Let's begin with a little trivia.
I'm going to ask you what the following statements or phrases have in common as compared to the
topic of self-worth, goals, and achievement.
So a value judgment, personal preferences, not necessarily something factual, and it
expresses how someone feels or thinks.
What do those have in common that tie into the topic of self-worth, goals, and achievement?
You're probably wondering what the heck is he talking about?
Hey, if you've got it, great for you, because that is the subject of today's podcast.
So let's find out what I'm talking about.
This is Life Unscripted, the podcast that just hits you with the hard truth that life has
no script and everything you've been taught is an illusion.
I'm your host Alan Stafford.
Give me as we explore how we can break free from the grip of other people's negative opinions
and begin to live our life as we see fit.
Now back to the show.
So opinions, everyone has one.
You know, everyone walking down the street has an opinion.
You know what they say about opinions, right?
Opinions are like assholes, everyone has one.
Some people have more than just one opinion.
Does that mean they have more than one asshole?
I don't know, some people are so full of shit, you just never know.
They might have multiple assholes.
All jokes aside, folks, we're going to talk about a serious topic.
Opinions, because we are always listening and getting other people's opinions, whether
we want to or we don't.
It's just a fact of life.
Go through today and just listen to the conversations people have with you.
How much of it is an opinion?
You'll find that a lot of it is an opinion, which means absolutely nothing unless you
assign meaning to it.
But first let's define what an opinion is so we can understand, have a baseline for understanding
what we're even talking about.
Because not all opinions are bad.
We're just going to focus on the negative opinions that people give that impact your
mental health, that your self-esteem and your drive and your dreams.
An opinion is a belief, judgment or view that someone holds about something.
But it's not necessarily based on facts or evidence, folks.
It expresses how someone thinks or feels about a particular topic, person or thing.
So about everything anyone says is pretty much an opinion.
Because they're not speaking from facts.
They're not speaking from real evidence.
They're just making evidence up or listening to someone else's opinion and regurgitating
that opinion.
And again, we're going to go back to politics.
Politics is a good example of just people repeating opinions that have no basis.
They're not even doing the research.
And here's the kicker people.
Opinions are subjective.
They're not objective.
They are subjective.
They vary from person to person.
You can ask one person their opinion on something and then ask another person their opinion
on something and that's going to be two different opinions.
Some of them will sound like they're the same but they'll have variations in their opinion.
Because people have very different perspectives and interpretations of the same information.
So unlike facts which can be objectively verified, we can objectively verify, and there's a whole
process for verifying facts.
I'm not just saying just because some news agency or some book tells you it's a fact
that's a fact.
That's not necessarily the case.
But real facts can be objectively verified.
Opinions, well, they cannot be proven true or false.
So just what a person thinks.
It's a belief system that a person has that they interject the thought and you somehow
buy into that.
So in other words, opinions often involve a person's value judgments or their personal
preferences.
You know, they use words like good.
That's a good thing.
Oh, that's a bad thing.
Oh, hey, he's the best.
Or this is my favorite.
These are all indications that you're about to get an opinion and nothing rooted in evidence
or fact.
So again, the focus on this podcast episode is really to help you understand that opinions
are exactly that an opinion.
It's a belief held by someone else that's not rooted in factor evidence.
So why are you listening?
Why are you having or why are you allowing a person's opinion impact your life, drive,
you know, your motivation, deter you or any of that stuff?
And that's what we're going to talk about today.
But you might be wondering, why am I even bothered by someone else's opinion, which
you probably shouldn't be.
But for those people that are understanding how to break away from someone else's opinion,
especially negative opinion, is important because it helps you not succumb to the damaging
opinions that affect your self belief.
You know, you might suffer from feeling inadequate or unworthy every time you talk to somebody
or somebody who made you feel that way with their opinions.
Or maybe their opinions led you to believe that you're an imposter and you suffer from
imposter syndrome or you have a decision paralysis because of all the negative opinions that
you've heard about your decision making capabilities, or you just have a fear of rejection or failure
as a result of listening to other people's opinions.
These are all results of someone listening or someone being impacted by another person's
opinion.
It's important to understand how to navigate someone's negative opinion in that it's just
exactly that, an opinion, a belief that they have that has no bearing on you or your results
or your future.
You see, because people's opinions have a profound impact on many of us.
And it's had a profound impact on me growing up.
And I'll get into my story here in a few seconds here.
But it has a profound impact on all of us when we have to deal with negative opinions.
It impacts our self belief, which leads us to not pursue our goals, to not follow our
dreams because we believed what someone had to say and that belief is rooted in their own
belief system, which is not rooted in anything that's evident or fact based.
