Don't Be Bitter | Warrior Notes

Chris Albert 00:00:00 (link to this point)

This is Chris Albert, and I'm here to remind you of one thing. Someday, you're going to die. Now that's not some morbid statement or scary idea. It's solid fact. Your time here on this earth is limited.

And we need to be reminded of this as much as possible for one simple reason, to live your best life while you can. This is the Warrior Soul podcast.

You know, we don't get to live this life in a vacuum. We're surrounded by other people. People we love, people we care about, but also people who annoy us, people who get on our bad side, people who wrong us in every single way. And as you travel through life, you can end up bitter, you can end up angry, you can end up holding grudges. But here's the thing, if you fall into that, which a lot of us do, a lot of us have that tendency to constantly fall into bitterness, to constantly hold grudges, to think that everybody around us is against us, to constantly think about that person who did us wrong.

When you fall into that, what you're actually falling into is weakness. You're falling into a situation where you're not actually in control of yourself. And that's what I'm gonna talk to you about today. And I'm gonna talk to you about how to get out of that and how to move forward with your life. Before we do that, if you're new to the Warrior Soul podcast like a lot of people are, we've been growing like crazy.

I'm talking we're we're doubling our downloads for previous months. It's absolutely insane. And I wanna welcome all of our new listeners. If you haven't been here before, if this is your first time listening, the Warrior Soul podcast mission is to empower US military veterans and anybody else willing to listen to live your absolute best lives. And we do that by delivering tools, tactics, strategies, and ideas to help you just show up as stronger, wiser, more capable versions of yourselves in the civilian world or in your life.

And if you're not a veteran, like I said, stick around because anything we talk about here is going to apply to you as well. Just a couple of things before I get into today's material. Number one, we have a new store at Warrior Soul. A lot of people have been asking me for my past fitness programs, my past business programs. You know, I've I've written I'm a trainer.

I've written a lot of fitness ebooks. I've put together a lot of training programs, a lot of courses. I've also put together a lot of courses on business. And for those of you who are either interested in getting into awesome shape and and, you know, putting your body into a better place, or who are interested in doing something like what I do here with the podcast and with my online businesses, I've set up an academy for you. And it's got a bunch of books, a bunch of courses, and things like that that you can take advantage of.

It's all it also contains the Warrior's Obituary Society, which is our private mastermind where we take individuals from our audience and we empower them to live epic lives worthy of epic obituaries. If you're interested in checking that store out, you can head over to warriorsoul.academy. That's warriorsoul.academy. And like I said, we've got an array. It's a highly curated collection of courses, ebooks, and writings that I put together.

I've got a few more coming out in the near future. But, yeah, definitely check that out if you're interested. Beyond that, I just wanna give a shout out to our awesome sponsors, F Bomb Nutrition. They make delicious packets of fats, macadamia nut butters, They mix them up with salt, sea salt with pecan butter. They're really delicious.

You can find those over at www.dropanfbomb.com. Use the code Warrior Soul at checkout to get yourself 20% off your first order. And also my friends over at Save the Brave. Savethebrave.org. They're an amazing five zero one c three charity, and they are doing amazing work.

They're setting up camaraderie events around the country, fishing, golfing expeditions, and they're also helping out Gold Star families. If you wanna check out Save the Brave, head over to savethebrave.org and make your donation or request for help today. So let's get back into this subject matter here, bitterness. Right? That feeling of anger, that feeling of holding on to a grudge.

Somebody's wronged you in the past and you just can't get it out of your mind. So you sit there and you think about them. You think about them all the time. Maybe you're heading over to their social media channels and you're checking out their pictures. And every happy picture they put up is like an assault on your senses.

Maybe this person is a past lover. Maybe it's a past girlfriend or an ex wife. Maybe it's an old best friend, somebody who who did you really wrong and crossed you in some way. Maybe it's somebody you don't even know. Right?

And that's happening a lot these days with the political climate out there. Right? We've got a lot of celebrities talking out of their mouths, spewing garbage. We've got a lot of politicians out there spewing garbage. And what I see on Twitter all the time is basically people spending all day long commenting on their stuff, trolling on their stuff.

And here's the thing, guys. Whenever you find yourself into that type of situation where you are controlled by your intense feelings, your intense emotions surrounding a person, that puts you into a position of weakness. It puts you into a position where you are thinking about things that don't really matter to you, that don't really matter to moving you forward in your life, that take your attention off of the things that are supposed to be the most important to you. The people you actually love and care about, the people who you're supposed to be taking care of, the people around you who might need your help, might need your guidance, might need your leadership, your responsibilities, your life. All of these things need your attention.

