Speaker 1: If someone finds themselves blaming, complaining, or justifying why they
Speaker 1: can't get something, that's usually victim talk. Welcome to the
Speaker 1: one you feed Throughout time, great thinkers have recognized the
Speaker 1: importance of the thoughts we have. Quotes like garbage in,
Speaker 1: garbage out, or you are what you think ring true.
Speaker 1: And yet for many of us, our thoughts don't strengthen
Speaker 1: or empower us. We tend toward negativity, self pity, jealousy,
Speaker 1: or fear. We see what we don't have instead of
Speaker 1: what we do. We think things that hold us back
Speaker 1: and dampen our spirit. But it's not just about thinking.
Speaker 1: Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort
Speaker 1: to make a life worth living. This podcast is about
Speaker 1: how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction,
Speaker 1: how they feed their good Wolfe thanks for joining us.
Speaker 1: Our guest today is Greg Swanson, a leading coach and
Speaker 1: expert on physical, emotional, spiritual, and mental strength. He has
Speaker 1: authored several books on the subjects and over articles. Greg's
Speaker 1: life defining moment came in June when he survived a
Speaker 1: horrific avalanche while descending from the top of Mount Rainier.
Speaker 1: Here's the interview Hi Greg, Welcome to the show. Why
Speaker 1: thanks Eric, really glad to be here, appreciate you contacting me,
Speaker 1: and you know you're doing some great, great work with
Speaker 1: your podcast and looking forward to our conversation. Thank you.
Speaker 1: You and I talked. I don't know, it's probably been
Speaker 1: a couple of weeks ago on your show, and now
Speaker 1: we've got a chance to have you on the show.
Speaker 1: So let's start where we always do with the parable. Um. So,
Speaker 1: there's a grandfather who's talking with his grandson and he says,
Speaker 1: in life, there are two wolves inside of us that
Speaker 1: are always at battle. One is a good wolf, which
Speaker 1: represents things like kindness and bravery and love, and the
Speaker 1: other is a bad wolf, which represents things like greed
Speaker 1: and hatred and fear. And the grandson stops and he
Speaker 1: thinks about it for a second, and he looks up
Speaker 1: at his grandfather and he says, well, grandfather, which one wins?
Speaker 1: And the grandfather says, the one you feed. So I'd
Speaker 1: like to start off by asking you what that parable
Speaker 1: means to you in your life and in the work
Speaker 1: that you do. Well, that's great, you know, it's really interesting.
Speaker 1: I've studied Native American traditions when I moved up here
Speaker 1: to Bend and I've always found that parable just fascinating.
Speaker 1: And you look at it and it's basically what you
Speaker 1: focus on, you get, you know, this is that whole.
Speaker 1: If you want to take it to a metaphysical level,
Speaker 1: it's you create your own reality. And for me, what
Speaker 1: is you know, in my coaching and in my life,
Speaker 1: it's so much easier at least it was for me
Speaker 1: to feed that bad wolf than it was the good wolf.
Speaker 1: And it took a lot of discipline and focused in
Speaker 1: concentration to start to feed that good wolf. Once it
Speaker 1: started being fed, the other one kind of died off it.
Speaker 1: It's not completely dead, but you know, it's not as
Speaker 1: strong as it used to be, right, And so you
Speaker 1: you focus a lot on I mean, your your show
Speaker 1: is called the Warrior Mind Podcast, So maybe you could
Speaker 1: tell us a little bit about what does the Warrior
Speaker 1: Mind mean to you? What what is it that's behind
Speaker 1: that name and why why is that your focus? Well? Great? Thanks.
Speaker 1: You know, I look at a warrior. Traditionally we look
Speaker 1: at warriors. We think of them as battling and you know,
Speaker 1: perhaps vikings or spartans and going out to battle and
Speaker 1: and just killing and doing whatever. But I look at
Speaker 1: it as the warrior is one that masters themselves physically, mentally, spiritually,
Speaker 1: and emotionally, and really all of those have to start
Speaker 1: in the mind. And so the warrior mind is the
Speaker 1: one that uses the mind that masters their minds, so
Speaker 1: they can master their body, their emotion, and and there's
Speaker 1: their spiritual practice. And so with that, the warrior mind
Speaker 1: basically feeds the good wolf. And what are the characteristics
Speaker 1: of the warrior mind? Wow, that's a that's a big question.
