Ted Talk 96: How To Stop Being So Hard on Yourself

Podcast Transcription: How To Stop Being So Hard on Yourself

Ted Ryce: Are you being too hard on yourself? How would you even know? Do you use names or tough talk or derogatory comments when you self-talk, when you don't achieve what you want? I want to ask you this, how is it working for you?

Does it help you achieve those goals or does it just kind of add on to the stress you already feel, the guilt, shame, whatever, embarrassment you already feel from not accomplishing those things that you keep trying to accomplish. 

And in the context of what we usually talk about here, we talk about weight loss, fat loss, improving our health. So much of what we focus on here is about fat loss and so much of what our common goal that so many people have is to lose weight, is fat loss. By the way, it's a great goal. 

The thing though is when you're too hard on yourself and it's something you've been doing for awhile, but it doesn't help your results, it's not the right strategy. And that's what we're going to be talking about today. Why it's the wrong strategy and what is the right strategy? 

If this is your first time tuning in, welcome to The Legendary Life podcast, I am Ted Ryce your host, but also what I really do is I coach entrepreneurs, CEOs, and other high performing professionals, and I help them achieve the body, the health, and really the life that they want.

And so let's return to this idea. First, I want to share something with you. One of the things I've been doing, occupying myself during this pandemic, as we start to pull through to the other side, but we're not quite there.

I've been watching stuff on Netflix. I've been watching series, seeing the Low Key series most recently, just finished that the other night.

And one of the other things I've been doing is I've been watching some of the older movies that I've enjoyed, that are available on Netflix and Amazon and Disney plus.

And I rewatched Zero Dark 30. And you may remember that as the movie about the hunt for Bin Ladin. It opens with, now look about the movie, I ended up reading these details. There's a lot more to that story than the movie, the Hollywood vision that that movie put into the movie. The way it was portrayed in other words

But that opening scene where that dude with the PhD, the FBI woman just comes in and she's new to the whole thing, the CIA black sites and the torture and all that. 

And they don't do torture like how we use to think about it, where they're really hurting people and, you know, I don't know, pulling out their fingernails and that type of thing. He's stressing this person who was involved in the 911 attacks.

And very interesting. The guy who he's interrogating is a bad dude. But one of the things that the, the CIA guy who's, what do you call it performing the interrogation and torture. He's like, look man, you're going to break because everybody breaks. It's biology. 

And I really love that point there because I just had a conversation with a friend of mine. Former Navy seal turned sleep evangelist and medical doctor. I think that's another important thing. Doc Parsley.

And one thing he was saying, he's like look, these seals - when he was telling the story about how he got into sleep and why he views sleep as such a crucial component of achieving the goals that we want in life, 

he talked about how seals would come in -and these guys, the basic gist of the conversation was this, seals are super human beings. 

I mean, have you ever seen the seal training? They talk a lot about, oh, well, the mind gives out before the body, but the reality is a lot of people's bodies give out, people get injured all the time. They've got a recycle, I forget the name of it, but they got to go through the whole hell week thing again. And a lot of people get injured. 

And so the guys who make it through that are really tough. And I don't mean tough psychologically. I mean, tough physically, like their connective tissue is tough because if you got connective tissue like me, you're not going to make it through that training. I don't care how tough you are. I probably have the skills to become a decent MMA fighter in my day when I was training. But my connective tissue just wasn't gonna put up with it. So I made sure I didn't choose that route cause I'd have a really short career.

So the point is this, if a guy who gets through the Navy seal selection process becomes a seal, successfully conducts these operations that these guys do.

If they get pushed to the edge, to the breaking point, to where a 25 year old guy, who's 250 pounds with 10% body fat and shoots guns and kicks ass and all these things. If they get pushed to the limit and start to break down, you're going to break down too, especially if you're an entrepreneur athlete.

And I love this analogy although some people hate it. It's like, you're not an entrepreneur athlete.

 There's no such thing. Unless you're an athlete, you're not an athlete. But I really like this analogy because your sport is business. 

And just like, you can't play a football game, every day. You just cannot play full out every single day. You need to recover. 

