This week, I pull back the curtain to reveal my own techniques for transforming everyday interactions and self-perceptions. We'll navigate the complex web of words that can either lift us or weigh us down, and I'll equip you with strategies to interpret and harness the power of language to your advantage, fostering personal growth and a positive, proactive mindset.
Turning points can be found in the most unexpected of places, like the finish line of the Boston Marathon, where my personal goal time slipped through my fingers. Yet, in that moment of perceived failure, I discovered a wellspring of opportunity for learning and betterment. In this candid share, I recount my own experiences with reframing obstacles as springboards to success, showing how a shift in narrative can unveil profound opportunities for joy and self-improvement. We'll discuss how to practice positive instincts and maintain well-being even when life throws curveballs. By the end of our time together, you'll see how to apply these reframing strategies in your life, transforming setbacks into stepping stones for greater happiness and achievements.
Thank you for tuning in! If you feel led, please subscribe & share the show to others who you believe would benefit from it. Keep in touch below!
This week, I pull back the curtain to reveal my own techniques for transforming everyday interactions and self-perceptions. We'll navigate the complex web of words that can either lift us or weigh us down, and I'll equip you with strategies to interpret and harness the power of language to your advantage, fostering personal growth and a positive, proactive mindset.
Turning points can be found in the most unexpected of places, like the finish line of the Boston Marathon, where my personal goal time slipped through my fingers. Yet, in that moment of perceived failure, I discovered a wellspring of opportunity for learning and betterment. In this candid share, I recount my own experiences with reframing obstacles as springboards to success, showing how a shift in narrative can unveil profound opportunities for joy and self-improvement. We'll discuss how to practice positive instincts and maintain well-being even when life throws curveballs. By the end of our time together, you'll see how to apply these reframing strategies in your life, transforming setbacks into stepping stones for greater happiness and achievements.
Thank you for tuning in! If you feel led, please subscribe & share the show to others who you believe would benefit from it. Keep in touch below!
Welcome to the Win Today podcast, a weekly tool intentionally crafted to help people enhance performance, feel inspired and conquer life. Our commitment is that you will learn from some of the most disciplined, heartwarming and inspiring people on the globe, in addition to receiving a piece of a winning playbook from myself or a renowned expert in their field. My name is Ryan Cass and I'm your host, and it is my purpose in this world to inspire people to establish a foundation for sustained success by developing systems that will enable you to accomplish your goals, break systemic trends of adversity and chart a desirable course for life. Thank you so much for tuning in. Please help us achieve our vision of becoming one of the top podcasts in the world by subscribing to the show, sharing it with somebody who you believe will benefit from it and leaving a review. Let's connect with our guest.
Speaker 1:
Have you ever had that nagging parent feeling? You know that they're attempting to help you, but it just feels like they're nagging you or they're telling you something that is blatantly obvious, especially those that are already well into their adult lives. You think all right, I'm not 15 years old anymore, I'm not six years old anymore. I already know what it is that you're telling me you ever had that really grind your gears. This episode is all about reframing. I believe that our experience in life is often influenced by the lens in which we view it from and, as I've shared on here many times, everything in life is created through language, both by the words we speak out to others and the words and the dialogue that we create inside of our minds that ultimately influences and shapes who we are, how we show up, how we view the next situation that follows, or the next day, the next week that follows. Everything is created through language and, as I was thinking about what I wanted to share this week, this reframing topic has really been present in my mind, both from a personal perspective, professionally my two favorites, the ones that I would say are deeply ingrained into my way of being with the intent that it gets you to understand how do you develop a reframe, or gives you a couple new reframes to use, because what I'm about to share may be something that you're experiencing now and it bugs you or you want to build a different relationship with it. And then, lastly, that it gets you to think about other reframes, and maybe it's not these two particular things that I bring up, but it could be others that you then now have a framework to build off of. So with that reframing, I covered why it's important and, to reiterate again, we deal with a lot of stimuli in this world.
Speaker 1:
Between our physical conversations, between the conversations in our minds, in addition to all of the information that is available for us to consume on our phones, on social media, in the news, there's an abundance of information, material, spoken word, interactions that ultimately influences our way of being. One of my favorite books that I read a couple years ago is the Four Agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz. I highly recommend the Four Agreements, not just as a one-time read, but as I'm going through here to pull out a few examples or an excerpt. It's one that you can definitely use as a refresher, whether it's every year, every couple of years. Now that I'm speaking this, this will end up again on my 2024 list.
