23: Dealing With Setbacks
Life will smack you in the face as hard as it can. What’s your plan when it does? Have you stopped to evaluate your process when it has? Are you stuck in a feedback loop of setbacks and negativity? On this episode, we go over some ideas and strategies to get you moving in the right direction and starting to create positive outcomes.
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The Daily Stoic
Why have history's greatest minds—from George Washington to Frederick the Great to Ralph Waldo Emerson, along with today's top performers from Super Bowl-winning football coaches to CEOs and celebrities—embraced the wisdom of the ancient Stoics? Because they realize that the most valuable wisdom is timeless and that philosophy is for living a better life, not a classroom exercise.
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By following these teachings over the course of a year (and, indeed, for years to come) you'll find the serenity, self-knowledge, and resilience you need to live well.
The Daily Stoic Journal
A beautiful daily journal to lead your journey in the art of living--and an instant WSJ bestseller!
For more than two thousand years, Stoic philosophy has been the secret operating system of wise leaders, artists, athletes, brilliant thinkers, and ordinary citizens. With the acclaimed, bestselling books The Obstacle Is the Way, Ego Is the Enemy and The Daily Stoic, Ryan Holiday and Stephen Hanselman have helped to bring the Stoicism of Marcus Aurelius, Seneca, and Epictetus to hundreds of thousands of new readers all over the world.
Now Holiday and Hanselman are back with The Daily Stoic Journal, a beautifully designed hardcover journal that features space for morning and evening notes, along with advice for integrating this ancient philosophy into our 21st century lives. Each week readers will discover a specific powerful Stoic practice, explained and presented with related quotations to inspire deeper reflection and application, and each day they will answer a powerful question to help gauge their progress.
Created with a durable, Smyth-sewn binding and featuring a helpful introduction explaining the various Stoic tools of self-management, as well as resources for further reading, this is a lasting companion volume for people who already love The Daily Stoic and its popular daily emails and social media accounts. It can also be used as a stand-alone journal, even if you haven’t read the previous books.
For anyone seeking inner peace, clarity, and effectiveness in our crazy world, this book will help them immensely for the next year—and for the rest of their lives.
Tyson: 00:05 Welcome to the social chameleon show. Where our goal is to help you learn and grow and transform as a person you want to become. Today we're talking about dealing with setbacks. Yeah, I think it was gonna get a little deep. Um, I think before we get started, I wanted to kind of have a little quick little disclaimer here. Uh, this is for informational purposes only and is not intended to be medical or psychological advice. You need help. Go get help. You think you need help? Go get help on the national suicide prevention lifeline is 1-800-273-8255 Don't be ashamed. I was googling it. I seen they had a chat thing to use these things. Use these resources. If you're dealing with things you feel like you can't go on anymore or you want to hurt other people, please go get help. It's not the end of the world.
Ransom: 00:58 Definitely. All right, so yeah,
Tyson: 01:01 we can get started now after a little
Ransom: 01:03 again, that deepness, that deep, dark place out the way.
Tyson: 01:09 Yeah. I just wanted to preface the episode with that.
Ransom: 01:12 Cool. Well we got a, we got a little funny story. We want to tell people maybe the flavor.
Tyson: 01:20 Yeah, I know, I know. We're looking for, for something to kind of give an example of whatever kind of bring stuff. So I know you like the story of the time we were camping or something and I'm quite quite hungover the next morning and we decided to go sit on the beach and drink some more and play some drinking games. Uh, shout out to some snappa and I was like, Oh, I had the brilliant ideas. I always do. I'll drive my car up on the beach. The sand is pretty, pretty packed, you know, kind of as you got closer to the beach and Oh, the back of my car on up. And as most of you have ever driven on sand, no, there's, there's gonna be some soft spots sometimes and I wound up in one and buried the car to the frame. We're like, I guess we'll deal with this later.
Ransom: 02:16 Yeah, I mean it's just one of those things, right? It's like in the morning or like, ah, you know, we want to continue this, uh, this little beach session, so backs the car up on the sand so you can like play as radio is carstairs carceral is actually pretty good at the time and then from there, like he stops backing up and we're like this look. And I was like, no, he didn't just get stuck in with them right now. But I guess as it gets out of their cars, I go, I'm stoke and I'll take a look at this. And then I was like, I was like, yeah, that's the frame of your car sitting on this, not the tire of your car frame of your car. Like this is a frame, like flush either
Tyson: 03:00 push sand as I opened the doors.
