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Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to this episode of the Stable Parenting Podcast. My name's Shane Jacob, your host, and I thank you for taking your time to be here with me today. You know I appreciate it. I appreciate you taking your time. You could be anywhere, almost, but you are here with me and I'm gonna do my best to make it damn worthwhile for you.
Here we go. Let's see. Today, I'm gonna begin by giving you a quote by an amazing human being that I know very well. The quote is, here it goes:
"Fully accepting ourselves and unconditionally loving ourselves is not a good idea. It is our duty to mankind, for without a commitment to pursue this ideal, we cannot fully love the people we deeply care about or make the contribution to the world that we were destined to make. Disregarding this endeavor not only limits ourselves, but we limit our full sphere of influence."
I love that quote. And that, by the way, is by yours truly, me, Shane Jacob.
In Stable Living, I teach five skills to develop yourself-beliefs, to be able to believe what you want to believe about yourself, to be able to know or more know or more fully understand what I already know about you. Okay?
And what I'm beginning to more and more hopefully know about me. And that is that you and I are invaluable and priceless and amazing as we are right now, right here today. Okay?
Because the more that you know that you are that priceless, invaluable soul, and that you're worth all of the abundance and goodness that this world has to offer, the better your life is gonna be. And the better, like I said, that's how you make life better for all the people around you that you care about and make your contribution to the world.
Step one, skill one, first skill, number one, is what I call one-up harmful words, okay? That's step one. And it's a big one.
What that means, one-up harmful words, what I mean by that is to speak, to think and speak kindly about yourself.
Now, we talk about horses and humans on this podcast. And let me just tell you one thing: horses know what you're thinking about. Okay? They don't just sense fear and they don't just sense your inhibitions. It's a little, it's quite a bit deeper than that. Okay?
They couldn't articulate exactly what's going on in your thought process, but I'm here to tell you: horses know how you feel about yourself. And what is inside of you is coming out when you interact with them. And it is so amazing to evidence that, to see it.
Okay, we do that in some of our live demos and I see it every day. As soon as I finish recording this podcast, I'm gonna go out, get on my couple of my young horses that I'm training, and what is inside of me is gonna come out. And they are gonna feel it, and they are gonna react to it, and it is gonna determine how our ride goes today, how our interaction today with them goes. Okay.
Now, people know a lot more than we think. A lot of times we want to think, well, all this stuff that I'm saying, and all these little things don't matter, and whatever's going on with me internally, I'm going to override that and come out however I want to, and it's going to have no impact. And I'm here to tell you it does not work that way.
People know, and they can tell. And even if you can't, what is inside of us, what we truly at our core believe, like I've talked about just recently on this podcast and many times, is that what we truly believe to be true about ourselves is coming out in ways that we don't even understand.
And unless we choose to decide how that's going to go, what I mean is, unless we choose what we want to believe about ourselves on purpose and commit to a pursuit of believing that, then we're going to be at the mercy of whatever our brain gives us to work with.
And most of the time, I would say all of the time in my experience, if you just go on autopilot and default and unintention, then we don't really end up being able to give all we can, don't become all that we can be. We can't give all we can to the people of the world. We can't make our contribution to the world, which is what my quote in the beginning led with.
Back to the first skill, which is one-up harmful words. Let me explain exactly what that means. First of all, words and the thoughts in our minds mean things.
What is a thought specifically, Shane? I will tell you what I mean by a thought: it's a sentence or a phrase in our mind. Okay, that's a thought. So the words that come out, the thoughts that don't come out, or if they do, either one, that's a thought.
And words are things that come out where we can hear, people can hear words coming out of our mouth. So they all mean things.
A lot of times, I don't know if I am working on becoming more and more and more aware of my words and what they mean, because words mean things. And the words that we use about ourselves mean a lot.
Words in general mean things. I mean, we say so many things, a lot of times we just, for so many different reasons, and half the time, the words that we're using, we're not even really thinking about what they mean and what effect they're having.
