Moment 40 - The Solution To All Of Your Problems

In these ‘Moment’ episodes of my podcast, I’ll be selecting my favourite moments from previous episodes of The Diary Of A CEO. This week we’re jumping back to episode 47, a solo episode where I talk about a simple solution that can help us get out of our own heads and overcome a tough situation. If you ever feel trapped by your circumstances, this is the podcast for you. What’s crucial to understand is that you can’t control your environment, but you can control how you deal with it. It’s through hard and challenging experiences that I’ve been able to build my own resilience using these methods. I want this podcast to go out to someone out there who’s in a similar situation but doesn’t know what to do. Episode 47 - https://g2ul0.app.link/jWDCIWRrLmb Watch the episodes on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/c/TheDiaryOfACEO/videos Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:02Steven Bartlett?

  For the first point in my diary this week, I've just written "You versus your thoughts", and I'm gonna start off with a quote which I think is incredibly relevant and pertinent to what I'm about to say. The quote is by Buddha, and the quote goes like this: "To enjoy good health, to bring true happiness to oneself, one's family, and peace to all, one must first discipline and control one's own mind." And it kind of begs the question, why was Buddha so obsessed with something so internal when referencing external factors? And I guess, my question to you is: What is your experience? What is the experience you have as a human being? What is that?

• 0:46Steven Bartlett?

  What is the experience you have at work? What is controlling that? What is the experience you have within your romantic relationship with your girlfriend or boyfriend? What is the experience you have when you're just walking down the street? When you're arguing with someone? When you're sad? When you're happy? When you're celebrating a win or a victory? When you're riddled with anxiety and you can't move? What is that? The irrefutable answer is: It's just a bunch of thoughts. Both vividly conscious thoughts and quite distant, intangible subconscious thoughts, right? And those immaterial thoughts, whether conscious or subconscious, have tremendous material consequences in your life. They can make you depressed, right? We all know that. They can make you physically ill.

• 1:30Steven Bartlett?

  They can impact your physical appearance, right? They can destroy your immunity. They can change your habits. They can change your diet. They can make you ecstatic, fulfilled, content. They can make you react in ways that will cost you your job, or your partner. Or in some cases, as we've seen many times, they'll cost you your dreams, your career, your livelihood, everything. Those thoughts are your experience. And the, I guess, imperative truth that I've come to realise, especially this week, is: I cannot control other people. I really can't control all the bad things that happened to me this week. I can't stop bad things coming to the people that I love either. But I can control my thoughts.

• 2:16Steven Bartlett?

  And in a world of... Total chance, you know, in a world of luck and unpredictability and unintended consequences that are forced upon you. I've come to learn that there is so little outside of my mind that I can control, basically nothing. I've given my life, every hour I have for the last, I don't know, couple of decades, and still, things go awfully wrong sometimes. No matter how hard I work, no matter how much I care about perfection, heartbreak, pain, misfortune, and unwanted consequences still manage to find me. It doesn't take you long to realise that controlling the world, controlling external factors, is

• 2:56Steven Bartlett?

  a fight that you will never win, that I will never win. And this week, I witnessed two things, which really gave me perspective on this. This week, I witnessed a close friend of mine completely have a breakdown because their train was cancelled because of the storm that's hit the country over the last couple of days, and that resulted in a one hour delay for that person to get home. I witnessed that that caused them a breakdown. And I also witnessed another friend, a completely different friend, have a lesser reaction after her older brother, who was rendered brain damaged and had his skull removed following a horrific car accident, regain his consciousness, lose his total sense of identity, and begin

• 3:37Steven Bartlett?

  to aggressively attack his own family, tearing her whole family apart, and rendering her and her aging mother basically his permanent carer. That one hour train delay caused more of an emotional and bleak reaction in one friend than the loss of a close family member to another. And if I ever needed proof that anyone's experience is not determined by what happens, but by the filter we apply to what happens, maybe that was it. And what is that filter?

• 4:09Steven Bartlett?

  It's your thoughts. And we're all predisposed to think in constructive and productive or toxic and destructive ways, of course. I can hear people right now shouting back at me, you know, science has presented evidence that chemical imbalances can alter your thoughts. That is true, right? But science has also clearly demonstrated that your thoughts can change your chemical balances, that every thought releases some type of chemical. When positive thoughts are generated, when you're feeling happy and optimistic about the world, your brain produces serotonin, which creates a feeling of well-being and happiness and ecstasy in some cases. And when you're thinking negatively, the brain actually draws precious metabolic energy away from your prefrontal cortex within your mind.