Ransom: 03:04 So that was a Nina said that was a little setback that we had that morning. He just wanted a little music to play for our enjoyment. And uh, yeah, I think we actually just ended up enjoying the morning. We ended up enjoying the morning and just playing the stereo likely like we plan to after that it was like halfway through the day, it was hot, you know, we've been consuming some alcohol so we were slightly dehydrated and slash or hung over at the same time and I just remember digging like all day for like dug all the bottom of the car, like getting all the sand out and then from there we were like looking around the beach for either like pieces of lumber or driftwood or rocks or anything we can like stick underneath the tire. I think we had like cardboard and we're just making this whatever we could to like dig a hole, a stick something in there and then just kinda like. And then we were looking for so long like people on the beach, like we're watching us, like mobile to us. Then they're like, do you guys have been digging for awhile? Like yeah, like I mind if we help push and like uh, I think like I think like two or three, three big dudes came over to help push out the sand. But I'm,
Tyson: 04:22 I want to say too, I think somebody brought their truck over and also gave it a Yang from the front. Maybe
Ransom: 04:29 it's kind of fuzzy, but we definitely, we're working hard to get that out of there. And from there people saw us working so hard. They definitely lended a hand to get us out of there, which was kind of cool.
Tyson: 04:44 The Times that was, that was fun. But perseverance, you know, we, we made it, we made it through.
Ransom: 04:50 Yeah. And I guess, you know, that's a little, like I said, we started this episode kind of deal so we just kinda wanted to throw something in there which you know, was kind of fun, a little fun story for both of us. Bring back some good memories, but every now and then life just kind of throws you that curveball, you know, it's like you have this plan, right? Like for us, we were going to listen to the radio on the beach and all of a sudden it's like whoop, like, wow, that plan just kind of backfired. Like, yeah, we got to listen to the radio. We spent the rest of the day, you know, dating right, and finding what we could and getting help to get out of that situation. So, I don't know, it's a little light story, but you know, there are people out there dealing with major setbacks, not just a car stuck in the sand.
Ransom: 05:40 No, we're talking about divorce or bankruptcy or you know, whatever the case might be. You know, we don't really have a particular set back for say um, but when dealing with setbacks, most people kind of default back to like what they're, they're go to planning. I mean just like anything in life. Like you have a Goto plan. I, you know what I mean, regardless of whether you won or not or if some people aren't even aware of it. Sometimes psychologically, you know, the first major setback that they had in their life from when they were just a wee little kid is kind of what takes the default plan or dealing with setbacks. You know, things like lying right? Or things like brilliance for those in the adolescent years, you know, maybe it's drugs or alcohol in. So whatever, whatever your setback plan is, you know, most people aren't, aren't even aware of what that is. You know, they just kind of the default through life and it's like, you know, they, they themselves don't see the pattern, you know,
Tyson: 06:51 the thinking you have is what got you in this predicament to begin with most of the time anyway. You know,
Ransom: 06:59 if we're talking about alcoholism, yeah, it's Kinda like that. Just like you have a setback in life, you hit the bottle, the bottle so much that that becomes a problem, that becomes your setback. So you hit the bottle, you know, it's like fat bastard, like I eat because I'm depressed. So this, you got that, that downward spiral, right? Just kind of goes back into it, right? Like those are the things that, number one, you want to definitely try to avoid those if possible. You know, like I said earlier, like if you have problems like that goal, seek help and that's, you know, if you're in that place, I know you got one person in the back of your head, you're like, oh, this guy could really help me out. And then you got that doubt too. It's like, Oh man, he's too busy or in oxygen shown ever talk to me, man, I don't think of it that way. You got one person in your head. I know for sure you got one positive person in your head that you're thinking about calling or reaching out to men definitely make that reach.
Tyson: 08:04 And even even if you feel like you don't reach out to somebody, like there's somebody that's out there that can help you and that is an expert in your problem. Your problems are not solely 100 percent unique to just, you know, somebody on that world that has gone through it already.
Ransom: 08:23 Yeah. Most of the time. And you know, sometimes, you know, I know we talked about this in the other ones, like department attention, like sometimes the right person just shows up in your life and he was like, you all of a sudden you have this problem and you're standing next to somebody in the grocery line and you overhear them talking about something similar and it's like, hey man, that's the universe talking to you. You'd be like, Hey, you know, I don't know you, um, you know, and maybe you can give that to everybody has that speech, right? Hey, I have this friend who has this problem, like you sound like, been through that, like what would you recommend to this friend who was actually me
Tyson: 09:00 but a friend of mine,
Ransom: 09:02 a friend of mine. And like sometimes that, that, that doesn't know. But definitely I'm reaching out for help, you know, changing your plans, right? You change the five people, you hang around with. Those kinds of things are, are good. But just kind of wanted to add that, you know, that most people without even knowing it have a default plan for setbacks. And it comes from something either you know, that wasn't your fault, like you were too young to remember. You had a setback. That's how you got out of it. Or maybe you just learned it from watching your parents or your brother or somebody you looked up to in life and that's how they deal with all their setbacks. So that's your default go to. It's like, oh, well this is what I'm gonna do every time I have a setback in life and what's going to avoid it until it goes away.
Tyson: 09:51 What's your plan for getting out their credit card? That. Oh, I just stopped answering my phone. I just stopped paying the bill. Okay. Sounds like a good plan to me.
