Ted Talk 85: Help! I Am Feeling On Edge! All The Time

Episode Transcript: Help! I Am Feeling On Edge!

Ted Ryce:Hey there, welcome back to another episode of the Legendary Life podcast. And if you can’t hear it in my voice, which you probably can, if you’ve been listening to the show for a while, I’m under the weather a little bit. No worries, it’s not a reinfection with COVID – at least I think it’s not. I mean, I haven’t been tested, but my symptoms are super low, so I’m isolating myself and doing all those important things that we’re supposed to do.

But today, I’m here to talk about a really important topic. Why is it that we don’t do what we need to do, even though we know what we need to do? Why is it that we struggle to do those things that we need to do to make ourselves feel good? And if you’ve ever heard me on this show, and you felt like, oh, that I was talking down to you, or I was condescending, or anything, I was arrogant or cocky or anything like that, I want to share some of my own personal struggles.

Well, before I jump into it, let me share this with you. And if you’re listening to the show for the first time, well, what we do here is we break down science-based information on how to lose fat, how to improve your health, how to live a legendary life, in other words, which goes way beyond just how many reps to do in the gym, or what types of exercises or how many calories to eat, or those types of things. We talk about a lot of different things on this show.

And on Fridays, it gives us a chance to just have a conversation about things that are important that need to be talked about, the deeper—I don’t know—problems, struggles that we have in life.

 I’ll just start off by saying this. I’ve been in such a weird mood since my dad died last year in October. I was in Mexico for a while, had a really nice time there, did a lot of scuba diving, did my advanced scuba certification, did a lot of breathwork there. I had some great experiences.

And then I found myself in Brazil at the end of December to spend the holidays with my business partner, Gisele, and her family, ended up getting COVID. And it’s just been a weird ride since then. In many ways, so amazing. Brazil has taught me so much about family, about connections with people, about… Ugh, I’m going to save those lessons for another episode.

Today, though, I want to talk about this. I’m in this position right now; I haven’t been working that much. I’ve been working with some clients, of course, I always work with my clients. Our team has been working super hard to keep this podcast going while I kind of pull myself together. And that’s kind of what I’m getting to. I’ve been working on pulling myself together.

It’s been about six months since my dad has died. Yes, I’ve been working with clients and doing episodes and that type of thing. But I just want to share some of the struggles and then some of the lessons I’ve learned from my own struggles and how it relates to so many of us, and probably to you.

So, I’ve been in this situation where I don’t need to work that hard to make money anymore. I am in a good financial position. And for many different reasons. It’s not that like I’ve got several yachts parked outside my waterfront mansion. I’m not a millionaire or anything, but I have a comfortable life, let’s say. And I live in a way where I live well, but again, I don’t have supercars or yachts or anything like that. I’m smart with my expenses. And part of why I live outside the United States is because I can get such a great quality of life while I’m building my business.

So hopefully, that explains the situation. But one thing I’ve been kind of caught up with is I wanted to redo my style. I hired someone to help me, he’s amazing, found him off Twitter, His name’s Manny. You can find him at @wellbuiltstyle on Twitter or on Instagram. The guy’s amazing, worked with him, did a consultation, and he helped me a lot.

And so, I’ve been redoing my style, right? In case you’re wondering where I’m going with this, I’ve been redoing my style, I’ve been spending money on stuff. And I got a little bit obsessed. I don’t know if you can relate. I know you probably can, right? You’re like, “Oh, I’m going to get these shoes, I’m going to get these pants, I’m going to look so cool. I’m going to get this thing, it’s going to make me look so cool, and then when I look cool, I’m going to feel good inside.” Except I kind of feel better dressing better. I feel good when I dress well. And I think style is something that we can all work on and improve, and it makes a difference.

However, the retail therapy, it doesn’t work to handle the deeper issues. And I was thinking about this today because I just had a breathwork session. And as I finished my breathwork session with Sabine, the person I worked with in Playa Del Carmen, Mexico, I decided to continue with her online, even though I didn’t want to, right? I had all these stories, “It’s not in person, I really like in-person, and online isn’t going to work for me,” but I decided to do it. And whoa, I feel so amazing now.

