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Are you ready to take the steps necessary to thrive? Join us every episode as host Adam Gragg discusses what is holding us back and how to move forward with purpose, along the way developing healthy relationships and navigating life transitions while overcoming fear, stress and anxiety. Adam is a family therapist, mental health professional and life coach helping individuals and organizations find the transformational clarity that unleashes hope. Live the life you want, the legacy you decide.
Ep117_Negative
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Adam Gragg: [00:00:00] So if you would have told me eight years ago that I would struggle with being negative. I would have told you I was, that you were crazy. Cause I looked at myself as being a positive person and I was in a lot of cases, but I was reminded I've struggled with negativity big time over the last five years at different moments.
And you know, it's much easier to [00:01:00] be negative than it is to be positive. Although it's really not much easier, but I was sitting out at the pool at my apartment complex. And nobody else was out there. I was talking to some friends in California, my buddy Ben and his wife. And then I looked around at this pool and I thought no one else, nobody's here.
I'm all alone. And I didn't feel FOMO. I didn't feel insecure, but I thought a year or two earlier, I would have been very insecure to be alone on a Friday night. But what has shifted in me is what I'm going to talk to you about today. So with the shift that I've made is, Learning how to overpower the negative thoughts, the negativity in our lives.
It's such a common struggle and it does so much damage. So this is, bro, stop being so negative. And I'm gonna give you three ways that you can stop being so negative. This is the Decide Your Legacy podcast, episode 117. And I'm your host, Adam Gragg. I'm a coach. I am a content creator. I love [00:02:00] to speak and work with teams.
And most of all, I love living out my passion of helping people find clarity and face their biggest fears to live there and leave their legacy. Okay. I talk about stuff I struggle with myself. Do you not have it all figured out? I am a fellow traveler. I'm in the business of life transformation. So I want to share something uncomfortable that I did recently.
And it really wasn't that uncomfortable, but it kind of was uncomfortable. So I was at the moment that I realized that I was sitting outside by myself on a Friday night, hanging out for three hours or whatever. There was moments where I started to feel insecure, like I should be doing something with other people.
And then I had to fight that back. So it was kind of like, My brain was kicking in saying, you really should be insecure here. That's a much more natural response, but I wasn't letting myself. So it was kind of back and forth because I was okay when I was talking to my friends in California, [00:03:00] but I wasn't okay when I realized that where are all the people and why are they having so much fun without me?
But I ended up having a really good night. 10k the next morning. I got to bed much earlier than I would have. Had I gone and done something with friends. So I want you to get uncomfortable as well. This is the podcast where my listeners get uncomfortable. So I want you to start with an action. What, who is somebody that you know in your life that can be super negative and has that kind of pattern in their life?
Because unfortunately people don't often change that. They may have seasons in their life when they're negative because they're going through grief or depression or whatever. And that happens. I get it. But there are also people who have consistently had a pattern of being negative in your workplace or at home.
I want you to think about that person right now. And then I also want you to recognize and reflect upon how does that negativity impact you? How does it impact the way you want to interact with them? What is really driving that negativity in their life? Because this can give you some insight into yourself as you reflect on them.
So you can speak it into your phone. Whoever that person is, I won't tell them. I won't show them that you wrote it down. [00:04:00] Think about them. I want you to reflect on them and yourself as we go through this content. Bro, stop being so negative. Listener, stop being so negative. Come on. So it is much, much easier to be negative.
I don't know why, but no, I do know why. The reason is because it keeps us safe. It's a natural way to live because it works. It works for us. It works for you. to be filled with fear and to recognize how we can get hurt, especially if we'd have trauma. We've had trauma in our lives and we don't ever want to get hurt again.
Of course, maybe not in that way because it was so incredibly painful. So we don't want to go anywhere near that thing that hurt us. It's helped us. These are all things that have helped us to survive, but it's a dysfunctional way of living on a day to day basis. I don't want you to have to live that way.
I mean, that's why I've created, that's why I like creating content like this. That's why I've created Shatterproof Yourself. So, it's important to figure out that we can do some things to overcome this, and that's what we're going to talk to, and I'm going to talk to you about today. So, when you, if you want to be depressed, and if you want to be anxious, I'll give you a really [00:05:00] simple, straightforward formula.
