In this episode, Rick and Keith talk about the Laws of Attraction and what is meant by “what you put out, you get back”. We think you will find the conversation both interesting and freeing.
keith jones
ToBeRe… community member Lisa K requested we do a podcast on Victimhood. She wanted our take on how we define victimhood and how to recognize it; even if it’s us who play the victim. In this podcast, the guys respond to Lisa’s request.
Keith’s References:
Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela was a South African anti-apartheid revolutionary, politician, and philanthropist, who served as President of South Africa from 1994 to 1999. He was the country’s first black head of state and the first elected in a fully representative democratic election. Prior to this, Mandela served 27 years in prison, initially on Robben Island, and later in Pollsmoor Prison and Victor Verster Prison. Widely regarded as an icon of democracy and social justice, he received more than 250 honours—including the Nobel Peace Prize. He is held in deep respect within South Africa, where he is often referred to by his Xhosa clan name, Madiba, and described as the “Father of the Nation”.
Mother Teresa, known in the Catholic Church as Saint Teresa of Calcutta, was a Roman Catholic nun and missionary. In 1950 Teresa founded the Missionaries of Charity, a Roman Catholic religious congregation which had over 4,500 sisters and was active in 133 countries in 2012. The congregation manages homes for people dying of HIV/AIDS, leprosy and tuberculosis; soup kitchens; dispensaries and mobile clinics; children’s- and family-counseling programs; orphanages, and schools. Members, who take vows of chastity, poverty, and obedience, also profess a fourth vow: to give “wholehearted free service to the poorest of the poor”. Teresa received a number of honours, including the 1962 Ramon Magsaysay Peace Prize and 1979 Nobel Peace Prize. She was canonised (recognised by the church as a saint) on 4 September 2016, and the anniversary of her death (5 September) is her feast day.
Jalen Anthony Rose is a former American professional basketball player and current sports analyst with ESPN. Rose also hosts an ESPN podcast with David Jacoby called Jalen & Jacoby. In college, he was a member of the University of Michigan Wolverines’ “Fab Five” that reached the 1992 and 1993 NCAA Men’s Division I Basketball Championship games as both freshmen and sophomores. Rose played in the NBA for six teams, most notably alongside Reggie Miller on the Indiana Pacers teams that made three consecutive Eastern Conference finals, including the 2000 NBA Finals. Rose was primarily a small forward; however, he sometimes played the role of a shooting guard.
Rick’s References:
Earth, Wind & Fire (EWF) is an American band that has spanned the musical genres of R&B, soul, funk, jazz, disco, pop, rock, Latin and African. They are one of the most successful bands of all time.[1][2] Rolling Stone Magazine described them as “innovative, precise yet sensual, calculated yet galvanizing”.
Viktor Emil Frankl was an Austrian neurologist and psychiatrist as well as a Holocaust survivor. Frankl was the founder of logotherapy, which is a form of existential analysis, the “Third Viennese School of Psychotherapy”. His best-selling book Man’s Search for Meaning (published under a different title in 1959: From Death-Camp to Existentialism, and originally published in 1946 as Trotzdem Ja Zum Leben Sagen: Ein Psychologe erlebt das Konzentrationslager, meaning Nevertheless, Say “Yes” to Life: A Psychologist Experiences the Concentration Camp) chronicles his experiences as a concentration camp inmate, which led him to discover the importance of finding meaning in all forms of existence, even the most brutal ones, and thus, a reason to continue living. Frankl became one of the key figures in existential therapy and a prominent source of inspiration for humanistic psychologists.
With a keen focus on directing my energy towards the things I can control, I have more love, peace and gratitude in my life these days. And by letting go of things I can’t control, I remove barriers that prevent me from being my happiest and creating winning connections with others. It’s sobering to know that I am solely responsible for how I experience life. Others can contribute, but at the end of the day, it’s up to me. And it all comes down to how much effort and consistency I apply to training my mind to interpret life.