And how often is it that we get into these situations where we’re like, “Oh, I need to go out and eat some food, I need to go out to dinner from all this stress, or I need to have a couple of drinks from all this stress or smoke a little bit of weed to handle all this stress, or I need to go shopping to handle all this stress or I need to go on a vacation, and then go shopping and then drinking to handle all this stress.”

And it works a little bit. And it can even be healthier things like, “Oh, I need to go exercise to handle all this stress.” But yet, so many of us, we walk around with this, like baseline level of agitation. I don’t even want to call it anxiety. It’s like agitation, right? Anxiety, it’s kind of irritability. It’s all these things. And all these negative emotions, and we’re just kind of running on the edge and you really see it play out on social media when people got triggered so easily about politics, and there’s all these buzzwords, people get so triggered.

And what I’m kind of getting at is we’re all walking around, so many of us, walking around just feeling  on edge. And we do different things to handle it. Some of us, we argue on social media and use buzzwords to try to argue our points and blame our problems on others. I’m not going to even get into it, but I think you know what I’m talking about right now. And it’s not isolated to one side of the political fence. It happens on both sides. Both sides, okay. So, if you thought I was talking about one side but not the other, no, I’m talking about both sides.

There are people who drink a lot alcohol, do other drugs. Alcohol is a drug, by the way, in case it’s 2021, you haven’t woken up to that idea. It’s a drug, right? Smoke weed. That’s a drug too of course, right? Some of us, we go shopping. Some of us, we work, and use that as a way to kind of occupy our mind so we don’t have to deal with those uncomfortable feelings.

And what I want to tell you is this… And some of us exercise. I mean, I did most of what I’m talking about today, right? Porn and sex. Sex is better than porn, but if you’re not having a real connection when you’re having sex… I mean, all these things that we do, to deal with this underlying problem of “I don’t feel good,” right? No matter where you want to call it, I don’t feel good. And all these things that we do.

And I kind of caught myself recently, because I was falling into this trap with buying clothes. I mean, I can’t even buy too many things because I travel around and everything’s got to fit in my suitcase. So I had to give away some stuff because I over bought. And it was kind of nice, because I got to give it as gifts. But it was like, the thing was this, I didn’t buy the gifts to give, it happened because I was just compulsively spending, buying things compulsively and I ended up with too much stuff, and then I gave it away.

And the people were very happy, and it was nice. But it’s kind of lame at the same time, too, you know? And I was like, “Oh,” you know, and they were very happy and appreciative, the people who I gave the clothes to. But at the same time, I felt kind of like an idiot, right? It’s like, why didn’t you just by the presents for someone? In other words, I’m like, just asking myself, “Where’s this compulsive behavior coming from? What’s going on here?”

And even though I’m a coach, and I know the right things to do, in other words, work with people, I’ve been a bit resistant to it. And one thing I’ve noticed, it’s like, “Oh, I don’t want to work with the breathwork girl again, because, yeah, it’s going to be like 500 bucks for so many sessions. But I spent 500 bucks, I dropped it, and I didn’t even think about it twice, right? With all the clothes that I gave away. I had to give away about $500 worth of clothes.

But it wasn’t an issue with the clothes because I bought the things. But it was an issue when I had to pay another person. Another example, can you relate to that, by the way? You don’t have any problem, you don’t think twice about all the money you spend on food, on clothes, on watches, on purses, on shoes, suits, whatever it is, cars, you don’t think twice about that. But when it comes to paying another person, you’ve got issues.

And even me with, “Oh, my, I lived in Asia for two years and I’ve meditated with monks and I’ve gone to an Ayahuasca retreat in Costa Rica, and I’ve…” what else have I done? All these different things that I’ve done. Even me, I have some issues with it. And I want to say this too, my parents never taught me much about money. Basically, the only thing that my parents taught me, because they were mostly either working or drunk, all they said was—and this was my stepmom, my dad even said less than this. That’s the type of relationship I had with him, which is very representative of so many of our relationships with our hard-working parents.

