Ep82_Power_full
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Adam Gragg: [00:00:00] I actually rear-ended someone about a week and a half ago, and I didn't find out that the car was totaled until last Tuesday, and it threw me back. I was not expecting that I had to deal with it really discouraged and I gave away my power to that situation. Let it really bring me down. Welcome to the Decide Your Legacy podcast.

This is the latest episode, and today I'm gonna talk about never giving away your power. Four facts. Never give away your power to whatever the challenge that you may face may be. Never give away your power. And if you found this podcast helpful now or in the past, subscribe so you won't ever miss another episode.

Pull out your phones. It takes less than a minute. Give it a rating and review on Apple or Spotify or wherever you get your podcast content. Hundreds of you listening. Haven't done that yet and I'd really appreciate it. It helps the podcast to grow more organically, which it has significantly. Just thinking last week, there are days when I know people are talking about it and downloads jump up and spike up and it's because people [00:01:00] tell people about it and there are more reviews and more ratings, so really appreciate that.

So it can help more people. So something uncomfortable. I did recently, and I share this to challenge you to do the same. I apologized to somebody and they actually responded saying that they appreciated my apology. It went really, it was good.

It was awkward. But anyway, I did, and then I went and spoke to a company and first time I'd spoken to this company before and after the event, I had lunch with everybody that was there, about 40 people there, 50 people there, and. I made it a goal to not actually say anything about myself and just to be curious about the people that were actually there.

And I realized how hard that is for me because I want to prove, I still struggle with proving my worth to people, but it went well. I got to know some people. It was a German company. I got to know some really cool Germans and had a great time. So I'm your host, Adam Gragg. I'm a legacy coach, a blogger, speaker, mental health professional, and I aim to teach concepts that you can talk to your six year old about.

And they can understand them and you can discuss them with them. So my goal is to keep it simple and I talk about subjects and topics that [00:02:00] I struggle with myself. I, I don't have it all figured out. I mean, I'm a fellow traveler trying to figure this stuff out myself. And I challenge you to listen today, not just as a student but as a teacher.

So that you're gonna discuss some concept that you learned today with maybe your six, seven year old, with your wife, with your friend, with your teenager, and something that resonates to you. But you'll do that in the next 12 hours, cuz then it's gonna stick much, much more. And the reason I challenge and share those uncomfortable things at the beginning of every show is because I have found that there's not much more important to good mental health than actually facing your fears dead on just doing it.

And there's not much more damaging than just playing it safe and hiding out. This is the podcast that you do not just listen to. So I wanna start with an action as I always do. So who or what is something that you give your power away to? So is it a situation? Is it an addiction? Is it your past? Is it a person?

Is it a romantically or a family member or one of your children? Is it a problem, a health issue? You get consumed by it. You think about it, you focus on it. Controls your emotions, it takes away your joy. Is it a [00:03:00] family issue or a loss in your life, or is it an ideology, like a set a system of ideas and ideals?

So for example, materialism, or it could be used to political ideology. Not necessarily a bad thing, but you're giving your power away to that thing, so it's stealing your joy. I can think of times where I gave my power away to being an Oregon Duck football fan, and if they lost in the national championship game, I knew I was gonna lose sleep and it was gonna derail me for a little bit.

That's being fanatical, which I spoke in the last decided Legacy podcast about, there are times when it's good to be fanatical, kind of excessive over the top. There is times when you shouldn't be. Most of the time you shouldn't be. You don't wanna be, you don't want to be because it's not gonna be good for your mental health.

So giving your power away to somebody, a problem, a situation, it's stealing that ability, although you're still responsible, but it's giving that. Power, responsibility a way to some other situation. Not a good, great thing. So write down just something you give away your power to speaking it in your phone.

Write it in your journal. Pull your car over something. What do you give your power away to? And just put that down. Is it your boss? Is it [00:04:00] your job? Is it materialism? You know, is it even the kind of legalism? I mean, that can be an ideology. It can be a good, I mean, your faith can be a great thing, but legalistic views can be really damaging.

Is it something that, you know, you gotta kinda lay back on, but what are you giving your power away? Is it a parent? Is it one of your kids? And, you know, I had a, I had a dream recently. This was really interesting. I, it was actually last night, I can't believe it, but I had a dream. It was so vivid. I thought it was real and I believed it.