Now in sports, we know it's pretty obvious, but in the world that most of us live in, when we're running our businesses, it's not physical stress that is the problem. It's psychosocial stress that is the problem. 

And so we start to have problems, oh Jimmy is having problems at school. Jenny is having issues with her, may want to quit ballet. Oh, my husband or wife is having some issues at work or running their business. Things start to pile up. And we start to break down a little bit. We start to see symptoms in our life.

And instead of being objective about it and saying, ah, I'm starting to have sleep issues here. That's not good. What can I do about that? Or I'm starting to bite my nails or whatever sort of stress, manifestation of stress starts to come out. Instead of being objective about it and saying, ah, I'm under a lot of stress right now. Look at what's happening here. I'm having these symptoms. What should I do to calm myself down? 

A lot of us say, come on, suck it up and push through. You should be able to handle this. How come you can run a business, but you can't get your ass in shape? How come you can't just control yourself? What type of loser are you? 

And look, if tough talk works for you and you end up performing better, great! But for those of you who have been tough-talking yourself for perhaps decades, and it still doesn't work, we got to ask ourselves, what do we really need to do here? 

Because we're trying this same strategy and it's not working. And I really want to come back to this idea that, the story that I told in the beginning about the Zero Dark 30, everybody breaks, why? Because it's biology. Everyone breaks under enough duress. 

Now I don't mean by the way, just in case someone's getting a little political. I'm not saying torture works. It's a good thing. I don't know. I'm a coach. I'm a fitness guy, like I don't read about that type of stuff. And that's not what I'm talking about. In fact, torture may not work. 

But what I am saying is that everybody gets to the point where if we're tortured or if we torture ourselves with enough stress, we all break. We all break down. 

And that's what the point is, just in case anybody got lost down, because most of you are Americans and you get lost down those split. What are you trying to say here? Are you saying that torture...? Are you endorsing torture on your podcast Ted? No, I'm saying we all break if we have enough pressure, especially if we're sleep-deprived. 

I'm saying that we all have a limit of stress. Here's a really important point. I want you to pay attention. I don't mean that you're not psychologically tough enough to handle it. So many of us are, I'm a tough son of a bitch when it comes to enduring pain and suffering, I've been through a lot of it. All you got to do is read my story on my website. Just click on the About Me section and read that.

Or Google my name, Ted Ryce. You can read all about my sister, my brother, all that stuff, my family. And so I'm no stranger to suffering. And the problem is this. It's great to be psychologically tough enough to handle these tough situations, these traumatic or stressful, however you want to characterize these situations.

But the thing is this, I want to return to this idea, physical stress. Most of us are not Navy seals on a mission where we could be captured and killed. That's not a reality. I've never been in the military. Almost went, glad I never went or maybe it would have been great, I don't know. But I'm really happy with my life now.

So we're not gonna stop to death. We're not going to freeze to death. Most of us,  aren't worried. If you're in America, you're not really, I mean, I don't know. Maybe you were worried about civil unrest or whatever, but I shouldn't even laugh at that. I don't know. I just kind of think it's silly, but I don't know what's going to happen. Hopefully everybody pulls their stuff together. But the thing is this, it's psychosocial stress. 

We're not really in physical danger. Physical danger exists, but it exists every time you get into your car. And that's probably the most danger that most of us face, statistically speaking, regardless of our driving skills. If someone runs into us, runs the red light, runs the stop sign and runs into us. I mean it is what it is. So we take a risk every time we get in our car. But most of the stuff that we worry about, it's psychosocial. 

For a lot of people with weight loss, with fat loss. When you wake up in the morning and you see your body, a lot of people, a lot of clients have come through my program saying, oh, I don't like…  It starts when I see myself in the morning, not happy about it. And then when I try on clothes, not happy about it either. 

Half of my closet fits, half of it I hope it'll fit me again one day. And what else? Then if you've got kids, raising your kids, then you got work or you're running your business. So we have all this stress that comes up on us.

Now I want to say something that's really important. Biological stress. It's almost easier to deal with, in a way, I mean, at least the biological stress that most of us go through. Maybe you're hungry for a couple hours, because you skipped lunch, that's stressful. Maybe you go and do a hard workout, that's stressful. But after you get hungry, you end up eating and then the stress goes away.  If you work out and you finish your workout, after the workouts done, the stress goes away. 