My step mom said, “Oh, if you don’t go out to dinner at expensive restaurants…” both my parents were attorneys by the way, in case you don’t know the story, so they did very well financially. And they basically said, or she said, he didn’t basically say, she said this straight up, “If you don’t get good grades, you’re not going to make enough money to go out to eat and do things like this.”

Which turned out not to be true, because I did terribly in school and dropped out, don’t have a college degree, and I make a lot— I don’t want to say make a lot of money, but my business is going to be making seven figures within the next year or so. Partly that is because of my business partner’s super ambitious, not because of me, so please don’t think that being cocky or anything like that. I’m very lucky to have someone who’s so ambitious because I’m kind of not, you know, ambitious to an extent, at least.

Anyway, but I’m having this thing about paying people, and I’m a coach. And so if you’ve ever heard me say—I just wanted to kind of come clean today and share this with you—if you’ve ever heard be like, “Oh, you’re buying the programs again, but you’re not going to hire a coach? You’re going to buy the workout, but you’re not going to hire a coach.”

I think we all fall into that trap. We all fall into that trap. And it’s easy to fall into that trap. And again, it’s like almost innate wiring. And I don’t think it’s necessarily…Maybe it’s biological wiring, I don’t know. But it’s certainly, at least for Americans, cultural wiring, we have big issues paying people. In fact, you see that with…

Oh, I’ve had these multi-multi, I mean, guys with Ferrari collections, okay? And when I mean Ferrari collections, I don’t mean the brand-new Ferrari is that cost like 300k, or whatever, I’m talking about like, one of their Ferrari’s is $8 million, because it’s like a vintage Ferrari. And they have problems paying $10 more per session when I was doing Personal Training, but would drop $8 million dollars on a— actually, he bought it for 6, and it appreciated to 8.

But anyway, he spent $6 million on the car. I guess that’s about a bad example, because he made $2 million on it, right? But the point is, he would go out and spend $1,000 for dinner and not think twice but he doesn’t want to pay me 10 more dollars per session. And it seems like it’s just we’ve got this thing.

We pay people the least amount we can. We try to get deals with stuff. But ultimately, we’re going to buy the stuff. And I’ve found myself in that situation. And so I just want to share that. And what I want to tell you is I had to get over this self-sabotaging behavior, because the clothes were making me look good, but they weren’t making me feel good.

If I’m honest, I look in the mirror, I’m like, “Oh, I feel so much better that I’ve got my style together,” right? Because I really want to get my social media thing going and really take that more serious and I want to put out the lifestyle, and look like, hey, I’m a person who’s been working on all this stuff. I’ve got my things together in my life, which, to a large extent, I do. I mean, I work from my computer, okay, where I want to the world. I’m very blessed, let’s say.

But what I want to ask you now is have you been guilty of that? And what I want to say is that’s okay, if you’ve been guilty of that. But one of the things that I try to do with my clients, and actually, one of the things that my clients say they take away from working with me is being results-oriented. Far too often, especially in the health and nutrition world, and when people find out that I’m into this calorie tracking, macro tracking thing, people will ask, “Well, what are the starting calories? I have my starting macros 40% carbohydrate and 20% this

And I’m like, “Listen, listen, I don’t care about any of that. All I care about is, is what you’re doing giving you results or not?” And it’s the most important thing that we can focus on in life. Is this getting results? “Hey, I’m struggling in my relationship, but I’m trying to make it better.” Okay. Is reading those books and blog posts and you know, instead of working with a therapist, is it giving you results? If the answer is yes, keep doing it.

If the answer’s no, you’re going to have to go deeper. Does that make sense? Of course. And for me, doing all these things, I mean, I work out regularly. I eat well regularly. I do a lot of things health wise really well, but yet, I was struggling with my health a bit recently. Mostly because I was walking around with these pent-up emotions and not able to release them. I was walking around with these negative emotions. I was going out to dinner.

I’ve been eating a lot of sushi, okay. Going out to dinner a lot, eating out almost every meal. I’ve been doing a ton of fun things. I went skydiving recently, did a ton of fun things. And they make me feel good, but they’re not giving me the results. So, then I started saying to myself, what do I need to go back to? What am I missing here? And what am I struggling with? And what has worked for me in the past?