It was like I, I had a dream that for, for some reason my teeth were in really bad shape. It was really strange. I know. But I woke up believing this was true and I remember getting up and looking in the mirror cuz my dream was that my teeth had rotted and that I was in. Thinking about ways that I wouldn't be able to sh w was gonna be avoiding showing these to people that my teeth were in such bad shape.

My teeth are in good shape, I take care of my teeth. But it was so stinking real, like vivid. And that's what happens here, is we can believe something so vividly that is really not true. And that can be a way of [00:05:00] giving our power away. And the problem is, is that when we give our power to a situation that we believe is true, or that we feel like we have no.

Authority in that situation. You know, like in a relationship or a job or whatever, our finances or whatever, then we feel like we have no choice. We back ourselves into a corner, and that caused some major problems. It can really cause great anxiety and depression. It can cause us to stop trusting ourselves and our intuition and to go by rules and checks.

Lists, it can increase the stress level in our lives. Tremendous levels, cuz we don't believe we have a choice in the situation. You know, I was relieved to see that my teeth were fine. So in this episode today, you're gonna learn how to take your power back. When you've been giving it away, four facts to keep in mind.

So fact number one, and these are hard for me to even tell myself because a lot of times I do not wanna believe that these are facts. But I do believe that they're facts. They're just inconvenient facts They make, actually, they make my life a lot better, but in the moment they make it more difficult cuz I have responsibility at that point.

And responsibility isn't [00:06:00] always fun cuz it requires vulnerability. You have to make a choice. You have to make a decision, and then you gotta do something different. Or you don't have to, or you know you can do something different. So number one, fact number one is you have power over your thoughts. You don't have complete control over your thoughts.

Things are gonna be intrusive, but you do have power over your thoughts. You have the ability to focus on good things in your life and opportunities or obstacles and problems. You have the ability to. Determine what you're gonna focus on after that initial negative thought or that initial fear, or that negative core belief that you have, and whether you're gonna feed it or wallow in it.

You have power and influence, not total control, but power and influence. I remember, right, really for probably three years after my divorce, I kept this narrative in my mind that people are judging me, people are looking at me. You know, I am looked at as a failure. How could you do this, Adam? You know, how could this all happen?

Whatever. I mean, all these thoughts. Not true, but they went through my mind and they led me to acting in a certain way where I'd isolate and where [00:07:00] I would just get focused on work and that addiction there. And they led me to not being in a great place. But the second thought after I have that initial thought is my responsibility and what I can do is tell myself the truth, or I can keep filling and feeding those lies.

The choice is up to me. And so I stopped doing my daily five and five for a period of time. I stopped doing my gratitude practices for a period of time. I stopped doing journaling and reading at the level that I had done before. I stopped doing some things and not feeding my mind with good stuff, but just wallowing in the bad stuff.

There are some actions you can take if you wanna work on your thoughts. Couple things you can do. One is stay productively busy. You know, you first admit that they are your responsibility. Stay productively busy. So having a schedule and keeping it, having some structure in your life, I got off of that structure in my life.

You know, there's a cliche and it's, you know, an idle mind is a devil's workshop. You know, a cliche is like an opinion. It's overused and it's often something that is true, but we don't wanna hear it. Or we have it as a, in a cliche format to make it really convenient, [00:08:00] easy, and then it's something we can, that we can just really easily discard then, because we don't wanna really think about it.

But there's real truth to that because if we're just idle and we're just spitting in our own heads and not doing something productive, then we. We can very easily succumb to that negativity and easily succumb to others' opinions about us that might not be positive or easily succumb to things that we believe that really aren't true and not challenge that truth with some kind of thinking that's positive and more accurate and more true.

As I go through those questions that I have many times, what's more accurate, healthy, positive, true about this situation, about that initial thought that you can replace it with, and we can be quick to doing that. So I was watching a documentary about. About Kirk Cousins quarterback, I'm a fan and he does and has done for over a decade.

