Your World Within Podcast by Eddie Pinero - THE POWER OF ATTITUDE | Listen When You Wake Up

Episode Date: April 17, 2023

"Two things define you: your patience when you have nothing and your attitude when you have everything." – George Bernard Shaw"

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finding clarity and focus. Not when the environment is perfect, not when the stars are aligned. When your mind wants to wander and your emotions are high, when the conditions are not perfect, and your brain starts to rationalize, maybe picking things back up some other time. Can you carve out serenity for yourself? Just enough to do what needs to be done,

because sometimes that is what makes all the difference. I remember way back now, 2017, getting out of a relationship, relocating, starting over in many ways, just kind of wrecked. And for a period, couldn't immerse myself in my work like I used to. The rest of life felt like it was on such shaky ground that it's like, you know, when everything's shaking, how do I find this stability to talk about it? it. To turn it all into something meaningful, it just felt impossible. But I was working through it, and one morning I was out on my patio listening to this meditation app. It was a guided meditation. And I'll never forget the voice saying, think of your thoughts as clouds floating overhead. You're sitting and looking up at them, just watching them go by. Which means a few things.

One, it removes you from your thoughts. That shattering in your head is not you, and you can in fact step away from it and observe it. And two, it kind of diminishes the good thought versus bad thought label. They're all just thoughts. And they only mean something if you take them on, if you choose to embody them. And now this alone is a practice or skill that people work on their whole lives, right? This concept is just the beginning, but, I felt that in many ways it was a light bulb moment.

It opened a door for me. There was a very practical usage here because the easy days are rarely a problem. But life is messy. The easy days are great, but you can't rely on them. Life is ups and downs. It's the days that things are turbulent or the other corners of my life are presenting issues,

whether it's people or health problems or frustration, or angered something that's occurred, just human things. To be able to sit down, open my laptop, and envision it all as little clouds floating overhead is freeing. It's like disassociating yourself from the baggage. Yeah, you might be in a storm, but you're capable of creating an eye wall, manufacturing serenity for yourself.

It's saying, no, the externalities do not get to, dictate how, when, and where I allocate my attention. It's not about running or hiding. This is about understanding that life does not create perfect moments. The timing will never be just right. And therefore, we must manufacture our starting points. We must create the very arenas in which we will perform. And one of my favorite examples of this was an eye-opening experience for me being sick on the day I planned to run a half marathon, been practicing, working out for months, right? Woke up with this scratchy throat and a cough, and everything sort of devolved into chaos.

I spent the morning constantly reminding myself that I was operating on an empty tank, that I was going to be less than 100%. It wasn't until I stopped talking to myself and just started running that I saw through the story I was telling. I separated my reality from my thoughts and created a space I could thrive in. I remember about halfway through looking at my time and realizing, wow, like not only am I okay, this is great, I feel good. I'm going to make something incredible out of this. Conditions weren't ideal, but that's just it.

Sometimes life asks us to make something of ourselves in the world around us with less, than ideal circumstances. When things aren't perfect, can you separate your thoughts from the task at hand? Can you find focus when you're surrounded by noise? Can you create clarity amidst the clutter? It's important to understand that life consists of highs and lows. That is the plane of reality we exist on,

and so the question becomes, comes. During the lows, can we carve out that environment to succeed? When we want to stop, to turn back, when we want to make excuses, can we separate the thoughts from what must be done, the emotion from the action? The ability to find calm amidst chaos is a superpower. We just need to remember to look. We need to remember that the negative emotions, the ideas and the stories are not us. They are clouds floating overhead. Step back, observe them, let them go by and understand that now it's time to do what needs to be done. Now it's time to tap into that potential and that strength that's always been there. It's always existed. It just needs permission, not from the external world, but from you.

now.