Death By Adulting
A podcast focused on helping you make decisions today that you won't regret tomorrow. Hosted by Dr. Steve and Megan Scheibner. The Scheibners share wisdom and advice regarding marriage, parenting, dating, communication and even sex.
Death By Adulting
Navigating Adult Stress with a Dash of Inigo Montoya
What if overcoming your fear of phone calls could be as simple as channeling your inner Inigo Montoya? Learn how this beloved character from "The Princess Bride" can guide you through the art of making phone calls in a world dominated by texting. We'll share practical tips to help you conquer this modern-day challenge, all while sprinkling in a dose of humor and nostalgia from the iconic film. Discover essential communication skills that will not only make you better at adulting but also reduce your stress levels.
Ever wondered why a phone call might be more effective than a text? Tune in as we break down five compelling reasons, from the complexity of the message to the emotional nuances that only a voice can convey. We'll also discuss the alarming rise in stress levels among younger generations and why older adults seem to be handling stress better. Mental health is a pressing issue, and we aim to shed light on the importance of communication in alleviating some of that burden.
Life is full of unavoidable stresses—work, family, and everything in between. However, armed with the "Hundred Year Rule" and practical tips for managing emotions, you can navigate these challenges more effectively. We'll also introduce you to our "What the Heck" segment, where we humorously tackle everyday frustrations, and provide some seasonal cleaning tips to help create a more peaceful living environment. Join us for actionable advice and a bit of humor to make your adulting journey a little less stressful.
On this episode of Death. By Adulting, we discover what the Princess Bride has to do with oh everything in life. Next, how to manage stress in a stress-riddled world Our three tools for keeping those pesky unavoidable stresses under control, followed by an episode of what the Heck Then Megan's boss adulting tip of the day, plus much, much more. Roll the intro.
Speaker 2:Don't you wish you knew whether the decisions you're making today were going to work out okay tomorrow? Welcome to Death by Adulting. I'm your host, megan Scheibner, with my co-host, dr Steve Scheibner, and you can think of us as your on-demand personal old farts. You know, when it comes to adulting whether it's dating, marriage, parenting, finances, communication or even sex, you don't have to like it, you just have to do it. And if we have to do it anyway, why not do it? Well, that's what we're here for to help you make decisions today that you won't regret tomorrow. Well, here we are, back at the Death by Adulting table, yes, and we're going to jump right into some adulting topics today. Actually, the topic we're going to talk about we're going to talk about for the next three weeks. It's such a big topic that we have to talk for three weeks about it, um, but we'll break it into manageable, bite-sized pieces for you.
Speaker 2:But we're going to talk about the topic of stress and a little later in the episode we'll look at some of the statistics about how stress is affecting us. And and boy, it's affecting us. But we want to start out with a stress that is a stress for young people. Now, that really wasn't for us, steve. We grew up uh, the only way you could communicate someone with someone, unless you sent them a letter, was to call them on the phone. But in today's texting world, making a phone call has become a stressful thing, and you know what I think? Think perhaps the Princess Bride may have the answers we're looking for.
Speaker 1:Yes, let me roll that video Hello.
Speaker 2:My name is Yanigo Montoya. You killed my father, prepare to die. Well, there you have it, our friend Inigo Montoya and his answer to how to make a phone call you want to jump in there for a minute well, as we teased with in the beginning.
Speaker 1:Everything you need to know in life. You can learn from the Princess. Bride, if you've ever seen the Princess Bride movie. You have to watch it. It's an older movie now. It was made in 1987 but, it is an absolute classic.
Speaker 1:You'll watch it over and over and over again. Then you'll memorize the whole movie, like most of us have. And Inigo Montoya repeats that line over and over again hello, my name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father, prepare to die. And, like you said, everything you need for a good phone call is in there.
Speaker 1:Now let me let's just kind of talk about a phone call for a minute, because I don't want you to think that here's a couple of boomers doing like this about. You should learn how to talk on the phone. That's not what this is about. There was a time when we didn't text and we didn't email right, those were new technologies that came our way, and then, when they did, we had to learn how to do them. Technologies that came our way, and then, when they did, we had to learn how to do them. We're going to kind of reverse engineer the phone call because we have to relearn how to make a phone call, because people don't make phone calls as much as they used to back in the back in our day, it isn't just young people.
Speaker 2:I would only text if I could.
Speaker 1:Correct. I've, I've totally come over to the texting yeah, right and so. But when I, you know, you know, when we send a text in the early days it was dear so-and-so comma, you know, next paragraph, we'd write it like it was a letter to a business or we'd send it. You know, sincerely, steve, and if people go, my kids would go, dad, you don't have to do that, I know it's from you. So now do I end all my texts with dad on them? Sure.
Speaker 2:I do. Do you know why?
Speaker 1:to get under their skin and irritate them. But I know what I'm doing and I know I don't have to do that Right, so don't say anything in the comments. Uh, but there, I had to learn how to text. Now, if you grew up in the texting world, you have to learn how to make a phone call. Yeah, and sometimes in the adulting world that can be really intimidating and you're maybe aren't very good at it. I've talked to a few people that you call them and they pick up the phone. It's like, and you have to say hello.
