Episode 5

The main ideas from this information are about managing your journey in life, managing stress, giving to others, staying excited, and making abrupt changes. It emphasizes the importance of managing stress and recognizing that stress comes from within. It also highlights the benefits of giving and staying excited in order to achieve goals. The importance of making abrupt changes and conducting personal assessments is discussed. Additionally, the role of affirmations in improving self-esteem is mentioned. Welcome to another episode of Rob the Graveyard. If you've listened to the first five episodes then by now you have the gist of what it means to Rob the Graveyard and what this journey is all about. And indeed it is a journey. Remember I said earlier that Robbing the Graveyard is not an event, it's a journey. It's a journey from where you are to reach your ultimate destiny in life, to reach your ultimate goal to achieve your major purpose in life. But it's a journey and inevitably life gets in the way. So you have to manage it. That's what this podcast, this particular episode is all about. Managing your journey. Because imagine for example you were the captain of a ship because you are the captain of your life. So imagine that you were in the ocean, way out there in the beyond, let's call it that. And you are experiencing turbulence, turbulent waters, storms, rough waters, waves, all kinds of challenges that scare the life of you. Makes you feel like you want to turn back your ship. But you can't afford to turn back your ship because you have a destination that you have to reach. Because you have to take your luggage, your belongings, what you have to your destination. Because you have to take it there and leave it for your next generation. That's what it's all about. So you have to manage it. And one of the things that you're going to find you have to manage most as you face the turbulent times is stress. I call stress a self-deterrent. It deters you from doing what you need to do. But then here's something that is really interesting about stress that most people don't recognize. It took me a long time to realize this. Nobody can stress you out or nothing can stress you other than yourself. You alone cause the stress. See because it's not what happens to you. It's how you respond. Not how you react. How you respond. And that's the thing about stress. Because stress is something coming from an internal position. It's coming from your mind. How you feel. How things look like to you. And how you respond to it. You see the stresses are something you can manage. How you're feeling. Whether it's about feeling sick. Whether it's about dealing with financial challenges, family challenges, school challenges, work challenges. All these are things that can cause stress in your life. If you allow it. So we have to develop ways to manage stress. Understanding that you bring upon yourself. Because guess what? Let's take an example. Let's say that you have money problems. Because money problems probably cause more stress than anything else. So let's imagine you have money problems. You're having a tough time paying your rent or house payment. Your mortgage. Maybe you have a hard time paying your car payment. Hard time putting food on the table. Being able to provide the things for your kids that they need for their life. And you're stressed out about it. You're thinking about it. You're getting anxiety. You're feeling sick. All the things that come as a result of stress. None of which are good. And then you wake up tomorrow morning stressed as usual. Worried about how you're going to take care of things. A familiar restraint, right? A familiar thing that people deal with on a daily basis. But let's say that your wife had bought a lottery ticket. And she walks into the room and tells you, hey baby, guess what? We won a million dollars in the lottery. Instantaneously, your stress will dissipate. You haven't received the money yet. But just the mere fact that your wife has told you that you guys just won the lottery. She showed you the lottery ticket and said we're going to go down to the office and get ourselves in position to receive this money. Your stress is immediately gone. All your financial stress. Why? Because the idea of not having money has now become eliminated. Nothing has changed yet. You haven't received the money. Everything is still in position today like it was yesterday. But the thought process has changed. And that's where the stress originates. In the thought process and processes. And you can control that. It's tough. I'm not going to say only and pretend that it's easy. But it is something that you can control. If you get definitely sick with cancer or something major, that's a different thing. Even that can be managed. But that's a little bit even beyond the scope of what I'm talking about. Most people are dealing with challenges that they absolutely can control and control their thinking process. Right? So if you develop or find ways to manage that stress, it will eliminate a lot of the anxiety and depression and physical ailments that come as a result of you allowing stress to affect you in a negative way. There are many things you can do. You know what I find in my life is that when I'm really feeling the stress that I bring on to myself, I go play chess. I get on the computer and I play chess for