Aware & Aggravated - 8. Reset Your Emotional Reactivity & Be The One In Control

Episode Date: September 29, 2024

This episode is all about how to truly be less emotionally reactive, being less sensitive, and fully taking control over your emotions. This is how to make sure your feelings aren't controlling YOU. �� Social Media: https://www.instagram.com/leoskepi https://www.tiktok.com/@leoskepi https://www.snapchat.com/add/leoskepi   Merch (NEW DROP OCTOBER 31ST):  https://shopleoskepi.com/collections/   My App Positive Focus: (Apple) https://apps.apple.com/us/app/positive-focus/id1559260311 (Google) https://play.google.com/store/apps/detailsid=com.positivefocusapp&hl=en_US&gl=US&pli=1   FaceBook Support Community:  https://m.facebook.com/groups/851294735925522/?ref=sharehttps://m.facebook.com/groups/851294735925522/?ref%3Dshare&exp=7ffb&mibextid=I6gGtw   Business Inquiries: [e-mail] 

Hi friends, this week I got to put emphasis on the friends. Hi friends, because I got to bully you a little bit because we're talking about how to reset your overreactions to things, how to stop being so sensitive and also how to get a grip on yourself and not let your emotions run you and control you and make you do stupid things and embarrass you. All right? If you see any of this as an issue in your current life, it's because what you're doing is not working.

So we got to rebuild this mindset from the ground up. And I got to be a little bit abrasive and a little harsh. I've been trying to be a lot nicer. When there's a sensitive topic, I'll be nice. But with situations like this, if you deal with overreacting and your emotions taking control, you got a big ego and you have a really, really big protector aspect. And I have to talk to you in a way where I needed to be talked to in a way where

it could go through my protector aspect and hit the real me behind it. So I could actually change some things because when I say you have a big protector aspect, if you feel emotions at a level where they take over it's because as soon as the emotion gets too strong, you mentally and subconsciously and physically, your body starts perceiving a threat and it will kick on that protector aspect. And that's when you feel free

to actually stand up for yourself and do things the way that you wanna do and care for yourself. It totally makes sense and we're gonna go into it. But I think I gotta point out, is nobody wants to be the friend who's overly sensitive. They don't like that annoyingly overly like reactive friend. It's like, God damn, like, don't let them find out nothing.

Don't let them hear nothing. Don't let them get their little feelings hurt or they're going to freak out and lash out. Yeah, it's not fun to be that friend or be that person who always overreacts. And it makes you very, very hard to care about. It makes you hard to love. And it makes you very, very hard to care about. It makes you hard to love, and it makes you unsafe to love because you're unpredictable. If you let your emotions run you

and you let your reactions control your actions and how you handle situations, you're unpredictable. So as soon as you feel a little too emotional, whether it's too sad, too mad, too whatever, you become very, very unpredictable to those around you. It makes you not trustworthy and we all know the people who overreact a little too much and you don't respect them. They're like a flight risk, they're a liability and this is all coming from someone who has been one of the most reactive people you could meet. Like I used to be extremely

run by my emotions and would lash out, would freak out. I had a big issue with binge eating because I would be a little upset and I would just be like, fuck it, avoid any consequence and go for whatever it is that I wanted, ate whatever I wanted. And I've also done a lot of damage with anger and I want to help you avoid these mistakes from what I've learned. So I'm not talking as some idiot online like the rest of these people who try to pretend like they know stuff where I'm like,

oh, listen to me, like, this is all about to come from my heart. From me and little Leo's heart to yours, because I want to help you not do a lot of the shit that I did. So the first thing we got to do is go into what you get out of being so overreactive before you try and fix it or flip it. There's no such thing as self-sabotage. There is no behavior that you do no matter how damaging that is not benefiting you in some way So if you notice you have self-sabotaging behaviors and reactivity and being overly sensitive is one of those for you It's not a self-sabotaging thing. It is serving you in some way So let's look at what you're getting out of it before we try and flip it and change it because you can't let go of something And so you understand the benefit of it even if it's causing damage.

