Follow these 3 steps when life's a bit 💩 and you want to live Lit! 🔥

Living life lit. It doesn't mean living in a permanent state of ecstasy. It isn't all of that positive vibes, only toxic positivity bullshit. We have to accept life is hard sometimes. You know, everyone's hard is different. You know, I mean, everyone's at different places at different points, has different things, but everyone has their own version of hard. And your version of hard will change. It will change as you grow, as you move, as different things happen within your life. 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 life. I'm your host, Ryan Spence, the big lore dropout, life coach, author, speaker, lover of hoodies, hip hop and big hairy, audacious gold. 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 with friends, I invite you to grab a drink, take a seat, and allow me to guide you towards living a life that's lit. Hello people. Welcome to episode 23 of the Triple C Project. Before we begin, question, have you picked up your copy of the Triple C Method, my book? If you have, fantastic. I love you. Have you left a review? If you haven't left a review, please go ahead, leave a review on Amazon or Goodreads. It really helps to get the book out to more people. It helps me to see what insights and takeaways you have and never know, that might help influence what I decide to write about in book number two. The ideas are already percolating there and if you haven't read it yet, what are you waiting for? You can now get it on paperback, ebook and brand spanking new audiobook. Head to Amazon Audible where it's read by me so you get to hear my dulcet tone. So if you like the podcast, you're going to love the audio version of it too. And please make sure you grab hold of the free workbook that goes with the book. The book wasn't written for a holiday beach read where you sit, you get inspired and then you go back to what you're always doing. It's written as partly like a blueprint really, to kind of help you to start to take the steps you need to do to make the changes you want to make. And you can only do that if you first of all read the book, but then also go through the workbook alongside the book and answer those questions. For yourself and start to get yourself thinking about who you are, what you want to do, why you want to do it, and all of that good stuff. So Amazon, Audible, Wallet Stones, Barnes and Noble, anywhere you buy your books, your audiobooks, you can go ahead and grab the Triple C method, gain clarity, boost confidence and build courage so you can live life lit. And please do leave a review. It really, really does make a difference. Okay, that's my plea, my plug for this week. As is often the case, what I was going to talk about this week is not what I'm actually going to talk about. I was going to talk about balance and I had an interesting story formulated in my head as I went to bed last night about how I present that to you. But listen, I'm feeling a little bit of a funk at the moment. Not long term, it's really sort of just today. And I felt that it was only right that I shared that with you and I delivered an episode that would help you, if you're in that state of mind, to kind of share with you the framework that I use to help me get through certain situations when things aren't going to plan. If you've listened to any of the previous episodes, you'll know that living life lit, it doesn't mean living in a permanent state of ecstasy. It isn't all of that positive vibes, only toxic positivity bullshit. We have to accept life is hard sometimes. You know, everyone's hard is different. You know, I mean, everyone's at different places at different points, has different things, but everyone has their own version of hard. And your version of hard will change. It will change as you grow, as you move, as different things happen within your life. And for me, the last few days have been hard with my kids. Here in the uk, we have just started the summer holiday, which is six weeks, six whole weeks of having your kids at home. And today as I record this, we are on day three and we had a nice weekend away with the kids. But yeah, there was definitely some drama there and that drama has continued over the last few days. And the thing is, it's the last summer before my 4 year old starts school and I'm excited about all the things that we get to do before he heads off to school and we have this time together and all that good stuff. But as I say, four days into the holiday, and to be honest with you, it's been a bit of a shit show. Children running off on the beach, throwing tantrums, demanding shit, not taking no for an answer, fighting Each other. I'm not going to go into it all and I'm not going to go into details because, look, the. These aren't entirely my stories to tell and my kids will grow up one day and, you know, they may hear this and hear people talking about them and at 6 and 4, they don't want the shit that they do at 6 and 4 to be following them around for that for the rest of time. But so I'm only sharing that with you to just sort of show you that everyone has their heart and their heart at different points. If you're a parent, you'll probably relate to what I'm saying, particularly with having your kids at home all the time. But if you're not, it doesn't matter. It could be anything else. It could be relationships with friends, with immediate family, with pets, with the wider family, whatever, whatever the situation is. We all have situations where, you know, they take the shine off our litness. And so it's important that we have tools and strategies to work through that, to deal with that. Because we're all about working towards creating a life that's lit. And as I've said before, a life that's lit is having those moments of joy, those moments of joy being more the norm rather than the exception. But it doesn't mean everything is great all of the time. That would just be weird. And that's not, that's