Episode 5b

The podcast episode discusses the concept of "Robbing the Graveyard" as a metaphor for achieving one's ultimate purpose in life and leaving a legacy for future generations. It emphasizes the importance of managing life and staying focused despite challenges and stress. It also encourages taking action, focusing on solutions rather than problems, and maintaining excitement and enthusiasm. The episode highlights the power of the mind and the ability to control stress and overcome obstacles. It concludes with the importance of giving and being kind to others, as well as embracing a mindset of continuous growth and learning. Welcome to another episode of Rob the Graveyard. My name is Terry Bryan and if you've already listened to the first four episodes of this podcast, I would imagine that you're getting the gist of what it takes to Rob the Graveyard. If you haven't, please go back and listen to the first four episodes and you will have a full understanding of what it means when I talk about Robbing the Graveyard. Remember, Robbing the Graveyard is a journey. It's not an event. And inevitably, life gets in the way. So you have to manage it, manage your life and manage your process. In other words, you have to steer your ship is what I refer to this process as. Because you're a captain of your own ship. Think of it as a ship at sea. Think of your life as a ship at sea that faces turbulent waters, rising tides, even rogue waves, storms, all kinds of water turbulence as you navigate your way to your ultimate destiny. And remember, you don't have the option to turn back. Even though you may feel like turning back, you can't turn back. Why? Because you are trying to reach your ultimate purpose in life, your ultimate destination, your destiny. And at the end of that process, you have to provide for those left behind, your progeny, all of the gifts and benefits that came from your efforts. Because what you want to do is that you want to create a path. You want to lead the way for your next generation. You want to provide for your children's children. That's part of what it means to Rob the Graveyard. Okay? You have to do that. So you have to stay focused and keep it moving regardless of what challenges you meet. And one of the first challenges that you are going to meet along the way is stress. And stress is a self-deterrent, meaning that it causes you to go off course and it deters you from what you're trying to get done. But there's one thing about stress that you should understand, is that you alone cause the stress. See, no one can stress you out. People always say, well, this person stressed me out, or this situation stressed me out. No, you stress you out, because stress comes from internal. Stress is in the mind, is the pressure on the soul sometimes that we put on ourselves. That's where stress comes from. There are triggers to stress, triggers that make you feel the way you do. But at the end of the day, you control stress. You control, in other words, how you think, how you feel about a situation, no matter what the situation is. See, because you've got to understand, it's not what happens to you, but how you respond to it. Not how you react. See, react is more spontaneous, right? Whereas a response usually comes from thought and consideration. How best should I respond to this situation? What should I do? Not just a reaction, which may be without thought. So you have to learn how to harness those proper thoughts, how to get the right feeling, how to respond properly to the challenges you meet. Because stress, my friends, is one of the main things that will tear you down. And I can tell you a whole lot of things about stress, because I've dealt with stress a lot myself. We all have. One of the things that I do is to try to focus on something different than I like to do, like play chess. Because what I found about chess is that when I sit down to play chess, the only thing I'm focused on is how do I prevent my challenger or my opponent from trapping my king in the game. That's it. And I stay focused on that, and I can't think about anything else while I'm playing chess. And that relieves some of the pressure. It gets your mind to relax a little bit, because stress builds up continuously as you focus on the negativity more and more. So if you can take a break from the negativity, it will help you a lot. I also exercise a lot. Exercising helps to reduce stress. It helps to relax you, helps to get your mind off of things sometimes. Or you can do anything that you find that works for you to get your mind off of the problem. Because what happens to us oftentimes is that we focus so much on the problem as opposed to focusing on the solution. When you face the turbulent waters, don't think about the turbulent waters. Think about how do I get around it? How do I get through it? How do I overcome it? That's how you deal with your problems. That's how you deal with your challenges. Right? You have to sit down and figure out, how do I solve the problem? Focus on solutions rather than the problem. And when you find yourself focusing on the solution as opposed to the problem, you make progress. You see, the key thing here is to take action. Not sit down and wallow in the negativity. Taking action is very important. Because once you start taking action, then your focus now is on the action. What do you need to do to accomplish the goal to get around the problem? And then that also relieves stress. So taking action is very important. Don't just sit down and think about things forever. How bad it is, or how bad it could be, or how bad it will be, and all that kind of stuff. Because one of the things you should also think about is the fact that most of the things that we think about, most of the bad outcomes and the worries and the fears that we conjure up in our mind, never happen