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Travis Chappell (12:40)

us and included in this bucket because I find myself going down some of these rabbit holes recently. In fact, it was a conversation that I had with a friend of mine who is even less engaged in politics because he's constantly working and just didn't have time for it. And there was a couple of things that I brought up that he was like oblivious and unaware of. And I was like, I kind of miss being oblivious to these types of things because there's just no use. It's wildly outside of my control. There's nothing that I can do about it. All it does is just stir this hatred and anger inside of me for some other group that I have not personally met or connected with or had conversations with. And I just find it to be an objective waste of time for the most part, especially if you're not already in a position where you can do something about it. Like, there's some people that I see that are following this arc of like, they built value through a business or they were a creator or something, and then they had this massive exit or they became really huge and then they started getting into politics and it's like, I don't, I don't like it when I see it because I preferred their other content before they became political. But I can at least understand where they're coming from. Where it's like, okay, well, you're worth a half a billion dollars now. You know, you actually have the ability to make an impact on this and maybe there are some things that you can control about some of the outcomes that you don't like that are happening in the world around you. But for, but for the majority of us normal people who are just focused on paying the bills, living a good life, providing for our family, having a good time with our friends. It just like inter, like interjecting these things into our daily lives is objectively making our lives worse. And you see, I mean, the last election cycle, last couple election cycles, we've seen lifelong friendships destroyed over the fact that somebody dared to post something online about their political beliefs. And then all these other people are, are making them feel bad for those things or they're further confirming those things, or it's like, look, neither one of those is great. And again, the majority of this is outside of your control. And if you're not a political, like if you're, if that's not what you're doing for a living, if you're not running for office, or if you're not trying to affect policy change, if you're not a lobbyist, if you're not actively involved in that world, I just don't see a ton of reason to be fully educated on everything. Because that's the problem, right, is that you can't be fully educated on everything, first of all, because we're not in the, in the rooms behind closed doors where all the decisions are actually being made. So we don't even have all the information. You know, we think that we have more information, information than we do, but we really don't. And then, and then also there's nothing that you can do about it even if you had the information at hand. And so, yeah, I just, I just find that the majority of the time that you're spending doing those things, it's just going to be, it's going to be more of a negative effect over your life than a positive effect. And I'm not suggesting that you fully and completely bury your head in the sand and just not know anything about what's going on in the world. But my sort of view on it is like, if it's a big enough thing, I'll hear about it. Like, if it's, if it's enough of, if it's something that's worthy of being known, then somebody's going to tell me about it at some point. But like I said, I fight back against the concept that everybody should just have a fully fleshed out opinion about everything. It's just like we don't have all the information. There's people who dedicate their entire lives to this one policy that you're talking about from this armchair expert position, you know, how we can solve the water crisis or by doing this, I don't know why we don't just do this. If they elected me, we'd take care of it in three months. It's like really, you think that you, like the, the, the version of you that you are right now would, if you were in office, you would be able to just solve this problem that people have spent decades dedicating their entire lives to research and, and trying to solve themselves. It's, it's wildly nuanced, it's almost impossible to solve from our perspective. And so, and, and, and you, the time that is spent worrying about all these other things, if that time was spent doing, doing other things that actually affected your day to day life, then you would find the overall quality of your life to be better by just focusing on other things that actually have the ability to create change in your life. So limit your news sources, you know, mute commercials if you have to stop, stop listening to all these political podcasts in yours, in your free time, in your spare time, and listen to stuff that's going to be more encouraging. Choose the inputs that are going to encourage you or that to enrich your soul or your psyche. Choose the things that are going to allow you to live a better version of life, not a worse version of life. Because if you get sucked into these negativity bias headlines, then you're just going to start adopting this worldview that everything's negative, that the world is burning and that we live in a terrible time and everything's horrible. And if you believe that about the world, that it's really difficult to see the opportunity that exists through all of the bullshit. Whereas if you adopt the other perspective, you're going to start noticing opportunities open up to you because that's the belief that you're adopting. The, the, the, the fact is that nobody on this planet sees reality as it is. We all see reality through our skewed perspective. That is the version of reality that you see. So the cool thing about that is if that is the case, then you get to choose which version of reality you accept as truth in your life. And so I look at it as if I can choose a version of reality that is useful to me and not harmful to others, then I'm going to choose that versus something that is harmful to me, even if it's not harmful to others. And I think a lot of people are just deluding themselves into believing that everything's burning and the world is on fire and there's no opportunity and the economy sucks and I can't get a job and I can't do this And I can't, I can't, I can't, I can't. And it's like, man, well, it's really difficult to try to create any sort of abundance in your life if that's the initial belief that you're holding true. And so yeah, stop, stop over consuming negative things in general. I think politics is the first example that comes to mind because it's so prevalent and it permeates every area of our society and it's something that you sort of get criticized for not caring about or you, you, you know, you get, you get lumped into a bucket of privileged people who just can't afford to not care about those things or something. I don't know. I just, I just find it to be extremely useful to remove myself from all that stuff as much as I poss. And focus on the positives, focus on the great stuff that