All we have is the present moment. When I was younger, people older and wiser than me would say this. While I heard them, I wasn’t listening very well. I was busy being caught up with achieving and succeeding in life. This meant using the past as motivation to rise above where I started out and the future as a lighthouse guiding me towards what I wanted to accomplish and obtain. It’s no wonder I missed out on all the peace and joy along the way. I didn’t fully appreciate the people around me who provided wonderful examples of how to live in the moment and how the present moment is all that matters. It’s all that is. Everything else is a trap or an illusion. Once I learned this, I began working on how to honor the present and experience it fully. This meant making lots of changes in my mindset.
The first step I needed to take was to stop judging others, myself and life. I had to train myself to stop looking for what was missing in people and wrong with life. I began working on seeing the good in everyone when mistakes are made, rather than passing blame. I acquired new lenses by which to view life’s problems. With lots of practice, I started seeing possibilities and opportunities in situations that I once would’ve reacted in anger and frustration towards.
The second step involved gaining leverage on my ego; especially when it comes to other people. I make it a practice to extend grace and forgiveness even though it was once much easier to judge and shame others and myself. I gave up the victim identity my ego wanted me to take on, by telling me people wronged, abandoned or betrayed me. Which led to an important question. If I am no longer a victim, then who am I? The answer is free. I get to be free when I let go of all the things my mind chooses to believe and focus on, that only result in anxiety, worry, stress, guilt, blame and shame.
Training the mind to be present in the moment is the only way to be free. Free to be happy, free to love and free to just be. It’s not easy because we are conditioned to operate from a place of fear; even when there are no real threats to our physical being. In the absence of real danger, an untrained mind will create something to be afraid of or react to. A trained mind responds to “perceived” threats by making a choice that results in experiencing peace and gratitude in the present moment. For example, traffic is something you can’t control. However, I used to get angry and frustrated when I felt I was stuck in it. Now whenever in it, I express gratitude for the opportunity to practice patience and mindfulness. I use the time to do a gratitude exercise or listen to a personal development podcast by teachers like Eckhart Tolle or Wayne Dyer.
Another example deals with stress. I use to feel anxiety before certain workouts or business meetings where I was attached to the outcome. I’ve learned that stress, anxiety and worry are created in the mind. And because this is where they originate and I control the mind, I can minimize or eliminate them. The key to doing so is to be present. Occasionally stress and anxiety slip past my defenses and when I feel them, I run through the following steps:
- I ask what am I worried about or afraid of? Is it something I can control? If so, take care of it. If it’s an upcoming workout or race, eat clean, train and sleep. Case closed. If it’s something out of my control, let it go because there’s nothing I can do about it anyway and worry won’t change the outcome. Again, case closed.
- What if it’s something I really want? A relationship, something material, a different outcome? Attachment and expectations are where all suffering resides. When I let go of attachment to how I want something to go, I’m free from being occupied with what could happen or the “what ifs” if it doesn’t happen so I can focus on what is happening right now. When I’m present, I experience life and the people in it as opposed to life happening around me or to me on my way to something else.
- Acceptance. I’ve learned to accept people and situations just as they are instead of resisting the facts about them. And when I say acceptance, I mean being loving and kind in my energy towards them. I love people based on who they are and who they are not, rather than how I think they should be. We are all extensions of each other. To dislike, judge or hate someone is to hate myself. That no longer makes sense to me. And to resist a situation as it shows up in life is a waste of energy and a missed opportunity to create something meaningful from what’s there.
Training the mind is not easy, but if you want a peaceful, loving and happy life, it’s absolutely necessary. It’s true that no one or no-thing can make you happy. Only you can do that. Money, fame, power and relationships won’t do it. But a trained mind rooted in the present, aware of its power to choose how it sees people and things and a commitment to train it, can be make all the difference in the world.
Keith
It’s easy to list all the benefits of living a healthy lifestyle and adopting a positive attitude. We also know the big risks to our physical health and emotional state for not being healthy. But what about the hidden costs of not working on yourself to be healthier, happier and more loving? Listen as the guys riff on this topic.
Keith’s References:
Wayne Dyer see www.waynedyer.com. Dyer told readers to pursue self-actualization, calling reliance on the self a guide to “religious” experience. Dyer criticized societal focus on guilt, which he saw as an unhealthy immobilization in the present due to actions taken in the past. He encouraged readers to see how parents, institutions, and even they, themselves, had imposed guilt trips upon themselves. Although Dyer initially resisted the spiritual tag, by the 1990s he had altered his message to include more components of spirituality when he wrote the book Real Magic and discussed higher consciousness in the book Your Sacred Self. He passed away at age 75.
