Transcript

Inside Job · Wanzology

Inside Job Hey, hey, hey, hey!! Welcome to another episode of WANZOLOGY!!! I am your host, The Wanz!! I hope that this broadcast finds you in good spirits and good health and good fortune. Today I would like to talk about something that I've mentioned a bunch of times before. I know that I keep talking about, you know, knowing the difference between ‘your-self’, two words and yourself, one word. And I want to take one side of that coin and get into a little, get in a little deeper. When I talk about knowing the difference between ‘your-self’, two words and yourself, one word, one of those is everything that happens inside in that nasty four inches between your ears. That is the two word yourself, you're dealing with your inner self. The funny thing is, is that the mechanisms that work in there dictate what actions you're going to take. What feels good, what sounds good, what happened the last time you tried whatever it is that you're about to try again. The downside is that inner voice, that inner mechanism, can lead you astray. It can lead you places that you didn't intend to go, get you to say things that you didn't mean to say. Maybe even do things you didn't want to do. Life is an inside job. If you haven't got the insides figured out, the outsides are gonna be much, much more challenging, because what you think you become, or so they say, I’m a firm believer in, you give your best effort, and then you evaluate the results you don't try to manufacture the results. You just analyze them, compare them against similar results. The whole idea is to just be a little bit better than you were the last time, not to take over the world or control your life. You can't control your life. Okay? That's a fallacy. Like thinking you can hold a puff of smoke. As brilliant as human beings are, they cannot manipulate things that happen outside their bodies. You can't make something appear that isn't there. You can react to a whole bunch of things, and then all of a sudden the thing that you want will appear, but you can't like hold your hand out and say, I could really use $500 and WING!!!, $500 appears, doesn’t work like that. “I really wish I could find a job.”, ZING!!! I have a job! It doesn't work like that. How things work is humans are reactionary. We react to the stimuli in the world around us. When I say stimuli, it could be the weather, it could be food you ate, it could be memories, either way, all that stuff lives inside that wonderful four inches between your ears and all that is is thoughts. You can think anything that you want, but when you do something, then that's when it actually matters. This inside job, what does that really mean? What that means is you can have a positive attitude on the outside and be totally falling apart on the inside. You can pretend or act ‘as-if’ you've got it all together, inside you are scrambling to stay upright 'cause you don't know which way is up or down. You want to be cool, you wanna make sure that nobody actually sees that you're struggling 'cause God knows how they feel, what they think is important or should it be? Really it shouldn't, and this is where it's difficult. It's counterintuitive. You don't live your life for the appearance that others will get. You live your life to achieve the goals that you set for yourself, you wanna be happy, you want to be moderately financially secure, you you want to have a love interest. You want to have kids, maybe you want success on a level that only you can determine. What does anybody else have to do with that? What does what anybody thinks about you have to do with that? Have you ever just asked yourself, why am I doing this? Why am I worried about what people are going to say or think? A thought never really hurt anybody, and here's the really, really finest point, nobody can read minds. You may think somebody quote unquote ‘knows’, but if you just wait five seconds, don't say anything, what you expect doesn't appear. It doesn't manifest, does it? What you tell yourself on the inside is the catalyst for what you do on the outside, it has been said: “Living is the constant struggle between the values thought of the actions taken, and all of those match the will of God.”, now even if you're not religious, God can always stand for Good-Orderly-Direction, 'cause Lord knows, there are people out there who really need orderly direction. Sometimes, I am one of them, no question, but the problem is how can you tell when your insides are leading you the wrong way? How can you tell before you actually reach a dead end that you're heading down a dead end, and then it's not gonna be the result you wish it would be? Well, there's only really two mechanisms, two answers to that question: One, you go and you just keep going until you can't go anymore, which can be painful, which can be taxing or, search those memory banks for what feels familiar, what looks familiar, what sounds familiar, is this a feeling you've had before? The odds are pretty good, you have. So what'd you do the last time? I had a psychiatrist who hipped me to a concept that I've grasped onto with both hands. He said, “Why do you fear performing or fear that you're any good when you have all this evidence, Michael? You have all this evidence leading up to now that is contrary to your doubt.”, what that meant was, I didn't think I was good enough, I didn't think I was a good enough singer, performer, whatever. I just wasn't good enough on so many levels, wasn't good enough for love, wasn't good enough for a job, wasn't good enough for