 Welcome to today's episode of the mindset mentor podcast. I'm your host, Rob dial. If you have not yet done so hit that subscribe button so that you never miss another podcast episode. Today we're going to be talking about two simple mindset shifts to change your relationships. Let's be real, no matter what it is that you do. Well, I guess there's only one case in this entire world where you're not in a relationship with somebody. And that is if you happen to be a hermit and you never leave your house and you never see anybody, they never talk to anybody. You never get into text messages and to zoom phone calls or any of that type of stuff. That's the only way that you're not into relationships with other people. If you're not a hermit and you do end up leaving the house or talking to anybody, you have relationships with other people. Even if you just go and you go to the grocery store and you're talking to somebody and you're seeing other people around, you're in relationship, not a deep relationship, but you're in a relationship with every single person that's around you. And so I'm going to give you two simple mindset shifts to help you change your relationships. The first one, which is a very important one that I think most people don't think about is that everyone, literally everyone that you see, that you meet is doing their best. Now, this can be hard to kind of really get the concept and to grasp this concept because some people are really freaking difficult, aren't they? Like really difficult, but you have to realize it's very important to realize that this is them doing the best that they can based off of everything that they know, everything that's happened to them and everything that they've learned in their lives. And what I like to remind myself when I see other people who happen to be quote unquote difficult to deal with is if I was raised in the exact same shoes, went through the exact same circumstances that they have gone through in their entire life, I had the same parents, I had the same bullying teachers, every circumstance, every single second of my life was exactly the same as theirs. I would be the exact same as them. And so when you see somebody, the important thing to see is when you see an adult that's difficult, when you see an adult that's pissing you off, when you see somebody who is not doing what you want them to do, they're triggering you, whatever it might be, you have to see not the adult that's standing in front of you, you have to see the child that is wounded inside of them because at some point in time something happened that made them break from their truest self. And it's important to remember that everyone has their own unique set of experiences and emotions and circumstances that can greatly influence who they are, all of their behaviors, all of their actions. And if you knew everything that they've been through in their entire life, it would be way easier to have compassion for them. And so the important part of this one of everyone doing their best is to remember to have compassion. The problem is that we only see the adult man that's an asshole, that's what we see in front of us is that whatever is 42-year-old man, it's just a complete asshole and you're seeing that person. What we don't see is the six-year-old boy who was verbally and physically assaulted by his father every day. And when you can really get that and you can see, okay, that guy's a 41-year-old man, he's an asshole, but the reason why he is that way is because of something that happened in his life. I don't know what it was, but if we were to take the example of a six-year-old boy who's verbally and physically assaulted by his father every single day, you go, man, yeah, it's hard to love the 41-year-old guy, but it's easy to send love to the six-year-old boy because I wouldn't have wanted to go through that because if we did see that child that went through that when they were growing up, it would be so much easier to have compassion for them. And there's many factors in someone's life that impacts who they are. And you guys have to realize, I think you understand, a lot has happened the past few years. Mental health issues are skyrocketing. They're about three times more than they were three to four years ago. And so someone that you see may be struggling with the mental health issue. They might have depression. They might have high anxiety. They might have social problems. And all of those things can greatly affect their behavior and their ability to make actual good decisions. And so they also may be dealing with a lot of personal problems. Like you see somebody who is just presenting himself to you as they are, but you don't know what's actually going on in that person's life. And it reminds me of the phrase of everyone that you meet is fighting a battle that you know nothing about. And so there's a lot of personal problems that people can have nowadays. There's financial difficulties. There's relationship issues they could have. And there's all of these different issues that they could have. They could have a child that's in the hospital and they could have a relationship that's divorced or starting to go through or their wife might have just cheated on them or their husband might cheat. You don't ever know what's actually going on. And all of these things can cause somebody to act in ways that they would not normally act. And so we can look at somebody and immediately be like, yeah, that person sucks. That's the easy thing to do. The harder thing to do is to take a step back and be like, okay, how can I have compassion for this person? What is it that I'm not seeing? What could possibly be happening behind the scenes that I might not know about that might make somebody come and present themselves the way that they're presenting