So by better understanding the concept of the impact other people's opinions have on
you, you can begin to improve your mental health, build those better relationships and
have a stronger social interactions and build the ever so needed mental resilience.
When we come back, I'm going to share with you my personal story that's led me on my
journey to negate and ignore other people's negative opinions.
And I even ignore most people's opinions, period.
That's beside the point.
That's when we come back.
Okay, we're back.
And as promised, I'm going to tell you or share with you my story as to my journey that brought
me to this point in my life where I don't listen to other people's opinions.
As a matter of fact, I question where they get this information from.
And it probably rubs people the wrong way.
But in the end, it saves me.
It builds my resilience and it saves me from worrying about what other people think about
me and what I'm doing.
And I just keep going and going and going and going.
And it doesn't really matter because I know that what I'm doing is right for me.
So I wanted to be a movie director.
Okay, I wanted to direct movies.
I was really influenced by, by television and the movies.
And I began making small, a little home movies on Super 8 and editing them and learning everything
I could about movie making.
I even ended up working for Westinghouse Broadcasting, which was a cable company at the time when
I was 16, 17 years old, began pulling cable that ended up using their camera, became a
camera operator and then eventually ended up directing some of the shows.
And I thought, man, I'm, I'm, I'm making it here.
And then I ended up going to college, getting into USC, getting into cinema school.
And that's when it all began.
That's when all the doubt began because people, not just people in the school, but people
outside of the school, friends and family, even a boss of mine discouraged me from pursuing
a career in cinema saying that very few people make it, very few people even become a director.
And why are you so special that you think you can become a director?
And so that began to play over and over and over in my mind.
And it began to lower my self-esteem about myself and my abilities, despite the fact
that I have already made home movies, which they were probably crappy, but nevertheless
I was doing it.
And I was able to rise above an organization to direct local programming.
Again, I began to doubt myself because I thought, yeah, this is just local programming and
these are just home movies for myself.
They really don't matter.
I began to play those head games all because people discouraged me based on their own opinion
and feelings of an industry they've never even worked in.
Imagine that.
And you're probably thinking, oh, that wouldn't happen to me.
Folks, it happens to everybody everywhere, every day.
People are influenced by someone else's ideology about their belief system and they don't even
have the first-hand experience in whatever it is they're doing to share that opinion
with you.
It's just a thought.
It's just what they believe.
It's what they've heard.
So it's been handed down from generation to generation in their family.
It doesn't matter.
It's just their opinion.
And one of the sad, I wouldn't even say it's sad, one of the challenges I had growing up
is that I didn't have people to tell me.
I mean, my parents said I could achieve anything, but then I thought, well, all parents say
that.
That doesn't matter.
My parents could say, well, if you believe it, if you dream it, you can do it.
Well, sure.
Okay, mom, okay, dad, thanks for that bit of wisdom.
But you're not going to believe your parents because they're your parents.
They want what's good for you.
They want to encourage you.
Unless you have rotten parents that don't do that, then that's a different story and
a whole different podcast.
But nevertheless, I didn't have those mentors to show me the way.
And that's why, again, I'm motivated to help you understand that other people's opinions
are just that opinions and they're not rooted in any fact or evidence.
So why are you listening to them?
So as it turned out, you know, my journey, my journey began in my late 20s when I began
to question other people's opinions, I began to ask, how do you know?
And they would just say, I just know.
And I would think, well, that's not an acceptable answer that I just know.
There has to be, there has to be more depth to your logic.
I took a few critical thinking courses that made me begin to question that as well.
So I began to question everything.
I began to question religion.
I was brought up religious.
I was brought up both, you know, with a Baptist dad and a Muslim mom.
Talk about two worlds that collide.
It's like we always wanted to be at each other's throat.
I will kill you.
Oh, the Holy Lord, Trinity will save me, you know, type of stuff.
And that really mind fucked me as well, you know, having to deal with that.
And then I later on went into practice Buddhism, which I completely reject any Abrahamic religion.
And this is not a topic on religion, but I'm just sharing with you my journey to becoming
a self-sufficient thinker and not listening to other people's opinions because I began
to question all of this religious stuff.
I started to dive into history courses, philosophy courses until it brought me to this day where
I'm pretty much a stoic.
Life is what it is.
And everybody has an opinion like they have, you know, assholes.
So why, why listen to them?
There's no point other than if you want to take some good stuff from people who've actually
achieved something and they give you your opinion on how to achieve it, then go ahead,
by all means, include that in your journey.
