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Hello, how are you?
Welcome back to the show.
Hello, Ben.
How the heck are you?
I'm good, Patrick.
Really good.
We're going to talk today about complaining.
We're not going to complain.
So fun.
What a great way to lead into something, right?
Especially for our audience.
Everyone's riveted right now.
Don't worry.
I heard you tell a story.
I think this was in the summer.
We haven't had a chance to talk about it here on the show, a story about how you sort of like the origin stories of a bit of a new framework for you, for us.
So I wanted you to start this conversation.
If you could give us the story one more time.
Lead us into this new framework, all around complaining, and then we're going to take it from there.
So wherever, wherever you think is the best place to start, let's start there.
Once upon a time, there was a boy.
So the the Idea was the kind of like the birth child of this framework happened when I was.
I'm lucky enough to Both my parents are still alive.
My mom lives on the beach on Cape Cod.
It's where we spend our summers.
Had this amazing day.
And towards the end of the day, I'm on the beach with my mom and we're there.
And she was complaining because the storm, these storms come in and they bring in a lot of debris.
You know like.
Twigs, seaweed, rocks, and her beach was a mess.
And I'm cleaning up the beach and she comes down and she's just trying to make conversation.
You know a good mom like she is.
And she starts just, like, complaining about how messy the beach is.
And I, you know, you're always kind of like, this was like a, should I go here or not?
Especially with, like, your mom, you're not sure where this is going to go.
But I was like I'm going to call this out and just see what happens next was like kind of first world problems right, mom.
Just kind of like i, i didn't want to, i didn't want to.
Like how could we be complaining?
Right, this is right around the fourth of july, which had this amazing amazing, amazing day, and i'm loving every bit of life and everyone around me and we had this like day that was truly complaint free, like everyone's just talking about how lucky we are.
And that was her saying that like oh, this beach.
It was like it was so jarring to me that I had to kind of like highlight it, underline it and have my mom try to like reread it.
Like actually mom, no, this is my response was first world problems, right?
Just trying to make light of it.
And to my mom's credit, because you don't know if that's going to turn into some sort of like lecture back.
Yeah.
Or at least an eye roll.
Yeah.
Or worse.
Or yeah, she walks away like and oh my gosh, now we're like to her credit.
She was like she paused and she just kind of like you should see it reflect a little bit.
And she was like, yeah, probably not even a first world problem.
Right.
And it was like, Oh yes.
Okay, cool.
Well, as I think a lot of us do when we have conversations or maybe not, I don't know.
I mulled that over in my head for, for 72 hours.
Like I just kept on thinking about it.
And I think about complaints and I think about them a lot and it's not complaints.
What I'm thinking about is, um, the stories we tell ourselves, shout out Mark England, right?
Like I think about our mindset and I think about our default operating system.
And I think about how we're programmed as humans to search for issues to look to solve.
That's like what the brain is set up to do.
And what I came away with after that three days of kind of like not being able to let this go in my head was this sort of category one through five of complaints, much like a category one through five of storms, right.
So there's a category one storm and a category five storm.
And just to kind of put a little like to color between the lines of this analogy, a category one would be a light drizzle, right.
Which means that it's a mild annoyance, but there's there's no meaningful consequences that come from that right.
It's going to be gone in minutes, certainly not going to really disrupt anything.
A category two would be like a thunderstorm where you need to make some small adjustments, right?
But by tomorrow, nothing's really changed.
You know, you can think of it like a thunderstorm happens during my son's soccer game.
They have to either postpone it or cancel it.
But by the next day, life is going on as normal.
There's no real difference.
A category three would.
It would be like a tropical storm where there's real consequences and it takes some real energy to solve this thing.
A category four would be like a hurricane where your future is different now.
It requires your full energy.
It requires support from other people and you need to adapt to something.
And then there's the category five, which is like an existential crisis, right where life will never be the same.
This requires emotional and spiritual rebuilding, right like your town got devastated, like a you know, Puerto Rico experienced one of these like massive, massive destruction.
So if you take that kind of like levels of impact, levels of importance, if you want to use that word magnitude, We could kind of put complaining alongside of these things.
Like what is the thing that's happening in your life?
Is this a light drizzle, a tropical storm, or a Category 5?
And we can sort of build – we can use these to go.
How appropriate or how much attention do we want to give to these things?
Aka, is it worth complaining?
Mm-hmm.
Because we're not robots and it's okay.
