 Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional. We so badly, almost every person that I meet has some form of a control problem. You will have stress and anxiety when you're focusing on trying to control things that you cannot control. We're going to talk about the death of everyone that you know that's around you and how to cope with death. We're also going to talk about your own death and how to become more okay with it, right? And the interesting thing about death is that it is guaranteed. It will happen no matter what. And we really need to learn that if it's going to happen, it's nothing we can get away from. We need to try to become as okay with it as we possibly can because everybody that you love will die, right? Like, it sounds morbid, but in reality, it's not that morbid. It's just fact. And you will die. And so we're going to talk about both of those because I get a ton of messages, so many messages on Instagram from people. And I read all the messages, right? Of they lost somebody. They don't know how to get past it, right? They lost a loved one. They just died of old age or they had something that happened to them that was tragic or there was a suicide or it was their grandparents or it was their parents. Some people, it was old age. Some people, it was young age and it was something that was tragic that happened. It's every type of thing that you could do. Some of them are overdoses. Every type of death you could think of, I've been sent messages about it. And when I see something that comes through many, many, many, many times in my Instagram messages, I go, huh, I should probably make an episode on this because this is clearly something people want to learn about. So for those of you guys that want to message me and give me some form of request of what I should do an episode on, message me on Instagram. That's where I usually talk to people, Rob Dile Jr. R-B-D-I-A-L-J-R. That's how I communicate and talk with people. But when we're going into death and we're talking about death, I've seen it come up many, many times and people are struggling all of the time with how do they cope with it? You know, someone that they love, they won't expect them to die. It happened. How do you work through it? The first thing that I think is important is before anybody dies, at this moment, you have to learn to start becoming more okay with it because it's going to happen for everybody, right? To you, to your loved ones, to everyone. And that's not morbid, it's just a fact. So first let's dive into the death of someone that you know before we talk about your own death. We'll talk about both when we'll dive into them. And I'm going to make it as light as possible because this is going to happen. Why would I want to make it depressing, right? So I'll talk about how, you know, in my instance of how I've had some relations with death, you know, up into my first 14 years, I never knew one person that died, maybe some older person that I didn't really know that was in my family, like a distant cousin or distant anorocle or whatever it was. But no one that was, I was really close to had passed away in my first 14 years. Then when I was 15, my dad died unexpectedly. He was an alcoholic. We weren't expecting him to die. He did. We were flying up to go see him from Florida to Tennessee. And we were getting on the, about to get on the plane to go see him because he was unconscious and we got the message that he had passed away. I was in, you know, he was the first dead body I'd ever seen. And that left a really big imprint on my mind of, holy s***, this is going to end. Like this, as much if you've ever been to a funeral of someone that you know and that you're close to, it feels like a joke. It feels like they're about to pop up and be like, Hey, just kidding. No, no, no, just joking. Let's go hang out. Right. And it never happens. And so it's the, it's that realization of like, Oh, wow, this is going to happen to everyone that I know. And this is going to happen to me as well. I would say that moment changed my life as far as the urgency that I bring to every single thing that I do. And I'll talk more about that later. Right. I was also in the room about three or four years ago when my grandfather passed away. Right. I was in the room in hospice there. It's a crazy experience to be in the room when someone passes away. Right. I was there. I was also there when my mom and her three sisters told my grandmother that her husband of 70 years had passed away. Right. That's a whole other thing to see is to see somebody process that in real time. Right. I've had friends die from car accidents. I've had friends die from overdoses. I've had friends die from suicides. I've had friends that have been murdered. I've seen a quite a few different sides of death. And I don't know if I just gave you like my qualifications for talking about death, but I guess I just did. But I'm going to tell you what I have learned through the process, being somebody who is obsessed with mindset, obsessed with trying to get better. And the first thing is, is there's always a grieving process. Right. And one thing that I've noticed with people is they try to speed up the grieving process. Whatever the grieving process is, the grieving process is don't try to speed it up. Don't try to not feel it. Don't try to keep yourself busy. That's one of the things that pisses me off the most is when somebody has somebody that they're dealing with the emotions of death and someone says, well, just keep yourself busy. So you don't think about it. Yeah. That sounds like a really great way to just repress your emotions. You don't want to do that. Feel it as beautiful it is to experience the most beautiful, amazing, joyful, loving parts of your life. The other emotions are also very beautiful. And it's part of the human experience. And if you can't allow yourself to experience the lowest of lows, I promise you, you actually won't be able to allow yourself to experience the highest of highs. So allow yourself to feel it. Don't feel like you, there's a right way to do it and a wrong way to do it. There is no right. There is no wrong. Just experience it and see if you can enjoy this part of the human experience. Right. So I will say that and as far as grief and the way that it goes is one of the best ways I've heard it explains is kind of like waves, right? Going out into the ocean, you know, and when you first have someone that you love that passes away, it's like the waves are a hundred feet tall and they're just crashing on you and crashing on you and crashing on you and you can barely come up for air. That's like how it feels in the very beginning where it's like, you're just getting swept at every single emotion and feeling and anger will come up and sadness will come up and fear will come up and you're just getting hit by this constantly rocked by these waves and then time starts to pass and the waves start to come a little bit less frequently. But when they do come, they're still a hundred feet tall and they're still throw you upon the rocks and you try to get up and try to have some form of air to come up, right? And then, you know, as time goes on, you tend to process and, you know, the waves will still come unexpectedly. But instead of being a hundred feet tall, they might be 50 feet tall and they might get to 20 feet tall and 