Speaker 1:Hello, and they're like oh yeah, good, it's like, it's like a text it's like you know, they want to see the three dots on their, on their on their phone and that doesn't happen on a phone?
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's. It's absolutely foreign to them.
Speaker 1:So five reasons to use the phone.
Speaker 2:Well, let's talk first about Inigo Montoya.
Speaker 2:Oh okay, because really he does encapsulate all that you need to know to have a successful phone call, and the more you know, the less fearful something is. So here we go. Inigo Montoya starts out with hello. You start out a phone call with a greeting hello, or hi, or I live in the South. So I say hey, hey, right, and then he introduces himself. My name is Inigo Montoya and my kids hated this when they were little, but when they first started answering the phone, we taught all of them to say their name. It's just polite. So hello, my name is Inigo Montoya. He's greeted you, he's said his name. Now he states the purpose of why he's calling you killed my father, right? That's the purpose, and it might be. I'm calling to arrange a date. I'm calling to answer your question.
Speaker 1:I'm calling to Remind you about something like you killed my father. Yes, you killed my father.
Speaker 2:There's the purpose, and then he goes on to a hoped for conclusion Prepare to die Right. And you want to end your phone call with a hoped for conclusion.
Speaker 1:The only thing Inigo Montoya was missing in his little soliloquy was goodbye. Goodbye, yes, but I suppose prepare to die. It's kind of a blunt.
Speaker 2:Since he was going to be dead, he wasn't going to have to say goodbye. So there you go the greeting, the introduction, the purpose of the call and the hoped for conclusion.
Speaker 1:Wow, okay. So that's four really useful parts of an effective phone call.
Speaker 2:Yes, but there are times that you have to call.
Speaker 1:There are times and it was sweet with the kids because we wanted them to have the discipline of being able to answer a phone. Sweet with the kids because we we wanted them to have the discipline of being able to answer a phone and because it's a life skill that that in the adulting world that they live in now they're all grown, that they've they really use a lot. And so when they picked up the phone, instead of, you know, you've called a, you've called a friend and they've got little children, and the kid picks up the phone and they you can hear a kid talking like. And then you ask for the parents and they either drop the phone on the floor or they hang up or they carry it out to the pool and drop it in. You know, whatever, when you called our house and the kids would say hello, this is, you know, peter or Emma. May I ask who's speaking, please? It was such a delightful experience. By the time we got to the phone, people were in a great mood. They're like, wow, that was really wonderful.
Speaker 2:Show me how to do that with my kids and we'll we'll talk more about the parenting aspect of that. We had two kids that did the same thing. They answered the phone and said dear heavenly father, it was like they were praying. You know our father, who art in heaven. No, no, no, that's a different application, Sorry.
Speaker 1:I guess, stress affects all of us. Sometimes we have real brain farts, you know, when we were stressed out too much. Okay, so, um then, five reasons let's talk about that to use the phone.
Speaker 2:Yeah, there are five good reasons to use the phone. It's actually you, your first. I just wanted to set it up. Look in my eyes, look in your eyes.
Speaker 1:Five reasons to use the phone.
Speaker 2:It's actually you. You're first. I just wanted to set it up. Look in my eyes.
Speaker 1:Five reasons to use the phone Number. One the details are too complicated for a text, right? A text is two-dimensional, and I think you're going to talk about that a little bit. But a text is just words on a screen and many times you don't know the tone behind it or you infer a tone from it which is not always healthy.
Speaker 1:There's just too much stuff or there's just too much to explain. So you're trying to get it down. You know, and you don't. You don't want to send it. We've all gotten a text that's out. Oh, here we go, and then we don't want to read it, and so we want to keep it succinct in a text. But you've got too much to say, and so many times I've started a text and I said you know what? I just hit phone and I call and I say it's too complicated.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I just say too much for a text because I'm going to ask you this question and then you're going to, hopefully, you take it the right way, but if you don't, just let's avoid all that. Right, a phone call will avoid all that Right. Too many steps, yep, too many steps. Number one too complicated.
Speaker 2:Number two is this there's too much opportunity for misunderstanding, and you kind of alluded to that. Um, when you and I even are texting, I can't see your eyes. I can't hear your voice. We've had lots of miscommunication when we're texting and then you wonder how you end up in these kind of tense, stressful moments when you maybe thought you were being funny or you were just giving information and it was just taken wrong and it's because you can't get the heart behind it Right?
Speaker 1:Can we riff for a minute here, cause it's not written down on our notes about the use of emojis in texting, because certain emojis uh kind of have a certain meaning to them. At least I pick them up that way. So if I'm texting with you and all, and then it's longer and longer between a text and then I get the thumbs up text that means I'm done talking to you, that's like click, that's like, you know, slamming the phone down back in the old days, and so they. She hung up on me.
Speaker 2:That's what I get this from anybody.
Speaker 1:I don't just get it for you when I get a thumbs up from somebody that they hung up on me oh yeah, I got more I want to text right, so what's your most used emoji?
