Mark Bell's Power Project - Mark Smelly Bell - Mark's Stoic Philosophy

Episode Date: July 30, 2020

Mark Bell shares some philosophy he lives by. This comes from the Notes App directly on Mark's phone. Pay close attention to this one as there is a ton of great information in this episode. Video version here: https://youtu.be/PzUOdUSpes0 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

Podcast fan, welcome back to Mark Bell's Power Project podcast hosted by Mark Bell, co-hosted by Nsema Iyeng and myself, Andrew Zaragoza. Today's episode comes to us by way of the Mark Smiley Bell YouTube channel. Again, this is different than the Super Training YouTube channel that we all grew up with. So please, if you guys haven't already,

please go subscribe to Mark Smiley Bell on YouTube. All links will be down in the podcast show notes. But today's episode, Mark's talking about the Stoic philosophy that he's episode, Mark's talking about the stoic philosophy that he's been following. He's going to share some of the quotes that he's actually made up himself that are really, really powerful. But I think you guys are going to dig today's episode. If you do, please reach out to Mark Bell. It's at Mark Smelly Bell on Twitter and Instagram. Let him know you guys heard it on the podcast feed. And I don't know, just hit them up with like maybe your favorite quote that he spits today. And yeah, just let

him know. Let us know at Mark Bell's Power Project on Instagram, at MB Power Project on Twitter. And I really hope you guys enjoy this episode. I'll talk to you guys later. Peace. This is Mark Bell from Super Training Gym. Super Training Gym, the strongest gym in the West. And today I'm going to talk to you about stoicism. What I want to talk about right now is I've been like reading quotes, I've been diving in deep, I've been doing a lot of research. I've said on Twitter a while back, I made a tweet and basically said something to the effect of working on yourself as a full-time job. And it's the most popular tweet that I have. Other people retweeted it. People got excited about it. And it really can be, and it really is.

And it should be something that you work on. You want to work on your personal development. You want to work on how we think about our thoughts, how we interpret life. For me, I'm on a quest for myself to continue to gain freedom and continue to get closer to what people call, quote unquote, the truth, right? We will never know things absolutely, or we won't know things for certain, but we can continue to narrow down the BS that we hear every single day, and we can figure out a way to get a little closer to the truth. During this quest, I have written out some of my own concepts, but I'm going to read you a little chunk of what I wrote here. I have come to the conclusion that I no longer need emotions. I'm going to read that again.

This is something I wrote. I have come to the conclusion that I no longer need emotions. I still identify them. I still understand them, but I do not have to react to them. That is a choice. I trained myself not to react to them any longer. You have the freedom to interpret that whatever way you'd like. If you're like, damn, bro, like I don't want to be emotionless. I don't want to be a robot. This is not about being a robot. This is about choosing a mode of interpretation. This is about choosing what gear you're going to switch into based off

of what you just heard. Sad, mad, happy, depressed, anxious. I don't even know if all those are emotions or this might be slightly different than emotions. So we have those things on this side, right? And then we have the input of what's coming in. The input of what's coming in. The input of what comes in does not have to equal the output of what goes back out.

So what comes in, somebody saying that I'm fat, I don't need to look and say, does that match up with sadness or does that match up with madness? Should I be really mad or should I be really sad? Oh, wait, I also have the option I could be depressed, too. Let me put on a sad song. I want you to understand that it's a choice. It's something that you choose. Now, I will also say, please forgive me because I do understand that many people suffer from depression on a really wide scale. And some people are bipolar. My brother was bipolar and he died from it. So I'm compassionate. I have empathy towards those things. I understand those things. And so not all of us are able to deal with the input that comes in the same way as everybody else is. Right. So I do understand there's a percentage of the population that that is very difficult.

from that, aside from those people that may have a really tough time with that, I still think that everybody possesses the ability to get a little bit better at it. And it's important for me to share a lot of that with you because I think sometimes if I say something, you might get a little reactionary to it, but there's no reason to be reactionary to it because you just need to understand that you have a choice that you can make on how you're going to react to it. You can just react to it. You can just be reactionary, but you don't have to have an emotion attached to that reaction. You're entitled to however you want to interpret it for yourself.