If you want to be depressed, listen to your fears and do what they say. Those intrusive, intruding thoughts, just believe them. If they're telling you that somebody's betraying you, or there's some kind of danger ahead, or you're going to get rejected or hurt, listen to it and don't do The opposite. Don't listen to your intuition, then you're going to be anxious and depressed.
Yeah, guaranteed. Avoid doing hard things in your life. Isolate and don't be around good people. Only hang out with dysfunctional, fearful, toxic people. Make social comparisons on a frequent basis. Through social media, through the people you recognize, In public, at church, anywhere you go, just compare yourself to them, compare your life to theirs.
That'll make you depressed and anxious. Frequently make assumptions and believe those assumptions about other people. That is guaranteed to make you depressed and anxious. If you want to be happy, If you want to have joy in your life, do the opposite. You know, don't take counsel from your fears. Don't [00:06:00] listen to those strong emotions unless they're based on factual evidence, evidentiary information.
Face your problems, don't avoid them. Compare yourself to yourself and your progress within your own life and not anything external with other people. Measure your success backwards, how far you have come, not the gap between where you are today and where you want to be. And then don't make assumptions.
And if you do recognize that they're an assumption and get clarity. First thing you can do to overcome your negativity, bro, stop being so negative. You can eat healthy with your mind. All right. So we talk about mental health. We just came out of mental health awareness month. Mental health is a big.
Common topic these days. I like to think about a mind eating food and it's going to be eating a bunch of garbage, that it's going to regurgitate, or it's going to make them feel sick, it's going to make your mind sick, or you can eat healthy content. You can eat anything. Be around healthy people. You can read good books, you know, and there's, there are books that are not good and there's content you can consume that's not good.
It's going to [00:07:00] be fear inducing. It's going to be content that's trashy. That's not true. That's leading you down the wrong path. But you know, Intuitively, and we're going to talk about that some, there's a big difference between the content you consume that's going to enhance your life and inspire you and content that's going to detract and pull you in the wrong direction.
I can look at videos on YouTube, some are going to be very inspiring and helpful, and they're going to be content that inspires me to do things that are courageous. And there's also a lot of fearful, mind wasting content that I can consume as well. When I listen to Inside the NBA on a commentary for nine minutes on Luka Doncic, I mean, that can be inspiring.
You know, it can also be a time waster if I listen to videos on that NBA game over and over again for an hour, which I can definitely do. It can be content that I can testify in my mind, but I'm doing it, I'm overdoing it. So, the lies that you believe, [00:08:00] whatever you consume consistently is going to impact your focus.
Eat healthy with your mind. And what does that look like? It means consuming books. It means being around people. It means talking to people, consuming videos, looking at articles, research, growing. It means learning new skills, activating your intellectual capacity through stimulating conversation. being curious and having good positive interactions with other people.
Recently I wrapped up a legacy group which lasted for 90 days and it was so inspiring to see how other people in that group I recognized what they were facing in their life and we got to focus on truth and even the group got to speak truth into everyone else's lives based on what they heard them share during that 90 days as they got to know them.
And some of the people in the group I recognized were Certain qualities that came out and everybody identified one big fear in their life. Something they believed about themselves that was [00:09:00] not serving them well. And the group got to give them feedback on that fear. And then I came up with one truthful comment based on that fear.
So for some people in the group, and I'm just going to share, okay, here's, here's like, and I may have shared these before and I'll do it again, but it was really so cool to see one of the guys, I really felt like it resonated with courage giver. And just really inspiring person who's given a lot of courage to others.
Opportunity creator, courage giver, hope builder, fear facer, heart connector, and burden lifter. And, and there were others as well, but I just thought it'd be really inspiring to hear that we can be around people who are going to lift us up. You know, it's amazing to me. And I read some statistics on reading recently, 65 percent of Americans have not read a book in the past year.
