Rules of Engagement

Good morning, Cadre. Good morning. I hope you are all doing well. I hope things are going well for you. I am in the middle of a move and that is a very busy time. And it is on the pretty high on the list of stressful things people go through in their lives, along with births and deaths and marriage and divorce and all that. And I'm trying something new. I was trying it anyway, and then it dovetailed nicely with the fact that I'm moving. And so it's not quite a numbered rule of engagement, but it is something I am considering.

Good morning. Speak Wonder. It's very delightful to see you here. I'm just saying I'm in the middle of a move. And of course, one of the things I try and do when things are stressful is up the amount of positive in my life. The moving stress isn't negative. Negative. But it's not like, oh, I'm having fun all the time. Although I'm trying to add more of that in. Right. It can be. Some things can be chores or adventures, as I've talked about before. And I'm trying to make as many adventures as I can.

But I'm also trying to celebrate things. So two things. Well, three things really. I'm celebrating today. One. This morning I did my 1000th Orangetheory Fitness class. And Orangetheory has given me many gifts, including my friendship with JC who I met when he was working for the Orange Theory Club I went to in Minneapolis lo these many years ago. JC from here in Cadre. That's how I know him. So today I went to my thousandth Orange Theory class, which is a big deal for me. I've been looking forward to it for a while.

And Now I have two new goals. One is to go to 1001, because I don't want to stop. And sometimes if you meet a big milestone, you stop. And it's just, I'm not gonna stop and to hit 11 classes, because 111 is my favorite number and then 11 is my second favorite number, etc, etc. So that's one thing I'm celebrating. Another thing I'm celebrating to up the amount of positive in my life. Bruce, Frederick, Joseph Springsteen last week announced a new box set, I guess you could call it. It's been rumored for a while he did a box set in the early 2000s called Tracks, which had outtakes and stuff from all his albums from the 70s, basically up through the early 80s, I guess.

But this is seven albums he's had in the can for since 1983, like starting in 1983, up through 2018, seven full albums, 83 songs, 74 of them. We've never heard. Some of the songs have either been on movie soundtracks or other albums. But my goodness, if you are a Bruce Springsteen fan and if you've been here for two minutes, you know that I am, that's a big deal. And so I'm celebrating that. And then there was a single he released from one of the albums, Rain in the River. What a great song. I recommend it highly.

So that's the second thing I'm celebrating is at the end of June, I will have seven new Springsteen albums. Keep in mind, the Beatles released like 90 some songs total. Led Zeppelin released 70 some songs total on all their albums. I, I just don't know how to absorb seven albums. I mean, it will become a quarter of his studio albums because he's released 21 studio albums and when you add seven more, that's 28. This will be a quarter of his studio album output on one day. Like, I just don't know how to pull that in.

Okay, but that's for me. So the third thing I'm celebrating is the number of people in my life who have sent me the message. I'm sure you've heard about this, but isn't this exciting? Or aren't you excited about the Springsteen release? Like, aren't you excited? This is a big day for you. What must this be like for you? I mean, just the number of people who, in their lives, when they hear Bruce Springsteen, they think of me, delights me. It's one of the, it's one of the delights of loving something so much and then being open about it is that people just know.

People just know how much you love it. You know, like when Mark Hamill does something good in the world, people also let me know because I'm a big fan of him and his work. So that celebration is a corollary of what I want to talk about today, which is I made a decision. So I. I've been very tired for a long time and I have been working on it for a long time. Both the emotional components of my fatigue, because there is one sort of coded into my body is age old fatigue. I was abused at night as a kid and so it left me pretty tired, but I couldn't really tell anybody why I was so tired.

So I'm going to get to that a little bit more in a second. And I consulted doctors. I don't want to take sleep medication, but I have A naturopath. And I'm on some supplements that are designed to support sleep that have helped my sleep hygiene really good and I exercise pretty well, etc. So I've just been doing all the things. When I say my sleep hygiene is pretty good, it's because that's been part of the journey, is just working on it. I wear an eye mask, I have a noise machine. I go to bed at the same time when I wake up in the middle of the night anxious.

I now, for years now, almost 10 years now, I decided before I go to bed what I'll think about if I wake up anxious. Which means after a few years of practicing that I no longer wake up anxious very often, which is huge. Or if I. I mean, I still wake up at 3 o' clock every night or 1 o' clock or at some point I wake up but I don't stay awake. I can get back to sleep pretty easily. Most of the time I'm tired a lot, I work out a lot. So that leaves me physically fatigued, which helps with sleep at night.

But sometimes I wonder, is that a problem during the day? So I've tweaked that. But I realized I had a chronic thing I was saying, I was saying all the time, oh my gosh, I'm tired. It was my first response when people would ask me, how are you doing? I'm really tired. And then I'd often say something positive, but my first thing was always, ugh, I'm so tired. Ugh, I'm so tired all the time. And I decided this winter that I was going to do an experiment of not complaining about being tired all the time, just that one thing.

Like I'm not going to. I call it rehearsing that old feeling, just saying it all the time without even thinking about it. Is it true that I'm tired? Usually it was, maybe, maybe not. And even if it is true, is it useful to put my attention there when somebody asks me how I'm doing? Is that a great way to spend my time and energy and my attention? Is that a great invitation for someone else's attention into my life is to say, oh, I'm so tired. So I just stopped and I have a little marker. I have these habit calendars that I use and I every day I'm like, did I, did I complain about being tired today?

And here is what I am learning about it. And I don't know exactly how I'm going to phrase it as a rule of engagement yet, but I'm just Going walking into the lived experience. I'm less tired. I'm less tired just because I'm not saying I'm tired all the time. Because here's what I decided, that if I am tired, I am either going to rest or turn my attention elsewhere. That unless I'm gonna rest being tired, there's no use focusing on the fact that I'm tired. It was pretty notable a couple years ago at the super bowl when Taylor Swift, you know, she was on tour for the ERAS tour, and she went down after the Chiefs won to see Travis Kelsey.