If you're like, hey, dude, I don't want to not have emotions, the emotions are still going to happen. No matter how much you train yourself, no matter how much you prep yourself for life, there's still going to be emotions that hit you. But for me personally, this has been really helpful. It's been helpful to take the input of what somebody says and to recognize, I don't believe that anyone's trying to do anything to you. I think that people are trying to do stuff for themselves. And I think that we get, we get kind of tied into like that person's trying to hurt me. That person's trying to hurt my feelings. That person made that

statement because of this. And I need to knock them back down because I know more than them. I need to be more right than them. Like, yeah, they're kind of right, but I need to be more right than them. So when they make this post or when they say this thing, I'm going to show them that I'm more correct than them or I'm going to show them that I'm smarter by correcting them. Hey, you used, you know, than instead of then or whatever. Or, you know, you're going to point out these kind of small things

and what is it really for? That's what you need to question sometimes. And I think all of us need to do this. Let me read you a little bit more on these concepts. Because it's just stuff that I just, I've written out on my phone. So I'll start from the top here. People's interpretations of what's going on used to amaze me. Not anymore.

I have no expectations of anything. Letting go of all that kind of stuff has just really helped me. So sometimes when I'm writing these things out, it's like a plea to myself of like, hey, please try to adopt this. I'm going to read it again. People's interpretation of what's going on, meaning what's going on in today's world in 2020. So people's interpretation of what's going on used to amaze me. Because what do people say right now? People are like, man, stuff is just so crazy. Okay, well, that's your interpretation. But if I'm to think of a few years ago, if I'm to think of, you know, different presidencies that we've had over

the years, have they always said negative stuff about the president? It's like, yeah, there's always been a massive amount of negativity, a massive amount of jokes about the president. You know, has there been fighting between political parties? Have there been other atrocities going on? I realized that because we're in the experience of this, because we're like in this, that we feel that this is the most prominent time that we've ever had in our history. I get it. I understand why we feel that way, but it won't always be that way. As we start to venture out and as we get through 2020, you know, it's not, each person's going to kind of have their own view of what 2020 was.

I personally think it's going to be a really amazing pivot point that helped change a lot of things for the better. And you could look at like the 60s that way, you know, people were protesting the war and those kinds of things. You can just look through our history and these things have happened time and time and time again. So it is what's going on right now. Crazy. It's just your interpretation of it. So I don't think that way anymore. I don't feel that way anymore. Another thing that's been really helpful is to just kind of learn to let go of certain things. Like having beliefs is great, but you need to understand that beliefs are just made up. They are literally made up. You make a belief and then somebody says something against

that belief and then you get mad about it. But why are you getting mad about it? Because it's just a belief. It's not even really necessarily the truth. It just happens to be your truth, right? And so then you tend to get offended by it. I can't believe that you believe that. Well, you shouldn't believe that you can't believe something from somebody else because how come they're not entitled to believing their own thing

when you're entitled to believe your own thing? How does that make any sense? Or, you know, with a scenario with police officers, right? I think more recently I've been seeing this acronym that like all police are bastards. Do you know what it is? It's something like that. Once you use the word all, then we're talking about absolutes and you can start to see how flawed the statement is. However, you're

entitled to your own beliefs. So if you believe that, that's fine. But what I would do is I would do a little investigation of where'd that belief come from? Did that belief come from because I'm black? Did that belief come from because I've had run-ins with the police before? My brother's had plenty of run-ins with the police before. I've seen him thrown to the ground before. I've seen him handcuffed. So I could, you know, technically for me, I could have that perspective and just think all cops are that way. But like, if we're being honest, once you start to use absolutes and once you start to say anything is a certainty, then I think we're getting into a real gray area. As I said, you're entitled to your beliefs. I'm entitled to my beliefs.

But once somebody starts spewing out these things that are like truly certain, well, if you're going to spew out things that you feel are certain, then I think we need to have a conversation, an intelligent conversation that doesn't involve violence, doesn't involve fighting. We need to have a conversation where we both open up our mind and we both try to maybe come to a compromise. Maybe we meet each other halfway and say, okay, you know what? I see why you feel that way. And maybe you don't believe what they believe, but maybe you just have a newfound respect for why they think that way. I think it's easy to get caught up in the emotions of stuff and it's easy to get caught up in the experience of things. But what I think is a really great practice, this has been really helpful to me as well. You want to try to observe

yourself from a distance. But the hard part about observing anything is to not disrupt. If you can observe without disruption, then you're on to something. But as soon as you disrupt, as soon as you observe, let's say you're observing what your children are doing. Somebody always comes to me crying. I'm going to see what the hell happens here because somebody's always coming to me crying. One of my kids always come to me crying, right? Not anymore. They're older, right? But I'm going to do my own investigation.