example. And when I play chess, all of those thoughts leave my mind. And I'm able to focus primarily on not getting my king trapped in the chess game. So I'm not thinking about all of the problems that I'm facing and challenges. I'm focused on the chess. Sometimes I go and exercise and that helps to relieve some of the pressure. So there's things that we can do while we are learning how to more, how to properly manage it through our mind only in terms of recognizing that most of the things that we think about, the bad things and the bad outcomes that we think about as a result of the challenges we face never happen anyway. So if you start with the premise of understanding that most of the bad and negative things that we think about as a result of the fear that arises from the stress and the bad thoughts we have, those things never happen. So if you understand that, that's the beginning point. That's a good starting point. And then you try to think about solutions as opposed to focusing on the problem at hand. Focus on the solutions. Focus on ways that you can get out of the problem. Those are very significant things you can do to overcome stress. Because we bring it upon ourselves. Because if you totally ignore and be oblivious to the things going on around you that are bad or unwanted, then you wouldn't invite that stress into your life. Because it always comes from your own mind. So that's something that we have to do. That's part of steering your ship. In the turbulent waters, don't think about the turbulent waters. Think about how do I get through it? How do I get around it? How do I overcome this challenge? And that is management. Managing and steering your ship. Now one of the things that we often do is that we get selfish in our life. This is another form of management. Give. Sometimes you just have to give stuff to people. Be kind, be nice. And the law of nature says that if you give, it will be returned to you in many times what you originally give or have given. Or give is probably the proper way to say it. Give. Simple. Just give to people. Be kind, be nice. And it will come back to you. Some people call it karma. But whatever you call it, whatever it is, it appears to be a law of nature. Do good and good will attend you. That's all I really have to say about that. Learn to be a giving person. But don't give expecting something in return. Give from the kindness of your heart. Give to help others. And that will ultimately come back to you naturally. But just do it with a pure and clean heart. Don't look for anything in return. And eventually it will come back to you. Okay. That's one of the principles that I think they talk about in church. When they talk about giving, well, tithing, right? You give to the church and it comes back to you. Now, I'm not going to get into that, but that's another example of how you can do that. And that's part of managing your life. Steering your ship. Now, let's get into some other things that are really more challenging maybe, but things that we absolutely have to do. And one of the things that we have to do is we have to stay excited. Now, oftentimes people fall prey to the idea of, I don't want to get too excited because I don't want to be disappointed. Well, that's a recipe for failure. You have to stay excited. You have to attract into your life that which you want. I remember I talked about visualization earlier in one of the previous episodes. I talked about visualization. And one of the things I talked about visualization is that visualization is taking your vision to another level by adding emotion to it. You have to see yourself achieving your dream and you have to see what it feels like. That's what visualization is about. It's about seeing it and feeling it as well. And that helps to bring it more into existence. Well, if you decide you don't want to get excited because you don't want to be disappointed if it doesn't work out, then you have just reduced your chances of it working out because you are not attaching the emotion to it. So you got to stay excited. Don't matter how many times you fail. Okay, you have to keep it pumping. And that's one of the hardest things to do out of fear, fear of disappointment. Stay excited and never give up. Always believe that you're going to make it and always see yourself with the benefits of what you're trying to get or what you're trying to achieve. I'll tell you something, you know, we call it childlike enthusiasm. Because sometimes they say, you know, the little children shall lead you. And I'll tell you something happened to me maybe about 10 years ago, my first son. Now my first son, I remember he used to like to watch Mickey Mouse on TV. And I remember one day in particular, he was trying to he was on the floor playing with his toys. And I got up and I walked away, I was there playing with him or watching him mostly. And I walked away to the bathroom. And when I came back from the bathroom, he was trying to climb onto the bed to reach the remote because he had recognized by that point in time that the remote turns on the TV. So he was trying to get to the remote to turn on the TV, even though he probably didn't know what he was doing. But in his attempt to reach the remote, guess what happens? Bam, he hits the floor. Because by the time I saw him trying to climb up on the edge of the bed, I couldn't get there fast enough. And