30 feet tall and sometimes they then after a while they come really unexpectedly. Could be a year, two years down the road and it might be like a song that you hear that just hits you again and you can't help but be overcome with emotion or might be driving past a certain part of town and seeing a, you know, a gas station where you have a memory with that person and you just get hit again and there's nothing wrong with that, right? The human experience is a beautiful thing. The highs are beautiful, the lows are beautiful. The worst things you could do is try to rush a grieving process or think that you're doing it right or think that you're doing it wrong. One of the things that I always tell people, if you want to help yourself, if you love somebody that died, right, they're not going to come back. Like I can promise you that. But one of the things you can do is you can help them live on in you. And what do I mean by that? This is something that I do with my grandfather. My grandfather was like the kindest person that I've ever met in my entire life. He was incredible to the point where like, I'm finally at the point where I don't cry talking about him because he was just that incredible of a human being, right? And so when he passed away, it was such a, another monumental event in my life that I wrote down, and this was a few years ago, so I was at least, you know, emotionally intelligent enough to work myself through it because I had worked many clients through at this point in time, not like when I was 15 and I had never had a client, never really worked to myself at all, right? So I wrote down all the things that I loved about my grandfather, unconditioned, like literally the only person I know with unconditional love, like no matter what, he was going to help you out, right? Kindness and loving and joy didn't matter who you are, what you believed in, what you looked like, didn't matter. Loved you either way. So I wrote down all the things that I loved about him and the character traits that I respected most about him. And then what I did was I went, I want to wake up every single morning and meditate on how I can be more like this. Because if I fully respect somebody and who they are in the character traits that they have, what did I want those character traits to also be inside of me? And isn't that the best way, the best way to actually keep that person alive after they have passed away? So I recommend if you have somebody that's recently passed away or you have somebody that passes away soon enough or even if they pass away in a distant past, write down the two, three, four, five things that you loved most about them and then wake up every single morning and take five minutes and pause and read those five things and close your eyes and try to get into your subconscious of I'm going to bring these aspects of this person into myself every single day. And if you do that every single day, what you'll realize is you actually start to become the aspects of that person you love the most. So that's the interesting thing about the grieving process and how to help you work through it. Another thing that will help you as well is to realize the difference between pain versus suffering. And this is super important, okay? Because pain is the pain that you feel in pain is inevitable. You can't go through this life without some form of pain. Pain is inevitable. You're going to have scars in this in any lifetime. You're going to have scars. Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional. What do I mean by that? Pain is somebody died in the emotions that you feel with that pain is the feelings that you feel from the loss of someone suffering is the resistance to someone's death, which then makes it even worse. It is the unnecessary part of it, right? It's the thoughts of, oh my gosh, they were too young. It shouldn't have been them. It shouldn't have happened this way. Maybe what did I do wrong? Part of this is my fault. I should have been there for them. I shouldn't have let them get in the car. I shouldn't have let them do that thing. In most of the time, the suffering comes from not accepting, right? So there's the pain of the event. That's going to happen. You're going to have pain. It's part of being a human. The suffering is not accepting it and wishing that it was different. There is no other way that it could have happened because it didn't happen any other way. It happened the way that it happened. It could not have happened any other way. Why? Because it didn't. You have to learn to accept. The suffering comes when you are resisting the way that the world is. There's nothing you can do about them. It is in the past. There's nothing you can do about anything in your past, right? The only thing that you can do something about is you. So you have to learn to accept. You cannot change. Accept that that's just the way that the world is, right? Another thing that I always tell myself that I heard from Ram Dass, who is a spiritual teacher who passed away about a year and a half ago, is something that I say every that I've noticed and I start to say to myself of the past year and a half when someone that I know passes away. And what he says is that a soul does not leave this plane that we're in a second too soon or a second too late. It happened the exact way that it's supposed to happen. If you believe in God or the universe or fate or, you know, the quantum realm of all of this stuff that's happening, you've got to believe that everything happens the way that it's supposed to, right? And I've just accepted I'm not in control. I'm not in control of when someone leaves this time. I'm not in control of when I leave this. It's going to happen the way it's supposed to happen. The soul does not leave this plane a second too soon or a second too late. Just the way it goes. It worked out exactly as supposed to work out. That was, you know, if you want to say that was their karmic predicament, it could be. And the way that you're reacting to it is also your karmic predicament too. What's going on with that? So you have to realize that death is going to happen, but you can make it easier on yourself by instead of not accepting, actually sitting down accepting and start figuring out what you love most about them and bringing that person into yourself and then being okay and not judging yourself for the grieving process and allowing things just to happen. So that's the death of a loved one. Now, let's talk about you dying because it's going to happen. You're not going to be able to live to 500 years old. You know, there's all these people that are talking about longevity and living forever and putting yourself inside of a freezer until something, I don't know what all that stuff is. I'm not going to resist it. It's going to happen, right? It's going to happen and most people are terrified of it. It's going to happen. There's nothing you can do about it. So you might as well figure out a way to become at least a little bit more okay with it, right? No matter how terrified you are of it, it's still going to happen. So you might as well accept that, right? But the way that I see death is I see death as a beautiful part of life, right? We're dying in every single second. If you're watching me on video, I am slowly decaying in front of you every single second, as beautiful as that sounds, right? I'm