When Bad Luck Has You Wanting to Watch the World Burn

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

The Warrior Soul podcast is written, produced, and edited by me, Albert. Our goal is to empower US military veterans to live their absolute best lives, and we do that by providing tools, tactics, strategies, and ideas that they can apply into their lives to become wiser, stronger, smarter, more resilient, and more capable human beings in the civilian world. If you're not a veteran, stick around because anything we talk about here can obviously apply to you. And if you like what we have to say, any information we provide, and the guests we bring on, please head over to iTunes and write us a written rating and review. It really helps to spread word about the show and to get this helpful information into the hands of more veterans so that they can in turn improve their lives and shape the future of this country.

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They do other sporting events, and they also do a lot of work to help Gold Star families. And look, we've all heard stories about veterans charities where the executive boards are taking these giant salaries, and I don't have a problem with that at all. But here's the thing, I wanna make sure that whatever organization I'm talking about is doing amazing work. Savethebrave.org is doing absolutely outstanding work. Their board doesn't take any salary whatsoever, and they are having an amazing impact.

They're focused on getting veterans to live their absolute best lives, and that's what this podcast is about, and that's why we wanted to work with them. So if you're interested in volunteering or donating to Save the Brave, head over to www.savethebrave.org and make your donation or your request today. Finally, this podcast is brought to you by Warrior Soul Apparel. This is a clothing company that I actually helped to start a couple of years ago as we were beginning the brand Warrior Soul. We've got some amazing t shirts.

We've got skimmy shirts with some pretty funny funny sayings on there like, I love Jesus, but I cuss sometimes. We've also got some awesome hero shirts. We have the amazing hard times, breed hard people series, and these are just great shirts that I've helped create, and they support the show. So if you're interested in getting some Warrior Soul shirts, head over to www.warriorsoul.shop. And finally, if you're interested in joining a new group that we are putting together here at Warrior Soul, a group for those who are looking to live epic lives worthy of epic obituaries, stick around to the end.

We'll have some information for you to check out. With that, let's get into the episode.

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.

It doesn't matter who you are on this planet. Doesn't matter what race you are. Doesn't matter how much money you have. It doesn't matter what you've done in your life. At some point, everybody is gonna face a downturn.

Yeah, of course, we see those people out there who act like nothing's wrong in their lives. See them all over social media and guess what? Most of them are lying. Every single person faces something in their lives that brings them to a down point. We all face tragedy, we all face bad luck, and ultimately, we all face death.

So what I want to talk about today is how do you deal with bad luck? How do you deal with the world when it seems like every single thing is going against you? How do you deal with life when something so bad happens that you have to just sit back and you have to look at yourself and say, of course, of course this happened, of course this horrible thing happened. And it's tempting in your mind. It's tempting in your mind to say, of course, it happened to me because the world, because God, because the universe, because everything is scheming against me.

It's keeping me from being who I wanna be, from living the life that I wanna live. Right? That's the way a lot of us think. In fact, I think all of us think like that up to a certain point. Right?

I can't believe this is happening to me. I can't believe that all these horrible things in the world happen to me. And it's a tempting road to take because inside, we wanna be bitter. Inside, we wanna be angry. We want something to be mad at.

We want to take that anger out on the world in some way. So we walk around like we're in a bad mood. Somebody messes with us. Oh my god. They're gonna catch a look.

They're gonna catch a stare. They might even catch a few yells or a few hands from us. Right? Wait for somebody to catch these hands. So you walk around with with rage in your mind.

And that rage could last an hour or it could last a few days. And in some people, some people, that rage can last years. Years. Sometimes decades. You can go around carrying that rage in your heart.

Because you were unfortunate enough to have something happen to you in your life that you didn't want to have happen. So how do you deal with that? How do you deal with that? If you're not supposed to walk around with rage. If you're not supposed to walk around with anger, if you're not supposed to walk around looking mad at every single person you meet, who you don't know for the rest of your life, What else are you supposed to do?