Speaker 1:
The first agreement is to be impeccable with your word. I've shared this before being impeccable with your word. He talks about this concept of our words and language being the most powerful thing. Language is the creator of all things. Black magic versus white magic. Now, in conversation with ourselves or others, black magic words can be, such as I'm going to try to get better with XYZ versus white magic. I'm getting better at X, y, z. It prompts action. Be impeccable with your word. This is huge with reframing, so here is an excerpt of that from the book.
Speaker 1:
Being impeccable with your word is the correct use of your energy. It means to use your energy in the direction of truth and love for yourself. If you make an agreement with yourself to be impeccable with your word, just with that intention, the truth will manifest through you and clean all the emotional poison that exists within you. But making this agreement is difficult because we have learned to do precisely the opposite. We have learned to lie as a habit of our communication with others and, more importantly, with ourselves. We are not impeccable with the word.
Speaker 1:
The power of the word is completely misused in hell. We use the word to curse, to blame, to find guilt or destroy. Of course we also use it in the right way, but not too often. Mostly we use the word to spread our personal poison way, but not too often. Mostly we use the word to spread our personal poison to express anger, jealousy, envy and hate. The word is pure magic, the most powerful gift we have as humans and we use it against ourselves. We plan revenge, we create chaos with the word. We use the word to create hate between different races, between different people, between families, between nations. We misuse the word so often and this misuse is how we create and perpetuate the dream of hell. Misuse of the word is how we pull each other down and keep each other in a state of fear and doubt, because the word is the magic that humans possess, and misuse of the word is black magic. We are using black magic all the time without knowing that our word is magic at all.
Speaker 1:
I use this excerpt to also introduce the first reframe how we hear other people saying things to us, sometimes Again going back to the beginning, saying things to us, sometimes again going back to the beginning. We might completely misinterpret their message and hear everything as black magic because of the relationship that we've allowed ourselves to build with certain words or how certain people say certain things are ultimately what they are telling you. The first example is the nagging parent and here's my first reframe my mom. I love her to death and, mom, if you're listening, I love you and I appreciate the reframe that you've enabled me to build, the reframe that you've enabled me to build. We may have the parents that, no matter how old we become, we'll still look at you as their baby, and that in itself is a blessing. That in itself is magic.
Speaker 1:
And there are times when, even at 31 years old, let's say, I'm going on travel where my mom might ask me hey, have you packed all of your bags? Did you get your hotel? Did you get your rental car? And in the back of my mind I'm thinking, okay, man, this woman is throwing all this black magic at me Like who? Who does she think I am to not know these things? And I'd get so frustrated and sometimes it would, it would cause me to to snap. You know, hey, mom, of course, of course I got the rental car. What do you think? I'm stupid. And and then I can only imagine how I may have made her feel in those situations. And I went to this conference in California three years ago now.
Speaker 1:
The Create Powerful course, which I've shared on the show a few times, was up on the stage in front of about 200 people all over the world, a lot of very successful business owners, and he was sharing that every time, to this day, that he goes on business trips, his mom still asks him if he got his rental car and all the basic needs and how it used to upset him. And now he's completely changed his relationship with the communication that his mom was giving him. So I pulled him aside after the session ended and asked him. I said Mark man, I'm, I'm dealing with the same thing.
Speaker 1:
Sometimes my mom will call me and ask me what I believe is the most basic thing in the world and I feel like it's almost condescending, like how dare she think that I'm not capable of doing X Y Z, that she's throwing all this black magic at me. And he said you know, ryan, when, whenever she reaches out to me and asks me if I got a rental car, I realized that she's not going to stop asking me about the basics. And did I do X Y Z? I shifted how I looked at it. I stopped looking at it as a black magic moment and I looked at her words as magic that, hey, there is somebody that is simply loving me right now. There is somebody that loves me right now and loves me enough to make sure that I'm not forgetting anything. And that was so powerful in that moment.
Speaker 1:
And I remember, after speaking with my mom the next time because I was going to travel back to the Carolinas the following day or two days after or something like that I knew she was going to ask the same questions that she always would and I figured, okay, I'm going to test this out, I'm not going to let this bug me, I'm going to shift my relationship with what I believe she's going to tell me or ask me and just hear somebody loving me. And, of course, a couple of days later I'm getting ready for my flight home. Did you pack your bags? Yada, yada, yada. Is the dog taken care of? And rather than get frustrated, you know what? All I hear right now is that somebody loves me.
