Are you doing it to be comfortable; or to be comfortably numb?

If you deal with the feelings as they arise, you can be intentional as to how you deal with them, how you work through them, and you can recognize patterns that emerge. And you can practice the tools and strategies that help you to overcome those challenges, overcome those obstacles, to deal with those feelings. But if you don't take the time to do that, if you do continue to numb yourself, to suppress those feelings, then when those feelings choose to erupt, you'll have no control over how they come out. You're listening to the Circle C Project.

Welcome to the Triple CE Project, the podcast that helps you gain clarity, boost confidence, build courage so you can live lifeless. I'm your host, Ryan Spence, the big law dropout, life coach, author, speaker, lover of hoodies, hip hop and big, hairy, audacious goals. If you're tired of living the life you think you should want and ready to start living the life you do want, this podcast will help you get from where you are to where you.

Really want to be.

So now we're friends. I invite you to grab a drink, take a seat. Allow me to guide you towards living a life that's lit.

Hey. Hey. Welcome to episode 43 of the Triple C Project with me, your host, Ryan Spence, life coach, author of the Triple C Method, here to help you go from living a life of lethargy towards living a life that's lit. Still got a bit of cold. You can probably hear it in my voice right now. And I've actually, this is about the third or fourth time I've started to record and be like, oh, okay, can barely speak. But I really wanted to share this message with you this week. I think it's apt as we're coming up to the festive season as I record this, but it's also appropriate at any time now. We are told pretty much to be productive. That's kind of how the whole world is designed. It's how the corporate world in particular is designed. You show up, you work as many hours as you as you can. In fact, not as you can, but as needed to create more, to produce more, to make more. That's what happens, right? And that's without any respect for your health, for your well being, for any of that. It's treating you like a cog in a wheel. You are a resource that is there to be used to get things done. That's how it works, okay? No matter how nice the organization, that's pretty much what the corporate organization, organization is. I'm passing no judgment on whether that's right or wrong, but What I'm saying to you is that rest and recuperation is important. It's important to our health, it's important to our well being. Pleasure is important. Doing things that make you feel good, it's important. But you have to be intentional about why you're doing those things. If you are doing things that make you feel good because they make you feel good and they make you feel comfortable and they make you feel relaxed and it allows you to recharge, that's great and that's important. You should do that. But if you're doing things to stop yourself feeling your feelings, to numb yourself from all the bad that's going on in your life, that's a different story. It's another issue. And that's going to store up some problems. So for me, when I was in big law, like many lawyers that I don't, I'd love an after work drink, you know, or I'd go home and sit on the sofa and have a few glasses of wine or a few beers. You know me quite frequently, I'd sit and binge watch Netflix until the early hours of the morning or go down YouTube rabbit holes, all while shoveling salty snacks into my mouth. Salted popcorn or, or tortilla chips, you know, And I would tell myself that this is pleasurable. And it was. I would feel that, yeah, this is cool, I enjoy this. It's, I'm relaxing. This is kind of what you do after a hard day's work. But knowing what I know now, and looking back, I know that that wasn't always telling the full story. I was often doing the things that I was doing to numb myself, to not feel the feeling of lethargy that I had, to not deal with the issues of feeling unfulfilled or feeling unhappy, of feeling directionless in my life at that point. And so by drinking, by eating, by binge washing, I could allow myself to switch off from all of that and just not deal with it, just not feel it, Just pretend that everything was fine. And this is just what you do to end a good hard day at the office. And like many, I'd use the excuse that I was decompressing. You know, this is, this is, this is how I decompress. This is how I get over the stress. But decompression is something that should serve you. In my view, rest and relaxation should serve you and serve your growth. But what I was doing wasn't serving me. Because sitting on the sofa night after night, drinking and eating unhealthy food and Mindlessly watching tv, no matter how great or enjoyable the show might be, if the intention was, the tension that I was doing it with, was effectively to know everything, to not have to deal with all of the things that I was dealing with internally. So it's a way of suppressing them. What I was doing was putting a sticking plaster on a deep wound. You know, it covers the wound, but it doesn't deal with the underlying cause. Now, look, there's nothing wrong with wanting to feel better. We all want to feel good, right? But the nature of the human experience is that you're not going to feel good all of the time because things happen, there are challenges, there are obstacles, things that you can't control, that you have to face head on and deal with. And so it's better to deal with them as opposed to trying to ignore them. You have to allow the full spectrum of human emotions to flow through you as and when they show themselves. Because if you try to suppress them, if you just try to numb them, if you ignore them and don't feel what you're feeling, those feelings don't go away. They just stay there and fester and bubble up like a pressure cooker. And at some point that pressure cooker will erupt and those feelings will release themselves in a way over which you have no control. If you deal with the feelings as they arise, you can be intentional as to how you deal with them, how you work through them, and you can recognize patterns that emerge, and you can practice the tools and strategies that help you to overcome those challenges, overcome those obstacles, to deal with those feelings. But if you don't take the time to do that, if you do continue to numb yourself to suppress those feelings, then when those feelings choose to erupt, you'll have no control over how they come out. It could come out in the way of just completely bawling somebody out who's basically done nothing wrong. Someone who has nothing to do with anything that's happening to you. It could be in burnout, it could be a complete collapse of your health and well being. You have control because you haven't empowered yourself. You haven't been intentional about dealing with those feelings as and when they arise. And the other thing about knowing yourself for the feelings is that you can't get clarity when you're numb. You can't get clarity on the vision of the life that you want, the way that you want to live your life, how you want it to look, how you want to feel. If you're numbed out all the time. If you're not feeling the feelings because you don't really know who you are. If you're not feeling the feelings, you're not recognizing how certain things affect you, and you're not developing tools or strategies to deal with how those things affect you. You're not allowing yourself to feel. You're not allowing yourself to be who you really are.

