Hey everybody, you're doing absolutely fantastic. We've learned a ton of stuff here, life changing. And now we're going to learn another great one. It's dirty secret, a psychology. Number two, all problems are maintained. Everything in life if you think about it, is maintained.

Otherwise it What? That's right. It goes away. Don't maintain your health goes away. Don't maintain your position at work. It goes away.

Don't maintain your house. It goes away. Don't maintain your relationships. I can promise you, they'll go away or worse, they won't. But hey, I'm trying to maintain a theme here. All problems are maintained.

So here's a new question, ask yourself begin to ask how or why do I maintain or create my own problems? How am I maintaining or creating my own problems? Now specifically, we're going to look at maintaining. Here's why. For anything to exist, it has to be maintained. It's called the law of atrophy.

You have a tomato and it's on the vine. It's getting energy coming through the plant going into the tomato. And it can live like that for a long, long time. Go ahead and do nothing. don't damage the tomato. Simply take it from the vine, put it on the counter, and within a few days, it'll dissolve into a pile of mush.

Why? How did you injure it? How did you destroy it? I simply did nothing. It takes a certain amount of energy just to maintain something. It takes a tremendous amount of energy to make something better to make something grow.

All you have to do is nothing in everything will destroy itself. So when people have problems Ask them how or why their system by which they maintain or create their own problems, especially maintain, right? And here's what I do. I tell them, You know what? I'm not that smart guy. I'm not that creative guy.

But I'll tell you what, I figured out pretty early in life, that there was one thing that I was awesome at that I could always pull off. You know what it was? Like? No, what was it? I could always screw up. Can you screw up?

And they're like, you know, if you actually had to, like, if I stuck a gun, your head, could you screw up. And people were like, yeah, I could screw up. Great, because here's what we're going to do. We're going to take your problem, and we're going to figure out different ways to screw it up. Because if you don't work your exact system for maintaining or creating your problems, you ruin them. It's almost like I don't know how to fix a car.

But if I wanted to sabotage one, I could go underneath there and just start pulling stuff apart damage and stuff, twisting stuff cutting stuff in pretty soon I wouldn't have to go too long before nothing. That damn car would work. certainly wouldn't. Run. That's what we do with our problems, we figure out how we can screw them up. Maintaining or creating is the opposite.

Takes a lot of energy takes a lot of creativity. All you have to do is nothing. Say you have anxiety. How do you maintain anxiety? Remember, thought, feeling, thought, feeling? How do you maintain anxiety?

Well, you have to keep thinking anxious thoughts in a stream. Oh, here's what I would do. Stop doing that. Stop thinking anxious thoughts, boom, done. All the anxious feelings go away. Why?

Because you're not maintaining it. Now remember, everything that you don't maintain goes away. So what I want you to also do is conversely, while you're not maintaining your anxiety, I want you to maintain your serenity. Do some meditation, go for a walk, relaxation, healthy diet, taking breaks during the day, listening to relaxing music, whatever it is for you. That's maintained. Meaning of your serenity that creates serenity, the opposite of your issue.

So what you feed grows, what you starve, dies. So I want you to starve your anxiety and I want you to feed your serenity. And you will be amazed at what happens before you're halfway through. Now, here's the reason we can do all these things. And I want you to see this in a very empowering way. We are the cause, not the effect.

You cause the anxiety by thinking the anxious thoughts, the effect is what happens afterwards. So we're not an anxious person. We're persons causing anxiety and human that human happens to be us. So the good news is, like I said in another session. The bad news is you're the problem. The good news is your the problem and therefore you can solve it instantly.

The minute you decide, he just didn't know how that trick worked. Your brain is essentially tricked you. He didn't understand why people do the things they do. And therefore he didn't understand why you do the things you do. Now we've saw that you understand why you do the things you do, and you can be effective in changing it, you know that you are the cause and not the effect. Therefore, go for the effect you want.

It's almost like when we said, we were talking about the bumper sticker, what would Jesus do? I'll tell you a story. There was a story about a man who was walking across the desert, and he got lost. And he wanted to get to Greece. And he said, Okay, how the heck am I going to get to Greece? I don't, I'm lost.

I don't know which direction to going. While he was lucky, a man came walking across the desert, his name was Socrates. And he said, Oh, this is great. Socrates will know how to get degrees. I said, Socrates, how to get how do I get degrees? And Socrates thought about it for a minute.

He said, Oh, that's easy. Just make sure every step you take is in that direction. When you want to cause a certain effect, just make sure every step you take is in the direction. So ask yourself, if I were to be a man or a woman of serenity. What would I do in each situation? How would I handle this?

What would I think about what would I do? How would I hold my body? How would I breathe? How would I do everything? What would I eat? What I spend my time thinking about doing?