Here's an example. When's the last time you said or you heard somebody say, “Well, hey Shane, to tell you the truth,” or “Well, to be honest with you, blah, blah, blah”? You know, people say that to me a lot.
I hear that in the world and just, you know, with random people as I go throughout the world and through my life experience. And I'm like, “Well, to tell you the truth…” I just think, wait, what I want to say, and sometimes I do, is like, “Stop. Hold on a minute. You mean you're going to tell me the truth?” And they're like, “Yeah.” And I'm like, “You're kind of implying to me, let me just tell you what meaning I'm making out of that, like, that you haven't been before. I mean, why are you noting that now on this particular piece?” Just a fun thought.
You ever, I hear this too. People are like, “All right, well, we'll see you later. Take care.” And they'll say, “Well, hey, don't work too hard.” Like, “Don't work too hard?” What does that mean? Why did you say that to me?
How would I know if I'm working too hard? And I mean, would I think working too hard is the same as you? And then, what detrimental effect, why are you warning me against working too hard? Like, I don't really get that.
Okay, or this is a terrible one. I used to say this: “You know, I'd complain, but nobody will listen.” “You know, I'd complain, but nobody cares.”
“How you doing?” “I'd complain and nobody cares.” Here's one I used to use myself, I may have came up with this myself, I don't know, maybe not. But I used to say, people are like, “Well, how are you today, Shane?” And I'd just say, “Do you want the truth or something more pleasant?” And just look at them like that.
And it'd be like, but I mean, I don't say that anymore. I've made a practice not to say that, even though it was kind of funny sometimes. But it wasn't helping me. And really, it wasn't helping them other than get a quick chuckle. And it wasn't worth it because I was implying to myself, it meant something to me, okay, whether I thought it did or not. It meant that something was wrong, something very unpleasant was going on with me. Okay. And it may or may not have been.
So first of all, I'm just going to ask you to consider the first step that you need to do anything, which is to have the desire to consider looking at what you're using for your own language, your own self-talk, your thoughts, and your beliefs that you use, your thoughts and your words that you're saying and thinking about yourself.
Okay, because here's the thing: it is your responsibility to decide what those are going to be, if you care about it, and to do something about it. Okay? And you can do with it whatever you will.
Okay, but here's the deal, just let me explain this.
You have your very own unique super computer. No one gave it to you. Even identical twins have different DNA. Yours is totally unique. By supercomputer, I mean your brain. It's the only one like it in the world.
Then add on top of that your unique life experience. Nobody, no one has had the exact same experience you do. You combine those two things, you are your total unique. Out of all the millions and billions of people that have been on this earth and will come to this earth, you are a one of a kind. Isn't that amazing to think about?
And so here's what happens. This mind, this chatter, all this noise, it's estimated 60,000, it's estimated 6,300, I don't know. But let me just say this. How many thoughts actually go through in our mind?
Okay, I said what a thought was, a phrase or a sentence through our brain. 6,300 or 63,000, thousands and thousands and thousands per day. Okay, we know that thoughts create how we feel, and we know that how we feel is everything because it determines what drives us to action.
Feelings drive our actions, and our actions end up creating our results in this lifetime. Okay.
So we have this amazing brain, and it is like the latest version. You have the latest brain version that is available on planet Earth. The most evolved, the most up-to-date, the most updated brain.
And it has two, I'm going to give you two of the pieces of the brain in simple language that I understand, which is not much, but this is important. Okay?
You have the amygdala, or the lizard brain, sometimes it's called, which is your basic default natural brain that says, I'm here to seek pleasure, avoid pain, and conserve energy. Okay?
We have that part of our brain, and then we have the prefrontal cortex, right? We've all heard that. And that's the thinking part that helps us analyze and reason and make decisions for in the future. Okay.
Now, unless we choose to do something about the thoughts that we're thinking, all of this input combined with our original brain pattern, our unique DNA, along with our life experience, something will happen, a circumstance will happen to us, we'll wake up and we'll be going, all the things that are happening right now, okay?