Speaker 1:uh, it's either the the sideways laughing, crying face or the thumbs up. I hate to say it, but there's when I tell you, send me the thumbs up sometimes when I tell people I want to be done texting, I just send them a thumbs up. So now you know if you text me, you know. Uh, it's either laughing crying face or the the angry red face one.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and it tells you, I mean in your favorites, you know what you use most. So, mine is the laughing for sure, but then mine's this one.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, you send me that one all the time I send that one on and this one. Right. Yeah, so you know as silly and shallow as emojis are they do, they do try to give us some depth. To talk to me, even though it's a smiley face, it's not. We're way off the reservation. This is five reasons to use the phone and we're talking about how to have it. We'll use this in another one.
Speaker 2:We'll talk about five ways to have a great text conversation all right.
Speaker 1:The next one is this so the first two reasons we've already stated to use the phone number three is this the preceding texts, the conversation that's been going uh, have dug a deep pit of misunderstanding somehow we've all been there, haven't you?
Speaker 1:you've gotten to a place where you go okay, you text a little bit more. No, no, that's not what I meant. I I don't have time to explain it at some point where you're you're digging a hole, okay, you got to go. Hold on, I'm going to call, where you just hit the button and call.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And you go. We got off on the wrong track here. I didn't mean that when I said this, you know, and did you take it that way? Cause that's not how I meant it, and it clarifies you can hear the person's voice.
Speaker 2:Yeah, good, All right. The next one is this you need them, and they all keep kind of going back to the same place, but you really need them to hear your heart, so sometimes it's this is so important. I need you to hear that. I need an answer now Because with texting there is kind of the freedom to go. I'll get around to it. A phone call you're going to get through and talk, right, If you answer your phone, you, you need to answer your phone sometimes, but there are times that I need to be able to get hold of one of my kids or you and go. I am so serious about this, right? This isn't funny. There's no emojis. We need to talk about this.
Speaker 1:Yeah, right, yeah, absolutely, that's, that's good advice. And and uh, the last one number five reason to use the phone is whoever you're texting with, they're old, they're just old. How old I don't know, but old right, we're old. I like a phone call. I prefer a phone call to a text.
Speaker 2:Even though I text all the time when the kids call. That's special.
Speaker 1:It is special and that's what is nice about it. So it's being considerate and appropriate of the person that you are communicating with, and if you knew that they would prefer a phone call, maybe you would prefer to text. Do it the way they would prefer it. It says something to them and when you're reaching out to your parents or you're reaching out to grandma and grandpa, it's nice to hear their voice.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's others oriented it is.
Speaker 1:It's oriented towards the needs of others, not always what is most convenient for me. So very good, we're going to wrap this one up.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I will just say, as a mom, to when my young adults when I say you know how's your week going, and I'm really thinking about you and I know it's been a hard day, you doing okay, and I get the letter K in a text, yeah, no, no, no-transcript. Call your mother, okay, all right. So the five reasons that really you do need to use the phone, not text, use the phone or this, um, what you're trying to say is too complicated, complicated for a text. Number two there's too much opportunity for misunderstanding. Number three the previous texts that you've been having have dug a deep pit of miscommunication that now you need to get out of. Number four you need the person you're communicating with to hear your heart and, finally, the person you're talking to is old. Five good reasons to use the phone Awesome, all right. So that's kind of a quick and dirty.
Speaker 2:Here's one solution to one stress in your life. There you go, you're welcome, but now we're going to go on and talk about some harder stresses in our lives, and today we're going to talk about unavoidable stresses. But before we get there, I just want to share on my handy dandy phone some of the statistics that we have found about stress which are different than even 18 months ago. About stress which are different than even 18 months ago. The, the, the charts are moving way up and there's not really a dip in any of them. Um, this is a. This is a good one for us. We're almost there, but the lowest stress levels actually are in adults older than 72. So that could be the most discouraging stat of all, because you go, I've got all the way till 72 before I feel better, but we're going to give you some help. Um, 80% of millennials are stressed about money, and I think everyone's stressed about money, but 80% of millennials, not just millennials, yeah.
Speaker 2:Teenagers report a stress level above 5.8 out of 10 during the school year, so when they're in school their stress level is higher. One in five college students has thought about suicide because of stress. That's a scary statistic. 83% of Americans are worried about the future of the nation. Nearly 25% of people feel stressed during the holidays. That's probably connected to family relationships, and then 45% of college students this semester sought counseling for stress.
Speaker 1:That's one out of every two.
Speaker 2:One out of every two. Now, when I went to college, we weren't seeking help for stress. It just wasn't a thing. I mean, you worried about it, some people worried about their grades. I maybe didn't do that, but but that was kind of it. The stress levels were low.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I would think I would say that is true. Life is more stressful today than it was 30 or 40 years ago.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:It wasn't, the stress didn't exist back then, but it's just, I think it's, it's ramped up.
Speaker 2:And we're even, we're seeing it. Remember, we're counselors. And so we see people in counseling but we're looking at children who are in fourth, fifth and sixth grade, that you can look at them and say they're carrying the weight of the world on their shoulders and it shouldn't be.
Speaker 1:And there's lots of things, I think, that have contributed to that over the years. This isn't a bash on young people by any means. It's a. It's where the general culture is, but there's more communication. There's less downtime than there ever was before.
Speaker 2:There's, you know, when we were kids children, there was three TV channels, now there's a thousand or more, and so there's too much input.
