The Truths To Living A Peaceful & Courageous Life | Susan David EP 211

0:00Hi, my name is Lewis Howes and welcome to the Daily Motivation show.

0:10I firmly believe that taking charge of your mindset allows you to be in the driver's seat of your life and unlock your potential. And that's why I'm thrilled to share that my new book is out right now. It's called The Greatness Mindset. In it, you'll learn how to build a plan for greatness through powerful exercises and toolkits designed to propel your life forward. This is the book that I wish I had 20 years ago. It's everything I've learned in the last decade with the research and the science to help you unlock your mind. Make sure to go to lewishouse.com slash 2023mindset to pick up your copy of my book, The Greatness Mindset, today.

0:53What often happens when we get hooked, imprisoned by our thoughts, emotions, stories is we over-identify with it. And so we start saying things like, I am sad. If we just think about the language, it's so normal. Of course we say that. I am sad. I am angry. But I am sad. What are we doing? We are saying, I am. All of me, 100 % of me is sad. There's no space for wisdom, values, intention, calm. Like there's so much inside all of us that is beyond that difficult emotion. But when we say I am, we are literally defining ourselves with it. So it's not using the words I am. it's maybe something else.

1:33If we say I am sad or even I am being undermined, I am being undermined. Again, you are creating a prison. I am, this is fact. I am being undermined. All of me is being undermined. So I've got no choice but to shut down in the conversation. So one of the ways that we can start defusing is recognizing that when we label our thoughts, emotions and stories with an I am and then the word. It's a big statement. It's almost like there is a cloud and you have become the cloud. And the cloud is the sad cloud. As opposed to I feel sadness. The power here is exactly that. The language, how you use the language.

2:09How we language matters. Words matter. What we can start doing is it's so simple. You can do it in a meeting. You can do it in a conversation with someone else. You can just start noticing your thoughts and stories for what they are. They're thoughts and stories. So instead of I am sad, I'm noticing that I'm feeling sad. I'm being undermined. I'm noticing the thought that I'm being undermined. I'm not good enough. I'm noticing that this is my I'm not good enough story. This is coming up for me. This is coming up for me. So when you start noticing your thoughts, emotions, stories for what they are, what you are actually doing in effect is you're moving from being the cloud, I am the sad cloud, into recognizing, and for everyone listening right now, you are not the cloud.

2:53You are the sky. You know, you are not the cloud. You are the sky. Wow. And there is a cloud. There is a cloud. In the sky. You are the sky. Wow. You are human and messy and capacious and beautiful and real and authentic and you enough to have all of your difficult thoughts, emotions, and stories and to still be the sky, to still be the you. For every person listening, doesn't matter if you're 30 or 40 or 50, for every person listening, there is a child inside of you. There is a five-year-old and that five-year-old is tugging at your sleeve and that five-year-old is saying, see me, love me, hear me, connect with me.

3:40So I think one of the truths is going to be to turn and face your five-year-old child and ask your five-year-old what it needs. Does it need spontaneity? Does it need creativity? One of the truths, I think, is that when we hold our child inside of us with gentleness, and we also recognize that there is, however old you are now, whether it's 30 or 40 or 50, there's also a 70-year-old looking back and saying, see me, love me, do what's important. And so I think one of the truths is that we are not alone in the world. even if we feel alone, we've got a child inside of us and we've got an older version inside of us.

4:23And that if we walk the journey with both of those people holding our hands, we have an infinite source of grounding and wisdom. So I think that for me is one of the truths. There is a mythology that being compassionate towards yourself is about being weak and lazy. It's like letting yourself off the hook. It's about lying to yourself. When we think about a little child in a restaurant running away from its parents and looking back to make sure that the parents are there, it's the knowledge that the child has that his parents are there, that if something goes wrong, that they'll step in. It's that knowledge that actually allows the child to explore the restaurant and to learn and grow.

5:07And so I think a second truth is that self-compassion is doing for ourselves what we see with that child and the parents and what I mean by that is it's when you are kind to yourself it's when you have your own back that you are actually more likely to take risks to learn to grow and be vulnerable and so I think a truth is self-compassion is the cornerstone to thriving and resilience and then I think that the third truth is a difficult truth. Before my father died, when I was little, I would go into my father and my mom's bedroom. And at five years old, a lot of kids become aware of their own mortality.

5:51So they start to recognize that one day their parents won't be there. And I would find my way into my parents' bed night after night, after night, after night, after night, much to their like dismay and I would cry and I would say to my dad daddy promise me you'll never die and this was 10 years before my dad was diagnosed with cancer and I used to say daddy promise me you'll never die daddy promise me you'll never die and my father could have done the forced false positivity just be grateful for the time we've got together he could have done that but he chose not to he could have buffered me from the truth but he chose not to and what he said to me is, Susie, we all die.

6:34It's normal to be scared. And Lewis, what I understood as a truth of the way that he was guiding me through those long dark nights is he was saying to me that courage is not an absence of fear. Courage is fear walking. Courage is about being able to To hold your fear, your change, your concern, your sadness, your whatever it is in one hand. And to move forward with your values in the other. Courage is not the absence of fear. And I think for me it was very powerful because in a world that tells us to do away with fear, in a world that says, oh, you know, even in a pandemic, look for the silver lining.

7:20Never mind we're in the shadow of illness and death. there is actually profound resilience by being able to walk into the future holding both holding both your fear and holding your courage because that is what life is asking of us every day life is saying are you agile and it's born of a correspondence with your own heart

8:03Thank you so much for listening to today's episode of The Daily Motivation, and I hope you have an amazing rest of your day. If you enjoyed this episode, make sure to click the link in the description. That will take you to the full episode of our main podcast on The School of Greatness. And if you are loving the daily motivation, please follow us over on Apple Podcasts and Spotify and leave us a review over on Apple Podcasts right now. And if you want more exclusive content and ad-free listening experience, make sure to subscribe to our Greatness Plus channel on Apple Podcasts right now. And if you want to get even more inspiration from our world-class guests and learn how to improve your life and take it to the next level, then make sure to sign up for the Greatness newsletter and get it delivered right to your inbox over at greatness.com slash newsletter.

8:53Again, have an amazing day and I'll see you tomorrow with another episode of the Daily Motivation Show.