5 Steps To Stop Suffering

0:07Welcome to today's episode of the Mindset Mentor podcast. I'm your host Rob dial. If you have not yet done so, hit that subscribe button so that you never miss another podcast episode. And if you're out there and you love this podcast, do me a favor, go ahead and give us a review, however you listen to the podcast, whether that happens to be Spotify or that happens to be Apple podcasts or however you might listen to us, give us a rating or review. The reason why is because the more positive ratings and reviews that we get, the more that those platforms actually show this to people who have never listened to it before, which allows this podcast to grow and for you to be able to pay it forward as well.

0:38Today, we're going to be talking about five steps to stop suffering. We're going to talk about this because we all suffer so much in our minds. In our realities, for the majority of people, not everybody is it this way, but for the majority of people right now listening, your life is pretty good. It's in a pretty good situation, and it might not be where you want it to be. It's actually probably not where you want it to be because you are listening to this podcast. But really, if you start to look around you, you can realize that the majority of your life is actually quite beautiful. And it's something that we should start focusing on is the stuff around us that is good versus stuff around us that is bad.

1:15Because there's really only two states of being that you could be in at one point in time. You could be in a beautiful state or you could be in a state of suffering. Those are the two states that you could be in. And I don't mean like it's just a completely beautiful, blissful state every single minute or it's a complete suffering state every single minute. In life, we have varying degrees of each of these at any point in time. So let's talk about each state and how you can kind of identify which states you're actually in. So the first one, we look at a beautiful state. Beautiful state can be categorized by happiness, by love, by the feeling of peace, the feeling of gratitude and being grateful for what you have.

1:55It can be the state of feeling compassion or feeling excitement for what's going on. really it's an underlying tone of the just the tone of your life is peace in some sort of way things are okay right now there's nothing to worry about and that's the feeling that's the underlying feeling throughout your life when you're in a beautiful state you are comfortable in the world you're comfortable in your own skin and you just have a feeling a sense of ease just that right there would be what I'm talking about when I'm talking about being in a state that is a beautiful state. You're at ease. And when you're at ease, the people around you can sense the way that you feel and people end up being more comfortable around you.

2:42People end up being more calm and more at ease from your presence because how you show up will change how other people feel around you as well. And you will then in turn put more people at ease because your presence affects everyone that you come in contact with. Whether you realize it or not, your presence is always affecting people that are around you. And a beautiful state, the important thing to realize about a beautiful state is it's not about the situation or the circumstances of your life, which most people think, oh, well, I can be in a beautiful state if my life is exactly what I want it to be.

3:16If I have what I want, if my husband acts the way that I want him to do, or if my father starts treating me the way that I want to, then I will be at a state of ease. No, a beautiful state is not about the situation. It's not about the circumstance. It's about how you are feeling about your life, how you are feeling about your circumstances, what you are thinking about the circumstances in your life. That right there is a beautiful state. Now, on the other side of that is a state of suffering, which from what I have found is actually a state that most people tend to live in more often than not.

3:51So a suffering state could be stress, could be the feeling of anxiety, the feeling of constantly worrying, fear for what something might happen coming in the future, anger around something that happened to you or the way someone's acting, sadness, boredom. If a beautiful state is an underlying tone of peace and ease, a suffering state is the underlying tone of something is not right. You are not at ease. You are not where you want to be. And your nervous system might feel on guard the entire time as if your nervous system is just kind of sitting there waiting to be attacked. So you're kind of on guard all the time.

4:35There is no ease in a state of suffering. It is just the feeling of what's going to attack me next. Fear, fear, fear, worry, worry, worry, and constantly trying to protect and be in a state where you can protect yourself. And you being uneasy makes other people uneasy being around you. And so if you're uneasy and you think that you're faking it and you think that no one else is noticing it, I promise you everyone else that you come in contact with is subconsciously noticing the vibe that you're at. And if you're uneasy, you're 100 % going to make other people uneasy being around you as well. So one of the most important decisions that you'll ever make in your life is what state you're going to be in at any moment.

