Happiness and being fulfilled

Ta-da! The recording has begun. Happy almost New Year. Happiness and goal setting, it's kind of where everybody goes this time of year, but the truth is happiness is every day. Goal setting is every day. Um, a lot of people get stuck in that it's New Year's Eve, therefore we're gonna make some crazy promise to ourselves that we're never gonna break. While being totally intoxicated. Yeah. So as far as plans for making something actually work really well, making large decisions while drunk is usually not really high on the list. Now, I'm not saying don't get drunk and that sort of stuff. I'm not here to judge. I'm just saying try not to make crazy decisions while intoxicated or whatever choice of pharmaceuticals you choose since there's so many options that are legal and whatnot. All right, so let's talk about happiness. This is something that I believe all of us tend to chase all of the time. We want to be happier, right? Right? Right? I'm, I'm not missing this, right? Most of us want to have happiness. Do we want happiness all the time? Yeah, that'd be pretty cool. Or would it? If you didn't cry those tears of sadness would you appreciate your happiness as much? I don't know about you, but I have watched tons of sci-fi movies where there's an absolute, positively perfect, um, happiness quotient for everyone, and it always seems like there's something very evil about being happy all the time. Now, that being said, please understand, because this is Suicide Prevention Saturday, and often people have to deal with anxiety and depression prior to getting to the point of where they're considering suicide, I'm not saying happiness is bad. I'm saying happiness is something that is temporary. The good news on the other side of that is happiness and sadness are both temporary. We need to go from one to the other. Do we have those other emotions in there? Yes, yes, we do. Um, we have anger, we have grief, we have regret. Uh, when I was talking to Mike, who watches, has been watching for a long time, we We're talking about depression is one we're thinking about what happened in the past. Depression is often regrets of, oh, I lost something. Where anxiety is in the future and, oh, this could happen that could ruin my life or make things horrible, but I don't know if it's going to, but I'm going to freak out as if it's going to be the worst thing that ever happened, even though it hasn't happened yet. Where does happiness come in? Happiness is defined by you, not me. My happiness is defined by me. Your happiness is defined by you. How do you find your happiness? Well, here's where I want to talk about my history just a wee bit. Um, I forgot to share this ahead of time, so hold for just one moment while I do this. Um, and I want to make that bigger. So Og Mandino, and I will make it even bigger so you can actually see it because it, to me, it is super important. The Greatest Salesman in the World. Og Mandino's story, it's not all about sales, although part of that story is, but within The Greatest Salesman in the World, there are the 10 scrolls. That it says the priceless wisdom of 10 ancient scrolls handed down for thousands of years. What does this have to do? It's fiction. Really? Yes, yes it is. But you know what? It was very useful. I started reading the 10 scrolls back in my 20s. So for those of you who don't need to do math, that is back in the '90s. And one of the most important scrolls is how you're supposed to read the scrolls, in that every single day you read them in the morning when you get up, you read them at lunchtime, and then at nighttime you read them out loud, right? So what are we building? We're building consistency. What do the scrolls say? You should get the book. So no, the scrolls basically tell you different habits to create. It talks about the importance of habits. And again, I believe it's rule number 1 because it's been a while since I looked at this, is the one that says, "I shall do this in the morning. I shall do this at lunch, and in the evening I will read this out loud." And for those of you who are the praying types, there is definitely a difference between praying like this where it's all in your head and you know God hears you, or when you say, "Dear Lord, please bless my friends." When you say something out loud, it becomes a little more real. So let's continue down the success journey, right, or the happiness journey. So for me, another piece of this is Tony Robbins. In the later '90s, and maybe before, after I started reading Og, Tony Robbins taught me a lot of things about how to be happy, what to focus on, how important focus is. So The reason I show you Tony Robbins is simply for the fact that you never know who needs to hear a different point of view. Like I said, your happiness is based on your desires. So Tony talks about mastery on every area of your life. One of the great things about him is that he talks about what we call chunking. And what is chunking? Chunking is taking something really big and overwhelming and making it into little tiny pieces. And this is something that happens with the book of, uh, The Greatest Salesman in the World. And then when Tony Robbins tells this great story about learning how to be a race car driver, and the whole point of the story— because I'm not going to go through the whole thing, hopefully you can find it on YouTube somewhere— but you need to look at where you want to go. And here's the perfect example. The story says while you're learning to drive, when something goes wrong, everyone looks at the wall because they don't want to run into the wall. And the race car instructor said, no, look to where you want to go. And so he's like, yep, got it. Okay, as soon as the car starts spinning out, he looks to the wall. Race car instructor grabs his head, says, "No, you want to go there. Look there." The point is you need to focus on where you want to go. I'll give you another example that probably most of