← Earn the Right to Live Your Dreams
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Foreign welcome to the Earn the right to live your dreams podcast. This is Coit Cooper and I'm ready to rock it out. How to find calm in a chaotic world. You could really just say in chaos, period, when things are getting wild, when things feel a little bit out, out of control, like, how do you find calm? And it seems like right now our world is more chaotic than it's been as long as I've been alive, for sure. And man, it's crazy because, like, I felt like we went through a whole year where you're trying to find your bearings and you're, you're trying to figure out what's what. And then you feel like there's a little bit of normalcy coming through last summer and you're getting to free up. And then all of a sudden new variant comes of COVID and things start to come at you again, really, really strong. And when that starts to happen, things start to amp up. The media amp, social media amps up and you can just feel that, right? And one thing I really truly believe in, and I try to practice this as much as possible, is guarding myself from negative content, guarding myself from the news, from social media, where it's very, very negatively driven. And one of the reasons why is it's so drama driven, right? You get eyeballs by being more dramatic by playing worst case scenario. And the news has done that for a long time. But. But I feel like now what's happened is that's in television shows and then that's trickling over into people's posts as well. And so what I always say is if you don't guard yourself against that, you're gonna have anxiety, you're gonna have frustration, you're gonna have overwhelm, and without knowing it, you're gonna get addicted to drama as well. And you're gonna start to look for that. And I don't know about you, but I don't want that. And so with that being said, I thought the other day, I want to get on social media and just see more of what people are posting about, more about what they're thinking. And I knew I was going to jump in and then pull myself back out, but I got on Twitter and there was a couple of posts on there that kind of intrigued me. It was talking about kind of what's going on with vaccinations and things like that. And I got on there and my purpose wasn't necessarily to form an opinion. I just wanted to know what people's opinions were. And so I jumped on There and I started to read through and man, it didn't take me but three, four, five minutes. And I felt it in my body. I literally felt myself starting to respond. And the reason why is it's not only the drama we've talked about, just people posting things that are so dramatic and, and from far sides of their belief systems, but they're aggressive and they're, they're not kind at all. People have become so condescending when they're posting things on social media. When they have a belief, they think their belief is the only way. And you have these two sides that are spitting things at each other. And I thought, oh my goodness. And so there's that and then there's, you know, when you're dramatic, you're going to get these far sides of what's going on. And that causes your, the kind of the amygdala that, the part of your brain to over respond to that and you just feel it. And so I cut off to that from that and I thought, my goodness, like, I can't be doing that. I've got to be cognizant about what I'm exposing my brain to. Because you know what I want. I don't know about you, but I want to be productive. I want to be positive in my day. I want to feel like I'm contributing to making the world a better place. I don't want to jump into that and feel that anxiety and feel stuck. I don't want to jump into that and get frustrated and argue with people. I want to be able to see what's going on, draw my opinion, come back to the table and find a way to bring the best that I have to offer. And I think that's why I thought I want to do this podcast episode, because I don't think with everything that's going on, I think it's very challenging to find calm, to find peace, to find productive, to find a way to contribute. And I'm not sure it's very difficult right now. And I know I have to fight for that. So I thought, what could I add to this? How could I use some of my skill sets and the things I've learned to contribute to this? So we're not trending more towards more chaos instead of we have more people out there showing what calm looks like, to show what peace looks like, to show what love looks like, to show what caring, kind, open mindedness looks like. And if we're going to get there, there are definitely things that I think we need to be doing. And these are things that have really served me over the last couple years and I don't know if I intentionally set out to do them, but I invest in growth a lot and I read just non stop. I'm reading, I'm listening to things, I'm trying to grow and, and there's some things I've learned that have led me to calm, to peace, to fulfillment. No matter what's going on in my environment. These are things I've been able to find and they are the coolest thing when you find them. The world can be just kind of just breaking loose with craziness around you and you can still come to your center and you can find peace and you can choose the emotions you want to experience. You can choose who you want to be and go out in the world and still be that. And, and hopefully you're listening to this, you're like, come on, I definitely want to do that. And if so, I've just got a few really simple but crazy impactful tips for you. And I hope you can use these things to continue to find who you are and bring your best so we can all kind of pull back and get things in a better place in our country and our world. And so the number one thing that I think is so critical, and I think this is not only critical in chaos, but in just in everyday normal living, is if you want to be calm, you want to be have peace, you want to be fulfilled, you want to just even just crush it, like bring your best in the key areas of your life. The number one thing you got to do, you got to find space for silence, space for stillness. I read the other day that our world, on average people have about 5,5000 different messages coming at them in a given day. 5000. Now I don't know the statistics on this, but I would be willing to bet I've seen a similar kind of concept. I would bet at least 80% of that is either negative or really, really dramatic. Meaning not real, not real. Imagine that, 80% of those messages, 4,000 messages coming at you a day right now that are negative or dramatic, leading you in the wrong direction. How could we possibly not be overwhelmed, frustrated, worn down with that amount of information, negative, disempowering information coming at us right now. How could we not? It's