5:16And once again, what I said is one of the most important decisions that you will ever make is what state you're going to be in because it is a decision. Now, mind you, when I say this, when I say you make this decision, it doesn't mean that you make this decision and you're that way forever. It's not like you're like, you know what? Rob's right. I'm going to be in a beautiful state. And then you'd make the decision. And then until the day you die, you're just in a beautiful state. You're not going to be there forever. I promise you that. You're human. And being a human, let's be real, is really fucking hard sometimes, right?

5:45There's ups, there's downs, there's great days, there's bad days, there's great moments, there's bad moments. You could be having a really great day. You could be in a complete blissful state. It's just you wake up, you feel good, you had your coffee, you hung out with your children, you took your dog for a walk, everything was amazing. And then something happens, right? And you'll react. And that reaction will then put you into a state of suffering. and then you find yourself in a state of suffering. So it's not about never going in to a state of suffering because that will never happen. We probably will never get to that point of complete enlightenment for the rest of our life.

6:20We'll probably never get there. But what it's about is when we notice ourselves slip into a state of suffering is recognizing that you put yourself in that state, that you were the person who put yourself in that state. Nobody else puts you in that state and no external circumstances puts you in that state.

6:48And what it is then at that point is taking the necessary action. Once you notice that you're in a state of suffering to put yourself back into a beautiful state. So let me give you a few examples just to kind of make, give it some more context for this to make sense to you. Okay. Let's say that you have a lot going on at work right now. We've all been in this situation, right? And you've got a deadline that's coming up next week. And you've got a lot that has to be done in the next week. And you don't know if you're going to make the deadline. And you're kind of worried about making the deadline.

7:18And you're stressed about how much you have to do in the next week. So all day long, when you're at work, even when you're home from work, you're worrying, you're stressed, you're anxious about your work. And this is super common, right? Like I've found myself here many times. And you've probably found yourself there many times as well, where you have a deadline approaching. There's a lot that you have to do. There's underlying stress. There's anxiety. There's the feeling of, of not really being at ease. But even though you might have something coming in next week, next Wednesday, you have this thing that is due in this moment right now.

7:53What's wrong? Are you okay? Are you safe? Yeah, you are. So what can you do? The first thing you can do is bring yourself to this present moment and realize that, you know, that thing that's coming up is not right now. It's coming up next week. It's coming up next Wednesday. So what do we do? We bring ourself back to this present moment. One of the best ways to do that is breathing techniques. And, you know, I've offered this many times. And one of the things that I do multiple times a day is just 60 breaths into the nose, out through the mouth. And when I breathe out through the mouth, it's a long exhale.

8:28I can breathe in out through a straw. Another thing that I do quite often as well is I'll go onto YouTube. I do this every morning before I meditate and I do this multiple times a day. I'll go onto YouTube and I'll find breathwork techniques. So sometimes I just go into YouTube and I type in five minute breathwork. Sometimes I do 10 minute breathwork, depending on how much time I have. And the breathwork techniques brings you back to the present moment. And then what you do is now that you're present, you've got yourself to a calm, centered state, feeling at least not as stressed, not as anxious, because when your emotions are high, your logic is low.

9:00Now that you are in the present moment and you're here, you make a list of all of the things that need to be done by that deadline. And so you make this, this giant list and looking at that list might be like, Oh my God, I don't know if I'm going to get all this done. But what you can do is you can look at them and you can prioritize them. This is number one. This is number two. This is number three. And then what you do to make yourself feel better is you take action on number one, because number two and number three don't matter that much right now. what matters is number one. So I noticed myself being stressful.

9:28I noticed that I was in stress and anxiety. I realized I can't do everything at once. I can't, you know, how do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time. So what's the first bite that I need to take to make myself feel better? So I noticed myself stressed and anxious. What am I stressing, anxious about? I'm stressing, anxious about this thing that's coming up next Wednesday. Okay. What can I do right now? I'll bring myself back to this present moment. I'll do some breathing techniques. I'll make a list of my to-do list that needs to be done for that. I will prioritize number one, number two, number three, the three most important things on that list.