You got to find that hidden benefit. So the first thing is boundaries. Do you notice it takes you getting pushed to a point of extreme hurt or extreme emotion to feel valid in setting a boundary? Do you need to be so hurt that you get angry where you feel validated and you feel justified to discard everybody else because you feel guilty to set a boundary. If so, your anger coming up and your overly emotional states are coming in to help you have a sense of self and help you take care of yourself and set up a boundary

and communicate how you feel. Maybe it's not going to be in the most productive way, but having any kind of boundary is better than none. And a lot of people try to consider everybody else and they get strung out with it. They get so overwhelmed and they see nobody's taking care of them. Then they feel betrayed. They feel discarded. Then they feel pissed off. And then the anger comes out and you finally get to lay down a boundary or stop something or boot someone out of your life that is causing you headache. Like you finally get justification to stand up for yourself and care about the

way that you feel. And like I said, it's better to have boundaries even if they're set through anger and lashing out than to have none at all. And that is the secret subconscious way that you get boundaries if you struggle with this. But with overreacting and feeling too sensitive and like lashing out, that does not come from a little bit of anger or a little bit of emotion. Whenever the emotions hit and they feel uncontrollable, like they are at a level where you can't get a grip on them,

it's because the emotions have to get that severe and that strong so they can bypass and get through any guilt you might feel like you have to get to a point of so emotionally controlled by the emotion that you don't have to worry about guilt. There's no even doubt or thought in your head. It's like you fully have to take your foot off the brake and you have to take the fucking leash off. And when that emotion gets too strong, it just rips that leash out of your hand. There's no control it, you just got to let it go. And it goes to meet needs

for you. But the way you can get a grip on the overreaction part, because we understand, okay, if you set a boundary because you're so emotional, or you're so hurt, or you're so sad or so angry, cool. But when it's overly emotional, like when the emotions too strong, that's when you start doing things that make you look dumb and embarrassing and it's like you take it too far It's kind of like when you see videos online of this is a dumb example, but it's gonna make sense you see videos of like street fights and people getting into it and you see somebody getting provoked like they're minding their business and somebody comes and Starts messing with them and it escalates to a physical altercation and the person who're minding their business and somebody comes and starts messing with them and it escalates to a physical altercation.

And the person who is minding their business bodies them and knocks them out. When I say you take it too far with the emotion, it's like when these people who were actually the good guy in the scenario, knock the person out. And then when the person's laid on the ground out cold, they continue to hit them. That is too far. If the person's laid out, you leave it.

You're done. When you start continually going for it, that emotion is taken over. You're not logical no more. And that is quickly how the good guy will be seen as the bad guy and the unfair one. Like you had the upper hand, but you took it too far. And now you're the asshole in the situation. Now it's a big deal. Now everybody's looking at you. Weird. The reason I'm bringing that example up is because I'm about to take it into

disrespecting people when you're communicating. So the way that you can get a grip on this is to see the goal. What is the goal? What is the outcome you want out of this situation? What are you trying to achieve by letting that emotion come out and letting you do what you want to do? So like the example with the fight thing, if the goal is just to get the person to leave you alone and knock them out and be done with it, you need to understand that that is the outcome you want so that you can identify when that goal is accomplished.

What is the issue at hand? And now this is where I say I'm gonna go into a conversation style thing. If you're setting boundaries with someone or if you're communicating something bothers you or hurt you, you need to know what the goal is. You wanna let the person know what they did hurt you, how it hurt you, and what you're feeling or dealing with

because of it and the position that you're in. You do not want to continue further and start attacking them and disrespecting them. And how could you do this? You're so bad. You don't care about me. You're so inconsiderate. You don't want to make attacks like that. What is the goal? To communicate the boundary that you want to set up or to express how something they did bothered you or hurt you or something that you're not okay with. You can communicate something and say, I'm not okay with this and this is why. You need to know when to stop and not attack them.

But the biggest thing with trying to attack someone, I'm going to pull this out of your subconscious. When you were in the conversation and you lay down a boundary because someone hurt you, you're not used to people respecting your boundaries or your feelings. And when you use disrespect to further shame someone or attack someone past the level of communication you need to with saying what it is that bothered you and what happened in the situation, when you go into attacking them,

what you're trying to do subconsciously when that emotion comes over, you're like, Leo, I can't not cuss them out. You can because the only reason you're doing it is to guarantee a change in the behavior that they have toward you. You want to guarantee a change and that boundary not being crossed again. You have this subconscious need to dish out a punishment and attack their self concept and attack the person past the point of the goal because it's what you think will instill them a little fear or a little extra consequence or a little pain to one respect you more and to guarantee

a changed behavior and a changed way that they treat you. But the next part of this, oh, this is the biggest manipulative part. And sometimes this works. So if you deal with emotions and you have them come up so strong and they control your behavior, like some people get too emotional and cry and they don't wanna cry, but the tears just come out.