he hit the floor and he started crying. So I picked him up. I'm here trying to soothe him, make him feel better. And he starts kicking and screaming, kicking and crying and he started stop crying. And he kept kicking, kicking, kicking, trying to get out of my hand. So I recognized that. So I put him back down on the floor. Guess what he did? He climbed right back up on the bed. And he picked up the remote. And he turned the TV on somehow. The only problem was that Mickey Mouse didn't show up because he wasn't on the right channel. But when he turned the TV on, he started giggling. Right? Because he thought he was going to see Mickey Mouse. But that's another example. I thought to myself, wow, this kid just hit the floor, but it didn't deter him. He got right back up, climbed right back up on the bed again, reaching for that remote to get to what he wanted to get to, to see Mickey Mouse. That was one instance. That same day, it was in the evening time. And this is one of the reasons why it stuck in my mind. I also was drinking a beer. Now, my son at the time, everything I was drinking, he always wanted some. He would reach his hand out. He would try to get my glass. When I put to my face, he would want to drink it too. But for some reason, it seemed like he always wanted to get my beer. I would drink Corona. I would have the bottle because I love Corona. I would only buy Corona, bring it home. And I would drink this Corona every so often. And he was always trying to get the bottle. But I would never give it to him, of course. So guess what? It made him even want it more. So he was always trying to get the Corona. If he saw the bottle anywhere, he would go after it. So this particular afternoon, I drank my Corona, emptied the bottle, put it on the nightstand. Again, I went looking for somebody else in the bathroom area. And when I came back, guess what? My son had the bottle. But I'll tell you, before he got the bottle and I refused to give it to him and he was asking, he would look at me and smile. And I'll tell you something, in my mind, I could hear him talking, right? Even though he couldn't talk, I can hear his inner voice saying, one day, I'm going to get you. One day, I'm going to get you. I'm going to get that bottle. And I would see myself responding, in your dreams, son. But that day, as I went to the room, the bathroom, I came back out. He got me. He got the bottle. He put it, somehow, I put it up. When I came back from the room, I saw where the bottle turned up. And I said, well, what you doing? And he looked around at me and he said, ah, because he finally got that bottle. And there was nothing in it, hardly, but the ending drips of it. But those drips were coming down inside of the face, of his face, right? So, I had to go up there, take the bottle off, and wipe those two drops of beer from inside his face. But that was another example of somebody trying, and trying, and trying, and staying excited about it, and never giving up, and finally, they got to the goal. That is childlike enthusiasm. And that is what we need. We need to maintain childlike enthusiasm if we want to achieve our goals. And that is the primary difference between the young people and the old people, or older, I should say, or more mature, right? The young people, they haven't had all the bad experiences, all the failures in life yet. So, they're still enthusiastic. They're not beaten down by life yet. You know, life gets in the way, and it beats us on our head for years, and years, and years, and after a while, we just give in. But children are young and vibrant, and they still have a lot of hope. So, they don't get deterred that easily at that young age. It takes more time to beat them down. The attrition eventually gets to all of us, but most of the time, the kids that keep enthusiastic and stay focused, they get to the goal. And that is the reason why a lot of younger people are the ones who come up with the computer technology and ingenuity to create all this new computer and phone technology. Things that we are all using today, most of it is invented by younger people. Because they are the ones who go out there with unbridled enthusiasm, believing that they can get things done, once we have already given up. And that's why they're the ones who come up with most of the new technology. Now, bear in mind, there are some people up in the age who are able to do more. If you think about someone like Thomas Edison, for example, he failed 10,000 times according to people. But what was his response? His response was, I did not fail 10,000 times. I found 10,000 ways that did not work, which took him closer to a way that does work. And eventually, he was able to invent the incandescent light bulb. So, that is how we have to approach things. We have to keep it moving. We have to face it. Imagine, Thomas Edison probably felt like death won't over after having tried 10,000 different experiments and wasn't able to get it done at first. How do you think he felt? But he kept moving. Right? He felt like death won't over, I would imagine. But he had to perform what I would call the Phoenix Maneuver. You know, the Phoenix Bird is a bird, a mythic bird that rose from the ashes. That's what we have to do. Because I know sometimes we feel like we're dead and destroyed from all the failure to re-encounter. But you have to rise up and start anew. You