And what I returned to was okay, well, what am I struggling with? I’m feeling just on edge, and I work out, and I do all these things. And I meditate every day, by the way, but it’s just not working for me. Even the meditation, it makes me relax, but it doesn’t…but it’s like, I’ve got to keep doing it, I’ve got to keep doing it, I’ve got to keep doing it every single day. It’s too much.

I want to do some exercise every day, but I don’t want to feel like oh, if I’m not going to emotionally feel good, I don’t want to become emotionally dependent on the exercise, right? And we’re talking not feeling great here. But we’re talking about I wasn’t feeling good. How do I get to feeling good? Because feeling good should come effortless. Feeling great? Okay, you’ve got to work for that. But feeling good? Effortless, if you do the right things.

And for me, what I returned to, what I thought about, when was I sleeping the best? When was I feeling my best? And it was when, you know, most recently when I feeling my best and it was when I was in Playa Del Carmen, Mexico, working with Sabine doing breathwork. I felt as when I did the breath work, I released these negative emotions that I was just stuck with. And after I released them, I felt so light.

And what do I mean by that? Well, have you ever just gone through your day and you’re like, you smile at people, you have conversations with people, you try to connect but there’s just something, hmm, like something taking up your brain’s computer RAM, just kind of taking you away from really connecting and being present in the moment?

Well, I was feeling like that. And after I did the breath work, I cried like a baby—almost every time. And I released those negative emotions. And after, I was able to be more myself, I was able to sit there and connect, I was able to explain myself better, have better conversations, I was able to feel better.

A lot of that compulsive behavior where “Oh, I’ve got to exercise. Oh, I’ve got to exercise. Oh, I’ve got to go buy things.” I was shopping online, looking at clothes compulsively, exercising compulsively, drinking compulsively. In other words, when there’s compulsive behavior, what you’re trying to do is you’re trying to make yourself feel better. But if it’s the wrong strategy, in other words, if it’s not dealing with the root, then you’ve got to try something different.

And even though I’m a little bit sick right now after this breathwork session, which is my second session this week, I’m feeling much better emotionally. I’m feeling much better emotionally. So, I want to ask you this, what do you take away from this story I’m telling right now? Do you relate to it?

Are you walking around just kind of on edge, and you’re doing a lot of the right things? Maybe you’re doing the shopping and drinking etc. Or maybe you’re just exercising all the time. Or maybe you’re meditating or getting your quiet time or whatever else the Gurus are telling you, but it’s not quite working, it’s not quite dealing with the root problem.

And the answer there, folks, is you’ve got to get deeper. And a lot of it is about dealing with those emotions that are stuck inside of us. And I’ll tell you, the stronger you are, the more you can push your body to work hard and work hard in your business, work hard in the gym, the more you can ignore those signals your body gives you and push past those points where your body’s saying, “Hey, you’ve got to stop this, like we’re hurting here, you’re tired.” The more you do that, the more work you’re going to have to do to dig deep and get those emotions out.

And this is what keeps most people stuck. This is what keeps most people from connecting with their children. It’s what keeps most people stuck in a cycle of compulsive behavior. It’s what keeps most people not able to really be present in the moment, even if they’re on vacation. So, you can’t run away from yourself. You’ve got to dig deep. You’ve got deal with what’s going on deep inside, and we’ve all got that.

The worst thing that people say sometimes when I talk to them, is they’re like, “Oh, well…” they know something’s wrong emotionally. But they’re like, “Ted, but I don’t, you know, you have this story where your brother was murdered and your mum died and you’ve got all this tragedy,” and they say it in a respectful way, I’m just telling you a story here. They say it in a respectful way.

But they’re basically saying this ”look, I don’t have any big trauma with a T”. But the thing is this, if you had parents that were more in love with work, or more compulsive really with work or with drinking or with doing other things, than spending time with you, you’re going to have some stuff going on. If you were bullied, if you were made fun of, if you had a really rough divorce, or if you do have a trauma with a capital T in your life, you’re going to have to do more work, and it is not going to be the superficial stuff.