Neurofeedback and neurofeedback is basically where you're giving yourself some feedback on your thinking pattern. So for example, I used to, when I would do couples counseling, I used to hook up both of the couples to a pulse oxometer and it would measure their heart rate and their blood oxygen oxygenation level.

And what would happen in a conflict [00:09:00] is one of theirs would actually, there was an alarm that would go off when it reached a certain level, and so it would go off because they were so elevated and at that point it gave them some information that it's probably not gonna be a productive conversation from this point forward until you both take a timeout and step back from it.

Because those, by those, you know, their, their heart rate and their oxygenation level were were indicating that they were under a great deal of stress. I call that brain lock. They're in brain lock. How do we get outta that? We can do that with ourselves by, we can give ourselves some feedback. Cuz your body's telling you as you get in tune with it, that you're not thinking straight, that you're under stress.

You may carry it somewhere. I carry it in my stomach. Oftentimes I carry it in my shoulders and my neck as well. But it tells me that, okay, I gotta change something that I'm thinking here. Deal with something in my life. And neurofeedback is excellent. I mean, I think there's some really great, there's, I can put some links in the show notes to one, to actually two companies that I'm, that I really like as far as having.

At home neurofeedback. And that can give you some information, more details on this, but it's, it's really helpful, gives you some information on how your body's responding to your thinking patterns and it can help you stay more focused. So [00:10:00] fact number two, okay, this one I especially do not wanna believe, and this is you have power over your emotions.

Not total control. Not total influence, but you have a lot of influence over your emotions and what we feel. Is directly connected in some fashion to what we're focusing on the most. So if, for example, a child is told as they grow up that people aren't trustworthy and you know, you can't trust people in business, you can't trust people in in relationships, your friends will betray whatever.

People have parents that are like that maybe cuz they've been hurt in their life. And if you're a child growing up with that, And that's the way your, one of your parents is acting. So they may not have a lot of friends, they may not get out a lot, or they may just really be focused on certain parts of their pro profession, their profession.

That's it. And so, but they're getting that message that people aren't trustworthy. So it'd be very natural to have feelings of, oh my gosh, if, if I interact with people, you know, they're gonna hurt me. So, real apprehension, which is an emotion, a lack of, you know, a lack of. A lack of peace around people. For some reason, they're just [00:11:00] connecting that they could hurt me even though the person's not going to hurt them.

It's just how they're feeling in the moment, but their feelings are connected to their thinking and their thinking, and that example was connected to how their parents interacted. We can let our emotions linger, or after we feel them, we can try to understand them. And we can try to figure out what it's trying to tell us about our situation because emotions are a compass.

They tell you to move away from something, to move towards something, to adjust something. They will tell you that your thinking is off, that you need to adjust it, that you will, that you can adjust it. You don't need to, but you can, that you can adjust it, that you can make your perspective and attitude more healthy, that you can do some things to change.

That's a blessing about, about emotions. People will often say, and I have said in my life too, that I can't stop worrying. And I remember one period when I was struggling and not facing some things in my life a few years back. I remember that I was worrying about everything. I mean, I'm gonna be sued. I'm gonna get in an accident, I'm gonna have, something's gonna happen with the plane.

It's, and this relationship's gonna be bad. My [00:12:00] friends don't really like me. Or whatever it might be. I could worry about. Anything at that point. And the reason I was doing that is because when we are habitually worrying and we start to have some sense of peace, we'll just replace it with something else to worry about.

And especially if we have other core issues that we're not actually dealing with, then we're gonna find something else that's smaller that we can focus on and feel some sense of control over in our lives. When we're out of control in one area of our lives, we'll find something that we can control in our lives.

And it could be something positive, it could be something very negative, it could be something very negative like. Worrying, for example, cuz it doesn't really solve anything. It's just ruminating and thinking we're gonna come to a solution but not actually ever coming to that solution. So we just go over it again and again and again.

So those little things become our focus. I see this consistently with clients and it was funny, I was meeting, having lunch with a bunch of colleagues, other people that are in the mental health profession and coaching profession, and we were talking about our clients and talking about situations. Just having some pizza and having a good old time.

And I remember one of my. One of my friends, Todd, he actually shared that he has had clients throughout the [00:13:00] years and then he was talking about one specific client that, like the very end of the session just really addresses a core issue in, in her life. And so she waits and waits and waits and then right when she's about to leave this core real issue that needs to be discussed, it's brought up, you know, it's a real safe thing for a client to do.