not real life. So what I'm going to do in this episode, I'm going to share with you a framework, a three part framework that I use when shit hits the fan, when things aren't going the way that I want them to go, when the situation is not going how I would like it, and what's happened is kind of outside of my control. Because we can only control what we can control. And when we learn to let go of what we can't control, it can start to give us a different reference point, a different way of seeing things. It can help to release a load. But I'm getting ahead of myself here. So the framework is the triple A framework. Yeah. And I know this is. I don't know how I do this, but frameworks that I come up with always seem to have a. Have three parts to them. And not always, but often the same letter. Something about the alliteration. But anyway, it is what it is. The three A's, the AAA stand for acknowledge, accept, adapt. So we're going to run through each of those to show you how I work through situations like the one over the last Few days with my kids and like other difficult situations where things aren't going to plan, whether that's in business, just generally in life, in relationships, whatever it is you can work through and you can apply this. Okay, first a, acknowledge. So you have to acknowledge whatever it is that's happened, Acknowledge that things are shit. Acknowledge that they're not going to plan. Acknowledge that they're not the way that you thought they would be or the way that you want them to be. Why is that important? Because the thing about our feelings and emotions is that they are there. Just because you gloss over them, it doesn't mean that they disappear. If you just continue going along with that painted smile on your face and trying to gloss over the negative emotions and feelings that you have using that toxic positivity, positive, positive vibes only nonsense, you're not doing yourself any favors. Because those feelings, those emotions, those frustrations, they've got to go somewhere and they will come out at some point. So by intentionally acknowledging that they're there and sitting with them, sitting in that discomfort, you are giving yourself space and time to release them, to let them go in their own time. And if you don't do that, as I say, they're going to come out at some point, and they'll come out when you least expect it. And you may find yourself, like Michael Douglas in the film Falling Down. I'm probably a bit older than some of you, so you might want to go and look that film up, kids. But it's basically a guy who's just had enough and goes absolutely nuts. But that's what will happen. It's like a pressure cooker inside of you. So you have to release those emotions. I mean, crying, that's why crying is so powerful, because you just release everything from you using breathwork, even just sitting in stillness and just acknowledging what's swirling around in your mind. But you have to take time to acknowledge where you are and what's happened. Okay, Number two, accept. You've got to accept. At some point, you've got to accept what's happened. Okay? You've acknowledged that it's there, but you have to just accept, okay, it's happened and here we are. And because you've got a. You've got to get to a place where you can let go. What you don't want is you don't want to be carrying this negative situation around with you forever because that shit weighs you down. We all know if you go out and you're carrying something you don't need, you're carrying this additional weight that is holding you back, that is making you go slower than you could otherwise go. And it's the same in life. It's the same with your feelings, with your emotions, with the situations around us. Some point you've got to simply accept that it's happened and you can't do anything about it because we can't control everything. So letting go of the things that we can't control allows us to shed that metaphorical weight and allows us to start to feel a little bit lighter. But I don't want you to rush to accept. Depending upon the magnitude of what's happened, you may need to sit longer in that state of acknowledgement and then you may need to sit even longer in that state of acceptance. Only you will know how the thing has affected you. But it's important you go through the process so that you're releasing in the acknowledgment and you're letting go in the acceptance. And the third step, final step, adapt. You've got to adapt to the situation as it currently is, not look at the situation as you would like it to be. So things haven't gone the way you wanted them to and you find yourself in this situation which isn't where you want it to be. So the questions you got to ask yourself is what are you going to do now? What can you control? How can you make things so that you can still get to where you want to get to? So just because you're here and it's not where you wanted to be, it doesn't mean you have to give up. Doesn't mean you surrender and you stick to where you are or you just go back to where you were and you don't try and move forward again. You've got to adapt. It's like when you come up to an obstacle in the road and you think, ah, that's now in my way. So I can't go the direct route I was going to go. How else can I get to where it is that I wanted to get to? You know, maybe you go sideways, maybe you take a few steps back and then you do a running jump. You know, there are, there are lots of ways you can look at of adapting to the situation. Could you ask for help? That's another way. Ask for somebody to help you through, help you over that obstacle again. Moving back to my kids a little bit, I took one of them up to my in laws for a few days yesterday and again it's help. It just means that it releases the Load a little bit off myself, myself and my wife. So could you ask for help? Is there people who have been where you've been before or could just give you some assistance, some guidance to help you