I don't want to pretend like that it's not human to kind of sometimes go like well, this sucks right.
Okay, I get it.
But if you start to kind of like, we have that kind of like framework for a storm.
Now, if you put some examples to what these things might be and you go okay, based off of these examples, what should our response be?
What should our mindset be?
And what's the lessons we learn, right?
So category one, these momentary frictions.
Remember, it's just like, It's the light drizzle.
This would be something like you hit some red lights on the way to work.
Someone makes your coffee and uses the wrong kind of milk, right?
Someone's walking slow, a pedestrian, like Heather freaks out about pedestrians.
We played this game of I might have talked about this before which was like, if you could get rid of one thing in the world, what would you get rid of?
And people were saying like, you know, like, People said, like, hunger.
People said, like, poison ivy.
Heather's was pedestrians.
Just people walking slowly across the street.
Yes, people walking slowly across the street.
Yeah, yeah.
Nice, Heather.
Okay.
So, yeah.
Pedestrians.
You know something like?
You're about to listen to your favorite song on Spotify and an ad pops up right.
Your phone's not connecting to your car.
There's the example I used when we explained.
The first time is like you're on this bike ride and you get a headwind right.
Like these are like momentary annoyances.
They're not real.
Okay.
So here's what we want to do with these guys is this is your chance.
This is your opportunity to build your character.
This is the practice of non-reaction.
Now you're going to like when the headwind pops up, your first thing is like oh, and then you're like OK, wait a minute.
It's not real.
Like pedestrian.
Oh, and you're like, OK, let it go.
Like the idea is, can you smile and let it go?
These are not problems.
They're training reps.
So it's not going to matter in five minutes, five hours or five days.
So don't give it more meaning right now.
These are the opportunities for emotional conditioning.
That's what these are.
Okay.
Then we have the next ones, right?
Which is that category two.
Remember, this is the thunderstorm, right?
Which is like, we're gonna have to reschedule Bodie's game, but the next day it's no big deal.
These are small things that, right?
Like your flight's delayed for two hours.
Your kid forgot their lunch and now you have to drive it to school.
That's a real world one, right?
You get a parking ticket.
You're on a Zoom call and the Wi-Fi kicks out, right?
You spill your coffee on your pants on the way to work.
Your cat gets stuck in a tree right before you're about to record a podcast.
Yes.
Yes.
Exactly.
That's exactly it.
That's still such an amazing story where you had to like...
Did you have to get like a 35-foot ladder or something ridiculous?
We had to get somebody with a 35-foot ladder.
Yes.
Okay.
That's amazing.
That's such a great example.
Yes.
Your cat gets stuck in a 35 feet up in a tree.
Okay.
So here's the deal on these ones.
These ones, just like the thunderstorm, is like how quickly can you respond?
How quickly can you react?
How quickly can you pivot?
These require flexibility, not emotions.
Right.
This is the tactical response, not the dramatic one.
So the questions we should be asking ourselves like, OK, what do I need to solve this thing?
Right.
Do I need to adjust my calendar?
Do I need to make a phone call to somebody?
Can I hire someone to do this?
If yes, it is solvable and not tragic.
Right.
That's that's the idea.
Here's like the here's like the takeaway from this.
High performers are suffer less because they solve things faster.
It's flexibility and adaptation.
Okay, we move on to category number three, right?
These are, this is the tropical storm.
These have real consequences and require some energy.
So these are things like you get passed over for a promotion.
You get an injury, right?
You tear your meniscus.
A autoimmune disease pops up.
You have to have shoulder surgery.
There's real tension in your marriage.
Your car breaks down and you need to get it fixed.
Maybe like you have to fire someone.
These are real things.
So here's the idea behind these ones.
Is these, just like the tropical storm?
These deserve real attention.
So In the first ones, like let it go, roll off, smile.
Then it becomes like this thing of like hey, use as a training tool to get better, but just respond and react quickly.
This one is the understanding that these are serious, but what we want to do is ask ourselves like are they permanent?
Right?
It's not a, are they as big of a deal as we're making them out to be in the moment?
So yes, we can give them some attention.
Yes, we can give them some energy.
We should.
They require energy to solve these things.
Just like the tropical storm.
We don't want to minimize these things, but we also don't want to catastrophize them, right.
These are not the end of days.
These are not life moving obstacles.
These are things that are going to pop up, but we can work through these things.
So slow down and respond, right?
Don't overreact and engage intentionally.
