Pain Is Inevitable. Suffering Is Not: The Skill That Changes Everything

Ep 150. Suffering is often described as an unavoidable part of the human experience. Pain, loss, disappointment, uncertainty, and adversity are realities that every person encounters throughout life. Yet while pain may be inevitable, suffering is often shaped by how we relate to our experiences.

The distinction is important.

Pain is a natural response to injury, loss, challenge, and hardship. Suffering, however, is often amplified by the stories we tell ourselves, the fears we project into the future, and the unresolved emotional reactions we carry from the past.

A stressful event does not need to be happening in the present moment to affect us.

A memory, an image, a thought, or a recollection can activate the same fight-or-flight response that occurs during an actual threat. Within milliseconds, the nervous system can shift into a state of hypervigilance, narrowing attention and preparing the body for danger—even when no immediate threat exists.

This is where self-regulation becomes essential.

The ability to regulate the sympathetic nervous system allows us to maintain not only greater environmental awareness, but also greater personal choice. Instead of becoming trapped inside automatic reactions, we gain the ability to remain present, deliberate, and responsive under pressure.

True self-regulation is not merely a concept.

It must be practical.

It must be teachable.

It must be repeatable.

And it must work across a broad range of situations—from everyday stress to significant life challenges.

The most effective systems of self-regulation are built upon principles rather than rigid techniques. They begin with physiology first and psychology second. When the body is regulated, the mind becomes more capable of clear thinking, emotional balance, and strategic decision-making.

This is why self-regulation must become a skill.

Like any skill, it is developed through repetition, deliberate practice, and consistent application. Over time, effective regulation becomes second nature, gradually replacing the maladaptive stress responses that may have been learned through years of adversity, trauma, or chronic stress.

The Running Man Model of Human Stress Regulation is founded on this principle of sophisticated simplicity.

Its purpose is to create a practical bridge between physiological regulation and psychological resilience. It offers a pathway toward reducing unnecessary suffering by helping individuals regain influence over their internal state, their attention, and their response to life’s challenges.

The goal is not to eliminate pain.

The goal is to reduce unnecessary suffering.

To move from reaction to response.

From survival to adaptability.

From struggle to skill.

And ultimately, to become more capable of meeting life exactly as it is.