What would I do or not do to maintain Serenity? Boom. And if you just follow that, you will get there. So you were amazingly powerful in your life, because you are the cause. You're not the effect. You don't have to cause problems in your life anymore.

You don't have to maintain them anymore. You're amazingly powerful. It's a matter of having the tools which we've been teaching you and to make a decision. Decision means to cut yourself off from any other possibility. Now, these are a couple of great life rules. These are not my rules.

These are law rules. Rule number one, we get more of what we reward. Rule number two, we get less of what we constant and we consequence. This is the essence of dog training. But this is why we do what we do. We were trained this way.

Basically, with Spanx on a rear end, or Scooby snacks, like a dog, okay? We got to reward if we did certain things that were positive, we moved in the direction of pleasure, we've been talking about that since day one. And we moved away from the things that cause pain, we moved away from the negative behaviors. So if you have somebody in your life, okay, it's gonna sound horrible, but in some ways, you need to train them like a dog. If you want them to do more of something, you got to constantly reward that. You're not constantly constantly, you can do it less over time, but initially, you want to let them associate a reward with that behavior.

So you do it very consistently. Over time. You can just maintain it and just do it periodically. And in fact, a weird part of psychology. That intermittent reward will work better than a steady reward. That's why those one armed bandits work great and, you know, Las Vegas.

But we also get less of what we consequence. So let people know when you're not happy with things and give them a consequence. And they'll do it. Let's, I used to do this very subtly in group. If somebody said something really great, I would say, Man, that was greater Damn, I never thought that that's really smart. Okay.

Or that was really nice here to share that you didn't have to do that. That was that was beautiful. See, I'm rewarding something. There's no dollar amount going back and forth. I'm not giving them candy. Although not against that I would sometimes bring in chocolate or doughnuts.

Another another Scooby Snack, right? But if somebody said something that was really negative in group I go, damn, that was kind of harsh. Or I don't know if that's quite the way I would have said that. But I understand your sentiment. You know, or I just wouldn't say anything. Just not recognizing it, not rewarding it, rewarding the positive stuff and just ignoring the negative stuff.

That was enough, but better to use a little reward and a gentle consequence. Okay. I wouldn't even have I would do something like I would say, Well, I appreciate that thought. I'll tell you what, say that back to them. But I want you to say it in the positive form. Okay.

The consequence was having to do it over and getting called out in the behavior when you thought it was going to sneak by. And the reward was, if you did a good job restating it, and you probably weren't going to do they would do that at least three cores at a time. I'd say that took a big man to do that. You did an awesome job at that. I couldn't have done that better myself. Absolutely.

Fantastic. Proud of you. Excellent. So remember this in life. A lot of times we want people to act certain ways, but we don't reward them when they do what we want. We usually pretty good about consequences of them when we don't get what we want, but a lot of times that creates resistance.

So I would rather do more with the reward and less with consequence because consequence can sometimes come back on you. And especially if you're being a good student of life, and you're realizing that, hey, every time I consequence they just dig in deeper. Hello, be good student don't do that. Now, the next, the next concept is focus management. Remember this, write this down. Whatever you focus on, you get more of this is how an anxiety disorder starts.

This is how depression starts. You think about one little thing that you're a little anxious about a little nervous about. And the more you focus on it, the more different ways you can think of to think about it. And therefore you focus on it more and with greater variety. Then you kind of escalate all it could be, you know, worse and worse and worse and worse. You keep escalating how bad it is.

That's the wrong thing to do. Because the more time you spend on it, the bigger it gets. And the bigger gets the more anxious you get, the more anxious you get, the more you focus on what anxious things because that's where your mind is. You can see how depression would work the same way. Think of mildly depressive thought. Think of a couple other bad things that could happen.

Start Gunny, sacking them together, start seeing them over and over in your mind in a cycle, start escalating the level of how bad they could be. And then you're focused on depressive things. And this works a second way too. When you focus on certain things. One of the reasons you get more of it is, is say you're anxious, you will start scanning the environment. Remember the confirmation bias you would start looking for things in the environment that matched up with your belief.

Right now your belief is anxiety or depression. So you're going to scan your environment and you're going to find everything and suck it in to your mind to your life to your anxiety to make it stronger. that matches up with being anxious or depressed. Then anything that says why you shouldn't be anxious or depressed or you know, good things in life, you're going to poopoo those, okay? Or are you going to turn that positive into a negative? Okay?

So, remember, whatever you focus on, you're going to get more of could be anything. Now, we talked about in terms of negative things, you can also focus on positive things, you know, love and confidence and happiness and, you know, having a positive future and, you know, all the bright things that have happened to you over time and all the great things are gonna happen in the future. You know, be careful where you put your focus wherever your focus goes, it's going to tend to linger and it's going to tend to grow. So, almost like the Scooby snacks. Whatever you give focus to that'll grow. Whatever you starve, that'll die.

