Well, hi friends, I wanted to take a few minutes as we introduced this particular module in our course on the six steps to overcoming stress, and talk about the content of this module, which is really on having a right perspective toward problems or challenges. And that's by by embracing them. And I thought I'd do it from my perch here, which is right outside my hotel, on a very cold and a very snowy day in Moscow, Russia. I'll be speaking tomorrow do about 1000 people at a wonderful convention. And in the process, being here in Moscow made me think about streaming And challenges. Now look at many places around the world.

And this may be your situation. You're living on pennies a day. I've had the challenge and opportunity to travel around the world for years and I've seen how people live. I know my friends and the Philippines who are working with orphanages and schools and, and educational systems and churches and faith based organizations, and even employment to help children who they found on dump heaps, whose parents may have been dead or may have been in problems, had problems with drugs or sex trade. And these poor little children had no place to live. And they've adopted them in large numbers and help them grow and develop and become the kind of people that they needed to be and they've really made a difference in the lives of them who, who have suffered unbelievable areas.

Stress and showing them how to move from a distress to use stresses, which is the focus of our attention. So you may be in that environment. I chose this place because I'm here right now is I'm beginning to film this particular module on dealing with stress. But I'm also here because many of you live in a culture, an environment that's stressful. Maybe it's a living environment, this dysfunctional home or a work environment, this dysfunctional and has a culture that's distressful or stressful and can result in great distress. Or maybe you live in Moscow.

On the way here I read that the average sunlight in December of 2017, which is a month ago, the the sunlight total sunlight for the month in Moscow was six hours for the month. And you can see today, there's no sunlight. There's no It's cold, it's very cold. And it's just overcast and gloomy a lot, particularly in the winter periods of time. And so this article went on to talk about how people struggle here in a culture that's rather depressing and stressful because, number one, it's dark a lot. There's not a lot of light during the winter because of its position.

And beyond that, the economy's tough. And beyond that, the the traffic is unbelievable. And people have a hard time getting back and forth. So they get by, but it's stressful. Now, again, I know many people who live in much different places. And I chose to introduce this module with this particular background because so many of the courses I communicate and teach in I'm presenting from Miami environment in San Diego, California.

And it is not a stressful culture. It's a delightful culture. And often it's from my home, which is not a stressful home. It's a delightful home. But I know many of you don't have that. So I want to address in this module, how you deal with problems or challenges the right way.

And the key is to learn to embrace them. Now I know right now, that sounds crazy. But I'm going to unpack that during the multiple videos and other tools we provide. In this particular module. I'm going to show you that again, stress as a way of life. That your choice whenever you have a stress in your life is to embrace it, or to react to it and you can react to it by either turning inward and getting depressed and frustrated and hurt, bitter and all that or you or you can react to it by lashing out by doing things to try to anesthetize yourself.

And that causes you to get into addictions whether it's drug or alcohol, or work or sex or entertainment, whatever it might be. That's the wrong way to respond to stress. That that the secret is to learn to embrace it. Garfield A number of years ago wrote an outstanding book in which he looked at high achievers around the world. And one of the things he discovered among all high achievers was that they didn't use the word problem. They, instead of seeing something as a problem, they wouldn't even use the word problem.

They say, well, we have a challenge, or we have an opportunity, or we have a mountain to climb, or we have a glitch. But they didn't use the word problem because they wanted to think rightly about how they attacked it. And that's one of the things we're going to talk about how to get the right mental frameworks or the right perspective in mind to tackle challenges and reality problems but something that we set called challenges or roadblocks or mountains to climb in the right way. And when we talk about embracing that, I'm going to show you how you can take a challenge and learn to embrace it and treat it not as an enemy, not as an intruder that's interrupting your joy or your fulfillment or your life, like, perhaps this snow is or this environment, but instead learn how to embrace it, how to use it as a friend say, hey, the key is that I not ask the question, why is this happening to me?

The key is I asked a question, what can I learn from this? What can I do about this? What can I control? What can I not control? And how can I believe that all things will work out for good? And I'm going to walk you through that process as we work through the module.

So here's what I want you to do. As we go into this module, think again about that major area of stress in your life. Right now that's holding you back. And hopefully you've been doing that as we've gotten Through the multiple modules, and then I want you to think through, okay? Am I embracing this problem? Am I seeing this as a friend truly in my mind, in my heart, my behaviors, or am I treating this as my enemy, or an intruder at the very least, that I'm trying to get away from or kick out or deny, or deal with in some way journal, as much as you can write your insights down, and, and process that.

So as we move forward, you can start to change your thinking, and then change your behavior which will change your joy. Because again, remember, this is all about dealing with stress as an adventure, creating life change and becoming the kind of person you ought to be You got it. So do some reflection on that between now the next session as we go through this entire module, and let's see if we can change your behavior to deal with problems or challenges the right way, by embracing them looking forward to it. Ron signing off from nippy, but not problematic, challenging Moscow.