Or they get angry and they just start breaking shit or smashing things or hitting people. Like whenever that thing comes out, you got to stop and ask yourself. If you notice this is a trend and a pattern in your life, you got to look at the subconscious need being met. Like I said, it's not self-sabotage. What are you trying to achieve by displaying that emotion? So people that cry, people that deal with crying uncontrollably,

and they don't want to cry in a situation, but they just do. You subconsciously want people to soften their approach with you. You want them to be nicer to you. You want to kind of like disarm them and change their behavior. Your emotional display is a manipulative attempt subconsciously without you knowing to change their behavior and change how they're treating you. When it doesn't work, that's usually when you have another one come out and it flips and goes to shit. But that's a big one with sadness is you just want people to treat you a little nicer.

There's other ways to communicate it, but we're gonna get there. The one with anger. I used to display anger a lot. I'm not angry to get there. The one with anger. I used to display anger a lot. I'm not angry in this episode. I'm Albanian. I'm just very convicted and I'm excited talking about this shit. I'm actually in a very good mood, but people misread my intense communication style with being angry. I'm happy Sal. I'm a happy dick. If you want someone to pay attention to you and you want to be taken seriously. Anger, getting loud, getting aggressive, like freaking out and having that reaction and that response in a situation and displaying that emotion is trying to meet that need. You want to be listened to,

you want to feel seen, you want to feel taken into consideration. You want people to pay attention. That's a valid thing. Now, the other one that gets a lot, a lot of people in trouble is indifference. When you display or try to cover up how you truly feel and pretend like you just don't care, what you're trying to do is get the other person to care. So you think that there's an association with, if I withdraw, you come running. Or if I act like I don't care, you'll lay off and it's not going to be a big deal.

Sometimes that works with bullying scenarios when they can't get a reaction out of you. But a lot of people use the indifference approach and the shut down emotionally to get the other person to care. They want some kind of reassurance that you care and you want to do something to make them feel better and you want to change their behavior toward you. But with all of this and all of the different emotions, you can go into all of them and see why are you actually displaying each one?

What are you trying to achieve by this emotion coming out? Or you don't understand you're doing it, but what is the emotion trying to achieve for me that I'm not seeing by taking over and I cry or I freak out or I just go numb and I pretend like I don't give a shit about anything. Figuring out what it is you're trying to achieve and then asking yourself, is that the best way to go about it? Is all you have to do. with the anger thing. If you want someone to take you seriously or you want them to pay attention, is screaming at them the most realistic and is that the best approach to take to get that outcome? Usually not. There are situations where you do got to yell, like if there's a serious event happening or people are in danger or their safety is at harm or

you like notice something like if someone's about to get hit by a car, you scream. If someone's in the ocean, it's a shark. You scream, shark. Like you want to get them out of the water. There's times to scream, but with normal conversations or like business meetings or interviews or dates or like a breakup, what are you trying to display that emotion for? And is that the best approach? Is screaming at someone the best way to get them to pay attention to you and see you and listen to take you seriously? Usually not. That's not usually what gets people's attention. I have a whole podcast episode about anger. If you really need help with that, I've shared everything I've learned about flipping that. It's like two episodes ago from this one. It's literally titled reset your anger, but with crying and that analogy of people who get overly emotional and they just start crying and they feel like they can't control it. Is that the best approach for the situation that you're in?

If you're at work and your boss yells at you or criticizes something or tells you, Hey, you fucked up. This is where you can fix this. Is that the best time to cry? No. What you want is for someone to soften their approach to you. Crying is usually going to piss people off because it looks like you're deflecting responsibility and you're like trying to disarm them and make them approach you different. It's like, girl, if I can't just tell you how you're fucking up and have you fix it,

what are we doing here? Like, are you strong enough for this job? People see the manipulation tactic and I'm someone who when people cry in front of me, I'm very considerate and attentive when I see it for what it is. If I see it as a manipulation tactic, I'm going to call you the fuck out on it. But I do want to say you're not bad or wrong for getting angry and displaying that or crying and displaying that to try and get these approaches. There are other ways to do it is what I'm trying to bring your attention to. But a simple example, I'll just think of one of communicating that you want someone to soften their approach.