• 4:54Steven Bartlett?

  And even more alarmingly, the more you focus on negativity, the more you think negatively, the more synapses and neurons your brain will create, which will allow you to think more negatively in the future. So really, those that think positively will likely have more serotonin, feel better, and therefore continue to think more positively. Those that think negatively will have less serotonin, feel worse, and therefore continue to think negatively in the future. It's a cycle, a rewarding and positive one, or a viciously negative one. But either way, it's a cycle that you have control over, just by what you think. And what you think is the thing that's determining your entire experience at all times, in the past and in your future. That's the thing.

• 5:39Steven Bartlett?

  It's not what's happened to you. It's not that you've lost your keys, that you've got a flat tire, that it's raining, that your train's been cancelled, you know, that arsehole ex-boyfriend, your boss, your spouse, that dickhead colleague, all your clients. It's what you think about those things. The majority of harm is caused in your head by you and your thoughts. The harm isn't caused by reality, what actually happens and the outcome. The problem isn't the problem, the problem is the way you think about the problem. And I don't think anybody loves this idea. I didn't love this idea the first time I heard it. Because once again, it puts a mirror up in front of us and it makes us take responsibility. That horrible thing that none of us really deep down want to do. It makes us take responsibility for how we're feeling.

• 6:24Steven Bartlett?

  And we, all of us, including me, are conditioned to believe that things piss us off. You know, today, my videographer was telling me about the things that piss him off. He said, and I quote, "My clients used to piss me off when they didn't pay me on time." And I thought about that sentence. With the logic I've just presented to you above, any sentence of that nature is inherently flawed. Your clients didn't piss you off. The sentence should have been, "I pissed myself off when my clients didn't pay me." Suddenly, external blame becomes internal responsibility. Suddenly, it's on you. And suddenly, you can do something about it.

• 7:05Steven Bartlett?

  Suddenly, you have control of a seemingly uncontrollable circumstance of a late-paying client. And when you have control, you can change your life. And you can make hell into a heaven. It becomes a choice. And if you understand what I've said above, and if you believe it, if you take it in, it may just be the most important thing I've ever shared with you. It may be the most important thing I ever will. Because your thoughts are your experience. And what else is there, other than your experience? So what else is there, other than your thoughts? Understanding this is most of the battle. And believing it and embracing it and living it is most of the battle. Because it's the helpless, losing battle of not being able to control negative news

• 7:46Steven Bartlett?

  or negative events and negative people that causes most of our anguish. You know, in this podcast, this isn't an observational podcast where I just point things out that I've noticed in my life over the last couple of weeks, whatever. This is a podcast where I also try and share the solutions that I use for these problems. And I guess step one to this is to believe me and to believe what I'm saying. Because it wasn't until I believed this that things started to drastically change in my life. And I got so much better at dealing with bullshit. And you know, in my job as a 27-year-old CEO of a company with hundreds and hundreds of employees all around the world, across five headquarters and seven offices. I know that every day that I wake up, I'm gonna be exposed to unpredictable bad news.

• 8:30Steven Bartlett?

  So I needed to believe this. I needed to really, really embrace it. You have to believe that your thoughts are everything, not the circumstances you find yourself in. And then you have to like resign, you have to hand in your notice, you have to quit the job of trying to control the uncontrollable. That's step one. I guess step two is you have to try and be ultra-conscious about your thoughts. You have to like really observe your self-thinking, and this is an art in itself. It's not easy to do. And one way you can do this is by writing down your thoughts, by journaling, making a diary just like this one. I can't tell you how much having this podcast and writing in my diary and really analyzing my thoughts throughout the week in hindsight has changed my life.

• 9:15Steven Bartlett?

  This will increase your self-awareness, your thinking awareness. And when you can see your thoughts from a bird's eye view, you can understand the patterns, the triggers. And then you can start to be, I guess, more conscious about the effect that those triggers are having on you. And for fairly innate survival reasons, thinking becomes an automatic thing. So by the time you're twenty seven, like I am, although you like to believe you're the CEO of your own thoughts and actions, you're not. Most of them are reactive, most of them are survival-oriented, emotional, ego-driven, blame-oriented, and somewhat negative. And, you know, in many cases, they're so automatic, in fact, that we're, you know, we don't even realize that thoughts exist in the process of us making a decision. We don't even know we're thinking.

• 10:00Steven Bartlett?