you have experienced in your life. When was the last time you asked a friend over to dinner and you said, "What would you like?" Or a child or a friend, "What would you like?" If you really think about that encounter, How many times do people say, oh well, I just don't want anchovies, I just don't like mushrooms, I just don't think anything except for sushi, whatever the thing is. But what did you ask them? You asked them what do they want. And here's where we tend to fail in finding our happiness is what do we want? What do we want to do? What makes us happy? And there's lots of different tools and there's different ways to find your happiness. So reading the book Og Mandino, Greatest Salesman in the World, it's a really short read. It's really pretty awesome. Um, there is tons of stuff that Tony Robbins has out there for free and one size never fits all. So none of that may help you. However, I have yet another suggestion for you. One of my friends, Billy Jean, is marketing. He has a podcast which I couldn't find the— couldn't find it, but if you actually look up Billy Jean Offends the Internet, you will find some of his podcasts. You can go here to his YouTube channel, and Billy Jean talks about marketing. His whole deal is marketing, if you can't tell from here. But he also breaks things down into simple pieces and parts. The way that this works is that as a business, a Great Start Shooting School, for example, what do I need? I need customers. What does Billy Gene teach me? Oh, he teaches me how to break down advertising to realize, okay, who am I marketing to? What does marketing have to do with happiness, you ask? Hmm. Let me tell you, you need to market to yourself first and foremost every day because we need to decide what makes us happy. What is our avatar? Who are we and how are we happy? So marketing is awesome because everything in the world is marketing, whether it's losing weight, getting fit, any of those things. You have to sell yourself on making that change. Like I said, don't do it while intoxicated. Never a good idea. All right, like I said, now here's the other thing: surround yourself with people who are more successful than you, or people who are more successful in an area than you are. Um, through Billie Jean, one of the other guys I got to meet who, uh, I enjoy is Ed Mylett. Ed Mylett, um, is— I don't know, he's an athlete. He just has amazing, amazing interviews on his YouTube channel. Um, just this year he released a book, the one that you see right there, The Power of One More. And look, I have it because guess what? Reading is another one of those things. So going back to the beginning, because for once I'm trying to be on point here, is that Augmentino said, do this thing 3 times a day, which was read at breakfast, read at lunchtime, and read before bed. So reading helps. Oh, speaking of Billie Jean, we're doing 75 Hard again, and that has you read at least 10 pages of nonfiction every single day. Here's an example of the power of one more. So think of one thing that can make you happy. One thing that makes you smile. And how do you figure that out? Well, this is a trick that Tony Robbins taught me. How do I find something that makes me smile? Ask the question, right? Again, back to what we focus on, like the race car driver. Look to where you want to go, not where you don't want to go. How do I find the answer to that? The word how. Allows our brain to work and focus on what we're looking for. So if I say things like, why does my life suck, which many of us have programmed ourselves to say that on a regular basis, our brains are gonna come up with an answer. If we say, how can I enjoy the journey? How can I find the happiness in my life? Our brain's also going to come up with that answer. Here is another book, Zen Bow, Zen Arrow. I don't know how long ago I read this one, but Zen is about right now. What is occurring right now? Well, you're rich enough to have internet access. That's one of the things that is happening right now. You can hear me, uh, Patriot, if you're here. You can't see me, but there are other people that can see me as well. And if you're like me, you'll put videos on in the background. You don't watch it anyway. Zen bow, Zen arrow talks about allowing things to happen in your life, in that marksmanship, whether it's with a bow and arrow or a firearm, is the same. You're looking at your target. Hmm, is there a theme here today? Just maybe. So you're looking at your target and you see your target, and then the arrow is hitting your target. And the Zen bow, Zen arrow, the short version of a lot of what's in here is that you just allow things to happen. So much we try to control, so many things we try to make happen. The beauty of Zen is just allowing yourself to be here in the moment. What is occurring? Noticing. Are there smells around you right now? What does it feel like? Are you warm? Are you cold? Are you snuggled up in a blanket? Are you driving down the road in a big bouncy truck? What's happening right in this moment? Who can you think of? Who do you love, right? Every time I say stuff like, who do you love, I get goosebumps because sometimes we forget that we love people. And then I dare you, double dog dare you, Actually ask yourself, who loves me? And I really hope you come up with good answers. And if you don't, ask the question, how do I love myself better? Because happiness starts with you. Again, because I'm so old, back in the '90s, I think it was, there was this movie and the famous line that came out of the movie was, you complete me. And it was signed, and I don't know how to sign, but, um, the idea is that we need someone else to complete ourselves, which for some people is true. However, all of the people like Ed, and then one of my other favorite guys, uh, Dean Graziosi, he really talks about this. He was married and divorced, and when he got divorced, he decided he had to really work on becoming the man that he needed to be to