The War Inside and the One Outside

The most intense battles often happen in our own head long before anyone else notices. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:50

And we're here for you, people.

SPEAKER_00 0:54

Back with some big old giant hugs, sending you some love.

SPEAKER_01 0:58

I got busy, but fearless, fear no more. We have returned with episode 11.

SPEAKER_00 1:08

The war inside and out. The war that the quiet war that no one sees. Yeah, all especially at this time that we're going through right now in America. I'm sure people are disheartened by what's happening across the globe. And I just want to remind people that that's not the only war going on. We want to remind people that it's not the only war going on. And the one you really have to be safe from is the one that happens inside your mind.

SPEAKER_01 1:40

That's the one that's going to control your decision making and your habits. It defines your day-to-day life if you let it, if you allow it.

SPEAKER_00 1:51

Yeah, I can't tell you how many people say that they struggle with anxiety daily or self-doubt or depression. And we just don't give that enough credence that that's a daily thing people have to do while going through work, while dealing with their family, while just trying to make ends meet.

SPEAKER_01 2:12

I know that all too well. As per usual, we'll start with the gratitude. So my gratitude for the week, I've said it before, but I gotta say it again. Uh, is the opportunity that falls on my lap when I put in the work and when when I'm on the right track. I um I always find myself getting better and better opportunities that just thrown out my lap, and I couldn't be more grateful for that.

SPEAKER_00 2:46

My gratitude for this moment is my ability to engage peace because uh I used to struggle with not being able to accept the things that are happening right now, but now I don't even have to find a solution. It's just given to me and I'm super appreciative of that.

SPEAKER_01 3:15

So like you said, the outside world right now is loud. Uh and that's been I feel like the the normal ever since COVID, uh since 2020, that social media and those the phones in our pockets that we're just too informed at this point in time.

SPEAKER_00 3:40

Especially informed about things we can't do anything about.

SPEAKER_01 3:44

Right. And it's very loud and fear sells. So our algorithms is designed to keep us informed if you al if you let the algorithm get to that point, you know, and it's it's it there's nothing wrong with staying informed. Um, you just gotta find the balance.

SPEAKER_00 4:12

I think a good action that all of us could do today is go on all of our social media platforms and delete the search history. Start over and and choose one now because I'm sure when we first started it, we were unaware. Uh one of the largest cases against uh Facebook and YouTube just Oh yeah, yeah, just got they just got found guilty because they knew that what they were doing was gonna be addictive to not only teens and adolescents, but everybody, yeah, everybody. So don't be fooled. Go on there, delete that, and just start over with a conscious mind. Uh what what triggers do you find when you're scrolling your algorithm? What what triggers you to stay on longer?

SPEAKER_01 4:58

Oh man, I can't yeah, everything, because it it hits every emotion, whether it be like entertainment, funny, um makes me it makes me feel something for a second, but in return it numbs me out. So it's just this constant like constant roller coaster of it is just like a drug. It it's just like a drug. And I think a lot of people are struggling with that right now, where you know, you sit down for a minute to go unwind, and then next thing you know, an hour or two hours goes by, and you're just you you completely lost your day.

unknown 5:46

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 5:47

We've slowly turned from being creators to being consumers, right? Mass consumers, because we consume so much media, not and obviously I'm not talking about physical, like consuming food, but the amount of content that we consume, we don't we're not creating stuff anymore because it's taking too much of our time away. And I think the most productive thing that we can do to help feel peaceful again and uh homeostasis is to start creating things. Go find the art, go find a new hobby, and and when you feel the urge of creativity, just act upon it.

SPEAKER_01 6:29

That's usually where I find my like peace, is when I when I step away from it and start picking up a guitar again or creating music, playing music, recording music. It's it's usually a really good place for me to be.

SPEAKER_00 6:46

I feel like procrastination is the biggest self-sabotage that you could do. Oh, that's a fact.