But if it's just something negative to tear you down, let it go.
It doesn't matter.
It's their opinion.
Okay, folks, when we come back, we'll dive into the meat of our discussion on other people's
opinions and the impact they have on your self-worth and your belief system.
And then what you can do about that to help you be more resilient when you're thinking.
That's when we come back.
Welcome back.
Let's get into the impact that negative opinions have on your psyche.
And folks, there's a lot, but we're going to cover some of the top ones, some of the
top ways that impact your mind and your thinking when you are the recipient or you're constantly
exposed to those negative opinions about you or things that you've done or things that
you should do from other people.
And just as a reminder that everything I tell you is based on research.
This is not just something that's coming from my opinion.
I'm not giving you my opinion about other people's opinions that you shouldn't take.
This is just my, I mean, this is based on research studies.
So there's some science backing what I'm explaining to you.
Your self-belief drops.
Your belief in yourself when someone gives you an opinion.
So for example, let's go back to the example of my story when they would tell me that I
was not good enough or I would never make it.
Automatically, I began to believe like, Hey, you know, maybe they're right.
I mean, my parents say I'm good and I can become anything, but that doesn't really
count to my parents.
You know, I've accomplished a few things, but they were really low level.
There wasn't really anything grand like a big movie director in Hollywood.
So I began to believe what they're telling me, their opinion.
And then turn, I began to doubt my own beliefs.
I have these poor self-beliefs and self-efficacy too.
So self-efficacy is one's belief in their ability to succeed in specific situations or accomplish
a task.
So that is, if you believe you can do something, you have a higher self-efficacy than someone
who doesn't believe that they can do something.
And as a result of being, what do we say, abused by opinions?
I don't know, that might be a strong word, but as a result of listening to other people's
opinions constantly and taking them to heart, we lower our self-efficacy.
We lower our self-belief in the fact that we can do or accomplish something.
So that's another impact it has on your mind.
Another thing that occurs is your resiliency drops.
You're not very resilient.
And what I mean, it's your capacity to recover quickly from difficulties.
So if something, if you were to set, let's say you're going out and you're going to try
to accomplish a goal or a dream that you have, let's say that you go out and pursue a dream.
Okay.
And you start by pursuing this dream.
Let's say this dream is to run a marathon, for example.
But everyone's telling you, you can't do it.
It's hard.
It's 26.2 miles.
You've never ran a day in your life.
If you were, if you had a high self-resiliency, you would be able to bounce back from that
and say, well, that's not true.
I can do it.
I know I can do it.
I'm just going to have to practice a little harder.
I'm going to have to practice a little longer, but I'm going to be able to get there.
What happens is when people are inundated with those poor negative opinions, they can
often lower their resiliency and their ability to bounce back, keeping them further in that
state of mind that they cannot accomplish anything.
So this is another side effect, another psychological impact that you have when you deal with other
people's opinions.
And again, I'm going to keep pushing for you to not always listen to people's opinions
because that's exactly what they are, an opinion, a belief, a thought that is unfounded on anything
based on evidence or facts.
And here's another thing.
If you are constantly taking other people's advice and it's poor advice, poor opinions,
and you're letting it impact your future drive, your drive, your goals, your dreams, you are
what is called having an external locus of control, meaning you believe outside circumstances,
control your destiny versus those who are highly resilient will believe that they have,
or they believe they have an internal locus of control, or they have an internal locus
of control, meaning they actually believe that they control their destiny.
And they're better off because what they're doing is they're taking the other person's
opinion, they're listening to the opinion and they're going, well, you haven't done it yet,
so I don't know that it's not going to work for me.
I'm a different person.
I'm in total control of my destiny.
And if I decide I'm going to do it, I'm going to do it versus external locus of control
where they go, oh, you know, Bob down the street says that I'm not going to be able
to run that marathon just because I don't run.
And he's probably right, you know, because I don't really run every day and I don't
even think I'm capable.
See the difference?
The person that believes Bob has control over their destiny with the words that Bob chooses
has an external locus of control.
They believe that there's external control over them versus their own ability to control
themselves.
And that's where you don't want to be.
You want to have that internal locus of control.
You want to be able to say to yourself, I can do this despite what you think.
I don't care what you think because your thoughts are just your thoughts.
They're not predicated on anything based on fact or truth.
And these next two are really, I see this a lot in a majority of people, cognitive biases
and cognitive distortions.
So what am I talking about?
If you're constantly exposed and you believe other people's opinions, you develop a systematic
pattern of deviation from the norm or rational judgment.