Cuz then they don't have to deal with it in that session because usually a lot of people that do what I do have clients back to back. Sometimes they don't.

But we do that too. I mean, we avoid, avoid, avoid, and we focus on these things that we feel like we have some control over and don't deal with the core issues. So what can you do here? Some things you can do. So one is, and these are, these are things you can do right away. I mean, they're stuff you can apply.

A couple of things you can do to work on this, to to, to work on this fact that you have power over your emotions and you don't have to give that power away to other people and what they do and react. You don't have to react. And reaction is like, you know, no power, response means there's a space between that trigger and what we actually do.

An intentional response versus an unintentional reaction. So what we can do is we can not, [00:14:00] do not resist your emotions. Don't repress your emotions. Don't hide from and self-medicate your emotions. Let them come. Don't fight them. That's not the best way to deal with them. Addiction is often the repression of emotion.

Of negative emotion. Let them come and then see them as a gift and then learn from them. And as you do that and you don't repress them, you may talk to a friend about 'em. You may journal about them. You may try to understand them by just processing them in your own head, like, where's that coming from?

What's going on here? But you're not actually running from it. So you can start making progress in your life. And emotional maturity comes from facing your emotions. Sometimes it's. Used to be that we would talk about, and I'm not, haven't heard this in a long time, but that, you know, addiction stunts your emotional growth so that someone becomes an addict at like age 16 and then they get sober at age 26 and they're gonna be a still, still be a 16 year old.

I see some real truth to that because those emotions are such a teacher. When we, we run from them, we don't learn from them when them, we just keep making the same mistake again and again. You know, it's a cycle of insanity. We keep thinking we're gonna find the same solution through the same [00:15:00] means and mode and it's not working for us.

So number two, that you can do, you can take cuz you can figure out the route. Of your emotions. So that means actually dealing with your past, that means actually figuring out, well, what is really triggering here? I'm triggered in this situation where somebody is rejecting me, but the emotion is so strong, it's like I'm gonna die and I'm not gonna die.

It's just a sales call, but what's going on here? And then you ask yourself, you know what is really happening here? And you get to know yourself and understand, and over time, and it may be talking to a friend or a therapist, or a coach or a pastor or maybe journaling, but you realize that, okay, that's.

Connected to my past in this way cuz I experienced some great rejection as a kid and I don't wanna experience that again. That's why I'm having this shut down, runaway cutoff kind of response, emotional cutoff kind of thing. And then you realize that I have some power over that response. So you're like, that's triggering me.

Because in a very strong way in your head, you're saying this because of what happened in my past and I don't have to react. I can respond and I can ask questions and I can be curious and I can listen and I don't have to run. I can deal with the root cause. And that is [00:16:00] power. I'm telling you, man, there that is serious power.

When you recognize that, okay, this is not in this present situation, this is not, this present situation ain't the problem. I can handle this present situation now. I just don't think I can handle it because of what I experienced in the past, but I have power and confidence and I can handle it. I had a client last week tell me that it was the exact same thing.

It was like this guy. In that moment, I thought you have made a breakthrough. It was like a new person the way he was talking and he was seeing that he does not have to be and give his power away to the past and does not have to give his power away to relationships and that he has choice in the matter cuz we believe we don't have in the, in our thoughts and in our feelings, but we do and we don't have to give it away.

And I've seen that with health problems for people. I've seen that with tragedy. I've seen that with people that go through. Severe neglect and abandonment and all kinds of major issues where they retain their power and they don't give it away to that situation. And that's so inspiring and we see have so many inspiring stories throughout history of people who have done that.

And [00:17:00] it inspires me today, and I want to be an inspiration to other people by moving forward through difficult situations, knowing that as hard as it seems in this situation, I don't have to give my power away. So if you found this podcast helpful so far, hit the link to shatterproof yourself, seven Small Steps to a Giant Leap in your mental health.

You'll only get that through subscribing through that link, and you will not wanna miss that. It's a brief video and workbook actionable tools that can transform your life. So fact number three, again, I don't wanna believe this, but I know it's true. You have power over your response to others, to other people.