I, that I have. The, the awesome opportunities that the world affords to me now, the beautiful time that we live in and all the amazing things that we're blessed with, especially as Americans and especially in the year 2026. So stop over consuming negative things. Next, schedule time with friends and family. The number one common denominator between all the blue zones on this planet. The blue zone. And if you haven't heard of blue zones, blue zones are the, the parts of the planet where there's the highest of centenarians, people who live to be past a hundred. And what they found through studying these different, these, these five different regions on the, on the planet is that none of them follow the same diet. None of them, none of them follow sort of these traditional biohacking things. Like, like, like some of these communities are active smokers. They drink alcohol. They're not doing all, they're, they're not, you know, doing cold plunges and, and breath work and meditation and all this other stuff that we've told ourselves is, is the thing that's going to make us live past 100. The number one common denominator between all of them is a very strong sense of belonging and community, bar none. That is the number one thing that unites all of these blue zones. So get more actively involved and plugged into the community that you have. If you don't have one, then you got to do the hard work of finding one and building that community. Like getting, getting just laughing and enjoying each other's company and talking about things that are beneficial for you and having stimulating conversations with people that you care about. Those types of things are going to allow you to Live a much better version of life. Schedule a game night, schedule a dinner party, schedule of, you know, go see some comedy, go watch something that makes you laugh, makes you smile instead of something that makes you upset. Go to, go to a concert, get around some good music, get around some good, good, you know, not to use this term too much, but get around some good vibes and you know it will raise your overall energy significantly. So schedule time for community style events, things that will get you more plugged in to feel like feeling a sense of belonging with people that you love but also with, with the community at large. Like that's the beautiful thing about comedy or concerts or things like that is you get into room with a bunch of people who you don't know. But you're all sort of on this same wavelength of energy. You're all sort of on, like on this higher, you know, know, whatever vibration, if you want to call it that. And, and the more you do those things, the more enriched you're going to feel on the inside, the better you're going to feel on a day to day basis. Lastly, this is this, if there's a hack to feeling better, this is the hack. And it's gratitude. Practice gratitude. It's just like anything else. The more you practice it, the better you get at doing it. And it sounds silly because like growing up to me it was always just like Thanksgiving time. Write down all the things that you're grateful for. You know, let's go around the table before we eat our turkey and say something that we're grateful, grateful for. And before it was just like I'm making a list, you know what I mean? And so when I say practice gratitude, it's not just like oh, here's some things I'm grateful for. And then let's move on to the day. It's write down those things, take two, three, four minutes and just really feel how grateful you are for the presence of those things in your life. And it can be something massive like a family member beating cancer or something like that, like this, this awesome feeling of victory that you have as a group, as a unit over this terrible disease. But it could also just be something simple like the smell of coffee in the morning or a hug from your spouse, or watching your kids go down a water slide for the first time. Anything like this, from this wide range of things that we of teeny tiny things to huge things to things we take for granted, like our eyesight or the ability to walk, or the ability to hear, to taste, touch, smell, to Experience the world. To be able to hike in nature and see this view, that just is incredible. And it stimulates your mind. Try as much as you can to practice this gratitude on a daily basis. Because it's impossible to be anxious and grateful at the same time. It's impossible to be stressed and grateful at the same time. It's possible to be depressed and grateful at the same time. You can't experience both of those emotions at the same time. So the more you practice this gratitude thing, the more likely you are to end up in that state more throughout the day. And so have this, like, practice of gratitude. But then secondarily, something that's been really helpful for me is whenever I notice that I'm in a really good state, a state that I would. That I would mark as a state that I would like to be in more. Like, whatever that is. Peace, gratitude, joy, happiness, fulfillment, meaning any of those types of. You know, I try to stay away from saying, like, positive emotions or negative emotions or whatever, but anything that I would view as something that enriches the quality of my life or the way that I feel about the quality of my life, anytime I'm feeling that on accident, I try to use that as a trigger to feel that emotion as much as I possibly can. So instead of. Instead of, you know, seeing my kid do something really cool or say something to me that. That is just really sweet or something like that, and then I just go, oh, that was cool. And then I just move on and get back into my phone or get back into working or something. I try my best. I don't. And I don't do it every time. And I'm not. And I'm. I'm constantly working on this because it's something that needs to be worked on. But it's been helpful for me to not just have this, like, practice of gratitude, you know, in the morning when you write in a journal or something like that, but also to have this. This. This. This reinforcement of the good feeling that I have in any particular moment. So now when I see something or I'm experiencing this feeling, I try to just close my eyes and allow myself to feel it to. To the fullest possible extent. Because every time you do that, you're. You're basically. You're basically expanding the neural pathways in your brain to allow your default state to be pushed more into the positive direction, rather. In. Rather to be pushed more into the negative direction. That's where a lot of these things come from. Anxiety, fear, stress. Some of these things that we would label as negative things. A lot of it comes from the fact that that's sort of what our brains are hardwired to do. We are more motivated by fear than we are anything else. That's just, just, you know, evolutionarily true. So the, the more that you can fight back against that, the more that you can practice just allowing yourself to be in that state, the more habitual it becomes, the. The easier it is for your neurons to fire into that direction rather to fire into another direction. It's like forging a path in a field. You know, the first time somebody walks through it, they got a machete through all this brush and stuff. But then when the, you know, five