Speaker 1:I think there's just too much coming at us all the time, and then the political issues have just gotten out of control.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, we're going to talk about that. There's some unavoidable stresses that we have to learn to deal with, because if they're unavoidable, they're going to get to us.
Speaker 1:Right Before we jump into that, yep, let me ask you to do this If you've made it this far in the video, you like what you're seeing so far. Do me a favor, do us a favor. Click that like button down below, subscribe to this channel and hit the notification bell so that you don't miss any of this great content coming your way. It doesn't cost you anything, it's free. And then, finally, do us a huge favor and share this with your friends on social media. It'll help us grow and it'll help others that are getting the benefit that you're getting now.
Speaker 2:Well said, dr Scheibner. Thank you All right. So what are these unavoidable stresses? And I'm just going to list some and, as you think about them, jump right in. So number one and we saw that in the statistics I just read is the economy. That's an unavoidable stress. Yeah Right, any thoughts on it?
Speaker 1:Well, it's again death by adulting. Right, we're talking about the adulting world that we live in, and the older you get, the more you get in touch with the stresses of money and finances. When you were a kid, it didn't mean anything to you and I thought. When I was a child, I thought you just went to the bank and got money and that's how it worked.
Speaker 2:I even said that to my dad once and he laughed and I was like why are you laughing? That's where you get money right.
Speaker 1:Now the federal government does it that way. That's how they just print money right.
Speaker 2:Which is why we're stressed. That's why we're stressed.
Speaker 1:It's causing all sorts of problems for the rest of the economy. But inflation is through the roof and inflation, Even if inflation comes down temporarily or for a while, it's still a cumulative thing. So when it jumped up for four or five years, you never get that money back. Everything is more expensive now going forward.
Speaker 1:Yeah, the baseline is higher, which means you have less money to spend and I think for the first time, they said that the credit card debt in the United States went over a trillion dollars of credit card debt, so people are living on credit and that's a. That's another trap. There's lots of traps out there that will ratchet up the stress. There's nothing worse and again, a lot of us live in this world than going from paycheck to paycheck or not even making it from paycheck to paycheck and uh, that it just stressful.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and there's nothing you can do to avoid it. Um, so that's number one. The credit card. You can, yeah, you could you know?
Speaker 1:you have to have some discipline with your credit cards. A lot of this stuff comes down to discipline. Some of it comes down to hard work. I mean, you could go out and get another job Now here's those solutions should be temporary, right? If you have to let's $10,000, $12,000 in debt Go get a second job for a while, take all of that money and apply it towards your debt, get out of debt and then quit the job, but don't go back out on the revolving credit and spend more. So learn from that.
Speaker 2:Once you pay it off, don't bring it right back.
Speaker 1:Cut those cards in half, don't use them. The sinister thing now is it's on our phone, so you just tap your phone.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, it gets easier all the time all right, uh, this is linked with it, but, uh, the second unavoidable stress is finances. Right, and it's like you said, it's that? That? Okay, if I pay this, I don't pay that. How long can I hold off that? And that is stressful and it's going to affect you physically and emotionally and spiritually. It's going to affect everything.
Speaker 1:It's a, it's the trap right, and it's been around forever since, since we were kids. Get a credit card, build credit right, they said. And then you start getting into this emotional thing where you want to live either above your means or ahead of your means, so where, maybe years from now, you would save up the money and be able to afford a pool or a nicer car or whatever it is. Now you say, well, I want that right now. Yeah, so I'll go out and borrow on it and you can.
Speaker 2:You can borrow the money and your credit's good enough.
Speaker 1:But then you got it. Your monthly payments are adding up. It's amazing. You ought to look and see how many little things add up every month your Netflix subscription, your Prime Video subscription, your subscription to Adobe, your subscription and all of them add up. You don't realize, but you're spending hundreds of dollars every month on these little. What was $4.99, but now it's $7.99. Then it went up to $14.
Speaker 2:Well, and it's hard to even know what it is. And when we talk about that a lot, I get so many emails of your Apple. Payment went through and I'm like for what?
Speaker 1:I don't even know what it is, yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, all right. Here's number three. We're in an election cycle. That's unavoidable stress. We're in an election cycle.
Speaker 1:That's unavoidable stress, yeah, and nobody is neutral on anything these days or civil yeah, nobody lets it roll off their back either. It's very emotional and it falls into what I call the 3% rule. Politics and a lot of other things on social media especially have fallen into this 3% rule. What do I mean by that? It used to be in the old days that 3% of the people that means not the other 97% 3% of the people thought it was their God-given gift to find something wrong with everything. And so what did they do about that? They stirred the pot wherever they could go, finding something wrong with everything. They thought that they were more gifted, smarter, you know whatever, more connected than anybody else, and they were the pot stirrers of life.
Speaker 1:Social media comes around and it gives those people a platform. And now the 3%? The trolls of life? Trolls have always been around, but they didn't have a platform before. Now. The trolls of life trolls have always been around, but they didn't have a platform before. Now. The trolls have influenced more people than they ever have before, and some people think, hey, that sounds like good fun, let's stir the pot. So now, instead of three percent, we're at 20, 30 percent are, are trolls out there. Yeah, they don't really care one way or another, they just. They just get energized by riling everybody up or seeing how many clicks they can get on something, and that whole thing is is, uh, fueling right the fire that is in everybody's belly about politics these days.