a performance or a solo or a song. Yet I can go back to various parts of my history and see where I've had love, I've had a job, I've had performances and sung songs, and they all were wonderful. So what makes this time any different from that? Circumstance. I'm not the person I used to be, and my life circumstances are different. Meaning you can't just repeat what you did before and expect it to work. Everything changes, and if you think you're the only one who changes or that situations, circumstances in your life change, why would you try to do the same thing in a different circumstance? So how do you determine what exactly to do, how do you use this evidence? How do you determine that, ‘Hey, this feels familiar, and last time I did ‘X’, well maybe now I should do y?’, how do you determine that? How do you know? Answer? You don't. It's your best guess, your best guess. I think it's really telling that humans have lost the connection with their younger selves. If you can go back as far as you can remember, I can go back to being six, seven years old and between six, seven years old and 10 years old, I can think of a lot of things that I learned. When I go from 10 to 15, I can think of a lot of things that I learned, and then when I go from 15 to 20, same thing. So why is it so outlandish that a person wouldn't go back over how and what they've learned before in order to instill the confidence that they're able to learn now? “I'm still worried that somebody's going to think I'm stupid.”, “I don't want to look like a fool.” Who gives a crap what you look like? The old song man: Everybody plays a fool sometimes. No exception to the rule, listen baby, May be factual may be cruel, I ain't lyin’, But everybody plays a fool. An old song with a very, very timely purpose to remind us that being foolish, acting foolish, looking foolish, not a death sentence, the world will go on, 'cause Lord knows you've looked foolish before. Hell, you've done foolish things more than twice, and yet here you are. So, this inside job is just exactly what it is, it's work on the inside. Working on your insides usually involves three things: self-compassion, self-acceptance and self-love, which are all three different things, especially for different people. Until you can accept you are exactly who you are, it's very difficult, not impossible, but it's very difficult for you to get along with those little voices in your head. Until you can practice self-compassion and forgive yourself for making a mistake, reminding yourself that when you were younger, making mistakes was how you learned things, life will be different and every challenge will be scary. Until you can take those first two and appreciate them for exactly what they are and love ‘your-self’, two words. Care about yourself above all others. Everything is going to be difficult. You have to be somewhat selfish in order to exist in this world, but all that selfishness is the key to self-preservation, as well as self-compassion, self-acceptance and self-love. If you take care of ‘your-self’, that makes you more available to take care of other people, places, and things if you take care of ‘your-self’ first, you become an example, not only to yourself, but to others. If it's okay to act like a fool and look like a fool, you do something foolish. Look around, are people crying because they saw you look like a fool? Are they laughing? Are they smiling? Usually smiles aren't bad. More times than not, smiles are good!! But taking care of this, this inside work, this inside job, nobody can really do that but you. You are the one who has to know about you. So over the next little while, be it a day or a couple hours or whatever, I'd really like to challenge you to maybe even write out on a piece of paper, divided in three columns, and then put self-compassion, self-acceptance, and self-love, and see how many examples you can list in all three of those columns. Once you get as far as you can go on that, we have a smaller piece of paper, list out how you could possibly get more of those things for your-self, two words. It is a constant battle in one's mind between what we think and what we know, and when we lose confidence in what we think, it's really difficult to find the courage to do something. When we lose confidence in what we know, that's very bad. That's where you have to really be good at going back over the evidence that got you from there to here where you are right now, because none of us got here just by chance or by luck. We knew some things. We still know some things and we still can learn some things. So, the challenge is to focus on learning more about the inside of you. Why do you think the way that you think? Compare that to the way somebody else thinks about the same thing, like a brownie. If you like a brownie, why does someone else like a brownie? Or if you like polka music, why does someone else like polka? Just finding out this information can be a bit helpful, and I do say a bit because inherently to make it to almost any age, we have to ‘know’ things or we're going to ‘learn’ things. Hopefully…hopefully, looking on the inside of you will allow you to do both. That is it!! Let's work on the inside people so that we can be better on the outside! Thanks for tuning into this episode! It's been kind of weird, huh? Introspection always is very strange, but it's also very powerful. I hope that you go on and have yourself a better day, even if your day is fantastic, and I hope you have a really, really good day. Be good and I will see you in the next episode later.