Mark Bell's Power Project - Mark Bell's Saturday School EP. 10 - How To Stop Caring About What Other People Think

Episode Date: July 25, 2020

Hey class, welcome back to Mark Bell's Saturday School! Today we the people ask The People's Coach, how do we stop caring about what other people think? Time to develop some confidence today. Get your notepads and No. 2 pencils out, class is in session Subscribe to the Podcast on on Platforms! ➢ https://lnk.to/PowerProjectPodcast Support the show by visiting our sponsors! ➢Piedmontese Beef: https://www.piedmontese.com/ Use Code "POWERPROJECT" at checkout for 25% off your order plus FREE 2-Day Shipping on orders of $99 ➢Icon Meals: http://iconmeals.com/ Use Code "POWERPROJECT" for 10% off ➢Sling Shot: https://markbellslingshot.com/ Enter Discount code, "POWERPROJECT" at checkout and receive 15% off all Sling Shots Follow Mark Bell's Power Project Podcast ➢ Insta: https://www.instagram.com/markbellspowerproject ➢ https://www.facebook.com/markbellspowerproject ➢ Twitter: https://twitter.com/mbpowerproject ➢ LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/powerproject/ ➢ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/markbellspowerproject ➢TikTok: http://bit.ly/pptiktok FOLLOW Mark Bell ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/marksmellybell ➢ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MarkBellSuperTraining ➢ Twitter: https://twitter.com/marksmellybell ➢ Snapchat: marksmellybell ➢Mark Bell's Daily Workouts, Nutrition and More: https://www.markbell.com/ Follow Nsima Inyang ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nsimainyang/ Podcast Produced by Andrew Zaragoza ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/iamandrewz #PowerProject #Podcast #MarkBell

I'm ready. All right. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to another edition of Saturday School. Yes, class is now in session with the people's coach, Mark Bell. If you guys have any questions for the one and only, let's see, Mark Smelly Bell, hit us up on Instagram at Mark Bell's Power Project, at MB Power Project on Twitter. Hit us up with the questions you have for the man. And real quick, just some house cleaning. Thank you to Piedmontese for sponsoring this episode.

You guys know it's the absolute best beef in the universe. Higher protein, less fat, cooks faster. Don't know what they're doing to those cows over there, but I appreciate it. For more information, head over to Piedmontese.com. That's P-I-E-D-M-O-N-T-E-S-E.com. At checkout, enter promo code POWERPROJECT for 25% off your order and free shipping on any orders of $99 or more. A lot of people, sometimes they'll throw up a picture. It gets a lot of likes.

And then they're now stuck because they can't post something else because they're afraid it's not going to get as many likes. They'll even make a post and wait for the first couple minutes. Oh, it's not getting attention. I'm going to take this back down. A lot of it comes from because people really seem to be doing things for everyone else. They care too much about what people think about them. You, on the other hand, I don't want to say you just totally don't care, but you will speak your mind. You will post what you want to post. So the question for today's Saturday School is, how do you stop caring about what other people think about you? I think probably the first thing is to think about yourself.

And if you think about yourself and that's where your focus is, you don't have to really be too concerned about what anybody else is doing um you know for example you know let's just talk about lifting you know as an example if if when i was young and just starting out, if I was concerned about what people, what people my age are doing or people that are in their thirties are doing when it comes to strength, I'd be super upset. You know? Um, I even think about that often, like, man, what if Instagram was around when I was a kid? Like, I don't think that would be great because I would be seeing these, you know, these amazing bodies and these amazing feats of strength and stuff.

And I, I don't know. I don't know what I'm thinking about. I don't know what I would think about that. But as a kid, for me, you know, there was, there was not really that much comparison going on. Although, you know, in a family, in a large family, there's some comparisons that go on, but they're usually kind of healthy. You know, like I'm like 11 or something. And my cousin Steven is like 13 or 14 or yeah, probably 14 or 15. And I can kind

of make sense of, okay, he's faster than me. You know, like when we run, he's faster than me. Of course he's taller than me. He's old, he's older. They're fairly healthy comparisons, but I don't have like access to millions of people to compare myself to. And I think that's, what's going on with social media is you have the ability to constantly compare yourself. I mean, you know, it's as if you're just at a never-ending trough where not only are there people to your left and people to your right at this trough, there's people directly across from you as well. And, you know, if you've never been in a lineup like that, you know,

peeing at a 49ers game, you know, everyone's got their wieners out. You know, you don't want to end up in those situations because who cares what the guy next to you has? It doesn't have anything to do with you. You know, you can't, it doesn't really benefit you in any way. And same thing with what the neighbor has or same thing with, you know, anything that anybody else has. It's, um, the only benefit it could, something could potentially have for you is, uh, if you can acquire more knowledge from that person. So if you can communicate with that person, um, let's say that you see, you know, let's say that you're into photography and you see someone's just always killing it every day.

