Episode 190: Being in the Zone of YOU

Welcome to the Soul of Innovation podcast. I am Thomas Anglero, and I want to ask you a question. What do you measure yourself by in any given situation? What are you thinking about when you do something? When you are trying to achieve something?

Are you thinking only about you and your outcome?

Are you visualizing yourself with the completed project, having gotten a higher salary, with that amazing partner, that woman, that man?

Are you seeing yourself lift that heavy weight? Are you seeing yourself having lost weight? How do you see yourself? What do you measure yourself by? What I'm asking you is this: How often, so often, so often I see people thinking, looking around before they do anything. Why the hell are you doing that? If you're in the moment, if you're doing what you're supposed to be doing, if you're completely focused in on what you're doing, you don't even notice sound, you don't see people, you're just in your own zone. You're thinking about what you're doing. You don't even feel time and space. If you have no idea what I'm talking about, then you're spending way too much time thinking about what other people are thinking about you, looking around and looking for people to see if people are looking at you, and you're not living your life. You're setting your life standards, your body standards, your educational standards, your financial standards, your mental standards, and most importantly, your emotional standards by someone else. And most likely you don't even know that person. They don't even know you, and they don't want to know you, and you're still stopping your life. You're cutting your standards short because of them. Seriously, do you understand what I'm saying? For example, you're about to buy a shirt, a dress, a pair of pants. You try them on. After you try them on, or while you're trying them on, you look around. Why the hell are you looking around?

This is your subconscious, your insecurity coming out, and you wonder if anybody's looking at you. What the hell does that matter? Does it not only matter that what you feel like when you put on that pair of pants or you put on that shirt, how you think you look like? Everyone else's opinion doesn't matter. The first person to go outside and wear some rainbow pants, that person felt good about themselves. They said, those rainbow pants make me feel fantastic. And then it becomes a trend.

Look at the Norwegian curling team.

They have a tradition of wearing some of the ugliest clothes you've ever seen for a national team in curling or any sport. It's just ugly. But now it's cool. But now when everybody else curls, you have to wear the most ugliest outfit you could find. When they first did it, they didn't care. They didn't care that in a sport of people who think they're really cool, really important, howdy toidy, that they will laugh at them. They now set the global fashion trend for the world.

A Norwegian curling team has set a fashion trend? Yeah, and it came from Not caring about what anyone else thinks about you is what you feel about you, is what you think about you, is what you know about you. What do you know about you? Do you feel confident about yourself? Sometimes you don't. That's okay. But most of the time you should. Who are you? What do you represent? You know that. How much difficulty have you gone through your life And in those most difficult moments, say recently when you maybe were crying or sad or depressed, was there anybody there to help you? No. Was that person when you came out of the dressing room trying on those pants or shirt, that person, were they there to hug you and give you help and cuddle you and console you? No. So why the hell are you taking into consideration what they're thinking when they're not the person to be there when you need it, the person to love you and care for you? Do you understand? Everybody's irrelevant. It is what you think about you, is your value you think about you, is how much you love you. That's all that matters. If that shirt makes you feel good, you wear that damn shirt. If that pants make you feel good, you wear the damn pants. If lifting that weight makes you feel good, you lift that weight. If skipping to work makes you feel good, you skip to work. If having your hair blown out like it's back in the '70s God bless, wear it well.

You set your own standards. How you feel about you sets your own standards. No one else's opinion matters.

Do you hear me?

You set your own standards. Today I went to the gym. Share a story. I went to lift weights. I was excited, looking forward to lifting weights today, trying to get back on the health track because I care about how I feel. I care that I don't feel like I should feel. I don't think I look like I should look. I don't think I'm as strong as I should be. Those are standards that I set. So therefore, I dedicate my time to getting back. I'm in the gym, I'm lifting weights, going through my sets. Fantastic.

I don't see anybody. I don't hear any music. I didn't even know there was a spin class going on, literally with the door wide open into the weight room.