That's the idea behind these guys.
Okay.
Category four, right?
These are the life-altering events.
This is a hurricane.
This is the big ones, right?
This is your future is now different.
They require full energy, full support, and you have to adapt to this kind of new thing.
This is cancer diagnosis.
This is divorce.
This is your business suddenly, this would be like COVID.
Your business suddenly loses its biggest clients, right?
And now revenue is 40% less, right?
This is like your parents getting dementia.
This is your house floods, your house burns, like major things, right?
So for these guys, it's about not panicking, right?
This is serious and you need to rally.
We need to be able to create some clarity and focus on what matters right, because what's going to happen is we're going to get into this fight or flight catastrophizing and we're going to get in this sewer cycle.
And what we really need to do is kind of simplify, reduce the noise, focus on what matters.
And we have to recognize that we're probably not going to be able to go on this one alone.
We need to be able to kind of do this with other people.
This is where we rally the crew and we realize that this is an identity shaping event.
So you are now going to come out of this as a different person, right?
No one's going to come out of a cancer diagnosis or house burning down or parents having dementia.
You're going to emerge differently out of this scenario.
So who are you going to be on the other side?
Are you going to be able to look back on this with pride or with regret in how you handled it?
And the big one out of this one is rally the crew.
Like this is where you need other people.
The hurricane brings people together.
We need that.
And the category five is this big, the existential.
This is the earth shattering one.
Life will never be the same.
Requires spiritual and emotional rebuilding.
These are things like your child being diagnosed with stage four cancer, your spouse dying, being told that you have a terminal illness, a catastrophe that leaves you with a permanent disability, some sort of like like devastating betrayal.
Like your best friend and your wife start hooking up right.
Like these are major things that are going to change.
Life will never be the same.
The idea behind here is survival first, right?
It's like you don't have to try to make – yeah, it's not about making meaning of things, right?
It's about – it's not about what's the mindset hack.
It's not about like what's the tricks I should be using.
It's about –
Put one foot in front of the other.
If we can, we want to try to.
The only thing we want to try and do is pull back away from the why me.
That's the only thing from a mental thing that we're going to try and stay away from.
And instead go... Instead of why me, it's what now?
What do I need to do now to just take one step forward?
I'm going to try my damnedest to make it through this day.
That's it.
This is...
This is sacred ground.
You are being rewritten in the moment.
You will not be the same person on the other side of this thing.
Potentially for the better, right?
Like we just don't know that just yet.
It's that wise old farmer type thing, right?
We don't have enough perspective to know how we're going to be rewritten.
So the goal is just survive, okay?
Get through this thing one day in front of the other.
Try not to go into the sewer cycle of why me and just go, what is the productive thing?
Next, next, next, next.
Get through it.
Fall asleep.
Wake up the next day.
Next, next, next, next.
Because truly the only thing that's going to help with any of these things is time and space.
And if we can get some time and space away from these existential problems catastrophic, shattering your world moments, they can kind of fall into a category four.
But in the moment, they're five.
And we just got to survive the fives.
So that kind of brings this.
I just wanted to like lay out that framework of this because it can kind of lay some language and understanding for the conversation going forward.
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I think the first thing I want to bring back up is something you said right at the top, which is I don't know if you said this exactly, but this is what I wrote down which is that complaints are stories.
Right.
Which is, I think, a really useful reminder, because if a complaint is a story, then it is within our power to tell a different story.
And so we can translate that complaint into either something neutral or something positive.
Even just neutral is a benefit, right?
If we go from negative to neutral, that's a win.
And then I think everything else you laid out is recognizing that all each of these, even to the degree that it is like, even the category four and five stuff, the really hard stuff, they are still stories, much harder stories, much harder, much harder to find a foothold in.
But, to your point, we can figure out where we can find a foothold and do what we can with what we've got.
But again recognizing okay, these are stories, category one, category two, category three, these are stories that i'm telling myself and so when these things happen, We can have the awareness that we talk about all the time.
We can say, wait, what is this?
What level is this?
Is this going to matter tomorrow?
Is this going to matter in a month?
And it all makes me think about two things which are related, which is one, your bracelet, which we've talked about certainly before in the past the never whine, never complain, never make excuses bracelet.
So I want you to remind us what that is.
And then even that is a hearkening back to a very core theme of our conversations over the years and a core theme of stoicism.
And it's almost a cliche at this point, which is control what you can control.