You're like, holy crap, I just can't handle it anymore. I can't stop seeing this guy's images, man. How does he have one up on me all the time? How about you DM the guy? How about you go slide into the DMs and say, hey, man, you know, I'm curious, you know, as to how you're able to execute, how you're able to do this stuff, because I would love to buy you a cup of coffee one day or take you out to lunch or something, because I would love to learn more about this

or get on a Zoom call. How easy is that to do nowadays, right? You have a lot of options when it comes to these kinds of things. Specifically, how to not care about what other people do. You know, there's books on it. There's a book of, it's called The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck. And that might be a book to look into. There's some really good stuff in there. Mark Mason, I believe the guy's name is. Check out that book. There's also another book

called Atomic Habits. And I know that they're quite different from each other. But having good habits can help a lot too. Because I mean, part of you not worrying too much about what somebody else is saying to you is very much etched deep in your own happiness. And not being happy, feeling behind, having anxiety, these are all things that if you have anxiety because you're behind, you can get rid of that simply by being ahead, you know, simply by working towards being ahead. But you'll also have to get a better grasp on your anxiety as well as have better habits, because if you have better habits, then you might just be moving faster and you still have anxiety over the same old thing. You're going to have to figure out a way to get fulfillment from the things that you do. Like the things that you do, they really need to be things that are like truly fulfilling. They really need to like fill you up.

You know, I was at super training today and one of the guys was, and, and, and, you know, I want people to, when I mentioned something, you know, I own my own gym, I have my own podcast, I want people to, when I mentioned something, you know, I own my own gym. I have my own podcast. I have my own this. I have my own that. I don't want you to ever think too much into that. I don't want you to think that, oh, I don't have that.

So I can't get, I don't have access to what Mark's talking about because it's definitely not true. But I was at super training today and one of the guys was deadlifting and I complimented him. I complimented him a lot. He's one of the guys that hangs out with Hottie. I'm forgetting his name at the moment, but this guy's lost 140 pounds or 200 pounds or something like that. He comes in sometimes with his son and he's in there deadlifting and he's pulling 315 against some bands. He's lifting like a savage and he's lifting it really effortlessly and he's this is great lifts you know and and i kind of took a step back and i'm like oh yeah no that's just okay that's the same guy that i remember from a few weeks ago because i haven't been at the gym for a few weeks and i go dude i said you look awesome like what i'm like but i'm like'm like, you put on a bunch of weight,

right? And he's like, yeah. And then he said, he's like, yeah, he's like, I put on some muscle. Well, this guy lost so much weight that he kind of had that, uh, melted candle look that I talk about all the time. He just looked like he was, you know, disappearing into no man's land. And then he recognized, Hey, you know, uh, you know, I want to, you know, gain some size again, gain some muscle. Um, so he and I just shot the shit about that for just a second. But then he looked me in the eye at which a bunch of other people have done at super training as well. And he said, Hey, I, and he, you know, he could kind of tell he was like welting up. He was, he's like, it means the world to me to open this place back up. He's like, thank you so much. You know, cause we opened the gym up a couple of weeks ago. Cause fuck Gavin Newsom, right? We're trying to make people happy over here. You know, we're trying

to get back to work. And so those kinds of things are like, that makes my work so much more fulfilling, you know, and think about what he's doing. You know, he's lifting. It means that much to him. Obviously, it's fulfilling. There is not. It's going to be rare that Instagram is going to give you that feeling. It can here and there. Someone could hit you up and say, Andrew, you know, the post you made the other day,

man, it was right on. Hit me at the right time. I needed that. Thank you. But is that all you're using Instagram for, you know, is that all using social media for it's not, you know, I think we're looking for the negative. I don't know why we're like that, but we just, we just are, you know, I think it's, uh, Joe Rogan has talked about this before. I think, you know, error correction is where knowledge comes from. And so correcting something wrong is how we learn. It's literally how we learn. And so we're looking for something to be wrong. We're looking for something to be messed up. Every time

you put your glasses on, Andrew, you probably been wearing glasses since you were a kid. Pretty much every time you put your glasses on, the first you probably have been wearing glasses since you were a kid. Pretty much every time you put your glasses on, the first thing you're looking for is like smudge spots on your glasses to make sure that you can see okay. And it probably drives you crazy when they're not clean, right? They're always dirty and yeah, it's the worst thing ever.

I hate it. Yeah, and so you're not so grateful that you have these glasses that are going to help you to be able to like you can't see for shit, right, without them, right? I mean, I could strain to 2020, but then I'm straining, and then eventually, like, a couple hours later, I'm hurting. But no, absolutely. I need them. Yeah, you need them.