80 percent of U. S. families did not buy or read a book last year. 42 percent of college graduates never read another book after college. That's really, that one's hard to believe, really, I mean, I almost don't want to believe that statistic, but [00:10:00] it's from a reliable source. So 70 percent of Americans have not been in a bookstore in the past five years.
That one's kind of interesting. I think. Maybe it's because there aren't as many bookstores, but we actually have a Barnes Noble opening up about a mile from my, or mile and a half, mile from my place, not far. I'm real excited about that. So, so what actions can you take to eat healthy with your mind? Well, first of all, track what you are eating with your mind.
All right, track it. So if you think you're only consuming 15 minutes of news a day, I mean track it. I like using a stopwatch or just looking at the time on my watch and measuring how much time am I on YouTube right now? How much time am I watching TV right now? And what am I watching? Whatever you measure is going to grow.
So if you want to get healthier, well, you can track your calories of what you physically eat. You can track the time you use, you've put into consuming books and talking to people. And watching television, you can track it. So [00:11:00] hit the link. If you find this content helpful, I mean, this is all tying into a course that I just launched on Friday of last week.
I'm so excited. This is something I've been working on for over a year. It's called shatterproof yourself, seven steps to a giant leap in your mental health, and there's a light version. It's a 20 minute version. I'm covering seven things that I've seen over 25 years, working with people that can help people today.
to improve their mental health. So step one relates to clarifying your vision. This step four is shifting your perspective. I'm teaching you how to do that in the mini video, the light video, and also the frill version. You're getting worksheets, a workbook, a lot more content in the full version. So, and these are keys for you to find inspiration.
You're getting information, inspiration, and taking action in your life. So you want to sign up for Shatterproof Yourself, Seven Small Steps to a Giant Leap in Your Mental Health. So the second action to take to stop being so stinking negative is to step back from your thinking and think about your [00:12:00] thinking.
All right, Think about your thinking. Analyze it. Recognize it. Replace it. Get away from it. We have two basic broad categories of thoughts that enter into our mind, all right? So, if we're able to recognize in a moment that we're having a thought that's a very fearful thought, And we can identify it, and even identify it's not actually serving us, then we can learn to say, this isn't something that I have to focus on today.
I don't have to listen to this thing. It's telling me one thing, but it's not true. It's telling me to be afraid, but it's just trying to keep me safe. It's analyzing the world and giving me some information on the world, but it's not true. You recognize it and you name it. There's times during the day when I say, That's just my fear talking.
That's just anxiety talking. I'll say that in my head. I'll say that verbally in my car if no one's in there. I may say it while I'm cooking, even if somebody is listening. Possibly. And you start to recognize that this stuff is not coming from you. Where is it coming from? Well, it's your ego. It's your psyche.[00:13:00]
But it's not you. It's a lie. You are believing lies. Much of what you think is a lie, it's not actually true. And so I'm getting ready and I'm excited about this. I haven't actually done it, but you can check out the YouTube channel in the next week, and there'll be a video. It's going to be on invasive thoughts versus intuitive thoughts.
Invasive thoughts versus intuitive thoughts. An invasive thought, definition of that is it tends to intrude on a person's thoughts and privacy. It's like something breaking in, invading, an invader into your house. It's breaking in. You know, it's It's eating your food while you're asleep. It's stealing your gold bars if you have any.
It's stealing your dog. I mean, because the dog's not barking, it's asleep. I mean, it's invading. And maybe you wake up and then they steal your TV and they steal all the joy out of your life. You recognize it, but you're glad you didn't wake up while they were actually invading your home, and it was after you had woken up and you realized they were gone, and you called the police, but they invaded your [00:14:00] home.
I mean, it was a violation. That's how I want you to think about this type of thinking that's violating the joy in your life. It served you well at some point, but it doesn't serve you now. An intuitive thought, intuition, think of it as second nature. Using or based on what feels to be true. Instinct. We have these terms for truth.
Like, I just had a gut feeling about that guy. You know, we can feel truth in our gut. There's actually a brain and gut connection. There really is. It's a, it's a connection that's been documented in research. We want gut health, you know, think about it. So there's actually terms we use, like we feel feelings in our neck, you know, relationally.