That's a question that I think a lot of us think about when we're in this type of situation. All these people, they want me to put a smile on my face. They want me to be happy. How could I be happy? How could I be happy in a world that looks like this, that treats people like this, that doesn't understand what we're going through?

Right? Does that sound familiar? It might. Here's what I want you to understand. What I want you to understand is that the only victim of your rage is yourself.

You see, here's the thing. The more mad you get, the more you allow yourself to become as bitter as possible, the more you allow yourself to go down that path, down that dark hallway, the more you're keeping yourself from moving on, from doing other things, from learning new lessons, from becoming stronger. And by carrying around that rage in your heart, that rage that you're trying to you're trying to let out because you want the world to know that you're not a nobody, that you're not a weakling, that you're not a pushover. Well, what it's actually doing is it's making you weaker. It's turning you into a person you never intended to become.

It's turning you into something that you don't even understand. Right? Your rational mind knows that in order to move forward you need to let some of this go. Your rational mind knows that if you're ever going to move forward in this world and make a career or make good money, then you're going to have to put a smile on your face at some point. Right?

Your rational mind knows that, but you don't know that. Or at least the part of you that you're allowing to take over right now. And it's hard to really figure this out based off of rationality. Right? Because in a lot of ways, it's like fighting your way out of a dark room.

Somebody's turned off all the lights. You don't know the pathway out. And so that's kind of why you're fighting with yourself. It's a lot like what happens to us if we get disoriented. We start fighting with ourselves, we start fighting with our own minds, we start fighting with our own illusions.

So, here's a few things that you're going to need to understand if you want to be able to stop fighting with those illusions. The first thing is this: you do have a choice. Right? You don't have a choice over anything that ever happens to you. You don't have a choice over your lifespan.

You don't have a choice over your family's lifespan. You don't have a choice over the economy. You don't have a choice over a lot of things. But you have a choice as to how you perceive the things that happen to you. Right?

And they can either happen to you or they can happen for you. Right? When they happen to you, you're giving up all control. That thing happened to you and you're pissed off about it and that's how it's gonna be. But when things start happening for you, and when you start to switch that perspective, and say, you know what?

That that horrible thing, that happened for me. It happened to make me into the person that is gonna be strong enough to carry through the rest of this life and overcome any obstacle put in front of me. That thing happened for me to make me stronger, to make me wiser, to make me into a more capable individual, to make me into a more empathetic individual so that I understand that when somebody else is going through a rough situation, I'm gonna be able to help them. I'm gonna be able to lead them. This thing happened to me to make me a better leader.

It happened to me to make me a better human being. It happened to me to make me somebody who people would come to for help. Right? Because that's what we all wanna be. We wanna be that guy who everybody turns to when there's a tragedy.

We wanna be that guy who everybody turns to when somebody dies in our family. Right? We don't wanna be the guy who's off in the corner by himself, who nobody wants to talk to because he's a bitter asshole. If you think about what you're doing to yourself when you carry around that rage, all you're doing is turning yourself into somebody that nobody wants to be around. And if you remember, remember who you are, remember what you were in the military, remember what you wanted to do when you signed up for the military, well, that's pretty much the opposite of what you ever wanted to become.

So you have to ask in your mind, how much power are you gonna give that thing that happened to you? How much power are you gonna give that person who did that horrible thing to you? Right? Because you might be fighting with that person in your mind. If it wasn't a person who did it to you, it was the environment or God or whatever, well, you're fighting with God.

Think about that for a second. I've read the Bible. That never ended well for anybody. Right? What makes you think it's gonna end well for you?

Want the best outcome for yourself. Right? You want to be something. You want to inspire people. You want to have people understand you.

To to be able to influence this country. Right? I see so many people out there who are concerned with where this country's going. Who are concerned with what might happen. Right?