Speaker 1: There there are so many, right, there's discipline, there's focus,
Speaker 1: there is release, releasing of those things that that are
Speaker 1: not important. We tend to over exaggerate the things that
Speaker 1: are unimportant and under exaggerate the things that are important,
Speaker 1: and so there's this discernment that has to come in.
Speaker 1: But I would probably say the biggest, biggest attribute of
Speaker 1: a warrior mind is aware, being aware, being aware of
Speaker 1: your thoughts, what yourself talk is, what you're saying to others.
Speaker 1: When you can be aware of what's going on in
Speaker 1: your head, you are then that much closer to discerning
Speaker 1: on which wolf you want to feed, and what are
Speaker 1: some of the main um you talk A lot about
Speaker 1: mental strength, and and we had a guest on a
Speaker 1: few weeks ago where we sort of touched on that subject.
Speaker 1: And I'm interested in what you recommended some of the
Speaker 1: ways to build mental strength, some things that maybe you
Speaker 1: know people could start on in a relatively modest way, right,
Speaker 1: And before I get into that now, I will certainly
Speaker 1: answer that, I'd like to just clarify a little bit
Speaker 1: my perception of mental strength versus mental toughness. Um mental
Speaker 1: toughness has been used quite a bit, and when I
Speaker 1: look at the word tough, it almost means tolerating, putting
Speaker 1: up with you know, when you get tough feet from
Speaker 1: walking barefoot, you get callouses on it, and it just
Speaker 1: it's just prevents the irritation. But when you look at strength,
Speaker 1: it's like going to the gym. You are getting stronger
Speaker 1: because of the adversity you're facing. You're just not tolerating it.
Speaker 1: So if you go to the gym, you do you
Speaker 1: know squad, then you do to ten to twenty, you're
Speaker 1: actually getting stronger. And so that's where I look at
Speaker 1: the at the mindset, it's not just tolerating, but the
Speaker 1: strength is actually building from that. And and one of
Speaker 1: the things that I'd love to help people get into
Speaker 1: first is utilizing a physical process to get into their
Speaker 1: mental process. I really like working out or going for
Speaker 1: a steep hike or something that's going to challenge you
Speaker 1: mentor like this is tough. I can't do it because
Speaker 1: that's where it shows up so so quickly. It's it's
Speaker 1: probably the easiest way to engage in a conversation is
Speaker 1: through a physical program. One of the things that I
Speaker 1: think is interesting where I think of mental strength often
Speaker 1: is exactly in that way, in some sort of physical
Speaker 1: way where my brain wants to give up way before
Speaker 1: my body really needs to, And um, how do you?
Speaker 1: How do you continue? What are some of the things
Speaker 1: that someone can tell themselves to keep pushing through That.
Speaker 1: The reason I use the physical because everybody can do that.
Speaker 1: The challenges, and I will get that. I'll get to
Speaker 1: that question and second the challenges. People generally want to
Speaker 1: read a book on mental strength or mental toughness and
Speaker 1: think they can develop it by reading it. Mental strength
Speaker 1: is and however you define it mental strength or mental toughness,
Speaker 1: you have to take action. You have to You can
Speaker 1: read all you want, but you have to take action.
Speaker 1: So For me, I like lifting or are doing cross fit,
Speaker 1: and there are some things that you know, I say
Speaker 1: to myself beforehand. One is, you know, I'm just going
Speaker 1: to finish what I start, because mental strength isn't coming
Speaker 1: in first, it's finishing what you start. And so if
Speaker 1: you can go into a weight room or a run
Speaker 1: of five k or do a cross fit, or start
Speaker 1: out on some long hike, you know, twenty mile hike,
Speaker 1: and if you can finish what you start, that's a
Speaker 1: huge step in developing that mental strength. So some of
Speaker 1: the things we get through there when you feel like
Speaker 1: you can't go, take take a two second three second break, regroup,
Speaker 1: and then continue. Just finish what you start. That's great,
Speaker 1: great advice, and I think it ties into setting goals
Speaker 1: that build slowly over time exactly. And when you look
Speaker 1: at it through the physical perspective, then you can apply
Speaker 1: it to if you're an entrepreneur, or if you're if
Speaker 1: or if your salesperson or some other part we tend
Speaker 1: to get. We tend to hit these roadblocks and we stop.