decaying in front of you. For those of you guys that are listening to me just on the podcast, my voice is slowly deteriorating for you, right? But the beautiful thing about death, in my opinion, is death gives your life urgency, right? If you didn't have to die, if you were immortal, you'd always have tomorrow. Why do I need to go ahead and try to build this business? Why do I need to try to get into that relationship, help the world, make money, have fun, you know, change other people's lives? Because there's always tomorrow. But the beautiful thing about death is that there is not always tomorrow. Tomorrow is never guaranteed. And so if you take life and look at it that way, you realize that that should bring in your life some urgency and urgency in a good way. And if you deal with, if you've ever heard of stoic philosophy, there's a stoic phrase and stoics, the beautiful thing about the phrase that I heard around it, not the original phrase I was going to tell you, I'll tell you that in a second, but a phrase that I heard around stoicism is that stoicism doesn't, doesn't take away human emotions. It domesticates them. It makes you understand the emotions, feel them, and be able to work through them and process them in real time. And one of the things that they say, the phrase in stoicism is momentum mori, momentum mori, right? Which means remember that you're going to die. And you may have heard me talk about this on the podcast before. And this, I've thought this way, even before I ever heard the phrase, you know, momentum mori. And I remember I was having a conversation with my mom not too long ago and I was like, Mom, just curious, how often do you think of death? And she's like, Oh, I don't know, maybe, maybe once a week, once every two weeks or so. And I was like, Oh, okay. And she goes, Why? Why? How often do you think of death? And I was like, Oh, I don't know, probably every few hours, five times a day, 10 times a day. And she's like, Really? I was like, Yeah, but not in the creepy way. Like, Ooh, I'm thinking about death. I'm thinking about dead people or any of that type of stuff. Or, you know, I can't wait till it happens. I wasn't thinking of that type of stuff. It's just like, it's going to happen. And if I think about the fact that it's going to happen, it brings me urgency. I always say that I don't really have any fears anymore, except for one. Like, I don't care what people think about. I don't care about other people's opinions or judgments. I don't care about failing. I don't care about any of that stuff. I've worked through it mostly. I won't say I'm just completely relieved of it, but it's basically mostly gone. Right? The one fear that I really do have though, is that I'm going to get to my deathbed in wish that I would have done something more to bring out my true potential for the world. Right? The only thing worse than the pain of hard work is a pain of regret. I do not want to regret anything when I die. I want to get to my deathbed and be like, Damn, that was fun. You did everything you could kid. You did it all. You did everything. You built the business you wanted to, you had the family you wanted to, you had the kids you wanted to, you impact the world that you wanted to, all of that stuff. And the reason why I do what I do and the reason why I push so much harder than a lot of other people that are in my industry, because I'm going to die. And I pay attention to that every single day. Like, I think about it all of the time. I'm very aware of it. And it's a beautiful thing. So I want to experience everything that there is in this world. I want to experience all of the beautiful, all of the hard stuff. I want to experience everything that there is. I want to bring out all of the potential that I feel that I have inside of myself. And I know you all feel that you have some potential inside of you. I want to release all of it to the world. So therefore, when I do get to that day, when it will eventually happen, I can go, All right, I'm ready. I've done all that I can. So when you can come to terms that everyone that you know is going to die, and you are going to die as well, and you can come to terms with it and see it as a beautiful thing and have it give you more beautiful things in life than negative things when you start thinking about death and when death happens. To see when someone else dies, you can take that beautiful part of them and put it into yourself. And you can look at your own death that will eventually happen and have it give you more urgency to get off the couch, to get off to Instagram, to do the things you want to, to impact the world, to impact the people around you, to bring out your potential to the world, you realize that death is actually one of the most beautiful parts of life. When things are going crazy, we're going to talk about how to be peaceful. And we're also going to talk about how to change your relationship with everything that's happened in your past. Because one of the things that I see from a lot of people is that a lot of people are still resisting the current moment that they're in, and they're still resisting the past and things that have happened in their past, even though they have absolutely nothing to do with their present moment. And one of the things that I've been told before we dive in and I give you this phrase that I think could possibly change your life. One of the things I've been told is that I'm uncommonly calm in a lot of situations. And I'll give you a couple of situations that kind of make sense for you. The first thing that pops in my head, there's three situations that pops in my head when I was thinking about this. Number one, there was a time when we were traveling, my girlfriend and I, we were in Chengu Bali. And we were in an Uber. And in Bali, they don't like Ubers. So literally somebody came out, a bunch of this local taxi gang is what they call them basically, right? They come out, they start banging on the hood. They force us to get out. They force the driver to get out. They're yelling, they're screaming. It's the middle of the night. It's like midnight almost. And I remember everyone's freaking out and screaming and yelling. And as they're freaking out, I'm going to myself, you got to be calm. You got to be calm. You got to be calm. You can't be the only, you can't be just just crazy like them. And so I had to kind of take the situation and make it calmer, right? I was in this situation. I can't change the situation. Now I've got to figure out how to make everybody more calm, right? I didn't know if anybody had a gun. I didn't know if anybody had a machete. If there was going to be someone that was going to be hurt or killed, but I just knew I had to be calm because nobody else was. Second time I remember is I remember when I used to have an office and I had two offices that were right next door to each other. And somebody broke into my office in the middle of a meeting. They broke into the office that was to the side, stole a TV for me, stole a Nintendo Wii that we used to use all the time during team meetings and stuff. And I remember everyone was like, man, you're so calm during this situation. Someone just stole all of your shit. And I was like, yeah, well, you know, maybe they needed it more than I did. And then the last thing that popped into my head was you've heard me talk