But if you're dealing with a business problem, maybe you're dealing, like one of my clients was having to figure out, he was trying to not fire anybody when the pandemic was roaring. And businesses got shut down. He was trying to not fire his employees. 

That's stressful. You have all these people relying on you. You don't want to fire them. Everyday, that was on his mind. 

And so other people, they have to deal with complicated... You might have a business that has to deal with a complicated political something, or another, regulations of some sort. 

One of my clients was in a business and he wanted to sell the business. But didn't feel like people or what was it exactly? Oh, his sales team. He wasn't happy with his sales team, but also wasn't happy with his business. He wanted to quit his business and go do a startup. But he felt like the offers he was getting for his business, he didn't feel good about the price. So he stayed in a business he was no longer passionate about.

So as I'm saying this, what's coming to your mind about your life? Because I don't know your particular story, but I'd love to make this relevant to you. What is coming up for you as you hear these stories, you hear me talking about these situations, what's coming up for you? What is relevant in your life? What is the story of your life? What is the story of your stress?

And there are three big areas and I've gone over this many times, but it bears repeating. There's your health, there's your wealth, there's your relationships. 

Is your health stressing you out? For a lot of us, it's our health, my situation. I'm in chronic pain from some of the injuries that I've been in. I've been in car accidents. I've been in extreme sports, continue to do some extreme sports by the way, so that's a health issue for me. 

As many of you know, I got not diagnosed. Well, I had a precancerous polyps removed from my colon, that was quite large. Not too happy about that. So those are some of the things that I've been dealing with. 

What are you dealing with right now? What are you dealing with? And what areas, what are you dealing with your health?

What are you dealing with your wealth? What are you dealing with your relationships?

Personally, my business side is probably the least stressful thing that I have going on. For me, it's more concerned about my health and more relationships. 

My business I'm really happy with, I mean it's like, okay, is your business a hell yes? For me, it's a hell yes. And you're like, well, how much of it is a hell yes? I'd say in the nineties. 

But my relationships, that's got some work. I need to rekindle some of my relationships with my friends. I need to branch out and meet some entrepreneur friends. I need to meet some new people. 

Just to give you an example, I've been living outside the United States, literally in another country than where all my friends are. 

So what is coming up for you? What in those three areas are you struggling with? And then ask yourself how has being hard on yourself helped you? Has it been an effective strategy? 

Has it been something that allowed you to improve? Or is it something that is just adding to your stress and you're kind of stuck in the same cycle of repeating, that being hard on yourself it's just part of the cycle of poor results and maybe not even poor results, but the results that you've gotten so far. 

Because if you put in effort and let's say you've lost 10 or 15 or 20 pounds, but then you hit a plateau. It's just that if you want to lose more, if you want to get to the next level, you're going to have to change something. 

So it's not that, it's up to you to decide whether your results are good or bad, poor or great or whatever, but it doesn't matter regardless of your qualitative analysis of your results. In other words, whether you think what you've done is good or bad. To get to the next level, you're going to have to change.

And so many of my clients, by the way, it's easy to teach them the strategies. Here's how you track your calories. Here are the common problems with tracking calories. Here's how you make it work. 

Here's how many times you got to work out. Here's how many steps you got to do. It's pretty straightforward stuff, stuff that doesn't take a lot of time to go over, to learn, to implement. But the problem comes when we're trying to implement things and we're no longer able to act on the behaviors. 

We're no longer able to act on the behaviors, to follow through on the behaviors. Now, a lot of people say, well, I lost my motivation or they'll say it just got too hard so I gave up. And what I want to tell you is this, for me as a coach, when I hear those things, what I hear is stress. What I hear when someone talks really tough to themselves, they're experiencing trouble because they're really stressed and they're adding more stress on to themselves. 

So what is the solution here, when you're being really hard on yourself and its not working? Well the solution is this, realize that it's coming from a good place. You're being hard on yourself because it's something that's probably helped you before. But to get to the next level, there's a great saying. I'm so terrible with remembering sayings and quotes, but there's a saying I'm just going to paraphrase it because I can't remember it exactly.