And so thinking about these categories with this framework in mind, where does that end?
Where does the actual practice of awareness, daily awareness, in the moment awareness, fit into this as it relates to what we can do now that we have an intellectual understanding of this framework?
Okay.
Wow.
There's a lot there.
Okay.
Okay, so what do we do now that we have this intellectual framework?
This language.
In the same way that we've got the mindset continuum language like just having the language is so helpful.
Exactly, yes.
Having language is so helpful, but here's the big thing, is the understanding that not everything deserves the same response.
Yes.
That's the punchline, right?
And if you don't distinguish, if it's one or two or three and you give everything the same response, what happens?
That's exactly right.
Suffering is miscategorization.
Mm-hmm.
Category fours and fives are they need your attention, right?
For survival.
You're about to a hurricane.
If a hurricane is coming and you don't batten down the hatches, if you don't prep, if you don't get to a safe place, really bad things can happen.
They need your attention.
If you give that same level of attention to categories one and two, I mean first off, just calling it what it is, that is, lack of emotional maturity.
That's what that is.
We have to be able to recognize the differences between these two things and treat them differently.
So it's like on one side, they're all the same.
That is emotional immaturity.
What is it when you are able to understand and categorize them and recognize what they are?
That's wisdom.
That's what that is.
So It becomes this thing of where we're not trying to avoid the, I'm sorry, life.
It's the understanding.
The wisdom is the understanding that we're not trying to avoid fours and fives, right?
It's about building the type of human that can meet the fours and fives.
The only way we can do that is if we treat the ones and twos as trainings.
We have to pick up those light weights so we are able to meet when catastrophe actually hits.
We are strong enough.
We are ready to heed the call.
If we just treat everything the same, we get blown out with every single one.
People that are listening to this are probably nodding along because they're that type of people.
But we all know people that get freaked out when the waiter brings the wrong order.
Yeah.
We get people that are like freaked out when they hear something on the news.
Like we can't get overwhelmed by drizzle, right?
Okay, so like your kid's game got rained out.
No big deal.
So we have to understand that these minor frictions are just that.
They're inconveniences.
They're not the things that we should pull everything into.
This gets into where you were just kind of saying this – mindset 101, I think, kind of like where I would start with.
That is like and we're talking about mindset.
The first one is just understanding that mindset is the story you tell yourself.
I think it's so powerful, just so you can start to pay attention to that.
And the next one is are you paying attention to the things that you can change?
If you're paying attention to everything, meaning There's that circle of influence, the things that you can control and change, which are so limited,
And then there's that circle of concern, the things that pull on your attention.
Complaining is giving attention to negative things that are outside of your control.
We talked about this kind of like a decision tree before on the show.
Which is, you ask, do I have a problem?
If the answer is no, don't complain.
Like that's – it sounds ridiculous, but like okay, is there?
– you have to actually ask yourself that.
Like is there actually a problem?
Because sometimes you end up in like crowds outside of our bubble, right?
And people actually complain when there is no problem.
It's just –
It's just their language.
It's how they talk.
It's sort of like the story you told at the start of this, which is like your mom just came out and she was just making conversation and it came out as a complaint.
This is how people make a conversation.
Like, can you believe the traffic on the way to the game?
Yeah.
Like that.
Like we don't, like that's a negative.
It's outside your control and you're bringing attention to something you can't control.
And this sounds ridiculous.
Like why is he hammering down this?
The reason is because of the reticular activation system, the frequency illusions, which is what you pay attention to.
You will see more of.
You're going to buy a new Honda Pilot.
So what do you see on the road everywhere?
You see Honda Pilots on the road everywhere.
When you think about putting shutters up on your house.
And now, all of a sudden, you notice shutters on everybody's houses.
It's like this thing that you see everywhere.
What you look for, you see more of.
If you talk about and give attention to negative things, you're going to see more negative things in your life.
We know that people with a negative mindset get outperformed by people with a neutral or positive mindset.
I should say it the other way around.
A positive or even better, a neutral mindset.
So if we want to improve our lives, perform better in our lives, your language matters.
Like you complaining is holding you back.
I just read this book yesterday, you know, and it was about EQ, the workplace, and it was in terms of investment banking, and it was how, like yes, investment banking has a lot to do with intelligence, it has a lot to do with data.
The number one thing that determines success, even in such a numerical profession like investment banking, is emotional intelligence and what they.