about it recently is this whole plane situation where the engine of the plane that I was on caught on fire. We had to do an emergency landing and everybody is freaking out and screaming and crying. And I had this, this thought of like, damn, I'm really calm in this moment. I wonder why it is. And so then I started thinking about it. And I think that it all comes down to a phrase that I remember kind of brainwashing into myself when I was younger. And it comes from one of my friends and one of my first mentors, Hal Elrod. And he used to literally say it all the time. Got me to say it all the time. And then also at the same time, made bracelets that said it. And the phrase is can't change it. And the reason why this is so empowering is because there's so many circumstances in your life right now that are sending you off the deep end, or that you're worried or that you're stressed or that you have fear or sadness around that you literally cannot change in any sort of way. So if we go back to those three examples, the whole Uber situation that was happening in Bali, can I change the situation? I can change the situation. Yes. Can I change the fact that I'm in that circumstance and that situation is happening? I can't. So if I can't change it, what I need to do is I need to figure out how to show up the best that I possibly can to it, right? Because I can't change it. I'm in this circumstance. Everyone's yelling at each other. I don't know if there's guns. I don't know if there's someone's going to get hurt. I just know there's a lot of stuff that's happening in front of me. I need to figure out how to show up the best way that I can, because I can't change the circumstance that I'm in. Okay. So that's the first one. Second one, somebody stole a TV for me, a Nintendo Wii, and a bunch of other stuff, sound system that was there as well. Can I have my stuff un-stolen? I can't, right? So if I can't change it, the only thing that I can change is how I show up to those circumstances, right? That's the only thing that I am in control of at that moment. And then the last one, with the plane. I can't fly a freaking plane. So if there's a problem, they have to shut off an engine because the engine's on fire. We have to land with one engine. Can I change that? No, I don't even know how to fly a plane with two engines, let alone one of them being out, right? So the only thing that I can change is my circumstance, is not my circumstance, but the way I actually feel in that moment and how I show up in that moment. And so if you think about this phrase, it can be super powerful for you because there's so many things in your life that cause worry, frustration, anger, sadness that you literally cannot change. I'll give you a very simple example that probably happens to every single person at least once a week. You ready to see what that is? Traffic, right? If you're stuck in traffic, and I've done both of these, you can be frustrated and pissed, and you can grip the steering wheel until you can see the whites of your knuckles, and you can scream, and you can cuss about how you're going to be late. You can do that, and that's completely up to you if you want to do that. But can you change the traffic that you're stuck in by doing that? No. Even if you don't do that, can you change your traffic? You can't. The only thing that you can do is just go along for the ride. That's the only thing that you can do in that moment, right? So when you think about that, and you're sitting there in your piss, and I've been here, but I'm like, I'm late, I hate being late first off, but I'm late, and I've got this going on, I've got to do this, and I'm late, and I'm pissed off now that I'm late, and I put myself in this situation. Maybe I left on time, and now I'm in this situation. I've been really pissed off in this situation, but nothing that I can do in that moment will get rid of all of the traffic. So I've got a choice to make. Either I can be really pissed off and angry and frustrated or worried in that moment or sad or whatever the hell that it is, or I can take a step back and say, hey, Rob, you can't change it. You can't change the traffic. Can you? No, you can't. There's nothing you can do. You don't have a, you know, Tesla doesn't make an airplane yet, so I can't just take off into the sky and get to my appointment that I need to get to, okay? I'm either going to be late pissed off, or I'm going to be late and happy. And so what would I rather be? I'd rather be happy. It's just my choice. I don't know about you, but I'd rather be enjoying my life and enjoying my circumstances in life versus being pissed off and worried and frustrated all the time. So what can I do? Okay, I could take myself out of the, out of the worried and frustrated and pissed off mode, and I can say, okay, I can't change this. If I can't change it, what can I appreciate about this moment? Well, why don't I put on one of my favorite songs? I'm going to listen to a song that I love. What else can I look at? All right, you know, I can look at the sky. Oh my gosh, it's a beautiful day out right now. It's the sun shining. I can appreciate that. There's so many things that I can appreciate in a moment that I was really pissed off at 30 seconds ago. And so if I can't change my circumstance, if I can't change the fact that I'm stuck in traffic, I can change the way that I feel in that traffic and the way that I feel in that traffic will dictate how I show up. So I can show up pissed off and frustrated that I'm late and people can see it on my face and I can put my body through all of this stuff that it doesn't need to go through or I can just say, you know what, let me take a step back. Let me put on some good music. Let me find out what I can appreciate and let me show up the best that I possibly can. So if you're in the middle of a situation and you just ask yourself this question, can I change it? I can't. All right, I can't change it. What can I love about this moment? Because the only thing that you can really control in this moment and in most moments is literally your reaction to the moment. That's it. Like we so badly, almost every person that I meet has some form of a control problem. I'm one of the people to say this as well. I have a control problem in many aspects. If you're listening, this is a pretty good chance you have a control problem in some aspects of your life. But the crazy thing is, is we can control almost nothing in our life. Like literally almost nothing we can control. And if you think about that, you say, okay, what is the things that I can control at every moment that I'm a hundred percent sure of? My reaction to the way I feel about what's going on? How I personally show up, how I think about these circumstances. And one of my favorite quotes is from Viktor Frankl. Maybe you've heard me say before, but you need to get it brainwashed into your head. And Viktor Frankl wrote a book called Man's Search for Meaning. Viktor Frankl was a psychologist who was a Jew who was put into Auschwitz and was watching people get, I mean, some of those brutal things you've ever heard of if you read the book. And one thing that he says in the book is that between stimulus and response, there's a space. And that space in that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom. So let me explain the quote real quick. Between stimulus