In this episode, we discuss why you MUST allow yourself to have bad days and how they will actually make you stronger in your life.
Just remember that having a bad day is better than having no day at all. So let yourself have a bad day and then move on.
It's like a muscle… you don't get bigger stronger muscles while lifting the weight or doing the workout. You are actually tearing and shredding your muscle fibers apart and ripping them up! you are damaging them! You grow and get stronger during the rest days after the workout is done! It's your body's way of defending itself to be ready for the next time you encounter that kind of challenge in your life! It's no different with the emotional stresses that come at you in your life!
You get stress and challenges to make you stronger so you can handle more! Everything that happens to you happens for a reason and a purpose and it serves you!
Also, these things are coming up in your life for a reason… (this is something I was just sharing with one of my good friends) it might be something you must heal from your past (family, friend, spouse, ex, or someone).
It might be something you need to master now so you can overcome something even bigger coming! In a good way!
Or… It might be something you must master so you can help others free themselves or your kids, or spouse, partner, family member, loved one!
In other words… It's meant to serve you and make you stronger like the muscle getting stronger to defend itself for future stresses like we just talked about.
Ok, now let's talk about how to move past the bad days, how to best use bad days, grow and get stronger from them!
Resources Mentioned In This Episode:
Resources (if any) will be here 🙂
Transcript: (Read Time: 41 Minutes)
Dr. Dan: What's up fellow RockStars? Dr. Dan here and in today's episode we're going to be talking about why you want to have a bad day.
I know that might sound pretty weird but trust me, if you hear this it will give you the tools to allow yourself to have a bad day, but it will make you stronger.
It will help you be happy, healthy, and wealthy. It will make you more successful in your life and who doesn't want any of those things, right?
If you don't I don't know why you're watching my YouTube video or I don't know why you're listening to us. You should be instead looking up really depressing stuff instead [laughs].
So you might want to click off or go somewhere else and watch a really depressing movie or something like that. If do want to be more successful in your life, be happy, healthy, and wealthy, then stick around and we are going to go into that.
Before we get rocking and before we get started, first I want to bring on Tony in the house. Tony are you there?
Tony: What's happening fellow RockStars? Yes Dan, I am here and ready to rock. Oh yeah!
Dr. Dan: [laughs] For those of you that are sitting there, “Man I don't why should I have a bad day?” [laughs] But the truth is, just remember this, having a bad day is better than having no day at all, right?
Because [laughs] what's the alternative if you don't have any days? [laughs] Exactly, so let yourself have a bad day and move on.
We're going to get into all that because as you can see in the picture right there, that's actually from one of my books- “45 Lessons to be a RockStar in Your Life and Make the World Your Stage.”
It's something that when I tell people this, they're like, “What, that doesn't make any sense? Why do I want to have a bad day? I don't want to have a bad day.”
Then they end up fighting themselves for having a bad day. Then they just make it worse. That bad day turns into a bad week. Then that turns into a bad month and that turns into a bad year.
To avoid having to have that long of a bad day or a bad year, you want to use these strategies that we're about to share with you right now.
Think of this like a muscle because a lot of times when I was a trainer and I had my own personal training business, I used to work with clients and they were like, “Oh I just want to work out all the time because I want to get stronger. I want to get bigger muscles.”
For the guys, they're like, “I want to get huge. I want to get huge.” They thought they had to be in the gym four or five hours a day, come in twice a day sometimes.
I'm just like, “Dude that is not when your muscle builds.” When you're working out, your muscle isn't actually building as you're working out.
What's happening is is that you're tearing it apart. You're tearing those fibers apart. When you're doing those heavy bicep curls or whatever it is that you're doing- bench pressing or squatting or leg pressing or doing tricep push downs or anything like that, tricep extensions- what you're doing is you're tearing apart the fibers.
They're ripping apart. You're actually causing damage to the muscle itself. Then what happens is that it repairs itself. When does that happen?
Not when you're working out, it happens while you're resting, while you're recovering. You might work out say on a Monday, while you don't actually start repairing until let's say Tuesday or Wednesday.
That's why you don't train that muscle every single day because you wouldn't give it time to repair itself and you can actually end up getting sick because you run your immune system down too much.
That's pretty much what we're talking about right here because the same thing happens with your emotional stress that you put on your body.
You're breaking yourself down and you've got to allow it time to repair. You can't force it repair any faster otherwise it's not going to repair itself, right Tony?
Tony: Absolutely, I couldn't agree more. It is so important that you treat your mind like a muscle, bang on.
Dr. Dan: Yeah, right because again because your body is defending itself. It's a defense mechanism in order for it to get stronger. Most people don't even realize that, right?
The same thing is happening emotionally. Emotional stresses are forcing your body to get stronger so you can handle even more stress which again, probably doesn't sound like something too appealing right?
Imagine if somebody came to you and said, “Hey would you like me to give you some stress so that way you can adapt to it and I give you even more stress?”
Does that sound appealing Tony?
Tony: Absolutely, 100 percent, I would love, nobody is going to say “Yes” to more stress, are they? Unless they understand the difference between distress and youstress, which youstress is like euphoria, isn't it?
Dr. Dan: Well let me ask you this?
Tony: Go on.
Dr. Dan: Well then let me ask you this Tony for you and everybody listening or everybody watching, “Would you want this kind of stress where I said, ‘look let me make it stressful for you've got to do something whether it's like lift these ten bricks or you need to do this emotional thing' or something like that? It's going to be a little stressful but we're going to give you a hundred bucks.”