Speaker 2:it's uh it's a shame there's not a thing we can do about it.
Speaker 1:You can't do anything about the trolls, but you can, you might, you can limit your social media, yeah and your news time, your, your radio shows, your podcasts.
Speaker 2:I mean, this may be a season of quiet, it may be, and we're gonna.
Speaker 1:We're gonna talk about this more, and because we're gonna do three uh shows on stress and anxiety I think we're talking about it in another show, but let me just tease with it a little bit Go out and touch some grass, do something real. Pet a horse, yeah, you know. Go do something out in nature.
Speaker 2:Well, you know, we're Christians. Why did God create the beauty that is our world? Right, it could have been black and white. It's because, in interacting with that creation, you are interacting with the God of the universe.
Speaker 1:And it's the greatest stress reliever in the universe Right.
Speaker 2:Absolutely All right. Here's the next one. They're all three linked together, but anything that has to do with a job so unemployment, searching for a job, being unhappy in a job, the competitiveness of certain jobs right, all of that is unavoidable stress because you got to work.
Speaker 1:The politics in a lot of workplaces.
Speaker 2:The gossip, the clicks. I mean jobs are stressful.
Speaker 1:Yep, they are One of the reasons I so my two major jobs in my life was I was a naval officer for eight years and then a bunch of years in the reserves. There was a lot of politics. Yeah, climbing the ladder, you know back scratching, sticking people you know, knife in the back, kind of thing, and I tried to avoid all of that but you know you couldn't. Very political and socially climbing, social climbing. And then the next job I have, which I've had for the last 32 years, is I'm a pilot for the largest airline in the world and you know what the delightful part about that job is? There's absolutely no politics there and you go. How is that even possible?
Speaker 2:It's all based on seniority.
Speaker 1:I don't move up until the guy in front of me either, retires or dies and you know what. You don't have to worry about stabbing anybody in the back? You do have to pass a checkride every nine months and you do have to keep up the standard and you do have to do all that and be healthy. That incentive makes for lousy pilots. No, the system really works. But the nice part is you don't take work home with you.
Speaker 2:So all those job related things, they spill over into the home life, right, yeah, and I think you missed the most stressful one. What's that? And I know that we have listeners, watchers you know whether you're listening on an Apple podcast or whatever who are in ministry, because ministry is the gift that keeps on giving. Like as an airline pilot, you come home and you're like, ah, there's nothing I can do about my job except look and see when I go to work next, right.
Speaker 1:Yeah, You're right. For 10 years I was a senior pastor.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and it came home all the time.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and this. That's the opposite. Of you can't take home work, work home with you.
Speaker 2:You always take work home with you, yeah, yeah, all right, one more. And, um, this falls into the avoidable stress and the unavoidable. We're going to talk this time about it being unavoidable, but family relationships, yes, uh, you know, in a perfect world they'd be all light and sunshine, but family relationships cause a lot of stress and in some sense they're unavoidable. But uh, next episode we're going to talk about kind of the, the freedom you have to make them avoidable also.
Speaker 1:Okay, yeah, and and even if you have what you would consider a pretty good family relationship, there's still stresses there, and and we don't want to be all pollyanna-ish with you, but they're boy the extended family is a very stressful situation for most people. It just is it absolutely is.
Speaker 2:So we've given you some problems, some unavoidable stresses that are a problem.
Speaker 1:I was just thinking are we going to give them some solutions?
Speaker 2:Yeah, and we don't ever want to leave you hanging without solutions. So we have three solutions today for these unavoidable stresses. Now, there's different solutions for stress that you caused yourself, but these kind of fit, for those stresses that there's not a dang thing you can do about it, right, all right. The first one is this Apply the 100-year rule to it, and that seems really simplistic, but the 100-year rule is is this going to make a difference in 100 years? And you know what? There are some things that will make a difference in 100 years, but not many Correct, right. And when you can look at these stresses with that mindset, you can kind of sit back, take a deep breath and go. You know what I'm going to do the next thing? And muddle through this, because in the end it's not that big a deal.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's really good advice. We've talked to a lot of couples about that. Big a deal. Yeah, that's really good advice. I we've talked to a lot of couples about that over the years. Ask yourself out loud the question will this make a difference in a hundred years? Now you might have to come down off the ceiling because if you get all revved, up and you're like, yeah, you want to be right and you're trying to you know, get your point over and relax a little bit and say, well, is this going to make a difference in a hundred years?
Speaker 1:And be honest with yourself. The answer is no, it's not, it's not. And then you got to cool down.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you got to let it go yeah.
Speaker 1:Right. So I've got. I've got a couple. One is this um, either have discipline or rule over your emotions. Okay, now, we live in one of the most feelings driven cultures the world has ever known.