SPEAKER_01 6:54

I'm the king when it comes to procrastination. I will uh put things off until last minute and my whole it's something that should only take me five, ten, fifteen, twenty minutes or you know, maybe an hour I I put off, I put off, and i my whole life is consumed by fear because of it. Left to my own devices, of course. I um for whatever reason my it's this like you say, like a war within your brain where uh it leads to like shame and and uh depression, anxiety of anything, whether it be like a tough conversation or um getting a task done or just something that's hard, something you don't want to do, something you don't, you know, you need to do but don't want to do. What does self-sabotage look like to you?

SPEAKER_00 7:59

Uh I think the first form of self-sabotage that most people know is the internal narrative that they operate with. Uh we often picked it up from our parents that were trying to keep us quote unquote safe. So they didn't want us to try new things that we would fail at and feel bad. And so we started creating faux peace in the house where we just didn't talk about our mistakes and our failures. But there's nothing wrong with failures, right? That's how you learn what is for you and what's not for you and how you can get better. So nowadays I lean into failure all the time. I don't I rarely even use that word because I don't really feel like it's failure. Like we're all just doing life thing. We're on a rock in the middle of space, flying at some weird amount of speed. Like there's no rules to this, just try your thing, go out there and be whatever you want to be. So uh I've I've managed to get on the other side of self-top sabotage nowadays.

SPEAKER_01 9:05

And I always wonder when it comes to me, when I when and I just speak for myself, but um I always wonder if it's my feel of failure or other people seeing me fail. Like, is that what what does that look like? Is that is that the real reason why I'm so fearful of anything?

SPEAKER_00 9:27

Yeah, because what what would happen if someone saw you?

SPEAKER_01 9:30

Who knows?

SPEAKER_00 9:31

Probably nothing. Yeah, that that's why I tell people to just go try it out. Go prove it to yourself that whatever you think is gonna happen, write it down, and then go do the activity. And if you prove that what you wrote down didn't happen, then you can't use that in the future.

SPEAKER_01 9:46

Yeah, it's failure. Failure to me is now looks like when you just stopped trying. That's failure.

unknown 9:56

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 9:56

And success is what it happens after you failed. You know what I mean?

SPEAKER_00 10:05

Like I don't know the person that just tried the first time and was like, yep, got it. Great.

SPEAKER_01 10:10

Success only happens after you fail.

SPEAKER_00 10:13

So write that down right there. Uh and you can see where people start to build up physical representations of that kind of doubt and sabotage with breathing, at least for me. I just a client just left uh an hour ago and they didn't know how to flex their core or find their diaphragm. And the diaphragm is such a powerful muscle because it's the first muscle in your body that responds to your nervous system.

unknown 10:43

Right?

SPEAKER_00 10:43

So whenever you get scared, I'm sure you've all of us have got scared before, you hold your breath. And that's your diaphragm. If you constantly put your diaphragm into shock, it stops operating in connection with how you're moving and how you're thinking. Your breathing is gonna be off, it's gonna be shallow, you're gonna feel chronic fatigue. And like, why am I so tired? Because you're putting in max effort to do daily tasks. And uh if any if if all of us could just take a second to inhale through our nose, make your belly big, and exhale for a long five, six seconds, you'll feel a little bit better.

SPEAKER_01 11:22

That's true too. It it works.

SPEAKER_00 11:28

How about you, Eric? Like, where do you feel physical restrictions from your mental obstacles?

SPEAKER_01 11:35

Lately it's been my hip. I uh for the past couple of months I've experienced severe what I thought was back pain, and later learned that it was coming from my hip because of just stress and my environments or my habits. I it it and it it really, really was causing a strain on my life to the point where I could barely walk some days. I and for so long I just assumed that I had all these back problems or I just dealt with it. I didn't really do anything about it um until we started working on it, and lately it's been a lot more manageable.

unknown 12:29

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 12:30

Movement is really life. I know people have heard that before, but we haven't really taken into an account that we sit so much more than our ancestors said, our bodies are not meant for long-term sitting, right? And most of our jobs are sitting, probably looking at a screen. I know I gotta edit stuff for content on on social media platforms, and I know when I I have to get up every half an hour to make sure to move my body, and we gotta start establishing tangible tools, like an alarm set, like, oh, make sure we get up and move our body, touch our toes, stretch our back, lean left and right, because life is so linear, like moving forward and back. We don't use our sides, we don't twist our spine, but it will change your life if you start to think more dynamic instead of in this linear fashion in black and white.