You know, he's a pain in the neck. You know, we have the ability to get in touch with our body and notice things that are true. Things that feel true about situations. Often my first thought about a situation is the most accurate. The first gut reaction to somebody, the first gut reaction to some experience that I've had.
I think it's a [00:15:00] great way to go out and date. If you're single or it's a great way to hire is you try to listen to your gut reaction to people. I've seen people that didn't really align on paper, but my gut reaction was very positive and they ended up being, ended up being right. And I've had situations where on paper, I've ended up hiring people.
My gut reaction really wasn't that great, but I talked myself into it. I had to think about it again and again. And I talked myself into it because I wanted it. I wanted it to work so bad. So, A good idea, and I want to list some things here, some differences between invasive and intuitive thoughts. Kind of cool, kind of cool.
So an invasive thought is often going to be very loud while an intuitive thought is going to be quiet. An invasive thought is going to repeat itself again and again and cause this ruminating type pattern while an intuitive thought may pop up once and maybe twice but then it'll go away. Interesting, huh?
So an invasive thought is [00:16:00] going to have a real sense of fear to it, an urgency to it, the tyranny of the urgent. It may not be identified as fear in the moment, but it is a fearful type thought. While an intuitive thought is going to have a sense of peace to it, a sense of tranquility to it. Intuitive thoughts usually come out of nowhere, while Invasive thoughts, all right, like an invasive, a intruding thought, an intruding thought is going to come, usually be, be triggered by something external, like a, a situation that we're in, that's reminding us of some kind of fearful type situation that we've been in, in the past, potentially, so an intruding thought is is going to keep your heart closed off towards people while an invasive, while an intuitive thought is going to keep us open and going to have a sense of hope to it.
So it's this hope versus fear cycle. And I want to go ahead and link in the show notes to a video that I put together on the hope versus [00:17:00] fear cycle. I'd love for you to check that out if you haven't already checked that out before. So some ways to actually work on this, some good actions you can take.
Just start seeing the good things in your life. You know, recently I was grateful for my attorneys at times in my life when they've helped me to make decisions that I wouldn't have made because they had wisdom in that situation. I've been grateful for my accountant because he's helped me to see problems that I wouldn't have seen.
And I don't always like to spend the money on those types of professionals, but then I can look and be grateful for the amount of information and insight they've given me. I noticed last night, and I do this sometimes, but I was on a walk and I noticed the sky and the moon and the clouds and I was just For a moment, just grateful for the situation that I'm in, in just the amazing beauty of the world.
And you just take a moment to recognize how powerful the world is. And we're this [00:18:00] one person on this huge, in amongst billions and billions of people, on this speck of dust, you know, floating through the, through the universe. And we're 93 million or so miles away from the sun, yet we can still feel its warmth and see its light.
And we're, what, 200, 000 ish miles away from the moon, and we can see the sunlight reflecting off of the moon and even see craters on the moon with the naked eye. And I guess, although I didn't see it, I saw pictures of it, we could have seen the northern lights even in Wichita, as far south as that is. And, uh, yeah.
It's amazing even just thinking about that. I think there's so much power to reflect on. It gives and puts things into perspective. So that's the second action is to think about your thinking. Very inspiring when you think about it. So, and then action number three is to seek discomfort. All right. New phrase here.
Seek discomfort. I've thought about making t shirts that say that. I'm sure somebody else has. Here are [00:19:00] some scary actions that you can take. I've made a list of 25 scary actions. I'm going to publish this and you can check it out on my website. It's going to be a blog article. It's coming out. So I got a couple things that I'm kind of giving you a prequel or actually, um, giving you some information on in advance.
And so, all right, I'm making a list of, on a scale of 1 is like not very scary, 10 is really scary. So I was talking to my team about this on Friday. What are some things that like are a 1? And so trying a new food was something one person said. Walking outside at night, something that somebody shared.
Taking out the trash at night. All right, it makes, you know, it makes sense. Something else that would be like a five could be getting piano lessons or learning ukulele lessons, maybe. And it depends on the person. Something that could be a 10 would be maybe handling a tarantula. All right. Or, you know, handling snakes, if you're really scared of that, getting some art out into the public.