Ransom: 10:00 Well, I mean whatever. I mean, whatever. Whatever your default. Some of those default plans are good and some that we can only. You can only avoid things for so long. Right? Like talk about 12 rolls of life. You've got that dragon in the house, man. Just like that dragon gets big dude. If you don't pay attention,
Tyson: 10:20 you know these things under the rug.
Ransom: 10:23 Yeah. All of a sudden that dragon gets out of hand and now you got a major problem, you know, so. But anyway, I'm just kind of, now that we've got that out of the way, so some, some ways on how to handle setbacks and again, you got to kind of fight and break your default, go to like if you're a default goal too for handling setbacks is a horrible plan. Know what I mean? It's like, oh, I want to break up with my girlfriend. So every time I break up with my girlfriend I called her like that's not really a good plan to handle them back. Like you're trying to get away from this person and the way you get away from them is to talk to them.
Tyson: 11:10 It's funny how we just, you know, and it's thinking like, especially like that you'd like you can you send that person being around and talking to them and stuff and sharing your day and stuff. And so your default, you have that feeling like, well I've been sharing these stories every day with this person for two years, three years, five, 10, whatever it was. And you're like, I got to reach out to them. That's just what I feel. And you've got to recognize like, wait a second in order to have get away from this, I've got to stop that pattern.
Ransom: 11:39 Yup. And that's basically number one, you got to kind of control that. I mean if you're, if you're going to plan is actually a really good, then maybe you can kind of work on, you know, we've got some tips here to, to kind of improve that. But if your default plan for handling setbacks is not the best strategy and number one, you know, try to change that. Right? Anytime you have a setback that's hitting you in life, like just try to break that pattern, you know, things I try to stay positive. Like it's really hard to stay positive and a negative situation
Tyson: 12:14 or even even find positivity in it. Yeah, that's true. I hear that a lot too. Like Oh, there's nothing positive about this. This is horrible. It is horrible. But what can you learn it? There's always something positive. Maybe you don't see that right now, but there definitely is something there.
Ransom: 12:34 Definitely. And I've also, you know, again, I, I have friends who have illnesses or their children have fatal illnesses that are cruel and unkind and one of the things that I look at, um, and those types of situations is yeah, I understand that situation is, is horrible and I myself have a hard time going through it just with that being my friend. It's not even my own, you know, my own child, but I look at all the positive people and all the positive things that have come into their life because they have this major setback in their life, you know, and it's like I said, man, like the therapists you have coming to see you take care of your child, you know, the conferences and meetings that you go to. Like there's a bunch of positive people they're learning and you know, I don't know from what I look at that situation, it's like, yeah, I see this family going through this horrible setbacks. Yet I see loving, wonderful people around this family all the time, all the tenants. And you know, to me, I think that in one of those things, right? So pet a cat in the street, men, it's like you gotta, you gotTa. Take the good with the bad like there's. There's definitely something horrible happening to you. It's a major setback in your life or sometimes catastrophic setback, but you gotta look at the good. You just stay in that darkness. It's just a downward spiral into darkness. You gotta get Outta that.
Tyson: 14:07 And that's the thing too, when you start getting around these positive people, even if you're in a shitty mood and you're having a tough time getting into that positive state and whatnot, you're going to get around these people and you're gonna start to feel it. This is going to rub off on you. You're going to. It's going to change your state. You're going to pick up that energy in that vibration. And Stephanie's people that are are positive. So even if you can't maybe find that positivity yet within yourself, get around those other positive people. It'll start to rub off on you and it starts to change your state.
Ransom: 14:37 Definitely. And then the other thing you do when you're in a situation, you know, to try and stay positive, it's just not panic. Yes. Then you get into those situation. It's like the sky is falling, the sky is falling. Chicken little thing, man. And it's, it's like that panic is just going to cause you to do things that are immediate, that panic is going to cause you to make harsh and sometimes wrong decisions. And you're already in a bad spot. You know what I mean? You've already had this major setback, whatever that may be. When you start to panic about things like and you just start making bad decisions,
Tyson: 15:12 right? Yeah. You gotta be careful. You know, you got to try and take things at face value. Stop, you know, making it up. They said, well, this is happening and then this and this, and you start getting in your own head and you start creating these scenarios that a lot of times don't exist and never even will come to reality. You know, you gotTa, you gotTa sometimes you gotta get out of your own head and take that, you know and say, listen, this is just what it is and that's it. I'm not gonna add anything to it. No, that's not already here.
Ransom: 15:42 Yeah, that's a, that's a kind of rough skill. I mean like just saw a lot of times in life, especially in my knee and myself, like we make situations baker than what they are in the office. It can also be true. Let's say you take another look at a situation and you're making it smaller than it is your economist. Not a big deal. That's not a big deal and it's like a from the outside perspective, I think that is a big deal. I think he handled that situation things in perspective, like whether it'd be too big or whether it be too small, you know, getting back to the example of us stuck in the car. It's like yeah, it was a, it was a big thing that stuck in. But you know, at the time the car got stuck. Like we chose not to handle the issue at that time. It's like, well, you know, let's enjoy the morning. That's what we came here to do, you know, the car wasn't as far back on the beaches. We wanted it, but it's on the beach music. You, we can have a good time and you know, you know, we just took that little moment right there to, you know, enjoy our spirits up, you know, do what needed to be done. And then from there like, you know, I'm sorry. Well we had our fun first, right.