Debbie Ford Debbie Ford, a former drug addict whose popular self-help books, including the best-selling Dark Side of the Light Chasers, and Shadow Effect, encouraged people to acknowledge their faults rather than pursue perfection. She passed away at age 57.
Rick’s References:
The Death of Ivan Ilyich (first published in 1886, is a novella by Leo Tolstoy, considered one of the masterpieces of his late fiction, written shortly after his religious conversion of the late 1870s.
The Death of Ivan Ilyich tells the story of a high-court judge, and his sufferings and death from a terminal illness in 19th-century Russia.
The mundane portrayal of Ivan’s life coupled with the dramatization of his long and grueling battle with death seems to directly reflect Tolstoy’s theories about moral living, which he largely derived during his sabbatical from personal and professional duties in 1877. In his lectures on Russian literature, Russian-born novelist and critic Vladimir Nabokov argues that, for Tolstoy, a sinful life (such as Ivan’s) is moral death. Therefore death, the return of the soul to God, is, for Tolstoy, moral life. To quote Nabokov: “The Tolstoyan formula is: Ivan lived a bad life and since the bad life is nothing but the death of the soul, then Ivan lived a living death; and since beyond death is God’s living light, then Ivan died into a new life – Life with a capital L.”
Tim Ferriss Timothy “Tim” Ferriss (born 1977) is an American author, entrepreneur and public speaker. He has written 4 self-help books on the “4-hour” theme, The 4-Hour Workweek, The 4-Hour Body, The 4-Hour Chef, and Tools of Titans; the first two were No. 1 New York Times bestsellers and the third was a No. 1 Wall Street Journal bestseller.
Gandhi Revered the world over for his nonviolent philosophy of passive resistance, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (born 1869) was known to his many followers as Mahatma, or “the great-souled one.” He began his activism as an Indian immigrant in South Africa in the early 1900s, and in the years following World War I became the leading figure in India’s struggle to gain independence from Great Britain. Known for his ascetic lifestyle–he often dressed only in a loincloth and shawl–and devout Hindu faith, Gandhi was imprisoned several times during his pursuit of non-cooperation, and undertook a number of hunger strikes to protest the oppression of India’s poorest classes, among other injustices. After Partition in 1947, he continued to work toward peace between Hindus and Muslims. Gandhi was shot to death in Delhi in January 1948 by a Hindu fundamentalist.
Seneca the Younger (c. 4 BC – AD 65), fully Lucius Annaeus Seneca, known simply as Seneca. Playwright and statesman, often considered a founder of Stoicism, which taught that virtue, the highest good, is based on knowledge, and that the wise live in harmony with the divine Reason (also identified with Fate and Providence) that governs nature, and are indifferent to the vicissitudes of fortune and to pleasure and pain. Reduction: “Tough it out and don’t bitch.”
John Lennon, in his song to his son “Beautiful Boy (Darling Boy).” At the end of the song, John Lennon whispers “Good night, Sean.” The lyrics of “Beautiful Boy (Darling Boy)” contain the famous Lennon quote, “Life is what happens to you while you are busy making other plans.”
In this episode, the guys talk about Scarcity. Scarcity is the notion that if someone else has something, there’s less of it for me. This idea is in direct opposition to feelings of abundance and prosperity. Scarcity shows up with money, relationships, love and more. Rick and Keith talk about experiences in their life when they operated from a space of scarcity and how they moved towards a spirit of abundance.
Rick’s Reference:
Law of Attraction: The law of attraction (LOA) is the belief that the universe creates and provides for you that which your thoughts are focused on. It is believed by many to be a universal law by which “Like Always Attracts like.” The results of positive thoughts are always positive consequences. The same holds true for negative thoughts always leading to bad outcomes. But the LOA is much more than generalizations; thinking about red Lamborghinis will bring you red Lamborghinis – always. To the believers, questioning the validity of the LOA is akin to heresy and blasphemy; it creates religious fervor. To the uninitiated, it may seem silly to discuss even the possibility that such a law could exist.