I mean a hundred bucks is a hundred bucks, whatever. Maybe it takes you five minutes of work and it's pretty stressful or you have to come up with some kind of jingle or some kind of slogan or something like that.
But here's the deal though, if you accept this little bit of stress, well, now I'm going to go ahead and give you a billion dollars for a little bit more stress that now you can handle, right?
Tony: Yeah, sounds good to me. I'll take it.
Dr. Dan. Yeah.
Tony: Yeah OK.
Dr. Dan: [laughs]
Tony: [laughs] When do we start?
Dr. Dan: Exactly well that's the reason why because the stress, it challenges you to make you stronger so you can handle even more stress.
What I like to say is that it happens for a reason and a purpose and it serves you. Pretty much everything that happens in your life happens for a reason and a purpose and it serves you.
It's probably not going to be clear when it actually happens because you're in it. You're in that mud. You're pushing through and trying to get through it and it's not clear at that point because you're so stressed that you can't really see it.
That's why it's so important to be able to take a step back but again, these things are coming up in your life for a reason. This is actually something that I was just discussing with one of my good friends a couple days ago.
We were talking about this. This probably comes up at least once a week- whether it be one of my students, one of the coaching sessions that we do with people- it comes up so often.
I think I was talking this today on a walk with my son. I was telling him the same thing. The reason why is because it's something you need to overcome.
It's time for you to overcome it, master it, and get stronger from it because it could be something from your past. It could be something from some trauma or something as a child that might have occured, whether it be a family member, a close friend.
Maybe it wasn't even a friend. Maybe it was someone who wasn't very nice to you. Maybe, like I said, it could have been an ex. It could have been somebody from your past.
Maybe a teacher or something like that that made you feel a certain way and said things and stressed you out. Something that you hold onto today in your emotional junk drawer where you're letting it rule your life without even realizing it.
When other people come up to you- that's another one from my book right there, you've got to empty that emotional junk drawer- but what happens is you carry this stuff around with you.
That junk drawer just gets bigger and bigger. Without even realizing it, people that don't deserve to be treated or be lashed out at by you because you feel that they're doing that same thing that that other person did to you, but maybe they're not.
Maybe that wasn't their intent whatsoever. More than likely it wasn't but it felt very familiar and it felt the same to you because you have that emotional stress.
You haven't emptied out the junk drawer yet. You haven't done that spring cleaning right? [laughs] It should be something that you need to master and just overcome because it could be something you need to prepare yourself for the future because maybe something else is coming along that you won't be prepared for yet.
I don't mean that in a bad way. It could be a new business opportunity. It could be a new partnership. It could be a new relationship.
It could be something that your child or your spouse or somebody else a close family member or a friend, a loved one, that will need your help. Maybe you want to help other people out there like me and Tony are called upon.
To help others out there overcome and avoid the things that we had to go through, the challenges that we had to learn from and master and overcome because if we didn't go through those things ourself, we wouldn't be able to help our loved ones, our family members, our friends, you watching this right now.
We wouldn't be able to help anybody. We'd be stuck in it ourself, right Tony?
Tony: Yep, 100 percent. I once heard that when you have these challenges, it's because- whether you believe in God or the universe or the multi-verse or anything bigger than yourself- I heard that when you face these challenges, what's really happening is you're being given the opportunity to learn a lesson.
If you don't learn that lesson, you get the same lesson, but bigger. If you then don't pay attention to that thing and take action, it gets a bigger problem and a bigger problem.
For example, somebody who needs to look after their health may have a little niggle of something but they don't take their health and fitness very seriously.
They eat rubbish. Then they get a bigger warning sign. These are all little alarm bells going off. Then they don't take action and it gets bigger.
Then some people they never take action. They end up having the worst outcome that nobody really wants in the form of nasty things like cancer or death.
I believe you get these opportunites to learn and it keeps coming back until you pay attention.
Dr. Dan: I'm glad you brought that up Tony because that is definitely something I listen to constantly. I used to call it listening to the universe, but as we know, there's a multi-verse out there.
We're going to talk about the multi-verse instead. I'm always listening to the multi-verse. If you go back and listen to the first episode.
Me and my wife went over to the podcast where we talked about where the word RockStar came from for us. Why we use RockStar life.
It has nothing to do with being on stage and being like, “Oh I'm going to be the center of the stage.” Or back when it was it was trendy.
It was before it was trendy back in 2006. It came to me and at that time it wasn't really being thrown around like it is today. Like, “Oh you're a rock star,” or anything like that.
People weren't really out there saying that constantly. It was actually some people at events. I was travelling around. I was speaking.
I was listening to events. I was attending events. I was networking. I was doing all these things because of the way I carry myself, this energy, plus I had diamond watches on, earrings, and all this bling, all this cool clothing, and people would always just like, “Dude are you an entertainer? Are you a rock star? Are you a musician? Are you a DJ?”
I would get this anywhere from at the grocery store. I actually had one woman when I was in Sedona and I was speaking and this woman was talking the phone to somebody.
She started taking pictures of me. She was talking to somebody and saying, “Yeah, I think it is.” I was like, “Who does she think I am?”
Maybe she did know who I was. I don't know but still it was pretty funny. Sometimes I would get people coming up to me and being, “Dude are you Kid Rock?”
I'm like, “No, I'm not Kid Rock man.” I got that one a couple times too.
Tony: Kid Rock is great. Here in the UK we have two TV presenters. They're called Ant and Deck. Bascially they're the equivalent of Ryan Seacrest here in the UK.
They present everything. Everyone says I look like Deck but they don't leave it there. They say I look like a fat Deck. That's what I get so charming.
