Life Notes with Sheldon
Life Notes with Sheldon
When Your Mental Computer Freezes, Don't Just Ctrl+Alt+Delete
We explore how moments when we "freeze" in life can become powerful opportunities for growth and wisdom when approached with intention and mindfulness.
• Sometimes we freeze due to trauma, stress, or being overwhelmed
• The space between stimulus and response is valuable thinking time
• Ask yourself: "What's the greatest amount of good I can do in the shortest time?"
• Jordan Peterson's advice for moments when you don't know what to do
• The principle of "the earth always wins" - everything requires maintenance
• Stewardship goes beyond maintenance to honor what matters most
• Being authentic and honest builds trust in relationships
• Lying, even with good intentions, depletes your "trust bank account"
• The quality of life is determined by the quality of our connections
• When we improve ourselves, we improve our capacity to serve others
The greatest good you can do may be giving time and effort to the precious people who matter most in your life.
Welcome to Life Notes with Sheldon, where we talk about ways to get off the sidelines and back into the game of life as your best you.
Speaker 1:Hello friends, and thank you for joining me on Life Notes with Sheldon, where we talk about ways to get you off the sidelines back into the gaming life as your very best self. You know, to start this recording, when I do it, there's a red button that we have to push here the studio and it makes things record, as you probably could have guessed without me telling you. But as I pushed it today, I realized I pushed it too soon because I had to cough, and it makes things record, as you probably could have guessed without me telling you. But as I pushed it today, I realized I pushed it too soon because I had to cough, and so I tried to push it to turn it off and I messed something up and the thing froze and there was just this hourglass and I couldn't do anything to control it or change it. So I had to go get Adrian next door to come and help me reset it and get it back going and it just froze. Froze is what it did and I was thinking about that.
Speaker 1:You know, people, us, we're kind of like that, right, sometimes we just freeze, we don't know what to do, or somebody pushes our button the wrong way, or we let them. Or something happens in life and you know, we freeze. We come to a point where we just jam up. Maybe there's no more we can do, maybe we've done all we can and maybe we just don't know how to do anymore. But we have these points in life where sometimes, for whatever reason be it trauma or stress, or lack of sleep or bad health or whatever it is that is pressing against us we just freeze and we don't know where to go. And we freeze up and there's just this little hourglass, you know, reminding us that time is still ticking but we're frozen in time. So I want to talk today a little bit about what we do in those moments and how we can actually use them to our benefit.
Speaker 1:First of all, nobody likes to freeze. Right? If you've ever been involved in public speaking, it's one of the worst things, biggest fears. Right, you're out there talking, giving a presentation, and all of a sudden you just freeze. And sometimes those happen in life, right? How many times do you leave a situation and think, oh man, I wish I would have said that. Or you were asked to talk for a group or something in church or anywhere, and you think man, why didn't I say what I wanted to say. I just froze, I wanted to say that. And so freezing think is not a good thing and no one wants to have that happen. But we're human and we overload and it happens. So how do we adjust our mindset around it, how do we deal with it when it happens and how can it be beneficial?
Speaker 1:Well, first of all, sometimes we freeze and we don't know how to act, and one of the worst things we can do in this moment is just to act, just to act right. We're frozen, so we have to do something drastic, we have to distract, we have to jump right into something, and sometimes that's when some of the worst decisions of our life are made right. Someone is really mean to us, and so we freeze. Well, in that freezing time, we can have anger, build up to the point where we do something crazy or say something awful. And that's happened to me, maybe it's happened to you, maybe you're a much better person than I am and it never has or never does, and I commend you for that. But in that freeze time, you know, we can take that time to regroup and rethink, reframe the situation, reframe our thought process around it and consider our response. Consider our response. That time between stimulus and response is essential, valuable and cannot be overrated. And so you know in life, as you're going around and as you freeze, take that moment. Take that moment you know, say you're giving a public discourse, public talk somewhere, public presentation, and you freeze. Well, you can just try and overcome that by saying some random, meaningless thing or going off on some tangent because you want to cover up the fact that you froze. Or you can make that a dramatic pause where you really think about where you're going and you really think about what you want to drive home for the audience and you ask yourself what's the biggest difference that I could make in the littlest amount of time. That was a mind-blowing thing.
Speaker 1:A friend of mine and a coworker, jordan Peterson, came to Phoenix, arizona a few years ago, three or four years ago, and you know I'm an admirer of his work and his brilliant mind and many of his positions and ideas, and so I wanted to see that. And boy, it was an amazing thing to see this group of college students and community come together and just sit around this man and listen to him. Think you know the days of salons and sitting in around brilliant minds and just listening to them. You know are limited and the places you can do that are limited. And it was amazing to see all of these people there just to hear a person think and reason and them to do that around them, and it was really a powerful experience.