All the input you get, your brain will, it is, +it makes, it puts AI to shame. It immediately makes meaning out of everything that's happening combined with your unique DNA, and it spits back out a thought. And that thought creates a feeling, and that equals an action. And then here you go. Okay?
it makes, it puts AI to shame. It immediately makes meaning out of everything that's happening combined with your unique DNA, and it spits back out a thought. And that thought creates a feeling, and that equals an action. And then here you go. Okay?
So the thoughts that we have, okay, are creating our results in this lifetime. And if we just allow it to be our lizard brain, not our thinking brain, our prefrontal cortex, we're just going to be at the effect of whatever happens to us, right?
We're just going to kind of bounce. You can get by, and people, millions of people have, right? And a lot of people do. And that's okay. But not if you know, and you want, and you desire to do something to improve. Okay?
To be better than, to use more of your God-given potential. Okay? Because it's available to you. And like I began with, it's going to allow you to give more and love more and make a bigger contribution for the moments that you're here on this earth.
So you can't manage 60,000 thoughts a day or even 6,000, but you can manage some of them. And you can become more and more aware of what you're thinking, because those thoughts and words that you're using about yourself, they matter.
And we are not, we're separate from the thoughts that our brain's giving us. Okay?
Stephen Covey, Stephen R. Covey, author of The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, said that the fact that you can think about your thoughts proves that you are not your thoughts.
Just because you think something, that just means that your computer gave you an output. Now, what you do with it, that is what you get to choose to do. You can either accept it, you can actually change it to a different thought, and therefore get a different feeling, and then for a different action, and therefore get a different result. Okay, if you choose to.
Most of our thoughts, according to Brooke Castillo, are unsupervised, haphazard, unconscious, and pre-programmed from our past history. They're just input we're reacting to. So our lives become this unconscious response to unexamined thoughts. And it's kind of sad.
To know that if you know how to manage your computer, that your life and the people's lives around you can be so much more enhanced. And that's what we're going for in this.
Okay, so the goal is not to manage all your thoughts, 60,000 a day. The goal is to become more intentional about what you're saying and thinking about yourself. Okay?
So the question is: what is good to think about myself? I mean, if all these words, if it all matters, what's good and what's bad?
Some of them are pretty obvious, right? “I'm an idiot.” “I can't believe I did that.” “What's the matter with me?” “I can't hold my stuff together.” “I'm not good with names. I never have been.” “I'm not good with numbers.” “I'm not good in crowds.” “I can't stand…” whatever. “I can't tolerate it when…” you know, this and that and the other.
Those are pretty, they're kind of blatant, right? We kind of know, we can hear that and we can say, hey, wait a minute. I'm not an idiot. Okay. And if we want to, we can stop and recognize that. That's pretty recognizable.
There's some other words, phrases that we use that are more subtle that I'd ask you to consider. And those are phrases like: “I should.” Okay? “I should have done that.” Or “I should do this.” “I should, should, should, should.” Okay.
Most all of the time, and possibly all of the time, when you use the word should regarding yourself, okay, what's happening unbeknownst to us is that our brain perceives that as “you should have, but you didn't.” So therefore, something's wrong with you. You are deficient. You are defective. Okay?
These are the thoughts that are coming in your subconscious. That's what your brain's feeding you when you say, “Man, I should have done that,” but you didn't, something's wrong with you. Because you didn't.
Because if you would have been better, you would have been okay. If you would have been a good person, if you were an amazing person, you wouldn't have done that. But you did. Because you should have. Okay? You should have.
So be careful with the word should.
I'm really working on eliminating should when I am referring to me. And I think I've almost got it done. If you catch me, put it in a comment, ever on this podcast using the word should about myself because I would like to know because I'm working on that.