That's how you work it. Make sure you're working the formula in the right way. Now, this is another key concept. why people do the things they do? I can't say enough about this. We have something called an explanatory style.

Explanatory is a big fancy word. You can see explain right in it. I sometimes call it explanatory style. You know, I slur the word a little bit so people realize that it's an explaining style, a way of explaining things. So our way of explaining things is literally going to determine what we will do and how we will feel. So classic example is girlfriend leaves you do you say, Oh my god, she left me and I'm no damn good.

No woman will ever love me. That'll make you feel one way. Okay, take a certain action. Or you could say thank God, you left me so somebody decent come into my life that'll make you feel another way and take a different set of actions. Notice that the situation is exactly the same. But what determines both the outcome the feeling and the action How you explain it?

Some people are winning in life, but they keep score lousy, and they act as if they're losing. Why? It's because of how they explain things. I remember one guy, he said, explaining his huge say you lose your job. Okay? One ways to explain it is I'm going to lose a bunch of money.

I'm going to be embarrassed. I don't know what I'm going to do tomorrow. It's going to be horrible. What if I don't like my next job is much bla bla bla bla, you can go on and on and on. The other way to explain it is before I pretty much peaked, they were going to let me go anyways. And now before I had one job, and only one possibility in my life, now I have infinite possibilities.

That's excellent. That's a great way of explaining things to yourself. You're not kidding yourself. You're not lying to yourself, you just using a different explanation. Although sometimes when things are really bad, yeah, go ahead and lie to yourself a little. Fake it do.

Make it It's okay. But a lot of why we do the things we do is the way that we explain it to ourselves. When you're justifying something, what are you literally saying, Oh, I'm coming up with a pleasant way of explaining why I do this thing and why it's okay. Everybody justifies or explains why they do everything. Here's why. Remember, Maslow's need hierarchy.

Fourth one up self esteem. Remember I said you can't go outside your self image. So you have to explain everything that you do. Good, better and different, right or wrong. on target or off target. matches with what you feel you are or doesn't match.

It now has to match. So you will explain it in such a way that it was okay to do this thing, and it does match with who you are. I think my kung fu instructor was one of the most confusing people I ever met. Sometimes somebody would say something nasty to him. And he wouldn't even look over at them or look over at them. He'd smile like he was greeting a friend, and he walked away.

What was he doing? The way he explained it is he said, I'm proving my mastery of my martial arts by having mental control. And I'm letting that go. Another time, he'd be walking down the hall and somebody would say something nasty to me. I know who these suicidal people are. But they did.

And David would beat them about the hidden face and they fall on the ground. So look, Bob Felder. Oops. How does that match up with what he had just said? Well, he matched it up. He said, I'm proving my master.

I've worked very hard. I have great mental control. I can choose to beat you or not beat you. in this situation. I chose to beat that person. And I proved my master.

I mastered over them. So I guess where he kind of found which one he was Do was based on the person, what did that person need? One person just needed some ignoring or some kindness. Or maybe they were having a bad day or something like that somebody else was hurtful to other people. When they got done with David, they're stupid enough to say this to him. They're gonna say to six other people and get in a fight with them and maybe hurt somebody.

So he was being proactive, nipping that in the bud. They weren't going to be hurting anybody today. Yeah, they're gonna be home nursing their own ones. So he always had a way of explaining things. And I'll tell you, if I drill down even as crazy as some of the things he did, seen, he always had a really good kind, loving explanation of why he did it. He's like, some people need kindness, and some people need a version therapy.

Even a therapist would do that. You know? I'm like, Damn, that's absolutely right. And when he explained why he did it, it was based on the other person, not him. That's what confused me. So remember that People always have a way of explaining things.

And if you know how, when a situation comes up, this person likes to explain themselves, you'll also know what they're going to do, and how they're going to feel about it. Now, if you want to change how somebody does some, you want to use this as a tool of influence. And shameless plug I got a huge course on influence. So you want to check that out. But if you want to influence somebody, change the way you explain the behavior, okay? If you want somebody to do something different, explain it in a different way, say, you know, maybe it would have been better to show that person kindness.

Maybe that person was being mean to you, because their father had been mean to them their whole life. How is beating on a kid that's been beat on his whole life and therefore is mean how is one more beating going to help him? Now, if you think of it, that way, you're no longer free to beat on that person. Okay, before that you would have said, Oh, he totally deserved it. Matter of fact, he swung me first. I even saw Dave when somebody was swinging him, he blocked it.

He blocked five, six times and say this is going to go horrible for you. If I start hitting you, do you want to stop now? Hurry up, my arms are getting tired. If you don't like me block and you're gonna hate, you wanna start beating on you. And he would let the person go. And I'm like, That's amazing.