But to get something that you've never gotten before, to achieve something you've never achieved before, you're going to have to do something that you haven't done before. In other words, you're going to have to change your strategy. You're going to have to approach it differently. 

And this is a tough one. And I want to even say it again because a lot of people say, oh yeah, that makes sense. Yeah. But you say it, but you don't really experience it. You don't know, let it sink in. 

Think about the results you have right now. Those results have been created by all the sum of your behaviors. And now you've hit a wall and you can't get beyond it. So how do you get beyond that wall? You gotta change. For a lot of people hiring a coach for the first time or I shouldn't say a lot of people.

But for a lot of my clients, especially in my coaching group, when I had a coaching group, a lot of them never worked with a coach before. That's why they joined the group instead of hiring me one-on-one.

They were like, huh is this really going to work? It's like, yeah, of course it works. I mean, as long as the coach works, I've hired a bad coach before that doesn't work. I lost 5,000 bucks, did not get, got a bunch of BS from a coach.

I hired one time that wasn't good. But as long as the coach is solid, you show up to do the work and you work through the struggles that come up, you're going to get results. 

So anyway, when we're being hard on ourselves and it's not working, because it worked for us in the past, but we hit a wall, what do we do? Got to change your approach? Well, how do we do that? We got to look at where is this stress coming from? 

Where's this stress coming from? Something we've already talked about, your health, your wealth, your relationships, and for most of you I would suggest looking at your wealth/career in relationships, because a lot of the stress that comes from, that sabotage people in the health area comes from those two other areas.

Now with most of my clients, it's not a money situation. In other words, it's not that they can't pay their bills. These guys are mostly men by the way, but super successful, mostly men these days, at least. Of course, if you're a woman entrepreneur, high performer, I'm happy to train you. I'm just saying most of the clients these days have been men. 

And so it's not that they can't pay their bills. Well, what is it? Well, in the case of one client, he just was no longer a hell yes in his business, but decided to stay there because he wasn't getting offers that he felt was you know, worth it. The guy didn't need money. He got a Ferrari collection. 

And so you got to ask yourself, now this was a personal training client. I don't, I'll go visit him when I go back to Miami, but we don't really talk anymore.

But I love his story. It's a good example because you know, we really have to do a little bit deeper work sometimes. 

When you're going to die and your time is limited. And regardless of how much money you make, even if you're a bazillionaire, you're going to die. So you've got however many years left. Do you really want to spend it in a business that you're not a hundred percent in because you just don't feel like the money you would get from selling the business is worth it. I mean, what is your time worth? A question worth asking. 

Where's that stress coming from? And then once we figure it out or at least get an idea, and by the way, you don't have to, you don't have to dial it in a hundred percent here, but you just got to get a direction.

You don't have to pinpoint exactly what's stressing you out, but you just have to get to the next layer. You have to ask the next question and get to the next answer. Was it more relationships? Is it more business? 

Well, what is it about relationships? What is it about my business? What is it about my current financial situation or career situation or business choice? What is it? What is it about my relationships?

And then we got to look at, okay, well, how do we cope with this? And there are three ways to cope. Let's just focus on two. Cause I think the third is a little bit confusing. There are two ways to cope with stress, there's problem solving, and then there's emotional coping. 

So problem solving. I've given this example before, so forgive me if you've heard it again, but actually don't forgive me. I want to know if you've actually implemented it really. So I'd take my apology back. Don't forgive me. I want to know if you've implemented it. So there are these two ways of coping. We either solve the problem.

Like let's say I'm lonely. I'll use myself here. I'm lonely because I'm living in a different country and I don't speak the language. And so it's hard to meet new people, both men and women, hard to make friends with guys hard to date women because I don't speak the language. 

Well, do you have to be in Brazil? Well no I could be in the United States. Oh then why are you there? So by the way I made the choice to go home. I'm going home in five weeks, spend the rest of my time here. And I'm going to go home in five weeks. And in that time, I'm going to use that time. 

So let me back up a little bit. So the solution to my problem is to go home so I can speak English to people so I can be around my friends and I can take away that language barrier to meeting new friends, to making new friends and meeting new people, no longer a language barrier.