Take care. Walk well.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:39

Welcome back, folks, to episode 150 of the Running Man Self-Regulation Skills Project podcast with me, your host, Dr. Armando Dominguez, PhD in health psychology, licensed professional counselor, and an adjunct professor at a local community college. And what we're going to be discussing today is the application of self-regulation and the lessening of suffering. Suffering in one's life can largely be avoided. Now, this is something that is usually attributed to be a Buddhist principle, but it's not exclusively something within the realm of that, philosophically nor religiously. But uh I will point out that uh the more we're able to gain skill in self-regulatory practices that limits our level of stress during perception of stress, experience of stress, then our suffering as a result will be less. Pain can't be avoided, pain is part of life, but suffering at times is a choice. If we look into our own experiences of our lives, often we are around people, whether it be family, whether it be ourselves, or even those that we work with or those that we meet out in public at large. And often we hear of people talking about the one they're pain, and I know that jokingly in the movies they they also often show old men and old people generally old not being uh der derogation, but the way they are categorized in this sense. And they're sitting down on a park bench or around a table doing what's called the organ recital of, you know, my liver, my back, my kidneys, and my heart, this sort of thing, and not and they they make light of it. And it's a very serious thing, but I'm making light of the fact that often we take a look at such things from a very extreme outsider perspective, not realizing that there's an explication. There is us explaining what it is that's going on in my life that pains me, but also pains me chronically. And it doesn't always have to do with body pain. Sometimes it's my life, sometimes it's the bills, my job, the stress, raising children. And all of those things can be potentially stressful, but how we manage those can vary amazingly between people of the same age group, same culture, same city, town, that sort of thing. Some of it's more acceptable and sometimes less. But often stress is the driver as to how we respond versus allowing us to respond and mitigate the effects of the stress that motivates or drives us to create whatever things that are behaviors that we change our stressors with, whether it be quitting a job, um, raising children with a heavy hand, or for that matter, being disciplined and calm in the arrival of whatever stress that may come and doing the best we can with the least amount of negative personal effects. Now, this sounds very idealistic when I say that, and it is uh to a degree, but it's not just an idealism. It's a practical idealism in the sense that we always want to shoot for the best. And the best may not always be the result. We may get it. But the more skilled we become at providing the best arrival of self in the most well-regulated sense, that doesn't mean under control perfectly. Not speaking in absolutes, but I'm talking about skill that translates into every day in all the things we do, then we're gonna have a lot less discomfort. We're gonna have a lot more choice in the matter in the stressful event that's occurring, because if you remember, the running man model is based on one very foundational fact is that whenever we stress, heart rate goes up, breathing changes, and we become skeletal muscle dominant, which means blood flow goes there primarily if we're under threat or in fear of some sort or shock, and the blood flow leaves intestines and stomach, that sort of thing, no longer resting, digesting. But primarily the part that I pay attention to most is the hemodynamic function that's going on in the brain. That means blood leaving, carrying blood sugar to fuel what we call thinking. Um now it's in your backside and your your glutes, your your your thighs and your arms to be able to climb, run, and fight. You're not there to make smart, you're there to get out of there in the sense that I got stronger, now I'm starting to coil. I shouldn't be where the stress is, and that's a very foundational thing. But it's also very fundamental to human as it is to any other creature that's in fear or threat. Now you may say that regular life, assuming there isn't a predator out there trying to harm you, uh, is not threatening to us that way. Well, in some senses it is, in the way we conceive of it, especially the stress that comes with having to pay for our electric if you have children in the house and you don't have the money to do that and it's going to be freezing tonight. Now that's a very heady perspective, but it's also a very realistic one. And I want us to pay attention to that because those things are threat. Threat to health, threat to wellness, threat to existence, definitely a threat to our sense of composure or a sense of safety of not only self, but also the integrity of family. Or let's say you have a home and it's summer here. I live in Texas, and the summers get very hot. Uh, and several years back, early May, we were having triple digits, and we had all throughout the summer. We had well over a hundred and some odd days, a solid hundred uh plus days into the hundred teens, and um very incredibly uncomfortable. Lots of people succumbed to the heat. Many people were out in the streets because it was cooler inside than it was outs outside than it was inside their homes. So something to think about. So the realism of whatever we consider threat now is not always something's going to eat me. I'm the baloney sandwich, and there's a tiger trying to eat me. Um used to be, probably still is in some cases, god forbid. But the idea is that the stress level will will shunt the blood from our brain to our body by default, and you can't think your way out of that. Doesn't matter how intellectually superior you think you are, that's a faulty belief under stress because your intellectual superiority tastes just as good as somebody that has a lower IQ that's just a little slower than you and gets caught by the tiger. They're just a little more baloney sandwich than you were at that moment, especially if you were faster. Had nothing to do with intelligence. Even somebody that's not particularly capable of really high functioning knows to get away from something that's scaring them. That's a neurological program we all share. And you don't have to be Marilyn Voss Savant at 200 and some odd estimated IQ points to be a better survivor. Of course, that's incredibly helpful, but the assumption