If you're getting yelled at by your boss or your partner is criticizing you for something and you don't like how they're talking to you, you can literally just say, I don't respond well to anger and aggression and feeling attacked. Like if you can tell me what I did wrong, I will be able to receive it and like be able to work on this and get you the desired outcome that you want. If I feel attacked and if I feel like you're just yelling at me, I'm going to feel like berated and disrespected from my own shit. But for now, if you can just take the emotion out of it, tell me what's going on. I'm here. I'm listening. You got my attention. I'm not fighting you. I'm fully here to make this go as best as possible or as smooth as possible.

And this is the way that works best for me. So let's figure out the solution. That's the quickest way to disarm somebody and actually get them to change their behavior and soften their approach to you versus crying. What is crying going to do? It usually pulls people away from the point and they'll get irritated with you like, God damn, every time I try and mention something, you cry. It's like if I go through your phone, if I'm dating you, and every time I go through your phone, you're going to cry.

I'm going to hit you with it. Why you've been doing what you've phone, if I'm dating you, and every time I go through your phone, you're gonna cry. I'm gonna hit you with it. Why you've been doing what you've been doing that I just caught you about. You're trying to cry to avoid responsibility. You know what I mean? No. Another angle we need to hit with feeling like you don't know why things upset you so bad.

You're like, I shouldn't be upset by this. I don't really give a shit, but why am I over here all emotional about it? This can come from a subconscious thing in childhood where if someone around you, your parent or your guardian or whoever, even your partner, like even if you're older, if you did not display an emotion, they made it mean you didn't love them or you didn't care. I'm going through this. I'm so hurt. How can you not feel anything? How could you not be mad? How could you not be mad?

How could you not be stressed out? Like they'll shame you for it. And you will have this association with if I'm calm and I do not get an emotional rise in myself, there's a threat to my connections with people. Like my parent or my partner will think that I don't care because I'm not matching their emotional response. So it brought you safety to have an emotional response to things that didn't even make sense or have shit to do with you. Like, even if you didn't care, you would have an emotional response because that's what you were trained to do.

That's something you don't have to go into. You just need to become aware of it to knock it off. You don't have to like sit down and journey the bad and freak out about it. Like you're aware of it. Now you're fine. You totally got this. But the other thing is sometimes this works and there's one time when this is actually like a really good tactic to manipulate the shit out of people and get them to shut up. So if you can out anger someone who's angry, it diffuses them. If you look at customer service, for example,

if you got a Karen in a restaurant or you got a Karen in a store and someone is just causing a fuss, the best thing a manager can do is to go over to the person and get more mad than they are about their experience they're having. So if the Karen's over here, you messed up my coffee, I want it for free. Wait, what? They messed it up? Oh, this is unacceptable. If they just get to going with anger to defend them, if the manager's like somebody's getting fired, this is not okay. And they just like take it there. It's going to immediately diffuse the Karen and the Karen's going to be like,

wait, wait, wait, wait, no, it's okay. Like you don't have to fire anybody. Like, can I just get a new coffee? Boom. That's a situation where matching an emotional reaction works to diffuse the other person. It usually works really, really well. So I want to give you that tactic if you need it. Like if someone is freaking out and they're mad, if you get more mad for them, it will disarm them faster than you can think. It's literally going to look like magic when you do it.

Do it consciously. Do it like intentionally. Don't do it by accident because you might fuck up if you actually get irritated by it and you like freak out. Just pretend to care more than they do and they'll shut up. But the other thing I want to talk about the next point is black and white thinking, but not just black and white thinking. I'm talking catastrophizing and using absolutes in a situation. So describing things with absolute words. So always, never, everyone, everything. When you use an absolute on a situation

or you look at something, you're like, it's useless. When you wipe something out or you use that black and white thinking, like it's all good or all bad, or it's one person or it's everyone, when you're constantly back and forth with that, I'm gonna call you on your shit. I had to call myself on this a long time ago, but basically when you use black and white thinking,

all it does is give you justification to give up and feel better about not trying or to feel better about not putting more effort into things. Cause if you can convince yourself, Oh, it's useless. It's everyone. It's everything. It's every time. It's always you feel better. You feel justified about no longer putting energy into something. Cause you've convinced yourself as useless. And then you will start to think, if I put any more energy into it, it's going to make it worse.