can also call it the graveyard shift. Now, this book I'm speaking about is called Rob the Graveyard. So, that's what I call a graveyard shift. You have to shift your life, beginning with shifting your mentality. You have to create what I referred to in the earlier episode as a watershed in the history of your family tree. You have to change the direction of which things are flowing. Right? And oftentimes, you have to do it flamboyantly. Sometimes, you don't, you know, there are times for incrementalism, which we're going to talk about in the next episode. There's a place for that. But oftentimes, you have to make a sudden and abrupt change. It reminds me of when I stopped eating chicken. Now, I loved chicken all my life. And I thought for years, I want to stop eating chicken because I wasn't eating meat. I want to move more towards a vegetarian lifestyle. So, I kept thinking to myself, I want to stop eating chicken. I want to stop eating chicken. And I would always think to myself, well, you know what? I'm going to do it one day. I'm going to maybe start a little, do it a little bit at a time. But you know what I remembered? I remembered that when I stopped eating meat, for example, I didn't do it gradually. I just stopped. Boom! And I never ate meat again in my life. But I was struggling with chicken because I loved chicken so much. But one day, I read something in the book talking about chicken and how it was processed and it just completely changed my mind. And from that day forward, I never ate chicken again. Now, I'm not here to tell you not to eat meat or not to eat chicken. What I'm here to tell you is that sometimes in your life, when you want to do something significant that you think is going to benefit you, you have to do it abruptly and just do it. And don't think about it anymore, just do it. And you know what? I actually gained some physical benefits or some health benefits from stopping that. But I'm not here to talk about that right now. The point I'm trying to make to you is that sometimes, when we think and plan about how we're going to do things and changes we need to make in our lives, we end up never doing anything because we plan it for so long. We're going to do it one day. You think about it and you ponder it. All that nonsense. That's what we do. Sometimes, it's just better to just talk. Don't think about it. If it's something you know you need to do, just stop it. Period. Point blank. Abruptly done. That's what works for me when I want to stop eating chicken. Okay? So, that is what a metamorphosis is. A change, right? And oftentimes, when you make these major changes in life, you have to start it by doing a personal assessment. Assess yourself. What am I doing? What are the results of what I'm doing? How is it affecting my life? How is it affecting my family life? Is it moving me forward? Is it taking me closer to my goal? If you make an assessment and that assessment tells you, you know what? It's not working. But guess what? Make a change. It starts with personal assessment and once the assessment is completed and you recognize you need to make a change, make that change and make it now. Don't procrastinate. Do it abruptly if you need to. Make it now and move on. Now, we just talked about all the different things that you face and the challenges that you endure and have to endure to meet success. One of the things that you can do is to improve your self-esteem. Improve the way you feel about yourself and a good way to do that is through affirmations. One of the affirmations that I learned, I actually stole this partially from a lady. I have a friend of mine who talked about life and she talked about, she said to me one day, I am the master of my life and I never forgot that because I said that is true. So, I created an affirmation for myself, right? Affirmations basically things you say to yourself to build your self-esteem, to give yourself more confidence and to believe, well, let's put aside the word believe, to know where you're going and how you're going to get there. To know that you can get things done. So, create some affirmations or maybe just look for some affirmations, research some affirmations, things that can make you feel better. You can look in the mirror and look at yourself and say them. You can say them while you're meditating. You can do all kinds of different things but you need to find things to say to yourself because most of the things we say to ourselves are negative. When you talk to yourself, that negative self-talk, that inner conversation is mostly negative. So, you have to find ways to change that into something positive and you have to make a concerted effort to do that. It doesn't happen naturally because naturally, because we live in a negative world, most of the things that we say to ourselves end up being negative. For example, you may hear people saying or you may have said to yourself, everything that I do doesn't work out. When things are going well, ultimately, something bad is going to happen. Those type of things. Negative self-talk. Things you're constantly saying to yourself about yourself that are negative, that help to contribute to the creation of negative results and we don't even realize it. So, think about positive things you can say and do it deliberately because you need to overcome those negative conversations that you're having naturally