And if you were to put them on and all you ever knew was that they were always kind of cloudy, you would still be so grateful that they're just the way they are just so you can see a little bit better. But my point is, is I think we're designed to kind of point out what's wrong. We're designed to – how many times have you gotten a bunch of good news? And you're like, when I see Andrew, I'll tell him tomorrow. That's a cool story. But if it was negative, if it was like, hey, did you hear about what happened with CrossFit? Did you hear what's going down with Greg Glassman?

For people that don't know, there's some stuff circulating around Twitter about Greg Glassman and people are de-affiliating with CrossFit and all kinds of madness going on. Anyway, you get the point. It's like for some reason we're quick to like nudge each other like, hey, did you hear about this?

Did you hear about this? Hey, did you hear so-and-so is getting divorced? That's the biggest one. Yeah, you never nudge somebody and say, hey, did you hear that they're still married? You nudge somebody and say, hey, hey, hear that? They're still married. You nudge somebody and say, Hey, Hey, they, they, they're, uh, they just celebrated their 20th anniversary. Like you don't say it that way. You only nudge somebody and announce it that way. And it's almost like for some reason, we're sick people. We're half happy about, I don't know why, you know, and I know some people

are gonna think I'm crazy for saying this kind of stuff, but I think I'm just being honest. I think this is what we do. You know, we, we find these errors and we're going to think I'm crazy for saying this kind of stuff, but I think I'm just being honest. I think this is what we do. We find these errors, and we're going to point them out all the time. And so for that reason, and everybody hates this advice, but you have to be really, really careful with social media. Because if we're talking about how do you deal with how other people think about you, how do you deal with what other people say about you. It's all social media based because other than random acts of like hate crime and somebody outwardly saying something to you completely random on the street, it's extremely rare for anything like that to ever happen. And like, you're not in public and, you know, someone's not going to say something to

you that they would say online. You know, online, they might say, oh, dude, you're not even that strong. You're not going to run into somebody at the grocery store who's going to say something like that. Or, you know, if you're in a tank top and you're in the grocery store, someone's not going to be like, you think you're a bodybuilder? Like, you know what I mean? Like that would be it would have to be somebody that is, you know, really completely irrational and out of their mind. And you'd probably just shrug it off and be like, what? Or you might even get into altercation with them, depending on the person. Right. But the, the point is, is that social media is kind of set up for that. It's set up for, Hey, here's what I'm presenting. What do you guys think of it?

And then once you ask people what they think of it, that's where everything gets all screwed up. When I created the slingshot or created any of the products that we have, it was a committee of one, party of one, because I don't fucking care what anybody else has to say, because this is what I think is good. This is what I think is going to be cool. Now things are different because the people that we selected to work for the company are people that belong there 100%. And after I have an idea and feel like it's a pretty good idea, then I start to kind of go around and I'll ask Tom and I'll be like, oh, what do you think is this idea? Or I'll ask you, or I'll run it by and Seema run it by

some different people, because I know that we all think in a very similar way nowadays, because we're all kind of understand what the company is about and those kinds of things. because we all kind of understand what the company is about and those kinds of things. But people aren't going to understand what your overall mission is. There's a saying from a guy named Karl Popper, which I'm a huge fan of this saying. And he said, no one can deliver a message that's going to be totally understood. Actually, I need to look up the quote now because now I'm messing it up, I think. I'll look it up here. But basically the point is that it's very difficult to have a message that's specific, that doesn't get a little bit messed up and doesn't get interpreted by other people

differently. If you think about, if you think about school, school, a lot of times they're like, hey, open up your textbook and you open up your textbook and you might be talking about something that's pretty factual. It might be a history lesson or something. And the teacher is going to give you their interpretation of like what is in the book. It's going to be, yeah, it could be, it could be, it could be the vantage point of, of white people, right? Well, the vantage point of the Indians is going to be way different. The vantage point of the African-Americans can be way different. The vantage point for Mexicans would be way different. And that is true across the board.

Even the Bible, even like the quote unquote word of God, all of church is kind of designed around that. OK, crack your Bibles, open up to this page. And then somebody gets up and gives a testimonial. And like, here's the way here's the way that I read that passage in the Bible. And they go up and they explain it and everybody at church is completely floored and they can't believe it because they had this experience where they agree so much with the person that was on stage because they're like, I never thought about it that way. I actually thought that in this, you know, in this passage that this meant this,

but now I recognize that it means something quite different. That was really helpful to me. Thank you so much. It's because the interpretations of people are going to be so vastly different. So here is the quote from Karl Popper. It's impossible to speak in such a way that you cannot be misunderstood. I'm going to read it again. It is impossible to speak in such a way that you cannot be misunderstood. Like no one in the history of the world has ever been able to communicate a message that doesn't get misunderstood, that doesn't get interpreted.