insane. Even if that is 5,000 of empowering, high powered, exciting messages like listen, your brain still can't handle that. It's too much. We, we are overstimulated right now. We're not only Overstimulated, we're overstimulated on the wrong things. And so, yes, we end up overwhelmed, we end up frustrated. Even with too much of positive, kind of light your brain up messages, we end up worn down. And so one of the ways to take that back, and I've seen this just work, unbelievable, just turnarounds for people, is to just create space for silence. And one of the best times to do that is first thing in the morning if you can just wake up and preferably wake up a little bit early when the world is quiet, when you don't have everything coming at you and just create a pocket for stillness. And the single best thing I've ever done to create stillness is just a breathing ritual, a mindfulness meditation. To wake up, to put on some relaxing, peaceful music and just focus on breath. Center your emotions, create some space for you to not only quiet your brain so it can replenish, but create some space there so you can actually think. Think about, do I actually believe some of these things are being presented to me? You know, do I actually. Is it, Is that actually true? We don't even do that right now in our society. We have so much information coming at us and we just grab a side and we just pick it and we dig in, actually stop, create space. Do I actually want to be doing this? Do I actually believe this? Who do I want to be as a human being? When you give yourself space to think, your brain has unbelievable capacity and it will lead you in the right direction. But it cannot do that when it's overwhelmed with too many messages. And it definitely can do that when it's overwhelmed with too many messages that are negative, dramatic, and pulling you in the wrong direction that can't lead you to your highest potential. So if you'll just start, it can be five minutes, it can be as little as a minute, but 5 minutes, 10 minutes, 15 minutes, I think you're going to love it so much you'll extend it out. But if you'll just spend a pocket of time and create silence and allow your brain to just chill for a minute, it will pay massive dividends. And guess what? If you can quiet all the negative noise, you can quiet all the clutter around you. You might just find yourself. You might find the core things that you truly believe in, and you might realize, I don't need all this noise. Instead, I just want to show up with the best attitude that I possibly can and raise my kids to be open minded, to be caring, to be loving. Or maybe you might say I just want to go into work and I want to be that positive light. You know, there's so many things that you can do and be. You can't possibly know which ones really matter to you until you give yourself that space. And when you find that space and you know the things that matter to you and you know who you wanna be, you give yourself a shot to do that. And one of the best ways to find calm and peace is to live the way that, you know you should be living. That is not a world where we are pulled by social media in negative directions. To be hateful, to be angry, to be critical, that's not it. That's not the place. But you have to find that for you and to give yourself that space to allow your brain to replenish, to allow your brain to rethink. So powerful. I do this every single day. And when I start with meditation, I find calm, I find quiet, I find that space to where I don't have to respond to everything that's going around me. And this gives me an unbelievable starting point in my day. So that's, number one, talk more than I thought I would, but hopefully that's useful to you. The number two thing, that's super, super important. It extends from number one. In fact, number one, you've already started that if you do that space for silence. But the number two thing is to intentionally disconnect from discouraging. And you could add to that disconnecting from drama driven as well. So, so important that you take pockets and you disconnect from discouraging. So we already know that that includes the news, social media, but this can also be people. Don't allow yourself to be surrounded by people that are just draining on you. You gotta create a pocket where you disconnect. And so if there are those people, disconnect from them. Try to find people who have those emotional states that you really believe in. You want to be more calm, try to find somebody who's calm and spend more time with them. You want to be more impactful, try to find somebody who's more impactful and spend time with them. I promise you, the discouraging and drama driven is not what you want to be. I don't think it's what you want to be. You have to decide that. But if it's not you, you've got to turn that around and disconnect from people, disconnect from messages. You know, give yourself limitations on not only how much time you spend on social media, but if you're gonna Be on there, you know, give yourself like these rules or guidelines on what you're gonna consume. Like, when I go on social media, I know what I'm, what I'm okay with consuming. I don't generally go on there and scroll and try to look for things that are going on with COVID because I know that's, I know how that's gonna make me feel. And, and I just, I don't trust that there's enough really good information out there that I want to go and just randomly just expose my brain to that. Because I also know that our brains have a part of it. They're going to look for what's wrong. And if you constantly expose it to things and information of drama driven things that are wrong, your brain is going to go, oh my gosh, like the world is coming down. And it's not only going to do that, it's going to project and expect drama. It's going to, it can even become addicted to drama. So the way that you, you get away from that is you disconnect from it. You only give yourself smaller pockets to consume that type of information. And when you do, even going in, you have a plan, you know what you're going to do. Like when I went into Twitter, I'm going to consume this, I'm going to hop out and I'm going to, I'm going to evaluate this a little bit. And so for you though, just disconnecting, if the news makes you feel overwhelmed and have anxiety, don't watch it, don't do it. It's not worth it. It's not worth your health, it's not worth your well being. It's not worth, you know, you robbing yourself of the ability to come into the world and be the person that you were created to be. So number two thing, just disconnecting from discouraging and drama driven. And then the number three thing, none of these things are, I don't know that they're crazy rocket science or anything like that, but number three is unbelievably powerful though. And