Mike Rowe (born 1962) is an American actor primarily known as a television host and narrator. Known for his work on the Discovery Channel series Dirty Jobs and the CNN series Somebody’s Gotta Do It. Rowe has narrated programs on the Discovery Channel, The Science Channel and National Geographic Channels such as Deadliest Catch, How the Universe Works, and Shark Week. He has appeared on commercials for firms such as the Ford Motor Company. He has served as a social activist on the causes of economic growth and job expansion as well. Past efforts include being an opera singer and a salesman.
Keith’s Reference:
The Secret is a 2006 film consisting of a series of interviews designed to demonstrate the “New Thought” claim that everything one wants or needs can be satisfied by believing in an outcome, repeatedly thinking about it, and maintaining positive emotional states to “attract” the desired outcome.
The censored version of the film and the subsequent publication of the book attracted interest from media figures such as Oprah Winfrey, Ellen DeGeneres, and Larry King. It has also received a great deal of controversy and criticism for its claims, and has been parodied in TV shows.
Leslie Calvin “Les” Brown (born 1945) is an American motivational speaker, author, radio DJ, former television host, and former politician. As a politician, he is a former member of the Ohio House of Representatives. As one of the world’s most renowned motivational speakers, Les Brown is a dynamic personality and highly-sought-after resource in business and professional circles for Fortune 500 CEOs, small business owners, non-profit and community leaders from all sectors of life. For three decades he has studied the science of achievement, interviewed hundreds of successful business leaders and collaborated with them in translating theory into bottom-line results for his clients.
In this podcast, the guys discuss suffering and how you can minimize your experience of suffering. Reducing or eliminating suffering can create a joyful and fulfilling life experience for you and those you’re close to.
Rick’s Reference:
4 Noble Truths; Eightfold Path. The Four Noble Truths comprise the essence of Buddha’s teachings. They are the truth of suffering, the truth of the cause of suffering, the truth of how to end suffering, and the truth of the path that leads to the end of suffering.
The Eightfold Path describes the disciplined practice leading to no suffering:
- Right vision: Understanding: understanding that life always involves change and suffering; realizing that following the Noble Eightfold Path is the way to overcome suffering and be really happy.
- Right emotion: Committing to wholeheartedly following the path.
- Right speech: Speaking in a positive and helpful way; speaking the truth. Not complaining or being a victim EVER.
- Right action: Living an ethical life according to the precepts.
- Right livelihood: doing work that doesn’t harm others and is helpful to them.
- Right effort: Thinking in a kindly and positive way. Not judging.
- Right mindfulness: Being fully aware of oneself, other people, and the world around you.
- Right meditation: Concentration or discipline in calming the monkey mind leading to inner peace and wisdom.
Although the Path has eight separate steps, they are not intended to be followed one after another. The Buddhist way of life involves all of them and every aspect of life.
Keith’s Reference:
Eckart Tolle (see previous references) Tolle writes in the introduction to his second book, Stillness Speaks:
“A true spiritual teacher does not have anything to teach in the conventional sense of the word, does not have anything to give or add to you, such as new information, beliefs, or rules of conduct. The only function of such a teacher is to help you remove that which separates you from the truth … The words are no more than signposts.”
He says that his book, The Power of Now, is “a restatement for our time of that one timeless spiritual teaching, the essence of all religions”. He writes that religions “have become so overlaid with extraneous matter that their spiritual substance has become almost completely obscured”, that they have become “to a large extent … divisive rather than unifying forces” and become “themselves part of the insanity”.
Tolle writes that “the most significant thing that can happen to a human being [is] the separation process of thinking and awareness” and that awareness is “the space in which thoughts exist”. Tolle says that “the primary cause of unhappiness is never the situation but your thoughts about it”
According to his official website, “at the core of Tolle’s teachings lies the transformation of consciousness, a spiritual awakening that he sees as the next step in human evolution. An essential aspect of this awakening consists in transcending our ego-based state of consciousness. This is a prerequisite not only for personal happiness but also for the ending of violent conflict endemic on our planet”.
In his book A New Earth, he describes a major aspect of the human dysfunction as “ego” or an “illusory sense of self” based on unconscious identification with one’s memories and thoughts, and another major aspect he calls “pain-body” or “an accumulation of old emotional pain”.