  People do terrible things, and then when the dust clears, they say, sorry, I wasn't thinking. Yes, you were. You just weren't aware consciously of your thoughts. And you can't control that which you don't realize exists. So step two has to be actively becoming more conscious of your thoughts and the patterns and triggers that are causing those thoughts. Step three, I'm gonna give you a tool for step three. You know, every time you encounter a situation that triggers a negative downward spiral of overthinking and doom and gloom, anything that you can't seem to shake, anything that just consumes you, right? And things happen to me all the time, small things that will just play out in my head

• 10:41Steven Bartlett?

  over and over and over. And the reason they're playing out in my head is because I can't find, seem to find a solution to that problem. So I'm playing it out in multiple ways in the hope that my, my brain, which is consumed by it, will be able to solve it. And that's almost never the case, right? At least even if I do solve it, it's probably not going to be solved when I'm in that frame of mind in the most wise, productive way. So here's my tip for you. Here's my little trick for you that, that has worked for me and that is backed by science. It's called the best friend method. You have to write down your best friend's name at the top of a page, right? It can be in your notes, in your phone, wherever you want to. And then, you know, it, it can also be a sibling. It can be a

• 11:24Steven Bartlett?

  parent, whoever matters the most to you. And then write down the problem, right? The, the thing that's been bothering you, the thing that's consumed you. And then write down what you would respond to your best friend if they came to you with that problem. Be totally honest. Say exactly what you'd say to your friend. Use expletives or profanity if you need to. Be totally honest. What would you say to your friend if they came to you with that problem? You know, earlier this week, a friend of mine came to me and they were having an absolute breakdown because of a problem. For the sake of their anonymity, I'm going to call them Jenny, okay? So I'm sat there on Jenny's couch and she is telling me all of her problems with this one particular situation. She's really upset and she's doing

• 12:06Steven Bartlett?

  that thing people do where they make a bunch of negative conclusions all the way down into that dark hole where there is no solution. So they'll say, this has happened, so that means this, which means this, which means this, which means this, which means there's no solution. And I was observing her make those very irrational, emotional, negative conclusions downwards, like a downward staircase into a black hole. And I just interrupted Jenny and I said, Jenny. Okay, I've listened to you now and I've got a problem that I want to tell you about. And I need your help with this. So I'm gonna tell you my problem Jenny and I need you to solve it for me. Right? I'm your, I'm your friend. Please help me solve my problem. And I just repeated back to Jenny what she had told me. And immediately her face changes.

• 12:49Steven Bartlett?

  Immediately, immediately she looks at me like what I've just said is pathetic. When she could see her problem reflected back on her from someone she cared about. It looks so pathetic. It looked very easy to solve. And without the cloud of mist, without the emotional mist around us. If for some bizarre reason, and this has been supported by science and multiple psychological studies. We're able to think so much more rationally. And she immediately could think of solutions for me when I had her problem. She was so compassionate, so unbelievably compassionate. And you know, remember earlier on in this podcast, I said that the problem isn't the problem. It's the way you think about the problem. So how is one gonna solve their own thinking with your own thinking? When in factual thinking is the problem, it's a bit of a conundrum, right?

• 13:32Steven Bartlett?

  But it does make sense. I've been over this a couple of times. But for some remarkable reason, when we're in a cloud of emotion about our, our own problems. We can't reason clearly, but we can still think rationally about the exact same problem. If it's happening outside of the cloud of our own emotion to someone else. And we're especially compassionate if it's someone we love and dearly want the best for. No matter what I've tried in my life, no matter how mature, experienced or wise I've become over the years. At times I still can't think clearly outside of my own cloud in a certain situation. Especially heavily emotional situations. So I do this exercise to help me find the correct and compassionate way forward.

• 14:15Steven Bartlett?

  It feels really fucking silly. And if, if I was to read this in a self-help book, I'd probably just turn the page, right? I'm not into all that fluff and all that crap, right? So you can probably be, trust the fact that if it comes from me, someone that doesn't believe in fluff and crap and bullshit. That isn't logical or proven by science or doesn't have some kind of psychological evidence to support it. Then I, then I tend to throw it in the bin, but I promise you this is backed by science. I've read about it and I promise you it's worked for me. And you know, I really, really hope it works for you. You can do it on paper. Once you've mastered the art of doing it on paper or on the notes in your phone. Then you can do it without paper and that's something that I default to now in almost every circumstance that consumes me. I really hope that works for you.