When people say to me, you know, they made me do it, or They're making me feel so sad, or they're making me so angry, or that situation's making me so angry, or This occurred and that occurred and I can't get over it, I can't shake it. They're giving their power away to that situation. And we're not talking about grief here cuz grief is a natural depressive cycle We go through and we come out on the other side at some point.

Where we're accepting the situation and seeing how it can be used for good and seeing how it [00:18:00] can be a blessing to others. Not that we're glad it happened, but we're getting to the other side and moving forward. But this is different. This is when we're wallowing and stuck and we're blaming at that point, we're blaming this external thing for keeping us in this situation, this health issue, our education, our lack thereof, the mistakes we've made in the past, whatever it may be.

So we have control over our initial response to other people. We don't have to react. We don't have to actually react. You can react or you can respond. But when I had this fender bender about a week and a half ago, I got outta the car. I checked to make sure the lady was okay. I didn't know if there were kids in the car.

I didn't know who was in the car. So that was my first inclination, was just to go check and see if everyone was okay. And it was, it was a single woman. She was okay. I asked her. I was flustered. She was flustered. I asked her to pull over into the parking lot of this place nearby. And so she did and got outta the car, talked to her.

She told me she was calling her son-in-law. He came out and he was there in like, like quick, I mean, I don't know, maybe two or three minutes. It was pretty cool. But this guy gets like the [00:19:00] son-in-Law of the Year award. I will tell you, I'd really, I think I really like him. I don't even remember his name.

I don't know his name, but. It was unfortunate how we met because I was really impressed by how he was. He was, he was defensive in a really healthy way for his mother-in-law, a really concerned for her. And then he showed concern for me, which I thought was really cool cuz he doesn't know me. And there was a good interaction there, really positive.

It was really good that nobody was hurt and all the whole thing worked out. And I think. In that situation, I could have been defensive, but I had to choose intentionally to say, okay, I'm really flustered. This is not fun, but okay, what's going on here? Let's get to the facts. I couldn't really even find my insurance card on my phone because I was so flustered, but I was trying my best, and that's really all we gotta do is try our best not to get sucked into the situation and do what you would do if you were calm.

That's the thing I tell myself in those kinds of situations, do what you would do if you were actually calm. I remember years ago, this is like a decade ago that I had an executive, well actually it was a group of engineers at a local. At a local plane [00:20:00] manufacturing plant and one of the main jet manufacturers in the world, at least at the time.

And they, I was talking to everybody and I think it was a group of executives and engineers, whatever, but I remember this guy, clearly I was talking about this daily five and five practice that I encourage clients to engage in. So you talk, you list. In journal in your, you write down handwriting journal.

You know, five things that happened yesterday that were positive in your life and five things you're looking forward to later in the day. You do it in the morning ideally, but you don't have to. You can do it the next day or whatever. You can do it, you can do exciting things for the next day or whatever, however you wanna do it.

But I, I was extremely religious and I put quotations there for many, many years without activity. And I remember going and speaking to this group about it as an encouraging thing that they could engage in to work on their attitude and perspective. Not that they had a bad one, but they were asking me to help them with stress.

So, and this guy that was there, he said, After I talked about this activity and said that I'd do it, he said, he said, do you do, how often do you do that? And I said, I do it every day. He said, do you really do it every day? And I said, yeah, you know, I mean, I, I don't think I've missed a day. I don't believe I've missed a day in the last, in the last year.

And, [00:21:00] and I, I believe I said I haven't think I've missed a day in the last two years. Cause at that point I had been doing it so consistently. I stopped unfortunately, when I went through some junk in my own life that I've talked about and stuff. But, but I, I do it now. I mean, I've been doing it.

Religiously quotes, you know, not perfectionistic, but I really find it beneficial when I wake up to do that activity. But the guy just grilled me and he wouldn't let go. And I got defensive. I got like, I was like flustered. I'd never in an audience had somebody like question. I'm like, do you? I mean, I was thinking you want me to show you?

I didn't bring my journal, but I'll show you. But yes, I do it every day. And I think back on that and think, why did I get defensive? You know, someone was questioning me and there was something going on inside of him that he wasn't believing that someone could do that and could really write out that in their journal every morning.