SPEAKER_01 13:24

And that black and white thinking, which brings us back to what you were talking about before uh the war on Iran, which is convincing people it's convincing the people to fall for the narrative of like that the 20 th 2000s propaganda of um you know brown people bad.

SPEAKER_00 13:53

Indeed. Like George Carlin had a great stand-up in the 1990s about how we say that people from Southwest Asia want to drop bombs on us and and the US has dropped more bombs on brown countries than any other country in the world. Historically speaking. Yeah, I'm not even being biased. And I just want to make sure that we're challenging the stereotype and using critical thinking because uh oftentimes we can find an enemy outside, but what about the enemy inside live inside our country? Inside us. And discussing identity needs to be a conversation before we ever go start a war, whether that be internal or external. Right when have you ever found yourself or have you ever found yourself getting into a fight or a conflict with someone because someone else told you a story about them?

SPEAKER_01 14:49

Oh yeah. Uh in my past life, before I became a little more um proactive as opposed to reactive, but like every fight was started by just something you heard.

SPEAKER_00 15:09

You're saying.

SPEAKER_01 15:09

Yeah, there was never a period of conversation or fact finding or resolving it in a different way. It was immediate, you had to do something about it right then or there, or you were looked down on. Uh it was just the environment we grew up in. You had to I was thinking of a story the other day um when I left here about like one of the first times we were kids. We were I mean, you were probably I don't even think you were in high school yet, and you had there was a altercation between you and someone else, another kid, uh, over a rumor over something, and and you specifically were like, no, like that's not how it happened. And multiple people were saying, like, no, that's not how it happened, and there was still it had to be dealt with, and you're like yeah, you're like, okay, you know, let's let's do it. And we went in someone's backyard and you guys handled your business, and and that was that. Uh, but that was just like how it's funny you bring that up because that's exactly how things were, but nowadays it's way different, you know.

SPEAKER_00 16:27

Except on a global scale, I think that's exactly how it is.

SPEAKER_01 16:30

Yeah, right, right.

SPEAKER_00 16:32

It seems like, oh, I heard you said this over here.

SPEAKER_01 16:35

Right. I heard that you're building this, so we're just gonna bomb the shit out of you.

SPEAKER_00 16:41

I just heard someone told me, my friend.

SPEAKER_01 16:43

Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, my friend.

SPEAKER_00 16:47

Yeah, that uh what it really makes me think about is the healing that is required to stop falling for the propaganda, right? Because uh we everyone knows about coping mechanisms and coping strategies, but coping is just on the way to healing, right? It's not the end. So if someone's like, well, you know, I I smoke or I drink or I deep breathe, all of that is just a method to get to where you don't have to use that as much. Right? You can recover your nervous system. Because I know I used to smoke weed quite literally all day because that's what we did when we went outside. Right, and I I did it so much that I didn't even know who I was when I stopped smoking weed. It was a new identity I had to build a relationship with.

SPEAKER_01 17:36

Sure.

unknown 17:36

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 17:37

Sure. I can I can identify with that too, but with my substance use. I when when it left all I I knew was that I could take a pill or drink something or smoke something or sniff something and it solved all my problems. I I could conquer the world, it felt like, as long as I had this very thing, whether it be um a drug or a drink or you know, whatever else I was chasing at the time. But as time went on, like it started to turn on me. And like you said, I it took me years to figure out who who the hell I was or what my purpose is, and that itself was a trigger, not having a sense of purpose, kind of just just floating around on this earth being like, What am I doing? What's the point of me being here?