Didn't notice anything. I was in my zone. Completely in my zone. At the end of my workout, my lower back started hurting because I went too damn hard, and the pain kicked in while I was lifting a weight, so I stopped. But that pain was so severe that it went down like to the nerves, you know, and it— because that pain went to my nervous system, it knocked me out of my zone.

All of a sudden I noticed that there was a spin class and there was this instructor, this huge man with a huge beard, yelling like he was the head of some military regiment and they weren't listening to him. There were women wearing tight clothes all over the place, looking through the reflections on every mirror at every young guy who was looking through the reflections of the other mirrors at the naked girls. I was in the middle of a meat market and I was in the middle of a disco spin class And I had no idea for the last hour and a half.

I was in my zone and I was focusing on me. I was focusing on what I want to do, what I see, what—

where I want to be, the vision I have of who I am. I know who I am. I'm already there. I just need to do this workout to get there. But everyone around me doesn't matter. Everyone around you doesn't matter. Being self-conscious, that's an insecurity. I didn't even know if I had clothes on. I didn't care.

I was in my workout. When was the last time you were in the zone? I'm gonna pause and give you a moment to think about it. Don't stop the podcast. Let's take a pause in a moment. When was the last time you were in the zone? The zone meaning life, time, people, sound, smells— you didn't notice them. You were so focused on what you were doing, you're so focused on what you were thinking, that everything disappeared. You should be like that more often.

When you have a goal—

what goal do you have in life? Let's say you have a goal to put on weight, to lose weight, to run faster, to make more money, to graduate from school, to get a good grade. That thought and that obsession of how to get there, that vision of you having that diploma in your hand, having that perfect grade in your hand, stepping on the scale and seeing it go up or go down, having that promotion, opening your bank account and seeing more money, that feeling That thought, that hunger for that, that's where you should exist right now. See it in your hand. See the scale. See the count. Feel the success. Feeling it? You feel yourself being successful? Do you see yourself being praised by others? Mm. Feels like a rhythm, doesn't it? Feel how great you are. Feel where you're going. See yourself already there. Powerful. Powerful. Powerful.

You are powerful.

See where your mind is now? That's the zone. Everything around you, the dog barking, the grass, the birds, the taxis, the subway, the trains. You didn't hear anything for a while, did you? Welcome to the zone. And the zone is all about you, your magnificence, your achievements, your accomplishments, the completion of you, you achieving your destiny. Stop setting standards based on other people who will never ever invest a second of their life in you, and you care what the hell they think?

Why? They don't care about what you think. You look around to see if anybody's looking at you. They don't want to look at you, so why do you care what they think? You be you, and then they care what you think because you just set the damn standard. Norwegian curling team set the global fashion standard that is mimicked by outside of curling people going to clubs, people going to school, people going to dancing, people walking down the street are wearing the Norwegian curling team's ugly clothes. They didn't care and they changed the world. You can change the world. They they changed the world by wearing ugly clothes. You're more intelligent than that.

That's actually what's quite intelligent if you think about it.

How are you going to change the world? Being you, doing you. Do you. Forget everyone else. Forget everyone else. Oh, what are people going to think? The hell with them. It only matters what you think and what you feel about you.

You set the standard for you. Go forth and spread beauty and light. I'm done. I'm done with other people and what they think. It's never been relevant. Today with social media and everything, Everybody's watching everybody more than ever before. It's so easy to be the benchmark and just change the global trend and be the global trend. You just got to be you. Everybody else is so busy watching everybody else that you forgot that to be that number one influencer, that number one professor, student, you just got to be yourself. Spread your beauty and light. Spread your love. Spread yourself. That's what this world needs. God, wouldn't it be beautiful to see you as the influencer, the changemaker in this world? What a beautiful world this would be. And it's not a dream. All you have to do is be you. Stop looking around and thinking about what other people are thinking. What are they looking at? What are they gonna say? What they're gonna say to themselves privately is, "I wish I was you." I'm Thomas Anglero. I love you. I truly believe in you. How much do you believe in yourself? Exactly. Until next time. 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.