Dr. Dan: That's not very nice. So get to the part about listening to the mutli-verse. I'm always having my ear now to the ground or to the multi-verse and hearing these hints because if you don't listen to the multi-verse, it's going to kick you in the nuts pretty darn hard.
If you don't have nuts, it's going to kick you in the ovaries. I'm always listening to it. It kept coming up to me. People are just like, “Dude, I just love your energy. You're a rock star.”
I had probably 10 or 20 people in a weekend just tell me, “Dude, you're a rock star.” I'm like, “Rock star, rock star, that just keeps coming at me. What's up with that?”
I finally just said to somebody, “Yeah, I am a rock star. I'm a rock star in life. You're a rock star in life too.” They're like, “Yeah, you're right, I am.”
I'm like, “You're a miracle. You need to make the world your stage.” That's where it came from. Woah, that's it, I need to use that. I'm always looking for these clues, for the multi-verse talking to me and saying things and just using them in my life whether it be in my business, my branding, my relationships, raising my children, or whatever it is.
If something comes up more than once, I start listening to it. After the second time I start listening to it and say, “Hey is there something there? Should we do something with that?”
Do you have any stories like that?
Tony: Yeah, I kind of do. I've seen it where people have just said something. I know Tony Robbins says it happens with him and it's happened with me as well where I've just been talking about something and then something will come out.
I'll be like, “Where did that come from?” I do think that there's things out there but I think things come through you in an inspirational way.
The things are out there, the ideas are out there, and if you attune yourself to it, if you're looking for it, then you'll pick up on these things. They'll make all the difference.
A lot of people don't see what's really there. It's all there but our brain can't handle too much input, can it? The reticular activation system is a deletion tool that gets rid of all this.
If you're aware of all the feelings and the sounds and the sensations of every nerve ending of your body, you go crazy. Your brain deletes so much information.
You're only aware of between seven and ten things at any time. For example, you're probably not aware of the feeling of your feet in your socks until I mention it.
For example that's one thing that I used to talk about when we did hynosis. The whole reticular activation system is an amazing thing. There's stuff out there but people just aren't picking up on them until they're attune to it.
You've got to keep your ears open because those things are out there 100 percent.
Dr. Dan: I like what you just brought up there about being able to retain and hold onto so much. I used to say I can only hold onto so much in my mental rolodex. A lot of people don't know what rolodexes are anymore.
Our bracket of people listening probably know what a rolodex is but some people are like, “What is that?” That's basically an old school, what does Apple call theirs?
Tony: It's a contact list, isn't it?
Dr. Dan: Is it your contacts list?
Tony: Yeah.
Dr. Dan: I'm trying to find it on my screen.
Tony: Your phone book.
Dr. Dan: It's just the contacts app. That doesn't sound as good so we'll say our digital hard drive or our SSD drive, our cloud drive. You can only hold so much in your brain cloud.
Tony: My cloud is full. I think that applies in life.
Dr. Dan: I'm going to call it my e-cloud for brain cloud. What I used to do and I have a book shelf over there and I have a bunch of old journal folders you used to get in high school and school, the real ugly ones.
I used to write, I think they're the Meid ones. I used to write all these ideas as they came to me and flowed in. I would keep it next to me in my bed.
I would keep it in my car. I would write a bunch of notes. Sometimes I wouldn't even go back to them. Sometimes I'd just go through them once a month or every other month.
I'd just write down random ideas I had from businesses, products, just things that I learned, recently became aware of, just ideas that flowed to me because again, you'll forget them.
All of the time, I had people coming up to me and saying, “Hey, I remember we were talking and on stage, you were talking and you gave this one example about how McDonald's and this is more gourmet when it comes to your mindset.”
I'm like, “Really? I gave that example I don't even remember that one.” Because it comes through you and you lose it so if you don't write it down, you'll just forget it.
What I do personally, use whatever works for you, Ever Note is great because you can do it on the cloud as well but the best two I've found for collaboration at least if there's more than person that's going to write on it, would be either using Google Document because people in real time can share back and forth.
If it's only for you you can use Google Doc or I like to use Trello. I don't know if a lot of you know what Trello is. It always you to drag and drop.
It's a bunch of sticky notes that you can move up and down and rearrange and add notes to and links and images. You can also collaborate with a friend or partner or somebody else you want to collab with on your ideas or not.
If it's just for yourself because I have seperate boards where I have some that I share with my team and other people and my wife and then some that are just mine.
I just brain dump things in there. In the last 24 hours I've probably put ten new items in there- just random thoughts and ideas and topics and things that I either wanted to look up online.
I create a section called “Brain Dump” and I put it all in there. I drop it in there when it comes in. Then I have other sections that you can organize like “Work on Next.”
Tools and resources that I want to buy. You can create and organize your thoughts and ideas and that's the best way that I've found to do it.
Do you have any that you use Tony?
Tony: Yeah, I do really like Trello, like you said. I used to have little scraps of paper. I used to have loads of them. My biggest problem is letting go of ideas.
It's not storing them. It's letting go of them. That's my biggest issue. I go, “Oh I just thought of this thing. It's going to be amazing.” I've got so many domain names that I bought because I thought this is going to be an amazing idea.
I bought these domain names. The other day I went, “I have to renew those domain names.” Jemma goes, “You just renewed some domain names the other day.”
I was like, “Yeah there's some others that need…” It's like, “How many have you got?” She says, “You should literally only have two or three for the things that you do that bring you money.”
I'm like, “I've got a couple more. I'm just going to let some of them lapse.” I don't think we ever really wanted to watch this episode because you'll quiz me on how many domain names I've got.