Speaker 1:There's an old saying that says if it feels good, do it, and a lot of people live by that motto. If it feels good, do it. And what? If it feels good, do it means is don't question it, don't think about it, don't deliberate over it. Just the more impulsive and the more impetuous you are in the decision-making process, the better in your mind and the more likely, by the way, this current culture is to reward you for your impulsive, impetuous decision-making. That's a terrible way to go through life, because you're going to go from one train wreck to another. Now, having said that you can rule over your emotions, I'm thinking of a great Bible verse for this and for those of you who are going, what does the Bible bible have to do with this? The bible's got all the wisdom of the ages in it. That's, that's the beauty of uh. You know what we call the word of god. It's, it's uh. There's no better book for living life than that book.
Speaker 1:But you got to know where to look yeah, so uh, second corinthians 10 5, right in the new testament, right smack dab in the middle of the new testament, says take every thought captive and make it obedient to christ. Every thought captive and make it obedient to christ. And that deals with the what ifs of life. The what ifs can begin to spiral out of control. And if you're thinking to yourself, oh, steve, I'm a what if person, I really am I. I go from. You know if this happens and what about that?
Speaker 1:and pretty soon you're going down the what if trail you're thinking I shouldn't even get out of bed catastrophizing it is it binds you and you know it. So ask yourself the question number one am I a what if? Person? And then what? What can I do to help discipline my emotions, to not let those things spiral out of control in my mind? Having a one-sided conversation where everything goes from bad to worse? A lot of us have those in our heads All the time.
Speaker 1:Right, and that's taking those thoughts captive. Stop right there, have a moment of prayer. You know taking every thought captive and making it obedient to Christ. Well, that tells me I need to sit down, fold my hands, lord, right now, I'm just going to stop and I'm going to hand this thought over to you. I'm going to hand this concern, this stress, this worry onto you In Jesus name. Amen, and get going.
Speaker 2:Yeah, can I throw something in there, Because sometimes we use phrases that bring up more questions than answers. So you know, like when we say to a child, stop acting weird and they think think calm down. If you knew how weird I wanted to be.
Speaker 2:So the phrase take every thought captive. That sounds nice, but how do you do that? And the answer is found in Philippians, chapter four. That tells us how to take thoughts captive and says think on whatever is true and lovely and pure and right and noble. And so it's an actual discipline of these unavoidable stresses that I'm chewing on. It's like a cow chewing on its cud. I have to have the discipline to chew on what's right, pure, true and noble, instead Anything worthy of repute of excellence. And that's a discipline. And there are times you go, I just can't do that. Yeah, you can, you can, but it takes work and it takes discipline.
Speaker 1:Well, you're working a principle that we talk about all the time when we counsel with people, and the principle is this put off and put on. Exactly, and that principle of put off, put on looks like what you just described. What do we want to put off in this illustration? We want to put off all the what ifs, all those thoughts that begin to spiral out of control.
Speaker 2:Yeah, the anxious thinking.
Speaker 1:That anxious thinking that goes from bad to worse in our minds. We want to put that off. What do we put on? Whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is right, whatever is true? There's a discipline involved. If you don't know what to put on, you can say to somebody all day long well, just take that thought captive. Yeah, take captive. Don't do that. Stop doing that. That's not going to do them much good if they don't know what to replace it with.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and if you don't know where to find what's true, lovely, pure and noble, just open your Bible and meditate on the Word of God. It is all those things.
Speaker 1:And God's Word can calm us in a way that we could never do for ourselves. Yeah, and the other, you know, just practical side of doing that is put, that thing that you're looking at, you know, put it down, turn it off, get out, go touch some grass.
Speaker 2:Yep, we talked about that, absolutely All right. So I've got another one.
Speaker 1:Another way to avoid the unavoidable stress, and I call this the dot illustration. Yeah, the dot illustration. We do this fairly often with people that come in for counseling. But I'll just put up a screen, a completely blank screen, with just a little dot in the middle of it, a little black dot, and then I'll ask people what do you see? Now your eye is drawn to that little black dot. So they'll say a little black dot. Now, 99.9% of that screen is white, but they're drawn to that little thing that sticks out, that's different, that's odd, that doesn't really fit in. Quite right, and that's what your eye is drawn to. Now. The next point is this If you stare at that little dot too long or long enough, it becomes bigger, it becomes expansive. That little dot, it hasn't grown, it's still the same size, but the longer you are preoccupied with it, the longer you stress over it, the longer you stare at it, the bigger it becomes.
Speaker 1:Think about that with the what ifs in your life and the stress level. Are these things that honestly, in reality are only little pebbles, but now they've become great, big boulders? Well, you got to stop staring at it, you got to stop examining it over and over depression, uh, the anxiety, all of those things come into our lives because we spend too much time either thinking about our own problems, our own worries, our own concerns, and we don't get out. And I'm going to give you the put off and put on here. We want to put off examining ourselves too closely and we want to put on serving somebody else.
Speaker 1:Get out of your house, go serve at a soup kitchen, go do something nice for somebody else, go see somebody who has a need, go mow somebody's lawn, go do somebody's laundry, go help clean their house. Right, I mean, there's watch their children, watch their children for them. There's any number of things that you could do that get you out of examining what is not working in your life or you think is not working in your life. And it's getting bigger and bigger and bigger. Yeah, and go examine somebody else and go help and serve them as you're doing that. That thing that got real big. It's going to go right back down to its appropriate size.