Speaker 1:And one of the key takeaways that he said is this he says and this can relate to freezing he said you know, if you're in a point of life where you just don't know what to do, you don't know where to go, you don't know what difference you can make. He said this is the answer in any given situation like that. And I'll say, when you freeze, he says this is the answer, this is what you do. You do the greatest amount of good in the shortest amount of time. Again, when you don't know what to do, here's your answer Do the greatest amount of good in the shortest amount of time. Friends, when you freeze, this is the key, this is the power, right? You freeze giving a talk. What's the greatest amount of good I can do in the shortest amount of time?
Speaker 1:Well, you can really take that moment to think what piece of information you can drive for your audience, and that could be an audience of 10, 15, 20, 100, 200, or it could be in having a one-on-one with your son a meaningful conversation or a one-to-one sit-down with your wife, where it's meaningful, and you freeze and you think you know what's the one thing I want to convey here, what's the one difference I want to make, what's the greatest amount of good I can do in the shortest amount of time in any given situation? And when you freeze for whatever reason, that is a perfect opportunity. Rather than to just jib jabber, go off on a tangent or try and cover up the fact that you don't know what to do, take that moment and ask yourself what is the greatest amount of good I can do in the shortest amount of time? And, friends, adopting that principle and adopting that practice will change your life for the better in infinitely powerful and magnifiable ways. If we'll take those moments in life and those can be the moments of anger that come, those can be the moments of depression that come, those can be the moments of despondency, and it's a key for pulling out of the doldrums, it's a key for pulling out of the stressful times of life. It's a key, you know, when you're feeling bad and, like my wife says, you just want to go eat worms Asking yourself that question and then responding is the key in so many ways of pulling out of it.
Speaker 1:So you're struggling with your kids. You're having a situation where one of them is driving you crazy and you don't know what to do about it. They won't listen. Okay, you can ignore, you can engage in a way that may be combative, you can just use your authority as a parent to bring down the hammer. And none of those things are very productive in the long run, and often even times in the short run. So ask yourself what's the greatest amount of good I can do in the shortest amount of time? And that answer might well be finding out where they're really coming from, taking some time to really understand the person in that situation. You know, my wife and I had this breakthrough in our marriage a few years ago where we just had this amazing, amazing, powerful time. And I have to get back to it because I think you slowly you slip away from these things if you don't do the work to maintain them right.
Speaker 1:If you have a yard that was, you know, had some weeds in it, had some briars. You worked in it and you made it beautiful. As you know, in New Mexico, you know, I have a friend who's a landscaper. He loves it. It's just in his nature, it's really his gift, and so sometimes I'll have him come and help me with things in my house and I've taken him to friends and family.
Speaker 1:And you know he said, you know I told him we put this little gravel kind of wig wavy thing in our backyard and it wasn't a big water feature, anything, it was just some gravel and some bushes where there used to be just grass, and it broke it up and made it really nice. And and I said you know, adrian, I want to make sure that I get the highest dollar, most powerful projective weed barrier that I can, because I don't want weeds coming up through this gravel. And he said, friend, there's something you should know. And I said well, what is that? He says the earth always wins. The earth always wins. He says stuff is going to grow up through this stuff, no matter what you put down in time. And we live in a place where there's a lot of dirt flying around. Dirt flies around and it gets stuck in the rocks and sometimes it germinates and grows on top of the barrier. But he said the earth always wins, sheldon, it always wins. So you should just know that in your landscaping endeavor, so you don't get too frustrated. And you know, as I thought of that, the earth always wins. You know, and the things that we build in our own life too, if we build a wonderful relationship, if we build a great business, if we build a beautiful yard, the earth will always win.
Speaker 1:And it takes a tremendous amount of upkeep. It takes more than upkeep. It takes stewardship right, because to just follow a list of your landscaping duties is different than having stewardship for the beautiful yard. When you take stewardship of something, you take it as if it was your own, you recognize it for the gift that it is and you personally take this responsibility and this honor, this sacred duty to maintain, to preserve, to provide, to make it great Great. So the earth always wins and we have to fight against it. We have to perform those maintenance checks and we have to make sure we have a system to stay on top of those things that are most important to us. Because erosion happens and it's a real thing, friends. The winds of life are going to blow against us, the waves will come and they will toss us. It's invariable, it's inevitable, it's unpreventable and it's unpredictable. And so it's so important in our life that we do those maintenance items.