You begin to infer about other people's situations and draw on, draw upon illogical conclusions
about them based on what someone else is saying.
For example, if someone says candidate A is a pedophile, you know, he's running for president
and you have this inclination to believe that person, even though their opinion is really
unwarranted, there's no evidence and they have no other insight other than it's just
their thought because they don't like the person.
You're going to begin to develop this cognitive bias, this judgment against that person and
it's unfounded.
There's no reason for it other than you just listen to someone else.
And this goes on all day long, every day across this globe.
People listen to other people's opinions about things and there's no basis for it and they
buy into it and it screws up their own cognitive biases and it creates cognitive distortion.
It's an unhelpful way we perceive reality.
It's like black and white thinking.
Cognitive distortions is black and white thinking.
It's catastrophizing.
It dramatically affects one's self-belief and their resilience when they have a high level
of cognitive distortion.
So what you have to begin to understand, take inventory, take inventory of your own thinking
today, today, tomorrow, write it down in a journal, identify am I believing this about
this person because so and so said so?
Or am I believing it about something that I saw and thought?
Or am I believing it about research and evidence from an unbiased source and really there's
no such thing as an unbiased source, but you're going to try to get to as close to an unbiased
source as you can.
Whatever that source might be, whether it be the news, some research paper, peer reviewed
papers, well respected novelist or historian, whatever it is you're trying to set out to
prove or understand.
Then there's a concept known as social comparison.
This is a theory that suggests that individuals determine their own social and personal worth
based on how they stack up against others.
It's like trying to keep up with the Joneses.
You're comparing yourself to the Joneses.
This will lead to feelings of inadequacy when you compare yourself, especially unfavorably
compare yourself to others.
And here's a perfect example.
And this social media, social media is the criminal in this social comparison because
what they do is people post crap on social media, Facebook, what is it, Instagram, TikTok,
especially Facebook, look at the life I'm living.
I'm traveling again today.
I'm on an airplane.
So you begin to create this illusion that, oh my God, these people are, Bob's better than
me.
Look at, he's always traveling, he's always going places.
He's always out drinking, having fun with friends when in reality that's not really
the case.
He's just showing you that and you're making a comparison that your life is not like that,
but his life is not even real like that.
It's probably pictures he's had from before or he might just post a picture today and
then six months later post another picture and you just happen to see it and you begin
to stack it together and begin to realize, oh my God, he's always on a trip, but he's
only posting whenever he goes on a trip and he goes on a trip twice a year, but you're
seeing it, you know, as though it's compressed time and two dimensional on a feed.
And so you're making that comparison.
You don't want to do that.
That's going to destroy you.
So again, social comparison is a byproduct of people's opinion and the way that comes
about is someone's posting or someone's doing something and you're trying to compete with
them and compare yourself to them and that's no way to live your life.
Compare yourself only to yourself from the day before.
Are you better or are you worse?
Who cares about the Joneses?
Who cares about what Bob does?
What did you do yesterday that you're going to do today differently that's going to improve
your life?
That's all you need to be comparing yourself to.
Nobody else.
And social comparison leads to an impact on your self-belief.
As I said, with social media, I mean, you could undermine your self-esteem and your self-worth
if you're constantly making these comparisons, thinking, I'm not good enough.
I don't have that kind of money.
Look at these get rich quick schemes.
People are always talking about, hey, look at this funnel.
Hey, you know, let's try this here.
Do this on YouTube, blah, blah, blah.
I don't know if blah, blah, blah.
It's a strategy that they try to sell.
But my point is you're seeing what other people are projecting that they're earning on e-commerce
or whatever they're doing on the side for a side hustle.
And you're like, I want to be like them.
I want to do them, but I can't get there.
I don't know what's going on.
Most of that stuff is BS anyways.
I mean, there are some people that make a lot of money out there, but most of those people,
they're just trying to get you to watch their crap and sell you their crap so you can, so
they can make money off of you, thinking they make money off something else.
So yeah, you want to stay away from all of that.
And all of that really is based on opinion, because it's someone else's belief system
that they're trying to project onto you and you're buying into it.
And again, I'm going to say, stop believing what other people are selling you.
Stop believing what they're telling you because it's not based on anything other than their
own belief system.
Why are you subjecting your own mind to someone else's thinking?
So the question I'm going to ask you is why are you still listening to other people's
opinions?
Seriously.
What does their opinion or what will their opinion do for you?
How will that change your life for the better?
It probably won't.
You might be able to say, oh, I think like you.
Therefore I will listen to your opinion, even though your opinion is based on nothing other
than your own thoughts and beliefs, because there's no evidence to back it.