It sounds so ridiculous, but what they highlighted in there was smiling, was making eye contact, was being enthusiastic, was having the right tone in your voice, was speaking up appropriately.
One of the things that the author found out really early because he had a great senior person in his he worked for.
JP Morgan ended up becoming wildly successful was early on, when he was a junior analyst.
He was giving some reports back to his senior advisor.
And the person said, you did a phenomenal job with this, but do you not like working here?
And he was like, what do you mean?
I, no, I think this is pretty awesome.
I think it's awesome.
She goes, you don't act like it.
Like, just think of that.
Like what energy are you bringing into the world?
If you want to elevate your.
This is like step one in my world, in my approach is like Become physically fit enough so that you are creating the right hormones coming through your body.
It means like get active.
Step two is be enthusiastic.
Like get excited about life.
And the telltale sign that you are not that is you're focusing on negative things, aka complaining.
So this is why this is kind of an important conversation.
It's not just because you and I don't like surrounding ourselves with people that are negative.
This is a huge part of chasing what truly matters, which is a fulfilled life.
We need to move ourselves forward in the conversation we're having in our own heads.
That conversation comes out in our words.
And if our words are negative, complaining again.
I'll define that as bringing attention to negative things that you have no control over.
Because if you have control over them, now we should talk about that.
You know, you having a conversation like, Bill, you are not meeting expectations.
You came up short in the last three projects that you were supposed to deliver to the team.
Those are negative things.
But you have control over that as the manager, the boss, the owner, whatever it might be.
We need to address those things.
That's not complaining.
Complaining has a lot to do with are you coming to this with a solution-oriented mindset?
So if you're not bringing a solution-oriented mindset to this conversation, the traffic on the way to this game sucked huh.
Or you're watching your kids play soccer.
I don't know why I keep on going to this, but you watch a kid's soccer game and you're like this referee what the hell.
Yes.
Okay, but what are we doing?
There's nothing we are going to do that's going to change that.
We're bringing attention to negative and you bring negative attention, so you're going to see more of it.
Now, the next call that's kind of gray, maybe it was a 50-50.
You're like, see, look at that.
We got to learn to kind of let these category ones and twos just roll off our back.
Smile and use them again.
Use them as the reps.
They are the training reps to help us get better at this.
Yeah.
I also think about.
I love that you're bringing up attention, because I also think about the fact that our attention, as much as we think we can multitask, as much as we can think we can pay attention to lots of things at the same time, the truth is we can't.
All we can do is context shift.
And so when your attention is pointed at, you know, I like to think of attention as sort of like a laser beam.
When your attention is pointed at the negative, at the thing you don't want, at the discomfort, at the same time, everything you just said, it doubles down on itself and it compounds.
But at the exact same time, you're also stealing from yourself the ability to see the good in the exact same moment, right.
And so your mom on the beach that day decided to focus not decided consciously, but decided to focus on the junk everywhere instead of, for example, the fact that her son was on the beach helping her clean it up.
Same exact moment.
It's just where did she point the laser beam of her attention?
I think just because you keep talking about soccer, I think about the first in baseball this year.
My youngest is eight and he was the youngest on his team and he really wanted to pitch.
And so we'd been practicing pitching in the in the yard and in the driveway.
But I told him like listen, you're the.
If he's not the youngest, he was the second youngest on the team.
I'm like, you're probably not going to get a chance to pitch this year.
You're just probably like your coach probably is going to let the older kids do it.
And then literally the next game.
I showed up to the game like 10 minutes late and I walked up to the field and he was on the pitcher's mound pitching.
One, just really cool.
I was really proud of him for saying yes to the opportunity.
But the reason I bring it up is the ump that we had in that particular game like, clearly didn't want to be there.
He was like an 18-year-old kid.
He just was like he wanted to go home.
And so every pitch was a ball.
Totally fine.
It's great.
That's good for a long game.
That 18-year-old should just –
Understand that he wants to go home.
Every pitch is a strike.
Everything's a strike.
But all the other parents were complaining about the ump.
And I was like, and my kid was pitching.
And all I was thinking about is how cool is it that he got to pitch today, when I had just told him it was probably going to be another year before he got a chance to pitch?
And that's what I mean by our attention is a laser beam.
It's like, where are you going to point it?
And what are you going to see when you point it, when you choose to point it in the positive or again, even the neutral versus the negative?
Yeah.
So I just think it's really like both sides of that is really important to recognize.
Yeah.
I think it's really important.
