Transcript

Out Of Control · Wanzology

Out Of Control Howdy, howdy-doooty, howdy-dooty, dooty-dooty!! Welcome, welcome, welcome to another episode of WANZOLOTY!! I am your host, The Wanz! Welcome! How are you? I, I'm sorry, I didn't hear that, how are you again? Oh, yes. Oh yes, you're stressed out. I've been hearing a lot about that. A lot of people have been really stressed out, like mega stressed out. Yeah, there's a lot going on in the world today, especially if you live in a certain country of America. There's a lot going on. I tried to warn a lot of people that this was what was gonna happen, but, they didn't listen to me and that's fine, that's neither here nor there, 'cause here we are not there. I've spoken to more than a few acquaintances and friends over the past couple of weeks. They too are slightly overwhelmed with all that's going on and their first inclination is to bury their heads in the sand and I don't want to hear any more of it, it just makes me more upset and I get that there's nothing wrong with that at all. There are those of us who lean into all of that, we're figuring out how to fight the good fight and have all the debates in the world, and that's kind of what we do, that's fine too, nobody says that you have to conform to one, two, or three ways of doing things. You're an individual. Be an individual. Meaning, if you don't feel like engaging, don't engage. If you don't feel like keeping up with things, don't keep up with things. Just be careful that you have an opinion about something you chose not to keep up with. 'cause that could be a little annoying for other people. A little hypocritical. Besides, how do you know that your point of view, your addition to whatever the discussion is, wouldn't be the answer that everyone is looking for? How do you know? You don't, and I don't either. Nobody does. I've been nursing a cold for the past couple of weeks, and, uh, I'm really hoping it goes away soon as I despise being sick. I, I will do everything in my mental power to tell myself I'm not sick, even though it feels like I'm sick. But back to the topic, the topic at hand, which is, do you feel that you're not in control at all and everything is out of control? You feel like the whole world is just spinning off its axis and you can't do a damn thing about it? Do you feel afraid of what the next thing is going to be? Well, maybe you feel anxiety simply because you don't know what's gonna happen next. All these things are related in the sense that you are feeling them one thing or another, maybe if you at the same time, but either way, the common denominator is you. I can totally relate. There are times when I feel completely and totally overwhelmed with all the things that are going on in life, my life, as it sits. I think I've had the blessing of not only having a program that keeps me sober, but it also keeps me what they call ‘right sized’. I'm not too big and I'm not too little, I'm just the right size. That's all they ever shoot to be. So here's the deal, you have control over every single thing inside of your skin, pretty much. Not a hundred percent, but yeah, that's your realm, that is your kingdom. Everything inside of your skin is yours. Don't want to trim your nails, let 'em grow. Don't want to get a haircut, let it grow. It's coming from inside of you, you don't have to do anything about it if you don't wanna. Now your breath, you should probably do something about that 'cause you know, it comes out of you, but it, yeah, it's, there's other people involved so. Don't be so selfish, and I wanted to make sure that you kind of have the distinction between what goes on on the inside of you versus what's going on on the outside of you, because the things that are on the inside of you are those things that you can do something about. Those things on the outside, not so much. In fact, not at all! Lord knows it feels like everything is changing in the wrong way so fast. No one really has a clue of what to do, and that's scary. Not knowing is insanely scary, I get that. I've said this before, you've got to realize you didn't get to where you are right now just by luck, you've learned many, many, many things. You've put some of those things into practice. There have been challenging situations that were painful, scary, maybe even a little dangerous, but you got through them. You got through them to get to whatever was next, didn't you? The answer is yes. Why? Because if the answer were no, then I'd be talking to a dead person right now 'cause you wouldn't have made it, but you did. You're hearing my voice. Congratulations, you made it this far, and I, I am one standing in your corner cheering you on to go farther. But how are you gonna do that? It's not simple. It's easy, not simple. I would normally say it's simple, just not always that easy. This is easy because it's just a decision and because you control everything inside of you. This decision is completely and totally up to you as most of your decisions are, but can you decide to just keep everything that's outside of your skin? Outside