I've held onto one- littletreat.co.uk- I've held onto that one for about seven years. I didn't do anything with it. I fact probably 11 years. I held onto it all that time but for me, Trello is amazing.
You can move stuff around and you can share it with people. We've got a Trello board for this show. I just think Trello's great but like you said, whatever fits for you really.
While we're talking about ideas and inspiration, it popped up in my head a second ago when you were talking about ideas and inspiration, things coming to you and writing them down.
There's a brillant book I listen to on Audible called “Big Magic- Creative Living Beyond Fear” by Elizabeth Gilbert. Maybe we'll link in the description to them because it's a great book.
If you haven't got Audible, you can get your first book for free if you use the link that's in the description. The story that stood out for me was that this author had this idea for a book.
It was very specific. It was about a woman who went off to Equador to find her boss' missing son. The boss wouldn't trust anyone else to go and find his son.
There's lots of specific details in this like there was a road being built through the jungle. There was lots of illegal stuff. She gave lots of specific details which is important to remember.
She kept putting off this book of this brillant idea that had come to her. Anyway she gets talking to this friend of hers that she's very close with but she doesn't see very often.
We've all got friends like that. When they meet up, they just pick up where they left off last time as though a day hasn't passed. She's talking with a friend and her friend's super excited because she's had this idea for a book about a woman who gets sent to this South American country to find something to do with her boss' son.
It was literally the exact same plot one or two little differences, little tiny details here and there. The whole thing she was saying was that the ideas are there floating looking for somewhere to land.
It will land on you. If you don't take action with that idea, it will then go off to someone else to be executed on which is why so often you'll have this genius idea for an app and then you do nothing with it.
Then somebody releases that app because you've had the idea and you've sat on it and not done anything. The idea's gone, “OK, you're not going to take action.” So it's gone off to somebody else and they've done it.
That's where you go, “Hey I had that idea for that app.” That's what happens. We were talking about writing ideas down. For me letting ideas go and saying, “I don't have time for you right now. I'll come back to you. If no one else have done you, then I'll do you but right now I'm focussing on this one thing right now.”
Bit of a detour there but we got back in the end.
Dr. Dan: I remember hearing a story and I looked it up a while back too about these monkeys on a Japanese island where they talked about the collective mind. Exactly what you just said where you basically with other's brain waves and minds.
The way the story goes is that there were these islands and they were seperated by 20 miles between the two islands of water. There's no way for one monkey to go to another island and another island and another island.
They're completely seperated. Apparently they had run out of food but there was potatoes there. Monkeys wouldn't eat dirty food so they wouldn't eat the potatoes because they were in the dirt and they were dirty so they wouldn't eat them.
One monkey had discovered that you could wash the potato. He would wash it in some water and they would eat the potato. All of the sudden, the whole island of monkeys would actually do the same thing.
They learned from each other but then all of the sudden, all the other islands where there were monkeys started doing the same thing. It wasn't like that monkey sent them an e-mail or a message in a bottle.
They didn't make a YouTube video. There's this whole story. I forgot exactly which island it was but I remember reading about it. I did a video about it a long time ago.
It might have been a webinar training that we did for our coaching students. I remember that story and it's the collective mind. That's another reason why with us doing meditation and yoga, the whole point of waking up early and doing yoga and meditation is so you can detach yourself from all the collective mind of all the chatter.
All the people that are in the stresses of their life getting ready going to work, stressed about getting their kids to school. All these different stresses out there of people having to work and just feeling stressed out.
Being able to remove yourself and just quiet the mind. That's the whole reason why we do the meditation and do the morning yoga ourselves. It's so we can help quiet that part of the mind.
Tony: By the way, I just Googled that thing and it's called “The Hundredth Monkey Effect.” Google that one folks. We were talking about your icloud your b-cloud being full.
Also in your brain computer you have RAM. If you've got too many apps open, that is when your computer starts running slow. When you've got 600 tabs open and you've got loads of apps running in the background, everything runs really slow.
That's the same with your mind. You need to close all those apps by meditating and just focussing on one thing. Then other thoughts come in and you've got to get rid of it.
I like to use the app Headspace for example. That's a great introduction to meditation for anyone who's not done it before. That's pretty much where I started with it all.
That teaches you that thoughts are like cars going past you in the road. You don't try to stop them, you just notice them. Then go, “Red car, oh OK.”
Then you get back to doing whatever you're doing. That's all- rebooting your computer is like meditation for me.
Dr. Dan: It's a nice brain wash because you need to wash that brain. You wash the rest of your body so why not wash your brain as well. My wife actually has some videos on YouTube.
She needs to start making some more because she's made a few of them in there. We can probably link to that as well. She has some meditations and some things you can do as well.
She's started some TikTok videos as well. Obviously the time limit on there is a little bit shorter so she can't do mediations on there. Definitely check out her YouTube video and you can watch some of the past videos that she had made.
Also on the RockStarlife.com site, we also have those videos over there as well and some other cool stuff. Bottom line, the struggle in having a bad day and all these stresses in your life are meant to serve you and make you stronger just like that muscle break down and the repairing itself during recovery.
Now that we've talked about all the stuff that happens and that it's meant to serve you, now we can talk about what you can do to overcome it and shorten that amount of time because the stronger you get, the faster you'll be able to get through it.
If you have a small stress of something happening that feels stressful to you now but might have taken you a day to overcome or two days to overcome or three days to overcome.
Heck there's been things in my life that took me a whole week to overcome. Now that I'm stronger, if that same thing happened to me today, I could overcome it in twenty minutes or maybe thirty minutes or maybe an hour at the most versus a whole week or a whole month.