Speaker 1: And it's not necessarily that we have to push our
Speaker 1: way through that specific roadblock, but maybe there's a different
Speaker 1: path to get to that goal. So some people will
Speaker 1: look at that as being stubborn and you know, contacting
Speaker 1: the same client or doing the same thing over and
Speaker 1: over again. Well, that might not be the mental strength.
Speaker 1: It's where is that goal? If this path isn't working,
Speaker 1: what path will get me there? What are some of
Speaker 1: the main things that keep people from developing that mental strength?
Speaker 1: Are there some common things that get in the way. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they've fed the bad wolf all their life. Seriously, I
Speaker 1: mean when you look at it, if you look at
Speaker 1: the bad wolf as a hiking trail, you know, in
Speaker 1: our brain are are our neurons that fire together, are
Speaker 1: wired together, And so if we've been feeding the bad
Speaker 1: wolf our entire life, that's the path of least resistance
Speaker 1: in our mind, in our brain, so automatically, our thoughts
Speaker 1: are going to go to the path of least resistance,
Speaker 1: which is I can't do this. I've never done this before.
Speaker 1: This is tough. Um too old, I'm too young too
Speaker 1: that whatever the excuses are, because we've been using those
Speaker 1: excuses our entire life. So now we want to create
Speaker 1: a new path, and it's going to hurt, like just
Speaker 1: like when you go into the woods and you want
Speaker 1: to create a new hiking path. You might have to
Speaker 1: get poked with bushes a little bit, but if you
Speaker 1: continue to walk down that path and feed that good wolf,
Speaker 1: then that will happen. But the reasons so tough is
Speaker 1: that it is difficult to change. Change is tough. It
Speaker 1: our brain is not meant to change. And so when
Speaker 1: it's wired one way, it likes efficiency and it's going
Speaker 1: to stay that way and it's going to fight you
Speaker 1: tooth and nail to change your your current way of thinking.
Speaker 1: A couple of things I saw on your site were
Speaker 1: around um hypnosis and neuro linguistic programming, and I'm curious
Speaker 1: how how you use those tools in relation to what
Speaker 1: we just talked about. So the brain is obviously you've
Speaker 1: got patterns in the brain, things that are wired in there,
Speaker 1: sort of the default settings that we've built over a
Speaker 1: long time. How do those two things help? Do they
Speaker 1: help accelerate that process? And how do you use those
Speaker 1: in your coaching? Oh? Absolutely, they absolutely do help. Because
Speaker 1: your conscious mind is really only about five percent of
Speaker 1: your daily activity and your unconscious mind about it's it's all.
Speaker 1: It's been said that your conscious mind is the goal
Speaker 1: setter and your unconscious mind is the goal getter. So
Speaker 1: if you're producing results that are different than what you want,
Speaker 1: most likely your unconscious mind is directing your behavior. Your
Speaker 1: unconscious mind is also where your beliefs. Your beliefs are there,
Speaker 1: your values are there, your emotional experiences from the past,
Speaker 1: all those reside in your unconscious mind. And hypnosis and
Speaker 1: neural linguistic programming deal a lot with that unconscious mind,
Speaker 1: so it slowly starts shifting the perspective on it. And
Speaker 1: when you can start to loosen the grasp of those beliefs,
Speaker 1: start to question them, start to reprogram them, and then
Speaker 1: use your conscious mind to take action as if they
Speaker 1: were as if the new beliefs were true, then you
Speaker 1: have a double edged sword and creating a new behavior.
Speaker 1: I've always been alternately fascinated with and skeptical of things
Speaker 1: like hypnosis, like I can never never have a good sense,
Speaker 1: like does it really work? Is it a but it
Speaker 1: sounds like you you believe in it or see results
Speaker 1: from it? Yep. And And here's the thing. All hypnosis
Speaker 1: is self hypnosis. If a person doesn't want to be hypnotized,
Speaker 1: they will not be hypnotized. But if they want to change,
Speaker 1: and they want to be hypnotized, they can either do
Speaker 1: it themselves or have somebody facilitated, but they are still
Speaker 1: self hypnosis. So it comes down to how bad does
Speaker 1: a person really want to change? And when they really
Speaker 1: want to change, they'll drop the barriers, they'll drop the
Speaker 1: the resistance and allow those changes to take place. It's
Speaker 1: not a miracle where you know, you go to sleep
Speaker 1: or go to hypnosis in one session and come out
Speaker 1: of it, although that can happen. Um. The key is
Speaker 1: that using these tools in addition to acting as if
Speaker 1: you know so if you're going to change a behavior
Speaker 1: that oh, you know, I'm I'm too old to do something,
Speaker 1: and then you get hypnosis in there and says no,
Speaker 1: you're you're young enough, and then act as if you're
Speaker 1: young enough. Between those two things it works. If you
Speaker 1: just do hypnosis and don't act as if it's working,
Speaker 1: it's not going to work. Yeah. I think that that
Speaker 1: idea about only being able, you know, being open to
Speaker 1: suggestion or hypnosis is really important. Although I have consistently
Speaker 1: been able to hypnotize my co host Chris here with
Speaker 1: a bucket of fried chicken. It's really all it takes.
