How to Overcome Your Own Negativity – Advice for Veterans

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, one of the most difficult things to do is to overcome past. And it's because in a lot of ways, even though you're trying to improve yourself in the moment, even though you're trying to adapt to good habits and trying to become better, the ghosts of the past, your memories, well, they tend to come up again and again and again. That's because in so many ways, our brains are conditioned to use the past as a benchmark for how we should act in the future. That helped us for a very, very long time as a species. For fifty thousand years, the human brain hasn't changed.

And there was a time that our memories helped us in survival, helped us to avoid dangerous animals, poisonous snakes, to avoid dangerous situations that could keep us or put us in the ground. Today, things are a little bit different. Society is very different. Most of us have lives of relative convenience compared to what people went through as little as, you know, a hundred years ago, let alone two thousand to fifty thousand years ago. And so a lot of times, what happens with our memories is that we end up becoming trapped by them.

We end up becoming trapped by who we once were, and that keeps us from becoming who we want to truly become. And a lot of you might have felt this whenever you try to do something in your life, whether that be increase your education or start a new business or begin a new relationship, those memories, they tend to creep in. Maybe the memory of a of a past lover who wronged you in some way affecting your marriage or your relationship right now. It could be memories of your childhood and different abuses you might have tolerated back then, that keep rearing their ugly head as you try to improve yourself, and they keep bringing your own perception of who you are down. Could be memories from the classroom, you know, when you were stuck there trying to learn and and maybe you weren't good at schoolwork.

Well, now, as you're trying to increase your education later in life, those same insecurities can come up and keep you from actually applying yourself. And they'll reinforce the narrative in your own head that you're not good enough, that you don't deserve more. And we've all experienced this. But the question is, how do we get around it? Why are some people able to overcome their past?

Why are some people able to become so many different things despite the fact that they had rough pasts? And why are some people so trapped by their past that they can't go anywhere and they can't really do anything and they can't improve? It's a valid question to ask, because every day we hear about people who've gone through things, who've accomplished amazing things, and then we hear about people who have been basically stuck for most of their lives because they went through a few different bad moments. So as somebody who has been consistently trapped by the memories of my own past, I could talk to you a little bit about some of the tools that I've used. I can't say that I'm perfect in this department, because I'll be honest with you, every time I hit this record button and try to record this podcast, those voices come up.

They tell me that what I'm saying doesn't really matter. They tell me that nobody's really listening. They tell me that I'm stumbling over my words and that I sound like an idiot. But here's the thing. What I've been able to do is despite those voices, I've still been able to publish.

I've still been able to take that chance. I've still been able to create this show. And the reason why I'm able to do that has nothing to do with my strength or my ability to turn those voices off. It has everything to do with a desire to help, finding a purpose for changing, finding a purpose that I wanted to dedicate my life to. And that purpose is to help all of you, Those of you who listen to the show, those of you who are in The US military veteran community who are trying to move your lives forward.

And what helps me to overcome those voices is the idea that I need to serve you. I need to be able to overcome this if I want to help that person who's stuck there sitting on the edge of his bed right now, wondering what the heck happened to his life. And so my advice to all of you is, number one, go out there and try to find something you're willing to fight for. You know, because a lot of you were in the military, you know that feeling. You know the idea of living for a purpose, serving this country.

And the first thing you need to do when you're getting out, and even when you're thinking about getting out, is to find a new purpose. That purpose could be, you know, your family, could be your children, it could be your wife, it could be service, could be you wanting to serve a certain group of people. But here's the big difference, and here's the thing you need to realize. If it's all about you, and if it's all about money, if it's all about increasing your state in life, that's when those voices are really going to rear their ugly heads, and that's when they are going to take over. If it's not about you, if it's about you helping others, if it's about you serving others, then it's going to entirely help you to eliminate those voices.

Right? That's the key there. That's the big thing. The next thing is this. Because we've also seen a lot of people potentially look like they overcame their past, but who eventually fell from grace.

They fell from grace in some way because they made a mistake. And the mistake usually has to do with them starting to listen to those voices again. Right? And we've seen people who look entirely successful from the outside, who, fell back into old patterns or old habits, and who ended up falling once again. How do you overcome that?

One of the big things all of us need to do whenever we're trying to accomplish anything big is to start to get to know ourselves, to really know who we are, to understand how we think, and to understand why we do the things we do. And I talk about that like it's easy, but it's not. It's probably one of the most difficult things you'll ever do in your life. And one of the tools, well, two of the tools that have really helped me a whole lot, And I'll put these two together, prayer and meditation. Prayer and meditation are huge for me, because prayer gives me an ideal that I want to live up to.