Other things that can come up in your life even bigger, whether it be business or your personal life, if that was to happen to you when you're not ready, it could take a year for you to overcome that, but if you're stronger and you allow yourself to get stronger to go through these things, then you can overcome these even faster.
It's like these little steps. When you're exercising, you grab the five pound dumbbells and then the ten pound dumbbells, and you're doing those for curls.
Well you're not just going to turn around and grab the 200 pound dumbbells. Most gyms don't even carry those but the one I used to go to did.
They had 220 pound dumbbells. You're not going to grab those and try and lift them because if you could get it off the rack, it's going to pull you to the ground.
You're going to fricking fall over and probably pull your back and mess yourself up. You need to work up to that. When I was 140 pounds as a teenager or 150 pounds as a teenager, I couldn't go grab those 200 pound dumbbells.
When I was 255 pounds and I was just a hulk, I could actually pick up those dumbbells. I was able to use them versus not being able to pick them up at all.
I had built myself up through years and years of training and slowly increasing the weight until I was able to lift those kind of weights.
Now, one thing I like to relate this to is the stress being a bottle of soda. I don't drink a lot of soda. I don't know about you Tony, but I probably drink one soda a month, maybe twice a month sometimes.
I just forget I got it so I don't drink it as often. Here's the last one I had in my fridge. This is the Virgil's Orange Creme Soda which is actually really good.
Jones actually makes a version of this and there's other companies as well. If somebody was to throw me this bottle. If I said, “Hey son,” to my son Body “give me a soda.”
He takes it and he throws it in the air to me and I catch it, would it be smart for me to open it right away?
Tony: I'm going to go with no.
Dr. Dan: What about you guys in there? Hopefully you know and you're not mean and you're like “Yeah open it up. I want to see you do it on YouTube. I want a reaction video of you getting soda in your face.”
It's carbonated. There's all these bubbles inside. It's going to be built up with bubbles. That carbonation and that build up of bubbles that's going to explode is like that struggle inside of you.
If you try and open it up to fast, it's just going to explode everywhere to ruin your day. It would ruin this microphone and I'd be out $300 for this microphone.
It would mess up my keyboard. There's another $100 right there. If it landed on my Mac Book Pro, I'm out another $2000. It would just spread out.
Hopefully it wouldn't get my iMac too because then I'd be out even more money. I'd probably have a pretty shitty month if something like that happened.
What's the smart thing that you do? Instead of opening it up right away, you would set it down. Maybe put it back in the fridge for a half an hour or 15 minutes.
Let the bubbles settle down. Back in the day, we used to do this little tap thing. I don't know if that actually works. I've never even actually really tested that, but put it back in the fridge let it settle down a little bit before you open it.
That's the same thing you've got to do within yourself. If those bubbles are the stresses and you feeling that, you want to do something that's going to allow your own bubbles to settle down before you before you put yourself out in the world.
Before you have an important conversation with your spouse or your loved ones, your family, your kids, your friends or your boss at work about something serious.
Obviously if you have to go to work, you can't just avoid people. You can't be like, “I'm just not going to go into work today because I'm feeling stressed.”
You probably have to go into work but you can limit yourself to being in those situations where you just might explode on somebody. Sit down for half an hour.
Put on some earphones if you need to or go into that Headspace app right there or watch my wife's kundalini and meditation videos.
Just do some chants and relax. Do some deep breathing. Do the whim hoff breath which is another one as well which you can find on YouTube.
Do something that will help you get into that head space. Then when you get home or if you're already home, you can do something even deeper.
For me personally sometimes when I'm having a bad day I need to be away from everybody else and limit myself. I'll come into my office and I'll sit back on my recliner right behind me.
I'll just turn on a TV show. I'll just watch a show or I'll watch a movie. That usually will make me feel good whether it be action or comedy that I actually enjoy.
I'll just watch that. Maybe sometimes I need a half an hour or an hour maybe two hours, maybe three hours. I remove myself from the stressful situation and I allow myself to go in and just relax.
I let those bubbles go away. All of the sudden I'm good. Sometimes it might take me a whole day to get through that if I'm really exhausted.
I give myself as much time as I need because I don't want to just explode over everything and make it even worse because then you end up fighting yourself.
You're like, “Why am I not through this bad day yet? I'm getting so pissed off at myself. I'm smarter than this. I should have already mastered this by now.”
By beating yourself up like that, what are you doing? You're stressing yourself out even more and that's not helping you so emotionally can turn into physically.
You could literally make yourself sick because you're stressing yourself even more. You've got to let those bubbles settle. You can't just shake the bottle and say I'm going to say good thoughts to it.
I'm going to kiss it and caress it and meditate with it for 20 seconds and then try to open it. It's going to still explode. You can't speed it up. It takes how long it takes.
That's what you got to do for yourself as well. I get it. You have life. Life happens. You have other people around you. Maybe you have to feed your kids.
Maybe you need to order Uber Eats or Door Dash or something like that or go pick up food and bring it to the kids. Drop it off and then go upstairs and then be on your own for a minute.
Whenever you can, you need to be able to seperate yourself and just relax. Let those bubbles subside before you let that carbonation and all those bubbles explode over everything.
Tony: Yeah, 100 percent. Having a strategy to deal with those things is the answer. What Dan's saying now is, “Hey, think ahead about what you're going to do.”
What is that movie that you're going to watch or that TV show that makes you laugh. Wouldn't it be a great idea if you wrote out a little happiness buffet or a state change buffet.