So you write an article, you send it to your friends, you get some [00:20:00] music out that you produced, you send it to your friends, you make some kind of professional video or you create a podcast, you expose yourself, sending it out to people. They're just some ideas. So asking for help for somebody can be a scary action that you take.
Going out to dinner alone or a coffee shop alone can be a scary action you can take. Going to a gas station or restaurant and asking to use the restroom, even if you're not actually going to use or pump gas or purchase something, or just going and using the restaurant can be a scary action you can take.
So you do some things to seek discomfort. Have some things. So I remembered this situation. I was talking to my friend Ben and his wife on Friday night when I was sitting out at the pool with all my friends. Actually, I was sitting out at the pool. I had no friends at the pool, so I was, I was joking with them.
I kind of showed, I showed them a video. We were doing FaceTime and I did reverse screen and showed them the pool. This beautiful pool with no one out there. But it was the opening night of the River Fest, which is a big festival in my area. And there's, I guess, 100,00, 200,000 people that go to the River Fest.
It's a [00:21:00] weekly festival. Really cool thing. I ran in the 10K on Saturday that went with the River Fest. So my buddy was reminding me that when I was 17, that was 1990, that over At the halftime of the Super Bowl, we, I decided we were going to go out to this place called Phoenix Field, which is, was, which was an old airport in the neighborhood area that I grew up in, in Fair Oaks, California.
And it was being converted, I believe at that time, into a housing development, or maybe it was after that, but there was some dirt out there and I thought I'd take the new ish Suburban that my parents had, that my dad drove, which I was driving and borrowing, had four wheel drive out in the mud and go four by four ing over the break, okay?
So, and, and I did. And so we loaded this up with my friends and it was pretty heavy, you know, and it was a, it was like a Suburban, a Chevy Suburban, man. It was red and gray. It was a cool car. I have a picture of it. It was, you know, we had four wheel drive on that thing. Sucker. And so I get out and I'm [00:22:00] going out in the mud and then, and then I slow down and it's starting to spin.
They're like, don't slow down, you know, do not slow down. And I was pretty insecure in this thing. And sure enough, we got stuck, you know, and it was halftime, you know, it was Joe Montana won the Superbowl MVP. The 49ers won that game. It was Joe Montana, John Elway. And man, it's, it's crazy, but. And I was really stressed out about the whole situation.
I was seeking some discomfort by doing a new thing, but I gave in to the discomfort and did something really dumb by sinking into the mud. We had to go, and I'm like, Ben, dude, how do we get it out? We went to, they were guys and they're like, we want beer. And somehow some of my friends went back home to their parents house and got like some beer from their parents to give these people to pull this car out of the, out of the mud. So I got it out of the mud and Ben assured me we went to the carwash and I brought it home and I didn't tell my parents about it until they found out because of all the mud underneath.
And I got in some trouble for that thing. It [00:23:00] was not the smartest thing to do. But that was some bad discomfort. I mean, I did, it wasn't a bad thing to do. But it, anyway, that's beside the point. Seek discomfort and notice how you feel. Actions after you do something that's kind of scary in your life. Even if on a scale of one to 10, it's a, it's a, it's a one or a two.
You do it. You try a new food and then you really feel better afterwards because you did something to stretch yourself. You do something different. with exercise, you mix it up, you know, instead of running, you go swimming or you do yoga or you lift weights or you call up a friend that you don't know very well and you ask him to go get some coffee with you and it's something you wouldn't normally actually do or you try something new with your business advertising in a different type of way or whatever.
Encouraging somebody in a way that you normally wouldn't. Just saying something positive because you're not used to doing that kind of thing. Have some scary actions or some uncomfortable seeking discomfort that you're going to do every [00:24:00] day, every week, every year, and make a list. And do it. And I'm going to get you the article on 25 scary actions.
Check them out. And I mean, I shared seven with them, seven of them with you, and I really encourage you to check that stuff out. So let's go ahead and review all these different things. So number one, action number one, bro, dude, stop being so negative. Some things you can actually do. Number one, eat healthy with your mind.