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Travis Chappell (25:50)

Yes.

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Travis Chappell (25:56)

Let's do this.

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Travis Chappell (26:01)

Hey, you weren't listening to me.

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Travis Chappell (26:07)

Meet the New Avengers. That's cool. Then.

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Travis Chappell (26:15)

You guessed it, Disney+US-TH person walks through that area. It's basically a path because all the brush has been worn down and there's a clear way to, to travel. And it's much easier to get to the destination. It's the same thing that's happening in your brain, at least, at least how I understand it. I'm no neuroscientist, but I've read a good amount about it. And that's basically how I have, how I've interpreted it is basically you have these neural pathways, and the more that you allow your brain to go to these areas and then feel it to the fullest, fullest extent, the more that you're, you're, you're chopping away at the brush so that next time it's a little bit easier to go in that direction than it is for you to go to the other direction of anxiety or fear or stress or any of these other things that we would look at. So these are just a few things. Like I said, these are not steeped in research, although some of them are definitely the gratitude thing, the neural pathway thing. A lot of these things are, are, are very much steeped in research. I'm just saying that these are the things that I've done in my life when I catch myself being in a negative mood more often than a positive mood. These are some of the things that I try to implement into my life to make sure that I can have control over the mood that I have versus allowing my mood to just adjust with the ebbs and flows of life. Whether I got enough sleep the night before or this event happened that I perceived as negative and then I'm going to immediately go back into this negative state. Like if I'm feeling this, I like to just, hey, monitor my inputs. Am I over consuming negative things? Am I over consuming negative marketing messages? Am I over consuming political discussions? Am I over consuming arguments and religious ideologies and warring and, and and contention? Or am I over consuming or you know, not over consuming but am I consuming good things, positive things, things that make me feel better? So monitor your inputs, stop consuming politics. That's the first thing. And then schedule time with friends and family. Get more connected to the community that you have. Like local community, family, friends, but then also community at large. And then also a gratitude practice. Those are the things that I do to help myself feel better. So hopefully that is helpful for you if you're listening right now as well. And that's it for this episode of the show. As always, you can reach out to me on Instagram, Travis Chappell or just shoot me an email. Travisravischapel.com, love to talk about any of these things with any of you. And if you have any questions, shoot them over so we can address them on a future episode. Thanks for tuning in to this one. We'll catch you guys in the next one. Peace.

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