Hey, I'm interrupting myself to give you this short message. Now. If you're listening to this pod, you're likely looking to change your life.

Here's the thing.

Transformation doesn't happen by doing what you've always done. It happens when you change your thoughts about what's possible for you. My book, the Triple C Method, helps.

You do that by giving you the.

Tools and strategies to stop living a life of lethargy and start living life lit, described as a transformational toolkit, and the book I wish I'd had when I decided to leave corporate the Triple C Method will change how you see yourself and how you live your life. Available now as paperback, ebook and audiobook read by yours truly. Head to iamryspence.com book or over to your favorite bookseller to grab your copy today so you can stop living a life of lethargy. Start living life Next.

I had a client once, and one of the things that they said to me was before working together, they were going for that extra glass of wine in the evening, they were eating those unhealthy snacks, all in a quest to kind of just feel that little bit of inner calm, that little bit of inner peace, just to feel like they had that little bit of control. In fact, I've had more than one client who said things to that effect. But once we started working on feeling those feelings, started doing that inner work through coaching, they realized that they didn't need all of that because they had the tools and the strategies within them to recognize when issues arose and to work through them to sit in the discomfort, but to also then find a way to adapt to the situation so they could get back to where it was that they wanted to be. This is not about not feeling your feelings. You have to feeling feel your feelings. But it's also not about not enjoying yourself, not having pleasure. I'm not saying don't have a few drinks in the evening. I'm not saying don't binge watch your favorite show on tv. And I'm certainly not saying don't shovel salty snacks into your mouth. I still do that right now. But what I am saying is ask yourself why check in with yourself when you're doing these things and just see, why am I doing this? Am I just doing this because it's relaxing, it's fun, it's pleasurable? I just want to. I just want to have a bit of rest. Or am I doing this to avoid something else? Am I doing this to not feel the pressures of my toxic work environment? Am I doing this to not feel the challenge, challenges that are occurring in my life? Am I doing this to not feel the sadness, the regret of not being where I thought I would be in life at this time? There are lots of things you could be numbing out from. And the question is to find out if that's why you're doing what you're doing, and if you are doing what you're doing, you are doing these things to make you feel better from a place of avoidance, from a place of trying to numb out, then that's great to have that self awareness. Because then when you have that self awareness, you can start to investigate why. And when you start to investigate why, you will then start to get in touch with those feelings, explore where those feelings are coming from. And only by creating that self awareness and then by doing that deep inner work, can you then start to get the clarity you need on creating the life that you want. And you can then start to understand what it means to you to live a life that's lit, what it is that you want to feel instead, and what you can do to make that happen. And all of this doesn't mean that you're never going to have bad feelings. You are, as I said at the top of the show, we are humans here. We have human experiences. We experience the full gamut of emotions throughout our life. We're supposed to. That's what living is. That's life. So it's not about not having a bad feeling. In fact, it's not about calling feelings good or bad either. But it's about feeling, just feeling. Feeling the feelings and not trying to numb them out with things that don't serve us. Whether it's drink, whether it's drugs, or whether it's rock and roll. But you get what I'm saying, right? So next time you're doing something that feels good to you, but you know, next time you're over the Christmas period, for example, you're crashed out on the sofa, glass of wine in hand, shoveling food into your mouth, watching some Christmas movie, just take a moment to check in and just say, am I just, Am I doing this just because it's Good. It feels good. It's nice and relaxing. And it's something that I want to do right now. Out of intention, or am I doing this to avoid dealing with other feelings that are going on in my life, other things that are going on for me. And just take a note, just check in, see what comes up for you. Okay, that's it for me this week. Talking with a cold on a podcast is. It's quite challenging, but I'm glad I got through this. I really wanted to share this message with you. It came to me. I've been thinking about it over the last couple of weeks, so I kind of really wanted to get this out to you. Are you comfortable or are you comfortable comfortably? No. And as always, if you want to dive deeper into these issues and do that inner work, you can hit me up on Instagram, am_spence, or find me on LinkedIn and to work with me on these deep inner issues to stop you from reaching for that extra glass of wine, the extra bag of chips, from a place of avoidance, from a place of numbness, and instead doing these things from a place of pleasure and a place of intention, head to IM Ryan Spence.com coaching and book a call. Let's. Let's have a chat. Let's see what's going on for you, where you are right now, where it is you want to be, and how I can help you to get there. Until next week, thanks for being here. As always, stop living a life of lethargy and start living life.

Thanks for tuning in. But before you go, the weight of limiting beliefs is heavy. It literally weighs you down and keeps you stuck in that life of lethargy. I know. It's why I stayed in Big Law for so long, and it's why so many of my clients don't believe they can do the things that they want to do. But what causes those limiting beliefs? It's a lack of confidence. Lack of confidence in the belief that you can do the things that you want to do. And I've got something for that. It's my confidence journal. It's six journal prompts that I created that I've used to help me get from where I am to where I want to be, to help, to give me the belief to do the things that seem outside of my control, outside of what I can do. If this sounds like you, you need to get your hands on the journal.

Best thing about it, it's free.

All you have to do is head to iamrinespence.com hit the button for Confidence Journal and get your copy today. It's going to help you start to reframe your thoughts and get you thinking about what you can do instead of focusing on what you can't do. And shared that load of limiting beliefs that you don't need to be carrying. See you again next week. And until that time, stop living a life of lethargy and start living life lit.