what it is is once we've intentionally disconnecting from discouraging, swap it out and fill your mind by pursuing experiences that bring peace. So important. If you want to find calm and chaos, you've got to find things that bring peace to you. You got to find things conducive to calm. It's so important that we do that. And that means we've already talked about this. But when I say experiences, I don't just mean like you Know events that you go to. I'm talking about people, places and productive habits. And I'm going to talk about a concept of prioritized values as well. But when it comes down to it, we've already talked about people. If there are people that bring you anxiety and they drag on you, limit that time and instead replace them with those people that lift you up. Find those people that make you feel better, that make you want to be better and spend your time with them. Try to go out of your way to do that. Because when you find people that are conducive to that, people conducive to you eating the right foods, people conducive to you getting your sleep, investing in yourself, like surrounding yourself with empowering people, you're going to find more peace in your life. Because ultimately I think you know this, I definitely know this. You find more peace when you're living to your highest potential. And so number one is finding people. Number two places. This one I absolutely love. There's maybe not a better way to find peace than spending time fully present in nature. There is so much beauty. We might think, oh, there's so much chaos out there, still so much beauty in nature. And my family is traveling in a fifth wheel right now all over the United States, and I'm in Mount Hood. All I got to do is intentionally go outside, walk in the woods and be present. It is absolutely beautiful. And when you get out far enough and it's completely quiet, our brain craves that. And it is an incredible way to empower. But you find peace in those moments. And when you start to find peace, what you realize is that's possible. And all you have to do though is to intentionally pursue these experiences, Disconnect from social media and the news, get out in nature and just find quiet. Just focus on breathing and soak that that in your brain and your body, your soul needs that. So important. It's one of my favorite things to do is nature. And then building on nature. I should almost made that the finale because it's so powerful. But proactive habits, it's also super important. And this can combine, you know, in nature. But finding habits conducive to calm. I find calm more when I'm grateful, when I make a habit. My morning ritual has gratitude. And I think, man, I'm so grateful to get to be these kids father and my wife's husband and to be a coach that gets to empower people. That brings peace to me, that brings hope, that brings excitement. It's not overwhelming my brain with the wrong things. Instead, it's pointing it to empowering. And that's something you can do every single day. You train your brain to find gratitude, you're going to find more peace on a consistent basis. But with that being said, I already mentioned this in the Space for Silence. But one of the most important proactive habits that you can embrace is the combination of breathing and mindfulness taking pockets in your day. When you start to feel your emotions getting out of control, or you do go on social media and you feel like, gosh, I'm feeling anxiety is to stop, disconnect and focus on deep breathing, deep in your nose, pause, breathe out your mouth, and all you do is focus on breath. And when you focus on breath, if any thought that pops up, just notice it come right back to breath. That's establishing not only a pattern of breathing, which breathing, deep breathing, the right type of breathing stimulates your vagus nerve and it centers your emotions. That's number one. Number two, when you develop the ability to be mindful, you start to notice your thoughts, but you don't judge, you don't respond in them. You come back to breathe. That's a master, powerful skillset because when you get good at that, you get good at clearing your mind. When you clear your mind, you'll find your core inner state. That what your norm, your default state, is peace. It's calm. And when you find that more consistently, the thing that you start to realize is that no matter what's going on outside you, if you do a good job with these types of habits, what you can always find is peace, calm and fulfillment, no matter what's going on around you. That is one of the greatest powers that you have as a human being. And I'm going to end with this. Where I really learned this concept was when I first lost my job at the University of North Carolina. It was a little bit of chaos. I was frustrated, I was overwhelmed, I was disappointed. I felt a little out of control. I had a lot of things going on. And I read a book called Man's Search for Meaning. Viktor Frankl is in a concentration camp. He lost most of his family members brutally murdered. And in the middle of it, he had a belief. And his belief was that you cannot control the things around you. But the greatest power that you have as a human being is to choose your response to any situation. Now, if anybody else would have said that, I think I would have maybe ignored it. But when he said that and I saw what he had gone through, I knew it was true. You can always choose your response. You can always choose where you point your brain. And if you get really good at pointing your brain to the right things and man, you can have an amazing life, but you gotta dig in. The world right now has some crazy things going on, but there's a. There's. There's. What's really going on is there's a lot of crazy information being thrown around. You can choose how you respond to that. You can disconnect from discouraging and drama driven things. You can instead create time for stillness. And you can focus on breath and centering yourself and finding calm. So you can decide how you're gonna go out into the world and make it a better place. I don't know about you, but I think that's worth fighting for. And I think that all of us are capable of more in a world. Let's not complain. Let's instead come back to the center, find a way to be better and get out and do our part to make the world a better place. I hope this episode is really useful for you. If you have any questions, you can always reach out. I'll be back to talk to you soon. Take care. I hope you really enjoyed this episode. If you're looking for a resource to help you find the next level in your life, then head on over to Amazon and pick up a copy of my brand new Flip the script book so you can break through your biggest barriers and pull out your highest potential and really just get out and crush it in the key areas of your life.