Speaker 2:It's interesting. I've used that dot illustration in a lot of counseling situations and I've had women, girls, young adult females say to me well, I don't think the dot changes size at all. And so I change the illustration and say imagine you have a zit on your forehead. But it's true, something that sticks out like a sore thumb. The longer you look at it, the uglier and the more repulsive, and you think everybody sees it right oh, and I can't go out and it's gonna ruin my life and this is my big day.
Speaker 1:Why did this happen to me? Now, that's what anxiety does right that's the what if yeah, that's the road of the what yeah exactly.
Speaker 2:well, steve, why don't you remind us of the three, and then we'll move on?
Speaker 1:Okay, here we are Answers to avoid unavoidable stress. Number one the hundred year rule. Ask yourself the question will this make a difference in a hundred years? The answer, almost always is no. Number two rule your emotions. Don't let your emotions go out of control. Take those what ifs and hold them captive and make them obedient to christ. And number two, uh, don't let something that's small, over your over examination of it, become too big and too out of control. Go out and serve somebody else, and those things in your life that you out of control will get much, much smaller.
Speaker 2:Manageable. Manageable yes, good work, there we go.
Speaker 1:All right. Now it's time for our next segment. Are you ready, Meg?
Speaker 2:I am ready.
Speaker 1:All right, it's one of my faves, this segment is called what the Heck, what the Heck that's going to be on Mrs Scheibner's tombstone. She says it all the time and when something is really stressing her and really frustrating, she says what the literal heck. And then we, we all run over, we go, what's wrong? And she explains to us something that happened in her life that evoked that deep seated emotion of what the heck is that? Yes, All right, We've all. You do this on a daily basis. You might not say it that way, but there's something you look at and you go what?
Speaker 2:How's that? Even a thing, right, yep, what the heck, how's that even a thing, all right.
Speaker 1:So let's talk about um the top four We've identified four there's probably 400.
Speaker 2:There's probably 400. What?
Speaker 1:the heck's a daily life, right? Let me start out with number one. Number one is this you thought an issue was taken care of and then you discover it's not. I thought we wrapped that up. I thought we got that resolved. I thought that was taken care of. You know, you got a bill. You thought you paid it. You even went online. You finally got to the website. You got all the drop-down menus to work. You got down and you paid the bill and then you went and you clicked submit down at the bottom and it took you back up to all the ones you didn't fill in or you didn't fill in right, and then they're all highlighted in red and you went back again and there was still another one because it dropped out because you took too long. And then you finally went and filled that out and you went and hit submit again and now you got all the drop down menus right. You hit submit and it says submit again and you hit submit again and you go. Do you really?
Speaker 2:mean you want to submit and you hit.
Speaker 1:I really mean I want to submit and I really, really, really mean I want to submit and when you finally did that, that it finally said a thank you, you're done, right, but you forgot to take a picture of that screen with your phone. And then, about 10 days later, you get a little email or a nasty gram of some sort, and it says hey, you didn't take care of this. Now you owe us, now there's a fine, yeah, and now you're gonna, you're gonna pay even more and you go. What heck? I thought I took care of that.
Speaker 2:I have one from that category. That happened today. I was on the United States Postal Service website yes, and yes, to do anything on it you have to open an account. Now. I wanted my mail to get held and so it says type in your name. And I typed my name in it and it said that name not available.
Speaker 1:Wow.
Speaker 2:What the heck, it's my name.
Speaker 1:It's your name. That is a what the heck.
Speaker 2:That's a literal. What the heck?
Speaker 1:Yeah, have you thought about changing your name? No, I don't. That's why they call it postal.
Speaker 2:I just about went postal. Yeah, all right. All right on to number two. I want to finish my bills um the irs, anything from the irs, all right.
Speaker 1:Uh, permits, permitting all right, let's. You want to talk about an adult issue? Right for the minute. Okay, permits getting permits for things. You have to put a fence in. You have to get a permit. You want to put a pool and you have to get a permit. Yeah, you want to run some electrical stuff to your garage? You have to get a permit. You want to run some electrical stuff to your garage? You have to get a permit. There's permits for everything. That means dealing with local government. All right, talk about a stress producer. Now, I'm just going to I mean, we're going to end it with my first one with this If you grew up and you enjoyed the pool that mom and dad put in for you, or you enjoyed something that was nice at your home, and you were a carefree child, and now you're looking back and you're going, I had no idea how stressful this must have been for dad or mom and dad to put this pool in, or whatever it was, or the fence. So we could play in the backyard.
Speaker 1:Do me a favor, pick up the phone we talked about that at the beginning and call your mom and dad and say, dad, thanks for putting that pool in, or thanks for putting the fence around the yard, or thanks for getting the thing. I'm realizing in my adult life how hard and stressful that was, because I just had to get a permit for you name it. Putting a deck off the back of my house.
Speaker 2:Yes, we'll do even better. Here's how you do it. You say hello, this is your son. I've realized how much you did for me. I'm calling to say thank you. See greeting introduction. Just like an Eagle, montoya, that's a great one.
Speaker 1:All right, what's number two?