and response, there's a space. So that means something happens. I'm stuck in traffic, whatever it is. Then I have a response. Most people act like their response, they're not in control of, which is complete bullsh**. You're in control of your response at every moment. It's just most of the time it just comes up so quickly because it's just programmed into you. It's something you've done over and over again that you don't even notice it, right? So between stimulus, something happens. In response, something, and I react to that something, there's a space. And in that space is our power to choose our response. So you get to choose how you're going to respond. It might be a millisecond, but it's still a choice. Do I want to get really pissed and start screaming at her? Or, because I've been down that road and I know what that looks like, do I want to show up with love? Or do I want to get really pissed off and frustrated about the traffic? Or do I want to show up and go, you know what, I don't want to put my body through all of that stress? And in our response lies our growth and our freedom. In our response lies our growth and our freedom. And I think that in this quote alone, it shows you the path of personal development. And you've heard me say before, there was times before where I used to get really angry about stuff and I would stay angry for a week, about one thing that happened. I would continue to be angry about something that happened days ago or five or six or seven or 10 days ago, even though it has nothing to do with this present moment that I'm in, right? I'd stay pissed off for as long as I possibly could. And I'd try to justify why I should be pissed off, right? So something could happen, stimulus, response would go for a week. I'd be pissed off. And then I started reading a little bit more and trying to work with myself and try to get better and trying to meditate. And then something would happen, stimulus, and response would be, I'd be pissed off for five or six days. Okay, that's still not good as I want it to be, as good as I want it to be, but it's still better. And then you work on yourself a little bit more in personal development. And then it goes to a few days. Then it goes to a few hours. And hopefully, you know, personal development and personal mastery of yourself means something happens and there is no response. Because you have mastered and fortified your mind that it doesn't matter what happens to you, you're going to be fine. And the response is always the way that you want it to be. Maybe loving, maybe caring, maybe that's how you want to show up and that's the person that you want to be. Well, if that's the case, if we could get that to be our reaction for everything, no matter what is just full acceptance, love and trust, I would say that's self mastery, wouldn't you? So the path of personal development is wrapped up in there. Between stimulus and response, there's a space. And when you can master that space, you master your freedom and you master your growth. You know, and we can't change the, we can't change the majority of things that are happening to us around us and we can barely control ourselves. And a lot of the worry and the stress, the anger, frustration comes because people are resisting and not able to change the situation outside of them. So perfect example of what we're in right now. If you look at everything that's happening with COVID, like I can't change COVID. I don't know how to do any of that. Like I just, I speak into a microphone. That's what I'm good at. I don't know how, I don't know anything about viruses or what's going on in the world or if the stuff that's happening is true or if it's not happening and if the conspiracy theorists are true or if they're false or if what we're being told is true or false. I don't know any of that stuff. I do know that I can't change the circumstance of hey, there is lockdowns, hey, there is mass needy, or I can't change any of those things right now. So what can I change? The way that I feel about those things, how I show up in my personal response to everything that's happening around me. That is the only thing that I can change. So if I can't change my circumstances, what do I need to do? I need to change my response to my circumstances because life is all about mastering the reaction. That's it. You know, if you're stuck in traffic, if you have COVID going on, if somebody breaks up with you, if somebody dies, if, you know, it hits the fan, whatever it is, all you can control is how you show up as a person. Now, does this work for the past? Because as I mentioned in the beginning of this episode, some people are still holding onto the past, even though the past is not in this present moment and the past will never be in this present moment. So does this work? This idea of can't change it for the past? Absolutely it does. Because if there's one thing that I'm sure of, it's that you don't have a freaking time machine. If there's one thing that I'm sure of, I mean, actually, I'm not sure that you don't have a time machine because I don't go to your house, but you may have a time machine, okay? I'm sure that I don't have a time machine. So if I'm worried and frustrated about things that happened to me in my past, I don't have a time machine. Maybe you do. I can't go back and change what happened to me in my past. That is one thing I'm sure of that can't change it is 100% true for your past. Because there's nothing that you can do unless you happen to be in, you know, back to the future and you have the car, you have a delirium that'll take you back to the past, right? So no matter how mad I get, no matter how pissed, no matter how much I cry about my circumstances and judge myself for the way I act in the past and I wish that I would have done it differently, I cannot change it. And you can't change it either. So how many people listening to this episode right now are carrying an underlying bit of anger, frustration, worry, sadness, anxiety around something that happened to them in their past and they're ruining this current beautiful present moment that we're in by bringing a past moment into a beautiful present moment? Your worry, your fear, your anxiety, your stress, all of those crappy emotions will be in direct proportion to the amount that you're resisting the way that the world is. Your past happened. And if you're anxious, if you're worried, if you're sad, if you're fearful, it's usually because you're thinking too much about something that you can't change in the past or something that you can't change in the present moment. Once again, too many people are ruining a beautiful present moment over something shitty that happened to them in their past or what they think could possibly happen to them in the future, which you can't change in the future as well. So if you can't change it, why not just learn to love the present moment that you're in no matter the circumstances? Wouldn't it be nice just to be calm and peaceful and loving as much as you possibly can be? I don't know about you, but that sounds nice. I would love to be calm and peaceful and loving as much as I possibly can. But if I'm resisting and resisting and resisting the past and, oh man, I should have said that. If I would have said that, she wouldn't have broken up with me and this wouldn't have happened or the present of, oh, I'm