anyway. Most of the things that we fear never come to pass. So if you start from the premise that most of these bad thoughts never want to come about anyway, then you can automatically feel better. So let's move on to dealing with things in a better way and that will help you to overcome the challenges and move towards your ultimate purpose in life. Because that's what you're trying to do. Another thing that you should do to help you on your journey is just to be kind to people. Give. Giving is very important. See some people get selfish and they don't want to help anyone. But that's not the way to life. When you give, it comes back to you many times over, in multiple amounts of what you initially give. That's a law of nature. I don't know why. I don't have the answer for it. But it appears to me that that's what happens. And you can find several people that tell you that ultimately they get greater rewards compared to what they give. So you should give. Some people refer to it as karma. Some people refer to it as tithing in church. You give tithes to church and then you get back plentiful in return. So that's a very simple concept. I'm not going to spend a whole lot of time on that. But you should just give. Just be kind and giving to other human beings and also be forgiving. That's part of giving. Giving grace. Those are the type of things that can help you along your journey. Because what we're talking about here right now is your journey. The things that you want to encompass. The things that you want to be challenged with. And how do you respond? The key word. Not react. Another thing you should do is to stay excited. The one of the things I used to say when I was even younger. I've heard this so many times. I guess I started saying it because I start behaving in this manner. Because a lot of people were saying the same thing. And you know we learn from what other people do. From the time we were kids. We learn from that. I'm going to tell you a story about learning from other people in a second. But the key thing is this. Oftentimes I would say. Well you know what? I don't want to get too excited about something. Because of the fear of being let down. Of being disappointed. Sounds familiar? We don't want to get too excited. Because we don't want to be disappointed. And we don't want to feel bad. Well guess what? That is the recipe for failure. Because one of the things we talked about earlier. In one of the previous episodes. Is visualization. Now visualization is a higher level of vision. See we need to have initially vision. And visualization takes your vision to another level. Because with visualization what you do is not only see an outcome. Have a vision of what you want. But you have to attach some measure of excitement. Some emotion to it. Because you got you have to see and envision not only the goal. But how you feel when you get it. How your body feels. What it looks like. You want to get a nice home and that's a big goal for you. Think about how it looks. The color. The shape. The size. The rooms. The smell. The neighborhood. Feel it. Not just see it. But feel it. And that is excitement. And that's what you need to help to bring more success into your life. Now yes of course you're going to have disappointments. And ultimately you may end up with many more disappointments than successes. But at the end of the day. If you achieve the major things in life that you want. And your ultimate purpose in life. Then guess what? It will be well worth it. So if you have 10 great things you're trying to do over the course of the next 20-30 years. And you only accomplished three of them. Guess what? By staying excited. Staying focused. And attaching some emotion to your excitement. And some emotion to your goals and your visions. Guess what? It will help you to get more. You will probably not get the three successes you've had. You may want to get one or none. But by the mere fact that you are staying excited. Not worrying about being disappointed. You will get a higher percentage of the things you're trying to accomplish. You're never going to get all. Nobody gets all. But those who stay excited. Stay focused. And are not afraid of failure. End up with more. That's how it goes. You see because here's the thing about life. See great thing about life is that. We determine what victory is. See when you play a game. You don't get to decide what victory is. Somebody sets the parameters and the rules for you. Well you need to get so many outs in baseball. You have so much time in football. You have to get so many yards. You have to score more than the opponent. All of that stuff. But in the game of life. You get to choose what victory is. You are your own referee. You play the whole game pretty much by yourself. Right? And you know what? The funny thing about it. If you even think about the games that we play in life. You will recognize that victory is usually earned by overcoming your opponent by just a little bit. You ever watch a race in the Olympics? You ever watch a race even in regular college athletics? Those races are won by just 0.1 of a second in most cases. The difference between the winners and the losers are a snap of a finger. Boom! Just like that. And the ones who inevitably win, especially the higher and more competitive levels are the ones who put in the greater effort and did not give up. And didn't worry about. I don't want to put in too much work because I don't. I'm afraid I may lose the race. You know you watch a football game. Right? And at the end of the game. The game is a one-point game or it's tied and somebody decides to go for a two-point conversion. And the difference between winning or losing between those players at the goal line with the last players of the game comes down to who is stronger, who worked harder, who has more endurance to get make