9:53And then I take action on number one. Either way, the deadline will eventually be here. Hopefully we will all make it in our lives to next Wednesday and we'll still be alive by next Wednesday. So the deadline will eventually be here. And if we're being real, you will probably get it all done. And so you could get it all done with this feeling of stress and anxiety and worry and just white knuckling your way through the next week or, you know, and with that, just so you know, when you're, when you're stressed and you're white knuckling and it's stress, anxiety and pushing yourself and worry and all of that, you have massive amounts of cortisol and adrenaline that's fallen, that's flowing through your body and that's putting your body at unnecessary stress.

10:36It's all running through your veins. And then what happens? You're so stressed out at work, you get home from work and that stress carries in. And maybe because of it, you're a little bit more short fuse with your children and you snap at your children and you're like, Oh my God, I just snapped at my children. I just yelled at them because of the fact that I'm so stressed out at work. Or maybe you snap at your spouse because of all this stuff that's happening at work. And now you realize that your feeling of stress and anxiety is not just you. It's now people around you it's affecting. Now you're not just affecting yourself, but you're affecting the people that you love the most as well.

11:09Or you can see it and you can say, okay, I see the reason why I'm stressed. It's because I'm seeing all of the stuff that I have to do. And I'm just a human. I can only do one thing at a time. I realize that. And so if I, you know, if I'm eating an entire elephant, I can only eat it one bite at a time. What's the first thing that I can do? I get myself into a calm state. And then what I do is I take the first action. I take the first bite. Wouldn't you agree that you probably take better action when you're calm, centered, and focused versus stressed, worried, pissed off, like a kid throwing a temper tantrum mentally, you know, like you're mentally throwing a temper tantrum.

11:48Oh my God, I've got so many things I've got to do. All right, chill out. Just come back to the present moment. Chill out just a little bit because all too often we're freaking out about these things. You're going to get it done. I know you will. You know you will. So that's a really good example of the circumstance is the same. You still have to do the report or whatever it is that you have coming up next week, but you could do it from a stressed out suffering state, or you can get yourself into a beautiful state and get some quality work done. Another example, let's say, you know, you woke up this morning and you're having a great day and you're on time.

12:19You leave your house on time to go to work. And out of nowhere, it's a route that you take every single morning. You hit a ton of traffic and you look at your Google Maps and you're like, oh my God, I'm going to be 20 minutes late. And so I've done this many times because I hate being late. And you're sitting there just so pissed off. I left on time. What's going on? Why can't these people drive correctly? You know, maybe somebody got into an accident and you're like, oh my gosh, nobody knows how to drive in this city. And you know, what are people going to think about me when I show up late? We have this important meeting.

12:51I'm going to look like an idiot walking into the meeting late. And you're just, once again, just white knuckling your way through this traffic. Or once again, that would be a suffering state or in a beautiful state, you know, you can't move the traffic along. You can't make traffic go faster. And so you could be pissed off the entire way. or you could realize there's nothing I can do about it. I cannot change this traffic. You take a few deep breaths. Once again, you get yourself centered and calm and a little bit more focused. You bring yourself to the present moment and you're like, there's nothing I can do about this.

13:22I can't change this. What can I do? If I'm gonna be arriving at work, I can arrive out really pissed off because of how I was just suffering the entire way or I could arrive at work. I'm still gonna be 20 minutes late no matter what. I could arrive at work in a really good mood. I could put on my favorite song. I can get myself feeling good. I can think about all the things I have to be grateful for. Once again, it doesn't change the circumstance, which is the traffic. What changes is the way that you are viewing the circumstance of your life. And you could view it to put yourself into a state of suffering, or you could view it to put yourself into a beautiful state.

13:54You put in your favorite song and you say, you know what? I'm going to make the decision that I'm going to put myself into a beautiful state either way. So when you look at a beautiful state versus a suffering state. A beautiful state is expansive, feeling expansive and feeling at one with things. A suffering state is contraction. You know, when you feel more expansive, more is available to you, more energy is available to you, more creativity is available to you, more ideas are available to you. It's almost like you open yourself physically and mentally, emotionally, spiritually to the world around you and you're like, hey, I'm open.