that you can use that level of intelligence, the fullness of your your endowment of intelligence, is assuming this, that you are safe, that you are not under threat, that you don't feel in danger. Those things happen. But whenever we're dealing with, let's say, existential threat like that, um, it seems a lot more dramatic, more realistic and almost heroic in the way that we would retell it if we survive it. The organ recital chronic doesn't sound so heroic, but it's an equivalent to I survived the tiger attack, I ran and poor Timmy, he he was a little slower than me, and yeah, they ate him. That that that doesn't sit well with us. It's not a pretty picture, but the fact of the matter is whenever we're talking about our chronic day-to-day stressors, it's the equivalent of that in a large way. And we have to respect that, don't lessen it or minimize it. We have to recognize it because it still stresses our body. Now, the reason I'm using this as an entree into my talking about the running man model, the human stress model that I teach, and the book that I have coming out here soon, and it's not about selling the book necessarily, but giving you the ideas to why I put this methodology together. And it'll help you understand, even if you don't get it from me, because it's not exclusive to what I do, what I do is good and it works really well. And I put it together in a manner that uh I will tell you that many clinicians at the level that I work don't have it. Some do have the information, but it's disparate and disconnected and often uh gets reduced down in a clinical sense. I've seen where people give you a worksheet here. I saw it in a book, try this. Experimental, and I don't like that approach. I work and use the methods that I teach, and I have worked with these for a long time. We're talking about well over 20 some odd years, closer to 40, if uh I count my martial arts training where I learned some of this in. And and I've I've stress tested these, and I've taught this to my students in the martial arts students in the clinical uh pursuit of licensure. I've taught this to patients that have been having the worst day of their lives, wherever I've had to sit with them and shown them how to manage the immediate stress that comes as a result of their thinking when they still have staples on their their throats after having had a uh an attempt, and also wherever they they have uh had somebody attempt on their life and they were suffering the the post-traumatic stress reactivity as a result of having somebody trying to off them. And I have to say it in that way because I don't want to give away any details of a clinical sense, but just the experiences uh that I had in teaching and using these methods to help teach people how to mitigate the effects of the stress that are brought on by the thoughts after the fact and teaching them how to deal with it when they're in the middle of it as well. And um the reason I'm going to do this is I want you to understand that I have put this podcast together with the idea, and it's called the project because it's developing, and it's not just developing in the sense of I'm adding more to this, but rather there is a sophistication within this method methodology that makes it seem too simple, it's like too easy. And I don't want you to miss out, and it shouldn't, this is gonna be not just about this and what I teach, but also those things that are of value and applying this so you can apply it to learning in all areas, because I want y'all to get better. I don't know you as an individual, but there's a lot of you's out there that I do. I love you guys, and um uh and I'm doing this as uh a love offering of sorts to let you know that I care because I want the suffering to be gone, not just for people that I know, but for people that hear this podcast and even people that I don't know that you may speak to. And suffering will never be perfectly zero because we always have new people coming online, we always have new pains coming up in our lives, and we have to learn how to manage them, learn how to live through them, if we do, and also how to deal with the after effects. And that's a practice, and practice means repetition. It means that if you're practicing, you're getting better at things, and we have to question well, what do I practice frequently that I get better at? And is it making my life better? Am I more stressed because of it? Or are things happening so quickly as a result that I maybe I don't really know what I'm practicing, and the results I'm getting maybe a mixed bag, and I don't always get what it is that's good for me. And those are self-directed self-reflection questions that I'm asking, and I'm putting them out there because I want you to know that this is part of the process of self-regulatory skill building and that we have to self-reflect a little bit. It doesn't have to be going through the mud and doing a counseling session with yourself every day, but questioning the reactivity and the results of my behaviors and what causes my behavior when it's happening, so I can learn to get better. You don't always have to get into the depths of PTSD or remembering how you got traumatized to change how you react and respond. You don't have to. Because often when you have the response that comes up, the PTSD response, for instance, the anxiety panic response, the fear response, we don't go in the fullness of the memory, but sometimes it's just something that's very similar that brings that up, and our body automatically goes into protective mode because, oh, that's close enough. The color's black, there was black whenever I got hurt, and we don't consciously think it this way. This is very subconscious, this is very, I would say, proto-thinking in the sense that's neurologically based, that we learn it and condition to it. We don't even have to think about it anymore. Let's think about spinal reflexes for a sec. And these aren't spinal reflexes, these are conditioned, mind you. A spinal reflex is something where if you have the pain withdrawal, when you touch something hot, your hand is moving back towards your center, towards your chest, pulling away from what hurt before you ever have a thought where you can label and name it. That's happening at the brainstem level, at the spinal level. Signal goes out, comes back. It doesn't even get to the conscious part before you even realize your hands already be pulled back, and then you start having pain, and then you start making noise and dropping the F-bomb and God knows what else whenever we're hurting. So that's a level of biology and physiology we're talking about. Now we're talking about the condition level, the next level. This