil, but it's very interesting, and then there has to be some sort of study. I'd have to find a study on what what type of personality is writing pen versus pencil, because there's got to be a study.

SPEAKER_03 18:02

It's definitely a personality, it has to be it's gotta be a personality thing.

SPEAKER_00 18:07

That would be interesting to see. But but I would I would almost say that that somebody that writes in pen maybe is taking even bigger ownership than somebody that writes in pencil.

SPEAKER_03 18:20

I think it I think it has to say that because I mean that's that's pretty solid.

Control The Response Not Events

Write On Purpose And Don’t Drift

SPEAKER_00 18:25

Say I'm confident enough to write this down in pen. I think pencil, pencil, when you write in pencil, is I think I'll try to get this done. I always have an opportunity to erase it really quick, and nobody will ever know it's there. Writing in pen, even if you white out, it goes, oh, there was something there. There was something on that list prior to this. And so that that's interesting, but that's for a different day. But we have to take ownership of our blinking line. We own it, so we may not be in control of what happens because we have all sorts of circumstances that happen in life that we have zero control over. We don't have any control over if the light turns red or green, we don't have any control over how somebody else acts, we don't have any control over somebody else's lousy driving, we don't have any control over anybody or anything. So what happens to us many times, we do not have control over. But what we do have control over is how you think about those things that happen. Because we've talked about before, if if if the same thing can happen to two different people and they respond differently. So it's not about the incident that happened, it's about the response that they chose to take. And that's really what it is. It's a response that is chosen, whether consciously or unconsciously, it is a chosen response. But again, it all starts about how do we think about it, how what's our perspective on it? You know, in some of our marriage groups, we've talked about jealousy. Why is one person really jealous and another person not? Again, it's because we're how we think about it. It's not because we don't love the other person as much or or less. It's not really that. It's how do we think about that thing? It's kind of like why are somebody why is somebody jealous over somebody's house and somebody's not? It's because it's how they think about it. It it and and that's how we respond. So, what we do have control over is how do we think about it? How do we respond? And then the next thing is what do we do next? What's our next move? So, kind of what would today look like if you took full ownership of your blinking line? If you took full ownership of that, what would you write with your page on attention? We talk about when logging food. What's the best way to log food? To end the day with zero surprises, to do it before you eat it, to do it before you eat it. So you've already planned out what food you're gonna take in. So by the end of the day, you go, oh man, this is, I mean, I I hit my day exactly like I wanted. So again, what if you wrote your day intentionally? That doesn't mean you write, you you can't write what's gonna happen, but you can write down how will I respond to today and what will my actions look like in that response. And so you can respond that I'm gonna respond to everything with a smile and a positive attitude. And how does that positive attitude look? So you can end the day, go, wow, I really accomplished the day exactly like I wrote it out because I was intentional about it. Some crappy things happened today, but I'm really proud of the way I ended the day with being intentional about those things and how I responded. So that that kind of goes into the next part, which is write it on purpose, which is really the challenge. Is Write your day on purpose. If you just get on a floaty out on a windy day on the lake, where will you end up? Who knows? Who knows? Wherever the wind blows you is exactly where you're ending. If you grab onto the dock and grab onto the person next to you, where will you go?

SPEAKER_02 22:27

Nowhere.

Questions And The Final Challenge

SPEAKER_00 22:28

Nowhere. You'll go exactly where you plan because you plan on staying right next to the dock and right next to the person. So you thought about I don't want to get away from this person, and I don't want to get away from this solid anchor. So you hold on to both. And so guess what? You stay next to exactly the two things you chose to because it was intentional. So the challenge is don't drift through the day. Do it with intention. Don't let somebody else have control of your blinking line. Don't let them take charge of that. Because sometimes we give them charge of that and we end the day and we're shocked about the day. Like, how'd this day happen? Well, who was involved in the day? You were. So how did it happen? Because of you. And we don't like hearing that because that gets on our feelings, and we and we think about the wrong way, and then it creates some well, you don't know me feelings, and then the actions are a rolled eye or a huff or a crossed arms or all of those things. So the challenge is choose your thoughts. You get to choose them. You have the choice of your thoughts. I can't control your next thought. You can choose your next thought, which then will guide your emotions, and then take some intentional actions to write your story. Because what happens if we're writing a book and we write one page today, and tomorrow we write another page, and then the next day we write another page. What happens over time? What do we start creating? A story. A story. And it says by and has your name on it. You got to write the greatest story ever told. Everybody has the greatest story ever told. It doesn't mean that you have the greatest life, it doesn't mean that. It means you have the greatest story. And the greatest story is how do you respond to those things? What is your response to that? How do you feel about it? How do you think about it? And then you get to create that story. And so at the end of your life, it is the greatest story ever told. But it starts with a blank page on today because those days will add up to that story. Any thoughts, comments, or questions?

unknown 25:27

All right.

SPEAKER_00 25:29

Huh?

SPEAKER_01 25:30

I sure needed that today.

SPEAKER_00 25:32

Good.

SPEAKER_01 25:34

Take control of your day.

SPEAKER_00 25:35

That's right.

SPEAKER_01 25:36

Tomorrow.

SPEAKER_00 25:36

And somebody, well, somebody else might have your somebody else might have your blinking line right now. Go snatch it back and say it's mine and you can't have it.

SPEAKER_01 25:45

100%.

SPEAKER_00 25:46

I'm going to finish the story for today. You may have had the first three quarters of the page, but I get the last quarter. And so that is the big challenge. So that's good. And just try to copy and paste as little as possible all the negative stuff. So and thank you, VTU, for joining us on Sit and Talk. I look forward to seeing you right here next time on Sit.