Maybe it's not even always misunderstood, but it's going to get interpreted a much different way. You know, if I said, uh, like a quote of mine that I, that I, it's not of mine, a quote that I like is, uh, a violent attack today is better than a well-planned attack tomorrow. Well, one person might think that I'm a complete maniac and that I'm in favor of violence and really, no, I'm, I'm kind of more like, you know, it's, you know, attack the day, bro. Like, uh, you know, you don't go get after it. I don't mean, you know, I don't mean to be violent. I just mean, you know, be aggressive with your day. Like I didn't mean it that way. And so anyway, the whole reason to mention any of this is the fact that when you make a post, you have to understand there's going to be negativity to it. You can't make a post and have it be absent of negativity. It's part of what's

going on out there today. Unless, I mean, you could turn off, maybe you can turn off the comments, you know, but like who does that? You even have the option to turn off the comments. You can turn off the comments on every, I think on every post if you wanted to, but I don't really see people doing that very often. Do you? No, I don't. And it's funny because I had wanted to do one the other day when I did a post for my wedding. I just wanted to post it.

I didn't want, I don't know. It felt like, again, I was thinking about other people before I even posted it because I wanted to post it, but I didn't want it to come off like, like, Oh, shut up. Like we know you're in love, but like, it was just, it was such an awesome like post. And like, I really, you know, thought that the video did really well. And I almost turned off the comments on that one just to be like, no, this is just us to like mark today's date as you know, our wedding date. And that's all I want. Like like if you want to congratulate me you guys can you guys have my number whatever but i was like no that's like that's kind of almost the opposite of what i actually was trying to get across you know because

i think that would have looked even worse and then of course it turned out all the uh you know people close to me commented and you know everyone gave me love but i still i would imagine at some point i would like to use the uh the comment section or turn off that. I have a couple of creative ways I want to use it for the Power Project, actually. But, yeah, no, I mean, I've never really realized it. Picture that you and Stephanie, you know, in the next couple of weeks, you end up getting the home that you really, that you really love. You know, you're really super, you get a sick picture. And some people's interpretation of that is that you're showing off. Other people are like,

oh my God, dude, congratulations. Like, that's so cool. I know that you guys were working towards that. I think I saw your wife, you know, talking about you guys changing things financially and getting out of debt and different things like that. It's like, someone's going to be like, but someone who maybe hasn't figured that out, someone's going to be like, Hey, that's, but someone who maybe hasn't figured that out, someone who's in just a different place, you know, they're, you know, still renting an apartment that they're not too pumped about, you know, what's their, you know, they're, they see it.

It just makes them feel like crap. And you're not, your intention was completely opposite of that you're like this feels good i think this is cool i think this is relevant my wife looks beautiful in the picture i'm gonna post it then you post it and people have these comments that just go real sideways and they're like hey what about when you did SARMs and your wife's boobs are hanging out? And like, you're just like, wait, what, uh, what happened here? I posted a photo of our home. I thought it looked good. My wife does look cute. I thought that was cool. And everyone hates everything about the picture. I'm just going to go jump off the bridge. You're

like, what the hell happened? Yeah. How did this, how did this happen? I'm not going to go jump off the bridge. You're like, what the hell happened? Yeah. How did this happen? I'm not trying to hurt anybody. Yeah. Things can spiral out of control really quick on social media. And now everyone's going to go searching for my wife's Instagram. Now you said her boo was hanging out. So... Hey, you never know.

Yeah, that's awesome. But I mean, that shows how crazy social media can be if your intention is to just post like a happy moment like a true genuine thing not like a an ig like flossing post like just like this one moment so happy but it can easily just slide way out of control if something is so um i can't find the word, but I'll just say off balance like that. You shouldn't put too much weight on it because it's going to fall off anyways. Yeah, there's a lot of irrational thought going on in the world right now. And it's like an irrational thought happens. It causes your feelings to pop out.

And then another irrational, another irrational thought process happens in defense of that. You know, I say something that offends you, you get triggered. And then now you're trying to hurt me back. And it's like, neither one of us got anywhere like it was just it wouldn't be any different if we fought it just we both punched

each other and it hurt that's like all we learned yeah and you might learn someone's you know yeah has anything ever like really happened to you because you posted something that pissed someone off or, you know, somebody said a hurtful comment or whatever it may be? Has there ever been an incident where you like, oh, shit, I guess I shouldn't have done that? Or my thoughts of this upsetting somebody came true and maybe I should not do that anymore. this upsetting somebody came true and maybe I should not do that anymore. You know, I would say that your, your words matter. They matter and they, they, they, they shouldn't matter as much as they do, but they do matter a lot. And yeah, I definitely have had not so much posts this is pre-social media just some banter

with some friends back and forth where it was like i just learned that it just it wouldn't be any different than stuff where you're just shooting the shit amongst each other uh when you're kids you know but i said some stuff and then it like would offend somebody. And then it just like a lot of hurt feelings and a lot of weird animosity and people like, you know, Oh, he said this about you. And it's like, I probably just shouldn't have, you know, done that thing or whatever. Yeah. These things have a massive impact on people. And social media is weird because I think you're always kind of like waiting for the really good thing to happen.