Normally, he let stuff go, or he take the person out immediately. Here's him going down the middle road, this man had a wide range of approaches to deal with things. And it wasn't based on his feeling. It was based on what was best for the person in front of them. He was just so intuitive with us. So we can always change how the other person acts by re re explaining it to think of it this way.

Therapy they have something called reframing. Do you know what reframing is? Think of it like a picture. A lot of times when you put a picture in different frames, the picture looks totally different in one frame to look like it's kind of woodsey and another one that will look like is kind of, you know, nouveau eration. Another one will kind of look like it's new wave. And another one you go, Dan, that picture is ugly.

It's just a horrible frame. The frame you put it in makes it look different ways, but the picture hasn't changed. So that's what reframing is. When you state something a different way when you explain it a different way. When you put it in a different light. It looks different.

So that's what a lot of therapists do. You could be a great therapist if you did nothing but master reframing. Okay. Somebody says I was a jerk my whole life. I say, thank god that's over. Good thing.

You're in therapy. We don't have to do that anymore. Who That was close. And they're like, What are you talking about? I'm like, well, you're not a jerk anymore because your therapy jerks don't come to therapy. jerks are perfectly happy being jerks.

They don't want to become better people go to therapy. What do you hi? Of course they don't. Therefore I know you're a better person and you want to do better from here forward. Therefore, you might have been a jerk your whole life but you're not anymore. That's a reframe.

Somebody can say. What's a good example? Well, a lot of times people have losses in their life like the girlfriend. I showed you refrain for that. You know, thank god they left so somebody decent come into my life. Some people, I remember when my mom died, everybody's like, Oh my god, this is horrible.

And there's such a horrible loss and blah, blah, blah. And I'm like, I don't understand. She was 84 years old chick congestive heart failure. She had a wonderful life. You can see she has people just lining up here. She's got 50 times more friends than I do.

She never had any major hardships in her life. She loved everybody. I never heard her say an unkind word about anybody. She always enjoyed her life. We should all do so well. This should be a celebration of somebody who live their life virtually perfectly.

And Got the hell out at a ripe old age? well beyond even with even congestive heart failure, well beyond the average age of 77, she outlived even the average person by what's that seven years with congestive heart failure. This is not a problem. This is a solution. She lived a good life. She lives it with kindness and honor and left.

Perfect. The woman died in her sleep. This is not a time to be crying convention. Okay. People can end up in therapy, you know, after this because they're so worried they lost their mother. Why?

If she had a horrible life, and she was a horrible woman, and she drank herself to death, and she never turned around, and we never had any good times with her, and she just ruined her life and didn't have to be like that. I'd say yeah, maybe we should cry or ass off for a little while. That's horrible. See how the way you explain things matters so much in what you'll do. do and how you will feel. Think of it this way.

Things are going great my business, I feel wonderful because I explained is Hey, things are going great and I'm making money and everything else. But when things go bad my business you know what I do? I say that's wonderful too. This is going to show me some problems I have my business that I'm now going to fix that are gonna make things better in the future. Instead of getting mad that I'm not doing the sales, I'm not doing the volume this or that isn't happening my business that I want. I don't get angry at it.

I attack the problem. I kick butt and take names and I feel good about taking massive action. I said before I was sitting on my button, I was making money. I was fat, happy and stupid. But Hello, I was fat and stupid. I can be kicking butt and taking names.

And when this thing turns around, I started making good money again, I can say yeah, that was me and feel proud about it. You know, it's not a rocky story if you start at the top and work your way to the bottom. So these are different ways that I explained things to myself. When things are down, that make me feel better and move me in a positive direction, and they have the benefit of being accurate. Whenever you're doing a reframe wherever you're doing explanatory style, make sure it's real whenever humanly possible. Everything I said to the patient, hey, you're a good person because you're in treatment.

Yeah, that's in escapable. That's not wrong. That's not something to make them feel better. That's not me saying, oh, you're a good kid. Don't worry. You're making that up.

That's an opinion. You're in therapy, and jerks don't go to therapy because they don't care about therapy and they don't want to get better. Damn, that's real. That's true. That's 100% true. Yeah.

Okay, so now I know how to do free framing you understand explanatory style, you understand that everybody has an explanatory style, and that they justify every single action. But you can loosen that up with reframing and help them see the real truth. But do it kindly do it slowly. Do it gently. Remember, if I say something to a client You're not listening. We have a clinical term for that.

It's called talking to yourself. I only tell people at the level they can hear in the amount they can hear. It's like weightlifting, you don't take 400 pounds and drop it on their neck. You give them as much as they can handle. Okay. And you move on.

Take your time. I'll see you in the next training.