is the practice level. Wherever we start doing things, and then our body starts doing it, what we would call second nature automatic. First nature is spinal reflex, no thank you. You can't think yourself to a faster spinal reflex. You just can't. It's just automatic. And it's one of those sub-programs that runs, like how your heartbeat and your breathing and your body temperature is regulated. You can get some skill and regulate temperature. That's a super high yoga thing. But fact of the matter is you can't stop spinal reflex of anything. That's just going to occur until we're no longer living, no longer have, in quotes, a spark that animates us. So the next part has to do with um how we respond based on practice, how often we've repeated something. And whenever we're thinking about once again, spinal reflex versus second nature, first nature's reflex, once again, and automaticity that occurs at the autonomic levels. And this is the cerebellum that runs and fires that little hamburger part in the back of your brain. That's your brainstem area. Now, this isn't a thinking part that's non-thinking, the thinking part that conditions to the part where there is no think that occurs after the fact. Like whenever we start riding a bike, every little thing we have to keep our mind on, we're herky jerky and twisty-turny and falling down frequently and wrecking into things, and we tend to turn the the handlebars of the bike in the direction of where we're we're looking, and then all of a sudden we're staring that way and crash, not meaning to, when we're really just trying to look out and not hit it. But the more we focus, just like a NASCAR driver, they tell you to focus in the area you want to go to. You look at the wall, you're gonna run into the wall. You look on the on the left-leaning turn, then you're gonna be on the left left leaning turn as appropriate. And that that's a cool thing. Now, the important thing to note is that through practice, we learn how to do this and we make adjustments, and they seem preternatural, almost above what we would naturally uh be able to do because we get so comfortable with it, we're starting to be able to allow the movement to happen on its own, the body drives it and based on our perception, and then we have this conscious quality that occurs during that where we could hold a conversation, maybe drink a soda pop in the middle, and maybe even just kind of pick our nose while we're doing all these things at a high level of skill. And the term here that's the the important part is skill. The repetitive result is going to be that skill development over time if you repeat that behavior, especially if you do it at a level of correction uh that is not only efficient, but also provides an effectiveness, then that very simple action of just barely twitching on the wheel a little bit, not really pulling hard, but just gently guiding a little bit and keeping on that left turn if you're doing NASCAR, or wherever we start allowing our body to relax and then we can turn our head left and right where driving a uh riding a bike, rather. Uh, all these things become much more simple and easy to do, but they're sophisticated. They're very simple actions, but they're sophisticated. Sophisticated in the sense that we don't have more techniques layered upon layered upon layered. People get stuck in the technical and not allowing our body to drive, and then you're always going to be stuck in your head. And you don't get really skillful that way. You just become a junk collector of sorts. This is something that's replete within the martial arts where people jump from style to style to style, saying, Well, I got this from here and got this from there, but it doesn't all work together very well. The methods are sound and good, but they can't put them together to save their backside nor to teach somebody to save their own backside where it counts most. And this is where simplicity is best. And the running man model, even though there are a lot of things that go into what it is that makes the method worthwhile, it's more so recognizing symptomology in self so that way you can recognize the signs that are the symptomology and the other selves that we're dealing with uh outside in our world and recognize them as signs that help us read. And that improves not only our capacity to be safe and recognize those things that could potentially unravel in a way that we can't control or like, but also it puts it in a position where we have a chance to choose. We don't allow our physiology to put our choices in someone else's hands, and it also gives you a very empowered sense of I can do this, I can choose this, and I can move away from that. And that increases your level of not only self-control, but what's called self-efficacy. That means I become more skilled in my life, I'm more capable, I can choose more, I can choose better more frequently over time, and not only do you get a greater degree of quality of life, but a greater number of quant a quantity of greater quality things in your life over time, and that's called winning. Not points on the board, but above ground sucking win. That means I become a better survivor as a result of a sophisticated simplicity. Simplicity is best. Easy, not always, but simple, yeah, you know what to do. Can you do it? That relies on skill. Is it effective? That's really important. Is it practical? That's one of the better questions. Can I use it in my life whenever I'm driving, when I'm talking to people at work, when I'm interacting with my children, whenever they're stressing out or fighting or trying to set the house on fire. That's all joking. But the idea is that I'm able to use this on the fly whenever I'm moving slowly, whenever I'm doing my life, or my life is unraveling in a way that maybe I can't control, or maybe I'm in a situation I really need to get away from. It could be maybe a uh traffic pile-up, it could be steering away from an argument where there is a group of people don't be there, and also maybe recognizing where people are at at risk and being able to warn them early, and maybe even stopping the thing that creates a risk if we must. We may be called to do that. Doesn't mean be a hero, but it does mean that you may have the means and the capacity to prevent something from being harmful to other people and yourself by catching things early. So the idea is that whenever we learn how to self-regulate, it's not just a mishmash of things that you throw at yourself. Okay, I gotta do breathing. Box breathing works wonderfully. I teach that. One of the new things that I've added, relatively new, is uh the neurological side that works faster than even the box breath. That