with yourself and try to stop those as well. So, I created this affirmation and it encompasses a lot of things, almost all the things I want in my life. I say to myself on a daily basis, I am strong. I am powerful. I am healthy. I feel good. I am the master of my life, my thoughts, and my destiny. And with my thoughts, I control my destiny and I achieve all my goals. I've been saying that for years but recently, I added something else to it. One more phrase, I am strong. I am powerful. I am healthy. I am wealthy. I feel good. I am the master of my life, my thoughts, and my destiny. And with my thoughts, I control my destiny and I achieve all my goals. Again, I am strong. I am powerful. I am healthy. I am wealthy. I feel good. I am the master of my life, my thoughts, and my destiny. And with my thoughts, I control my destiny and I achieve all my goals. That's it. Now, sometimes I do variations of that affirmation but that's what I say to myself every day. And I know it's true. I feel it and I go about my day acknowledging that, you know what, because I'm strong and because I'm powerful and I will myself to be healthy and I want to feel good so I will myself to feel good. And when I feel bad, I repeat that. I feel good until I get that good feeling back in my body because I'll tell you something. And later on, within this podcast, I'm going to talk about this. But there was a period of time between 2000 and 2006 where I endured a significant health scare and it gave me all kinds of health problems. It started with anxiety and it affected my body in very negative ways. So I've been through all that. It was very, very tough. And what I learned from that process, and believe it or not, I'm still dealing with some of those repercussions today, but what I learned from that process is that you can create your own demise. Because guess what? I kept thinking to myself I had a heart problem because I was feeling palpitations in my chest, which ultimately I found out later came from some vitamins I was taking. But I could not understand, as healthy as I was, working out as often as I was, eating properly, not overweight, in great shape, how could I just suddenly have these heart problems? Now I know people have genetic heart problems, but I didn't have any heart problems in my family that I knew about. Why was I having these heart issues? So I convinced myself that something was wrong with my heart. No doctor ever told me that because I didn't even go to the doctor. But I just convinced myself that I was having heart problems. And that eventually made me literally sick. I mean literally I got sick. The ambulance had to pick me up one day when I was in Vegas because I was feeling so bad. I was having all these chest pains, all kinds of problems, because I convinced myself that I was having a heart issue. And it almost destroyed my life, just by my thoughts. And I went to the doctor. He found nothing wrong. I went to more than one doctor. They did checks on me. They put heart monitors. They made me do stress tests. All kinds of different issues. All kinds of different procedures. And they couldn't find anything wrong. All the while I was still getting these palpitations. I got anxiety and panic attacks. They had to send an ambulance for me a second time. I went through all kinds of issues, just through my own thoughts. Convincing myself that I was sick, when I really wasn't sick. So eventually I realized that I didn't have a heart problem. After going to doctors one on one and everybody saying, you don't have a problem. So eventually I finally convinced myself, well you know what, you don't have a heart problem. You have a head problem. So you have to deal with that issue. That's where the issue is in my head, not in my heart. So I realized that just like I caused myself to be sick, by thinking that I was sick, why not use that same mindset to convince myself that I was not sick. That I was well. So when I get those, I'll tell you, when you start, when you bring anxiety into your life and depression, it's hard to get away from. Because it's all internal. So what I did is I had to work on ways to help myself overcome that mentally. So if you can make yourself sick by your thoughts, why can't you make yourself well by your thoughts? And that's where affirmations come in. Not only just the affirmation, but the thought process. You have to go after life and what you want with all guns blazing. Because when you start to think negative, that's what you're doing. You got all guns blazing in the wrong direction. You have all those guns blazing pointed at yourself. And you are destroying yourself. So what you have to do now is turn it around and have all guns blazing at the enemy. And in this case, the enemy is not another person. The enemy are your thoughts, your negative thoughts, your negative ideas, your bad feelings, your doubts, your fears. Point all your guns and have them blazing at that negativity and change your life around. And if you can do that, you will be able to properly steer your ship through those turbulent waters and through those storms. And you can come out on the other side with calm and success and achievement and move towards robbing the graveyard and achieving your ultimate purpose in life. That ends episode 5. We will come back with episode 6 and we move into a different phase of the process of robbing the graveyard.