Tony Robbins always tells about change your physiology, change your state and change your emotions that way. Think ahead, OK what stresses me out?
How am I going to combat that? Have that as a little piece of homework.
Dr. Dan: Something he says all the time is motion creates emotion. That's a great point. Get out there. You might already know what helps you.
For my wife, sometimes she needs to go on a run. Sometimes she just needs to go on a walk connect with nature. Go to a park or go to the beach, go to the mountains.
Get next to a water fountain that's really relaxing. Wherever you are, there's always something that you can find. Like I said, go to a movie, go to a quiet room, do something relaxing, listen to some good music, go sit in your car for ten minutes and relax, listen to something.
Again, just like the little image right there, fill yourself up. This helps you prevent future crap from happening as much and allowing you to get yourself out of it faster as well.
This is preventative. Let's say you catch a cold. You catch a cold then you can't do preventative stuff at that point because you caught the cold.
You can't do preventative stuff but you need to actually do the things like take some medicine or drink a lot of liquids, eat a lot of greens, relax, get rest.
If you've got a fever, put on a cold pack, get into a cold tub if you need to bring the fever down. Those are things that you do when you're in it.
The same thing with this. There's those emergency things that you need to do if the bubbles are festering and you need to bring those bubbles down.
That's those things where you go on a walk or those kind of things. Then there's the part that's preventative which is prevent yourself from getting sick in the first place which would be eating healthier, having less stress, rule your life.
Those things are going to prevent it from happening more often. It doesn't mean that you're going to be 100 percent bulletproof that you'll never get sick.
You could still get sick it just won't be as often and you'll be better prepared and you'll recover faster and better. The same thing goes here.
It could be things like exercising, working out, that is something that you should definitely do no matter what- going on more walks, heading to the beach- but filling yourself up really is doing things for you.
It could be- what are some of the things for you Tony? For me, I know working out is definitely one of them. Getting myself, treat yourself to something nice.
Sometimes there's something that I want to buy and I go online and buy it. If it's at a physical store. Sometimes I feel like getting some new work-out shorts or this shirt that I've been looking at or this new camera that I want to use, this new technology that I want or this other app.
Maybe it's like hey I just want to go get a Starbucks. I don't drink Starbucks but maybe I just want to go get a chai tea or something like that.
We have this place called Pressed Juicery which is almond ice cream basically. It's a soft serve made from almonds and it's really good. Head over there and grab one of those and eat that and treat yourself.
Do that once or twice a week. Do something nice for yourself by filling yourself up so that way these things will happen less often.
Tony: Definitely, people put themselves last, but you can't pour from an empty cup. You've got to fill yourself up. Having that happiness buffet, little smorgasboard of things where you can go, “Oh I'm going to do that.”
Think ahead of time. For me those things are watching comedy on YouTube, watching creative inspirational stuff on YouTube. I don't have to go out of my way to do these things.
YouTube it's there. It's on my phone. It's on my screen. We've spoken before Dan that spending time on YouTube to fill up your creative cup is time well spent so you shouldn't feel bad for that.
For me, playing on VR. I've got Innoculus Quest and I love to play Population One. Look at the smile that just- I can't talk about it without smiling.
I love playing it, such an amazing game. Jemma doesn't get it. She thinks it's stupid but I just love it. Flying around shooting people.
People from all over the world. It's amazing. We've had YouTube stuff. I love reading some funny stuff. Like you say, treats don't have to be sugary, nasty treats.
My mom has a gadget called Yonanas. Don't know if it's available worldwide or it's just a UK thing, probably worldwide. Basically you freeze some bananas and then you get this gadget.
You let the bananas defrost slightly. Bung it in there and it comes out like soft serve ice cream. You can mix in other fruits and it comes out as that flavor.
You chuck in some chocolate nibs, cocoa nibs and it comes out like chocolate ice cream. There's no dairy so it's a nice little treat.
Dr. Dan: I like to call those kaka nibs. I put those on my shakes twice a day. I always call those kaka nibs. Obviously playing VR is great for you. Like you said, Jemma doesn't really get it.
For some people it's get a manicure. Some people it's get a massage. For some people it's working out. I love doing that.
Tony: Working out does emotionally reset you, doesn't it? It's super important even if you're not doing it for the weight and for the fitness. Mentally, emotionally, it's been proven to reset you.
Hit the reset button. It reboots your emotions. Sorry I interrupted.
Dr. Dan: Again, you can only drive so far on an empty tank of gas. That's where that fill yourself up, that little cartoon thing that you just popped up from my book, was fill yourself up.
It's important to do that because this will help you preventative in the future. It will help limit that and keep you satiated and keep you full and make your life better.
I like to use the example, let's say you need to drive to a destination that's 200 miles away from you, I don't know what that is for you guys, because you guys don't use miles.
Tony: Yeah, we use miles in England. We're not supposed to but we do.
Dr. Dan: Nice, well if you have to drive 200 miles to a destination and you only have a couple of gallons of gas in your car. You can usually get about 80 or 90 miles on the amount of gas you have left.
Would it be smart for you to get into your car and try to drive that 200 miles? Would it make sense?
Tony: I would say no. It's just not going to work, is it?
Dr. Dan: Will positive thinking help?
Tony: Nope, nope. Pretty sure that you can be positive that your car will crap out.
Dr. Dan: So if your car can't make it and you can't squeeze it out of your car like that then how can you expect to do it for yourself? You have to fill yourself up.
You have to do those things. It reminds me of another example I like to use. When you're on an airplane, and they always tell you in case of an emergency and the air pressure drops in the cabin, what do they tell you you should do when a mask is going to drop off from above you?