in lockdown and COVID sucks and this thing and I'm tired of it and I don't want to be this way anymore. Can't change that either. Or the future, I can't change the future because the future is not here. The only thing that I can change is the way that I think in this current moment and the way that I feel in this current moment. And if I can master my reaction to the stimulus in the response, that little reactions in the inside, I can go, okay, before I respond, let me think about how I want to respond. Let me take that little gap and make it just a little bit longer so that I can figure out what it is that I want and ask myself, in this moment, am I okay? And 99.9% of the time, when you ask yourself, in this moment, am I okay? The answer is yes. Okay, that should calm me down a little bit. I'm okay in this present moment. Okay, next question. In 10 years, am I going to remember this moment? Most of the time, what you're freaking out about, you will not remember in 10 years. Why ruin a current beautiful present moment with something that you won't remember in 10 years at all? You probably won't even remember it next week. It literally means that little that you probably won't remember it last next week, but you're ruining a present moment because of it. You have in this moment, if you listen to this podcast, if you're watching this on YouTube or Facebook or Instagram, you have food, water, shelter, clothing, and probably a couple of people that love you, you're good, like you're set. Just let that click into your brain, because our brains always go into survival, survival, survival, something's wrong, I've got to survive, something's wrong, I got to survive. Reset it. Take yourself out of that moment. You've got food, water, shelter, clothing, a couple of people that love you at least, a couple of people that support you. You're good. Take this present moment. Find out what you can enjoy with it. Enjoy with it. And then put on a calm song. Find your song that's like your anxiety song, your frustration song, your worry song. When those emotions and those feelings come up, go to that one song over and over again. For me, it's been the same song for like 13 years at this point. The song is out of Africa theme song. It's just like this song that chills me. And it's, I've been doing it for so long, I've basically trained my brain into calming itself down when I put that song on. I used to when I had an office and hundreds of sales are up to work under me and it would hit the fan. I would go into my office, I'd close the door and I'd put that song on and I'd just take some deep breaths. And within four minutes, I was like a complete state change. So in this moment, am I okay? So I can't change it, right? Okay, cool. In this moment, am I okay? I am. In 10 years, am I going to remember this moment? I probably won't. I have food, I have water, I have shelter, I have clothing, I have a few people that love me. And I'm going to put on a song that's going to call me and I'm going to try to figure out a way to change my response to my current circumstances so that I can live in this beautiful moment and not ruin it. Because everything in your life, you can barely control. And if you can't control it and you can't change it, remind yourself of this episode, remind yourself of these steps, find the song and change your state into a beautiful state instead of getting yourself into a state of suffering. It looks like the world's going to hell in a handbasket, doesn't it? It looks like there's just more uncertainty and more uncertainty and more uncertainty. And then the next week, there's another freaking thing that happens. And then after that thing's done, there's another freaking thing that happens. And then there's COVID that comes up and then there's the Delta variant and then there's stuff that's happening in Afghanistan. And I bet you next week, there's going to be another thing. So there's a lot of things that are happening. I'm not trying to downplay any of these in any sort of way. What I'm actually trying to do is make it more peaceful inside of your brain and inside of your body so that no matter what happens, you are calm, cool, connected, and you know what it is that you need to do. So we're going to talk about how to create certainty in your life. And like I said, with all of this stuff that's happening right now, with COVID happening, what seems like, what are we at, like 18 months in or something like that, it feels like, it's a long time it's been, right? Who knows what's going to happen? Who knows if it's going to go away? Who knows if it's not going to go away? Who knows if it's going to continue to morph and change? Who knows if it's going to disappear? I don't know. I'm not a freaking scientist. And a lot of the scientists, I don't think even know what's going on. It's just, everybody's just kind of uncertain with it, right? But one thing that I am certain in is what I'm going to tell you about in just a little while. When you look at all the things that's happening over in the Middle East, it's a lot of uncertainty and you can look at it and it can make you feel terrible and it can break your heart. And that's not bad. There's, it's okay to have your heart break for other people and to see things that are happening. But the thing that I come back to is that people see, keep saying, well, something keeps happening. Something keeps happening. Something keeps happening. It's like, it never stops. And I say, can you remember a time in your entire life where there wasn't something bad that was happening or wasn't something bad that was being put on the news? I can't remember anything. I'm 35 years old. I don't remember a time when I turned on the news and it was like, hey, everything's amazing. We have nothing to report today except for that the dogs went out and played with their toys. I'm like, holy s***, today's amazing. Like, I've never seen that happen before, right? There's always something. And guys, there's 7.5 billion people on this earth. Of course, there's going to be some crazy stuff that happens, but I am 100% sure of one thing. There's a lot more good people in this world than bad people. I can't think of a time where there wasn't a lot of stuff that's ever happened, that's been happening. But before we dive into the uncertainty and how to meet your uncertainty with absolute certainty to calm yourself down, to have the peace and the joy and to be able to take the actions you need to to make your life better, but also make your family's life better, your community's life better, and the world around you better as well. Before we dive into that, it's a good thing to talk about, you know, what you consume. And you've heard me talk about this before if you've been listening for a while. But if you're dealing with a lot of uncertainty and then the uncertainty is giving you anxiety and stress and it's keeping you up at night, I promise you, one thing that you need to do is stop watching the news. Because the news is just going to keep putting up more terrible things and more terrible things and more terrible things. And the news is just, they're just a couple of corporations that are owned by media companies and they can tell you whatever the hell they want to tell you and they can change it however they want to, whether it's on the left side, whether it's on the right