So it's actually more safe to catastrophize this and use an absolute to avoid responsibility. You want to quit. You want to give up on something typically when you do this and it's a way for you to emotionally and subconsciously like take it there. But the really, really big issue with this and why you have to catch it early is because when you start using absolutes and you look at something like it was a little issue and you look at it as an absolute and it's the ultimate betrayal, you take a little tiny thing and you look at it as a full on betrayal, it will cause a more intense emotional reaction.

And when you get to a point where you are so overly emotional and you are such in a heightened state of any kind, whether it's sadness, heartbreak, anger, like wanting to destroy shit, either one, any type of elevated emotional state will shut off your prefrontal cortex of your brain. And that is responsible for logic reason and seeing other options and perspectives. It will lock that. It will lock your ability to see anything outside

what you have just pigeonholed as true. You will not see any supporting evidence for the opposite side. Your brain will shut down to that logic and reason. It will get better and you will be able to be extremely emotional and still be logical, but it takes a lot of time and a lot of practice. I'm someone who can dog cuss you out in the middle of a rage and know exactly

what I'm saying and mean every word of it. I'm just not going to hold back like you piss me off. So I can cuss you out and hit every point I want it to hit, and I'll be open to discussion and reason. But if I let it out, I let it out. That's taken me so many years. So don't expect this to be a quick little easy thing. This is something you got to check and like become aware of and you'll get better at practicing it. I still fuck up with it.

I still have to reel it in and not let myself go into situations. I prefer not to do things when I'm overly emotional, but sometimes you're in a situation where you have to, there's not an ability to not react or not respond. You have to. So give yourself grace on that one, but becoming aware of all of this and knowing what's really going on is going to help you a lot. But the biggest thing that this will do in relationships, the worst damage it can cause is when that prefrontal cortex shuts off and you

start to have that emotional reaction, you will start to perceive a threat. And that's why it kind of shuts off. Like you get in fight or flight mode. And what it does with the relationships, friendships, people, parents, anybody is it will lock them as a threat and it will lock any love you have for them out. You will no longer see it. You will only see them as a threat. You will wipe out any good they've done, any care that they have, any good thing that they've done for you. You will immediately demonize them and convince yourself subconsciously they're a threat. Everything you think you knew about them is gone.

You will look at them as a whole different creature and approach them fully differently. So it does not feel good for someone to do that to you. So get a grip on it and don't do that to other people. You don't want one little thing you do or one thing you say to, like I said, you don't want to be that overly emotional friend, but you don't want one little thing you do or say to bother somebody or upset somebody. And they immediately discard and discredit every fucking thing you've done for

them. Any love you've shown them or any care you've shown them, for them to lock that out and lock you in as a threat, it's the worst feeling and it will damage your relationships. Because once someone locks in that you're a threat and then takes actions to protect themselves against you, that is when you cause ruptures in trust that can never be repaired. That is when people treat each other in a way you can never come back from.

And it's a level of disrespect you can't come back from. And once you see how someone treats you, once they see you as a threat, there's no feel safe with them again. So you have to be very, very careful with this, especially if it's anger because you cannot take things back. But one more thing with what I'm saying with looking at things as absolutes and discarding somebody and locking out any love that you have for them or any love that they have for you and locking in that they're a threat,

it gives you a chance to finally consider yourself. You finally get an excuse to discard their feelings and do whatever it is that you feel comfortable with and whatever makes you feel better and not have to consider them. So you have to look at your relationship to the weight of considering another person. If you really want to love somebody, you've got to get that in check. It don't matter how emotional you get. You do not get to discard somebody. And like I said, that's where people do things that are so damaging.

That's like in relationships when people go cheat or you break up and they do something crazy, the blatant disregard and just the priority of doing whatever makes me feel better in this state because I finally feel justified to not have to think of you, you get the freedom you've been after. So look at how you feel trapped. This is such a big reflection of all of the things that you've been avoiding because these emotions come up like this to get you in a position where you can meet the need that you've not been able to meet or haven't seen a way to meet or felt safe to meet. So big,

big thing to look at. The next thing we're going to go into with the overreaction thing is the meanings that you assign to situations without realizing. And typically when you overlay a meaning over a situation that isn't true, it comes from a triggered core belief. So something that you believe at the core, like I'm not good enough or I'm unlovable. If let's say example, you're talking to somebody and you're texting, whatever, you're going to know him, you flirt and you have a little honeymoon phase and they don't text you back and

