 You don't go through this life without getting some scars. It's just things happen. Who were you before the world told you who you're supposed to be? Today, we're going to be talking about why change is so hard and we're going to talk about why everyone watching this might be a little bit bipolar. Now, uh, I've been in this space for a really, really long time, 15 years. Now I've been in personal development and I'll admit before I got into personal development, before I get into reading, before I get into working on myself, I thought that personal development in improving myself was stupid. My mom, when I was a child in my teens, early teens, I remember her listening to Tony Robbins tapes and I was like, that is so stupid. Like this woman's listening to another guy telling her how to be better. I thought it was ridiculous. And then when I got into this space, it was like this awakening of how I have built myself unconsciously. That's the important part unconsciously into someone that I did not want to be anymore and I don't know about you. That might hit, just hit home with you might strike a chord. Maybe you've realized that who you are. You just don't want to be anymore. You want to be a different person, not the person that you currently are. And as I started improving myself, I started to feel like I was constantly in a battle. It was almost like there was me and then there was who I wanted to be. There was like this person that I built myself up to be. And then the person who I felt like I actually truly was. And it was almost like I was fighting with myself. Like I would do things and I would think things and I would think why the hell did I just do that? Like I would get into an argument. My girlfriend at the time, I'd be like, why did I just say that thing? I didn't mean, like that's not who I truly am. I don't want to be the person that says that. And I would think things and I'd be like, what, where did that thought just come from? Like who, who the hell thought that because I don't feel like I thought, like that's not what I want to think. And it felt like this constant battle of who I was versus who I felt like I truly was behind the scenes, if that makes sense. And I would think, how is it possible to have these thoughts that are so different than true, who these thoughts and these actions and these feelings that are so different than who I feel like I truly am deep down inside. And I realized that each of us has at least two sides to us. And that's why I said bipolar. It's not a knock on people who are actually clinically bipolar. What I mean is it's almost like there's two sides of us that are fighting at all points in time. I don't know about you, but it feels like I have two people that are inside of me fighting at all points in time. I had a friend that I was talking to about this the other day and he's like bipolar. He's like, I feel like I'm octopolar. Like I've got so many different people that have so many different viewpoints that are fighting inside of me. And it sounds like an alien movie, right? Like I have two people that are fighting inside of me. But in reality, it's when I take a step back and I think about it, it's kind of like the movies I used to watch when I was a kid, or maybe the movies I watched on this kid, or maybe even the cartoons as well, where they're, this is what they meant when you have an angel on your shoulder and you have a devil on your shoulder. The angel is basically like your true self, who you truly are deep down below everything. The devil is like the conditioned self. So let me explain the difference between true self and conditioned self because this is super important for you to understand it. So the angel is more of like the true self. The devil is a conditioned self. So there's the true self, which is the angel. And when I think back to who I was as a child, like when I think to who I was when I was three years old and I see videos and tapes of me when I was a kid, I was this sweet little kid. I used to always, I remember I used to get, I don't know if you guys can relate to this. I used to go on walks and I'd come home and I'd bring my mom like a rock or I'd bring her like a flower that I picked from somewhere and it's who I was before the world told me who I should be, right? It's my true self. It's before I learned who I was supposed to be. So it's who you are. Your true self is who you are, who you were before the world, before family, before society, before advertisements told you who you were supposed to be. Think about that. Who were you before the world told you who you're supposed to be? And what happens is in the reason why we build up, we build up a conditioned self, AKA get out of that true self is because at some point we were hurt and usually hurt at multiple stages in our lives. We were hurt. There could have been some trauma in your life. So it could have been something that happened in your life. It was, it was, this is you before the trauma. This is you before the heartbreak. This is before you learn to protect yourselves. And what do I mean by protect yourself? Right? So let me give you an example of a dog. No dog is born aggressive. There's no puppy that's just like an aggressive puppy that's attacking everybody else around. Obviously there's different levels of aggressiveness and loving this and all of that stuff in each person, each puppy and stuff, but no dog is born aggressive. The aggressiveness is a defense mechanism that it is learned to protect itself. Usually an aggressive dog comes from an aggressive odor or a odor that beats their dog. And that defense mechanism builds up. The aggressiveness builds up. That protection mechanism is the conditioned dog. The same way that we have our true self and then we're hurt and we have traumas. We have things that happen to us. You don't go through this life without getting some scars. It's just things happen. People die. We get broken up with tragedies happen. You know, bullies happen. People get talked down to. We don't think that we're good enough. We don't think we're smart enough, pretty enough, fit