Ransom: 16:55 Then, you know, we had to do the work and do what we needed to do.
Tyson: 16:59 Yeah. You know, and that's the thing we just saw like, okay, what's the problem with this is the problem. We're stuck here. Okay, what are solutions? Let's start digging, you know, and okay, what's next? Okay. We've dug, we thought was maybe enough aren't, let's get props. This thick things in the proper wasn't enough. Do it some more and we just kept going down the Sif. Nobody was freaking out. Like, oh, we're never going to get this out old. When are you going to do and all. No, it was just like, okay, this is where we're at. Let's start taking action steps moving forward, what's the next day? And try it, fail next trial, fail next, try succeed.
Ransom: 17:33 Yeah, that's, that's kind of, you know, whenever you're in a situation, no matter what it is, like taking action is, is, is kind of a big thing, right? That's the key. I mean when you take action number one, I mean it takes your focus off all this negativity that's going on in your head. You know, we are humans and though we can quote unquote multitask like humans can't really multitask. Like you can kind of deal with one situation at a time. I mean there are things that we can learn to get on idol autopilot, but you have all these negative thoughts in your head about the situation that's going on. Like, you know, come up with a plan and pick two or three things and take action. Once you start taking action, then you're going to start to notice, hey, you know what? Like I'm not really thinking about the sky falling or I really thinking about all the negativity that the setback is causing me.
Ransom: 18:24 Just kinda go into the motion of things and you're gonna start to see ways out opportunities or these different things are going to start to, to start to see like, oh wait, I can not. I'm not focusing on just all this negativity or here's a solution or here, let's try this, or what are these? You're going start to open up your mind a bit. Yeah. Yeah. And that's kind of, you know, when, when coming up with plans on how to handle setbacks, like that's kind of the major thing. Don't actually think about the problem. I know it's. I know it's kinda sounds like a. it's like, well I don't think about the problem. Yeah. It's like you got to think about the solution, right? No problem. There's no point in rehashing it out. Yeah. There's a lot of people who like when they look at the problem, that they look at the problem to a deeply and they get it once for all the negativity is the negativity isn't the problem.
Ransom: 19:14 Again, I mean you gotta look at the positive thing, you know, what type of result do you want, what outcome do you want instead of the setback that I have? Yeah, exactly. The more you focus on what you don't want and the more you're going to get exactly what you don't want because that's what you're focusing on. Yeah. So you know, that's. I know it sounds ironic, like don't think about the problem if you're trying to solve it. Yeah. You don't think about the problem, right? You think about the solutions that you want to have. Exactly. Exactly. And I know that's another one of the steps. It's like you got to break that pattern, the pattern of things that got you where you are, you've gotTa, you've gotTa, you've gotta do something to, to break that pattern, to stop it from happening like this, you know, whatever. There's tons of ways. So you know, get yourself out of that state real quick if you got to have some sort of intervention to stop and break that loop.
Ransom: 20:05 This is breaking man. We got this. We have a habit. Sometimes hammers is what you need j, but yeah, so you know, try to think about possible solutions and again, seek help, you know, stay positive, don't panic and then after you start taking action, right, like you found a solution, right? Or something that seems like it's going to be a possible solution, like start doing it right? Once you're going through the process, like now spend some time and really evaluate like, you know, for us we had the car, it was stuck in a sentence like k digging, digging, digging. All right, now let's try move. Is it okay if the car's not going to move even though we done the frame of them. Okay. So now you know, we've got to work on the tires now so we've got the frame now we need to get traction underneath the tires. Like started looking through the car, started rummaging the beach, quantifying what we can, you know, and it's like okay, so you got problem number one. How though you're set back, now you've got a new problem that you're going to need to go through and this is all part of the building process. No,
Tyson: 21:10 just keep, keep, keep trying, things reevaluate, trying, reevaluate, make, make changes, make adjustments and just keep going through, fail. Try again, fail. Try again. As long as you're learning and you're, you're changing something like changing variables like this didn't work, what variables can we change? How can we get a different result?
Ransom: 21:29 Yeah. And then that's just part of those are part of the things you know, and I know right now we're talking about major setbacks, but this, this process can kind of work for like some of the smaller stuff you have in your life, you know? Absolutely. And then the more you practice this skill, right? If you practice it on the smaller things, right, or the minor setbacks that you have in life, when you have this major setback with, it's going to make it that much easier. It's like, oh, I already know the process of how to deal with the minor stuff. Now let's just kind of apply what we've learned on the minor stuff to a bigger problem.