that one last push. That is how close it is in life. The biggest victories are usually won among competitive people by very very slim margins. And that is where it is in life. So and those people who win have to put in extraordinary effort. And they can't worry about the possibility of failure. We all know it won't happen. But they can't sit down and say to themselves, I don't want to do an extra set of run throughs or extra set of weights or extra repping rates or whatever it takes because I'm a fearful, because I'm fearful that I may not win. You can't think like that. So don't think like that in life. Gotta keep moving. And you gotta use everything you have in you to get to your destination. You see what I've noticed in life is that children can be a great guidance to us. See because what we're looking for, what we need to get to, where we ultimately want to get to is like childlike enthusiasm. You see kids are, when they're in their younger years, they haven't faced as many disappointments. So they have a lot of enthusiasm. They don't have that much fear. They will try all kinds of things. They don't mind failing. Right? That's how we learn to walk. We get up and we fall back down. We get up and we fall back down. And we keep falling and trying and falling and trying until we learn to walk. What if a kid says, you know what? I fall down 10 or 15 times. You know what? I'm done with this. I'm not gonna try to walk anymore. They'll be doomed to crawling on their stomach like an animal for the rest of their lives. And I'm sure, I'm sure you don't want that and they wouldn't want that. So that's, that's a metaphor for life. We have to get up and go again. Have that childlike enthusiasm because that's what it takes to stay excited and never give up. Keep it pumping. Don't allow your failures or your so-called fears, failures, your challenges to keep you down. What if Thomas Edison had decided to give up? What if he had decided to give up? He failed 10,000 times to create the and to invent the incandescent light bulb. But what did he say when people were laughing at him, laughing at him and telling him, you know what? Human beings are, we were designed to use torches with fire and innovate to see our way through, right? What if he had said, you know what? I quit. What if he had listened to the naysayers and the critics? Because critics never do anything. All they do is sit back and point fingers, never get anything done, okay? They're talkers. Thomas Edison was a doer. He said, I didn't fail 10,000 times. What I did was I found 10,000 ways that did not work. And that is what separated him from the ones who were saying it couldn't be done. And that is the approach you're going to take no matter how many times you fail. If you have a specific goal, you're going to keep it moving. You're going to keep trying and trying and trying again and never give up. Stay excited and never give up. Because I guarantee you, Thomas Edison probably felt like death won over. But he didn't lay down and die. He kept fighting. You see, this reminds me of what I call the Phoenix Maneuver. You see, the Phoenix is a mythic bird that rose from the ashes, right? Rose up basically from the dead. That's how we're going to be when we are dead tired and we feel like death won over. We got to rise again, right? We're going to keep it moving. No matter how bad it gets. Les Brown used to say, if you can look up, you can get up. So get up. Put, you know, stop feeling sorry for yourself. I know, I'm not trying to sound harsh, but I'm just telling you because I've been through that myself. I used to feel sorry for myself with some of the challenges and problems that I faced. But I had to get up. So let's get up. Because guess what? If you lay there, you're never going anywhere. And ain't nobody going to feel sorry for you. And guess what else? Ain't nobody coming to save you. Because they're too busy trying to save themselves. So you're going to make that graveyard shift. Now we call this book, Rob the Graveyard. So when you make that shift, when you make that move, right? When you make the finish, when you complete the finish maneuver, rising from the ashes, you're going to make the graveyard shift. That means you want to shift your thinking. Because that's really the source of the problem for most of us. Our thinking. You're going to make what I call a graveyard shift. If you want to create a watershed in the history of your family tree, meaning if you want to change the way how things have been going, change the course of things, you want to make that shift. You want to make that graveyard shift. Rise from the dead mentally. Because that's what it is. It's mental death. You're going to rise from that and move mentally. Because remember, all you have is really all you need. And what is it you have? See God give us the one control over the one thing that's most important. See, we don't have control over a lot of things. We actually have little control even of our bodies. We can move our hands, our feet and think and move our eyes and stuff like that, right? We can move body parts, but we can't really control what's happening inside our bodies, right? We can do our best to try to make it better, but sometimes your hands move by themselves. Your feet, you get sharp feelings in your body that cause your body to move. Things happen that you can't control. But guess what? The one thing in life that the Almighty gave us total control of is our mind. And that's all you need. That's what you have for certain. You see, some people born with advantages. Some people are taller, some people are stronger, some people are bigger, some people are faster, some people have great abilities, intellectual and athletic. But you know what they don't have on us? A better mind. We're all born with the same mind, right? You know, in the United