enough and we get down on ourselves. And that true self starts to hide. And so what we start to do is we start to build up walls around ourselves, around our hearts, so that, therefore, people don't see who we truly are. And we become a little bit of like this conditioned self, aka the devil on the shoulder. This is what we're told that we should be. We learn how we are supposed to be, how we're supposed to act, how we're supposed to treat people. And we also, we learn how to protect ourselves. We learn how to defend ourselves. I'll give you a perfect example of my own life and my own situations. When I was first became a manager, I was about, I was 21. I came a manager in this company and I started training people and I started running training seminars. I started running interviews very, very young age and I started training people 17 hour, three day seminars. I would run, you know, meetings every single Wednesday for two hours for 30 to 50 people on average. I would run Sunday meetings for 30 to 50 people on average. Sometimes a hundred people would be at the meetings as well. So I was in front of people all the time and I was training and I was working and training and working and probably about 18 months into being a manager. So I'm probably about 21 years old about to turn 22, I would guess I'm running the number one office in the entire United States out of 700 of them. And I think I'm just hot shit. I think I'm more crushing it. We're doing so well, making so many sales and my manager at the time calls me up. He's like, Hey, man, I'm in town. Do you want to go get some food? I was like, sure. So he's like, all right, meet me at Chipotle. We go to Chipotle. True story. And he gets his burrito before me. I meet him there. I go in ahead and I get my burrito. I sit down, we're talking for a few minutes and I can tell there's something that's not coming out that he wants to tell me. He goes, Hey, man, I've got, I've got something to tell you. Can I just be honest with you? I was like, sure. Tell me. And he goes, okay. There's a lot of people that don't like you. I was like, oh, where did this come from? I wasn't expecting this to come out. And he started talking about, he's like, listen, I know who you truly are, because I'm with you all of the time. And we're constantly working. We're constantly, I can see who your true self is, but your true self doesn't come out very often when you're around people, when you're in groups of people, when you're, you know, some, it usually comes out one on one, but you are way more brash than you need to be. And I started realizing my condition self, right? I started realizing that I was pretending to be someone who I wasn't truly deep down inside of my heart. I wasn't that person, but I was hurt so bad as a child in different ways from my father to bullies to playing in sports and the way that guys talk to each other and treat each other. And I learned to have really thick skin in a really sharp tongue. So I would strike first with having a sharp tongue so hard that nobody would try to come back at me and nobody would ever try me. So it was basically like, I was trying to not even consciously do it, subconsciously make myself seem superior to people and harder than people that nobody would be like, I don't want to mess with this guy. And that wasn't my true nature. So when I look at who I was and who I built myself up to be at 21 years old and I compare that to who I was when I see myself in videos at three years old, I wasn't the same person, right? That's the angel versus the devil, right? That's the angel on my shoulder, the devil on my shoulder. That's the true self, me as a young age, versus the conditioned self, the conditioned self that's trying to protect itself, that's been through trauma, that's been hurt, and it's the aggressive dog that's trying to bark and scare somebody because it's really just terrified, not because it's aggressive, but because it's terrified and is trying to protect itself. And so I had learned that I had conditioned myself to be that way. And I didn't just like wake up to it one day and then just got rid of it. I was like, oh, I'm just, I'm going to go back to my, my, you know, perfect true self again, right? That person still exists inside of me that I was at 21 years old, and I have to work to diminish that version of me every single day, much better now than I was then, but we're talking about this little conversation that's 14 years ago, and I still have to work on it. And I'm definitely not as brash as I used to be, not as sharp tongue as I used to be, but I notice it starts to come up sometimes and I have to consciously bring it back. And sometimes I say stuff and I'm like, oh God, I didn't mean to say that. It just kind of popped out and I have to back step from there, right? And I don't know about you, but I would much rather be my true loving self more than I would rather be my conditioned self. I want to be who I was when I was a kid, right? I want to listen more to that angel more than I do to that devil. And I'm definitely not perving any sort of way. I still judge people way too fast. I notice it in my head, but then when I judge somebody, I go, okay, that's not who I am. That's not who I want to be. And so that first thought comes up, and that's the me thing, the whole thing I was talking about, you know, like almost like the bipolarness where it's like, there's just two people inside of me, there's the person who automatically comes up, the conditioned self, and then like, ah, that's not my true self. And so when I noticed myself judge somebody too fast or say something too fast or think something's too fast, I then in my head have to say three good things about the person that I just judged a few minutes ago, right? I have to, I have to consciously try to diminish that conditioned version of myself because I don't want that to be me because it's not even truly me. My true self is me when I was three years old, I still get pissed off when I get cut off on the road. Still comes out. I notice it come out. And then so I have to become aware, breathe