They didn't even do research.
They just kind of go, oh, I feel this way about this person.
Therefore I'm going to say, don't listen to this person or don't buy from this person
or don't buy this product or blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
And then pretty soon you're going to be going, oh yeah, I agree without any reason why.
And then it's going to cause you to develop lower self-esteem, lower belief in yourself,
going to keep you from pursuing your dreams, pursuing your goals.
And then one day you're going to look back and go, man, I should have never listened
to anybody.
I should have just done my own thing.
Well, I'm telling you right now, just do your own thing.
Don't listen to other people unless they've been successful and they're giving you their
story, their path to their success and helping you get there.
Just the only time you should be listening to people, not people who have never done
anything and want to give you their two cents on what to do, those people are abundant.
They're everywhere.
All right, folks, when we come back, we're going to dive into strategies for building
resilience.
We're going to talk about setting boundaries, cultivating a positive self-image.
I'm going to give you tips and techniques on what you can do to build that resilience
and not listen to other people's opinions and not take it to heart, but do your own
thing, have your own internal locus of control.
That's when we come back.
Welcome back and thanks for hanging in there.
If you're still in there with me, hopefully I haven't given you too much of my opinion.
I haven't given you any of my opinion, actually.
Well, maybe I have.
Let's think about this here.
I've given you a little bit of my opinion, but really a lot of this here is based on
research and science.
I would have to say that there is evidence and fact behind what I'm saying to you today.
Okay, we're going to talk about strategies for building resilience for empowering you
to navigate negativity, criticism, and that self-doubt.
In other words, navigate other people's negative opinions when you come across them.
It's important to be able to recognize when someone is feeding you a bunch of nonsense,
aka their opinion of something.
So the first process is helping you cultivate a positive self-image.
If you have a positive self-image, you are less likely to believe or fall prey to someone's
opinions and developing that negative self-talk within your own mind.
I'm talking about affirmations and positive self-talk.
I'm talking about replacing what's already in your head, the script that you're already
playing, the negative script that you're already playing, because you might not think you're
good enough or you can't do it or so and so says you can't do it.
Replace it with positive self-talk, positive affirmations, stressing the value that you
have because you do have value.
There is nobody on this planet that doesn't have any value to some degree.
Everybody has value.
You just have to believe that you have that value and in doing so, you have to tell yourself,
not everyone's going to tell you that.
Some people out there are going to tear you down.
They're going to give you their opinion.
They're going to tell you you don't look a certain way.
You don't fit a certain thing or a certain style or a certain genre or whatever the case
might be, but you have to decide for yourself, am I going to fall prey to that person's opinion
or am I going to say, I'm going to take control of my destiny.
I am going to believe in myself and I am going to get through this.
So positive self-talk.
So rather than saying, yeah, Bob's right.
I suck.
I know Bob doesn't know any better.
Bob doesn't really know me.
I am good at what I do.
I can achieve this.
I can become that.
I can go there.
Keep saying that to yourself because what you're going to be doing is you're going to be rewiring
your brain.
You've already wired your brain to negativity.
You've already said to yourself, I'm going to become negative.
And you said that by constantly thinking that way because someone's opinion of you.
So now just reframe your thinking into something more positive.
By dismissing that person's opinion and saying they don't have any basis or any proof.
They can't tell the future.
They don't know anything about me because I am me and I know me.
So therefore I can achieve this.
So first thing for affirmations and positive self-talk.
Reflect on your past successes.
Folks, I know that some of you might be striving to be a billionaire and that's great.
Hey, all the power to you.
I think you can do it.
You just got to ask yourself, what is the price I'm willing to pay to go do this?
But this is not what I'm talking about past successes.
I'm talking about anything you've done that has helped move you forward and become a positive
person.
This could be from getting up in the morning on time and getting to work on time.
If you're someone who's chronically late or always late to maybe accomplishing a task
that you found difficult or even easy.
It doesn't have to be large.
It could be something small.
Like today I set out to cook a scrambled egg and it may sound funny, but it's no
joke.
Some people can't cook scrambled eggs.
I can't cook.
Period.
I try to cook.
I follow directions and it still comes out nasty.
But you know, God bless my family.
They like to eat it.
But my point is, if you have any type of success in the past, start to begin to recognize that
you've been successful.
You've been there.
You've done that.
So you're able to do it regardless of the size of the success.
So again, what is another person's opinion about you not being able to achieve anything
have to do with anything at all because you've already been successful.
You've already done these little things or these big things to get you where you are.
And yes, success isn't just big things, folks.