Think about your mind. What diet are you giving your mind? Are you giving it positive content? Most people don't read. It's unfortunate. I want you to read. I want you to find ways to read and find positive content. I got great books on my website, 25 books that I love and I'd encourage you to read. Check that out.
It'd be really cool to see and hear from you and to tell me how you put positive content and put that comment in the show notes of this episode on YouTube. I'd love to see what you have to tell me about how you consume positive content. Number two is think about your thinking, recognize it, and then realize that a lot of it's [00:25:00] lies and figure out what's an intrusive thought and what's an intuitive thought.
How can you focus on the truth and not the fear? Do some things, some actions you can take are to really be grateful, to find the good things. Just look up at the sky from time to time. And the last one is to seek discomfort. I want to talk to you and challenge you to do some scary things consistently and knowing that on the other side is going to be hope, is going to be confidence because you don't build confidence before you do the scary thing.
You build confidence after having done it and realize that you can do it even if you don't do it well. Even if it doesn't turn out the way you wanted it to, you can still pat yourself on the back because you actually did it. So remember the rule. So 20 percent of transformational change is insight information.
You get information, you got information today listening to the Decide Your Legacy podcast. 80 percent is action. What action are you going to take based on what you learned in this podcast? An okay plan that you act on [00:26:00] is a hundred times better than a perfect, great, excellent plan that you do nothing with.
People will not judge you by your intentions. They will always judge you by your actions. If you say you should've done it or you would've done it in the past or you're gonna do it, that doesn't mean anything. What means something is how you behave now, what you go ahead and do based on the content that you glean today.
So what resonates with you the most today? By the end of the day, act. Take an emotional risk. By the end of the day today, by 8pm, by the time you Crawl into bed with that good book that you're reading on your Kindle. If you want it to stick, not only act, it'll stick even more when you talk about a concept that you learned today with somebody else.
Hey, I learned about eating with my mind. My mind consumes food and I wanted to talk to you about it. Don't make it silly. Just make it you. Do it naturally. So I'm going to go ahead and sign off and I'm so excited for you to check out Shatterpeak Yourself. Hey, by the way, it is live. You can [00:27:00] purchase it. So cool.
But also remember you can tell your friends about it and you can also check out the link to Shatterpeak Yourself Lite and download the worksheet. With that content, four pages long, it's great stuff. It'll inspire you to want to check out Shatterproof Yourself Complete, the full version as well. So I'll sign off the way that I always do.
Make it your mission to live the life now 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. So before you go, I have something very special for you. I have a seven minute coaching session and so I'm here.
with Lloyd Lutes, who is our operations guy for Decide Your Legacy. And so we're going to talk about this topic of bro, why are you so negative?
Stop being so negative. Okay. So we're going to talk about negativity. And you know, this causes a lot of problems in people's lives. I mean, when you have fear, you don't think clearly. You don't let [00:28:00] go, you don't really even, your immune system doesn't work well when you have a lot of negativity as well. It causes problems relationally, it keeps people from actually opening up, and it just takes the joy from life.
Yet our brains are really good at this because it keeps us safe and then it's kept us, we've probably been hurt in the past, so why not do it negatively now because, you know, we could get hurt and let's stop. And so what I'm going to Do is do a little coaching session with him. He doesn't have anything really prepared.
I'm just going to ask you and give you an idea of what this experience is actually like. So what is something that, I mean, I'm going to assume that you struggle with this. I don't know for sure, but what is something that you may want? Like, is there something you want to figure it out when it comes to negativity you'd like to figure out?
Lloyd Lutes: I know a big one around our household is based on comparisons or just sometimes it's just easy to kind of get stuck in like my own head and just kind of think be like depressed or disconnected at times, not necessarily have a. Comparison of what? Like other people's [00:29:00] lives?
Yeah, like a lot of what other people's lives are. Like um, I'll see people's accomplishments or things that they're able to achieve. Oh man. And it's like, I'm 32 and I'm not even close, so. Yeah.
Adam Gragg: Okay, that's a great one I think people can relate to. So what makes it, I'm going to say, how do I not do social comparison?
