Episode 133: Stop Fighting the Current of Life

Welcome to the Soul of Innovation podcast. I am Thomas Anglero, and I want to be extremely direct with you. Do you realize— you do realize how all of a sudden things just don't work like they used to coming out of COVID That the way you used to have— used to handle yourself, the way you used to walk through the hallways of your office, the way you used to carry yourself in the street, it doesn't feel the same. Am I right? Does something feel off? It's like close enough, right? But it's not exact. Um, it's a bit irritating because you can't put your finger on it, but everything looks the same. You're doing everything the same. People are somewhat the same, or they're the same enough, but it's not fitting exactly right. It's you. Let me explain. COVID has affected you more than you'll ever, ever know. It has affected you in so many ways and you don't realize it. The people around you are just like you. They're going through the motions. They're wearing the clothes they wore before they were locked in their homes, and some of them don't fit their clothes anymore. That's okay. And they're like, something doesn't feel right. What has changed is that all of us have gone through so many emotional experiences during COVID Some of us physical experiences, especially if you or your loved ones or someone you know got sick during COVID What has happened is none of us is spending the time to recognize that That was then, and this is now. Who you were then is not who you are today, and you're never going to make it back to that person. Listen, I am— I started a new job during the whole COVID thing, and I'm banging my head against the wall thinking, how come something feels so different? And that's because the job or the person I was at the other job, it doesn't resonate with this one. A job is not a job. I am not who I was. Those shoes will never fit again, if you understand the expression. COVID changed everything. The things and struggles in my personal life with my family, with myself, with my head, the struggles that you've had in your personal life, with your family, with yourself, inside your mind, with your head? How the hell do you expect and truly believe that who you were before, before the world was locked down, now 2 years later, you're the same person you were 2 years ago? Come on. So here's the question: who are you now? The answer is you're not that person from 2 years ago. You can't just put on those old pair of shoes and make believe that everything's exactly the same. It's not. And the challenge and the frustration is, who are you now? How do you walk now? Do you walk with an extra pep in the step? Do you walk to a different beat? What type of music do you like now? Here's a bizarre question, but maybe relevant. Two years has gone by. Two full Years. If you are 15, you were 13 back then, you are 15 now, and percentage-wise, that's 1/7 of your life. 15% of your life has gone by. There's no way when 15% of your life's gone by that you're the same person. 2 years has gone by. How the hell do you think you're the same person? If you're older, you should be wiser. Are you 2 years wiser? Are you 2 years more experienced? Everybody else around you is the same way, uncomfortable in their own skin. And society's trying to function by faking it till they make it. Ain't nobody gonna make it because faking it doesn't work because you don't know who the hell to fake it with, even yourself. So here it is, what you need to do, and this is what I'm doing. It's taken a big, big step back. A big, big step back to the assumptions that I've made that I think would work now because they've always worked before, up until 2 years ago. Now, during those 2 years, of course we worked, of course we went to the store, of course we ate, of course we virtually searched, socialized, and all that stuff, but it wasn't the same. And now we're back to the norms of seeing people, talking to people, socializing with people. Something ain't the same. What you got to step back now and you have to say, you know what, I am not the same anymore. Some of you may be taller, some of you may be fatter, some of you may be skinnier, some of you may be lonelier, some of you may be more introverted, some of you may be like the most extroverted person because you feel like you're a champagne bottle ready to pop because you got to get out and you got to party, you got to go dancing. Great. But you're not who you were. So take a step back. And be serious and humble with yourself and say, I don't know who I am, but what is this feeling inside of me? What is this? I always talk about it as a frequency. What is this resonance sound that I feel that is foreign because it didn't exist 2 years ago, but it's there now? It's my guiding light. It's like that— it's not a noise, but it's a musical rhythm in your head that you're trying to follow and figure out, but you haven't heard it before. Right, then you know that first time you hear a song, a song from a different genre you haven't heard before, it's like something appealing to it, and you have to hear a couple of times before you get into it. Yeah, boom, right? It takes a while to find out that rhythm. That sound in your head, that's you. That's you today. You're just following the old album soundtrack and the CD or MP3, whatever you want to call it. From 2 years ago. That's a scratch record. That