So what about I want to? I think I want to is better, but how about I'm going to rather than I should? I'm going to. Or when you recognize something that you didn't do that maybe you wish you would have, maybe you just frame it in a different way. I'm going to do this.
I had this planned, but I didn't do it. And so I'm going to do it then. Or if you recognize, we've talked about this before, when you recognize that you've done something that you wish you wouldn't have. Okay. And so then you go back and you frame it in a way. It's all how you frame it. It's in the language. It's actually in the words and thoughts, and you get to pick what they are, and they determine you and your results.
How about I need to, I need to do this? Well, that's better than I should or I should have. But still, this implies that you need to, but you're not doing it. So, I mean, do you feel some guilt that's happening subconsciously? Because it's happening. I need to do this. Unless you follow it up with, need to, and I'm going to go ahead and do it. Okay.
What about teasing and joking? This has recently come up just in my house. Okay. We've been talking a little bit about the intent of, you know, like making jokes to people.
And I'll tell you, full disclosure on this for me, is that sometimes I push back with people. And I push back in a sarcastic and it can be a kind of a hurtful, kind of stingy kind of way when I poke back at people.
And here's the thing, okay, here's what it comes down to. I would just ask you to consider your joking and your teasing and see if it's very appropriate or not. Okay.
I can go with that some amount of teasing and joking, if it's very light-hearted and the trust level is high, will help people come together maybe a little bit because they're talking about things that they can relate, you can both relate to. So sometimes it can increase connection. Sometimes. Okay.
But a lot of the time, our teasing is not appropriate. In other words, it's too much for the trust level that exists in the relationship. And somebody over there deep down is getting a feeling for it. They are interpreting, you're not causing that, by the way, okay. But it's being interpreted by them as they're deficient.
And sometimes even unbeknownst to us, unless we really break it down and think about, why am I being sarcastic with you right now? Why am I kind of making fun of what you did?
Because just like Shakespeare said, “Much truth is told in jest.” Okay, so what is the truth behind our joke? Consider that because people, what they hear, it influences them. Okay, and they're going to take that in.
I'm asking you to, when you joke with yourself about this self-deprecating humor, you know, like all the things that you, “I'm such a klutz,” and whatever, I'm asking you to consider how much you're joking about yourself and with others.
And what's at the root of it? What does it mean? What is the truth that, like Shakespeare said, is at the root of your joking? Just another part of this. Okay.
And so how do I know? Okay, fine, Shane. If it makes a big difference, going to, I'll take this into advisement and I will start using, exercising some awareness around my thoughts and my words about myself. So how do I know? You're kind of confusing me with this, you know, I need to, should, I do. I mean, how do I know if it's something that I want to say or think about me or not?
Okay.
And here's your measure. Here you go. Here's the answer:
If you would want to say that thought or those words to someone that you deeply love, they're yours too. But what you don't want to be doing is saying and thinking things about yourself that you wouldn't want to say or think about somebody that you love, okay, to pieces. So why would you do it to yourself? You shouldn't. BANG! You got me.
It's not a good idea to do that because you're not going to get the results that you want. And so if you can work to have awareness around your thoughts and words, recognize when you're saying or thinking something that you wouldn't want to say to someone that you deeply love, that's how you measure it.
Now, a relationship, this is kind of an interesting statement, think about this. A relationship is nothing more than the thoughts that you have about another human being. That's it. That's what a relationship is.
The quality, let me, let me, I didn't complete that sentence. The quality of your relationships is equal to or is the sum total of your thoughts about that said relationship. Okay? That's what it is. It's no more, and it's no less.
So if you want to change the relationship that you have with someone, what you have to do is change your thinking, think different thoughts. Change your thoughts about the relationship, and you will increase the quality of that relationship for you.
Now, there is one relationship in this lifetime with one individual that you're going to have, spend more time with than any other person, and that is the relationship with yourself, right?
And so, I'm here to plead with you to consider that the thoughts and words that you use about yourself are going to develop, are going to be the core, okay, of your relationship with yourself. And your relationship with yourself matters. Okay.