of your skin? Do you know how to do that? It's hard these days. There's, there's a lot of social media and news casts and red hats, and people are freaking out in the stock market and people being swooped up off the street and. Yeah, it's, it's a nightmare I get it, I get it. But none of that is on the inside of your skin. None of that has climbed through your ear hole into your brain to like eat the gray matter! How you perceive your world is up to you. What you see is what you see and then comes the next part what do you think about it? Now you can choose to think, “Oh my God, it's horrible! Oh my God!!”, or you can think it's like, “Ooh, that's not good!”, or maybe even, “I feel so sorry for those people, glad it wasn't me!”, or what about, “How could anybody do that?” There are a myriad of ways that you can interpret, perceive, what's going on in the world, and once it comes inside, then you have all the power in the world to shape it into whatever your perspective wants to be. How you see things is always gonna be yours. What you see may not be what you perceive, what you feel, smell, hear, everything that comes in through those five senses, you may not have any control over those things coming in, but you'll always have control over what to think about those things that have come in. Some people believe that if they don't pay attention to what's going on, it won't affect them, and that's not necessarily true. If you don't know what the weather's gonna be, you could have gone to work when it was sunny and when you came out it was raining and you didn't bring a coat or an umbrella, or you walked to work. You're invited over to a friend's house, oops!!! You were supposed to bring the dip, but you didn't. Now, these aren't earth shattering things, but the difference is, one, you were requested to do something, so that means that information came in and for some reason it didn't register and you forgot to bring the dip. That happens, but the other one getting caught in unexpected weather, well, there are these things called ‘forecasts’. Oh yes, that's right! They're on the news usually I think still I've been since I was a kid and that was a hell of a long time ago. Weather forecast, there is a good chance this is what is going to happen with the weather tomorrow. It's gonna be this warm, this cold, this wet, this dry, a forecast and you're probably saying to yourself, “Yeah, but the weather people are never right, they're never right!!” They're not supposed to be right, t hey're supposed to be accurate, not precise. Precise is. We'll meet at this Starbucks at this time, on this day. Being accurate would be, let's have coffee next week. I'm trying to get you to notice that the things that come into your body, those things that are getting you agitated, you can be accurate with most of them and precise with absolutely none of them, but I bet your expectation is to be precise with all of them, and that's the part that becomes overwhelming. You are only human. Being human has its challenges. One of those challenges is self-regulating, being able to manage all the stimuli that comes into your body through those five senses and for some it's very difficult. I get that for some it's very difficult. Some don't even understand how to do that at all. It's like, uh, I don't know what I'm gonna do. It's just too freaky. I'm, I'm, I stop. I quit. I quit. I'm done. Which doesn't solve anything. It just delays the inevitable. Sooner or later, you're gonna have to come to that crossroads and make a choice. That's what humans do. Humans make choices. They get to, you get to. What are you gonna do? It's always up to you. You could do nothing. That's a choice you make. You could do a little, it's another choice, you could do a lot or anything in between, but first, before you do something I would suggest you take a couple of seconds to understand what in the world is happening. All this stuff is coming in. It's like somebody opened a box of a thousand-piece puzzle set and then just turned it over and dumped all the pieces on the ground. They weren't nice enough to put it on the table, they just dumped it on the ground! So what you, you gotta pick up each one of those pieces. Are you gonna put 'em back in the box? Are you gonna put 'em on the table? Are you gonna start to put it together? See, told you, you're gonna have to make a choice. Oh yeah. The, the popular one. You're not, you're not gonna touch it at all. You get to make the choice. It is not easy to be able to control those things coming in, but it is easy to arrange them once they're in, and there's two different ways of doing this well, there's many different ways. I have two different ways of doing it. What I do is I find the most overwhelming thing, and I try to knock its knees out. I try to take on the biggest thing first, get the big hard stuff out of the way. In my mind, if this is the big, hairy, gnarly thing and I defeat that, everything else is gonna be a little easier to deal with. Or, you could do the start from the other end. How do you eat an