And I know it's hard at first, but it didn't take me that long after doing it for so long. I mean, it takes me probably five minutes, 10 minutes at the most if I wanted to now. But I should have asked questions. I could have asked questions, I could have asked him with the audience there, which I've said I used.

It seems like you're really passionate about this. Can you tell me more what's going on? Or, or what? [00:22:00] What would you like to know about how I do it every day and how I do it every day? And then I would've had some kind of a dialogue rather than a monologue from him and me getting defensive. So it's easy and we can't prepare for every situation, but I will tell you that a lot of the triggering situations in our lives, like 80% of them we can prepare for.

And so some things that you can do, To work on this and to apply this fact that you have power over your response to others is, one is instead of reacting, you can validate their emotion as I wish I would have in this situation a decade ago or 12 years ago. You can ask clarifying questions. So for example, you know, what are you, if they're frustrated and everything, I can tell you're frustrated.

What are you specifically frustrated about? Or how can I make this right or can you give me an example so you, I. Choose to be calm. You choose to breathe. You choose to relax to the best of your ability. Even though like when I got in that little car accident, it was very hard to relax, but I was trying. I was, I give myself credit.

I was trying. I called buddies right afterwards. I did some things that I would tell clients to [00:23:00] do in that situation, but we can choose to ask questions. We can choose to be curious. We can choose. To respond versus react. And the second thing you can do is you can be prepared because you know that you have these people, places and things that are triggering for you in your life.

So how are you gonna prepare in advance when you know you're triggered? For example, if you know you're triggered by people drinking, it's probably not a great idea to, when you're depressed, to go out to a bar with your friends and hang out. When you're gonna be triggered potentially, you may say, can we go to another place and maybe they don't want to.

And then you watch a movie at home, that's can be a very wise thing. Or you have people that say things consistently like a boss or a coworker or a family member that you know baits you. And instead of taking the bait, you can have written out in your journal a dialogue that you want to have. And it can be questions, it can be how you're gonna respond.

It can be even telling him that I'm really not comfortable talking about this anymore, or, Can we talk at a different time when they bait you? Cuz you're already in an emotional situation. Can we talk about this [00:24:00] tomorrow or can we talk about this later in the day? Because I really want to get some time to think this through, but that's an intentional planned response.

Sure. You never know when you're gonna get an offender bender, but even then you can write out how you would like to respond, I guess if you want to. Hopefully you never get an offender bender, I hope. I know, but that's the ideal thing. But you might, and if it happens, you'll be more prepared if you follow this advice.

So number five. Number four. This is the fourth fact is, so you have power over the actions that you take. You have power over the actions that you take. I remember in high school that I was a very skinny kid. You know, I played basketball and football in high school, but it wasn't until my, the summer, between my sophomore and my junior year that I started to work out consistently and I started to take these ga, it was called gainers fuel.

They're like power out, they're protein shakes. And I went from being about 180, which. To being about 2 [00:25:00] 25. And I worked out every day. I mean, I literally worked out every day. I kid you not, and this was a religious type thing for me. And I remember looking in the mirror saying, I can't believe it. You know, my body is changing and I have power in this situation.

And I was in good shape. I was running, I was working out. And those. Habits that I formed back then are still with me today. I don't work out like I did then. I like the weight that I'm at, but, and I don't eat as healthy as I did back then, honestly. But I like the habits that I have when it comes to exercise and taking care of my body, which started back then, and it was friends I worked out with and they encouraged me and supported me.

But I saw that I had. The ability, even when I didn't want to, I could still go work out. Even when it was the last thing I wanted to do and wasn't excited about it, I could still go work out. I could still drink those shakes. I could still eat healthy. I could still keep my commitments to friends that I was meeting at the gym, and it worked.

It had a big impact on my life. So here's some things that you can do is, first of all, you can realize that. Your actions are your [00:26:00] responsibility and that there's no excuse outside of some kind of crisis to make a commitment to yourself and not keep it. And that crisis could be very, should be a very rare type thing.