attract the woman that he needed and that he wanted. And the cool thing about Dean is he was through multiple divorces as a kid. His mom and dad got married multiple times, and he didn't want to do that to his children. And so when he had his first divorce, he really thought about, who do I need to be. And as far as the you complete me thing, it's super hard to think about, but you know, he found the key, which was who do I need to become to attract the woman of my dreams? And it's not that you need someone to complete you, but you need to be the best you, and it's not someone else's job. I mean, I believe my husband actually does a spectacular job of bringing out better parts of me than if I did not have him. So there is some completion to that, but it's really about another book that I don't have with me. It's called The Power of a Praying Wife, or Power of a Prayerful Wife, something along those lines. But again, it goes back to me. One of the things I teach my kids is I have zero control over how anyone else in the world acts. The only thing I have control over is how I respond to how you're acting. So if you're being a total and complete turkey, I have the choice of telling you you're a turkey. I have the choice of ignoring the fact that you're being a turkey. I have the option to decide, hmm, are you just having a really bad day? Is there anything that I can do for you? And having compassion when you're not being spectacular. And yet at the same time, when you are being spectacular, I can be jealous, I can be angry, I can cheer you on and congratulate you for finding the joy in your life. It's up to me how I react regardless of what the thing is that's being thrown at me. You're like, well, I can't control anything outside of my life. I'm like, exactly. What you can control is how you see it. I was just talking about death with a friend of mine the other day, and I was saying how the more funerals I go to, the more I realize that when the pastor gets up and says, this is a celebration of so-and-so's life, when I was younger, I'm like, such garbage. Now, having the losses that I've had in my life, I'm like, yes, yes it is, because we are sad that the person is gone because we are not going to be able to make any new connections with that person. We don't have any new memories. However, we can realize that, we can grieve, we can be sad, and then we can ask questions like, what can I do to honor that person's memory? You know, my dad, for example, for those of you who hadn't heard the, uh, the story before, um, for my dad, he got cremated, and to celebrate him, we put him in fireworks and blew him up. Because for my dad that would be the way to go because he liked large explosions and everybody thought that was a great thing. All right, more connections, more ways to go. Oh wait, I forgot. So Dean Graziosi, who's the last one I put up there, he also has a book called The Underdog Advantage. This is another way to look at when you are in challenging circumstances, what do you do? How do you make it better? What are the things that you can do that you have control over? There's only 24 hours in the day, and there's a difference between working hard and working smart. Leveraging your time, figuring out how you can be more successful with the stuff you have. Um, oh, let's see. Um, turning challenges into failures. That's what Tony Robbins says about it on the back here, because I'm like, I don't know. Um, So, but reading, reading a little bit every day makes a difference. This is one of the great things about the 75 Hard Challenge is that it tells you to read every single day. Another person I met via either Ed or Dean was Jim Quick. Uh, Jim Quick is the boy with the broken brain. And he had a brain injury since he was like 6 years old. And what he has done, the short version is he's like, hey, in school they teach you what to learn. However, in school they never teach you how to learn. So I have taken some of Jim Quick's programs, and again, the short version is start and stop a lot. In that if you are having a problem studying, do not go and study for 4 hours at a time. One of the things he suggests is set a timer for like 15 minutes, read whatever it is you're supposed to be doing, then decide how— and then when you're done with that 15 minutes, decide how and when am I going to use this information and how is it useful. Get up, get a drink, do something, come back and do another 15 minutes. Why is this? The reason is every time you start and stop something, the beginning and the end is usually what you remember. So if I'm reading for an hour because this is a thick book, what am I going to remember? I might read the stuff I read in the beginning. I may read the stuff that I read at the end. So by making your studying into short little groups, or when you're learning anything whether it's firearms or something along those lines, Starting and stopping a bunch of times is much more useful than just trying to do the all-nighters that we used to do in high school and college. So, but since I picked this up, I should actually say The Gift of Fear: Survival Signals That Protect Us from Violence. For those of you in the firearms community that are, you know, big into self-defense, The nice thing about this is it teaches you about our psychology. It teaches about predators. It teaches about what it means to be a victim. This is one of two books that I actually like. The Cornered Cat by Kathy Jackson is actually my other favorite because this is actually the first one that I read, and Kathy Jackson and I are friends now, so that's also kind of cool about this, but Both of these give you ideas. This is definitely more masculine and this is more feminine, cuz this is specifically a women's guide to concealed carry where The Gift of Fear is just more of a dude's point of view. Oops, wrong finger. So what's his name? There we go. Gavin Becker or Gavin D. Becker. So more masculine, more feminine, both great books