What do they tell you to do? They always tell you to place the mask on yourself first before doing it for a small child or any elderly people or anybody else that needs your assistance.
Why do you think that is? Because if you pass out, you can't help anybody else. How can you help anybody else if you're trying to help them put their mask on and they can't get it on fast enough and you pass out?
Now they don't have a mask. You don't have a mask. Great you guys are both passed out. You're good to nobody. Same thing goes for you.
Whenever I'm talking to a mother or a father that are like, “My kids are depending on me and I can't have be in this bad mood. I can't do this and I can't do that. They're always needing me so I got to be there for them.”
I'm like, “How can you be there for them if you're not giving yourself any time for yourself? You need to exercise.” “Oh I don't have time because I have kids.”
Well great, how can you fully be there for your children if you can't make the time to force yourself to even give yourself 20 minutes to workout?
Make it fun. Make it for them as well. If it's at a gym, bring them to the kids' club. Let them be in there. If they're older, then you need to have a real talk with your kids.
Like, “Look, you're old enough. I'm going to workout.” Grab some dumbbells, build a home gym. That's actually why I built a home gym. I've got this big, massive home gym now because I personally didn't like driving 15, 20 minutes to the gym one way and back because it felt like 40 minutes of wasted time.
There's half of the gym right there. The other half has an elliptical trainer, reverse hyper extension, calf machine, treadmill. Do you have the other shot of it too?
Tony: Oh yeah, here it is.
Dr. Dan: The other side? So here you go. That's the other side right there. I've got a nice, full home gym and that's not even including the stuff we do outside.
We've got battle ropes out in the front that I pull out of the garage. I have this sled that you can push that's got wheels. It's called The Tank. It's a magnetic resistance which is pretty awesome.
It has three different settings. Professional football teams and Crossfit Games use it as well. Anyways, bottom line is you got to make the time for you to do that for yourself.
Be as consistent as you can. Today because I'm getting done pretty late I'm probably not going to work out because it's getting close to dinner time. You know what, tomorrow I'm going to do it.
I'm not going to stress myself out because I didn't work out yesterday either because I got busy with some other things as well. I'm going to pick it up tomorrow.
But I'm not going to sit there and beat myself up and be like, “Oh it's been three days since I worked out. It's better I just don't do it.” Or stress myself out, it's like, “No I just didn't make the time. I had other things that popped up but I'm going to work out next.”
Heck, I could go downstairs and just do one set of something and be like, “I did it. OK I can feel good about it.” You've got to fill yourself up.
You've got to do things for yourself otherwise you can't be there fully for somebody else or to arrive at your challenges fully ready to overcome them and master them because so much more is going to come your way.
I mean that in a good way. You want to be prepared. You want to be ready to be able to handle the kind of stresses that can make you a heck of a lot more money.
It can lead to better things in your life both financially, physically, emotionally, relationship. If you're not ready for those things, if you're not fully prepared for them and in top shape for them, mentally and physically, then they won't appear for you, or you just won't be ready to take those on.
Tony: That's a really, really good point. They do say that if you're not ready for it you won't get it and that works both ways. If you're not ready for success and fame, if you're not going to be able to handle it, then it won't come to you.
Also, if you can't handle that stress and those challenges, then you'll only get what you can handle. You can handle it because you've got 100 percent success rate of survival so far. Pretty sure you're going to manage whatever comes at you 100 percent.
Also, the whole bad day thing, it's just a day. It's the meaning that you give it if it's a bad day or a good day. One person's really upset that it's raining because it ruined their picnic but then the farmer whose crops need watering, he's happy.
It's just a day. It's just rain. It's all about the meaning that you choose to append or give to it.
Dr. Dan: Yeah and I say a bad day, but let's be honest, the better you get at it, it's not going to be a whole day but if it is, it is. Yesterday I did have a pretty bad day and it was a whole day, but I was exhausted, I was tired, but I gave myself time, I relaxed.
I told my family, I said, “Look, I'm feeling pretty stressed. I'm pretty exhaused. I didn't sleep as much so just don't bring anything big to me today. Tomorrow we can talk about other things.”
Tomorrow I'll be better prepared but avoid those stresses, avoid those things the best you can. Sometimes I get it emergencies happen and things pop up and you can't control everything but just do the best you can.
The stronger and the better you get at this, like I said, things that would have taken me a whole month to get over or a whole week to get over, I can overcome in 20 minutes.
Me saying have a bad day can just be 20 minutes, 30 minutes, an hour but the whole key is to not fight it, to not just force yourself through it.
It's like you shouldn't exercise when you're sick. When you're sick, you don't go to the gym and have a full workout because that will get you sicker, so don't do that.
Relax, rest, recover, get stronger, and get ready for the next one. We gave everybody some great things that they can actually do on their own right now.
Sit down and go back and relisten to what we talked about. Start making that menu for yourself of things that you can do to number one, fill yourself up, so that's preventative, and then the second part would be things that you can do when you're in it.
When that bottle gets shaken up and you need to open it. What can you do to help those bubbles subside and it dissipate? What are some of the things whether it be go on a walk, go on a run, work out, watch a show, go for a walk on the beach, put your feet in the sand- earthing, put your feet in the grass, do a cold plunge.
A cold plunge is definitely good no matter if you're having a bad day, a bad week, because it will instantly snap you out of it. I remember I was really irritated, I got in the cold plunge three days ago with the wife.
She had said something. It wasn't something bad. She had said something that I would normally be like, “Why did you say that? Don't say that.”
She was beating herself up saying something. What it was was I'm only going to go in for one minute this time or a minute and a half since she's been in there last.