Well, wouldn't it make sense that that you'd work to put yourself into a position to influence others rather than isolating yourself and panning yourself off into a corner. Right? I'm just trying to talk sense into you. I'm just trying to be a friend. And we all have that choice.

I have it. You have it. It's just not always clear to see. That's why I do this show. Because I know what it's like to walk around with that in your heart.

I know what it's like to be so angry that you just want to watch the world burn. But I also know that I have a mission in this life. That my mission is to help to empower US military veterans to be the best version of themselves. And since I found that mission, I'm not so worried about myself. I'm worried about the mission.

And so the biggest thing you need to understand is that something happened that didn't quite meet up with your plans, that threw a big wrench into your life. Maybe a woman left you, maybe your family broke up, maybe somebody died, maybe you got injured, maybe you can't continue in a career that you want to continue in. Well, if that's the case, then your choice is either to fall into that black and never never allow yourself to become anything again. Or to say, I'm better than that, and I know that I can help people. I know that there's other people out there who can learn from me.

And you can dedicate yourself to a cause bigger than yourself. You can find meaning from that cause. And you can go on to live a beautiful life. You might not think you can do it, but you can. And it's just a matter of making a simple choice.

So what are you gonna do? Are you gonna choose to be bitter? Are you going to choose to grow progressively weaker as you continue to isolate yourself? Or are you going to choose that harder path? The path of forgiveness.

The path of allowing yourself to grow, to learn, to become stronger, to help others, to contribute to making this country great as possible. Because that's what you need it for. If you want the mission, it's there. You just gotta open your eyes, and you gotta turn the corner. That's all I got for you guys today.

That was an intense one. And, you know, I know that there's times when we're talking about a lot of stuff on this podcast. A lot of issues. A lot of different things. But everything goes back to this choice, guys.

Everything goes back to this choice. And so we have to continually remind ourselves of that. We have to continually remind ourselves that there's always a choice to be better, to be stronger. And there's always a choice to become weaker. And if we let our guard down, then it's gonna happen.

So I wanna thank you guys so much for listening. If you liked this episode, please share it out. If you're getting a lot out of listening to the Warrior Soul podcast, I highly suggest you listen to some of our other episodes as well. I did a really good episode a few weeks ago with Vincent Rocco Vargas who talks about issues in the veteran community. I did a great episode with Nick Koumalatsos.

I've got an episode coming up with mister Donny O'Malley. Actually, negative. That episode would have been published already by the time that you heard this, so go back and listen to it. And if you like all those episodes, please leave leave us a written rating and review. It really helps to get this information, this podcast into the hands and the ears of more veterans.

And that's what it's all about, guys. I don't want ask for anything in return. For those of you who might be interested in joining our group, the Warrior's Obituary Society, it's for men who are seeking to live their absolute best lives. Lives worthy of epic obituaries. And in this program, you become part of an eight week development program upfront.

We help you to define your vision, define your next mission, where you want to go. And then from there, we start working on specifics. We help you to customize your own fitness plan. We help you to customize your own finance plan so you can start knocking down debt, start building dreams. We help you to start focusing on your career, your business, and we help you to build networks and to build those soft skills that are gonna be required of you if you wanna grow in this life.

If this is something you're interested in, you know, after that eight weeks, it keeps going. Each month, we we have new challenges, new things that that that we're all working on as individuals, and we communicate over a private Slack forum. Right? We don't do anything over social media because I don't want anybody looking over our shoulders, and I don't want people getting distracted. So if you're interested in that, head over to www.warriorobituarysociety.

That's warriorobituarysociety.com, and we'd be happy to have you in the group. And if you wanna support the podcast in other ways, we've got a great store up at warriorsoul.shop. All of our gear is printed, designed, and made by US military veterans. We got a bunch of marine corps veterans. We got an army vet.

So definitely take a look at the gear. And with that, guys, I'll be back at you later on this week with another awesome interview from the Warrior Soul podcast. Get out there and live your best lives while you can.