because why? Because they teach you about psychology. They teach you to notice and pay attention to the things that your brain is telling you because you know you've walked into a room and looked at someone and you either immediately like them or immediately did not like them. And there's been people that make you squirmy and people that you're totally comfortable with. Now, is that always accurate? No. Is it accurate most of the time? Yes. Yes, it is. Because there are plenty of people I've met that I did not like when I first met them. And I got to know them and they're absolutely wonderful. And the opposite is true as well. People are like, oh my gosh, she's so sweet. I'm like, holy crap, not so much. So, but you have to be aware of what's going on in your head. So stuff that has to do with how our brains work. And then you need to have friends that send you books like this. This is where being around other people who are smarter than you, better than you, faster than you at certain things is always helpful. My friend Ray sent this to me as a gift, and The Way of the Wolf is another sales thing. However, it still really helps you with the whole marketing to yourself and how to relate to other people and to understand how to interact better. So, um, just one more thing for y'all to, to consider. So that's been 20 minutes. I know G2/3 asks for like 2 hours at a time, but nobody wants to listen to me that long. I hope you all have a spectacular new year. I hope this has been helpful because I always do try to give you guys more resources. And so because this is prerecorded, I got to sort of set up a little bit better, which is silly because it's not like I couldn't set up better for lives, but That's kind of what I got for you. What is your happiness? Everything previously on here, all the different great people that you could go look for and see if any of them, like, resonate with you as far as really cool stuff to learn. The more you learn about how you work, what makes you feel happy, and the more ways you have to define that, describe that, figure it out the easier it is for you to get and find your happiness. And understand that when you have anger, frustration, the not so great feelings— like, one of the things Dean Graziosi does a great job of, he's like, he's not telling you not to feel those things, but give them a time limit. Say, okay, something happened, it's total garbage, I'm really pissed off, and I'll allow myself to be pissed off. I think he does like 5 or 10 minutes, but then he's like, then move on. Because when you get stuck in that negative stuff, just like focusing on where you want to go versus focusing where you don't want to go— I know some people feed on being angry and mad all the time. I'm very glad that I'm not that person. Often I try not to be. Um, but realize what you're doing to yourself. And I've said it before, anger and hate are poisons that you give yourself. Because if I am very mad at my sign here, I can be very pissed off, very angry, put lots of energy into hating the sign. Does the sign care? No, it does not. Does the sign even know that I'm mad at it? No, it does not. So who am I hurting with anger and frustration? That would be just me. Happiness is your job. Finding it, holding on to it, remembering how to find it and bring it back to yourself. My happiness is often music. Music and dancing is even a little bit better. So with that, I'm going to go. If you feel like it, in your comments, or if you're chatting while you're watching this, let me know what are some of the things that make you happy? Who are some of the people that make you happy? Doing what makes you happy? I love shooting also. It's a very zen thing when I'm doing it well. I just came from the range, so I'm slightly annoyed because I suck right now, but I know that. And guess what else I know? I know how to get better because I've trained and I've learned. And so just like Og Mandino said, if I do something in the morning and at lunch and at dinner, I will get better. If I do some small thing every single day, I will get better. And as I'm trying to say goodbye to you, I knew there was one more that I should have said, um, and so now it's gonna be a half an hour. T2/3, I hope you appreciate this, um, just because the other gentleman that I've learned more about is Jordan Peterson and the 12 Rules for Life. So I'm going to throw this up here real quick just so y'all get to see it. Sorry, I didn't know that was going to move. So Jordan Peterson's 12 Rules for Life, one of the simplest things he talks about is keep your room clean. The things that you do every single day are who you are. So back to what happens in the new year, people like, oh, I'm going to change 5 million things and get this all done. And we fail because we try to do too much and say, oh, look, see, proof I suck. 'cause I can't do the things I said I was gonna do. Do one thing. Oh, and that's the other video I forgot too. Oh, see, I thought about all these things and I forgot to put 'em up. So make your bed every day. There is an amazing 5 or 7 minute speech out on YouTube. It's an admiral, I believe, giving a speech, commencement speech, and it's Make Your Bed. And I will tell you, I've watched that video multiple times. I have, um, shown my children the same video. There's a short version, a longer version, and I have made my bed on a daily basis for at least a couple years now. Do I do it every single day? No. Am I perfect? No. But do I feel better because I do one thing every day? Yes. Yes, I do. All right, pick your happiness. Realize what your happiness is, remind yourself how to get back to your happiness. Leave some comments, let me know what your happiness is. Let me know if there's one thing that you want to do and start doing on a regular basis. And why not let me know if you want to join 75 Hard with me as we go through— I think I'm 2 weeks in now. So anywho, all right, for real, for real, I am done and I gotta go. So