And even the superficial meditation and the exercise, you’ve got to dig deeper and deal with those emotions. And the things that I’ve found that work: therapy, number one, with a good therapist. It could be coaching too. But it depends on the coach and what they do. I’ve helped a lot of my clients psychologically, but if it’s deeper stuff you’ve got to deal with, then certainly a good therapist is where you want to go with that.

And that’s what I’ve done, I hired a therapist who’s so good, she’s hard to get. I’ve got to schedule in advance this year, twice a month. And she’s $200 an hour. So I guess it kind of works for me right now. But you’ve got to find a good person to work with. And you’ve got to spend the money. That’s why I dropped the price, because I had some trouble spending that money with her. Even though again, like I said, I was spending money on you know, I went skydiving, that was a couple 100 bucks, I bought all this clothes, that was a few 100 bucks.

But after I talked with her, it’s just, she’s great. It helps me release emotionally, I feel better emotionally, I feel more clear, I’ve got more clarity. If I’ve got more clarity, it’s easy to make more money. If I can get myself in a place of feeling good, feeling good energy, it’s easy to make more money. And I know it’s the same for you because we’re all human beings, and that’s how human beings work.

We run the risk-benefit analysis, “Oh, no, if it costs this much. And then I got to do this and…” No, if you feel good, you produce. If you’re in the zone, you produce, things go effortlessly, you make money effortlessly. The relationships with your family, your partner and your children, go effortlessly. The relationship with you and yourself and your health, goes more effortlessly.

But we’ve got to dig deep, guys, got to dig deep. Got to really ask ourselves is our approaches really getting to the root problem? Not just some symptomatic relief with a workout in the gym or some retail therapy or a couple of scotches or glasses of wine or some sex or some porn or some weed, or whatever else you’re into. Is it really helping you to feel better when you do it and it lasts, the feeling last?

Because for me, breathwork, it lasts. Working with a therapist, it lasts. Going and doing that Ayahuasca ceremony in arrhythmia at the end of 2019? Oh gosh, I’m getting my years mixed up now. Had to be 2019. 2019? So confused, No, it is 2018, actually. At the end of 2018, changed my world for me. 2019 was a very different year because I went and did the work.

And if you’re kind of listening to this, and you’re like, “Well, I don’t know where to start.” Ask yourself this: what is it that you’re really scared of dealing with? What is it that you’re really resistant to deal with? If you don’t like the word scared. What is it that you’re really putting off here? Is it a talk with your partner? Is it a divorce? You know you’re in the wrong relationship? Is it that you need some help to get past some of the things that you’ve been through in your life, but you’re resistant to it, and you’re stuck in a cycle of superficial, shallow, momentary instant gratification? Not even fixes, really.

What’s going on for you? What’s coming up for you right now as I talk about this? Because we all want our lives to be better, right? We all want our lives to be better. And that thing that is handling that thing that is what is going to take you to the next level. And guess what? People don’t want to tell you that. They don’t want to tell you that. You know, I could tell you right now, “Hey, listen, are you super sad because you’ve got some fat to lose? Well, hire me, I’ll get you there.” And I do.

But one thing I’ll tell you that I’ve noticed a lot of my clients, they’ve got emotional stuff that I know needs deeper work. Some of it, I can help with. Other issues? No, they need more. They need someone else who has a different skill set. Or I could tell you, “Hey, listen, go…” you know, everybody wants to sell you, they want to sell you more clothes, they want to sell you the new car, they want to sell you new furniture, new house, new purse, new shoes. And if you look around your house, and you’ve got a closet full of clothes, half of which don’t fit, because you’ve been also eating and putting on weight, and you’ve got all this cool stuff and you’re still not feeling the way you want to feel.

Well, it’s not working, what you’re doing. And it’s okay that it’s not working. And it’s okay if you’re stuck in a cycle, trapped in a cycle of continuing to do things that don’t work. Just don’t complain about it, though, okay? Just don’t complain about it. Don’t burden anybody with your bullshit, because nobody deserves it. You’re the one who stuck in this cycle, not anyone else, and everyone’s stuck in their own stuff, okay. But if you are stuck, and you want to do something about it, ask for help, seek the right help.