States we say, all men are created equal. That's what they say in this country. That's in the Constitution, right? But some people say, well you know what? That was created by some people for some people. We know that's true. We live in a country full of racism and prejudice, right? So some people are born with advantages. Some people are born with color advantages in addition to other genetic advantages. But you know what? The one thing that we are equal on across the borders of our minds, we have control of our minds and we can determine our destiny based on how we think. We can overcome whatever challenges or prejudices or shortcomings that are in and around us through our minds. Our minds are the one thing that we have control of that is on equal footing with everybody else. That's the one thing we control. The most important thing, okay? And that's all you need. All you have is all you need and it's right in your head. So the motto is, do the best right now with what you have right now. Do the best right now with what you have right now. Don't make excuses. Don't tell me I don't have any money. Don't tell me things are hard. Don't tell me nobody will help me. Don't tell me they're being prejudiced against me. Start where you are with your eye on the future but focus on right now. What can I do right now? What's the best I can do right now to put one foot in front of the other to move towards my destination? And guess what? When you move, all kinds of unforeseen help will show up to help you. If you move earnestly, honestly, you will get the help you need, right? So what am I saying? I'm saying you need a metamorphosis. A metamorphosis of thinking. A big change, right? A process of change where you start thinking different and as a result acting different, right? That's what you need to move towards your goal. Put aside the past things. Put aside the problems. Put aside the so-called failures. Learn from all the experiences that you've had and make that metamorphosis change from like a worm into a butterfly, right? That's a metamorphosis. Change your thinking so you can move to a different level, a different height. That's what you need but it starts with something. It starts with personal assessment. You have to assess yourself, see where you are, what you've done, what has happened, the result of it and therefore determine what you need to improve and how you need to improve and nine times out of ten it's all interior. It's all inside, inside your mind, right? If you think about it. So in order to start solving that problem, again, I'm telling you things that you don't need anybody's help for, right? You don't need anybody coming to do this for you to change your mindset. You can do that yourself, right? Make the assessment of yourself. Be honest and honest with yourself and a good and easy way to start changing your thought process, changing your mind is through good self-talk, through affirmations. What you call affirmations. See because most of our thoughts are negative. We're born in a negative world. We live in a negative world and everything around us is usually negative. So we become negative. So you have that negative self-talk, that negative inner conversation that tells you, you know what? Everything I touch turns to crap. Tells you that when things are going great, you know, you say to yourself, you know what? Man, things are going so good, sooner or later, things gonna get, go bad. Something bad gonna happen because I ain't used to this, this goodness. See that's that's negative conversation, right? I'm not gonna try hard because I don't, I'm afraid to fail. I don't want to feel disappointed when I fail. All of that is negative conversation, right? I'm not gonna go down the street here. I'm not gonna try to become a college graduate because nobody in my, nobody in my family ever became a college graduate. I don't want to become a professional athlete because I, you know what? The coach told me I'm not good enough, right? I'm not gonna go to college because I'm afraid I may go to college and spend two or three years or I may fail and not make it to graduation. All of that is negative self-talk, right? To help solve that issue, start with affirmations. Affirmation is good self-talk. Telling yourself good, positive things to help build your self-esteem so you can ultimately be the person you want to be. Now me, I'm just like everybody else, right? I had a friend years ago that said something to me one day. We were just talking. She said, you know, I am the master of my life and when she said that, it struck me. I said, you know what? She's telling the truth. We are the masters of our own life. Wow! So you know what? I ended up creating a full affirmation for myself to help me through some very turbulent times. See, I had a very, very bad experience physically, health-wise, that almost took me down, okay? So and it happened right around the time that I was having a bad financial crash too, okay? So I was really going through it. So I ended up creating an affirmation and it goes like this. I create this for myself and for myself so you can do the same for yourself. My affirmation goes like this. I am strong. I am powerful. I am healthy. I feel good. I am the master of my life, my body and my thoughts and with my thoughts, I control my destiny and I achieve all my goals. That's how I started out with my affirmation and I made a few changes here and there. I added one significant thing to my affirmation as well. One phrase I added. Now it goes like this. I am strong. I am powerful. I am healthy. I am wealthy. I feel good. I am the master of my life, my body and my thoughts and with my thoughts, I control my destiny and I achieve all my goals. That's my affirmation. I say it every day. Helps me when I'm feeling sick, I'm feeling down, I'm feeling, I wouldn't say