Advice

Show notes:

“Research shows that negative feelings like anxiety and depression, unlike positive emotions, make us more self-centered. In contrast, positive emotions boost our inclination to connect with others in productive ways.” -By  Emma Seppälä, The Happiness Track: How to Apply the Science of Happiness to Accelerate Your Success. Her website is emmaseppala.com.

For those who would like to read more about these topics check out our book.

Amazon Book link: Social, The Power of Relationships

Disclaimer, We’re not saying you are a self-centered jerk if you have depression or anxiety. It only means one feels inclined to think more self-centered when feeling negative emotions. When we feel more positive emotions it compels us to connect with more people.

Empathy is the ability to understand and share the feelings of another. A Neuroscientist Vilayanur Ramachandran explains the intriguing functions of mirror neurons. These neurons allow us to learn complex social behaviors. The foundations of human civilization Stand on our ability to use these neurons to learn complex social interactions.

We can look at someone and get a good idea of how they are feeling because of these mirror neurons, also known as empathy. They help us to recognize emotions.

“Vulnerability is the birthplace of love, belonging, joy, courage, empathy, and creativity. It is the source of hope, empathy, accountability, and authenticity. If we want greater clarity in our purpose or deeper and more meaningful spiritual lives, vulnerability is the path.” – by Brené Brown, Daring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead

When you have a hard time feeling empathy you can strengthen it through meditation.

When your empathy is too strong and it clouds your ability to take action it’s best to define who you want to focus on.

(All Amazon links are affiliate links, Thank you for supporting us through buying books through our links)

Link to the book on amazon Social, The Power of Relationships.

Show notes:

“It’s about values. It’s about happiness. It’s about living a life of meaning and direction.

It’s about surrounding yourself with people who elevate and inspire you.”

Quote by Jordan harbinger at TheArtOfCharm.com.

Values can control our core thoughts. They should trigger positive emotions that provide the rails for more positive trains of thought.

Expectations are habits on cruse control. When an expectation lies unmet it commonly triggers negative emotions. Many times we are blind to our expectations until they are broken.

The better you can control your thoughts the stronger of an impact you make in the world. Values and expectations are our thoughts behind our thoughts. Knowing what they are, gives you more control over what you think about. We only need to think about them once for them to make a large impact in our daily life.

When you feel happy stop and ask what do I value in this situation or why do I enjoy this experience?

When you feel badly stop and ask what was the expectation that has been broken or whose fault is it and what can I learn here?

The way you feel is the first thing you give in any relationship. Your emotions are influenced by what you think, and what you think about is controlled by your values and expectations.

Amazon Book link: Social, The Power of Relationships

“I think most everybody has a natural sixth sense for feeling what other people are feeling. Some have a stronger sense than others.” Josh Putman

Hi guys, we are trying to transcribe the episodes for you but it is turning out to be a lot more work than we have time for. So this may be the last transcription we will be doing for a while. After this episode we will be writing out just show notes with quotes and references from the show. Thanks for all your support.

Transcription:

Jason: Hello everyone thanks for joining us again at Social: The Power of Relationships. Today we are talking about our thoughts and how they control our emotions. if you are you’re here for the first time check out the last few podcasts to become caught up on all the things we talked about so far.

I’m Jason

I’m Josh

Josh has a great quote to start us off with.

0:40

Josh: this is a quote by Mahatma Gandhi “A man is but the product of his thoughts, what he thinks he becomes.”

Josh: That is absolutely true isn’t it? I mean, Our thoughts create our feelings, our feelings create our actions, and our actions develop our habits. Habits are what make us who we are.

Jason: Every thought has a feeling, have enough thoughts with a certain feeling and that creates our mood. Our mood is the first thing we give in a relationship. You don’t have to talk to see how someone feels. Through their body language we can get a strong sense of how they are feeling. That’s the first thing they also feel from you.

2:00

Josh: I think most everybody has a natural sixth sense for feeling what other people are feeling. Some probably have a stronger sense than others. You’ve probably been in the room when somebody walks in and they’re angry and that changes the mood in the room. It starts to effect how you feel if you’re there for too long.