Tyson: 22:08 I've, I've thought about it before too. It's like, you know, I've dealt with this on a smaller scale before, but now that this problem is a little bit bigger, the setbacks a little bit bigger and like I know how to deal with on a smaller scale, I'm gonna use some of those things I've learned on the smallest scale onto the bigger problem and it really makes tackling it a lot easier.
Ransom: 22:25 Yeah. So for those of you that haven't had a major setback life, you know, I'm not trying to believe if we'll do with all that you or whatever, but life is life, man. Life is going to hit you harder than you ever think you can't. You can be hit. And when it hits you with those problems that you just got to be ready. So when you have these minor little setbacks in life, like, oh, the lady at starbucks got my coffee wrong. Like yeah, that's not a real major setback. I mean, you know, but it just kind of take a look at a problem and be like, Hey, what can we do? So
Tyson: 22:58 maybe you can try a new drink like you're not. I've never had a whatever this is skinny, tall, raspberry, something else. Sounds good man.
Ransom: 23:05 And maybe your default app plan of action is to go in there and yell at the person that made your coffee so you can get into, you know, a free coffee the next time you come in. I don't know what your plan is, but you know, like you gotta again, don't panic, right? Say Positive. Don't focus on a problem, right? Focus on the solution. I need a coffee drink. What can I do? Right? I start with the small stuff. You start with a small stuff to life. Again, when you hit the bigger stuff, it'll be that much easier. You'll have, you'll have a set in place, right?
Tyson: 23:42 And then yes. The thing to understand like this stuff is just temporary. You know, a lot. It's already happened. It's done. It's over with you.
Ransom: 23:52 I always want to add that caveat is like some things are permanent, you know, like divorce or like aids. AIDS is permanent
Tyson: 24:02 but it's still, it's still temporary. Like you were married or divorced, that, that you're, you're not married anymore, you know that you're divorced, that's temporary. You have a new reality now you have a new set, you know, you have to live in an old reality.
Ransom: 24:17 Yeah. You can kind of think of it as this like going to the next level, you know, going from one room to another room. It's like, yeah, the old room that we had, it's not a room anymore. So now we have this new room and there's no room is, you know, again, don't focus on the problem. Problem being the old room. Focus on the new thing. Like, okay, now I'm single. I'm single life. I've been to before. You know, it's, let's do the single thing. I've been married before so I can get married again. Right.
Tyson: 24:51 That's what I tried to say. Bye Bye. You know, it's temporary. It's like, you know,
Tyson: 24:59 it's like, I'm trying to, trying to think here for a second. Um, you know, it's not, it's not the end. That's what I kinda mean. You know what I'm saying? That your life doesn't end here like divorce. It's not this, you know what I mean? It's not the end. You can, you can, you can get past that. You can move on. It's not, it's not the end of your life. Your life doesn't stop there. You know, Lisa doesn't have to. That's the choice you got to make, you know, and it doesn't have. You can, you can move past whatever it is, your job, this.in another whatever. You know, it's just tender.
Ransom: 25:33 It's just a face. Again, if you go through the steps right, don't panic. Don't look for the positive thing because when you look for the positive theme, then you know that's gonna be. That's gonna. Be Your way out for me, I, I tend to look at the Y. I don't believe in coincidence or accidents like things happen for a reason. You can find out what that purpose is to what it is and kind of move through. Then that's going to help you in life.
Tyson: 26:04 Yeah. Another thing too is you can, you can reframe this. You can change the way you're thinking about this thing and what, what, what meaning or emotions or feelings or whatever you're assigning to this situation and with that you can start to change the way you think about these things going forward. You know,
Ransom: 26:23 for sure even like things like getting mad, right? That, that person makes me mad. It's like I'm not making you mad. You're making yourself mad
Tyson: 26:35 or you're allowing them to make you mad. Like why are you allowing this? There's something you don't like about that person. You know, what's being or what, how you're being challenged or whatever,
Ransom: 26:46 you know. And it's like you can take a step back, number one, you can talk to that person, right? If you were a person or if you or your neighbor or whatever, like you will have interactions with them, but we can keep it on the limited limited conversation. Like learn what upsets you about that person and just don't say those things or try, you know, don't do certain actions around them. So they don't say things to you know, and keep it positive or standard ground. Right. Tell them, I mean again, be tactful about it. Don't go on often, but you can play to say, hey, you know what, I don't like the way you make your tps reports and no, I think he's changed that. Right?
Tyson: 27:31 But also I like to say offers to offer some solutions, like, you know, it's easy to point out problems and different things but it's harder to say this is the problem and then what kind of offer as a solution or a different way of helping you through this, whatever. So try that to add that to what your, you know, your advice or whatever it is the problem you're, you're helping somebody with.