And really, I deleted my Instagram just the other day because I was like, and I've done this before, but I think I'm gone. I think I'm gone, gone. It's still being operated and we still have people helping with it and stuff. I haven't run it in months anyway, but I got rid of my Instagram. I looked at a post from Jeremy Buendia and there was so much, you know, regardless of what you think of Jeremy Buendia, I don't care what you think about him. Maybe you don't like him. Maybe, you know, maybe you think he's an a-hole or whatever. That's fine. But I read a bunch of the comments and I was like, I shouldn't be

reading these. And then at the same time, I was like, you know what? No, read them all. Just sit here. Just sit in it and read them all. And then you dumbass, when you're done reading these, I want you to explain to Andrew. I want you to explain to your friends. I want you to explain to your family members how any of this could be utilized and how this could be something that could be potentially considered being productive in any way at all. How could you explain? How could I go and explain to Jake? Jake, I just read 175 comments.

One comment was worse than the other. I, you know, these comments, after a while, they started to kind of chew at me, and I'm not a very, you know, emotional person. what I talk about often is how to get better, you know? And so when I was thinking about it, I'm like, there, there's nothing here for me. You know, there's not anything to get better. I have education. I have like, I have knowledge of a lot of different people and I could simply make my staff aware of, Hey, if you see anything, that's cool. I could simply make my staff aware of, Hey, if you see anything, that's cool that, um, you think that I would dig cause it's from like, uh, you know, philosophy or if it's from,

you know, some new study about, you know, what makes people feel better when they do this, the first thing in the morning or whatever, whatever the heck it is, you see something like that, you know, please make sure that I see it. I could even just tell my friends and, and see it that way. But I just felt like there ain't nothing on here that I need that's going to assist me. And I think social media is being really, really damaging. And we're going to have some people on the podcast coming up to talk about how damaging social media is. We have a guy that we're working on right now. how damaging social media is. We had a guy, we're have a guy that we're working on right now. He used to work for Google and he just took off. He was like, I'm out. Like, I just can't, I'm not doing this shit. You know, like he, it's interesting. Cause he's a pretty big player in

the whole thing. And he's one of the guys who he's one of the guys who sort of directed some things to go in a certain direction. And then he, now he's like, Whoa, like, wait a second. No, no, no, no. I didn't, I, I didn't mean for it to end up, you know, heading in this direction like this. And he really wants to want to kind of pump the brakes and he, he wanted to implement some more things that he felt were ethical to try to, you know, to, to slow down this machine of what they're doing, because so much of it plays into the chemicals in your brain, you know, are getting hit every single time. The dopamine's

getting hit when you see the likes, the dopamine's getting hit. And you're, you know, you're getting hit in both directions. You're getting, sometimes you're feeling great, sometimes you're feeling bad, sometimes you're feeling great. And you keep checking it and checking it and checking it. If you remember the end of the social networking movie, the end of the Facebook movie, he just keeps trying to refresh his page over and over again to see if that girl says something to him. He's just refreshing it, refreshing.

I mean, how many of us have been there to try to see like, Oh, it only had that last thing only had 29 likes. The computer must be broken or my phone must be broken. And you refresh it again and refresh it again. It's still stuck. And there's still only one comment. And it's from your mom. And you're like, no, something horrible must have happened.

This has got to be messed up or whatever. But, man, it's super damaging. And what I'd like to kind of finish with is this thought is, you know, I know we weren't intending on only talking about social media. And I don't want people to think that I'm just here to bash social media because I love it. There's a lot of fun things that happen from it. We see a lot of funny memes, like where do we get our SpongeBob beams from, you know?

Those are the best. And there's a lot of fun stuff that can happen on there. But I would really, I want you to question where do you spend your time? You know, you hear that often people say, you know, you're the byproduct of the things that you read and you're the byproduct of the people that you hang out with. You're you're the byproduct of, you know, I'll change read since I don't ever read the byproduct of what you digest. You know, what what are you taking in every day and who you're hanging out with? And also, when you think about who you're hanging out with, how does social media not get factored into that? Because you're literally hanging out. I mean,

we're hanging out right now, basically. And this is through a network. This is through a computer. This is another way to communicate. And who are you hanging out with? Are you hanging out with Instagram? Are you hanging out with forms of social media more so than you're hanging out with anybody else? The most important person you need to hang out with is yourself. And if you have anything, anything remotely just off with you at all whether it's something small like um let's just say you're not that confident with your shirt off or something which is very it's a very minor it's a very common thing that little fucking thing will get eaten away and chewed up on and spit out 900 000 million fucking times if you're on social media,