And I like that, that description of like, it's a laser beam.
You can't kind of like, it's not a floodlight, spray it out.
You know, it's not like a, it's not a sprinkler where it's just kind of like going everywhere.
It is a, it is a, you put the hose on.
Yeah.
That's a better metaphor.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I'm envisioning like spraying someone.
But I just want to call out as well, like There are times based off of this framework, that it's not about trying to find the sunshine and the rainbows in the rain.
Like there are times that it is a hurricane.
What you're saying is spot on.
When it is a category one or a category two, yes.
Oh my gosh, you're going to miss the beauty of life because of where your attention is being drawn into.
There is so much awesomeness here, right?
Again, it's a light drizzle.
Okay, so...
Your kid's game because of the thunderstorm got canceled.
Okay, now you can go out to ice cream with him or whatever.
It'd be weird to do that in a rainstorm, I guess, but you can go and whatever.
Yeah, there's new opportunities, right?
As opposed to if you're all upset about it.
But dot, dot, dot, when we get into those category fours and fives, it's okay.
It's okay to be negative, right?
It's okay for your attention to go to the negative.
And if you try to just create the, this is people like, you need to grieve.
Like if you lose a spouse and you're like, I'm just going to find the positive in this.
Your kid gets diagnosed with stage four cancer.
You're like, I'm going to find the positive in this.
That's not reality, right?
It's a false thing.
This is where the optimist cracks because they're just trying to find the positive in everything.
And what we want to do is go like embrace the harsh reality.
This is what I'm dealing with right now.
This is going to take real work, real attention.
This is going to hurt and it's going to suck.
Okay, let's go.
Do I need support?
Do I need to change things?
Like I have to kind of really, really go at this thing.
So understanding that the laser beam in these little ones could just be robbing you of your life completely.
As we get to the big ones.
If that laser beam is giving you feedback, it's like a tractor beam that pulls you in.
We got three things now, right?
Laser beam, hose, and tractor, which gets you sucked in.
If it's sucking you into negative, like, yup, guess what?
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I want to bring in a couple, a couple ideas or a couple things that we talk about often, which is peace of mind and happiness.
I want to talk about how our recognition around these categories of complaints affect our peace of mind and affect our happiness.
And the first thing I think about is and I'm probably not going to get it right, but the Arthur Brooks uh, calculation of happiness is where you are versus divided by where you want to be.
Is that close to what it is?
Yeah, i think he says what you have versus what you want yeah, so like just recognizing that and then recognizing, all right, if we can do all this work, if we can like recognize that these are just stories we tell ourselves again, to the degree that we do that we can choose a better story that we can recognize.
Is this category one two three, etc.
Yep, and then start to recognize oh okay well, if I wanna get myself closer to peace of mind within this scenario, within this context, I can either increase where I am or I can decrease what I want, right?
Like there's traffic.
The traffic is making me angry, frustrated, whatever.
Well, if I can decrease my desire for there not to be traffic, I increase my chances of getting back to Again a neutral state, or even a happy state, and recognizing like those are the two levers we have.
It's either changing, get off the highway and get out of traffic, or care less about being in traffic.
And oftentimes I think we don't do either of those.
I think we just sit and stew.
Yeah, no, I think that's right.
Is like cause.
When I hear his I immediately I mean it's what you have versus, it's what you have versus what you want.
I immediately go to like, it's all like bigger things.
Right.
It's, do I have the career I want?
Am I living in the place I want?
Is it the marriage I want?
Have I got the earning that I want?
Do I have the house that I want?
Driving the car I want?
Do I have the body I want?
I think it's really cool, as you said, is, well, what if it was less about that want?
It's almost like because when you say okay, just don't want as much, does that mean don't want as nice of a body, don't want as much money, don't want to live in as nice of a house.
That's kind of weird.
But I think the idea which I love is, when it comes to these categories, what if you just didn't care as much about the ones in the twosies?
Yeah right yeah, like that.
Like I don't care if it's drizzling or not, meaning I don't care if someone gives me the wrong milk in my coffee, I don't care if if there's headwind on my bike.
I don't care if there's pedestrians.
I don't care if the beach is like that, right?
That's kind of a cool thing.
It sounds like, well, wait a minute, then you're caring less.
It's like, isn't that negative?
It's like, no, that's exactly what it is.
What we want to do is care less about the things that matter less.
These things don't matter.
And this is what kind of like I said.