Ransom: 27:52 Yeah. And then going, going on that note about trying to find positive things with major setbacks in life is. I guess for me, I'm, I'm kind of that person where I get to the point where it's like never again. Right. We'll get to a breaking point when I'm like never again. Is this going to happen? Like for me, I can use that as my ra like that when I get to a breaking point at somewhere where I'm like, you know what, this ain't gonna happen ever again in my life where it's like, okay, what am I going to do to better, you know what I mean? Like better myself, do all these things. It's like I don't want to be broke for the rest of my life. So what am I going to do? How am I gonna? How am I going to achieve this?
Ransom: 28:36 How am I going to make enough money in my life? And um, and from there I set my mind out and then I go in and do something, you know. So sometimes they set it back. Since you have, you know, again, the whole key is to make this a positive experience. The whole key is to find out how to set back is going to help you as a person. And Nikki thrive. No, for me, I like breaking home because when I get to my breaking point, guess what? Ain't no stopping me. I'm just like, this ain't never going to happen again. I'm out of here
Tyson: 29:13 that's reframing like, oh gosh, I always kind of talking about a little earlier. No, it's changing your mindset under flipping the script on those things and getting away from the people that a situation, that's the easiest way to kind of stop doing these things is getting away from what's happening. Getting away from that area. You know, when I stopped drinking, stopped hanging out at the bar, happy hanging out with your friends or whatever that are drinking, you know this or you know, it seems, it seems simple, but it really is effective.
Ransom: 29:40 Yeah.
Tyson: 29:42 And it definitely is. Definitely is. And I guess just since we're talking about the whole drinking thing, you know, like I, I just got to add this caveat. I'm not going to get too far into this rabbit hole, but there are times in life when you, you know, you're in a situation, you have a major setback, you know, it's, it's a pretty big one and it's sometimes almost catastrophic where you have to take a few steps back. You got to go in the wrong direction before you can go in the right direction. You know, a lot of times that happens because people aren't necessarily prepared for it and if you want to see if we can apply some context of this, you know, you talk about that, that raging alcoholic person who's been sober for 10 years, know what I mean? They lose their job, their wife and you know, they wreck their car like all in the same day like that person.
Tyson: 30:42 If you're in that situation, you know that person's might be hesitant to take a few steps back and grab that bottle again. Right? I'm not necessarily recommending that you take a few steps back, but I'm just saying life is gonna throw you some curve balls. Life is gonna. Throw you a some heavy hitters and sometimes you're not going to know how to go forward. And when you take those actions, right, you're going to come up with a plan and you take that action. Sometimes you go backwards and that's okay. You know, sometimes that's just what you know how to do and that's why you've got to, you know, you guys are formulating these plans and these things because when the, when the, you know, the shit hits the fan, you're just going to, you're going to default to your training. You're not going to rise, raise your expectations, your expectations, so you've got to, when you know that's what we're talking about a little earlier, we're talking about these, these little minor things going on.
Tyson: 31:43 If you keep training yourself and your training, your level of training gets higher and higher and higher and when these situations come and you're deviating back to your training, your level of training is higher. Maybe you can get to a point where you know your baseline isn't too to go back to the bar when you know things are getting a little out of hand in life, you know, and you've got to go back and sometimes you just need to go back, go back to the basics to simplify. We know what you're doing and your life and get. How can I bring this down? Reset, regroup and start over again.
Ransom: 32:15 Yeah, and that's, I think that's the key. I mean just like we talked about in the beginning of the episode is like you have this, you, when you're, when everything goes wrong around you, you, you, you go back to instinct. Yes. Whatever your instincts are, you know, like I said for that raging alcoholic, when everything is going down the whole, the whole world's on fire. Like go back to the instinct and grab that bottle to you got to train your brain. That's the whole, that's the whole thing about this is training your brain to have a, to have a feedback loop, the way to do things. It's going to work for you and you know, you especially, you got to look at what's around you and you've got to know yourself. It's like if you know that your default habits of how to get out of how to handle certain situations, take you backward, desktop that.
Ransom: 33:11 Right. And that's when you know that having that self awareness identify like on his little things happening today, boy, wow. I really feel like going and having a drink like no because we're not big thing comes. You're not going to attain that. You know, it's gonna. It's just gonna take over and you're just to. You're going to be like an autopilot sometimes being on autopilot, man. That's just, that's the wrong thing that's going to set you back even further. Yup, and that's the part where we talk about us. Like you go on auto pilot, you get set back even further back. Yeah. That's always step one is stop digging. Keep things in perspective. You know what I mean? Like I know if a big problem, a big problem and know if a small problem is becoming a big problem and you got to stop it.
Ransom: 34:01 The other thing too is like a lot of people whenever they make choices or they come to this road, you know, are they this big situation in life? It's like big dwell. Yes. Men. Ten years ago, whatever I, I, I went down route a, you know what I mean? And I should've went down round, be like, that's another negative feet. That's another negative feedback for you. Don't, don't dwell on that. Get hit with any setback in life. It doesn't matter what it is. You got choices, whether it's choice b, Choice C, whatever. You have choices. Even if you do, even if you choose not to pick a, B or c, guess what? Choosing not to pick either one of those. That's choice d, like even if you do nothing, that's still a choice. Yes. You know you have to. Sometimes they'll choose. You know what choice will force itself upon you.