through it. And then I remind myself that maybe this person is in such a rush because they've got to hurry up to the hospital to see someone that they love because something might have happened. Or maybe that person's really has to poop. I don't know, but I always remind myself they're either in the way, so when I get started to get pissed off from being cut off, all right, they're either on the way to the hospital or they're on the way to the bathroom. They either, they're either going to go see someone they love or they got to poop. It's one of the two things. And that kind of takes myself out of that little bit of a pissed off mind frame and I go, okay, is it a really big deal that's got cut off on the road, it's not. Am I going to remember this in five years? No, I probably won't even be thinking about this in five minutes. And so I noticed that thought come up. I noticed those feelings come up and I have to just take a step back, be aware to get myself out of the feelings. I always say, for me, say, if you listen to the podcast for a long time when you're in the jar, you can't read the label. I've got to take myself out of the jar of my head and say, hey, what's actually happening here? And it starts with having that awareness. I've got to become aware of who I truly am, who I have been and who I want to be. But that person's got a poop. All right. Hey, man, go ahead and poop. We've all been in that situation before where it's, it's, it's dire needs. You got to get there. Maybe that's what that person, why that person cut me off. Right. You can't control your first thought, but you can always control your second thought. Your first thought will pop up and then you got to think, is that the thought that I wanted? It isn't. Okay. That was just my condition self. That was just the devil on the shoulder. It'll pop up, but it's about the awareness of going, yeah, that's not who I want to be in my future. I don't want to be the person that's sharp-tongued. I don't want to be the person who gets pissed off and people just for cutting them off. I want to be more calm, more loving, whatever it is. And then just keep working through it. The important thing though is not to judge yourself. Because a lot of times when people start to work on themselves and they notice that person cut them off and they notice them getting pissed off, then they start judging themselves. Why would I judge myself? That's not who I truly am. And then get pissed off and stuff. No, it's about, all right, I've got the awareness. I see how it is. Let me go ahead and help myself work through this. And it's kind of like the the ants will still pop off. So pop up. Ant stands for automatic negative thoughts. Those automatic negative thoughts are still going to pop up. It's just the way that life is. I don't know if you'll ever get rid of the automatic negative thoughts. I don't know if I'll ever get rid of the condition self, but I'm noticing that over years of working on myself, working on myself, it starts to get smaller and smaller and smaller and smaller. I start to notice myself of years of working myself to start to get more back to who I feel like I truly am. The automatic negative thoughts are still going to pop up. That automatic negative thought, which automatic means automatically first is the first thought. Once again, you can't control your first thought, but you can always control your second thought. So what usually happens is it makes it easier for you when emotion is high, logic is low. So if you notice yourself getting into high emotion situations where you feel a lot of emotion, when your emotion is high, your logic is low. That is the worst time to try to think critically, try to think logically of what I should do now. And so the best thing to do is noticing when your conditioned self will pop up and you don't want that conditioned self to be there and to make a plan when the emotion is not high. So if you notice yourself get pissed off, don't come up with the plan then. But later on when you cool down say, OK, that wasn't my true self. That's not who I want to be. That's not representative of who I feel I truly am. So what can I do to make sure the next time that happens again, I'm going to have a plan right now that I'm going to create the next time that that pops up and I feel very emotional or pissed off or whatever it is that I have a plan of exactly what it is that I'm going to do. So the automatic thoughts, automatic negative thoughts are going to pop up. The judgments are going to pop up. The, you know, sharp tongues are going to pop up. All of those things are going to pop up at some point in time. You have to make a plan right now what you're going to do whenever they do pop up because that's the journey that we're on. We're just constantly working on ourself. You're never going to be perfect. You're never, you know, going to be exactly where it is that you want to be. This journey of life is a journey of self development and personal development and spiritual development just becoming better every single day. That's all that we're really here to do is just to try to improve ourselves. So don't judge yourself when it happens. Have a plan and start to work through it. You can't control your first thought, but you can always control your second thought. That first thought is usually the conditioned self. That second thought can always be your true self. Who you truly are, deep down inside, behind all of the protection mechanisms, behind all of the defense mechanisms, behind all of the walls you'd be able to have yourself, all of the hurt, the pain, the trauma, all of those things. There is a true self that's deep down inside there. That's the one that you got to find, and that's the one that you got to come in contact with every single day. Hey, thanks so much for watching this video. If you want to learn even more about master your mind, click right here and watch this video as well. Oh, let's get really deep because you're always looking to the external to figure out who you are. You can be literally whoever the fuck you want to be.