doesn't mean don't use the box breath. It did negate the usefulness of that. It just means that for different paradigms, both of these things work, and I usually line that out pretty well as to when they work best. And deep breathing, most people that I have talked to over years, and it's so annoying that people will tell you, whenever you're stressed, just breathe, man. Just breathe. Okay, whenever you're under stress and you're holding your core because you're waiting for impact or something's gonna hunt you, you can't deep breathe very well. If you hyperventilate, it's gonna be because you're trying to force a deep breath. Often, whenever we're trying to run, we should be ventilating in a hyper sense, um, but not sitting still where you would be in hypervent. You would be actually oxygenating at a higher level. That means you should be moving, not sitting still. But whenever somebody tells somebody, when you're stressed, just breathe, take a deep breath. Do not do that. I'm not telling you not to breathe, but deep breathing has its place when you're nice and safe, your assumption of safety is met, you're on the recliner, seated back, and you're getting ready to one, take a nap, two, relax or go into meditation with your favorite music. And that is absolutely appropriate, and you will gain and garner the benefit of a great degree of relaxation, depth of relaxation, and you will note that your muscles will love you and appreciate you for it, but not when you're in a stressful situation, do not debreat then. That is the equivalent of sucking wind from shock. Oh my god, that sort of thing. And often that will wake you up during a situation maybe that requires your calm and not your sympathetic tone. You want parasympathetic tone, if you will, or I don't know if they can call it an antitone or an atone, but uh anyway, that's my bad language for the day. But the idea is that you want to cool your body during the stress so that you have your fullest capacity, cognitive capacity to make the best decision. Now, I am not putting the outlying situations in here as a counter to what I'm saying. Yes, you can have situations where you could be in a self-defense, self-protective, combative situation, or where you're in danger due to fire, being in a car wreck, that sort of stuff. Those are very sudden, acute things that require the fullness of your capacity to deal with. And sometimes that can be terrifying. I recognize that. What I'm talking to you about is the self regulatory skill that, yes, works then when it's happening, but also more often than not after we've had events, we've become conditioned to hyper respond and generalize our fear response to everything that makes life miserable. This is where we start seeing people reaching for. Substances to numb their feelings, to change how they feel because they're always depressed or miserable or upset, or to find ways of feeling excited because nothing brings them excitement, especially if there's been a lot of adrenalizing situations and everything else is not nearly as chaotic. And what if we grow comfortable, conditioned, in quotes, uh to living in chaos? That means nothing is fun, nothing's exciting, nothing and everything's boring. People I've seen running through their lives with the corners of their mouth turned down, looking like their face is sagging, almost not almost depressed. That's not even blunted affect that that's that's a semi-flat affect like major depression would indicate. And because everything is so boring, and that's where they see chaos and get into things that are dramatic and problematic because it's not so much that they know the rules there, but the excitement and the uptime awareness is uh adrenalizing, and there's some dopamine, there's some hit there that's payoff because nothing else is exciting like that, and they misconstrue that. This is something that when we get into new relationships, this this is something that there's a science about that has been burgeoning for a while, and it's called limerence, where people get into relationships as a result of how the little butterflies, the golden butterflies, and the pink cloud feelings are happening, thinking that that's love when in actuality it's just a hyper arousal, it's just really pleasurable. But we can also get ourselves in situations, situationship is the term that people use now that shouldn't be long-lasting. It's just fun. Uh, but in our lack of innocence as a culture now, and the hyper speed that we jump into relationships, like the world's gonna end like tomorrow, so may as well know everybody's life and just jump into it and get the best you can as fast as you can before it's all over. And there's this assumption going in that it's not gonna last anyway, and that is a very terminal perspective, but it's also a very deterministic, this is how it's gonna be perspective, which means that there's no sense of we can get away from this. So if you do have the serendipity of running to something where you can get um into a relationship, have fun, enjoy yourself, and get yourself the benefits of what a relationship otherwise long term would have happened um in a more protracted linear sense, um, but in a period of days or maybe even hours for that matter, um, then you've done good because you got your dopamine hit, you got your payoff, and and you can say, hey, I was in a r situationship slash relationship, and this is what I got. And the problem is often, you know, whenever children come as a result, it gets very complicated, especially if somebody wasn't ready to parent or become a parent or want to be a parent for that matter. And that comes with its whole slew of problems in modern times, but still stress. So what I'm gonna point out next is the fact that whenever we have those second nature responses, it's because we've practiced them. If I've been chronically in a stressful uh situation and chaos is my norm, you've been conditioned to expect that to be your normal. Not that it is, it's not good for you. There's still cortisol effects. People that come up in situations like that often have substance use issues. And if they don't, the families that they came up in did. And sometimes it takes a great act of courage and will to rise above and out of that to break that pattern. And that is incredibly, incredibly important to note. There's a lot of people that extricate themselves from that and promise, I'm not gonna be my mom, I'm not gonna be my dad, and then in that very same space, they don't want to do that to their children, but yet because of their conditioning, they do those things to their children. And not meaning to, not wanting to, and it breaks their hearts, but it also