And the thing is, we've only got twenty four hours in a day, and we've only got limited time on this earth. So every second, every minute that you are spending on stuff like this is time you're not spending on making this life what it should be. It's probably got you wallowing in the past, thinking about that situation that made you angry, thinking about that time that person wronged you, or thinking about the times before that when life seemed like it was good. It probably also has you sitting there and, like I said, spending a lot of attention on this other person. Sitting there thinking about them, thinking about what they're doing.

Thinking about whether or not they're happy right now, and if they are happy, if you are thinking of them happy, you're probably thinking of them being happy about your crappy situation. You're probably thinking about them celebrating every time you fall on your face. You're probably thinking about them, you know, just having a good life while you are out there struggling. Here's the thing, and this is something you have to realize. Every single one of us makes a fallacy in our own minds.

It's a human tendency to overweight our presence on this earth, to think that other people are constantly thinking about us, to think that our enemies are constantly thinking about us, to think that these people somehow are thinking about that thing we commented on their post on social media when we tried to troll them, to think that they're probably stalking us the same way that we're stalking them. And the truth is that, well, they're probably going on and moving on with their lives. They're probably moving forward. They're probably putting the attention where it should be, and you need to do that too. Now here's the thing.

Anger can do a number of different things to you. Like I said, it can distract you. It can also be a fuel, and that's what we need to try to do. We need to try to turn this situation, this negative situation that you're in, and we need to turn it into a type of fuel that's going to get you to start focusing on your own life, Focusing on the things that are going to move you forward, and focusing on the things that are going to make you a wiser and stronger individual. So the first thing you need to do, you need to do here, is to number one, admit to yourself that you've been wasting time.

When you find yourself in a situation where you're thinking about that person or you're stalking them on social media or you're sitting there and you're trying to troll them on their comments or on their Twitter or putting energy into anything in this world that is not moving you forward, you need to realize you're doing it. Because for a lot of us, it's just a reflex. It's just a place that our mind goes. And I'll tell you, and I've constantly harped on this throughout my time doing this podcast, but one of the best ways of doing this, best ways of getting your mind into a place where you can observe yourself is through meditation. Sitting there just for ten minutes out of the day and observing your thoughts.

Now, again, this isn't something that's supposed to be spiritual. It might be for some people, but for me, it's not. It's not something that's supposed to give you some sort of zen like feeling or anything like that. It's something we do because we have to understand that our minds are often not in our own control. And because they're not in our own control, they can drift us off to places that don't really serve us.

So one thing I'm gonna recommend to you right off the bat is that you start meditating. And the app I'm going to recommend to you is Sam Harris's Waking Up app. Now here's the deal. I don't have any deal with Sam Harris. Sam Harris doesn't know who I am.

Sam Harris doesn't care about this podcast, doesn't care if I exist. I mean, not to say he's a bad guy or anything like that. He just probably doesn't know. Right? But he does an outstanding job, an outstanding job of explaining meditation and its importance and how you can do it and how it can get you out of this negative spot.

And his course is one of those things that's helped me to get through some of the hardest times in my life. This past year has been absolutely brutal for me, suffering from a chronic disease, dealing with a lot of business failures, dealing with a lot of personal issues. And through it all, I was able to keep my mind on the path and get everything back on order because I was able to observe my thoughts with his help. So I highly recommend that app. He puts out ten minute sessions that you can do.

It's literally just ten minutes. I do them first thing in the morning after I wake up, and it just allows me to clear my mind and observe myself. The next thing you need to do is you need to cast a vision for yourself. A vision of what you want your life to look like. And that goes toward making you understand that this life has to be about what you want, not what you want for other people, not the horrible things you want to have happen to other people, not anything that you can't control.

You can't control what any other person is doing in their life. You can't control the trajectory or the course of another person's life, but you can control yours. And when you do control yours, when you are putting yourself into a situation where you're working on yourself, well, guess what? Let's suspend reality for a second and let's think about if that other person who's wronged you or that other person who's on your bad side, let's think about if they are actually out there trying to thwart thwart you in some way. Let's think about if they are actually out there and trying to hold you back.