It's a punchline to the whole end of the thing is like People are suffering not from problems but from mislabeling them.
And if you don't care about the small ones, well then, what happens is, when the big ones pop up, you have the energy.
You're not exhausted from caring about everything.
It's basically like now that I'm saying it.
It's the subtle art of not giving an F.
That's exactly what Mark Manson's whole punchline is.
It's like, stop caring about Don't give an F about all these little things.
There's actually a book called, another book called, I'm going to get it wrong.
The subtitle is something along the lines of it's something like how to stop caring about little things.
Dot, dot, dot.
Most of life is about the little things.
Like it's just pulling on your attention.
Yeah, I always think about most things don't matter at all, and the things that do matter matter a ton.
And part of our job is to make sure we're parsing through all of the stimulus thrown at us to figure out is this one of the?
Is this in the bucket of things that don't matter, or is this in the bucket of things that do matter?
And that's what we kind of start in the beginning with is like your mind.
We're designed to think that everything matters and we're designed to seek out problems.
So for that reason, there's no calibration.
Yep.
Right.
There's no differentiation.
It's like problem, full attention, go.
Yes.
Like solve.
Give everything just like it would be if it was a category four or five.
Give everything to this thing.
Yep.
And this is the idea is like the wisdom is in the calibration.
Yeah.
Right.
I'm so glad you just brought that word in, calibrate.
Yeah.
Not overreacting to the small, mild frictions, but also not underreacting to the real pain Right.
That's what this that's I mean, to me, that's what emotional maturity is.
That's what that's what dealing with life appropriately is.
It's like right emotion, right amount at the right time.
Yeah.
Yep.
Yes.
Yeah.
Love that.
To back up just a little bit.
One of the you know, when you say like, does this does it mean we don't care?
And I think there's a degree to which, yes, it means we don't care.
But really, if you were to unpack that sentence a little bit more, it's that we don't, aren't going to let those things determine our peace of mind.
We're not gonna let those things be the determinant of our momentary happiness, from moment to moment to moment.
I'm not gonna let the traffic knock me off center.
I'm not gonna let a messy beach knock me off center.
I'm gonna choose to point my attention towards something good or neutral.
I'm not gonna point it towards something else.
I'm not gonna let something that doesn't matter feel like it matters.
And so it's a little bit different, because I think you can.
You can easily go to the end of that line of like well, nothing matters.
And then nobody wants to category hurricanes and devastating earthquakes matter.
Yeah.
And so I think it's just about like recognizing that does not matter.
Yeah.
It's recognizing what we mean in this case by what matters and what doesn't matter.
It's what's going to pull my attention away from where I want to point it towards things that don't matter.
And that's ultimately, I think, what we're talking about.
What can help navigate that in real time because again we're problem-seeking machines and everything is going to seem to matter in the moment is having perspective.
And you try to zoom out and say we've talked about this before.
Is this going to matter in five minutes, five hours, five days, five weeks, five months, five years?
If this is going to still matter in five years, we should be giving this attention.
This should be a thing.
If it pulls us into a negative, okay, but guess what?
There's a hurricane coming.
We got to deal with this thing.
That's a negative, but go deal with it.
To your point, if this isn't going to matter in five hours, five days, five weeks, like that's –
That's the thing.
That's the decision-making machine of like, should I give this more attention than it seems?
Should I give this the attention that it seems like it wants right now?
And the art and science of this is learning how to do that, right?
Learning how to, okay, this seems like a big deal.
My emotions are really high.
I'm massively triggered by this thing.
But wait a minute, like if I was to zoom out a little bit.
Not even am I going to like.
Is this going to matter?
Am I even going to remember this in five months?
And I promise you like no, no day that it drizzled.
Will you remember that?
No, it's not going to happen.
If you think about like and I do this all the time but like if you pop open whatever your phone, whatever app you use to save your pictures Google photos, Apple photos, whatever
If you think about going back and scrolling back six months to just look at the pictures you took that day and The chances of you remembering the thing that put you in a bad mood on the morning that you took that picture of your kid doing the cute thing, the chances of you remembering that is almost none.
Almost none.
Certainly none if it's that category one or category two that we've talked about.
There won't be any bit of you that will remember like oh yeah, it was really annoying when I had that Zoom meeting that morning.
You won't remember it.
Yeah.
You're in a bad mood because you're – your kid for the third, fourth, fifth day in a row left their bowl in the living room.
And you're like, just please put the bowl in the sink.