It could be that small thing like getting up on time, you know, doing a daily list,
doing daily affirmations.
These are all little successes that you should be celebrating and you should be taking a
catalog of what you've done in the past because that could tell you you are capable of doing
it again and doing things that are greater and bigger in the future.
And here's a big one here, folks, self-compassion.
Have self-compassion for yourself.
Be kind to yourself.
It's okay.
I give you permission to make mistakes.
You're human.
There is no perfection.
Perfection to me is a mental disability.
You have some sort of issue when you're growing up.
Maybe you were held to a higher standard.
Maybe you grew up with alcoholic parents.
And something has caused you to seek to be perfect, but perfection does not exist.
So be kind to yourself.
If you make a mistake, do what they always say, fail forward.
Get up, dust yourself off, learn from what you just did and move forward.
Say, laugh it off.
That was funny.
I tripped and fell over there, but you know what?
I'm going to pick myself up and keep walking.
That's all you got to do, folks.
It's really that easy.
Remember, most 99.9% of the stuff is in your head.
All you have to do is rewrite that script and you begin with positive self-talk, reflect
on the past successes you've had, and be compassionate to yourself.
Exercise self-compassion.
Boundaries is a big thing.
If you know me, if anybody knows me, I'm not sure if anybody really knows me, but if you
know me, setting boundaries is my biggest, my biggest message in life.
Because if you can set boundaries, you can accomplish a lot because what you're doing
is just saying, hey, this is where I stop listening to you.
This is where I stop dealing with your nonsense.
And this is where I begin my life, how I begin to live for myself.
So setting boundaries, you know, number one, learn to say no.
It's okay to say no.
There are people out there and I get it.
I was one of those people that would say yes to everything.
I wanted to be a people pleaser.
I wanted to please everybody, but you know what?
Pleasing everybody, you don't please yourself.
You don't get anything done for yourself.
So you have to learn to say no, and it's okay to say no.
Offer a solution, say no, I can't do it today.
Can I do it to you tomorrow?
Or no, I can't do it, but maybe so-and-so can help you.
Or no, I just can't do it.
I just cannot afford the time right now because I'm in the middle of this.
And you know what?
If you don't want to have to give an excuse, don't give an excuse.
Just say no, I cannot do this.
I appreciate you asking me.
I appreciate you, you know, leaning on me, but at this point, I cannot do this.
And folks, another thing, in order to not get sucked into the vortex of negativity, limit
yourself, limit your exposure to negativity.
You know, if you're scrolling through social media, don't listen to that crap on social
media.
99.9% of that stuff is crap anyways.
It's a cesspool of information, and it's all bogus and it's people's opinions.
That's all they're doing is they're selling, they're peddling their opinions to you, and
you're buying it.
So limit your exposure to that, to the social media, to the negativity around you, to the
news.
The news is designed to suck you in.
Stay away from that stuff.
That's like a bad toxic drink.
You don't want to be drinking any of that news.
So limit yourself to negativity.
And none of this will make any difference if you cannot communicate your boundaries.
Being passive aggressive, being assertive, I mean, not being, but being aggressive is
not the answer.
What you want to do is be able to calmly communicate your boundaries.
And it's okay to tell people, listen, I can only take so much of this.
At this point, it's a little too much for me.
I need to step back.
Or while I respect your opinion, because everyone's entitled to it, I'm just going to go ahead
and say no and bypass that today.
But thank you for sharing.
It's always good to hear another person's perspective.
These are things that I say to people.
And so I recommend that you do the same as well.
Create your boundaries, let them know where you stand and how people should treat you.
Don't let them walk all over you.
Okay, folks, so we've talked about cultivating a positive self image and a few steps to do
that.
And also just as we just finished up on setting boundaries, you know, makes specifically
communicating those boundaries so that people understand where you stand and how far they
can and cannot, you know, push you.
Next week, I want to get into developing a growth mindset.
So what is a growth mindset?
There are two types of mindsets that personal development coaches talk about a lot.
And that's the fixed mindset.
And then the growth mindset.
So a fixed mindset is exactly what it says.
It's fixed.
You're not changing it.
So if I'm this way, this is how I am.
This is how I think.
And that's it.
A growth mindset, a person with a growth mindset is open to new ideas and experiences, to understanding
and to expanding their personality, expanding their beliefs, expanding who they are.
They're open to growth in essence.
So the first thing you want to do when you're embracing a growth mindset is embrace challenges.
Look at opinions or other people's criticism as opportunities for growth rather than threats
to your self-worth.