And I'm just going to observe. Well, if I observe and they know that I'm sitting there, they're both going to behave themselves, right? It's when I turn my back that one hits the other one with a toy and someone comes crying, right? So I need to observe them without disturbing them. One of the hardest things I think in life, and this might sound super weird, and you might think that I'm a weirdo, but that's okay,

is you have to be able to observe yourself without disturbing yourself. You have to be able to be on watch and you say, why did, you know, I wonder why I acted that way. I wonder why I did, I wonder why I'm doing this. What is this I'm doing? And when we start to think about feelings and emotions, it's actually a lot easier than you think, but it does take practice. But if you think about, you know, all the stress and all the different things that happen in a given day, you can deflect a lot of this stuff and you can not allow it to be a negative stress because there's positive stress and there's negative stress. As human beings, we need to be stressed. We need to be too cold. We need to be too hot.

We need it to be too dark. We need it to be too bright. We need it to be too this. We need it to be too that. It's just when you learn to reinterpret, it's just so. So rather than it being too hot, it's just hot. Oh, wow, it's warmer today. I think I'll wear less clothes. It's freezing today. I

think I'm going to put on more clothes. But, you know, rather than just completely complain about it, you just put a strategy to it. Additionally, learning that my feelings aren't helpful towards changing the news, that has been massively helpful as well. I mean, that's huge. The way that you feel is not going to change the news. If I said, hey, I put $100,000 in your bank account, that's cool. You might be really pumped, but it doesn't change anything. You might run around the building a bunch of times and be fired up and excited. And the reason why I don't do stuff like that, the reason why I don't celebrate too much and I don't get down too much is because what's the opposite of a great celebration? You know, I'd rather kind of Barry Sanders stuff. You know, Barry Sanders, when he get in the end zone, what did he used to do? He used to take the ball and he'd flip it to the

referee. Now each person is different. You know, you can spike the ball and you can celebrate and you can do a touchdown dance or whatever it is that you want to do. That's what your job is. You're supposed to put the ball in the end zone. And so he always thought, I'll just flip it to the referee. This is another big one here. No amount of responsibility leads to stress. No amount of responsibility is going to lead to more stress. I understand it's easy to say, oh man, I'm super stressed. I got a lot on my plate.

Is there a limit to how much you can have on your plate? There's a limit to how much you can have on your plate right now. But do you know what that limit is? Do you know have on your plate? There's a limit to how much you can have on your plate right now, but do you know what that limit is? Do you know what the upward limit is? If you keep training and you keep being good every single day and you keep working on yourself, do you know what the upward limit is?

No one knows. There's nobody that can give you that information. Let's say that currently you're a college student and you lift some weights. Yes or no, does the rock do more than you in one day? You know, kind of think about that. And then how is he able to do, is the rock an extraordinary, exceptional person? Is he, is he, yes, you can view him in a certain sense. Yes. Right. The other question is, did he probably start out a little bit similar to you? Has he always been able to do as much as he's doing right now?

Nobody can tell you how much work you can handle. So if you feel stressed, you've got to ask yourself, why do I feel stressed? And most likely it's because you haven't developed a skill set yet to be able to handle the interpretations of the things that you hear, the things that you see, the things that you believe. One of the suckiest things about this whole process I found was cleaning out your closet and auditing everything that you once believed.

That has been the hardest part. I went through my day-to-day life and I was like, okay, I think I did a little bit better job on that. I'm like, okay, I think I did a little bit better job over there. And then I was like, oh, I think I did a little bit better job over there. And then I was like, oh, but what about past experiences? And then I was like, ah, I'm like, man, I got a lot of, a lot of work to do. I got to think about some of those past experiences. I got to think about some of the stuff I said and some of the stuff I did. And, and I need to, do I really believe that?

Do I think that's really that way? Luckily, you know, none of it, none of it was bad necessarily, but it was just kind of broken beliefs. You know, for a long time, I've been telling you guys that I don't read and I've said that I can't read and then I have to recorrect myself. Well, I'm actually reading right now. I'm reading a book, you know, for the first time in my life and I'm on page 15. That's 15 times better than anything I've ever done before when it comes to reading. So reading is new to me, right? So we add in a book of reading, right? And then I'll have people that come up and they say, how do you do it all? How do you podcast? How do you have time for your kids? How do you have time for your wife? How do you have time for your dad? How do you have time for your brother? How do you have time for training?