Speaker 1: What is n LP how is it different than hypnosis?
Speaker 1: I don't know much about it. I see it a
Speaker 1: lot of places, but I honestly don't really know what
Speaker 1: it is. You know, depending on who you which NLP
Speaker 1: school you go to, and how it's how they talk
Speaker 1: about it. It's basically excellence in communication, communication within yourself
Speaker 1: and communication with other people. Because we have these filters
Speaker 1: through which we delete, distort, or generalize information. You know,
Speaker 1: you think about it, We're all exposed to the same
Speaker 1: amount of information externally. How is it somebody can see
Speaker 1: one thing and the other person not see it. Well,
Speaker 1: it's through those filters, and neurolinguistic programming works with those filters,
Speaker 1: So it's you know, the neural the mind or the brain,
Speaker 1: linguistic the words, and then programming it. So it's basically excellence,
Speaker 1: at least the school I went to, is excellence in
Speaker 1: communication within yourself and with others. And when you can
Speaker 1: communicate clearly to yourself and understand that communication, you'll then
Speaker 1: be able to take action in accordance to what you want.
Speaker 1: See most people communicate with what they don't want. I
Speaker 1: don't want to be sick anymore. I don't want to
Speaker 1: be alone anymore. I don't want to be broken anymore.
Speaker 1: I don't, and they keep getting what they don't want
Speaker 1: because the mind cannot think of it. Not you can.
Speaker 1: You cannot not communicate to yourself. So if you're saying
Speaker 1: I don't want to be alone, you have to think
Speaker 1: of yourself of being alone. One of the things I
Speaker 1: noticed is I was looking through your stuff, is that
Speaker 1: you survived in avalanche. Is that a story you could
Speaker 1: you could tell the listeners in a relatively brief time. Well,
Speaker 1: I've done it in a minute, and I've done it
Speaker 1: in an hour and a half, So let me see
Speaker 1: if I can. Yeah, I'm looking for somewhere on the
Speaker 1: you know, not it doesn't need to be a minute,
Speaker 1: but you know right, Um, I was. I was with
Speaker 1: my brother. We were doing a mountaineer course on Mount Rainier,
Speaker 1: and the grand finale was to climb Mount Rainier, And
Speaker 1: so we got up beautiful day, beautiful morning, two o'clock
Speaker 1: in the morning. It was it was a June a
Speaker 1: couple of years ago, and we got up to the
Speaker 1: top and it was just gorgeous and it was such
Speaker 1: a beautiful day. We stayed up there a little bit
Speaker 1: too long. The guide said, come on, let's get back down.
Speaker 1: So we started coming back down and there's a place
Speaker 1: on Mount Rainier that's called Disappointment Cleaver, and if you
Speaker 1: go up it, you'll understand why it's called that. But
Speaker 1: when you come down it, there's a kind of a
Speaker 1: small little path that's right against a very steep part
Speaker 1: of the mountain. And it was in that part where
Speaker 1: um I was the last person on the rope team.
Speaker 1: I heard somebody about me say avalanche and try and
Speaker 1: it's not the big powdery avalanche because this is June.
Speaker 1: The snow is melted, so it's like, you know, a
Speaker 1: cement mixer of slushies coming down on you. It's just heavy, heavy,
Speaker 1: heavy snow. It's not gonna fluffy. So I kind of hit.