you don't hear from him for a few hours and you immediately are like something's wrong, something's off. A meaning that you will assign to that is they don't like me, they're pulling back and if you have a core belief of I'm unlovable, you will fully live that experience and if you have a pattern of being abandoned or people ghosting you in the past, you will see that one thing as confirmation of, I'm unlovable in the back of your head, subconsciously without even realizing it. And you will take an action that is different. So you'll get offended and take that personally

because you have that core belief underneath that's still running you around. You're gonna treat them a little different. You might be a little standoffish. You might be a little pissed off. You might ignore them back. And what you're doing is taking an action from that triggered core belief of, I'm unlovable. And you might be noticing a pattern of like, this happened last time I got abandoned.

So subconsciously you're like, I need to withdraw. I need to stop caring so much because I'm sensing doom that they don't like me anymore. Something's happened. Any change in someone's behavior that triggers a core belief will have you living that experience. So if you have this whole association, if they don't text you back fast enough, or they ignore you for a couple hours, you're not going to think that they're busy. You're going to be so emotional and living in that experience of this is

unsafe. I need to protect myself and I need to pull back. When you take that action of ignoring them or pulling back a little, they're going to notice a shift in your behavior. So let's say they were busy at work or they were busy doing something else and they got back to you later and you ignore them a little bit. Your action from that false meaning, being not in line with what you actually feel, you trying to protect yourself and pull back and then they're going to take an action of, wait, something's off.

That's another action that is now further confirmation. I was right. They are going to abandon me. There is something going on and you're going to be living that entire experience that is not true. And with situations like this, this is the point. Once you get that second confirmation of, yeah, something's fishy, something's weird, you immediately subconsciously will start looking for their faults, looking for how they weren't that great, looking for how,

maybe they didn't brush their teeth. Maybe their, their walk was a little weird. Maybe they weren't tall enough. Maybe you didn't like what they did for a living. You're going to start noticing their faults. Your brain is going to immediately start to try and discredit them and discredit the love and the care that you had for them because they will feel like less of a loss once you lose them, because you're already living the reality that you're going to lose them. So your brain's going to go trying to make it hurt less and you're not going to realize

it. You're going to be so emotional feeling all this shit and this is all that's actually really going on in your head and why you feel the way that you do and what might have contributed to the situation. And I'm not saying that you're always wrong. Sometimes you're right. Sometimes you notice some weird shit and you need to pry into it. But living the experience and writing them off like they don't care about me, they didn't like me,

they never liked me, that damages you. It makes you feel like shit and ruins your self-esteem. So before you go running into that, become aware of it. And when I said that you will start to nitpick them, that's also going to lead to you treating them different and getting even more confirmation of your first suspicion. And this is a cycle that leads to ruin. And if you're in a situation where you're like, okay, there's a pattern of this going on in my life, I don't know why things keep going so bad. Is this sounding familiar? Does this ring a bell?

Because you're acting like a damaged animal, like a traumatized animal. And I've been there. I've described myself like that at so many points in my life. I've felt too damaged to love or function or be alive at certain points. It's not true, but I fully get it. And what I want to point out with saying, you're acting like a traumatized animal. It's like if you go to a rescue and you see this dog or you see this Panther, I love Panthers. If you see this animal who is hurt and it's clearly in

pain and you walk up to help it and every time you get close to it, all it knows is to protect itself and it starts attacking everything that comes up next to it. Eventually, people are going to stop coming up to that animal. You're just going to have to let it die. You're going to have to let it just go because it hurts every single person who tries to come love it. So become aware of this. It's very important because I want you to feel cared about. I want you to have close relationships in your life and this is a really big thing that I had to break. And I thought that I could never do it.

I promise you can. I promise it gets better. And you do not want to act like that damaged and traumatized animal forever. Stop attacking the love that might be genuine that's coming in that will make you feel like you don't have to protect yourself all the time. You need to always have the guard up. Duh.