hurts their little ones, hurts the family members and the people they're around. They're hard to be around because they don't see the forest for the trees, the forest being the level of stress they're in and how stressful and stressing they are to be around because they can't regulate themselves. This is not talking bad about people. This is the reality of what self-regulation is and why I do this podcast. Because life is uncomfortable. People live through uncomfortable things, but it doesn't mean they should be thrown away or should be set aside, but rather we should embrace them and love them and be kind and compassionate and provide them the help they need, even if they don't want to hear it the first time. They may not hear it the second time. They may turn their eyes up and say, Will you stop telling me about this? But let them know, hey, I care about you. You may not want to hear this again, but I'm telling you this is what I see. And I'm not telling you to make you feel bad, not judging you. This is just what it looks like. And we don't like what it looks like. And it's like being a mirror. Sometimes the mirror gets a bad rap, and sometimes the mirror gets broken because people can't stand it or they throw it away, or they move away from it and no longer look in the mirror because it's too painful. So we have to be graceful when we approach, but we have to be consistent to be able to be there if somebody needs help. And we can't encourage somebody to change their mind because then they'll take it like we're trying to uh manipulate them or brainwash them. That's not it. This isn't brainwashing. This is let me show you how to stress less so you have more comfort and you keep your mind and your choices and your life decisions yours. You don't let other people make them for you because people see you coming down the pipes, and anyone that has predatory qualities that will try to pick people up, not unlike child predators or people that let that um get folks into uh human trafficking, they find the people that have trauma markers. And I myself have experienced things wherever people have taken advantage of me as a result of my fat, dumb, and and and happy look, and have been taken advantage of before in the military many years ago, just because I I was brought up, and this isn't a knock on my parents. I love my parents, even though they've passed from the rest of their souls, I love them. But they always taught my sisters and I to respect our elders. Nothing wrong with that. That's an incredibly useful and actually respectful way of being. But this one guy that uh I had known in the military, I was 21 at the time, he was a bit older, he was probably in his 30s. Little did I know until weeks later that he'd been kicked out of the military, but he asked me for $100, and mind you, this is circa 1986, 86, 87, 86, and I was pissed, I was upset because he caught me on payday. He was hanging out by the bank, he was asking people, I guess, and I was the fool that said, Yeah, I'll loan you a hundred bucks. Back then, that was huge money. I was making $900 a month, and that means that I gave him almost a tenth of my my pay, and then I was looking for his him and I was asking, hey, where is this guy at? Where and I'm not gonna give the name, uh, where'd he go? Uh have y'all seen him? They said, Oh, him? No, he he got processed out of the military because he was taking the paychecks we were getting paid in paper chip paychecks out of the mailboxes and cashing them. When I heard this, I was beside myself in anger. Once again, that was $100 was a lot at the time. And I knew that it was never going to come back, and I was angry. I wasn't just angry, but I started having anger brooding within myself for several years every time I would think about it. I wouldn't say it was traumatizing, but boy, I tell you what, I would get irritated when I think about it, and I felt insulted, I felt hurt, I felt stupid, all those ugly names that I called myself for having trusted him, not realizing, once again, probably the the cheapest lesson that I ever had as far as cost-wise, to learn a very, very deep lesson that not all people can be trusted just simply because they're elders. And I started questioning and realizing that a lot of people that I was made to bow and not kissing the sacred cow, but rather bow in respect that were drunkards, that were drug addicts, that were family members that made me feel awful. And I just remember the the awful smell of alcohol in the breath when I was like five and six and shaking hands and trying to be respectful, all the while, you know, my parents trying to teach me a principle, but all in the faces of these people that were uh addicted to alcohol, among other things, and that was like very disconcerting. It took me a long time to tease that out, but very important to point out is that often when we have situations like that, it hangs around. And we have to learn how to regulate those things and know where they come from and realize that we're not fundamentally at fault, but there are people that are fundamentally out there looking for our weaknesses. He saw me coming down the turnpike. I've just apparently just fell off the turnip truck, and it's like, hey, there's a sucker right there, and I was the sucker. And you know what? That's okay. Learn the lesson. Took a while, but you know what? I got it. And the important thing is that just that way, we have to realize that self-regulation helps us not give those signals of vulnerability, or else we do get picked off. And there were times that just because of my innocence, I wound up putting myself in situations that were compromising or potentially dangerous, and they didn't turn dangerous mind you, but they could have been. And there are some that probably could have cost me my life not knowing any better, or the lives of others for that matter, because I just happened to be there or acting in a way that I assumed things were going to be okay, not knowing that I was putting people at risk just because I was having so much fun. And here's some important things. What I want you to know is that this running man model works well, but it's founded on one thing, and that's the KISS principle. And I don't like saying this out loud because often people get very offended in these days of what we would call um hypersensitivity. But initially, originally KISS basically says keep it simple, stupid. It doesn't necessarily mean people are stupid, but sometimes we do act in a way as if we're uneducable. Now, KISS principle, keep it simple. And that's really what we have to do whenever we're learning good skills, new skills, useful skills, especially life-preserving