even if you don't post a picture with your own shirt off because everybody else has their shirt off. That is a very innocent thing to have an insecurity about. That is not a huge deal. And maybe even you're trying to work on it. Maybe you're doing push-ups and you're trying to train, you're trying to exercise, but then you just keep seeing. Maybe you're doing pushups and you're trying to train, you're trying to exercise, but then you just keep seeing. And again, the person that posts a picture of the shirt off, if it's me or Michael Hearn or whatever, we're not like, oh man, can't wait to make these guys feel really bad. Maybe every once in a while. No, you're not trying to make anyone feel bad. You're trying to be like, hey, I'm proud of what's going on here. I think that maybe people think that you've always been built that way. So they're just like, shit, man, that's super cool. But you're really just pumped and you're excited because you're like,

you should see how I used to look. You have this ability too. You can make these large changes. But what I want to shift towards a little bit, and I know we've been going at it for a moment here, but this is a big question and it's something that people need to, people need to really dive into is I have to go to my dad's quote. You know, we got father's day coming up and we have a strong dad t-shirt that will be, uh, I think that's, I think it's actually free. It's gonna be free on, uh, markbellslingshot.com. So make sure you don't miss out on it. I think we only printed like 400 of those bad boys,

but on the back it has my dad's quote, you know, part of knowing who you are is knowing who you're not. And I also admit, I don't know if that's my dad's quote, but that's what he told me when I was young. And I just always gave him, gave him the credit for it. But that's massive, you know, in, in, in understanding, you know, it's just, it's hard, it's hard to really kind of put into words because as I mentioned earlier, words do matter. Words do affect you. I haven't cried in a negative way from social media ever, but I have cried in a positive way from social media.

Actually, now that I think about it, I guess I cried a little bit in more ways than one. I've seen things, I've seen emotional content on there or things I viewed as being emotional from like military, you know, I viewed stuff on there that I thought was compassionate and I got caught up in it and I cried from it. But for the most part, you know, some stuff has been tears of like rejoice or being proud of something that somebody did. Like we've had some really crazy comments come in about what we do on this podcast. We've had, I've had people tell me they get off of like crack cocaine or heroin or like all kinds of wild, wild stories. And sometimes you're reading those stories, you can't help but kind of envision yourself being in those, in those shoes and

having just that one person that says that one darn thing that finally gets you heading in the right direction and, uh, and makes you feel really good. But you know, it's for the most part, for the most part, a lot of the stuff that you see is pretty negative. We don't really have a lot of stuff that's super positive when it comes to social media. And I think the best way to play social media is to understand that it's a game. And you need to really try to play the game. You need to understand it's an infinite game. There's no end. So that makes it difficult because like, what's the goal? I want to have more followers.

Why do you have more followers? Well, I want to help more people. Well, everyone kind of said, okay, really? You want to help more people, but why do you keep getting stuck on anytime anybody makes a bad comment? Because if you're going to help a lot of people, you're going to take a lot of criticism. And the more people that you help, the more criticized you're going to be. Walt Disney, people like that,

Elon Musk, those people are under fire all the time. Joe Rogan's getting blasted left and right nonstop. Joe Rogan can't say what he thinks anymore. He can't really. He's pretty strong, Joe Rogan. We all have to give him credit. He still speaks his mind pretty good, but you're not going to really talk. I don't think you'll hear about who he's going to vote for and these different things. I think at this time, it's just so toxic because people get so wound up in it. But it's been super helpful to me over the years to embrace this quote, part of knowing who you are is knowing who you're not. I don't have to, I don't have to worry or be concerned about what somebody

from the other side of the planet says, or what somebody says to me, I'm not that person. I'm not living their life. And that's the other thing too, is, um, that person i'm not living their life i and that's another thing too is um uh shit one of the girls uh that we uh get a lot of slingshot stuff to amanda i'm forgetting her last name she dates uh tp hulk um i'm forgetting her forgetting her name oh no she doesn't i I'm sorry. I said the wrong. She dates, uh, not TP Hulk, TP, uh, Papula. She dates TP Papula. Anyway. Um, her name's Amanda. I forget her last name, but she, um, her and I were going back and forth on some, uh, on some Instagram stuff. And it was all, it was all real positive. She, she made a great post and I, and I, uh, I wrote back to her. I was like, super appreciative that you put this

message out here. This is great. And she was like, yeah, even though we differ on a lot of things. And then I thought about that for a moment. As soon as she said that, I thought about it. I wasn't offended. She was like, we differ in a lot of our politics. And I was like, well, of course we do. You're 27. And I'm 40. We're at completely different points in our lives. So again, you know, part of knowing who you are is knowing who you're not. Even just recognizing you're in a completely different age category than somebody. My nephew, Hamish, he's seven. What's his interest when he wakes up? He's seven years old. He's at the beach house. He's turning on SpongeBob SquarePants. Every time he gets the remote, he's talking to the remote.'s at the beach house. He's turning on SpongeBob SquarePants. Every time he gets,

every time he gets a remote, he's talking to the remote. It's like SpongeBob. And then we're hearing whatever the music is or whatever lives in a pineapple under the sea. And it's, you know, off to the races again.