side, whether it's in the middle, all of that stuff. Your life will be better if you stop listening to the news. Your life will also be better if you start unfollowing more people, right? If somebody's too political or somebody's too doom and gloom or somebody is, if you look at somebody's Instagram story and it makes you feel worse, unfollow that person now. One thing that I've been doing a lot over the past two weeks is unfollowing a ton of people because I just don't even want to deal with it anymore. And they're people that I'm pretty good friends with. I see them pretty often, some of them. But I'm like, nope, your stories don't make me feel better about my life. Yeah, gotta go. Right? That's just the way that it is. That's okay, there's nothing wrong with that. So, you know, before I dive into the uncertainty, I just want you to think about the news and the politics and the doom and gloom and the people who you need to unfollow. Remove those things from your life and your life will automatically, you'll find more peace automatically because you don't have those people pulling at you and trying to pull your intention. You need to have a peace filter. I like to call it. I have a filter. If you think about like, you know, whenever you're making coffee, right? And you have that filter that holds all of the coffee. They've got coffee grinds and it lets the coffee and the water drip through. I want to be like a filter like that and all of the coffee grinds are just all of the shit that I don't need to be seeing because it's holding me back from creating the world that I want to. So, you need to have some sort of peace filter. What does that look like to you? I don't know. That's what you need to plan out. So, you can ask yourself a beautiful question. You could pause me now if you need to and answer it. What does my peace filter look like? What does it look like for me to create that? Unfollow as many people as you can. Take the TV off the wall. Do whatever it is that you need to to make there be more peace in your life. So, the way to find more certainty in this world is this. Now, you need to match the uncertainty in the world with certainty in yourself. And you might be like, well, no, I need to take uncertainty and I need to match my uncertainty with certainty and that will make me feel more certain. No crap. That makes a whole lot of sense, of course. But I don't mean in the external world. I mean internally. You know, if you have stress and anxiety or just this heaviness or this pressure that you've been feeling over the past few months or year or year and a half, right? If you have those, most of the time, the reason why you have that stress, why you have that anxiety, why you feel that weight is because you're focusing and thinking about things that you cannot control. And this is very important because today we're going to talk about what you can control versus what you can't control. And so if you feel a lot of stress and anxiety and worry, it's because you're thinking about things that you cannot control. So if you look at COVID, for instance, you can't control COVID. I can't control it. I can't control what it's doing. I can just kind of do my best as all of this stuff is happening and I can take care of myself. That's the best that I can do at this point. I can't control it. So it's going to do what it's going to do and I'm going to hope for the best. You can't control COVID. So if you're feeling stress and anxiety, is it coming from that in what's happening in the world? You also can't control other people. Are you trying to control other people? Are you on one side and you wish the people on the other side would do something or are you on the other side wishing the people on the other side of that would do something and you're just trying to control people? You will have stress and anxiety when you're focusing on trying to control things that you cannot control. There's nothing you can do about it. There's nothing you can do about other people. There's nothing you can do about COVID. There is something that you can do about yourself though and that's where the certainty comes in. Anxiety comes from the future as well. Thinking about what the future could be. Thinking about how uncertain the future is. Thinking about the doom and gloom that could be waiting for us in the future. Oh my God, it could be so bad in the future. It could, but it's not here now. So why am I making my present moment that isn't bad, bad because I'm focusing on a future moment that might never even come to fruition? That's really crazy, isn't it? Have you ever thought about that? Why am I ruining a beautiful present moment by focusing on a future that just might never happen? And in fact, there was a study that was done and found out that 85% of what humans worry about never happened. Let me say that again. 85% of what humans worry about never actually happened. Are you focusing on things in the future that might never happen? Well, of course that's going to cause you stress and worry and anxiety. Do you know why it's caused you stress, worry, and anxiety? Because the future is not here, which means it is another thing that you cannot control. We get stressed and anxious and worried when we're focusing on things that we cannot control. You can't control what's going on. You can't control what happens tomorrow. You can't control what happens in three months. For me, I'll give you a perfect example. My girlfriend and I, we have tickets, we've had tickets for three months now to go to Italy for all of October. It looks like it might happen. It might not happen. It went from definitely happening to about 50-50 with all of the changes. I don't know what's going to happen. And at one point in time, my girlfriend was stressing out about it, like, oh my God, I want to go so bad. I want to go so bad. Are we going to be able to go? Because usually we go for about a month every year. We obviously couldn't go last year. Our flights were canceled. We had flights booked for April. Obviously we couldn't travel anywhere in April of 2020. So then we pushed it back and we started, you know, we got tickets for October of last year. That didn't happen as well. So now we got tickets for this October. It might happen, it might not. And what I said to her is, what's going to happen is what's going to happen. Why would I ruin my current moment right now, this beautiful day, the sun shining, and there's not problems that are immediately right here in my present moment? Why would I ruin right now thinking about something that might or might not happen in the future? Do I hope that it happens? Yeah, of course I hope that it happens. Is there a possibility that it might not? Yeah, but I'm not the controller of the universe. I'm not the person in charge of all of these things that are happening. All I can do is I can control the way that I feel right now. We can focus on the present moment. And when we start to feel anxious and stressed and worried, it's usually a fear mechanism that we have in our brain. There's some sort of fear, something there. And we're worried about our safety in some sort of way a lot of times. And so an easy way to help yourself when you notice yourself start to flare up with stress and anxiety and worry is just ask yourself a very simple question. Just try this out for a second with me. If you've felt