Now, I know that some of you out there might not be religious. But, you know, for me, religion's played a big role in my life. How do you do this if if you're not religious? Well, if you're not religious and you don't have that kind of ideal, that religious ideal that you want to live up to, you need to define who you want to be. Right?

You need to write that down. You need to say, you know, take a half hour, turn on your favorite music, and list out everything that you stand for, every single thing that you stand for, your values. Alright? And you need to list out the things that you stand against. And, essentially, what you're trying to do is you're trying to come up with things that that you want in your life and the things that you're not going to tolerate.

Because far too many of us tolerate weakness in our lives. Far too many of us tolerate people in our lives who who bring us down. Far too many of us tolerate lack of action on the part of ourselves. And far too many of us tolerate lives that we really don't want to live. So you need to determine, you know, how you don't want to live, you need to determine how you want to live, and what you're not going to tolerate.

Right? And for me, prayer helps to remind me of that. I have all this stuff written down. I've I've come up with my ideals. I've come up with my values.

But but prayer reminds me of that every morning. The other aspect, meditation, has nothing to do with prayer. There's no religious aspect to my meditation. Of course, I'm Catholic and we meditate while we do the rosary, but I'm talking about something different when I'm talking about meditation. I'm talking about actually analyzing your brain, sitting down, taking a moment to begin to understand where your thoughts are coming from.

Alright? And recognizing when you're having a thought, recognizing when you are having a negative thought, where that might come from, recognizing when the fact that when you hear a noise, you didn't cause that noise. A lot of stuff is caused by the outside world. Right? And people try to complicate meditation to no end, but it's really as simple as that.

You're sitting there. You when a thought comes up, you recognize it as a thought. When a sensation comes up, you recognize it as a sensation. And there's a big, awesome app that I've used this year in particular. It's Sam Harris's Waking Up meditation app, and it's it's very inexpensive.

The first part of the course is free, and then I think it's a few dollars a month. But that app has helped me greatly. I listen to it every single morning after my prayer session, and then I go into my day, you know, kind of analyzing or or knowing a little bit more about myself after each session. And then once I do that, I journal. And again, this is something that people think is super hippie dippie.

Right? But what I journal about is my gratitude, how thankful I am for the life I live, how thankful I am for the fact that I have challenges in my life. Right? And one of the things that happens to us when we encounter problems, right, when whenever an obstacle comes in our way, and we feel like we're stuck, well, that's another chance where those voices tend to come up, those negative voices. And that's when they seem to appear the loudest.

And the very act of just being grateful for those obstacles and grateful for what's in front of you and grateful for the fact that you have this thing, this chance to overcome an obstacle that's going to make you stronger, well, that is an awesome thing and an awesome way to look at life. So what I'll do every morning is I'll write down three things I'm grateful for, and it's not the weather. It's not my super happy life. It's always something that's challenged me, like the fact that I just pulled my calf really badly and I couldn't run. So that forced me to do other things, like, you know, include high intensity exercises and get better at burpees and get better at other exercises, get better at kettlebells, right?

So you gotta look at the positive side of things and gratitude really helps with that. And then, you know, the biggest thing is this. You need to really make sure that no matter what, whatever you're doing, and it could be you might be super successful. You might be making tons of money. You might be you might have a million degrees and a beautiful woman in your life or or an awesome man in your life.

And the thing is this, you have to constantly check-in with yourself. Right? Even if your life is amazing, and appears amazing all from the outside, you need to check-in with yourself to make sure that you're still living your purpose. Because when money comes into the picture, a lot of times we get dragged away. We get dragged toward things that we don't necessarily want to do, and we get dragged into a life that we never necessarily wanted to live in the first place.

So you need to think about that. You need to constantly check-in with yourself and remember who you are. Alright? And that's essentially what all this comes down to, guys. So I don't want to make this super long.

Those are some tools that I've used to try to overcome those voices in my head because I learned a long time ago that you could put Band Aids on a situation. But if you haven't truly changed your state of mind and truly changed your mindset, then in so many ways, you're going to end up back where you were. So I wanna thank you guys so much for listening to this edition of the Warrior Soul podcast. This is Chris Albert, and, you know, I really appreciate all of you guys who have come here to listen and who come here week after week to listen to this. I'm working on bringing you guys some more interview episodes and things like that.

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I wanna thank you guys so much for listening. I'll be back at you in a few days with another awesome episode.