doesn't exist anymore. You're a new rhythm. You flow to a new beat. You love differently. You smile differently. You walk differently. You're empathetic differently. You're compassionate differently. You think about people differently, especially after COVID. Don't try to trick yourself into thinking that you are who you were. You're not. This is a process. And what I want to do now is— I've said this before and I'm trying to be polite, but I'm calling you bullshit. I want you to accept who you are. And I want you to allow for the new you to come out. As strange and as weird as it is, it's a rebirth for you. You have a chance for a new start. You may be a little bit heavier, you may be a little bit lost, but that's okay. Everybody's lost. Let me tell you a quick story to help you along the way. I was talking to someone And they asked me, how am I doing? I said, you know, things are difficult, you know, my family, I got somebody struggling. And as soon as I said that, their shoulders dropped because I gave them a real answer. And not only did their shoulders drop, but their face dropped. And they went from this like modus where they talked to everybody all goyf, you know, happy and joyful, and ah, then all of a sudden they like aged and they were like, yeah, you know, The last 6 months has been tough for me too. And then he told me the story about what happened to them and their loved ones and all this. And I was like, well, why didn't that— I thought to myself, why didn't she tell me this from the very beginning? Why did she have this mask? Why did she try to fake this personality thing? And then when I actually was real and then she became real, she's a completely different person. Does that sound familiar with you? When you go to work, you put on this whole different I call it coat of paint. Who are you now? You have a chance to get rid of the coat of paint and exist. You get a chance for people to see you, love you, fall passionately in love with who you are and the feeling that you bring into a room. This is the most exciting moment that you've had probably in your entire life, in your adult life. If you're young, this is exciting as hell because all your friends have forgotten who you were 2 years ago. They'll be able to— if they remember, the second they see the new you, they'll be like, damn, and they forgot the old you. You're welcome. You got a rebirth. To all you older people out there, this is the new you. Establish your new life now. And the way you do it is by just stopping for a moment and figuring out How do you exist? How do you love? Who do you love? Who do you want to work with? Who do you want to sit next to? How do you want to ride the train? It's a lot of crazy thoughts, a lot of heavy thoughts, but I'm being dead serious. The more I think about this, the more I realize that I cannot fight this current, and the current is called life. You can't fight it. I know a lot of you are fighting it. A lot of you are going, why is it so hard to swim upstream now? It's because you are swimming upstream. Why don't you just go with the damn current and flow with the way life is showing you and helping you to be who you are and who you're meant to be with the people you're meant to be, smiling, laughing. If you're not smiling, laughing every day, then you're swimming upstream. If you go to work every day and it's a bitch, is a headache, it's tough, it's confusing, you're swimming upstream, you're swimming against the current. Those are the messages that life is telling you that you're doing the wrong things and that you're ignoring your moment, your time to have such a wonderful and blissful existence. I love you. I want you to go forth and spread beauty and light and swim with the current. Go as fast as you can, as easy as you can. When you swim with the current, it's easy to swim. Life is pushing you effortlessly, and you're enjoying yourself. You ever see people riding the current, the wave? They're on top of the wave, and like they're human surfboard. And they lift their heads up and they're smiling, right? Because they are a surfboard and they're on top of the rave and they're going as fast, faster than they could probably run. And the wave is pushing them to shore, pushing them to salvation, pushing them to where they meant to be, where they wanted to be, but effortlessly. That is life. Life should be you as a human surfboard. But so many of us are swimming the opposite direction. Have that visualization. See yourself as a kid. I remember as a kid swimming, and then the wave would come. I swim real fast because I would try to swim on top of the wave, and every once in a while I would catch that wave straight into the sand. That's your life, and that's the only visualization you should hold on to. I'm surfing into the sand. I'm surfing into the sand. I love you. I believe in you. But you gotta stop swimming upstream, and you gotta go with the flow, and you gotta surf into the sand. It's a pretty cool visualization. Take care of yourself, okay? Until the next time. I'm Thomas Anglero. Bye-bye for now. Thank you for listening to that episode. If you want to contact me, you can contact me on my website at anglero.com, and you can also subscribe to the newsletter, or you can find me anywhere on social media with Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, and Twitter. Thank you so much, and I hope to hear from you very soon.