stress and worried and anxious at all today, ask yourself this question. Right now, am I safe? And think about that. And let it sink in for a second. And feel it in your body. Right now, am I safe? You are. Right now, there's nothing wrong in this present moment. There might be something in the future that could be wrong or might be coming up. You might be saying, Rob, I have bills coming up that I have to pay next week and I'm not sure how I'm going to pay them. You don't have to pay them right now. In this moment, am I safe? The answer for all of you hopefully is yes. And if I could come from a place of certainty of who I am and how I can go into the world and not uncertainty and not based in fear or any stress or worry or anxiety, I'm probably going to go out and take actions that are more in line with being able to make the money to be able to cover my bills that are coming next week. So you've got to realize that there's uncertainty in the future because we don't know what's going to happen with the future. But there's certainty in ourselves and in this present moment. If you're stressed about the present moment or the future, you can't control it. If you're stressed about COVID, you can't control it. You can't control any of those things. All you can do is take care of yourself today. If you're stressed about COVID, you can't control what's going to happen in the future with them. What you can control is how you take care of your body today. I can create certainty in the way that I'm caring for my body and in fact, I'm getting the right amount of sleep. I'm taking the right supplements. Then I'm getting the right amount of sun. Then I'm getting everything that I need to in order to, if I do happen to get it, hopefully battle it much better than if I wasn't taking care of myself. That's something I could create certainty in. The workouts you do, the food you eat, the supplements that you take. Eat healthy. Get movement. Get some sun in your skin. Drink really high quality water. Get the meditation in. Breathe more. Deeper. Calm yourself. Get a lot of sleep. Meditate. Stop stressing so much. Take supplements that are going to help you. That's something that is certainty. You can create certainty in this current moment with the way that you take care of yourself. You don't know what's going to happen in the future. That is going to create as much certainty as you possibly can right now. So what do you need to create certainty in? If you've been feeling stress, worry, anxiety, any of that, what do you need to create more certainty in? You can't create certainty in the future or what's going to happen with other people, but you can't create certainty in you in what you do right now. If you're uncertain with your life path, that's okay, but what you can be certain in is your personal development. I don't know what's going to happen in my future, but I know I've been working on myself really hard for a long time, 16 years now. Now I have a feeling that whatever bad could come to me in my future, I'll be able to overcome it much better than if I hadn't been working on myself for the last 16 years. What about you? How's your personal development? How's your mental health? How's your physical health? Those are things that we can be certain in. We can create certainty in those things because we can control those things. Your personal development, your mindset, in your health, those are the foundation to your life, to the way that you go out into the world. For me, I want to prepare my mind, my body, everything as if there's a possible war, not physical war, but actually like mental war that's coming up into the future and I want to be as prepared as possible. If you knew that you absolutely had to go into fight somebody inside of a cage in six months, and there's no way out of it, would you just let it happen and just wait till the day comes or would you go, well, if I have to do it, I'm going to freaking train anyways, even if I've never trained before, I'm going to train. Why? Because I can create certainty that I've showed up as much as I possibly could by the time I get into that ring. That's the way that I prep for life. It's like David Goggins. A lot of people make fun of David Goggins for how crazy he is and he is quite crazy. He's really, really hardcore. But when people say, hey, why do you put yourself through so much hell? Why do you push yourself so much? Why do you run 200 miles in a weekend when you literally could just sit and watch TV the entire time? He says he's preparing for life. He's preparing for what could come up. He's preparing for a possible 4 a.m. phone call in the middle of the night where they say his mother's dead and how he's going to overcome that mentally and he knows that if he pushes himself now and pushes himself now, the better he'll be able to handle that whenever that potential thing does come up in the future. So you can make yourself stronger right now mentally, physically, emotionally, spiritually by the work that you put into yourself. That is the only thing that you can really be certain in. So there's a lot of uncertainty externally in the world. I don't think that we're going to get to the end of your life and have any less uncertainty that we currently have. We're always going to have uncertainty. I feel like there's always been uncertainty. External, that's always going to be uncertain because you can't control anything external. But internal, what can you control? What can you create more certainty in? What is your life, where in your life is there calling for you to be more certain? For you to create more certainty? Is it your mind? Is it your body? Is it your health? Is it relationships? Is it your finances? Is it your mental stability? Is it your family? Where is your life calling for more certainty? Because there's only a small amount of things that you can control. But if you focus on those things, what you'll realize is that your stress, your worry and anxiety about everything externally goes down so much. Because you are now prepared to enter the world, to enter the battle of life. Because you can't go through this entire life without some sort of scars. You're going out and being able to be prepared for battle because you've been working on yourself. You've been working on yourself. You've been working on yourself. So the question I have for you is, are you working on yourself? In the way that you need to? Are you creating as much certainty as you need to? Are you creating certainty in your surroundings? The people that you surround yourself with? The food that you have inside of your house? The water that you drink that's inside of your house as well? Could you drink from a faucet? Yeah, sure. Could you go and actually purchase spring water? Which could be better for you? And have more minerals? Yeah, you could. You can create certainty in a lot of things around you in your immediate environment. What is it that you need more certainty in? All you have to do is realize that the uncertainty in the world will not go away. But you have a small amount of things that you can create certainty in. Figure out what those are. Figure out what you need to do to create more certainty. Make an action plan and start to actually take action in those to create certainty in your life. Ask yourself this question. Do I have any control over those things?