SPEAKER_00 18:39

Yeah, it it really gives like reminds you that you don't have or we don't have structure. Because pressing against something makes you realize that you have strength or that you're alive. If you just are in a vacuum, which is what it feels like when you're high, when you come back out of that, it's it's it it's like a real feeling uh a deep feeling of loss.

SPEAKER_01 19:04

It really is. You because you're shedding this old version of you, and it's you. You know, you live a certain way for so long, and then all of a sudden you have to change that. It's it's not easy. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 19:18

Taking that kind of attachment of your identity into relationships was a major conflict. You know, you just be in love with with whoever you were with, and at the same time you didn't really know yourself.

unknown 19:32

Right.

SPEAKER_00 19:33

And we didn't we thought that this other person that was dysregulated would be our safe haven. And it for me it I just had a poor poor idea of what love was supposed to look like inside of a relationship when conflict was the only way that I knew to get attention.

SPEAKER_01 19:56

I know that feeling all too well.

SPEAKER_00 20:00

What were some conflicts that you kept experiencing in relationships before you became more conscious?

SPEAKER_01 20:07

I guess I was looking for like more validation than I was looking for a partner or for anything, a friend, a partner, uh any type of relationship.

SPEAKER_00 20:20

Did that what kind of arguments did that start?

SPEAKER_01 20:23

I mean, because i I I I was incapable of loving anyone else because I didn't love myself at all. Uh I hated myself to be honest. And because of that, like there was just a lot of um conflicts can i in retrospect because of how I was treating myself and treating the other person. You know, I would take hostages um as I as I will call it, you know, down my destructive path with me.

SPEAKER_00 21:00

How did you do it?

SPEAKER_01 21:01

Like what was the method of taking a hostage? Just like because I could say all the right things, it just comes it comes down to taking the action. And then when when you take that action or when you're not taking the actions, and it's you start to self-destruct, I'm going back to these destructive behaviors, it's easy to, you know, it it's it's so easy to fall apart.

SPEAKER_00 21:32

Like for me in relationships, like I remember when I was still lying, right? Because I was when I was young, I got hit as a child as punishment. So I learned that I would rather lie than tell the truth and get hurt. Right. And that obviously is a terrible framework for getting into a relationship that you want to be beneficial. And the nowadays when I see Start asking people really conscious questions, I can see the aversion that happens on their face when I ask them why something is happening or what is the foundational principle underneath their behavior that most people's reaction is to push back because we're just not used to it as a society.

SPEAKER_01 22:19

And when we don't like when we don't feel good, we just want to sit and and relax, quote unquote, relax. And it's so it's so counterproductive. Um they say depression can't hit a mu moving target. I heard that the other day for the first time and I loved it. Um which is proven in my life because when I'm active and I'm moving around, like my my anxiety, my depression, all that shit is minimized, and and I'm a functioning, contributing member to society. But when I'm just stationary, right? I'm just this shell of a human being.

SPEAKER_00 23:09

Yeah, I truly believe that goal setting is the opposite of depression. Whenever you're waking up and aiming at a target, that would you said something's not gonna be aiming at you because you're taking initiative and you're being proactive. If it now, if we as a society can learn to channel all the mental anguish into a physical challenge, it would do us so well because it would teach us that we have resilience and integrity and do it without the cameras being on. It's like a foundational principle that I've operated. There's only one time in my life that I've ever experienced depression, and it's when I literally couldn't move because I was recovering from my neck surgeries, and it just felt like a weight was on me. Every step started to feel heavy. But as I literally started, like I I made a promise with myself that I was gonna go into my dad's garage and ride this bike 30 days in a row, no matter if it hurt, no matter what the cost was, it it just went away. I I don't even there wasn't a single point where I was like, the depression is gone now, right? So we can build strength and capacity when we start to make a choice about the fights that we're gonna involve ourselves in. What are some of the narratives you've dismantled using physical challenge?