So he's going to have way different interests than, you know, than what I have. Like someone might say, Hey, you know, what do you guys want to have? And just always his answer might be ice cream, you know, then what I have, like someone might say, hey, you know, what do you guys want to have? And just always his answer might be ice cream, you know, where somebody else is thinking differently because they're not seven years old.

Like, oh, I'd love to have a sandwich for lunch, you know. So we're going to have a lot of different interests, even just in accordance to our age, in accordance to whatever, you know, whatever the things are that are kind of more in front of us, you know, at that, at that particular moment. But that's always been helpful to me is, is to, is to rely on that. And also kind of finish lastly with, you have to think about how irrational it is. If you were to like Andrew, if you were to come into, if you were to come into, if you were to come to me and Nsema and you were like crying hysterically,

we'd be like, holy crap, like what is going on? Like Andrew is not normally like, what the, you know? And Nsema and I, like we're automatically thinking like, oh man, like something crazy happened. I barely even want to ask him about it. And we ask you and you wipe your eyes off, wipe the snot off your face. And you say three people on Instagram think that I'm getting fat.

You know, we, we would be like Andrew, you know, or, or three people said, I actually saw somebody recently, I saw somebody recently saying the podcast is better when Andrew doesn't talk or something like that. Right. So, but let's say that you're, of course, that doesn't feel good to see that. It doesn't feel good to see that it doesn't feel good to hear that it doesn't feel good for that to you know be in there right but it shouldn't it's maybe something you recognize and you're like ah i kind of wonder why he said that that's interesting did i suck on that podcast i don't know it makes you probably overthink it even more than you should because you probably shouldn't give it uh you probably shouldn't give it any attention but my point is is that i think that it ends up being pretty irrational because it's hard to think about these things rationally when somebody's trying to cut you up like that because again it's an irrational thought to begin with what that guy said wasn't

helpful he wasn't like hey man like and, like I, you know, you didn't know that much about that topic. It would be cool if you research that particular topic a little bit more, if you're going to speak on it or whatever, like even that's kind of negative. But if he just had a positive recommendation, you know, Hey, I liked on the other podcast a couple of weeks ago, when you mentioned this, I think that fits your line of thinking better or whatever the hell it would be. But man, it's usually purely negative. And a lot of these negative things, they come from an irrational place. And so that is what we were fighting against. We're fighting against a lot of irrational thoughts. These are irrational memes

that are passed on from person you know, person to person. Now, these people think that if you vote for Trump, that you're automatically racist. Now, these people think that if you have this idea or this concept, that you're automatically this way. Like I love West Side Barbell. So that means that I can't also like bodybuilding. I can't you know, I like powerlifting. So it's, it's no, you only talk about powerlifting. I don't want to hear anything else from you. That's all you're allowed to talk about. These are, these are very, I'm not allowed to run. I'm not allowed to go and like, and work on running because I'm a powerlifter. I'm not allowed to go from powerlifting to bodybuilding.

I'm not allowed to go back into powerlifting after I did a bodybuilding show because now I'm a bodybuilder. You know what I mean? It's like these things are, they're so irrational. They're so far-fetched. And unfortunately, these are things that we have to talk about. But if I was to go to my wife and mention, and you know, I heard I talk about social media all the time, but if I was to say, hey, you know, honey, I just don't feel great today because I made a post and like all these people, man, they were super negative to me. Well, she would be able to apply rational thought to that in one second. Well, not one second, in 30 seconds, because she's not in the experience. She's not in the moment. but I was in the moment. I was in the experience. I was getting drowned out by it. I was looking directly, staring into my phone. I was really thinking about those thoughts and I was like, why did that person

say that? Then I read the next thing and it confirms what the person before that said it. Holy crap. Am I really that way? Wow. This really sucks. Man, I really am that way. And just a small conversation of, you know, this happens a lot in powerlifting. You know, you would do a powerlifting meet and you would mess up, maybe bomb out on the bench press, and you think that everything that you're doing is wrong. You know, you think that everything you're doing is completely wrong. And in regards to social media, I think a lot of us end up subconsciously feeling the same way. We feel like everything now all of a sudden because one person makes one irrational comment about you, now you start thinking irrationally and the whole podcast is a mistake. is a mistake. Like, shit, man. Like, what are we doing? This guy, you know, this guy, this guy, or if you say this guy is an asshole, man, I can't believe he said that. And then the next week you see the same thing. And then the next week you see a couple people say something. And now you're like, yeah, man, like we, we should probably do some. And then you see another

podcast has like different microphones or they're talking about different topics or and now your mind is racing you're like we got to go after all this other shit and man that is a that is a dangerous dangerous place to live in and so to try to give an answer to this question of you know how do you like not care um I think that anyone says that they don't care. I think they're lying to themselves. I think that you can arm yourself with a lot of different things that I don't think there's any other way out of it. I think you need to delete. Not your account necessarily. I think you need to remove social media from your phone for a little while as a tester. Let's just say I'll just call it a seven day challenge.