Well, what's the absolute worst thing that you could do to them? Well, it's not something that that you could do to them. It's something that you could do for yourself. You could put yourself into a better situation. You could put yourself into a situation where you're gonna be more successful.

Because if in your mind that person is really trying to to put you down and that's the center of their lives, well then the worst thing you could do is is make your life better. Right? The worst thing you could do to them is to make your life better. So what you need to do is you need to figure out how you're gonna make your life better. You need to figure out how you're gonna put yourself into the best situation possible.

And that starts with having a vision for where you wanna go. Now, I don't wanna complicate this situation. There's a lot of advice out there about how to cast a vision, how to how to create a vision for yourself. But it's basically just a written statement of what you want your life to look like, what your life would look like in a perfect situation. And the reason why you wanna do this is because, well, if you don't know what your life would look like in a perfect situation, you have no way of getting there.

Right? You have to have a a place on the map you're trying to get to. So what you want to do is you want to first do what I said in the first step. You want to meditate. And then what I like to do is I like to get out there and I like to do a little bit of physical activity.

I find it helps to get those endorphins going, it helps to get some of those happy chemicals going in my body, gets me to feel a little bit better about myself. And then what I do is I'll come into a room, I'll pull out a journal, I'll turn on some of my favorite music, maybe some David Allan Coe, and then I'll just start writing. And I'll set a timer for about a half an hour, and I will write about what I want my life to look like. And the way it starts is you have to start with who you want to be. Who do you want to be as a person?

Do you want to be somebody who is sitting there constantly thinking about this person who's wronged them? Do you wanna be somebody who's a victim? Do you wanna be somebody who spends all their time on social media just trolling people? No. You don't.

You wanna be somebody who's out there accomplishing something. You wanna be somebody who's out there making things happen. You wanna be somebody that other people look up to as a leader. You wanna be a freaking boss. And so that's what you have to start to think about.

What are you gonna stand for? What are you gonna stand against? What are you gonna tolerate in your life? And what are you not gonna tolerate? What are you gonna go for?

And then once you do that, you wanna get real detailed about what your life is gonna look like. What does your perfect day look like? Who are you waking up next to? What does your house look like? Where are you living?

What are you doing for a living? What how are you spending your time? What are you creating? What are you putting out there into the world? So important.

So important that you understand that because it goes into understanding not just just what you want, but who you want to be, the person you want to be. So you can actually step into that role and become that person. And a lot of you think, okay, well, I'm just me. But here's the deal. You have an ideal of who you are in your mind.

And a lot of times, that ideal doesn't match up to the reality. And so if you've got an ideal for who you are as a person, somebody who's strong, somebody who doesn't take crap, somebody who's out there doing big things, then you have to identify who that person is. And you actually have to step into that role with action. Alright? You have to do that.

But before you can step into that role with action, you have to know what it is. And that's why you need to cast a vision. And then the next step is this. Like I said, writing a vision is no good unless you're living up to it. So then you have to start writing out what are you gonna do every day to live up to that vision?

What are the actions you are actually going to take to start to get there? Now, a lot of people focus on goals. And here's the deal, this might be a little bit controversial, but I'm not a long term goal person. Person. I'm not somebody who likes to plan out the next five years of my life because honestly, every time I have, you know, if you told me five years ago that I'd be sitting here recording a podcast, I would have laughed in your face.

Alright? I would have laughed in your face. And honestly, I started this thing, was just kind of like a side gig, something I wanted to do. But what I like to do is I like to think about, well, what do the next ninety days look like? What are the actual actions that I'm gonna have to take to get to the vision that I wanna get to?

What are the the milestones that I have to reach? Alright? What are the the short term milestones that I have to reach in the next ninety days to ensure that I'm working toward my vision? So what you want to think about is you want to think about those milestones and you want to plan backwards. What is the action you have to take just before you get to that milestone?

And then what's the action you have to take before that? And then you wanna plan backward all the way to the beginning. Now those of you out there who've been leaders in the military, you probably recognize this. It's called back planning, and it's something we use to plan out patrols, to plan out operations. Right?

And it goes into military planning. So this is a skill you already have and something you can translate to getting what you want out of life. You know? And and if you want, write out a full operations order. Whenever I'm doing something new for this business, something new for the podcast, I'm I'm writing out a full op order, trying to to just think about everything, think about everything in detail.