Speaker 1: I try to push myself up against the mountain as
Speaker 1: tight tight as I could, but because it's just so slushy,
Speaker 1: it took me and the five people attached to my
Speaker 1: rope down the mountain and we ended up hanging basically
Speaker 1: off the mountain because we did have a rope that
Speaker 1: was attached to the mountain higher up. So this this
Speaker 1: rope helped us. But we stayed there for almost eight
Speaker 1: hours before we were rescued, and the rescue was another
Speaker 1: long story because we had it basically, had a hike
Speaker 1: a mile to where the helicopter landed to be able
Speaker 1: to get out of that, and we were all I
Speaker 1: had a uh my pcl was torn, which prevents your
Speaker 1: nie from going from hyper extending, so every time I
Speaker 1: stepped on it, it would hyper extend. My hand was broken,
Speaker 1: my brother had a crack in his tibia, and unfortunately
Speaker 1: there was one person who did who did die from
Speaker 1: UM from exposure on the mountain. But it was quite
Speaker 1: a Up until that point, it was, you know, just
Speaker 1: a beautiful, beautiful experience, and and after that there's you know,
Speaker 1: there was a lot of shifts that happened to me personally.
Speaker 1: You know, I don't know if it was post un
Speaker 1: extress syndrome or whatever it was, but there was quite
Speaker 1: a euphoric feeling once I got back home, like really
Speaker 1: nothing matters. And it's not that that didn't care, but
Speaker 1: really I saw the really nothing did matter that much?
Speaker 1: And so were you doing kind of what you're doing
Speaker 1: now then or was this part of what helped UM
Speaker 1: catapult you into sort of doing your own um your
Speaker 1: own thing. Yeah, I was working in corporate sales at
Speaker 1: that time, and and I was also starting to develop
Speaker 1: or understood the power of mental strength at that point
Speaker 1: when I was training for the mountain um and we
Speaker 1: my brother and I climbed Mount Hood and Mount Shasta,
Speaker 1: and and so I realized the mind is important. I
Speaker 1: saw how the mind worked with me and sales, saw
Speaker 1: how definitely it worked with mountaineering. And so that was
Speaker 1: kind of the beginning part of it. And then um,
Speaker 1: obviously surviving that, I took a different look at that
Speaker 1: from a you know, a mental, emotional, physical, and spiritual
Speaker 1: perspective on how really all of that came together when
Speaker 1: I was hanging off the mountain. So another thing that
Speaker 1: you have done and talked about is um shamanistic journeys.
Speaker 1: Can you share a little bit about what that entails
Speaker 1: for you and what some of your experiences have been.
Speaker 1: That's a wonderful uh spiritual practice. It is not a religion.
Speaker 1: Um Shaman basically means one who sees in the dark,
Speaker 1: and it's not necessarily the dark of a cave, but
Speaker 1: the dark inside a soul. And so when the premise,
Speaker 1: I mean, when shaman's were very prevalent, they would do
Speaker 1: the journey work for a sick individual, they would find
Speaker 1: out why they were sick, they would find their power animals,
Speaker 1: they would journey for the other people. And as um
Speaker 1: Shamanism became more and more known throughout the you know,
Speaker 1: at least the United States through Michael Harner and Alberto v.
Speaker 1: A Vialdo, more and more people were able to do
Speaker 1: it for themselves. And I've trained with them, and and
Speaker 1: it's basically tapping into your soul or your unconscious because
Speaker 1: the unconscious mind is the seed of the soul. And
Speaker 1: it's going into your own soul unconscious mind and getting
Speaker 1: aunts there's and direction on big questions in your life.
Speaker 1: And so it's it's a really great, great practice. Um,
Speaker 1: I enjoy it. The thing is, the soul or your
Speaker 1: unconscious mind speaks in symbols, so it doesn't speak in
Speaker 1: to us in words or language. So when you go
Speaker 1: on these journeys, you know, many people have probably heard
Speaker 1: about finding their power animal and and then it comes
Speaker 1: to them with different things or a rock or a
Speaker 1: heart or whatever it might be. So these are all
Speaker 1: ways that we can communicate with our with our soul
Speaker 1: to get some direction in life. We all we all
Speaker 1: have answers to our big questions, Why am I here?