How do you have time to stay in shape? It's all just practice. It's just practice. There's nobody that can tell you a given amount of stuff that you can get done in a day or the amount of stress that you can handle or how much you could put on your plate. Maybe for the moment, it's not good to add a bunch of stuff to your plate because maybe at the moment you're still working on all that stuff and just as we always share here it's always incremental progress small incremental progress over a long period of time this this is huge right here this is i'm going to end on this one your thinking is the only thing that can affect you that's's pretty crazy, right? There is what, like physical harm, right? Like someone could punch you, right? But even when it comes to physical harm, it would still be your interpretation of what happened, what went down, why that transpired, why that happened. And you

have a choice to continue your life, to feel worse about it. like in the case of being abused or something horrific like that you still have a choice you have a choice to lock yourself up in a prison where you're upset and depressed and and mad and sad and everything else or you have the ability to say hey you know what that was just part of my past and if i look at the facts unfortunately a lot of people are abused that happens to a lot of people i still need to be a just part of my past. And if I look at the facts, unfortunately, a lot of people are abused. That happens to a lot of people. I still need to be a functioning part of society. And it doesn't give you a pass just because you had a past that was disrupted by somebody else's behavior, by somebody else's beliefs. It doesn't give you a pass to treat people whatever way you want in the future relationships that you have or the relationships that you have at the moment. If your dad abused you and now you're abusing your child, yes, it's understandable,

but you can't really just tell your kid, yeah, like I beat you because that's all I know. Like, you know, and it doesn't take away what you did. You still did something that's not right. Correct? I think that this is a powerful statement to kind of end with is just this idea of your thinking is the only thing that can affect you. We can think about the way someone else thinks about us and we can have that hurt us. Or we can say, you know what, I think they just don't understand me. Somebody says, I don't like Mark Bell because he's super arrogant. How do I deal with that? How do I deal with somebody saying that? Well, if I'm thinking about it, I could say, well, a lot of people that talk and communicate via YouTube and a lot of people that are on social media that are pumping out a lot of

information, a lot of them are considered to be arrogant. I can take some other information and I kind of plug that in and say, oh, well, it doesn't really have to impact me. It's going to impact you whatever way you want it to impact you. I'm going to leave you guys off with one of my favorite quotes, and it's from Abraham Lincoln. And basically he says, your mind is as happy as you make it up to be. Your mind is as happy as you make it up to be. I think that's an amazing quote. When I think about the reason why I'm on this journey

and the reason why I'm investigating a lot of these things, it's not because I'm sad. It's not because I'm mad. It's not because I'm depressed. It's not because I have anxiety. It's the simple fact that I want to try to help as many people as I possibly can be happy. I have found a lot of happiness in the simple things of life. I found a lot of happiness with my diet. I found a lot of happiness in my relationships. I found a lot of happiness

in the weights that I lift. And I don't really feel like I need to get happiness from anything artificial or anything different. I don't think I need additional stuff or things necessarily to make me happy. Although I do enjoy doing things that are fun I feel complete and I feel like hey if you feel complete why not go out and try to make other people feel complete or not make other people feel complete help other people feel complete especially the people that want to especially the people that are seeking out the information especially you guys that are that are here following this channel 29,000 followers right here, 29,000 subscribers.

We appreciate every single one of you. Over 4 million downloads on our podcast recently. It's just, it's overwhelming. It's overwhelming the support and the love that you guys show and the love that you guys give. In the comments below, you can love me some more by leaving me some questions. Let me know, like, you know, what are your thoughts? What are some of your interpretations?

What did I say that you feel is wrong? Like, did I say something that you feel is really off? Or did something kind of, when I said something a certain way, were you like, eh, I don't really agree with that. I'd love to hear it because that way we can gain more knowledge and we can all learn more. Also, if you don't mind, if you got stuff that you guys really like that, uh, lights a fire under your butt that gets you excited about that's in line with some of the stuff I just talked about, uh, please share that with us. We love talking about, uh, stoicism. Hit me with it. Strength is never weakness. Weakness is never strength. Catch y'all later.