If you change your view and you take a look at it as an opportunity for growth and not
a threat to your self-worth, you'll begin to transform the way you see and hear these
opinions and people's criticism.
You will begin to make you look deeper into yourself and say, do I need to make this change?
If he's saying that I cannot be this person, how can that be possible?
I know that I can be this person.
What do I need to do to grow to become that person?
Your mindset shifts versus accepting defeat.
Yeah, he says I'm not going to be this person.
So therefore, it must be true.
Even though there's no facts or evidence for that, I'm just going to go take it at face
value because he said it.
So embrace challenges.
Learn from your failure.
And this is one of my biggest things.
This is the thing I've always asked my kids, hey, you made a mistake or even my employees
when I've worked with teams, you made a mistake.
Did you learn from it?
What did you learn?
Are you going to do it again?
Move on.
And that's it.
There's no reprimand.
I don't reprimand them.
There's no beating them down or making them feel worse than they already feel because
they're going to do that for themselves.
They're going to feel bad for themselves.
So I don't have an opinion on the mistake they made.
I just want to know, did they learn from that mistake?
What did they learn?
What was the outcome and what are they going to do next?
So my advice is learn from your failures.
And one way to shift your mind is to understand that your failure is part of the learning
process.
There's this saying, and I don't know if I'm going to get the quote right, but Thomas Edison
said, I have not failed when asked about the light bulb.
There's a saying from Thomas Edison that, and it goes something like this here, when
he's asked about his failures, he says, I have not failed 10,000 times for I have found
10,000 ways that won't work or something like that.
I'm paraphrasing.
So the same thing should apply to you.
Don't look at the failure that you're, don't look at your failure as failure in a vacuum.
Look at it as an opportunity for growth.
So if someone comes to you with an opinion that you can't do it because you haven't done
it before and your response is, well, that's fine, but I'm trying it a different way.
And I'll keep doing it a different way until I get to the promised land or where I want
to be.
And that's my approach.
You can make all the fun, you can make fun of me.
You can call me names.
You could ridicule me.
You could say it's not going to work.
I'm going to laugh right back in your face because I'm going to say, yes, it will.
It just didn't work that way.
It will work this way.
And if it doesn't work this way, then it will work another way.
And I'll keep finding my way because I know it doesn't defy physics.
And if something doesn't defy physics on this planet in our life, we can achieve it.
So your opinion again is moot.
And folks, there are countless stories of people who have failed and have become very
successful.
Look at all the top businesses.
Look at Steve Jobs.
He was fired from Apple for Christ's sake.
I mean, look at the plethora of other people out there, scientists, engineers, designers,
inventors, who have all failed, but yet picked themselves up and kept going.
Can you imagine the world we would live in if all those people decided, hey, I failed
one time.
I'm not doing it again.
We probably wouldn't have the light bulb.
I mean, maybe we would.
Someone else would come along and do it, but it would have delayed the invention of the
light bulb.
It would have delayed the invention of aviation.
It would have delayed the invention of mass transportation.
It would have delayed our exploration of space.
So these all had failures built into them and they still fail and they still make adjustments
and learn from those failures.
So, so learning from failure should be part of your curriculum, so to speak, part of your
learning process, regardless of what you do in life.
And one of my favorites is continuous learning.
Learning is a lifelong journey.
And I don't mean just going to sit into an institutionalized facility to learn from a
book.
That's one way to learn.
And a lot of people do well that way and then they stop.
I'm talking about lifelong learning, reading, observing, communicating, listening, you know,
trying out new things, exploring, traveling.
These are all ways you can learn.
Reading is the number one.
Read books.
Read all kinds of books, not just fiction.
Read nonfiction.
Read magazine articles.
I probably would read the news the least because it's, again, got a lot of opinion in there
and it's trying to distort your mind.
But read history books.
I mean, talk to people.
Talk to people who from other countries.
You're going to learn a lot.
So always keep learning.
So embracing your challenges, learning from failure and turning that failure into part
of your learning experience and continuous learning through different sources and people
all help develop your growth mindset.
So all will all help build resilience so that you don't fall prey to other people's opinions,
negative opinions that keep you down and destroy your self-worth.
Okay.
And finally, we have resilience building techniques.
These are some general techniques that you can deploy in your own daily routine to help
you build resilience.
And we're going to kick it off with one of my favorites and that is mindfulness and meditation.
And I know if you have not heard about mindfulness by now, you've probably been living under
a rock because it's everywhere.
It's in every book.
It's on TV.
It's you can't get past a week or day without hearing mindfulness somewhere.
But it works, folks.
Try some meditation.