So it's not good enough simply to say, “Okay, I caught me. I caught me. I caught me.” The idea here is to proactively, we want to eliminate, we want to work to, this is a process. This is a pursuit. This isn't a mark it off the list thing.
We want to develop the habit of recognizing negative and reframing it. But on top of that, to actively, proactively using positive thoughts and language about ourselves.
And this is pretty uncommon. Okay. Did you notice what I led with? I led with, I'm going to give you a quote from a pretty, I don't know exactly what I said, a pretty amazing person that I'm very, I don't know what I said, but I gave myself a compliment. Okay.
And some of you are like turned off by that. Some of you are, okay. You're like, “Man, you're just bragging. You're just this and that and the other.”
Just think about why, okay. Because the thing of it is, it doesn't bother me if you feel that way, because I felt that way, negative thoughts about me, for most of my life, you know. But the thing of it is, it didn't help me, and it didn't help all the people around me. And it just was awful.
And so right at this point, I couldn't. I don't care what you think. I care more about what I think about me than what you think about me. And I have no problem liking me. And I'm continuing to work on that as I go along in this lifetime. Okay.
And I'm asking you to consider that. Have it be okay to like yourself, to say, “Hey me, you're pretty amazing. You did a good job today. I'm proud of you. That is a good work.”
We, you don't have to worry about being critical about yourself. The world and our default brain is gonna be hammering on us all the time that we're not good enough, that we're deficient a little bit, we made a mistake, on and on and on. Turn it, begin to turn it around a little bit because if you can turn the corner and have more positive than negative thoughts and words about yourself, your life's gonna turn the corner.
Tellin' ya, it's the way it works. This is the foundation. That's why it's skill one in stable living. So proactively develop, create the thought, create thoughts and say them, say them, at least think them to begin with. Okay, and a lot of times you won't be able to say that.
So we use a technique called laddering thoughts. And here's what I mean by that. Let's just say that I'm like, “I'm such an idiot. So that I can't believe I did that. I'm such a dipshit.” Or whatever I'm saying. Okay. And I can't, and I, I recognize it, I have the awareness, I'm like, well, what would I want to say? I want to say that I'm a total badass. “I am a total badass.” That's what I want to say. But you know, I don't really believe it. I can say it, but it doesn't sit right. It's not, I can't fully believe it. I mean, I can hardly say it, let alone believe it.
So the ladder step is to take a step towards the belief, towards what you want to believe about yourself. Okay. So if I think I'm an idiot, if I keep saying it, okay, which implies, which means that I do at some level think I'm an idiot if I keep saying it. So, but I want to think that I ama total rock star, okay?
But I mean, that's too much for me right now. I mean, I just don't think I have that much to be proud of and I can list all these reasons why I can't think that way. And so, okay, fine. Let's just take a step in that direction. “Hey, I recognized that I didn't want to do that.” Boom, that's a good thought. I can believe that one. I desire to think that. That's a good thought.
“Hey, I'm moving in the direction of improving the way that I think and believe about me. Hey, I'm improving.” So these are like little ladder steps until you get like, I did a pretty good job today. I did better than I did yesterday. Hey, I improved a little bit. “Hey, I recognize this.”
These are little, teeny, tiny ladder steps to get to where eventually I'm going to be able to, if I do this ladder process, okay, just take what I can accept and then progress those thoughts until I can get to the day, and it will happen, okay. I'll give you some examples, but and it can happen to where I say I am a total rock star. I believe it. I know it. It's what I am. It's been inside of me the whole time, but I know it now. Okay. And you will believe that. You can come to do that.
So I'm gonna give you the three-step process, okay, of now how to get this done. So just to be clear, okay, let's just go through the three steps of how to actually accomplish one upping your, one upping your, your thoughts and words, okay.