elephant? Well, it depends, are you gonna start at the nose of the tail? Pick one! You're still gonna only be able to eat it one bite at a time. That's what I'm saying. All these things that come into your world, all these things that stress you out, line them up against the wall, find the tallest one, find the gnarliest one and go up and punch it in the mouth!! Or kick it out, or make it go sit in the corner and wait so you can deal with the other ones! Don't think you can do this? You already have. You already have. You've already been in that situation where you have to be in three places at the same time, your phone is buzzing, you're driving, it's a commercial that you can't stand that's on the radio, or it's a song that you never want to ever hear again, but traffic is so gnarly you can't take five seconds to turn the radio off, so you suffer through that!!! Take a deep breath, turn the radio off. Maybe pull off to the side, pull into a parking lot, take a breather. All those places you're supposed to be, you're not in any of them, so that's pretty fair, and your phone turn it off. There is no requirement that you have to answer it. It has the ability to capture information even when it's not turned on. Amazing!!! You get to make the choice. You always have the power. You always will have the power. It's inside of you. What you have to do is practice noticing when things start to become overwhelming. The better you are at recognizing when things begin to become overwhelming, the easier it will be to line these things up against the wall and find the tallest one or the shortest one or the cutest and deal with it. That's what being a human is all about, how you deal with things. How you manage, dare I say, ‘control’ you as you wander through this happy go lucky, crazy ass time that we're all living in right now. And I'm not saying that you have to engage, I'm not saying that at all. If you don't want to watch the news because it upsets you too much, don't watch the news…because it upsets you too much. But make sure that you do something nice for yourself instead of watching the news. Treat yourself nice. If you're gonna take care of yourself, take care of yourself. Don't just leave yourself out on the porch while it's raining, cold and drizzly and whatever, let yourself in the house. Get a warm blanket, roll up and get comfortable, have some soup, something!! The world is out of control, Newsflash, it will never be in your control, ever. It will always do what it do and so will you. You get to do what you do and that's what evens the playing field. You can choose whether you engage or not. This is fact. You can choose how you engage, when you engage, how much you engage, and for how long. Or you can just walk on by, yeah, told you I got a cold. So this week I want you to concentrate, not concentrate, don't work that hard, I just want you to take a couple of minutes, seconds, I don't know, just take some time and realize that at any given moment there are tons of things coming in through your eyes, through your nose, through your ears, and you can focus on one of them at a time and understand how you would deal with them. You could do a lot of things. You could ‘just throw your hands in the air and wave them like you just don't care!!’, or you could just line 'em up against the wall like a firing squad and knock 'em off one by one. But I would practice this 'cause I don't see the world getting any easier to deal with anytime soon. And we need you around. More importantly, you need YOU around because if you are not here, what are these others gonna do? What are those other people who care about you, love you are part of your family, part of your clique, part of your set, your squad, your workmates? What are all these people gonna do without you? We all know that the world revolves around you. It's your world, we just live in it. Well, you better get yourself together then, or else somebody else will be in charge of your world. How's that gonna sit? You used to have all the control in the world, not anymore, and then somebody has control over your world. What are you gonna do then? While you have it, while you have it, please, I'm not begging. I'm just suggesting strongly that you take some time and try to understand what the hell's going on inside and outside of you. You have more power than you think. You just have to trust it. And if you go back over your life, there have been stressful situations that you came out on the other side. Some of them may be not so good, some of them may be stellar and everywhere in between. The whole point is that you've gotten through those things so that you can be here for these and I will leave you to take these things on, so you can get through 'em, 'cause you will. I believe you. I believe IN you, and I believe ON you!! You're gonna make it! We need you!! Never forget that!! We, us!! We need YOU!!! With that, I'm looking forward already to seeing you next week. Peace and hair grease. Remember, keep on breathing. When you stop breathing, that's when you got a problem…later!!