And then the next step, guys, is you wake up every day, and you do the things you told yourself you were gonna do. You put work into yourself, you start reading, trying to enrich your mind, you start going out there and putting work into your body. Right? Getting yourself into great shape. Right?

You start putting work into your business or your career, you start focusing, you start moving yourself forward professionally working and working on and acquiring the skills that you need to reach the pinnacle of your profession or your business. And then here's the other aspect of it. With those people who are still in your life, who you love, those people who are important to you, maybe it's your spouse, maybe it's your kids, maybe it's your friends, maybe it's your family, maybe it's your parents, maybe it's the marine soldiers or sailors or airmen who are still currently around you. Well, when you're with them and you are not working, be present. Put it all aside.

Get rid of that phone. Get rid of that social media. Put it down for a bit and be there for them. Fill the role you're supposed to fill for them. Be a friend.

Be a parent. Be a good family member. Be a good spouse. Be a good boyfriend, a good girlfriend. Be who you are supposed to be, and be present.

Don't be somewhere else. Don't be thinking about that piece of garbage who wronged you. Don't be thinking about that that that BS politician or that BS celebrity. Don't be thinking about stuff that doesn't matter to you. Right?

We're a few days out from Kobe Bryant's death. Right? And, you know, that's an immensely sad situation because at 41, he was just getting his life started. But, you know, I bet when you're on your deathbed, when you are sitting there and you're about to take your last breath, you're not gonna wish you put more into hating the people who wronged you. You're gonna wish that you put more into loving the people who love you.

You're gonna wish you put more into making a better life for them and a better life for yourself. You're gonna wish you impacted more people. So that's what this is really about. It's about putting energy into your life, not taking energy out of it. I hope that helps, guys.

I hope that you actually put this stuff into practice because it's worth it. There is nothing else more worth it in the world. It's that it's it's it's so important. Like I said, and like I say at the beginning of every podcast, we don't get to be here forever. Someday we're gonna die.

Hundred years from now, everybody you know is gonna be dead. Your children are probably gonna be dead. Your your your grandchildren are either gonna be old or they're gonna be dead. And everything, all the things that we worried about, all the crap that we dealt with in our lives, all the stupid things we said, all the stupid stuff we put our energy to, that's not gonna matter anymore. Most people aren't gonna know about it.

In fact, your name's probably gonna be forgotten. Alright? I I don't even know who my great grandparents what their name names were. What about my great great parents? I have no idea.

Right? You might. But here's the deal. Beyond their name, what do you know about them? Think about that.

This time here, so limited. And if you want your name to be remembered, if you want your name to to go down and and be spoken by your your ancestors, well, you're gonna have to get to work. And it's not gonna happen by putting your energy into shit. Right? It's just the case.

So get out there, get after it, and put energy into your own life. I wanna thank you guys so much for listening. I hope that you're getting a lot of these episodes. If you are, please share these episodes out with somebody who can use them. That's how this podcast grows.

I don't I don't advertise. I don't have money to advertise. Everything grows through word-of-mouth. And when you share these episodes out with people who can use them, you're helping people. Also, you know, this is completely free as well.

Head over to iTunes. Write us a written rating and review. The more iTunes reviews we get, the more that iTunes algorithm promotes the show. And the more this this information gets into the ears of more veterans and more people who can use it. So head over to iTunes, write us a written rating and review.

If you wanna support podcast in other ways, we have an amazing shop over at warriorsoul.shop. It's got gear, t shirts, things like that like that that you can buy. You can also support us on Patreon at www.patreon.com/warriorsoulpodcast. And if you want to support yourself, if you want to be guided through exercises like I took you through today, and you want a group that's going to push you forward and push you back onto the path, check out the Warrior's Obituary Society. Like I said, it's our own private mastermind group, where we empower each other to live epic lives worthy of epic obituaries.

You can find that at www.warriorobituarysociety.com. And when you join, you go through an eight week development program. We help you to customize your own fitness plan. We help you to cast your vision. We help you to customize your own personal finance plan so you can start saving money, building your dreams, knocking down debt, all of these things that are gonna push you forward.

Alright? So again, guys, thank you so much. Thank you for your support. Thank you for spending the time with me every day or every week whenever you listen to the show. And, to those of you out there protecting our country right now, to the law enforcement officers out there who are making sure we're safe, to the firemen, to the ambulance corps, to everybody out there who is putting work into making this society a better place, thank you.

And with that, guys, this is Chris Albert. Get out there and live your best lives while you can, and I am out.