So here's how the skill goes:
Step one is to recognize and reword, okay? Or reframe, one or the other, reword or reframe. So it's having the awareness, okay? It's just going throughout the day and listening for thoughts and words that we would rather do it differently when we recognize them, okay? These are negative things that end up sabotaging our life in all these ways. One's to recognize, okay?
Two is to record it. Now look, I know you get all these ideas and it's like, that takes too long, I'm not gonna do it, there's no way it takes too long, how could I do that? I'm busy, Shane. Here's the thing. First of all, A, it's worthwhile, and B, do it this way and it's very simple.
If you're a writer, carry a little three by five card or something, if you're old enough to know what that is, it's a little piece of paper. Make a list, just make a two-part list and just take quick notes on it.
What I did is I created a list in my phone and one column is green and one column is red. Okay. And so if I become aware of something, I just shorthand it. If I said, “I'm, I'm, uh, I can't believe I did that.” I'm like, “Can't believe I did that.” I put it on the red.
Okay. And you're not going to get like 500. I mean, you might, but we're talking about a short list. Just recognize what you're saying that you want to change. And I do that on my red column. See if I can pull it up here while I'm telling you.
And in the green column, I put what I said about myself, that what I said about myself that I, that was positive, that reinforced what I want to believe about myself. That's what I put on the green column. And then, here it is, if you're watching, I'm just showing it to the screen.
If you're not on video, I'm just showing on video, I'm just showing my list, which is a short list of, the green says, "believe," and the red says, "not me." So when I catch myself, when I become aware that I said something that I want to change, I put that under "me" in the red column.
And if I say something that I think about myself or believe in, and I become aware of it, I just put it on my green side. Now this really doesn't, this takes me like maybe five minutes a day. Okay. Maybe 10 if I'm really, if I have a lot, if I recognize a lot, maybe it takes 10 minutes. Okay. This is time well spent. Trust me.
Here's the big key. This is part of this. Once you've recorded your positive, positives and negatives, okay, for awareness I call that the one-up list because what you want to do is at the end of the day you're going to want to take how many negatives, okay, and then you're going to come up with that amount of positives if your positive side is short, and then you're going to one-up it, add one more positive when you say them out loud, okay?
Recap. Throughout the day record negatives and positives. Just when you record them, maybe it'll only be one, maybe it'll be five, maybe it'll be ten, maybe it'll be twenty. Quick, jot it down on paper or in your phone. And at the end of the day, before you go to bed, just take a quick look and look at the minuses, the reds, or the negative comments and thoughts that you've had, and look at the positives.
And make sure that you have more positives. And if you don't, create more positives that you actually believe about yourself. If you have to ladder them, and then give up one more on the positive side and say it. That's the deal.
The third step, okay, in this is to surround yourself with positive and supportive people. Okay, even in an accountability partner. My wife and I do this all the time. If we catch ourselves or if I hear her say something or if she hears me say something that sounds negative, if she hears me say something negative about me, she's like, "Hey."
See, that's my accountability partner and I do the same for her. And then I have a chance right there, I can reframe it and I can record it. And at the end of the day, that's my accountability partner.
So surround yourself with people intentionally that are positive, that don't freak if you say that you did a good job, that can go with, "Hey, I like myself," and that's great. "I like you too, man. I'm so happy for you that you're going down this road," right?
Because they're going to be a recipient of the way that you feel about you. Okay. It's good news all the way around. So those are the three steps.
You can get those in the, if you're listening, you can check out the transcript at stablelivingcoaching.com. Just go to this podcast episode, go to the transcript, then they're clear, the three steps are clear in the transcript that you can get that.
And also really, hey, Stable Living Coaching, we have a 14-day free trial. You can experience all the stuff that we go through in dealing with this and so much more, right? Everything that we deal with in where you're at to where you want to be. Okay.
So I encourage you to check out stablelivingcoaching.com. Get yourself a free trial, 14-day free trial of everything that we have to offer, 100% free for two weeks.
And remember, my friends, you cannot fail as long as you Don't Ever Stop Chasin’ It.