14:27Let's see what can come in. You know, a beautiful state is being creative. Suffering state is being closed. A beautiful state is feeling empowered. A suffering state is feeling disempowered. A beautiful state is feeling like connected with everything. A suffering state is I'm all alone. A beautiful state is possibility and opportunities around us. A suffering state is problems, finding all my problems. A beautiful state is feeling trusting and knowing and having faith. A suffering state is feeling protective and closed off and And the world is working against me. A beautiful state is things feel more effortless and they tend to flow more.

15:07A suffering state is just struggling your way through things. A beautiful state is abundance and so much around you. Scarcity is a suffering state. Lack, not having what you want. A beautiful state is I get to do this. I choose to do this. I'm the creator of my life. A suffering state is I have to do this. I'm the victim of my circumstance. A beautiful state is curious and being open to the world. A suffering state is closed and not being open. And our brains will respond to whatever state you're in. It will. And more is available to you, more energy, more ideas, everything. There's more available to you when you're in a beautiful state.

15:51So then how do you get yourself back into a beautiful state when you notice you're in a state of suffering? Okay, so this is five simple steps. Very simple. Number one, become aware, become aware that you are in a state of suffering. And then what do you do? That's number one. Okay. I'm aware. I'm noticing that I'm feeling a certain way. Number two, take ownership. It's you who have put yourself in that state. The way that you're looking at your situation is what puts you in that state. And you're the one looking at it. And that's important because it puts you into a place of power. When you decide that you're no longer the victim of your circumstance, but you're the creator of your circumstance and you're the creator, it puts you into a place of power because if you put yourself in that state, then you can get yourself out of that state.

16:35But if you're like, oh, well, I didn't put myself in this state. Well, then you're helpless. There's nothing you can do about it. And so number two is to take ownership. I did this to myself and I got myself here. I can get myself out of it. Number three is to come back to the present moment because the mind is almost always in the past or it's always in the future, but it's very rarely here. The mind is in fear. The mind is in suffering. The mind is in worry. The mind is in anxiousness. The mind is in protection mode. The body is always in the present moment. Your mind is always somewhere else, right?

17:03Our minds are always somewhere else. Your body, it's here. It's in the present moment. Okay. So what do we need to do? We need to come back to the present moment. How do we also come back to the present moment? Breathing, breathwork on YouTube. It takes five minutes, a few minutes. You can do it. You know, if you're in traffic and you notice yourself getting really stressed and you're stopped, you can go onto YouTube right now and you can literally listen, you know, put in YouTube five minute breathing technique when you're a stoplight or whatever it might be. And you could do the breathing. Obviously don't close your eyes or do anything that's going to make you pass out, but you can do the breathing to calm your body and nervous system down.

17:39And so come back to the present moment. Number four is ask yourself if you're driving or if you're out and you don't have a pen and paper, or if you do have a pen and paper, you can journal it. What can I do right now to make myself feel better? Examples could be like take action on that next deadline. Like we, I said in the first example I gave you, another example that I gave you was putting on your favorite song. What can I do right now to get myself into a better state? So that's number four. And number five is to focus on gratitude more. You have to learn just to be more grateful. There's so much, if you're listening to this podcast, you have so much to be grateful for.

18:12There's so much shit that's always happening in the world and so many terrible things that are always happening all over the place. You are probably okay right now. You're probably safe. So why don't you just try to come from a place of gratitude every morning? Think about what you're grateful for. Set your internal GPS to be more grateful for what you have in your life. So those are five steps to get yourself into a beautiful state. But really what it comes down to is notice that you're always in one of two states, become aware of it, take ownership of it, and then take the necessary actions to get yourself into the state that you want to be in.

18:44So that's what I got for you for today's episode. If you love this episode, please share it on your Instagram stories and tag me at Rob Dial Jr. R-O-B-D-I-A-L-J-R. And with that, I'm going to leave you the same way I leave you every single episode. Make it your mission to make somebody else's day better. I appreciate you and I hope that you have an amazing day.