Of course, I could stay here if I really wanted to, and then learn Portuguese. If I did two hours a day, several times a week, I could jumpstart my Portuguese, but guess what? I'd rather prioritize my business. I'd rather prioritize other things. 

So do you see how, me sharing my thought process, helping you out here with the problem solving, coping? 

So that's that would solve the problem. Ok, your problem is loneliness. Why are you lonely? Well it's hard to meet people here. I don't speak the language. Well you need to either one go back home or you need to two commit to learning Portuguese. Which one do you want to do? 

Or you just wait until you find some Brazilians who speak English really well and want to hang out with you. I don't want to do that last one. 

And you know what? I'm not that motivated to learn Portuguese anymore. 

I'm kind of, eu preciso descansar, I need some rest. Okay.

So I speak well enough. I'll come back to it later. I've got to come back to Brazil anyway. So I've decided to go home. 

So now that I've decided to solve the problem, I've chosen that problem there. I still have five weeks here. So what can I do in my five weeks to cope with the fact that I'm still gonna struggle with some loneliness? I'm still going to struggle with speaking the language. I'm still going to struggle with those things. So what can I do? 

Well, I can continue to practice my Portuguese. And even though I'm not feeling that motivated about it anymore. Another thing is, well I could snort cocaine and get drunk every day. Well, that's not something I would ever do, but I'm just giving that as a silly example, just to let you know, there are unhealthy ways of coping emotionally and then healthy ways of coping. 

I could go out to one of the Rodizio every single day, every time that I feel sad or lonely, let's say lonely. 

That's the thing that I've been struggling with here. So every time I feel lonely, I'll go to Rodizio. In other words, the all you can eat steakhouse. What's going to happen there?

Well, I think we all know. I think we all know what's going to happen there, especially Brazilians like to eat the fat on the steak. They like fattier cuts of meat. So I think we all know what's going to happen if Ted chooses that one. If I choose that one you know what's going to happen. 

I can take a shot of cachaca, which is like the Brazilian liquor. Like Russia has vodka. Mexico has tequila and Cuba has rum. Haiti has rum. Jamaica has rum and Brazil has cachaca. 

So every time I feel lonely, I could drink a shot at cachaca or have a caipirinha. How is that going to work out for me, if I do that? If I feel lonely often enough, that's going to lead to a constant state of drunkenness and a lot of calories.

So do you see how the emotional coping here is… Do you see how it's playing a part? What if I go and exercise every time I feel lonely? Well, that can be good, but what if I feel lonely every day, a couple times a day? Well, then I could end up over exercising then I'm just adding to stress, but I could just take a walk outside on the ocean. 

Cause I'm living in Florianopolis, Brazil. It's quite beautiful. I'm living in an area called Beira-Mar, which means oceanfront or oceanside or something like that, Beira-Mar. 

So anyway, I could go walk out by the ocean. I could go, there's a lot of things I could do. I could do meditation. One thing that I'm doing is I'm meditating frequently. I'm getting shiatsu massages once a week. I just started kitesurfing. 

Those are things that help me feel really present. And the good thing about the kitesurfing too, is I'm hanging out with Duda, my instructor. So I've got some of that social thing going, and he speaks English. Although he speaks English, but they don't get to practice a lot cause they don't get a lot of English speaking folks here. 

And so some of the things he told me to do while I was kite surfing, I didn't understand them. And I really paid the price physically by wiping out. But anyway, I just shared that to hopefully, you know, give you a little laugh

But the point is this, when I do the kitesurfing, I get to interact with some people. I get some socialization, some interaction with people. And as I'm telling you this story about what I'm going through, what are you taking away from my story and applying it to your story? 

What are the problems, at least from your perspective currently, what is the problem? What are the problems that need to get solved?

And this can be tricky. It can be tricky. I'm going to give you an example in a second, but I also want you to, after you think about the problem, what are the ways of coping emotionally? So exercise doesn't cure the loneliness. Do you see how that's not solving the problem, but it helps with the feelings of loneliness because I feel better after I exercise. 