Ransom: 35:01 It's like option a, option B, option c ran out, option B is what I have to do. That's the only thing I got left. You know, and whenever you get to those situations, again, it's all about being positive. It's all about keeping things in perspective. It's like, don't do well. You can go back in time to choose choice B or whatever. Whatever other choice you wanted to choose, you've made your choice. It's done. You gotta move forward. Time only moves forward and understand that like, okay, listen, I made choice a five years later I realized
Tyson: 35:38 that was stupid. Guess what? You can choose today a new choice everyday, every moment you can choose no more of this. I'm done and make a new choice and see where that takes you. And it's like, well, that wasn't a good idea either a little bit better and not the way I wanted to make a new choice, you know, stop sitting in like we're talking about. So I'm sitting at no dwelling and would've, should've, could've land. Just make a new choice. Go for it. Choose decide, go and reevaluate where, where am I at? What are we doing? What's up?
Speaker 4: 36:09 Yeah.
Ransom: 36:10 And you know, take responsibility for things. Yes, those are the choices that you made, the life that you live. I mean, granted, not every setback in life is your fault or some things that, whether it be that's the family you were born into, whether it be that, you know, whatever hand you were dealt in life, yeah, sure.
Speaker 4: 36:33 But
Ransom: 36:34 does like everybody, everybody has their hand in life. That's what life has dealt. You know, you have to take ownership on how you played that hand.
Speaker 4: 36:45 Okay?
Ransom: 36:46 It's like there's always something inside. Any setback that you can own up to it. Not saying that every setback is your fault. I'm not saying that you can prevent every setback from happening, but I'm pretty sure if you go back through the wreckage and you start looking through the rubble, there were probably some choices that you could have made better. There were probably some song choices that you know you may not or shouldn't have made.
Speaker 4: 37:14 No,
Tyson: 37:16 and don't you know, even if these things are, you know, part of you, well there's your skin tone or your family or whatever, these things and in the moment that you had no control over, we have no control over who our parents are aware we're born. All these things. Don't use those as excuses. You know, you can choose to, to, to use as a crutch or say it doesn't affect me. I, I can't control that, but I can control how I go moving forward. I can either use my background or my race or my culture or whatever is it as an excuse to not do things marketing or I can just ignore it and I could just take responsibility for what I want to do and how I want to live my life.
Speaker 4: 37:57 Yeah, for sure.
Ransom: 37:59 And that's, um,
Tyson: 38:03 with that I, um, is a really good quote about taking responsibility. I want to kind of blaming, blaming other people and stuff.
Tyson: 38:14 You must stop blaming God and not blame any person you must completely control your desire and shift your avoidance to what lies within your reasoned choice. Must no longer feel anger, resentment, envy or regret from epictetus, who was a 2000 years ago, he was a slave turned philosopher. But I mean, to me that's, that's, that's exactly what this is about. You know, like we blame everything. We'd been everybody and uh, and everything and we don't take responsibility even if it has nothing to like, I couldn't control. I was born a white male that nothing to do with me, but I'm not going to use it as an excuse and I'm not going to lean on it in any, in any way, you know, it's, it's your choice always how you want to act and who you want to blame for things.
Ransom: 39:05 Yeah. I, I'm definitely not one to say no blame. I mean, granted sometimes there is ownership of things, but I believe if you're going to sit there and blame other people, um, yeah, sometimes it is their fault. Sometimes something was their bad. Right. But you know, you also gotta look inward to, you know, if you're only going to sit there and blame the other person and not blame yourself for what happened, then I think there's something for something that followed there. Right.
Tyson: 39:42 And that's like when I, when I, um, the last job I had when I, when I would send out a crew to do something in and it didn't get done correctly, and then the owner of the company to come to me. And so what's going on? What happened here? I was like, it's my fault. He's like, it's not possible. You were not on the job, you didn't dig. The holes are like, it doesn't matter. I failed to show them and convey to them the message correctly. It is 100 percent on my, on me, you know, and, and a lot of times people don't understand that, you know? Yeah. I could have easily been like, yeah, I, these guys are fucking morons. Yada couldn't follow directions. Oh yeah, they dig holes over here and it did, holds up like what? I could have easily done that and technically you want to make sure that could be absolutely true and absolutely right.
Tyson: 40:27 And I'd be 100 percent justified. What the fuck does that solve? It doesn't solve anything, you know? And, and, and if I take, if I can look within myself and say, okay, something went wrong, what did I do to not get that message through to them? What did I do to what the, how did I fail to plan? How did that feel to convey this? Like there's so many things I could learn if I just say, you know what, this, this went wrong. And how can I fix it going for so it doesn't happen again.