Speaker 1: What's my purpose? What am I supposed to be? How
Speaker 1: am I supposed to be? And we can all find
Speaker 1: those questions those answers ourselves if we take the time
Speaker 1: to go inward. Some people will meditate, uh, some people
Speaker 1: will pray. Journey work is very much sound sounds similar
Speaker 1: to that where you go deep inside, setting an attention,
Speaker 1: asking the questions and and consciously being aware of what's
Speaker 1: happening around you without controlling what's happening. And this is
Speaker 1: the interesting thing is you have you set the intention
Speaker 1: to go on a journey, you put on some music
Speaker 1: and if you practiced it enough, or you can have
Speaker 1: a drum there and you go, so you know what
Speaker 1: you're doing, you know where you're going, but then you're
Speaker 1: not controlling the scenery, and it just unfolds. And it's
Speaker 1: been a great help to me as far as UH
Speaker 1: working with with with what where I should be going
Speaker 1: in my life. And I recommend a lot to clients
Speaker 1: and even on my my my workshops, I take my
Speaker 1: clients on journeys. You've got a spot on your website
Speaker 1: where you talk about situation where people have high mental
Speaker 1: resistance but low mental support. Can you walk us through that? Yes,
Speaker 1: the complacen zone. This is something that I I it
Speaker 1: came to me in kind of a journey, if you will.
Speaker 1: I was a meditation, and it's a combination stion of
Speaker 1: you know, neurallquistic programming and you know we've all heard
Speaker 1: of the comfort zone. Well, when we look at it,
Speaker 1: when I look at clients and I look at myself
Speaker 1: and look at people, we have this mental line of support.
Speaker 1: If it's weight, we'll never get any heavier than this weight,
Speaker 1: If it's money, will never get any broker than this.
Speaker 1: If it's being alone, will never be alone for more
Speaker 1: than six months, whatever it is, it's almost like hitting bottom,
Speaker 1: right rock bottom. So we had this mental line of support,
Speaker 1: and that's when we start to take action. So we
Speaker 1: start taking action and we start to improve our life,
Speaker 1: whether it's physically, mentally, financially, and then we start to
Speaker 1: get to this what I call this line of mental resistance.
Speaker 1: And this is where our limiting beliefs are, our past experiences,
Speaker 1: our motions come into play. And that's you know, you're
Speaker 1: not worth a hundred thousand a year. You've never made
Speaker 1: it before. What what makes you think you can? These
Speaker 1: are all conversations that go on, maybe not in the
Speaker 1: conscious awareness us, but there's the beliefs that are there.
Speaker 1: And so as we start to approach this mental line
Speaker 1: of resistance, we tend to take less and less actions.
Speaker 1: We tend to make more excuses, we tend to put
Speaker 1: off things, we tend to procrastinate. For example, if it
Speaker 1: was if it was a person who was on a
Speaker 1: nutrition program and they wanted to lose some weight. Let's
Speaker 1: say they wanted to lose a hundred pounds. Well, right
Speaker 1: about the ninety pound mark, they may say, you know what,
Speaker 1: I've done really good. Let me just have this one
Speaker 1: piece of cheesecake. You know what, I'm gonna sleep in tomorrow.
Speaker 1: I'm not going to go to the gym tomorrow. And
Speaker 1: then all of a sudden, that ninety pounds now it
Speaker 1: starts losing. Now their only eighty pounds lighter, sting, and
Speaker 1: they start getting down. They go, oh, what's happened? And
Speaker 1: they go right back up again. And you can see
Speaker 1: it financially with people uh A, relationship wise, they just
Speaker 1: go up and down, up and down, up and down.
Speaker 1: And part of it is because when we're not aware
Speaker 1: of it. And if you track out your behavior in life,
Speaker 1: you'll see that it's kind of like a saw tooth
Speaker 1: that goes up and down, up and down between this
Speaker 1: mental line of support and this mental line of resistance.