themselves in public right now. And additionally to all of this stuff, people are influenced by a lot of other things by cultural, societal, historical factors. There's people that have, there's traumas that people have. There's discriminations that they've gone through. There's bullying that they've gone through. And it's important to try to figure out instead of judging people instead of getting pissed off at people, all of this is to figure out a way for us to have compassion for everyone as we never really truly know what someone's going through instead of immediately judging somebody and immediately condemning somebody for their actions, we should try to understand and acknowledge that there's a whole lot of factors that may influence that person's behavior. And by doing this, we can also create a more empathetic and understanding society where people feel more valued and people feel more than anything else supported rather than being judged and rejected. Because if you think about it, if you see somebody who is a quote unquote asshole, usually people who need love the most usually ask for it in the most unloving ways. So let me pause and say that again. People who need love the most usually ask for it in the most unloving ways. And so by trying to figure out to have compassion for somebody who's lashing out at someone or lashing out at you might be and probably is that compassion is actually the thing that they need the most. And if we can try to figure out a way to have compassion and to love somebody and to support somebody no matter what they might be doing, it allows them to change more easily because when someone comes and lashes out at us and we respond to them based off of their lashing it reinforces the way that they think about themselves. And so if someone's an asshole to you and you're an asshole back to them well then they're more likely to be an asshole to the next person. It's just gonna happen, right? Because we're basically reinforcing that identity that they have themselves. But if someone's an asshole to you and you have compassion for them immediately that person kind of lets their guard down a little bit and then maybe they go into their next interaction not the same way they went to the interaction with you. And so by actually breaking the cycle of the anger or frustration or whatever it is however they present themselves and allowing them to see love, compassion a different thing than they were expecting breaks them out of the mindset that they were in and allows them to maybe interact with the next person a little bit differently. And so compassion makes us focus and try to find the good in people when it might not be immediately apparent. Now I'm gonna be honest with you it's not easy, none of this is easy but instead of focusing on someone's negative actions instead we can try to focus on any positive qualities any good that they might have done. And also finding compassion for someone else in your life makes your life way easier because when you try to have compassion for somebody you don't take anger home with you. So like if you have a boss that's just a complete douchebag, right? And you go and you have a douchebag boss and you come home and you have anger and frustration about your boss and all that stuff you carry that anger and hatred with you home. And that anger and hatred and you know let's just say the anger itself can then be transmuted into your children and your wife and your husband and into your family and to people who don't necessarily need that or they don't need it at all and they don't deserve it at all but when you bring that home with you you're then transmuting it to other people that doesn't do good for you that doesn't do good for your children that doesn't do good for your spouse any of that. And so when you can try to have compassion for somebody it allows you to actually free yourself from that anger or that hatred or whatever it is that might be there it allows you to let it go. It goes back to like the quote anger is the acid that only burns the vessel, right? Anger is the acid that only burns the vessel basically means that when you're holding on to anger for somebody else it's not doing anything to anybody else it's burning you up inside. It's the acid that only burns the vessel so when we can have compassion for somebody and try to find compassion we don't bring that anger with us and we feel a greater sense of happiness and contentment because we can reduce and more than anything else it reduces our stress and our anxiety, all of that. And so I get it, like listen I really do get it it can be really difficult to have compassion for other people like some other people they suck, right? Like the version of them that they present to us sucks sometimes like it can be really difficult but compassion is a practice it's not something that you're just immediately have it's a practice whenever you feel like you're going to wanna lash back out at somebody or you feel an emotional response to take a step back and to figure out a way to have compassion is actually a practice that we need to work on. And so it's important for you to remember that this is greatly going to affect your life but also everybody that you come in contact with as well. So like I said you don't wanna bring that anger home and give it to your children but if you can have compassion you can release that anger and you can come home be the parent that you want to be. So that's the first one super super important is that everyone is doing their best and what we need to do is to try to have compassion for people. And the second one to really help you with your relationships is that no one can change your mood. The second mindset shift in relationships is that nobody can change your mood. I want you to think about this real