Speaker 1:That can be a great moment for that, to reflect, to refrain and to determine, that time between stimulus and reaction, what we want our reaction to be. Now, this is very hard to do, it's one of the hardest skills to master and I have no way done it, but I've gotten better than I used to be and I'm still trying to get better. Second, the greatest good you can do in the least amount of time is so often to be authentic, to be open and to be honest. You know, so many problems that I have found from friends who may struggle in their marriage to have issues at work or issues at other places in their life, including my very own, is that so many times the truth just is never spoken and the truth is never found. Because we have this human tendency to want to hide, hide our weaknesses, and this is a deeply instilled neurological DNA type thing in our DNA. For survival, I mean, you know, as a caveman, you didn't want to show your weakness to the person that wanted to club you on the head and steal your mutton right, I mean, it's just from very on flight or flight. Survival teaches us that we hide our weakness and this often means hiding our true thoughts, hiding our feelings, because we assume that if we let people know that, they're going to see us as weak or they're going to use that weakness against us. And so many times this arrogance and this inability to share your feelings, share your thoughts in an authentic, safe way, prevents growth, destroys relationships and slowly erodes on our progress. And so oftentimes, the greatest amount of good, in the least amount of time, we can do is to, one, be honest with ourselves and, two, be honest with others. You know, an interesting thing happened in a relationship that I'll tell you about.
Speaker 1:In a relationship and I'll tell you about it's personal I had this feeling and I thought they were so unique to me, so very unique to me. You know, sometimes we make the mistake of thinking we are so complex that nobody can ever get us. And, yes, we are diverse. Yes, we are unique, diverse. Yes, we are unique. That's what makes you know, from our thumbprints to our cornea, there's no one just like us there's. You know, it's like a snowflake. Everyone is. Everything is different and beautiful, and so are we as humans and our soul.
Speaker 1:But we're not so different that we are unattainable, un-understandable, uncomprehensible to others, because so many of our fears, our insecurities, our desires, our weaknesses, our sins, our habits, all of those things, they're so intertwined in this train of humanity that we all essentially have the same struggles, the same insecurities to some degree.
Speaker 1:And this is something I found in 45 years of trying to understand the world and trying to understand myself. And so with this particular, you know instance, I finally started to share and open up and be honest about some of the things I felt, some of the things that I struggled with, some of the things that I didn't like about myself, and I found that this other individual felt very much the same way in so many ways, and it was this eye-opening event that caused me to realize that we're not so far off. You know, no matter what side that we're on male, female, right, left you know, wherever we are in life, we can't assume that we're so complex or so different that we can't be understood, because when we do that, we create that barrier from understanding, create that barrier from growth, create that barrier from progress. So when you freeze, consider that and consider that in most instances, many instances, being your honest, authentic, true self is the greatest amount of good that you can do With restraint and with caution. When someone asks you does this dress make me look?
Speaker 2:fat.
Speaker 1:Well, okay, let's be careful there. All right, you know, because covering and trying to hide is a dangerous game, friends, you know there's's. I once heard a story in a book that there was a lady who who went to a event you know, it was a something at a hotel. She stayed in a hotel, it was for a friend, it could have been a baby shower or something like that and she stayed in this boutique hotel and she had her young son with her and it was a very nice place. And she realized at the last minute that she'd forgotten to bring a gift. And this hotel was so nice that it had really extremely nice soaps and lotions I mean, you know, high dollar nice stuff like Bath and Body Works times 20, really nice kind of things. And so she decided to make a little basket and take those things and take it to the event. And so she took it to her and she said you know what I thought of you. I really thought you'd like these, I've used these and I really thought you'd like them. And the son says oh well, mom, those are the same ones we have in the hotel. So imagine, imagine, imagine how she felt, imagine how embarrassed and how awkward because she was just trying to cover something. You know what if she had said, hey, I forgot a gift, but I'm taking you to lunch, or hey, I'm going to send you something. Just been honest. It's so many times so much better and makes so much sense, you know?
Speaker 1:Another instance they gave was a lady who asked her best and dearest friend does this dress make me look fat? And the friend, deer in the headlights, decided to lie and say no, not at all. It's a wonderful dress, you look great in it, it really fits you. And so her friend assuming that you know what she felt was wrong, trusting her friend wore this dress to an event and tried to feel good in it, but felt like it didn't fit, felt like it didn't work on her. And so she asked someone else who wasn't as good of a friend. And she asked a group of her girlfriends, and they were honest with her. They said you know, girl, that dress does not work on you, that is not for you, and told her the reasons why. Well, instead of thanking her friend for lying to her to prevent her from having, you know, sad feelings for a bit, but then being able to face the truth, instead she lost trust in her friend and recognized that she was no longer able to trust her friend because her friend didn't tell her the truth.