2:30

Jason: It also goes the other direction too, where everyone is laughing and you start laughing. So, How do you control your thoughts? Especially when you’re around other people.

3:00

Josh: In the last episode we talked about building a relationship with ourselves. Our thoughts are the way we build that relationship. If we are to develop that relationship it’s good to be aware of what we’re thinking, particularly when you’re feeling something you don’t want to feel. Your focus is going to determine that emotional state.

3:40

Jason: When I was younger I struggled a lot with depression. Something I did that helped was keep a journal called my book of thoughts. I would record the moments that I was feeling really happy, why I was happy, and I record when I was feeling sad and what thoughts lead me to that state. After a while I could influence how I felt about most situations.

4:10

Josh: I haven’t done a journal, I should probably, but I’ve done a lot of self inventory. Over the years I’ve tried to decipher and discover what’s creating the states that I’m in to then create the state that I want. To feel the way that I want to feel as opposed with the ways that I don’t. It’s been tricky and complex at times. I think it would be less valuable if we were constantly worried about our thoughts. That can be counterproductive. Being aware is good but being hyper aware I guess can be a bit negative.

5:30

Jason: There’s always a balance to everything. We can’t control 100% of what we think. However we can influence them and ride the waves better with some training. In college I joined an improvising group call play Theory. Their goals as a group were to help people cultivate trust, generosity and enthusiasm. They taught four principles that were really helpful for guiding my thoughts.

These four principles helped me the most: Number 1 is “be 100% present”, number 2 “let go and play”, 3 is “say yes and”, number 4 is to “look outward.”

6:45

Jason: The first one is, be 100% present and that means letting go of all your fears and all your anxieties to just be in the moment. One the ways I do that is to start listing the things I’m grateful for.

6:58

Josh: I’ve done quite a lot of meditation to help me to become more present. I’m better at it on some days than others, but to be in the moment has been incredibly beneficial.

7:23

Jason: I find whenever I’m depressed it’s because I’m thinking too much of the past. If I’m feeling anxiety it’s because I’m thinking too much of the future, particularly what could go wrong. Being present for me means being focused on the very next action on a project I’m working on. I’m looking for ways to bring my life into more positive state of being.

Josh: Or like what you were saying earlier, making lists of things you are grateful for. What are you grateful for, in the room, with this person you are speaking to right now? You could be grateful for anything “I really appreciate the sweater that you are wearing. I really like that coat. They have nice eyes, a nice smile, good energy.” Being grateful helps you to stay present with them and it deepens the experience you are having together.

8:17

Jason: The next one is to let go and play. The concept here is to let go of your fears of what could happen and allowing things to happen as they are. Be okay with making mistakes. Be okay with things getting a little awkward and rolling with it. “Lets see where this is going and how I can improve it.”

9:00

A great quote from our teacher, Neil Hooper, who organize the group said “Play lowers the stakes and allows for failure when attempting new skills. Mistakes are opportunities to learn if viewed with an opened mind.”

9:29

Josh: Yeah because we get so worried about making mistakes that we feel like we don’t want to try something new. We feel we need to get it perfect every time. We tie our value to that, I guess. Why not play? It’s lowering the expectations for ourselves, it’s not really about succeeding, it’s about playing. It’s about enjoying whatever I’m about to do. I think that can help to alleviate some of those pressures of the fears of failure. Because there is no failure, you’re only exploring (just trying something.) You’re just playing.

10:00

Jason: Failures are things that we put on ourselves. If we do not do this then we are failures. It’s a very negative state of mind that we have to turn off for a bit. Yes there is opportunities that we can fail but play a game you can win and lose as many times as you need to to get there (Quote by David Allen).

10:29

Jason: Number three is say yes and, It’s basically accepting whatever comes and then adding to it. It’s adding a little spark of you to it. Whether that thing is that comes into your world or whatever that person says to you, you accepted admire it and then add to it.

Josh: You are not fault-finding. Instead, you’re accepting it as it is and looking for ways to improve it, not necessary to improve the person but to add value to the experience.

11:18

Jason: Number 4 is: looking outward, which is when you’re in a situation you’re always looking  for ways to help the other people around you. It’s making sure that your partner that you’re with looks great. What you’re doing is making them look great.

