Stop Tearing Yourself Apart

Chris Albert 00:00:01 (link to this point)

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Let's get into today's programming.

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.

What is going on, everybody? Welcome to the Warrior Soul podcast. This is Chris Albert, and this is where we deliver tools, tactics, strategies, and ideas to help you to show up as a wiser, stronger, more capable human being in your civilian life. Our mission is to empower veterans to live their best lives. And if you're not a veteran, stick around because anything I talk about here is obviously going to apply to you as well.

This is gonna be a quick one today guys. What I wanna talk to you about is the language you're using to talk to yourself. How you talk to yourselves on a daily basis. And you probably know what I mean, but if not, I'll describe it. Alright?

You're going about your day, you screw something up, and then for the next three days in your head, you're talking to yourself about what an idiot you were, what a dumbass you were, how you screw everything up, how you can't get anything right, and you're constantly ripping yourself apart. Worse than any drill instructor whatever rip you apart. Alright? And right, that might be that might be a long shot, but you know this fact. You gotta live with yourself.

You don't have to live with your drill instructors for the rest of your life. Right? You don't have to live with anybody else for the rest of your life, but you got to live with yourself. And if you are constantly talking and talking to yourself like that in a negative manner, bringing yourself down in your own head, one of the things you've got to understand is that our brains change on a daily basis. They literally change on a daily basis.

Everything you come in contact with, every person you come in contact with has an effect on your brain. That's why it's so important to surround yourself with good people. And if you are constantly talking to yourself in that way, well guess what? The one person that you are attached to, the one person that you have to deal with for the rest of your life, well, that person's having a really negative effect on you, and you're doing it to yourself. You're doing it to yourself.

So what I want to talk to you about here are some things you can start doing to start getting out of this vicious cycle of tearing yourself apart and bringing yourself down. And the first one is this, each morning when you wake up, you gotta take some time to be with your thoughts. You gotta take some time to start observing your thoughts. And I'm talking about meditation here. And when I talk about meditation, I've talked about it so many times here on this podcast because it's helpful.

But a lot of you might have this conception of of, you know, sitting in a lotus position and freaking, you know, just chanting or something like that. That's that's not what I'm talking about. What I'm talking about is sitting in a quiet room with your eyes closed and just letting your thoughts come up. And when they do come up, recognizing them as thoughts. Now this is important because when you start to recognize them as thoughts, when you start to observe them, you start to realize something.

And that is that you can't control the thoughts that come into your head. Right? Our brains are constantly going. You literally can't control it. But what you can do by recognizing them as thoughts is you can observe them, and then you can allow those thoughts to start to dissolve.

And when you do this often enough, what happens is you start to be able to recognize when your brain is going to that place, when your brain is putting you in a position where you are, you know, you're really destroying yourself. And if you get enough practice at that, then that can be something that keeps you from continually going down that path of self destruction. The next thing I I I really think you need to do is that when the stuff gets out of control, and again, I'm gonna sound like a broken record here, but when the stuff starts to get out of control and you're constantly down on yourself, you gotta do something to build yourself back up. Right? Now that can be exercise, that can be cardio, that can be something difficult.

Right? Put your put your body through something because you gotta get out of your head And you gotta get back into your body. Right? And by giving yourself some time, getting your heart rate up, that allows you to be present, fixed on the moment. Right?

You're you're faced with the challenge in front of you. And rather than going to that other place where you're you're in a room with an abusive freaking sadistic asshole, that's you. Right? You you allow yourself to be present, and you allow yourself to get back to where you can have you can start focusing on on improving your energy, right? Improving your mindset.

Another thing that I've constantly talked about here on this show that that can actually help you with this is by starting to read about awesome people, people who've done amazing things. Right now I'm reading that book about Teddy Roosevelt, The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt. And, you know, when you read a book like that, you get to see the human being. Right? I read a book on Lincoln not too long ago too.

Same thing. You get to see that these these people who were larger than life had very human problems and very human tendencies. They they all had strong mindsets, but, you know, they screwed up from time to time as well. And if somebody like Teddy Roosevelt screws up and he got out of it and he moved forward, well, that means that the rest of us can screw up too because Teddy Roosevelt was pretty much freaking god. Right?

He was awesome at everything. Right? But for us, I think a lot of us expect us expect ourselves to be perfect in every way, right? And if we're not perfect, then it goes back to, hey, you freaking idiot. Why are you doing that?

Why are you being such a dumbass? Right? And if you're constantly setting that standard for yourself, where you got to be perfect all the time, then and you're not giving yourself any leeway to learn, any leeway to improve, well then, again, you're never gonna improve. You're never gonna improve yourself. You're never gonna have the strength to get through hard times.

You're never gonna have the strength to to push forward. It's you are literally your battle buddy. Right? You're your closest battle buddy. And you can't be locked at the hip with somebody who's freaking out when stress happens or when something goes wrong.

Your mind, you want to get your mind to the point to where it can immediately jump to focusing on the solution for the problem. Right? And and that's not gonna happen if you're just freaking tearing yourself apart. Another thing to remember when you're going through stuff like this and you're dealing with that those negative thought processes is to think about how many people you've freaking forgiven in your life or who who you've corrected and just sat down and and went over things. Maybe you went off on them for a minute, but then afterward, you probably forgave them and you probably, you know, showed them where they went wrong or or maybe somebody wronged you and you forgave them.

Right? Think about how much slack you've cut other people in your life. And think about how much of a difference there is between the amount of slack you cut other people and the amount of slack you cut yourself. Right? There's probably a huge difference there.

You probably don't cut yourself as much slack. And I don't think you should cut yourself a lot of slack. I'm not saying, hey, go screw off or something like that. But don't bring it to the point to where you make yourself irredeemable in your own mind. Because once you get to that point and you don't care about yourself at all, that's when self destructive behavior comes in.

You got to get to the point to where you're talking to yourself like you would talk to a friend. Right? You wouldn't just constantly berate a friend because they probably wouldn't be your friend for too much longer. Right? You want to treat yourself like you're a friend, and friends can screw up.

With real friends, you can tell them where they went wrong. You can be really honest with them. But if you're constantly ripping them down, well, then they're gonna go and they're gonna find other friends. Alright, guys. It's Friday, and, I'm pretty low energy here.

But, you know, if you guys ever wanna talk about this stuff, feel free to reach out. I always put my email out there. It's chris@warriorsoulagoge.com. Feel free to reach out to me there or on social media. Always happy to to discuss these things.

And hope you guys are doing well. Have a great weekend. Well, it's probably not gonna be the weekend when you're listening to this, but have a great whatever it is that you're about to go into. And we'll be back at you with some more awesome content later on this week or next week or whenever. Again, I'm out of it.

And live your best lives while you can. This is Chris Albert, the Warrior Soul Podcast, and I am out.