Don't ever forget what life has taught you. If your life experience has been you watch your ass when it comes to people, you always got a knife behind your back. That's how I am. I love very hard and very deep, but I've been taught to protect myself and not love freely and you don't give loyalty to everyone. So I'm not saying and I will never say to blindly put down any mechanism you have to protect yourself and go trust people ever in my life. I'm not the one. I've tried that. I tried that with this last year of my life. Don't fucking do it. I have trust no one tattooed on my hand. Then I was like, you know what? Everybody's telling me,

Leo, you're too harsh. You're too harsh. You need to soften up. I softened up and took everybody's advice. And what did they do? Fuck me over and betrayed the shit out of me. So I have an even better read on people and an even better way to protect myself. But I do have very, very close relationships

and closer than I've ever had in my life because I have that balance, but you cannot feel safe to Walk into shark infested waters with no like was it called like the little spark thing that you shoot What's it called like a little flare gun? You can't walk into a lion's den without any trink darts in your pocket If you've been mauled by lions before you better not walk in when those trink darts You better have a case full in your back pocket.

Like you keep that knife ready, you keep that gun ready. Yeah. But you don't always have to use it. You don't shoot first. You don't misperceive a threat and shoot them by accident. Okay, stop being the damaged animal. I do wanna give you a couple of things to help you with like actually dealing with this

as it comes up. Because now you're aware of a whole bunch. If you made it this far, hi. If you made it this far, click download on this podcast. That helps me a ton with the downloading the episodes. Every episode you listen to, download it. I always thought it was like rating me five stars. I always said, everybody rate me five stars.

Rate me five stars, but hit the download button because my team told me that's like what actually like helps. So hit the download, Share with your friends too. But when it comes to noticing all these feelings coming up and getting very emotional, first thing you got to do is observe it. Duh. Okay. I feel a certain way.

I feel myself getting very, very, very pissed off. Or I feel myself about to cry. Observing it and noticing it steps you back from it. You take a step back from that emotion and it's no longer in control. You now are kind of in your logical mind a little bit, depending how it goes, but do not take an action. But that's my next point is do not take an action.

Don't continue a conversation, you stop for a second. You give yourself some respect to act in line with respecting yourself. And don't take an action that will embarrass you or one that you will regret. You take a second to check in with you. Don't take an action. Ask for a second if you need one. If you need to exit a situation or exit a conversation, do it. Ask for a pause. But hang on.

I'm trying to make sure I respond appropriately to this situation right now. I'm feeling a lot of things right now. Give me a second. That's more respectable than popping off. What I am going to also add this because people like to take what I say and run too fucking far and left field with it. If there's a physical threat to your safety, you act immediately. You do what you see fit.

All right, babe? Violence, we left in the past for no reason. But if you got to defend yourself, you do what you got to do, baby. You do what you got to do. That's like saying if a car is coming and it's barreling towards you and no, you shouldn't get out of the way. You shouldn't get anxious and honor how you feel and jump out of the way of the car. You should bend your reality and manifest it and think positive thoughts and bend it. It's too fast. You can't do that.

Sometimes you gotta jump, all right? Sometimes if someone's coming at you, swinging at you, pulling a gun on you, you gotta do what you gotta do. So I acknowledge that and I always will. But the biggest thing I've learned with situations like this, when I get very, very emotional, whether I'm upset or hurt or angry,

is pausing, like I said, taking a second and asking myself, what is it that I want? What is this making me aware of that I want? And if you don't know what you want, you do, because you're experiencing exactly what you don't want. What is it that I want? And I want you to speak it and speak from that. And I mean what you want out of a situation and also a new desire that's come up. What is it that you want? Just becoming aware of it.

Even if you don't say it because you're going to look like a lunatic, I don't care though. I'd be saying all kinds of shit. I talk to myself in front of people they know with me, but just becoming aware of what it is that you want. You understand what the situation is teaching you on a grander scale. If you're spiritual or you're religious, that's the point. Of all these things being triggered is to make you aware of something that you want and a new desire. It's rearing its little head.

It had to come through an ugly little way, but you feel so emotional because there's a message behind it. Figure out what it is. What is it that I want? Now the last thing I'm going to tell you about what you decide to do is this is kind of the filter that I run through my head. What is going to make me respect myself? How could I handle this situation that I'm going to be able to walk away and respect myself? Do not do something to try and prove something to anybody else. It doesn't matter if they see how hurt you are. It doesn't matter if you don't retaliate how you used to.