One of the things that I do on my breakthrough calls is I make sure this is the right move for the person. Because if they’re like, “Oh, I hate my relationship, I want to get a divorce. My partner, I’m not sexually attracted to them, or they’re not sexually attracted to me, or we fight all the time, or we’re just super disconnected, but we stay together for the kids or whatever. But let me go lose myself in working to better my health.”

That’s not, you know, it could be a right fit, but only if I felt like it was the right fit for that person, that person would really have to sell me on why that was the right fit for them versus marriage counseling. And I’ve asked people that, by the way, like, why are you talking to me right now? You know, if you’ve got these other things going on, why aren’t you trying to address something else in your life? It’s always interesting to hear the answer.

And luckily, I do a good enough job to where we qualify people well enough to where we get the right people who actually, you know, for hopping on the call. Most of the time, they’re a good fit, but not always. Not always. I remember someone who was on a call with me, she was in a car driving, doing this breakthrough call and driving around in her car with her kid in the passenger seat.

And I was super annoyed, but I just ran with it, right? And I shouldn’t say annoyed I was like, “Oh, man, what's going on here? This isn’t going to work.” But I just kind of went with it. And I told her I’m like, “Listen, I don’t think you’re ready for what we’re going to do here. I think it sounds like your cup is full, you’ve got too much on your plate. And if you feel like a person who has too much on your plate, let me tell you, what is it that you really need to deal with to take things off to empty your cup some so that you can fill it up with something else?

Because we all need to continually fill our cup up. We all need to grow. Human beings is one of the… Tony Robbins calls it one of the six human needs or eight human needs., I forget. We all need to grow, and we all need to contribute. And if we’re not doing those things, it’s going to hurt us inside. We’re going to walk around with this cognitive dissonance. So, what is it that you need to empty off your plate? What is it that you need to release? What is no longer serving you that you need to release so that you can be more of who you truly are?

That is the question that I’m going to leave you with today. I hope you’ve enjoyed today’s episode, and I want you to think that answer. I want you to think about the question, and I want you to ponder the answer. And it’s okay if you don’t know it, but start directing your mental activity towards solving it.

Because, wow! Once you release those things that aren’t serving you anymore, that’s the person…You want to make your life better? That is the way to do it. You want a better relationship, or at least to figure out the future of your relationship, you want a better relationship with your children? That’s the way to do it. You want your health journey to go easier, you want to lose fat more easily? That’s the way to do it, get rid of that emotional baggage that so many of us lug around.

So, think about that, folks. Think about the answer. Think about that question, think about the answer. And next time I talk to you, hopefully, I will have a less nasally, less sick-sounding voice. 

But I just wanted to say this: always a pleasure to do these Real Talk Fridays, it’s just a chance for us to push away some of the technical talk and really to talk about life, talk about the struggles we all deal with, talk about things that I feel like a lot of the people were just, “Hey, just do a low carb diet. You aren’t happy with the way you look? Well, let’s not dig too deep emotionally. Let’s just do a low carb diet or maybe Keto or maybe Paleo or maybe let’s track some macros or maybe let’s do a crazy…let’s do the P90x thing.

For some people, they really need to handle their health, that’s where it is. They’ve got their relationships handle, they’ve been in therapy, or just have, naturally because of having good parents and good role models, ended up in emotionally healthy places. But for a lot of us, that’s not the case, right? That’s not the case.

Hope you enjoyed today. Have an amazing weekend, and I’ll speak to you on Monday.

Whatever your case, make sure you’re not getting too lost with trying to put band aids. And let’s do the emotional surgery that we need to do to release those things that just aren’t helping us. And let me tell you, that’s just a beautiful place to be, all right?

In the next episode on Monday, I interview New York Times Bestselling author Scott Carney. He is back in the show and this time he talks about his new book The Wedge. He shares his journey when he submerged himself in ice water and learned breathing techniques from the ice guru Wim Hof to his Ayuhasca experience in the middle of the jungle in Peru to reach flow states. 

This episode is all about getting out of your comfort zone and living the life you are meant to live. If you want to become a  superhuman and learn what you're capable of, this is the right episode for you.Tune in on Monday and listen to this episode.