Speaker 1: Then what people do is, I'm going to set this
Speaker 1: big goal. So they set this big goal that is
Speaker 1: so far above their mental line of resistance that they
Speaker 1: think it's going to motivate them. But again when they
Speaker 1: get there, it just it stops them. So these big, big, big, big,
Speaker 1: I mean, I love big goals, but if you haven't
Speaker 1: achieved you know, smaller goals than these big goals are
Speaker 1: just not going to do it for for you. So
Speaker 1: what I recommend is within this complacence zone is get
Speaker 1: three goals that you know you can achieve, and then
Speaker 1: put the fourth one just above that mental resistance. And
Speaker 1: is that the third to the fourth one is where
Speaker 1: a coach comes in handy, somebody comes in handy to
Speaker 1: keep the person focused because up until that time, they've
Speaker 1: done it all. I mean, you look at it. If
Speaker 1: you go back and forth, back and forth, everything within
Speaker 1: the complacence zone, you already have created at one time
Speaker 1: or another in your life so achieving those goals aren't
Speaker 1: really any big deal. But what you want to do
Speaker 1: is get momentum to get really close to that mental
Speaker 1: resistance and then have that goal just above it. So
Speaker 1: let's just say it was income. You've made ninety thousand,
Speaker 1: but you've never made a hundred. You get to thousand
Speaker 1: at that time, you hire a coach, you get somebody
Speaker 1: and say, you know, keep going, keep going, what else
Speaker 1: can you do? What else can you do? Until you
Speaker 1: get to that hundred thousand, and then you keep making
Speaker 1: it because what you want to do is convert that
Speaker 1: mental resistance to your new mental support, and then you
Speaker 1: start the process all over again. That's a really interesting
Speaker 1: way to think through the goal setting process. Yes, because
Speaker 1: because people, I mean, here we are, we're coming on
Speaker 1: to the first of the year, and people will make
Speaker 1: these big goals which they've never accomplished before in their life,
Speaker 1: and they're going to use that as motivation, but they
Speaker 1: don't track where you know, I've set this goal before,
Speaker 1: I said this school before, Well, then don't set it again.
Speaker 1: And so if you look at really some of the
Speaker 1: things that you accomplished before, set those as small objectives
Speaker 1: and then perhaps at the end of the year, have
Speaker 1: that one goal that's just outside that mental resistance or
Speaker 1: maybe six months from now, and then when you hit it,
Speaker 1: maintain it for three months so that now that mental
Speaker 1: resistance is now your mental support and you get to
Speaker 1: start it all over again. It's that idea of basically
Speaker 1: start small and connect the dots right things that you
Speaker 1: can do and build from there. Right. And the key though,
Speaker 1: is being aware of when you're getting close to that
Speaker 1: mental resistance because although I draw it on a nice diagram, yeah,
Speaker 1: and again this gets back to your question about a
Speaker 1: warrior mind. You need to be aware. So when you
Speaker 1: start hearing the self talk of I'll take a day off,
Speaker 1: or let me go on vacation now, or let me
Speaker 1: have that cheesecake. None of those things are bad. However,
Speaker 1: if they're creeping up all you know, if they come
Speaker 1: back on a regular basis as you're getting close to
Speaker 1: accomplish and your goal, that would be a tell tale
Speaker 1: sign that you're getting very close to that mental resistance.
Speaker 1: We are getting near the end of time, but I'd
Speaker 1: like to talk through one last thing with you before
Speaker 1: we wrap up, and it's the idea of um being
Speaker 1: a victim or being a leader. Yes, yeah, um, you know,
Speaker 1: there's there's a lot of great people out there who
Speaker 1: talk about leadership, and I admire all of them. Just
Speaker 1: the list is too long to go into. But a
Speaker 1: leader in the purest sense, takes responsibility for all their results,
Speaker 1: in my opinion, in my in my world, that is,
Speaker 1: whatever result they get, they take responsive ability for it,
Speaker 1: or the responsibility to change it, or the responsibility on
Speaker 1: how to react to it. They're not pointing the fingers.
Speaker 1: So the victim, you know, when they blame, complaint if
Speaker 1: you find if not you personally eric, but if someone
Speaker 1: finds themselves blaming, complaining or justifying why they can't get something,
Speaker 1: that's usually victim talk. And when you can shift from
Speaker 1: and this is and and and I'll pay and a
Speaker 1: lot of others parts. They call it the cause and effect.
Speaker 1: You can either be on the effects side of the equation,
Speaker 1: meaning that the world is doing this to me, my
Speaker 1: partner is doing this to me, the government is doing
Speaker 1: this to me, and you give up all control of
Speaker 1: your life, you give up all your power, or you
Speaker 1: can say, yes, this is happening, but I can change.
Speaker 1: I can do this instead, I can react this way
Speaker 1: I can change. I can so you can be causing
Speaker 1: an effect, as Joe Despenser says, or you can be
Speaker 1: at the you can be the effect and the leaders
Speaker 1: on the cause side, the victim is on the effects side.