Speaker 2:Here's number two. Number two is this a task that you were sure you completed, but you didn't not like a bill, but like a life task, like it's time to make the bed. You're ready to go to bed at night and you realize there's no sheets on the mattress and you think, oh yeah, I put them in the dryer after they got out of the washer and you go to get them to put on your bed and they're soaking wet because you never pushed the button. Or the dishwasher's totally full and you thought you ran it but you didn't push the button. It always comes down to pushing the button right. Those things are what the heck.
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, I'm, my other job is a captain for the largest airline in the world. Um, there's a funny thing that we always say in the flight deck, which is there's always one more button to mash, and so you're, you get something all set up and then you, you forget to hit the last button. Well, whatever it was you did doesn't get done until you hit that last button. I forgot to hit that last button. Um, one more thought about the bill paying thing online, cause I just, it just occurred to me. The biggest frustration for me in that is this you get all done, you hit submit and it says thank you, and uh, and then, or it doesn't say thank you, you just hit submit and it says you know your thing has been submitted, and then you get that nasty gram 10 days, two weeks later. And then the person. When you eventually talk to a person after you've gone through the frustrating phone menu and they say well, did you get a confirmation?
Speaker 2:email.
Speaker 1:They go well? No, I don't think so. And they go well. If you didn't get a confirmation email, your thing didn't go through and you go well. How was I know I was supposed to get a confirmation email? Did it say you're not done until you get a confirmation email? No, it didn't say that. They just know that on their end. But you.
Speaker 2:Being an adult is just really difficult.
Speaker 1:I'm really done with this. I can't adult really difficult.
Speaker 2:I'm really done with this. I can't adult today.
Speaker 1:All right, number three Number three oh, that's me. Someone else's lack of planning becomes your emergency All right.
Speaker 1:Do I have to explain this to you? I mean, how often does somebody? They didn't plan, they didn't think ahead, they didn't prepare at all, and they show up and they don't have what they need? My son, he's 25, 26. Steven, yes, junior, 25 years old now. He's just started coaching a middle school baseball team. First day of baseball practice, three of the boys show up and they don't have a baseball glove. They're going to play baseball, but they didn't bring a baseball glove, and either their mommy did it for them, or they may not know they even need one.
Speaker 1:And so their lack of planning constituted his emergency. Sometimes those things are unavoidable, sometimes you just have to teach into it with young people, but sometimes that person's not so young and they should have known better, so don't receive that. You know what? Sometimes the loving, caring thing is to put, help them say hey, you know what? Let's everybody slow down, take a big deep breath. This is not my emergency, yeah Right, not my monkey, not my circus Right. We're going to more on that later.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And and and just kind of hand it back to him gently, but hand it back there's a, a saying that we say often fool me once, shame on you.
Speaker 2:Fool me twice, shame on me. If you have someone in your life that their lack of planning becomes your emergency the first time, shame on them. But if you continue to let that happen, shame on you. Shame on you, right, all right, here's the fourth. What the heck of life, and it is this you get up early, you get ready early, you leave early to get somewhere and you still arrive late. What the heck. What the heck and I can't tell you how often that happened that I got everything done early. I even had a good quiet time and God owed me Right, and we would take off out of the house and someone would say to me I only have one shoe on and we'd have to go back to the house.
Speaker 1:How did you get out to the van with only one shoe?
Speaker 2:Or we're going to their baseball practice and they say, oh, I forgot to bring my baseball shoes and glove Right, those, those types of things, those are the things that make mother's heads explode.
Speaker 1:Yes, yes, yes what the heck. All right, sum it up the top four. What the heck.
Speaker 2:All right, here are the top four. What the heck. You thought something was taken care of, but you were wrong. You thought something was taken care of, but you were wrong. Number two is this you thought you completed a task, but you never pushed the button. Number three someone else's lack of planning becomes your emergency. And number four you left early, but somehow you're still late. How's that even happen? What the heck? Awesome.
Speaker 1:All right, right, we're just about done. Let's get out of here today. Let's talk about Megan's boss adulting.
Speaker 2:Tip of the day, meg okay, I'm gonna say two, two dirty words spring and clean.
Speaker 2:Right, and maybe your mother made you spring clean and you were like why? I just want to go outside, it's nice out. But I want to encourage you adults that there are, there are regular patterns to our life and if you think of the seasons, there's spring, fall, winter, summer and use those things to your advantage, those those kinds of stopping points in life, to do some purging in your home, because one of the things that causes a lot of stress and anxiety is clutter and too much stuff. And and when you're in your bed knowing, oh, when I get up to get dressed in the morning, when I opened the closet, things are going to fall out. Those are those kind of never spoken of stresses that just weigh on you. So so make a list. You know, uh, get three boxes, do a to keep box, to go box and to give away box and whatever it takes. But but use this season, get rid of some things and get rid of some of that weighs on you all the time. Stress in your life.
Speaker 1:Awesome stuff, all right. Well, let's exit on this note. On our next episode. If you thought this stuff, these stresses, were stressful, you ain't seen nothing yet we're going to bring the big ones.
Speaker 2:Yeah, the big guns, the big time.
Speaker 1:Next episode we're going to bring the big stuff, but it's going to really transform your life.
Speaker 2:Yes, well, I'm your host, megan Scheibner, and I just want to remind you, when it comes to adulting, what doesn't kill you just makes you tired.