Hmm. Which. Or comparing other people's outsides or their success or whatever to me. Okay. That's cool. And that's a great one. I think some people can relate to that specific topic. And what is It makes it important to deal with that, and to work on that.
Lloyd Lutes: Yeah sometimes I almost feel like it's a feedback loop.
Like an analogy, if you hear like a high pitched whine in like a live concert or something, that's a frequency that's being fed back from the speaker into the mic and back again, and it quickly gets out of hand and out of control to the point where it's painful. Yeah. Um, and I think it, it, [00:30:00] Very much is an allegory for what that comparison can be.
Adam Gragg: The feedback loop that it causes you to do more of it? Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And then more of it? Absolutely. And then more of it? Yeah.
Lloyd Lutes: And then you're just so stuck in your head. Yeah. gets overwhelming and it, it, it very much leads to a negative mindset
Adam Gragg: fast. Okay. Yeah. And how, what's the history of that with you?
Is it going way back or is there like,
Lloyd Lutes: Sometimes it's, it's when I focus on something specific. So like I would love to be a professional musician. That was a thing that from probably middle school, I heard the Beatles play. And I was like, this is for me. I really want to make that happen. And so then I'll find just.
Maybe it's a person that's in a band. Their name is Adam. I'm like why, why am I not there? Or even professional sports. I was an athlete. I was performing at a high level and I kind of walked away from it, but it's like, if I stuck with it, why couldn't I be there right now?
Adam Gragg: [00:31:00] Okay. Where you would be like a professional musician if you stuck with it.
Right. Possibly. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So, and then what has, what would be the core issue here for you when it comes to this comparison? If you look, you peel, think of like an onion. What's like at the very center of it all
Lloyd Lutes: for you? I think failure is really where it sits at. Okay. Where it's like, uh, yeah, yeah.
I'd say that probably a core issue where it's like, I've, I've tried and I may not have succeeded. And so I might've moved on somewhere else, even though I loved it. I'm always afraid that, you know, that failure might come out to fruition in my life. And I've gotten, you know, pushed back. And various ways of failure, whether it's not being a live performance musician, but I can or it might be like something at work or something with my family or handling something and it eats away, not directly at that issue, but at the comparison [00:32:00] issue and almost amplifies it.
Yeah. So it's like, man, I've just continued to fail, so why haven't I been able to proceed in this area in my life? And then you focus
Adam Gragg: more on the failure? Mm hmm.
Lloyd Lutes: Or like, I've been in a couple bands and I've either been kicked out or walked away from it. It's like, why? I've not, why has that been a case or why has that been a problem?
Adam Gragg: Okay.
Lloyd Lutes: So it's almost like I haven't been good enough. So did you go into the situations
Adam Gragg: thinking you're gonna fail then?
Lloyd Lutes: I don't think so. I try to be generally positive, but in going into it, I don't think of failure, but it might be like, it's just a matter of time. You know, after you look around after a couple of weeks or a month, you're familiar with people or something, then it's like something sets in and it's like, okay, now's about time for it to fail.
I feel like the, the, the timer has gone off. When is, when am I going to get kicked out? You
Adam Gragg: know? So what has helped you with all that at times? If any, I'm [00:33:00] sure there'd been times when you don't do that as much or are there? What's helped?
Lloyd Lutes: Yeah. Some stuff. It's just being consistent, you know, sticking and trying to be consistent.
So showing up every day and. You know, I could choose to, to not engage, I could choose not to play and just walk away from it entirely, but I keep putting myself out there, and I keep trying to build networks and relationships with more people I keep trying to just plug away at it, and even if it's something that fails like something like, I'd like to play more music and post more on social media and help people walk through ways that I think and how I prepare for stuff, I'd love to do that.
I haven't made a video. I haven't made a production like that yet. And I can say, yeah, that's a failure, but it's not something that I want to fester on and think of. I, I just show up and I just take something new every day.
Adam Gragg: And that kind of leads me to the next thing and then we'll wrap it up here.
So what would be, [00:34:00] what would be a step? In the right direction, that would be a win indicating that you are moving in the right direction. And I'm going back here. So what we're talking about here is social comparison, which I did talk about in this whole episode, how that can lead to depression. You compare.