Speaker 1: There's certainly a uh spectrum there, right. There seems to
Speaker 1: be some things at least I've noticed that it's easy
Speaker 1: for me to be clear on like, Okay, I'm a leader,
Speaker 1: I'm responsible for this, and then other areas where I
Speaker 1: think I'm more likely to continue to play the victim.
Speaker 1: And so it seems like that's an an ongoing process
Speaker 1: to sort of drive that mentality through every aspect of
Speaker 1: your life, right, which brings us back to that warrior
Speaker 1: mind being aware. If you're not aware of playing the
Speaker 1: victim role in that area of your life, you're going
Speaker 1: to continue to do it. And and what you just
Speaker 1: have to look at not you personally are, but if
Speaker 1: what a person has to look at is is the life?
Speaker 1: Is the situations in this area of my life financial relationship?
Speaker 1: Is this what I want? And if it's not what
Speaker 1: I want? Then how am I contributing to this creation
Speaker 1: of I have I released everything to? You know? If
Speaker 1: I'm not happy in a relationship with my putting all
Speaker 1: my happiness on my partner. Where in work you may say, listen,
Speaker 1: I need to go out and make sales. I'm responsible
Speaker 1: for all my money, and you may be a go
Speaker 1: getter at sales, But in relationship, you give all your
Speaker 1: how are away. If you know that that's happening, then
Speaker 1: being aware of it is the first step. And that's
Speaker 1: what we talked about in the beginning. Right of having
Speaker 1: a warrior mind is being aware exactly. I think you
Speaker 1: and I talked about that when I was on your
Speaker 1: show last week, about that awareness being so important, and
Speaker 1: I think it's I think it's really interesting how subtle
Speaker 1: some of those things can be in in tricking us
Speaker 1: into thinking that we're not in charge, which effectively, when
Speaker 1: we say we're not in charge, we're feeding the bad
Speaker 1: wolf exactly. And when we when we are in charge,
Speaker 1: when we're taking responsibility for how we were, how we
Speaker 1: respond or the or the change of it. Because there's
Speaker 1: something when we talk about responsibility, it doesn't mean fault,
Speaker 1: and many people get confused with responsibility and fault. And
Speaker 1: I'm not to blame. Nobody's saying to blame, but at
Speaker 1: some level, if you get into car a car accident,
Speaker 1: You decided to get in your car at that time
Speaker 1: and take that route and somebody hits you. So it's
Speaker 1: just that's the responsibility part of it. And now you
Speaker 1: can be responded stable for how you respond to that accident,
Speaker 1: and you can be responsible on how to get the
Speaker 1: car fixed. Yeah, I think that, like you said there,
Speaker 1: that difference between being responsible and at fault is such
Speaker 1: a such a critical distinction. You know. I find a
Speaker 1: lot of people, a lot of people go through things
Speaker 1: in their life where something really terrible happened to them
Speaker 1: when they were younger, and you know, they're certainly not
Speaker 1: at fault for that in any way, but they are
Speaker 1: responsible at this point. We're all responsible at a certain
Speaker 1: point for what we do with those things that happened
Speaker 1: to us. Absolutely absolutely, and and you know, not to
Speaker 1: diminish any you know, experiences. At some point, you either
Speaker 1: can play the victim for the rest of your life
Speaker 1: or you can play the leader or the warrior and go,
Speaker 1: this happened to me, and now this is what I'm
Speaker 1: gonna do with right. The ability to draw strength or
Speaker 1: draw some sort of meaning out of these experiences we
Speaker 1: have is so critical I think to to building a
Speaker 1: good life. Right, and that goes in perfect with with
Speaker 1: the name of your podcast, right, the one you've feed.
Speaker 1: You know, we can either feed that bad wolf and
Speaker 1: relive that bad experience over and over and over and
Speaker 1: people are this and this happens and people can't be trusted, etcetera.
Speaker 1: So we just keep feeding that bad wolfere we can go.
Speaker 1: You know what I've learned from this, this is what
Speaker 1: I can do now, and you feed the good wolf
Speaker 1: then instead. Well, I think that is a great point
Speaker 1: to wrap up on, A good way to end. So Greg,
Speaker 1: thanks so much for taking the time to be on
Speaker 1: the show. It's been a pleasure talking with you. Eric,
Speaker 1: thank you so much. Or keep up the good work, okay,
Speaker 1: take care bite all right, take care body. You can
Speaker 1: learn more about this podcast and Gregg Swanson at one
Speaker 1: you Feed dot net slash Swanson