You're embarrassed at how you used to retaliate. I am because there's a lot of situations where I used to walk away being the bigger person or not like dog cussing somebody out or putting my hands on them and I regretted it for years. I was like, that's my regret is not pummeling this person because it felt like self betrayal. Like I said, go listen to the anger episode if you need help with that. But the other person does not have to see how hurt you are or see how much pain

you're in. Only person that has to see it is you and you're the one that has to respect it. So that's where I say, take the action in line with respecting yourself. But the other thing I'm going to point out is do not try and prove anything to anyone. Don't lash out or have an extreme emotional reaction with, Oh, I'm trying to show how much I care. Who cares if they see it or not? The only person that needs to respect that and see that is you. And then you take an action in line with how you feel to honor it and honor yourself.

Do not try and prove anything to anyone. Don't try to prove how tough you are and try and beat people up. I've been there, I've done that. I've been beat up, I've beat up a lot of people. There's no point in proving it. If you know what you're actually capable of, walk off. Shut your mouth. I know, I know, I see you, babe. You can rip somebody verbally and hit them where it hurts.

You can destroy their self-esteem with words. You can do immense damage to them physically. But what is that to prove? To who? To what? You know what you're capable of. Now see it and understand you have a big responsibility when you are capable of, now see it. And understand you have a big responsibility when you are capable of great damage,

whether it's with words or physically. You carry a big responsibility and you don't get to be blind to that. And that is what I wish someone told me earlier. You have to see and respect and hold that responsibility with care. You cannot use that power, however you see fit to prove this and prove that. There are some people in his life who are too fucking stupid.

You can literally take their life from them and they still won't get it. People will push you to a point of pummeling them and they still are going to be challenging you. There's no point in trying to prove it. Some people aren't going to see it and that's for their own reason. You do not need to prove anything to anyone with your reaction and what it is that you want to do in the situation. What you're going to do is respect yourself. You're going to take the action that will allow you to respect yourself and allow you to walk away and know that you honored how you felt and you respected yourself enough to not get out of character or do something to prove something in a situation. People like to say, Oh, you look like a pussy if you walk away from a fight. I know what I'm capable of.

I'm proud of myself and I respect myself more for walking away from a fight now because I have too much to lose and I have too much to offer this goddamn world and it takes an immense amount of strength to walk off. I'm no longer in a place where I'm gonna let a little altercation get me to a point where I don't honor my feelings and take the action in line that would make me feel better and make me feel like I respected how I felt

and removed myself to let it out and need to prove something useless. People aren't going to see it. And like I said before, if you take it a little too far, you're going to be seen as the bad guy. And a lot of people with me, y'all have watched me shut my mouth with a lot of people and there's a reason. I'm immediately going to be seen as the bully. There's a lot of twinks who like to talk a lot of shit about me online. There's a lot of people who like to come out of their fucking face.

Like they don't have eyes or ears. They put me in a position where if I say or do anything to check them, correct them, harm them or lash out, I'm immediately the bad guy and I'm immediately the bully because I'm bigger and I'm meaner and I'm tougher. These little twinks get off on it. But what I choose to do is respect myself and not even be involved in it. I don't address it. You ain't worth my fucking attention or my energy and I'm not going to disrespect myself

to address you or to put myself in a position where I make myself look awful. And I more so care about the respect of the people that I love. I'm not going to do something where I'm untrustworthy and I'm that overly reactive friend where I'm unpredictable and you never know what's going to happen because it makes you harder to love. So you don't want to embarrass the people that care about you. You also don't want to embarrass yourself. So that's where I say,

take the action in line with what is going to make you respect yourself, not have to prove anything or do anything for anybody else. What do you need to respect you? That's the decision to make. All right, I'm done yelling at you. That's it for this episode. If you're watching this on YouTube, leave this video a comment, Tell me what you thought and tell me what you want me to help you reset next week because I put out videos every Sunday. If you're new, subscribe, all that. This is a Sunday reset shit that we do. I love hearing you guys' feedback and what you want to know more about. I'm thinking about doing next week on how to trust yourself. This was a little

bit to do with that, but it goes a lot deeper. So tell me what you think. If I get comments for other stuff, we'll do that. But everything you need from me is in the description, my social media, everything that I've got. My new merch is coming out on Halloween. Save the fucking day. The collection is called fuck forgiveness. Cause you don't need nobody's forgiveness and nobody's permission to do what you want to do and be who you are. That's the whole meaning behind the whole collection. I'm excited for you guys to see it and And we're gonna sell the bitch out as always.

I'm so excited. But that's all I got for this week. So everybody be safe, take care of yourself, and I'll talk to you guys next Sunday.