So if you're making a commitment to working out in the morning, you're making a commitment to drinking a certain amount of water, you're making a commitment to getting up at a certain time or going to bed at a certain time, you're keeping that commitment to yourself come hell or high water, and you're doing it consistently.

You do it seven days in a row, you're gonna start feeling some power. In that situation. So you do it seven days in a row. You go to bed at 10:00 PM and you used to go into bed at 1130 or 11, then you're gonna start feeling some power like I did, and have in situations in my life. And then I've made some things and done some things like sleeping in and all this that I really still frustrate myself with even now.

But that power's gonna come. And then once you start feeling that, you realize it can translate and be passed on into other areas of your life. And it's not being given away to, oh, I can't do that. Oh, I can't make that change. Oh, I'll always be this way, whatever it may be. So a couple things you can do to take back your power when it comes to you taking action.

So first thing is no snooze button. Try it. [00:27:00] Make a promise to yourself, I'm not gonna hit the snooze button. So then you're gonna set your alarm when you want to wake up, and that's the time, and the only time that you get to wake up. So if you didn't have a snooze button, or if you could turn it off on your iPhone, I would do it.

I'm looking for an alarm clock right now that doesn't have a, have a snooze button, an old fashioned alarm clock. So, and then I'll have to deal with the consequences if I actually sleep in. I think that's a dangerous thing for me. So you do that and you try that, and you do it for, well train, you, train it.

You know, you train that training versus trying of course. And try that for seven days, train for that for seven days. Second thing you can do is you can schedule it. So you have some things in your life that will keep you busy and you know they're really good things and you block 'em off into your schedule.

I. Put 'em in there, plug 'em in, and give yourself some margin so you're just not back to back to back. So you can actually drive to that place and not be late. You know, you give yourself some drive time, some rest time, some time in between and everything, but you have a schedule. And then what you can do too is you can create habits on top of that schedule that if you have ever heard of the concept of habit [00:28:00] stacking, it's, you know, you do something and then you have a habit that you have created after you do that.

So when you get up, At 5 45, then what your habit is, is that you end up reading for 15 minutes or you, and then after you read for 15 minutes, you stack another habit on top of that, which is you go and work out for 45 minutes, and then you have another habit after that, which is you take a shower after that and you have your kind of this ideal morning routine that you place and it's habit stacking.

You know? Or if it's after you brush your teeth, you encourage your kids and your wife and you do it every day, or you do it, you know, I. For me, it's really important if I'm gonna start changing a habit, that I do it every day for a period of time to make it something that sticks. So if I want to be more encouraging to my daughter, for example, well if I decide that every day, I'm gonna say something encouraging that's genuine.

That's. Authentic. That's real. It's not manufactured. But I'm gonna be in that mode where I'm thinking about things that I can point out to her that I really appreciate, admire, or thankful for in her life. And that creates, starts creating a habit for [00:29:00] me. It's an action and it's an action you can take, you can do those kinds of things.

So let's go ahead and recap. Fact number one, you have power over your thoughts. Fact number two, you have power over your emotions. Fact number three, you have power over your response to others. And fact number four, you have power over the actions that you take. Remember my rule, 20% of transformational change is insight.

It's clarity that you gain, and then 80% is action. So you get that clarity and insight and then it propels you forward, but you still have to make a choice to go ahead and make that change to do something different. Insight. It's less important than action. What from this podcast today resonates with you most?

In the next 12 hours, talk about a concept with somebody. Teach it to somebody, something that resonates naturally for you, and then take an emotional risk based on what you have learned today in your own life. If you love this episode, post a screenshot of the episode with you listening to it on your Instagram, and then tag me, Adam Gragg.[00:30:00]

Really appreciate it and I will respond. As long as there's not like 500, I will respond to every one. So if there's a, there's just a hundred, I'll respond to every one. Okay. That's my commitment right now on this podcast. So have me out to speak live or over zoom. I love doing things all over the world and.

Love my team to engage with you as well. So you can hire me or one of my other certified legacy coaches to work with you and it could be working with you on this stuff, on, on giving your power away. So I'm gonna sign off today the way that I always do make it your mission to live the life now today, that you want to be remembered for 10 years after you're gone, you decide your legacy, no one else.

I appreciate you greatly and I'll see you next time.