Ransom: 40:55 Yeah. No, I mean, yeah, like I said, granted in that situation, it definitely your employees didn't do the job correctly, right? But I like the fact that you are taking ownership like you're their boss. So either it's a training issue, either it's a communication issue or maybe it is their fault, but if it is their fault, then you as a manager have the choice to fire them. They did. They messed his job at once. Okay. Oh, they mess this jump off. I'm pretty sure I can clearly communicate what I need to have. It wasn't done as a manager. You got to go on and say, hey look. But like, I don't think you're set for this job. I told you how I want it done. It's not done this way. And I mean in. And these are the things like if you look within yourself, you know, when you stop. I don't know. To me, I think the whole idea of when you stop blaming other things, one other people, uh, for what's happening in their life. Like that's when you look inward and that will help you fix what you can, Kinda like the serenity prayer or whatever. Right. Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change. Occurs, change the things I can. And the wisdom to know the difference. Exactly. That's just, just like anything in life like.
Tyson: 42:18 Exactly. But that's like you were saying, that's how you kind of get down to the bottom of the problem. Like you're saying, like if I just blamed everybody to begin with, I would never, I would never find out that you know what Matt, Tom just doesn't get it or Tom doesn't want to be here so he's just not paying attention, you know? And I'd never been to find that actual thing that is completely beyond. I've, I've adjusted, made, made different moves, communicate differently, change things up and like man this is still this one thing. But without having that self awareness, I would never find that, you know, that little weed that's, that's kind of sitting in there that I need to pluck out and runs fine.
Ransom: 42:52 And sometimes you know, that's all it takes. I mean, if you, as a manager, which go up to tom and be like, Hey Tom, I don't know, I'm sorry. Either I didn't, I didn't do this properly or whatever, and you know, tom might look at you and be like, Hey, my manager actually cares about me. Right? It's like, ah. He. He was like, I fuck that job up. And Tyson took the bullet for me for the boss. Like, yeah, you know what? Next time I'm going to do the job, right? Like Tyson is a good boss and when they. You never know what can happen, but you got to take responsibility for things that are within your control
Tyson: 43:32 shifts and you know, what is in your control heading over to the social chameleon, that slow show slash pick me, right? Go into this month's giveaway that's in your control a hundred percent this month for the month of August. If you're listening to this and it's still August, we're doing a back to school giveaway given we're getting your $50 Amazon Gift Card to help either you or your kids or whatever it is with your back to school shopping. You don't got kids, whatever, maybe 50 bucks for you right now, so I had over getting that goes through all the to the end of August and we'll pick a winner the first day in September. Okay, cool. All right, and then that's what you want to do. This week's challenge.
Ransom: 44:26 All right, so for the challenge out there. Yeah, so for any new setbacks that come your way doesn't in heck you might even be going through a major setback right now as you're listening to this right? But you got to work on ways to handle these setbacks, things we talked about today. Stop digging and try to break your old patterns, right? Try different approach. Start taking action on a new path and this path that you're taking. This could be the roadmap for all your future setbacks, right? Seek help, right? Find a mentor. Find those positive people out there. Stop blaming others. Got to find the responsibility within yourself. Find what you could do better. That's how you start by improving that one percent
Tyson: 45:25 and understand people. The struggles are what makes you stronger. It's what life's about. Learning how to handle setbacks, come on and it's a great skill that you develop this stuff and you start mastering these things in your life is gonna be a lot better. You're going to be more equipped. You're not going to have these, you know, big ebbs and flows in these highs and lows and, and stuff in your life. You guys know, you guys all know the famous little line. Just keep swimming, swimming, swimming, you know, keep it. Keep moving forward. You know, remember, you guys are stronger than you think you are. All that to yourself. Do you know? And listen, if you're dealing with a catastrophic setback and you know, call a friend, find somebody you know, suicide is not the answer. Doing other harm to other people. It's not the answer. You know, you know, there's plenty of resources out there. You know, Google, some things, you know, if you're dealing with suicide or something like that or whatever. Again, the number one, 800, two, seven, three, eight, two, five, five. Don't be ashamed. We all go through shit sometimes we don't have the skills to deal with it. There's other people that help.
Ransom: 46:48 Don't not your fault, it's not your fault, you don't know how to handle your situation right,
Tyson: 46:52 but you can use it. You can start to learn and you can start to to to take your hand out and ask me. I don't know how to handle this. I don't know what to do. Can you help me as a lot of people out there that want to help you, you know, and this episode was a help to you. I would really like if you guys can share it with at least two people and if you'd like to support the show by investing in yourself and your education and your future, you guys can head over to the patriarch picture on page and become a patron in between shows. You guys can connect with us at the social community show on facebook, instagram, and also we have this on youtube and your favorite podcast apps. If you're listening to the podcast version, if you guys could please leave a review so the show can help more amazing people like you. As always, for past episodes and links to everything we've talked about here tonight, you guys can head over to the social chameleon.show. Until next time, keep learning growing and growing and transforming into the person you want to become.