Speaker 1:And if we can't count on friends to tell us the truth, who can we count on to tell us the truth in this world? You know, I've often said to my friends my dearest friends and new friends I said you know, one of the best things you can do as my friend, and the one that I will be most grateful for, is that if I'm being an idiot in my life or doing something really stupid, that you will tell me I'm being an idiot and that you tell me that's really stupid and tell me hey, don't wreck your life, don't ruin your job, whatever it is, that you'll be honest with me. That is one of the very best things that you can do as a friend of Sheldon Pickering is tell me the truth. I can handle the truth in most given situations and it may hurt and it may be unwelcome and it may be unwanted even, but I can handle it because I can process it and I am able to, you know, either deny it or take the time to recognize it or consider how much of that may be true. Hey, sheldon, you're really being a jerk in this situation. Okay, I take the time and assess well, how am I being a jerk? Why am I being a jerk? Does my position require me to be a jerk in some ways? And if not, how can I limit it? You know, taking that time to think about it and consider. But the friend decided to lie, say you look good in this dress. And then she found out from other people the truth.
Speaker 1:And when we lie and other people find out we lie, we lose our truth bank account. We lose our confidence bank account. We lose our confidence bank account. Others will have confidence in it and trust us. It's a trust bank account, is what it is, and people are smarter than we think they are. You know, we think we can lie to people, but it always comes out. Sometimes they'll sense it immediately and just be kind to not call us out on it. But every time we do, even if it's trying to be nice to someone, we lose credibility and we make a withdrawal of their trust account for us.
Speaker 1:And that can be dangerous, because if we have a trust deficit, we lose friendship, we lose relationship, we lose credibility and we lose connection. And if we've lost those things, we've lost the greatest things in life. Because what is life? But the sum of all of our connections with others and the quality of life is determined by our quality of our connections with others, by our relationships. And a relationship not built and not serviced and not maintained and not meticulously cared for by trust is not a relationship in its truest sense and likely not a relationship for very long.
Speaker 1:Those are the hard facts, the truth. 45 years of learning and growing have caused me to realize this. And if you don't feel it is, then give me a call, give me a text and tell me what the truth is on that. But that is what I believe, that is what I have come to understand. So, friends, you're going to have a time, like this computer, that you seize up, that you freeze up, that you don't know what to do. You may not know how to act. Take that time, take that moment and ask yourself this question one more time. Last time I'll say it on this episode what is the greatest amount of good I can do in the least amount of time? Couple that with honesty, sincerity and authenticity and you will find a sure-proven recipe to improve the quality of your spiritual, mental and physical well-being and the meal that you prepare with those ingredients for those that you love.
Speaker 1:I love to cook, I love to share with my family. It's one of my love languages. And when they ask, hey dad, why is this so good? How did you do this? This is what I tell them. I said because I made it with love kids, because I made it with love honey. And when I do make it with love kids, because I made it with love honey, and when I do make it with love, when I do it with my heart, it is better and it's received better and it's given better. And so if we're going to do something in life, friends, if we're going to make a decision, if we're going to have a relationship, if we're going to do whatever it is, let's make it worthwhile, let's do it well, let's put our heart into it, let's put our head into it and let's all consider the greatest amount of good we can do in the shortest amount of time.
Speaker 1:Friends, I get 23 minutes on this and I'm at 22 and two seconds Now.
Speaker 1:I'm there and that's the greatest amount of good I could do in this short amount of time.
Speaker 1:It really is. It's from the heart, it's from the soul, it's from experience, and it's from sad experience, oftentimes, of mistakes that I've made, and it is with humble heart that I let you know that I need to improve in every one of these things, and I intend to, and so I hope you'll reach out to me with your positive thoughts and prayer. I'll reach out to you, listener, and my positive thoughts and prayer, and may we all join in this effort for self-improvement, because when we improve ourselves and the quality of our thoughts and the quality of our communication and our headspace, we therefore have the capacity to improve the quality of love and time and effort that we give to those who matter most, those few precious people in our lives that can often be counted on just one finger If you're very fortunate, sometimes ten fingers. But remember that, and when you do the greatest amount of good in the shortest amount of time, make sure that the lion's share of that is going to those people Until next week.
Speaker 2:You have been listening to Life Notes with Sheldon. Listen every week for a brand new note on life. We hope that we have given you a way to get off the sidelines and back into the game of life as your best you, you.