She's like, “I'm only going to go in a minute and a half.” I usually egg her on. I tell her, “You can do three minutes or you can do five minutes or you can do ten minutes today.”
She was already prepared for that. As soon as we get in, she said, “I'm only going to do a minute and a half.” Instead of me being able to respond to her, I just started laughing uncontrollably.
I couldn't help it. I was just laughing. I couldn't even talk it was just so funny. I was just like, “Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God.”
Literally I was laughing my butt off. It's so funny. That is a great way to change your state. If you don't have a cold plunge, most people don't, take a cold shower.
Put it on freezing cold and step into it. If you have a freezing cold pool, jump into that. If you have a freezing cold lake near you, jump into that or the ocean, jump into that.
It will instantly take you out of that negative state and change it all for you.
Tony: Absolutely. I was going to suggest if you haven't got a cold plunge like you then a cold shower. That will change your state, change everything.
Fill yourself up and have those strategies to get out of that situation. I've had some challenging times with our two year old. Jemma and I have had some back and forth about what we're going to do.
For me, it's how I react. I blew up. Yesterday or the day before I just blew up. I lost it because I was tired and all various things. Then I just lost it.
We had a chat. She's like, “T. you can't do that. I didn't even know who you were. I've never seen you being like that.” I was like, “Yep, that's not OK.”
For one, teaching a kid, she has this little table and it has a cup of milk on it. She wanted ice cream first thing in the morning. I'm like, “No, you can't have ice cream.”
So she lost it and she flipped this table with milk and it went everywhere. I lost it. Teaching kids by losing it is not going to work and I lost it. That's not going to work.
That's not good. Secondly, I can't even remember what the second thing was. I'm just thinking back. It's just not teaching her good things is it?
I need to just think OK so next time that happens, what am I going to do to change my state and not react that way. Obviously it's not going to stop her doing that thing but I'm not reinforcing that bad behavior by teaching her bad behaviors.
Dr. Dan: It's basically two toddlers fighting when you're doing that. You become the toddler. Somebody needs to be the master. Somebody needs to be the adult in the room.
Unfortunately, the world is full of toddlers. I'm talking about people throughout your life whether it be one of your bosses, coworkers, in the political state we're in- the president, everybody in the political world are toddlers.
Unfortunately, the world is full of toddlers so you have to be the adult in the room. You have to be the master. So that way the things that they do like spitting a bunch of crap all over the place, knocking over their bowl of cheerios or whatever the heck they're eating, and making a huge mess, you're not going to let that affect you and trigger you and give you a bad day.
For myself personally when my kids act up or start arguing, I like to come over and tickle the crap out of them. That usually changes their state immediately.
Sometimes without anger, I will scream. It's OK for me to scream at my kids or my wife when I do it jokingly and not out of anger because by doing that, it allows me to not actually get angry.
I might just do something that startles them. I might do a warrior chant- a big Rarr or a big bear growl or I might start doing some Kung Fu in the air or I might put this evil look on my face like I'm a warrior and I'm about to destroy them.
“What'd you say?” “Ohhh” and I run after them. They're like “Ahhhh.” They laugh because they know I'm coming after them and I'm tickling them or something.
By doing that, it's getting that agression out in a healthy way. It teaches them that it's OK to be emotional and I'm not telling them not to.
I'm just breaking their state. We're having fun with it after the fact. That's what I've learned to do to avoid those anger things. I don't want to get angry myself and I need to be the adult. So I'll mess around.
Tony: When an elevated adult can't bring down an elevated child, that's the advice I remember but in that moment, it's not easy. That's the opportunity to tear that muscle, to work that muscle like you said before.
The stress of the situation. Next time it comes you go, “OK, here's how I'll deal with it.” It wasn't the be all and end all; it wasn't the end of the world. After that, the rest of the day was pretty good.
We had a pretty good day after everyone had calmed down. [laughs]
Dr. Dan: It took me years to get there. It took me years to get there. This is not something that I acquired after one book or listening to something, attending one event and being like “Oh, now I can do this.”
It took time. It's going to take time, practice, and the more you do it, the stronger you'll get. The better you'll get at it.
Tony: 100 percent.
Dr. Dan: Should we tell everybody, is this the point in the video where we tell everybody to go down below and click the like, the subscribe?
Tony: The subscribe. Click the notification bell so you know when we upload another video.
Dr. Dan: Ding, ding.
Tony: What else could they do? They could comment. Definitely comment.
Dr. Dan: Let us know your top ah-ha moments. How are you going to use what we just talked about? How are you going to use this in your life?
Maybe something that in the past was ruling your life and controlling and was very difficult. What you're going to do to now move past it.
What are your top ah ha moments that you learned from this?
Tony: Maybe what's your go-to buffet of things you can do? Maybe you haven't figured that out yet. Maybe figure it out and put it in the comments below.
This is a great opportunity to hear others' suggestions. Maybe we'll pick up some new ones ourselves.
Dr. Dan: Give us an idea of some things that maybe we didn't even think about. Like, “Woah, I didn't even think of that.” It's been a long time since I've done that. I want to try it.”
Tony: We'll give our favorite ones a little shout out. We're definitely going to be reading every comment on every video and taking the time to respond.
We'd love to hear from you.
Dr. Dan: Awesome, I ain't got nothing else, other than to say, “Be a RockStar in your life. Make the world your stage.”
Tony: Oh yes, and, “Don't stop, believing [singing]. Hold onto that feeling.” See you later.
Dr. Dan: Love it.
Be a RockStar In Your Life.
& Make The World Your Stage!
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