SPEAKER_01 24:32

Oh man, I that I'm just not capable of of anything. There's there's nothing that I really can't do that I'm not capable of or that I'm not strong enough for or anything like that. Because even if I'm not now, I can get there. And it don't matter how long it takes.

SPEAKER_00 24:54

No, no, that's that's the best part. Like I'll just keep going.

SPEAKER_01 24:57

Yeah, yeah. Like I've been at this for a little over ye or less than a year. Um and I'm just starting to see like some results, you know, like some like noticeable results where people are starting to say, hey, like you're you know, you look thinner or you look you look like you're in shape. Like I'm just starting to hear that now. I uh and it feels good, man. It it does feel good, but I I can't tell you like enough like what I the lies I used to tell myself.

SPEAKER_00 25:37

Some I was talking to someone this morning and they were saying how I'm not a forgiving person, and I was like, that's just not true. The only reason why it may feel like that is because you keep saying that sentence. So I asked them to say, I am a forgiving person, and what we don't realize is all you do is have to say it, and you can be that because you uh uh our minds are fitted for the words that support the behaviors, right? You're not a bad person until somebody comes and tells you that. Say you did whatever you did, doesn't even matter. You're not bad until someone gives you the framework to what bad is, right? Right. Like you're a child back in the day. Indeed. So, yeah, uh for whatever rejection you felt before, whatever judgment you felt, you can just erase that narrative. A good way to do it is literally rewrite it. So write down the story that you've been trying to shake off, take that piece of paper, go burn it, go throw it into the ocean, whatever the case may be, and start writing a new story. It may feel like fiction in the beginning, but that'll start to change because you can start living what you're saying.

SPEAKER_01 26:44

The long game isn't to win every battle, it's just to come out on the other side better and stronger and a better, you know, become a better inner leader. Um, I want to, for example, I want to help people for a living. Um, I want to help as many people as I can. And my line of work is helping people, but if I'm not practicing what I'm preaching, then I can't give them what they deserve. It's like it's doing them a disservice. Um so it's you know, I'm working on transforming my insides to have more like self-respect and clarity and purpose in this messy, fucked up, insane world.

SPEAKER_00 27:42

I I definitely can resonate with that because I've lived a dichotomy previous to a decade ago. I was one way when I was at workout world training people, and I was another way when the lights went down and it and nighttime fell. Because that's how I was raised. You were a different person inside the house than the person that you were outside. And the word that comes to mind is coherence. Having your one story that you have to tell yourself instead of keeping up multiple lives, having one integration, your body and your mind working together for one mission. And that's why I think it's so important for you to aim at one specific goal and make sure that it's long term so you don't have to keep going back and tapping into something else to refuel it. And of course, have small side quests, because you know that makes this life fun, but but aim for something that you don't even know if you'll be able to do, right? I I remember watching Tupac say, I don't know if I'll change the world, but I guarantee I'll spark the person that will change the world. And I feel just like that, right? And that's one of the reasons why I made the Live Above app. And it's uh it's an integrative app that has a community board on it, movement programs, uh, physical challenges, mental challenges, and nutritional guidance, so we can start actually taking a step towards a healthy society, right? So if you guys want to join the movement, it's it's live-above.mvt dot so. That's l-v-ab-ov-e.mvt.so. Uh I want to see you guys on there because we need you guys in the family.

SPEAKER_01 29:36

And that's not on the app store.

SPEAKER_00 29:38

No.

SPEAKER_01 29:38

No.

SPEAKER_00 29:39

It's through your browser. Yeah. So you guys can find us and make sure we tap in. But you know how we like to leave out.

SPEAKER_01 29:46

Did you do the mantra last week? I was the mantra last week.

SPEAKER_00 29:49

Alright. The mantra this week is. Mantra for this week is make peace with the things you can't change, take ownership of the things you can, and use discernment to know the difference. Love that. We love you guys, and we'll see you again in about a week. Peace. Peace.