get out of the situation you're in or find a way around it? So the triple A framework. Acknowledge, accept, adapt. Recognize life isn't always lit. Don't force yourself to wake up in a great mood. Of course you choose your mood. But if things are a little bit shit, acknowledge that they're a little bit shit. Accept that there are things outside of your control that have made things a little bit shit. And then start to think about how you can adapt to kind of get you back on track, to get you back on track to where you want to be, to get you back to living a life that's lit. This is a framework that I always work through. I've been working through it the last couple of days and, you know, it's something that I always come back to because it works, it's powerful, it's valuable, and it's important, it's necessary. Don't let anyone tell you that you should always be positive. I get it sometimes as a coach or as a yoga teacher, that you should always be calm and quite Zen and quite relaxed. But look, the world's a fucked up place and fucked up shit happens. And sometimes it's not even the fucked up shit. Sometimes it's just small, irritating things that annoy you. And the thing is, those small irritating things that annoy you, they can be got through this framework quite quickly. You know, so like when I was driving this morning and I was tired and I was annoyed and I was trying to get somewhere and there was the car going way below the speed limit in front of me and it was absolutely annoying and infuriating. But again, work through this. I acknowledged it, I accepted I couldn't change it, and then I adapted. And I just went at his pace until I got to a place where I could overtake. And then I went about my business, went about my day, and I let it go. Something else could take a lot longer to get through. If something happens for you at work, if you're working with a boss who's a complete dick and they say something to you that you don't like, it might take you longer to work through. Acknowledge, accept, adapt. But you can do it. Acknowledge that it's happened. Accept that it's not your fault, that you couldn't have changed it, that this is this person projecting their own ways of thinking on you it's nothing that you could do about that. And then adapt. And that adapt could mean many things. It could mean figuring out a way to manage that person. It could be reporting that person to human resources or somebody else. It could be taken that as your point to say, right now's the time I get out and I start actively making the path to get out of here, whatever it is. Acknowledge, Accept, Adapt can help you in these situations. So I hope that this framework has been valuable to you if you use it and it helps you to kind of reframe your thoughts and help you get out of sticky situations. I'd love to hear about it. Send me an email hey@iamrinespence.com and and yeah, put in the subject, acknowledge, accept, adapt or AAA and let me know what you did and how it worked. I'm really, really intrigued and I really want to share with you the tools and strategies that have helped me so that they can also help you. And if you're not Already, head to IM Ryan Spence.com and download the free Confidence Journal and that will get you also onto my email list where I share tools and strategies like this each week I obviously talk a bit about what's coming up on the podcast, but I I also just share stories that have had things that have happened to me in the previous weeks or days and the sort of how I've dealt with them and sometimes I just share funny stories. So I think you're going to want to get on the list. There's some really valuable information that I share there and I'm spending a little bit less time on Instagram. So if you were or are following me on Instagram and you like the stuff that I post on there, then you, you're going to want to get on the email list to kind of keep more of that going. Awesome. So I think that's all I've got for this week. Always a pleasure being here sharing with you. I love hearing from you about what you took away from the show, what helped you particularly this week. Share this Share this episode with anyone you know who is going through difficult times or who finds it hard to decide. Deal with setbacks, with frustrations, with things not going their way. Share the framework with them. Acknowledge, accept, adapt. Because the more that we can help people get out of their funk, the more that we can help people get themselves onto the path towards a life that's lit, the better that life's going to be. The more we can create that ripple effect. And that's all that I'm trying to do. And I hope that's the same thing you trying to do, too. Okay, that's it. I will see you next week. And as always, stop living a life of lethargy and start living life yet. Thanks for tuning in to the Triple C project. Before you go, I want to share something with you. When I was in Big Law, I struggled with limiting beliefs. I didn't have the confidence to believe that I could change my life, that I could leave Big Law and do something differently, that I could move from a life of lethargy and create a life that's lit. That's why I created the Confidence Journal. For people like you who are in the same position that I was who was struggling with that confidence. I need a boost to allow you to believe that you can do the things that you want to do. Confidence Journal is six journal prompts that I've used and I still use to help me get from the guy who was too scared to post on Instagram, to the guy who is now committed to giving a TED Talk to the guy who wrote a book, to the guy who launched the podcast. You can do any of this too. All you need to do is stop boosting your confidence. So to do that, head to iamrinespence.com and download Confidence Journal. It's free, it works, and it's going to change your life. Thanks for tuning in. See you next week. And remember, stop living a life of lethargy and start living life.