So then if you, what's it, what's a win that, you know, like, ah, Lloyd is making progress here, but not a huge win, like, uh, you know, like you've totally overcome it. That'd be great. I mean, I can start with that. Like, what would it be like to just totally overcome this for you? Seriously.
Lloyd Lutes: Oh, yeah. I don't know.
See, that would be. No social
Adam Gragg: comparison. That would
Lloyd Lutes: be, that would be hard because it would probably have to be something really vindicating because every time I get on stage and I, you know, I'm playing twice this month for a church and every time I take the stage, even now, I've been doing it, For 15, 16 years and still every time I take the stage, who's a drummer out here that's really going to look through the haze and see that I'm really a false.
I'm really not able to do this.
Adam Gragg: It's that, that [00:35:00] sounds like the imposter kind of deal. It's very much. Yeah.
Lloyd Lutes: Imposter syndrome. And then they're going to judge you
Adam Gragg: and like laugh at you or something.
Lloyd Lutes: And then take my position or something. I could do better and then I'll take the position and then I get kicked out.
Adam Gragg: They're probably just glad you're there.
Lloyd Lutes: Generally, yeah. But they can't even find a drummer.
Adam Gragg: They're like, dude, we, we're just grateful for you being there. You're thinking they're going to kick you out. Oh yeah. See, that is going in bad. Yeah. I'm not trying to criticize you, man, but like what, so then what would like a small win be in that situation where you go and you play and you know, they want you there, but you're still like who, and you get into that kind of head deal.
So what would be the win? What would you do? An action you take?
Lloyd Lutes: I mean, the actions I take is really, really consider that, like, they're just happy that I'm here.
Adam Gragg: Yeah. You
Lloyd Lutes: know, sometimes I do ask in my insecurity, I ask, who else do you have playing for you? Cause like, I think I have six or seven different churches I play for now, including my main church.
Yeah. And it's like, well, who else is playing? [00:36:00] And most of the time No one. Like, we need
Adam Gragg: What if they tell you this guy's playing and he's, like, a really good drummer?
Lloyd Lutes: And then I definitely feel that insecurity. Yeah, see? What if you just didn't ask?
Adam Gragg: You just went and played?
Lloyd Lutes: Why do you need to know?
That's after that time frame. So I'll show up and I'll come prepared. You need to, why do you need to know what
Adam Gragg: they've already experienced though? Cause it's just a part of that. You're live. It's like when you have live music, don't you think most people are just like, I'm just glad to have live music.
Yeah. Like I, cause it's normally not, we don't get to have live music. Right. Yeah.
Lloyd Lutes: Or not having tracks play from this person. Totally.
Adam Gragg: So if you thought about that stuff, could that help you?
Lloyd Lutes: A lot of times it does, especially for like a particular church where they only have one drummer. And they said, you know, if, We give you a call when there is nobody, like, we really want you here.
And, you know, it's really cool that this the, the director is like, we, he's reaching out and actually I'm going to [00:37:00] have a family community time with him on Friday. Okay. So it's like really cool that he's still wanting to build the relationship and connect, even though that I'm not necessarily part of that church.
So there's different pieces. There's different pieces of evidence where people don't think that way, and they show that to me, but that I still easily can be, you know, a couple months in. That, that comparison switch flips for no reason, and that's when I start having that
Adam Gragg: problem. In that, but did that Okay.
So, so I hear a lot of things like it takes, you got to practice it. Yeah, absolutely. So then from this conversation here, since we're a little over seven minutes, what do you want to apply?
Lloyd Lutes: A big part was, you know, not probably not even asking that question. That's so good. I think the more that I've, I've been able to play in other situations, I think it's beneficial.
The more of not just the band I talked to, but the people that experienced the event [00:38:00] that I communicate and connect with them and allow that feedback to happen, to just help and not be critical and take a compliment as a compliment, but really take the compliment as a compliment.
Adam Gragg: That is so cool. That is so cool.
All right. You got it. So that's your, that's your action. And that's your seven minute coaching session. Check it out. Share it with your friends.