The kitesurfing does two things.  Well, I'm lonely, but now I'm talking to my instructor Duda. And so that helps with the loneliness and it gives me exercise and it gets me a nature. So it's like a three, a three-part win, we're going to the gym and doing cardio or doing my weights. It's not quite as, it's not ticking as many boxes. 

So again, what are you taking away from this? How are you solving the problem? What is the problem? That's the root problem that's causing the stress. Are you addressing it?

And what coping are you doing emotionally? Are you eating too much, drinking too much, smoking too much weed? Are you exercising too much? Or you know, what else are you doing? Tough stuff in a way but for me, it's quite simple. I hope it's becoming more simple to you. 

Now we can get into a tricky situation. Let's say, for example, that I got diagnosed with stage four colon cancer, I'm going to die. And I don't know that much about colon cancer in terms of like the stages and what's the survivability and that type of thing. So I'm just giving an example here. This is not medical advice. 

But let's just say, Hey, Ted, you waited too long to get this. And you have stage four, colon cancer, it's metastasized throughout your body. You got three months to live. How do you solve that problem? 

Well it gets a little tricky. Or let's use, that's a hypothetical by the way, I don't have stage four, colon cancer. I don't have a colon cancer at all. I, I nipped it in the bud, so to speak. Pun, not intended, nipped it in the polyp. So the situation is…

But my dad's dead. He died in, last year in October. So how do you solve that? And many of you have lost your parents as well. How do you solve that problem? Bringing them back to life is not an option, but what we can do is find a way to make peace with it. 

Now that's a deeper conversation and one we're not going to have right now, but I wanted to bring it up to you, wanting to bring it up to you. Just in case you might be struggling with that.

So after this conversation, can you see how being harder on yourself, if it's not giving you the results, it's just not the strategy that's going to... even if it's worked in the past, it's not going to work for you anymore. It only gets you so far. 

Then we've got to be smarter about our approach. We've got to calm down the emotional side and start to think more rationally. We've got to calm down the stress, we've got to analyze things. We've got to take the edge off so that we can examine things more rationally and use that prefrontal cortex, use that amazing part of our brain that lets us interpret language and set goals and build skyscrapers. 

And did you see Richard Branson was in space the other day? That's the prefrontal cortex working?

How can we calm that emotional side of our brain down and let our rational side take over so that we can enjoy more positive emotions? Really, it is what it's about. So that kind of wraps up our conversation today. I don't have too much more to say about it other than what are the actions that you can take away from our conversation today? 

Have you been mostly coping emotionally with the stress and out of that emotional coping, are you exercising too much? Are you drinking too much? Are you overeating? Those are probably the three most common ones that I hear at least. 

And I don't know, statistically speaking from the Americans like logical association survey or whatever, I don't know, but those are the ones that I hear most. From what I read statistically, women tend to eat more, guys tend to drink more and have more sex. Topic for another time folks.

But what are you taking away from this? How much emotional coping have you been doing and what are the results of the emotional coping? Have they been negative for you or have they been positive? 

Have you gotten in better shape, less pain, more energy, or you getting beat up or getting fatter, feeling worse. And with the problem solving, again you don't have to pinpoint it exactly but have you been at least doing some problem solving?

 And sometimes a problem doesn't get solved right away? Or maybe it's more complicated, philosophical problem, like dealing with the death of a loved one or a cancer diagnosis or a divorce. Can't go back in and un-divorce yourself. Probably tried that already. But what can you start to go into direction of solving the underlying problem or get closer to the root?

You don't have to pinpoint it right away, but got to at least go in a direction toward it. Hope that makes sense. 

And again, what is the big thing that you can take away from today's conversation? And more importantly than that, what is that thing that you can take away and go put into action right now before you go and binge listen to your next podcast about, you know, the latest greatest biohack that's really just procrastination from talking about this stuff that we talked about today. 

That's what I want to leave you with. I hope you enjoy it today. Love you lots. Keep in the fight, keep pushing forward, keep working to figure it out. Unfortunately, guys the journey never ends. It continues to evolve. 

But we can continue to get better. We can continue to shift the way we view things and become, we can find that inner peace, but it does take work. Love you lots. Enjoy the rest of your weekend and enjoy your weekend. And I will speak to you on Monday!