Josh: Because if everybody is doing that everybody looking great. It helps you get out of your mind and helps you support somebody else. It’s helps you to become more present.

11:57

Jason: It helps you to look great as well. Your thoughts are energy and we tend to identify that as emotional energy (happy, sad, angry, depressed) you know. Those thoughts sync with others when you are looking for connections. When you are trying to help someone else with your thoughts You’re connecting with how they are feeling and in a sense thinking the same as they are.

I’m not a huge believer in the energies of the cosmos, it may sound like it but I am referring to emotions. Our emotions are energy and as you think outwards you’re connecting with the energy of other people and that opens up the flow. You can continue to stay in positive states for longer periods of time that way.

13:00

Josh: You are feeding off of each other (I don’t know if feeding off of each other is the right words.) You’re supplying each other with positive emotion. It’s one of those weird dichotomies that the more you give away the more you receive. That’s how our thoughts create and shape who we are. That’s why they’re very important.

13:24

Josh: So Thank you today for this great conversation we had about our thoughts and the Play Theory Principles.

Jason: Thank you Josh so much and thank you James. James is in the background recording the podcast. He is our engineer thanks guys for listening and I look forward to more episodes do it next episode.

Show notes

“How you do anything is how you do everything” -T. Harv Eker

“All Human behavior is a result of the state we are in.” -Tony Robbins

Transcription:

Josh: Hello and welcome back to Social: the power of relationships podcast…Today we are going to jump into chapter one of the book that we mentioned last week, Social: the Power of Relationships. First off, we wanted to start with a quote from the first chapter.

Jason: This quote is normally attributed to T. Harv Eker: How you do one thing is how you do everything.

Jason: This relates to relationships because how you handle one relationship is how you will ultimately handle all the other relationships in your life.

Josh: We develop patterns for how we interact in our world, and they become habits. We develop them from a very early age. From the time we’re young children we learn how to process all the information that comes in and our parents and those around us teach us what’s good or what’s bad and then we interpret those things moving forward as good or bad. And sometimes they are flawed and we gain a flawed perspective. But it becomes the foundation for how we see the world moving forward.

Jason: So today we are going to talk about building a relationship with yourself. And how important it is to understand how you treat yourself is not only how you’re going to treat other people, but how other people are going to treat you.

Josh: Right. We develop a relationship with ourselves from an early age, too. And sometimes, as I said, that can be really flawed. I like that this is the first chapter because it is kind of at the root of some of our relationship problems in the world. We gain a really flawed sense of who we are, and how we should view ourselves. We don’t want to be proud or for whatever reason we tend to criticize ourselves more and put ourselves down more.

Jason: So how do you develop a personal relationship with yourself?

Josh: I think that being thoughtful about it in the first place is important. I didn’t think about it for most of my life. I didn’t think that I needed to make choices about how I see myself. I would just return to the habits that I had developed as a kid. And mine were pretty poor, they were pretty negative. So I would see myself through a negative lens. I would say “you made a mistake there, therefore your value is lessened. You have less value as a person. Therefore you deserve less happiness”. And I think that we all kind of have this negative self-talk. It got to the point where I had to be thoughtful about that, be purposeful about that and say whether that’s true or not, I don’t want to believe those things, I don’t want to feel that way. I would like to believe more empowering things about myself. I would like to find more happiness and more peace. I had to become aware that I was creating the lens. That the way I was feeling was going to be created by how I see myself. And so I had to make different choices. And it’s tricky because like I said they’re habits. And so you have to be very aware and kind of conscious all the time and say why am I feeling that way, oh it’s because I’m thinking this negative thing about myself.

Jason: And where did that trigger happen? Where did it all begin?

Josh: Right.

Jason: For me, I like to think of my older brother. He was a great example for me. He was the first person that really got me thinking about the relationship I have with myself. He was telling me why he made his bed in the morning. So every morning he would wake up, make his bed, and change his clothes, and he would always fold up his pj’s and put them on the bed. And when he would come home at night, he would look at the bed and he would go “oh thank you Past Self for making the bed and putting my pj’s there nicely so I can get ready for bed at night”.