quick. Think about the last time that somebody really pissed you off. Like what did they do to piss you off? Like think about it the last time when you're like you really felt it. What was it that they did? What was your reaction to it? So what was it that they did and what was your reaction to it? Maybe it wasn't that you got pissed off maybe it was that you were triggered by they made you feel bad. They said something and you felt bad about it. So when was the last time if you can't remember last time that you really got pissed off? When was the last time that you remember feeling like somebody was speaking down to you that somebody was telling you that you weren't good enough that somebody was making you feel lower than someone else? What did they do? How did they do it? And what was your reaction to it? And what if I told you that it's not what they did that triggered you. What they did did not trigger you. It was what you were thinking about what they did that triggered you. It wasn't the actual event that triggered you it was your internal conversation that you were having with yourself that made you feel triggered. I always say I could care less about what you're doing in your life. What I care more about is the conversation that's happening in your mind. And the reason why is because if I can find the conversation happening in your mind I can understand every single response that you have to something. So it's not the actual event that makes you triggered what makes you triggered is the way that you are thinking about the event. It goes back to one of my favorite quotes about life from Eleanor Roosevelt. And it says no one can make you feel inferior without your consent. No one can make you make you angry without your consent. No one can make you sad without your consent. No one can make you feel insecure without your consent. No one can speak down to you make you feel like you're spoken down to without your consent. You have consented to feeling that way. Now usually it's not something that you think about it's just an automatic thought and then feeling that pops up into your body. But you're triggered not based off of what they did but you're triggered based off of the way that you're thinking about what they did. And if you can really get this your life will change and it makes it really hard really really hard for people to offend you that to make you feel offended. When you're triggered that trigger is a gift. It is one of the most important things that you could have. So when you're triggered it is actually showing you where you are not free where you're stuck in time in a place you're stuck somewhere and that being triggered is actually showing you where you're not free. A trigger is a gift. It's not about what someone else does to you ever. It's about how you react to it. And there's a great quote around this and it goes back to Victor Frankel Fuban List's podcast for while you for me say this many times. Victor Frankel wrote a book called Man's Search for Meeting. You should definitely read it. It's amazing. He was a psychologist who was a Jewish psychologist who went through Nazi prison camps and he was in Auschwitz and saw all of the worst things in the entire world. And when he got out he wrote a book as a psychologist about the things that he saw and the things that he encountered and what he noticed about human psychology while he was there. One of his most famous quotes is somewhere along the lines of between stimulus and response is a space. And if you can master that space you master your life. So let me say that again I'll explain it. So between stimulus and response which basically means the thing that happens to you and the way that you respond there's a space and it might be like a millisecond but if you can master that space you can master your life. Between stimulus and response there's a space and if you master that space you master your life. You master your reactions to when you... So if you can see when you're about to feel triggered you can feel that emotional response start to build up inside of you and you can take a step back just real quick half of a second step back and say okay what's really happening here? How am I responding to this? How am I thinking of this? And you start to actually master your reactions to being triggered you notice your reactions to being triggered and you decide to have a different response that's where you actually start to master yourself. And so you have to realize no one is triggering you you're triggering yourself based off the way that you're thinking about something that somebody else did most likely. And so if you can really start to understand that no one can change your mood you're actually consenting to somebody changing your mood your entire life starts to change. And so those are the two things two simple mindset shifts to change your relationships. Number one, everyone is doing their best try to have more compassion. Number two, nobody can make you feel anything. No one can change your mood you're the person that's in charge of if you're triggered or not. So that's what I got for you for today's episode if you love this episode please share it on your Instagram stories and tag me in it Rob Dial Jr. R-O-B-D-I-A-L-J-R Once again if you want some more of this mindset tips and tricks and all that stuff go to YouTube right now and search my name Rob Dial R-O-B-D-I-A-L we're putting up tons of new videos on there that are not available on this podcast. And so if you wanna go to YouTube and search me on there I'll pop up and you can see the 400 and something videos that we put up on there so far. So with that I'm gonna leave you the same way I leave you every single episode make it your mission make someone else's day better I appreciate you and I hope that you have an amazing day.