But again, when that child is 25 years old, you're not going to remember that at all.
If it pulls you down, that's when we're not right emotion, right amount, right time.
It's okay to get a little frustrated totally yeah, a little like.
These are minor annoyances, calibrate it right.
Yeah yeah, categories.
So it's a minor annoyance, so treat it as such.
Yeah ah, dang it.
He did it again.
Hey, you know, have the conversation, see what best thing you can do to move forward, but then yeah, tomorrow it's not to be drizzling yeah, move forward.
Last thing i want to, i want to bring up, i want to go back a little bit.
You said something.
I think we were talking about category four or fives And you were saying something like who will you be on the other side of this?
Or this thing is going to change you on the other side of it.
And what I think is really interesting is that's totally true.
Even to a degree, like category three could have that, depending on what it is.
But category four or five certainly is going to change us when we go through it.
And that's to the degree that it is.
It's inevitable.
But what I thought about when you said that is, okay, so who will you be on the other side of this?
Well, it depends on some level. who you are going into it.
And category one, category two, even in the category three is to your point or, to use your words, is like that's the training ground.
And so who you are, in the same way that, like you sign up for a 5k or a 10k or an ultra, that is going to change you on some level.
And the degree that it changes you, or the direction that it changes you, depends on who you were on the day on at the starting line.
So who, who or how did you train in the category one, the category two, the category three, environments or contexts?
That is going to change the degree or the direction that you are changed when those really big things come.
And so that's why it's important to be recognizing on a daily basis is this a category one that I'm treating like a category three?
Is this a category two that I'm blowing way out of proportion?
Because those are the reps.
Those are the mental reps that when we get to the starting line even if we don't know that it is the starting line of a category four or five we're strong enough, we're conditioned enough to be able to withstand it as best we can.
Yeah, that's exactly it, right?
We need to treat the cat ones and twos, right?
The momentary frictions, the minor inconveniences, the disruptions of daily convenience for what they are opportunities to get stronger.
And we've got to learn to be able to handle hard better, so that when we get those big ones – let me say it another way
If we don't do that and those things we treat as big ones, when the big ones come, it's catastrophic.
We implode.
We are left with no solid footing.
It's essentially like the sick well-fit continuum, right?
If we haven't done the work to be at least well or closer to fit, and we're already sick and life hits us with something bad, that's bad news.
Like if you have a real big underlying condition, meaning like you have really advanced cancer and you're going through chemo, you're sick.
Like if that's the case.
If you get a small flu, you have no immune system.
That's life hitting you with a flu.
Usually no big deal.
If you get a flu when you are in that compromised position, that could be horrific.
It's the same thing here.
If you're weak emotionally mentally spiritually, if we haven't done the work to become a more formidable mental and emotional human being by understanding how to train through ones and twos, When the thing happens, it's going to rock us to the point where we might not return from it in a good way.
To the point where you said, you're going to come out a different person on the other side.
If you've done some of the work beforehand and you can enter that at least with a strong footing, you can grow from these things.
But I know from a personal example, a couple who lost their only son.
They were never the same on the other side of that in a tragic way, right?
They lost the meaning of life.
They're just basically two souls floating around this earth right now and they're empty.
There's nothing.
Whereas someone like Mo Goddard, who we've talked about this before, who wrote Saul for Happy, same deal.
Lost his son on the operating table from a mistake that the doctor made, how easy would it be for him to be vengeful, spiteful.
A victim came out of it further along than he was before in terms of his fulfillment and the meaning of life for him.
So I think it absolutely makes a ton of difference of have you done the work beforehand?
Dot, dot, dot, it's never too late to start to put in the work.
Yes.
Right?
Right.
Like if you are physically sick and you get sicker, like you giving up is the worst thing to do.
The best thing to do is to do all the things necessary to try to get yourself as healthy as possible in that moment.
Sleep better, eat better, get movement and exercise, get outside, connect with other people.
It's the same thing with this.
If you find yourself getting rocked by one of these categories or fives, it's not like Well dang didn't do the work to prepare.
Now is the right time to do that.
Try and gain perspective.
Try to do what you can.
Let all the little things go in between.
Focus on these big, big, big issues right in front of you.
I think it's a good place to wrap up.
Thanks, buddy.
Thanks, Patrick.
Thank you so very much for tuning into the show this week.
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The first.
If you want even more from this episode, I do recommend you check out the full listener guide, where we break down all the big ideas.
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