There's apps that help guide you through meditation.
There's courses online that are paid and free.
There's also yoga classes that you can take at a fitness center that will help center
you because when you practice mindfulness and meditation, it helps center you and calm
you down and it reduces the impact of external negativity on your mind because you begin
to be able to drown that stuff out.
People talk and yapp and flapping their gums all day long, but you're able, you're able
to drown it out with a little bit of meditation.
I promise you it works because I've been doing it for the last several years.
I do it every morning, 10 to 15 minutes in the morning.
I practice on my breathing.
I sit there, center myself, calms me down, preps me for the day, and then I do another
recap in the evening before I go to bed.
So I'm not taking all that toxic, toxic grime and crap from the day with me to sleep because
I don't want to go to bed all agitated and amped up because that's what the day will
do to you if you're working or if you're listening to the news or basically listening to people.
And I know you're probably not going to like this next one, but physical activity folks,
physical activity, there is nothing in this world that's a better substitute for physical
activity than physical activity itself.
Because when you engage in physical activity, what you're doing is you're boosting your
mental resilience by reducing stress and improving your mood.
So this means, this doesn't mean go into a gym and pump out some iron and you know,
come out, I'm caveman, look at me.
That's not what this means.
I'm talking about getting your heart rate up just enough to help you reduce some of your
stress.
This could be a walk around your neighborhood.
If you have a track or a park, if you have a treadmill in the house, heck, if you have
your backyard, my mom walks in her backyard, she goes round and round in circles.
If you've got stairs, go up and down the stairs, get up several times a day, but walk.
If it's painful, walk a little, build up your strength, but move your body because sitting
stagnant is not going to help you.
It's not going to de-stress you.
It's not going to build up your resilience.
It's going to sit there and aggravate you, cause you to gain weight and ultimately beat
yourself down because you're not moving and not being productive and gain social support
too.
It's really helpful if you have friends or family.
Heck, if you don't have friends or family, it's not a, it's, it's not doomsday.
There are community, communities out there that you can join, even online chat forums.
But if you're going to do that, remember, you don't want to get sucked into the negativity
because there's a lot of that going on online as well.
So you got to be very careful about the online stuff, but seek out friends, family, coworkers,
get a buddy, go have a drink.
If you don't drink, that's fine.
Have some chips and salsa or some vegan food, whatever it is you do, whatever, whatever
your stick is, do it.
If you just want to sit down and have a conversation, do it.
But everybody needs somebody to talk to, somebody to support them.
But don't take advantage of that person either because that's, that's the key here.
If you have a support system, don't start complaining.
And if you haven't heard my podcast on complaining, I would go back and listen to that one because
nobody wants to hear you complain because that doesn't help you and it doesn't help the other
person.
But what you want to do is have somebody that can support you and kind of be like a cheerleader
for you and help you along the way and someone you can talk to as well.
And in the end, if you need more help, you can always seek the guidance of a professional
counselor and there is nothing wrong with seeing a counselor.
I know in some cultures and in some groups of people, seeing a psych carries a negative
stigma.
Everybody explains something to you.
If you have a heart problem, you go see a heart doctor.
If you have acid reflux, you see a gastrointestinal doctor.
If you have anything else with you, you see that specialized doctor.
The same thing goes with your thinking and your mind.
If you have a problem thinking, if you have a problem keeping in control, if you have
a problem with self-esteem, seek help.
And there's nothing wrong with that because you may not know how to access the tools inside
of your mind to get you to where you need to go to become resilient.
So asking help is nothing wrong.
And if someone says it is, again, it's their opinion and why does it matter?
Because it's just their belief system and it's not based on anything because science
backs getting help with your psychology, with your mental state.
Okay, folks, I want to thank you if you're stuck with me because that means the world
to me.
No, it really does.
And also, you should pat yourself on the back because you were able to stomach and handle
my conversation here with you.
That's an accomplishment you can write in your little journal.
I accomplished the goal of listening to Alan's podcast.
But no, I really do appreciate it.
And what I really want to say is that you have everything you need inside your head
to do the things that you want to do in this life.
You just have to believe it.
And the first step to believing it is just accepting that you can do it.
And then start to build that resilience.
And then you'll see your life progress and transform.
I guarantee you, folks, it's been a long journey for me, but I have arrived.
And now I want to share that with you.
And I know you too can overcome other people's opinions and rise above it, build that self-esteem,
build that self-belief, build that efficacy, and get yourself to the promised land or the
place you want to go wherever that is.
Alright, folks, thanks for listening and I'll catch you on the next podcast.