unmotivated because I'm always motivated quite frankly because I want to achieve my goals. I want to rob the graveyard in the worst way, you know what I'm saying? So I really don't get unmotivated but I do get down, right? And I do feel bad sometimes physically. Ever since I got sick back in 2006, I haven't been the same since then physically, okay? So I say those affirmations when I'm feeling bad, physically especially. Get my mind back right. See because we got a porch life with all guns blazing. See when I say all guns blazing, I mean all guns blazing because a lot of times right now you're going through life with all your guns blazing too but the problem is your guns are pointed at you. Your guns are pointed at yourself. You want to turn those guns around and point them at your enemy. And who's your enemy? Not other people. Your enemy are your negative thoughts and your negative feelings, right? Put those aside. Point the guns at them. Blow them on the water. Blow them away so you can replace them with good thoughts, good feelings, and good belief systems. That's what it's all about. It's about feeling good about yourself and using that confidence in yourself to benefit you. That's what it is all about. You know what? I'll tell you a story to show you how powerful your mind can be. How powerful your thoughts can be. Your inner feelings can make a great difference in your life. I mentioned a little bit earlier that I was sick a few years back. Back in 2006, I got really sick. I was getting some palpitations in my stomach and they continued for weeks and weeks and I started to get worried. I started to think that I had a heart problem. I didn't go to a doctor. I didn't have anybody who understood anything about medicine tell me that I was having a heart problem but I felt because of these palpitations that I was having which ultimately turned out to be nothing. Turned out to be really based on some medicine, actually based on some vitamins I was taking. But at the time I thought it was a heart issue and I couldn't understand how I could have a heart issue. I was healthy. I was working out almost every day. There was no sign of heart problems in my family, nobody I knew about. So I kept thinking to myself how in God's name could a guy like me who worked all his life, ran track, did all these things to keep myself in great shape but yet I was having a heart issue and I convinced myself that I had a heart problem. So I started to feel the symptoms of a heart problem. I started to get sick, a lot of chest pains, all kind of symptoms that come from that type of illness and it got to the point where my blood pressure rose so high and I was getting so many chest pains that while I was in Vegas I really started to feel it more physically than I really even want to get into right now. They had to call the ambulance for me while I was on the street in Vegas and they took me to the emergency room. They checked me out, didn't see any heart issues. My blood pressure was sky-high because I was so scared and freaked out anyway. Took me to the specialist and they checked and didn't find anything of any significance. So they told me to follow up with my doctor when I got back. I went to a doctor, he sent me to a heart specialist, they checked me out, put me on a 24-hour monitor, this stress test, all the things you do to check for a person with a heart problem. Question me, ask me how I eat, I don't smoke, I mean how I exercise when I exercise, all these things turned out nothing. A few years later, ran into a similar anxiety issue which was developed from that sickness. Had to go to the hospital again, this was my third time having to basically go to the emergency room because of this issue. Checked me again, nothing. Doctor said, well you know what Terry, I don't know what's wrong with you but it is not your heart. Ultimately I figured out it wasn't my heart, it was my head. I made myself sick by thinking I was sick when I wasn't sick because of some vitamins I was taking that was giving me palpitations. It took me about 15 years to figure out that. When I started back to get those same vitamins, palpitations started back up. But here's the point, I made myself sick and many times we make ourselves sick. So here's the question, if we can make ourselves sick, why can't we make ourselves well? If you can think so negatively that you can give your whole body a reaction as though you were sick, why can't you reverse that? Why can't you bring good things into your life? Why can't you change your body? Why can't you re-engineer your body chemistry based on your thoughts? I'm thoroughly convinced about that now because I'm living experience of that. I totally made myself sick and guess what, I'm still suffering today but I'm a lot better. Affirmations, thinking, mindset, all those things have reversed a lot of the issues I've had. Okay, I'm probably 80% better than I was many years ago. I don't have enough time to tell you all the symptoms and problems and repercussions I was facing physically as a result of my thoughts. But I can tell you they're 80 to 90% better than they were 10 years ago and that's how long it took me to recover. So here's a lesson for you, it is a lot easier to hurt yourself by negative thinking than it is to bring yourself back to positive thinking. I can tell you that because our lifestyle, our world is so negative, negativity has a bigger drag on us than positivity because positivity is kind of slim. So do yourself a favor and start thinking positively more sooner than later. And with that I'm going to end episode 5 of Rob the Graveyard and remember this, to Rob the Graveyard is to maximize your potential by using your God-given talent, your natural talent, to achieve your ultimate purpose in life so you will take your talent with you to the grave. I'll see you in episode 6.