Josh: So that leads into one of the main points of this chapter, that you talk about three versions of yourself.

Jason: That’s right. There’s the past self, the present self, and the future self. And when we talk about ourselves, we talk about ourselves in those three categories. Like “I’m going to worry about this later…”

Josh: I’m going to worry about this later. Isn’t that a weird phrase that we say to ourselves? We’re literally telling ourselves not just that we’re going to think about this later, but we’re going to worry about this later. Why would we choose to worry at any point? But we do. And our words are very specific and they’re powerful. So then what do we do? We do worry about it later.

Jason: That’s true. I had a big breaking point with the relationship I had with myself. I was in college and life was very busy and I would be very lazy about making my bed, and doing my dishes, cleaning up after myself. And I came home one day and the apartment was a mess and I kind of woke up to how messy it was and I was angry at my roommates because nothing was clean and I barged into my roommate’s room to find that it was empty. And at that point found out that my roommate had moved out months ago, and the person who was messing up the apartment was me. I was the one leaving the clothes everywhere and leaving the dishes in the sink and leaving basically a trail of broken promises to myself because I would always say I’ll do this later and when later comes I was so depressed that my past self didn’t get it done that I didn’t feel like doing it now so I would go do something else like go hang out with a friend or play a video game.

Josh: I see the relationship with myself in terms of the emotional state. This is kind of a concept that I stumbled across over the last few years. Tony Robbins says that all human behavior is the result of the state that we are in, in the moment, in any specific time. But what I think we don’t always realize is that we have a great control over our states. And so we just let them happen to us. We aren’t intentional about creating a different state for ourselves. I’ll worry about it later…I think that sometimes there’s a reason why we don’t want to do it now, and that’s okay.

Jason: Normally it’s because we’re tired. We’ve been working all day, or someone else has passed on their garbage to us, and we feel miserable because they felt miserable around us and because of that we don’t do the other things in our life that show ourselves compassion and show ourselves love.

Josh: So we don’t process the problems that are there presently with us. And thereby make our future self happier or more grateful.

Jason: When you’re in that, where do you start? Where do you begin to make the change? Normally for me I begin by listing things I’m grateful for. Grateful for myself and grateful for the moment, grateful for what I’m capable of doing now.

Josh: Great! Gratitude is one of the highest frequencies we have. Love and gratitude. And when we can get into a state of gratitude, it changes our entire perspective.

Jason: It does. And gratitude is the starting point. If you’re trying to change the way you feel, gratitude is always the beginning. You have to start looking for something you’re grateful for. And as you’re building your gratitude, then other emotions start to take place. Like you start to feel joy that you realize that someone has washed the dishes for you. Or you start to feel love for others or yourself. All these other emotions come, but they come after you position yourself in a sense of gratitude.

Josh: Gratitude for yourself

Jason: Yes, for yourself. That is where you want to start.

Josh: What about for those people who struggle to feel gratitude or to feel positive? I’m speaking from personal experience because I’ve dealt with anxiety and depression for most of my life pretty intensely. There have been times I’ve been able to get myself to gratitude and think yeah that feels really good, but a lot of the time I have just really struggled to get there. Do you have any advice for someone who hears this and almost just rolls their eyes and thinks okay here’s another gratitude guy telling me to be grateful and just count my blessings. Is there a way that you’re found that pretty consistently gets you into a good state?

Jason: There’s a couple of different things. You can go exercise. Sending those endorphins into your body can really help you. Setting goals. When I was 14 I was really struggling with depression and there was a psychologist that I met with and these are things that they suggested to me. But something that has helped me more than anything was actually looking for opportunities to help other people. To serve other people. A lot of the time that ended up being washing dishes for my mom. And that’s the last thing on our mind that we want to do. But that for me has been the biggest tipping point of moving myself out of a depressed state into something more positive. In that moment you have to put aside all your worries, all your fears. You have to put aside all the things you don’t like about yourself. And stop thinking about them so you can start thinking about ways to help someone else in your life. Whether that be a roommate or a spouse or a sibling. Or even a co-worker. You have to start thinking okay what are they going through? What would impact their life to make their life a little bit better? And then going about taking those actions to do that, your thought processes have to change completely. From that moment you’re forgetting your fears and the reason that you’re depressed in the first place. And you start to feel love for the person that you are trying to help or trying to serve. And that tends to linger longer afterwards and those sad and depressed feelings may return later, but the more I serve, the longer it takes for those feelings to come back.