And one of the things she, he's like, oh my gosh, you've gotta be so tired. Cause she came straight from Asia, I think, and she said jet lag is a state of mind. She's like, I'm fine. Jet lag is a state of mind. Now, I'm not quite there, but I have noticed that not complaining about it all the time, not focusing on it all the time, just keeping my attention on somewhere else, means my experience of being tired is different because I'm not focusing on it so much. So there's just that that that in and of itself made me less tired.

And then the second thing that happened was because I made the decision, if I noticed I was, oh, I'm tired. Oh, I feel tired. Because I had the decision, either rest or turn your attention elsewhere. I'm resting more. So that's the second thing is I just started to rest a little bit more in the late afternoon. In 2018 and 2019, after I left office, I slept 10 hours a night, every night for six months, and I took a nap every day. That is genuinely what my body needed. After I stepped out of the crucible I had been in and then I just took it.

Then I didn't sleep 10 hours a night, but I still, you know, took a nap most days. And I love napping. But then as I got better, as things were better, I didn't take as many naps as I had more attention to be in the world. As I worked on anxiety in particular, as I worked on anxiety in particular and my freeze response sort of melted and I became able to be present and pleased and active in my own life and upward trend activities of my choosing, I stopped napping. And so now I don't nap every day, but some days I do or I rest, I just lie down and I read a little bit or something in the late afternoon, less tired.

So that was the second thing. Is there a third thing about me and being tired? This is also New you are watching me process it with you. Is there a third thing and third reason I'm less tired? Yes, because my attention is on more positive things and being higher vibe is just higher vibe, to put it in a 70s way. I guess being higher vibe means my life is higher vibe. It means when I turn my attention elsewhere, I'm doing something of my choosing, sitting frozen scrolling on social media, not very restful, not very energizing, and I'm doing just more activities that energize me as opposed to enervate me.

So that's been great. And I am also, I think I've talked here about one of the things I'm doing is I'm practicing being hungry. So I also made the same decision about not rehearsing, not complaining, not focusing on being hungry when I am hungry. And I'm learning a lot about my relationship to hunger, which is very different, which means I'm learning lessons about my relationship to food. But they are distinct lessons because they're about how I use food to stop being hungry, which is good, which is kind of what food's for, which is kind of what hunger is for.

But my relationship with food and hunger was just very, very messed with as a young person. And so I'm still learning a lot of lessons about that. I don't have much to offer today about it, except that not complaining about it has given me a better perspective on when I'm emotionally hungry and when I'm physically hungry. And what happens when I wait on physical hunger, not great. What happens when I wait on emotional hunger is fine. So that's, that's been good lesson. And not complaining about it means I can focus my attention on it.

Because if I'm complaining, it's capturing all that available attention and just putting it in the feeling bad as opposed to putting it in the thinking. And that's what I found about complaining about being tired as well. And I think there's a general lesson here for me about complaining. I was a notable complainer as a child, which I give a lot of grace to. I used to be very embarrassed by it, except I heard a phrase a long time ago that whining is just anger coming out of a teeny tiny hole. Whining is just anger coming out of a teeny tiny hole.

And as a kid I had no room or safety to express my anger. And I had a few things to be angry about. And so I just complained a lot. I just complained a lot. And I think that got me in the habit of complaining and I am less of a notable complainer as I've been in recovery, etc. But I think there's a lesson to be learned. What are the remaining places where I am tempted to complain? Complaining is usually not useful for me or the situation or the per if it's a person, the person I'm complaining about.

No one responds well to being complained or whined about or at. So I think the lesson here is it's more fun to have my brain applied to things that are fun, adventurous, that make my life go better. I am not saying to not attend to the things in my life that are not working or going well, but they are not usually particularly well attended to by complaining about them often. It's also I'm from Minnesota and I think there are a fair number of Minnesotans here. Often complaining is our passive aggressive way of trying to get someone to do something about it.

I know it was for me as a kid, complaining is not the most effective way. I have to get somebody to do something about the situation. I would like to have changed because first of all, usually I am the person in the best position to do something about the thing I want changed. I am not 11 years old anymore and as we've talked about before, if my, you know, if my happiness depends on someone else changing, you know, if I think the problem is someone else, if I need someone else to change to solve my problem, I have identified the wrong problem because I don't have any control over other people.

So usually I'm the person who I should be complaining to. I am the person I should be approaching about making a shift in the situation. And that's 100% true about being tired, and that's 100% true about being hungry. I am the person in charge of both of those things and so complaining about them is not the most effective way to get anybody to do anything, including myself. So I either choose to eat or turn my attention elsewhere. I choose to rest or turn my attention elsewhere. These are the lessons I'm learning.

And isn't it funny that one small thing like that can make such a big difference that I can learn so much about something big by really committing to something small. That's what I want to leave you with this week. By the time I see you again next week, I will have been to Tennessee to be part of John Acuff's Remarkable youe Live event. I'm part of his Guaranteed Goals community. I'm very excited about that. But by the time I see you next week as well. It'll be Tuesday, and the movers come on Friday, so maybe I'll have some insights about that.

But thank you. Luke. Hello. Nice to see you. I'm glad you liked it. I'm not sure which line it was, but it is memorialized on this live stream for all eternity. So have great weeks, everybody. Have a great week, Cadre. And listen, experiment with not complaining about something and tell me what you're figuring out, because two minds or more together is way more than one mind. And I am excited to be here with you, excited to hear what you learn about it.