skills such as self-regulation, and also life engendering and quality of life engendering skills like self-regulation. And this isn't about being a junk collector. This method is not about in the way I teach it, it's not about adding layers upon layers upon layers of new things, different things, and they're disparate, disconnected. But boy, it sure looks good because we kind of tacked them together with duct tape and it looks like it's sticking, but does it work? And I don't do that. And there's not a reason to do that for yourself, and nor would I teach something like that, or I wouldn't put my name on it. Now, the important thing is whenever we teach ourselves, we have to realize that anything that we do is motivated by like and desire and an outcome, an idea of an outcome that we're trying to get to. And if getting better quality of life is important to you, this model can help you. And this isn't me being a commercial, I'm just telling you this method is simple, it's easy, but it's also practical. And I'll give you an idea as to what it is that I'm trying to share with you. Now, the running band model does have a lot to do with like a self-triage of sorts under stress, but the whole point is that it's principle driven, and that means that it's applicable in a broad range of things from human performance like sport, martial art, and those things you want to do better. But it's also really important in our uh active interactions with other people day to day, our relationships, how we communicate, and also how we have people communicate us uh with us, and also how we raise our children to communicate and also be aware of their own selves and how to self-regulate and not haul off and just fall into a tantrum state and never grow out of it into their mid-20s. And we've seen some of that, and you know how ugly that looks, but it's principle-driven. Not only that, the foundation is very applicable, and the foundation starts with learning about the blood flow, also learning how to manage the breath, how to recognize the stress and tension in the body, and people that have anxiety and panic are very well aware. I'm not teaching you anything you don't know, but applying that awareness in a in a way that it becomes useful to you, then it's a tool. Now you know not only the what's happening, but when it's happening and what you can do about it without getting bogged down in the higher cognitive function that at by that point is being hijacked, in the sense that your fear is now using your ego mind, your higher level cognitive process to tell you a story about what it is, what to do, and the meaning and value. And don't trust it. Don't trust it under stress. Trust yourself to be able to manage yourself first before you start making judgments, before you start making narratives, before you start telling stories, because I can tell you, this is one thing I can't guarantee you that it's probably wrong. It's probably inaccurate, it's probably based on an assumption that went through the filter of your emotions and your fear at the moment, and you're not thinking straight. When you lose your mind, that's really what they meant long time ago, but they didn't have a better way to describe it. I'm sharing the better way of describing it so you not only understand, but you're able to speak it and add words to those visceral experiences that are hard to explain to somebody. Now, the next thing about this is the applicability. It applies generally across life because anything we do is a measure of stress that we're experiencing. It's an environmental irritant that creates either change or evolution, if you will, but also it's one that can cause us to overcome because maybe it's fun and useful, or maybe it's worthwhile that I might challenge myself to want to do to be able to get, let's say, said skill or whatever object I might think is valuable in my environment, but also environmentally within us, it changes us. So it's very applicable in learning how to manage ourselves to be able to be the better product whenever we want to be a better partner, a better dad, a better mom, a better grandparent, this sort of thing, but also a better performer, maybe a better coworker, a better friend. And those are some really important things. Now, this is practical. You can use it in your everyday life. You don't have to change your life to make this work. This will work and it will change your life if you want to do that. So self-regulation makes the biggest difference in the quality of life that you get and the quantity of life that you get, and also the number, quantity of quality things in your life over time to where it starts looking like I'm winning in my life in a good sense. Once again, not points on the board, but above ground suck and win, being a better survivor in the truest sense of the word. And also on top of that, it's easy to teach. I like this because it's not overly involved. It doesn't have jargon-heavy terminology. It's pay attention to this, pay attention to that. And this is when we use it, try to use this and try to do that. Think about your thinking sometimes, self-reflection. But it's a system that is very well suited to somebody that's needing to learn stuff fast. It doesn't take long, but it does take practice. I'm not gonna lie to you. The more often you practice, the greater skill that you gain. And anything that we practice, and I'm gonna put this in a very common perspective, anything that you practice, and let's say repeat, let's change the word to repeat, and let's say let's think about Netflix and chill. Everybody loves to do that. I never have, but I have been to a couple of shows once in a while, and I didn't even have Netflix, but I borrowed someone else's, that was kind of fun. But the idea is this anything that you do, anything that you repeat, you're laying down synaptic track. That means you're making nervous connections to recognize, especially if it's payoff dopamine. This is fun, popcorn family time, wonderful. But whenever you're doing something repeatedly, you start to seek that. Whenever you experience chaos and drama and it happens, even though you don't want that, but you experience it, and then you realize that everything else is boring, you have laid down synaptic tract. But not only that, those synaptic tracks are protected over time. You lay down myelin, those little fatty sheaths that protect the outside of that nerve, that means the spark doesn't go awry and go to the next nerve. It goes down that one faster, more efficiently, and you develop quite a few of those. Then now you have a super highway with less resistance. Okay, highway track one is blocked. I'll go two, three, four. And there's