Josh: That’s wonderful. I’ve found that the emotional state and the reason that we do something is the most important factor. There have been times in my life where I’ve tried to serve, as you say, but I’ve done it with the motivation of fear or shame. Like you have to do this or you’re bad, or you have to do this to avoid being bad. And so I think that for me one thing that has helped a great deal is being very patient with myself and being very honest with myself, allowing myself to feel bad and allowing myself to feel bad and being very compassionate with myself. And saying there’s a reason that I feel bad. And Brene Brown says we should talk to ourselves the way that we would talk to someone we love. So talk to yourself that way. If someone you really really loved was sad or depressed, how would you talk to them? Would say that doesn’t matter, how you feel doesn’t matter? No we wouldn’t. We would be empathetic. Even just sitting with them and allowing them to feel validated. I think that that helps us as well. If we can learn how to develop that skill with ourselves, and to validate our own feelings and say why do you feel bad? And let yourself talk. And listen to yourself.

Jason: You got it spot on! That is a great example. That reminds me of some things I’ve done in the past when I had a negative emotion that doesn’t go away. No matter if I’ve gone out and helped someone. I might be laying in my bed and be completely overwhelmed and depressed, and I’ll pull out my journal and I’ll answer three questions. Why do I feel this way? How can I fix this or accept it the way it is? And what makes me happy? And with the second question I always commit to doing something to change it if I can. But if there isn’t anything I can do it’s about accepting it the way it is.

Josh: And allowing yourself to be enough just as you are.

Jason: That’s right.

Josh: Well, thank you again. This was a quick jump into this chapter. Go to the website. It’s gatewaygears.com and you can find the book and purchase the book.

Jason: And also if you want to find more episodes you can also go to socialthepowerofrelationships.com

Show Notes:

Welcome to our Podcast. Here at Social we explore ways to connect and develop relationships.

To Review and buy the book This Link will take you to Amazon.

Brené Brown and her TED talk on vulnerability

Johann Hari and his TED talk on addiction

Addiction and the Rat Park experiments

Transcription:

Josh: Hello and welcome to Social, the power of Relationships podcast. Today we want to introduce the podcast and the purpose of the podcast. Jason wrote a fantastic book called Social: The Power Of Relationships, and that’s what this podcast is based on.

0:44 Jason: What do we want to accomplish with the podcast? The first thing is we want to help people understand how to network and why social can be so powerful in your relationships and in your life.

Josh: We’re trying to present to everyone the power that can be found in relationships, and therefore, why you should be seeking relationships, and furthermore how to do that; how to build those relationships.

1:50 Josh: What is the power of a relationship? I think the power is love and it’s connection. But what does that do for us in our lives?

Jason: It brings us fulfillment. And it brings us opportunities. When you have a relationship with someone, you’re able to be open with them and network and connect and help each other pursue whatever it is you want to fulfill in your life.

2:20 Jason: I went backpacking around the world for nine months with less than $3,000. That was one of the hardest things I had ever done, but the only way I was able to accomplish that feat was connecting with other people. Building relationships and networking. I spent most of that time painting houses, managing clothing stores, milking cows on a farm, taking care of horses on a horse farm, and hitch-hiking. Hitch-hiking is another one of those major ones where you have to really know people and be able to build that rapport quickly.

Josh: So do you feel like you learned most of that while backpacking or did you already know how to do these things before you left?

3:30 Jason: I had a pretty good idea before I left and the trip was a way for me to practice and hone my skills. Before, I struggled a lot as a child trying to make friends and connect with people. I grew up as a homeschooler in the backwoods of Virginia. I loved my childhood, but it really made me kind of disconnected from reality in a sense. I really didn’t know how to make friends, and my interests were really different from normal people. I loved camping out in the woods with just a pocket knife. I loved playing pretend, which is similar to other kids, but I took it to another level.