Mark Bell, Saturday school, seven day challenge, right? Saturday seven is the hashtag. There we go. Just, just dump it, man. Dump some of your social for a while. And how can we have a hashtag when you're dumping your social media? That's the real question. I guess I didn't think that went through all the way. But anyway, you see my point here is that it would be a good idea to investigate just what would that look like for you if you got rid of it? Did you feel better? Did you feel worse? But, you know, they recommend to people that are people that are bipolar or people that are really coming off of a really, really strong set of circumstances.

Somebody just came off of a divorce. A good doctor in these situations with someone who's like bipolar or something, they'll say, let's say it's you, Andrew. And they'll say, Andrew, you know, while you're coming to me for therapy, we got to give, we got to give this some time. And I know you said you just came out of another relationship, but it's actually good timing because I would love for you not to be in a relationship right now because you're having a hard time being in a relationship with yourself. And that's why you're here. And here's, you know, let's have some open dialogue about how you feel

and all this stuff. Once we get you right, then you can explore. And if you meet somebody, then that's cool. But let's just not actively try to meet people. So have you not try to actively meet somebody because you need to work on yourself. I feel that social media is the same way. I feel a lot of people aren't prepared for it. We're just jumping into it and it's a game that just is never ending. So be really careful of it and just see just what would it be like just to just delete the damn thing just for see if you can make it through seven days. I deleted mine probably about four or five days ago. We'll see how many days I make it. But I've deleted it in the past, and it was much to my benefit.

I'm not saying you need to get rid of it forever. Maybe get rid of it for a period of time. Maybe you start to feel better. Maybe you recognize certain things about yourself, and maybe you're able to go back to it. When you go back to it, hopefully you'll be stronger. Boom. There you go, peeps. That will conclude this class session of Mark Bell's Saturday School. Hope you guys appreciate it as much as we do. I know I love these conversations. It's really cool listening to Mark really get deep into certain topics. So if you do, please let us know, uh, drop us a rating and review on iTunes. Uh,

hit us up on Instagram at Mark Bell's power project, hit us up on Twitter at Mark at MB power project. Sorry about that. And, uh, hit us up with your questions too. Um, like I said in the previous episode, the, uh, comment section on these Saturday school videos are being highly underutilized. So that is a great place for you guys to reach out and for us to see it. Mark, I know you're kind of taking a, we'll call it a fast from social media, but you're also accessible and you are on multiple platforms.

Where can people get in touch with you? I'm at Mark Smelly Bell on Instagram and Twitter. I actually still am running my Twitter, but I'll see it. If you make enough noise, I'll end up seeing it because somebody will show me the way. Lastly, in finishing, I just want to sum up and give you guys something very tangible. And I've talked about this many times on the podcast before, but I want you to understand that nobody can make you feel any type of way.

There's no comment from any type of person that can sway you or make you feel a certain type of way. There's nothing. You hear people saying getting triggered, getting triggered is, is if you're someone that has gotten triggered or you get triggered, don't get triggered anymore because getting triggered is a, it should be a thing of the past. People should just, if you heard what, if you hear what I'm saying right now, you should not be able to get triggered or it should be very, very difficult because getting triggered is an irrational response to something that somebody said that probably is already starting out as irrational.

No one has control over your feelings. You have control over the things that you hear or you don't have control over the things that you hear. We don't always have control over the things that pop into our head and our thoughts. But we have control over how we think about those thoughts and how we place them with other things. Do you need to put your thoughts? Do you need to bundle your thoughts together with your feelings? You don't, you don't, you don't, your thoughts don't always need to be attached to a feeling. So if somebody says you're fat, you don't have to register that as sadness. There's, there's, there's, there's nothing in our history. There's nothing in your DNA. There's no

law. There's no rule that says that you have to pair those things together. So I want you guys to think about that. You are in complete control over how you feel. Your thoughts are a weird thing. And there's like, it's a very deep discussion because your thoughts are always going. Your mind is never on pause. Your mind never slows down. It's always thinking. It's always thinking, thinking, thinking. And you can't control some of those thoughts that pop in your head. You can't on here. You can't on see some of the things that you hear, some of the things that you see, but you can have a filtering system. You can have it filter through your head. You can have it filter through your mind.

And when it comes out the other side, it could be a little cleaner. It could be a little smoother so you can understand it a little bit better so that the next thing you do isn't an irresponsible, irrational response or you're triggered about something. So just remember that you, you have total 100% control over your thoughts, over your feelings, over, um, just about anything that you can think of.

You can control a lot of that. Strength is never weakness. Weakness, never strength. Catch you all later.