ten more. Just in case, if those get shut down because of construction, the other one's gonna be available. So that means less resistance to signal, faster jumping into those things that may or may not be good for you. Absolute neuroscience here. Once again, I'm not gonna get into the jargon, not necessary, but if you understand the idea, you can use this to make the biggest difference in how you feel, how you do, how you perform, and how you interact in your life. So it's very important that we think that whenever we move, often whenever we're in pain, uh, pain is a motivator to make us seek that that makes the pain stop. That's hedonic. That's absolutely human. That's animal that lives that says, I don't like that, that hurts. And let's find something that tastes good, feels good, or wants to mate with me, because that sounds a lot better than getting hurt or dead. So that's our natural tendency. Not that sex drives everything, it can in some cases, and I'm saying that jokingly, throughout the animal kingdom, but the human kingdom as well, that can become distorted because there's such a big promise of payoff as far as the immediate pleasure, but then of course, later after the fact, you have the responsibility if someone gets pregnant for that matter. So we have to keep things in context. So what does this have to do with the running mad model? A whole hell of a lot. And I'm saying it that way because everything that we do requires one, attention and two, arousal, but three, if it becomes hyper-arousal, then self-regulation becomes a very important point. No matter what you do. It could be school, study, could be making the decision whether or not you're gonna marry somebody or not, or if you're gonna leave a relationship or a job or change sports for that matter, those things will engage us for a time and cause a stress. That doesn't mean that we shouldn't have stress at all, because we do have good stress, you stress. But those stressors that cause us to grow are necessary. But we don't necessarily have to suffer if there is mental, emotional pain, even physiological pain. We don't have to suffer. Pain happens, that's life. But we can alleviate suffering. Suffering is unnecessary. Suffering is wherever pain takes us into a tangent where we start seeing things like people over-medicating accidentally, or where we start seeing uh injury of a very terminal nature, and I'm not going to name that today. But here it is. The self-regulatory skills help minimize that. And what we have to understand is that our natural tendency is to preserve ourself. Then we have this higher cognitive process called our ego that is that self-image projected that we in our mind think we're projecting. It's not how they see us, but um they uh will often take shots at us, especially we get a little uppity or we start getting a little big for our britches, as they say here in Texas, and then we will get taken down a notch, we'll get cut down a bit to keep us in place and keep us humble. Not to keep us smaller or less than, but rather to help us relate in a humble way, to maintain our humility. And one thing I'd like to point out, this is something that one of my sons, wise behind his ears, still a little wet behind the ears, but why wise behind his ears, mentioned that whenever people get egotistical, it's like a balloon. I love this metaphor. And the bigger the balloon gets, the more air it gets within it, and more inflated it is, the more the structure becomes compromised. It no longer has structural integrity, it gets stretched out beyond norm. And if somebody comes along and pops that, boom. There's a lot of pain, but nothing was really lost in the sense of physiology, physical, other than the the pain of the belief being exploded, and there's nothing left but this so many pieces of balloon looking like a broken egg somewhere. But the idea is just that it's an idea, but yet people relate with that in such a big way that people no longer are here as a result of that, because their egos were broken and that self-image was so real to them, not realizing in the process of becoming overbearing that they were actually just building an idea and wanting people to believe it. This is where we see a lot of elevated voices and yelling bravado, and where we see evangelical types practically at the top of their lungs, as if somehow that's going to make people believe some people do, because they don't have a sense of center. And just because somebody is loud does not make them accurate, doesn't make them cool, doesn't make them correct, certainly doesn't make them accurate, and doesn't mean that they all of a sudden care about you because they're shouting from the top of their lungs, regardless of what the message is. So this is part of the self-regulatory thing that I like to teach to make sure that we don't get stuck in ego, realizing that ego can hijack, get hijacked by our physiological brain and cause us to have some insane messages that come up that we take as true just because of the intensity of the moment or because it came up. When in actuality it's just us shouting and yelling with bravado, help me, I'm out of control, I don't feel safe. And they're trying to convince people that they are what it is they're saying, but when in actuality it is, they're really trying to convince themselves because they feel so weak and and vulnerable, and that's a very scary thing. But these are the things that the self-regulatory methodology I teach helps alleviate. It's a simplistic system, but it is sophisticated. Simple in the sense it's easy to do. And remembering, easy is not easy when it comes to repetition, but you must practice, no lies there. But whenever we want self-regulation skill, it's worth it to do things to gain the benefit of better health, less stress, and also higher quality of life. And that's where I'm coming from today. And I appreciate your time. It's been a long podcast, but that's okay. I wanted to put this out there that I also want to share it with y'all because I also know that uh y'all have been listening for a time, and I appreciate your listenership. And when this book comes out, I will let you know on the podcast. It'll be out on Amazon soon. It's going to be the running man model and how to manage stress in the face of fight flight and how to make it work now. So uh look out for that. I would love to have your pay patronage and uh thank you for listening to me this uh Sunday morning. If I sound a little odd, it's because I have a stuffy nose. I apologize for that. But uh, if you have any feedback, please send it to the email at running man get skills project at gmail. I'd love to hear from you. Take care. Walk well.