Josh: You can find a group of people that are interested in anything that you are interested in.

5:10 Jason: I first started making connections when I served a proselyting mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints for two years. During that time I learned one of the key principles that has led me, and that was really serving other people, and committing my life to really loving and helping someone. On my mission that was helping the strangers that we came across on the street. At one point I completely put aside the idea of trying to share my faith verbally because people don’t always accept that well. But people do accept service. And I found that you share what you believe by how you live your life. And I spent most of that time serving, helping other people. And these strangers that I could find, helping them any way I could, whether they needed someone to talk to, or helping them with their gardens and things, and that started me on this path of really understanding how to build these relationships.

Josh: Because you were getting something from that experience. What was it that you were getting from building these relationships in this way that you’re describing that you weren’t getting anywhere else?

Jason: I was getting fulfillment. I found purpose. And peace. That’s what I found most of all.

6:50 Josh: I’ve done a lot of research into addictions over the years, and one of my favorite authors and researchers is a woman named Brene Brown. She’s just brilliant. Another one is Johann Hari, who did a Ted Talk about the real cause of addiction, which is really fascinating. He says that basically the root cause of addiction is disconnection. And what we need to heal addiction is connection. Genuine, deep, vulnerable connection.

7:50 Josh: Over in Portugal they had a really big drug problem for years, and they were putting all this money into fighting the drug war. Which we have here in America. And we’re experiencing the same thing they were, which is they were losing. Majorly losing. They were fighting and arresting and doing raids and trying to blow up these drug cartels. And they were losing big time. And what they finally did, back in the early 2000’s, they said we’re going to decriminalize the use of all drugs, and then we’re going to spend the money that we were using on fighting the drug dealers and such on drug rehab facilities where we help people learn how to reconnect into society. And so instead of arresting people for using drugs, they would get them into these facilities and help them connect with other people, and their drug usage rates have dropped dramatically over the last decade or so. And that is the power of relationships.

9:12 Jason: Another one that comes to mind is this other [experiment] on lab rats where they had placed these lab rats by themselves and gave them two options: they could drink water or they could drink water laced with a really addictive drug. And the rats would drink the addictive drug to death. And then a few years down the line they decided to try the experiment again, but this time instead of having the rats be alone, they put them in basically “rat heaven” where they had all these other rats that they could associate with and they had toys there. Things that these rats could enjoy. And they still placed those two options of the water or the laced water. And very few of the rats went for the addictive drug. A few of them would drink occasionally, but they would never kill themselves with it.

Josh: Rats are social creatures like we are. They need connection. They need other rats to connect to. And they also had a lot of toys and things to play with so they had lots of ways to engage in their world.

11:15 Josh: So I think that moving forward in this podcast, what you can learn from us is to learn the skills to be able to develop relationships in your life that will bring this kind of fulfilling power into your life that will help you in many ways to be able to find joy, happiness, peace. To be able to find help overcoming addictions. To be able to find help with depression or anxiety or anything like that.

Jason: Helping with networking. Not only having the concepts in mind of how to be social but also how to find the right people to connect with. With the type of interests that you have. The type of strengths that you have. And when you get to those places where those people hang out, then know how to interact with them. What to say, and how to be yourself.

Josh: Because the book goes into some detail about the mechanics of what to do. We like to talk about how we need relationships, but we don’t know how to do it. And that’s one thing that I really liked about reading your book. It goes into some detail and it gives some practical examples and practical skills to be able to form a party or go to a place where you don’t know anybody and fit in.

Jason: How do you deal with those anxieties when you come into a crowd with hundreds of people?

Josh: Yeah. And the book goes into some depth on that. So that’s what you can expect from us in this conversation and we are so thrilled to have you on board. And hope that we can make connections with you through this podcast and help you learn how to make more connections and deepen the ones that you already have.

Jason: Come with us on this journey as we explore the concept of being social. And thanks so much for listening today guys, and as we go throughout this podcast we will share all the different things in the book, but if you’d like to get ahold of those things right away you can go to SocialThePower.com and sign up for our emailing list or you can buy the book there or on Amazon.com.

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