Speaker 1:
And I've practiced that reframe and kept that reframe at the front of my mind whenever I'm speaking with my mom and remind myself that, hey, there's somebody on the other line, on the other side of the phone or right next to me when I'm with her, that loves me. Then that's a blessing and I'm grateful for it. So it may be the nagging parent example to you, or it could be somebody else that there's a certain thing that they say that just drives you up a wall and gives you this emotional hijacking, or what you may hear in the personal development world as the amygdala hijacking the frontal cortex, you go into your fight or flight response. Look at is there an opportunity to shift your relationship with that thing? Is there a different way, a different lens that you can view it from? Because I know to this day that my mom will still ask me the most basic questions or did you think about this? Did you think about that? Did you get Simon his dog care? Are you taking your? Are you replacing your filters? All the things that I know or should know and capable of doing? It is just somebody that loves me.
Speaker 1:
Now, one thing that is key with these reframes is doing it once isn't going to set it in stone. So even when she called me in California right after, it didn't permanently ingrain this thought into my mind. Once you decide on what a reframe is going to be or how you're going to shift a relationship with something, then it has to stay in the forefront of your mind. You've got to remind yourself of it continuously, because then you will get your mind, body, spirit to believe hey and hear hey, this is someone that loves me, this is somebody that cares about me. This isn't somebody that's nagging at me. This is somebody that loves me. This is somebody that cares, this is somebody that wants the best. And there are times, even now, where there can be a minuscule moment where I'm like, ah, mom, but then boom, that secondary response that's been trained kicks in Nope, nope, somebody loves you.
Speaker 1:
The next reframe and as I'm saying this, I really am excited about the opportunity, or opportunities, that it may create for your life and the reframes that you may institute in your life as a result of tuning into this and opportunities is opportunity, is a very important word in my book. One of my favorite quotes actually is from Herb Brooks, the 1980 US Olympic hockey team coach that coached the Miracle on Ice team. He walks into the locker room and gives one of the most iconic speeches of all time, right before the US are about to play the Russians. And he walks in and as soon as he comes in the locker room, he says great moments are born from great opportunity, and that is what you have here tonight. That is what you've earned. I love that word and opportunity to me. Simply, I use that in many ways. Challenges and failures really don't exist in my book Challenges certainly, but I really view both as the same. They are opportunities. They are opportunities to get better. It's not win or lose, it is win or learn.
Speaker 1:
It is so easy to not accomplish a goal and then beat yourself up and forget everything it took to even get to the destination, to where you are in that moment. Case in point the 2024 Boston Marathon. I finished nowhere close to my goal time. I mean not even remotely close. I came in with a plan to run a sub 250 marathon. My training up to that point had been solid. I had just ran a 250 in Arizona in February. I knew that it would be a challenge to run that in Boston, but I also believed in my training and the shape that I was in that you know. I know it's going to get tough up to the hills, but running six, 30 miles for me, especially up to 17, where the hills do start I figured that would be no problem.
Speaker 1:
And the first 14 miles were solid. And it was going to be a tough day right around mile six because it was hot and I figured, okay, no problem, just another. You know, here's an opportunity to make it through the heat and push. And at 14,. It kept getting more difficult, more difficult. Body was slowing down. I knew that it wasn't my day. Pushed through, finished in three hours, 24 minutes, and to me now? To me that's horrible. That's nowhere close to what my training represented. But I don't look at that moment. I don't view that moment as a failure. I simply view it as hey. Now I have another opportunity to come back to Boston next year. I have another opportunity to train through the heat and run a few more marathons this year and prove to myself that I can break the 250 mark, go for 245, go even lower than that someday. But it wasn't a failure. And here's the black magic white magic, black magic, failure bad, it gets you disappointed.
Speaker 1:
Opportunity that means that there are great things to come. That means that there's more to come. Just shifting the word opportunity. That's something that's exciting. Great moments are born from great opportunity. Great moments are born from great opportunity. Opportunity, challenges and failures simply equal opportunities. And that's something that I've really ingrained in my mind as well. Even in my corporate role, I often talk to the team about all the opportunities we have. So things that aren't going well on paper or that we're not hitting the mark on. I'm very big on quantifying goals, especially in the corporate space. I can tell you where we're doing well and where we have opportunity. We're not doing well where we have opportunity.
Speaker 1:
To me, I believe that it's critical that we develop a strong relationship with the stories that we're telling ourselves and the stories that we're telling others, and these are my two favorite reframes to use. They are things that can quickly get me back on track and in a good mood, or things that won't allow me to go down this negative rabbit hole. Now, with that, there are additional reframes that I use and there's some new ones that I'm working on. So these are the two that I'm sharing with you, because these are the two that are most deeply ingrained and rooted into my way of being. They're essentially instincts now. So mom is saying X, y, z, somebody loves me, something didn't go my way Opportunity, like clockwork.
Speaker 1:
And if, rather, when you arrive at these moments where maybe you're frustrated about someone says XYZ or something doesn't go your way and you automatically tell yourself you're a failure and you want to look at it as no, you're just being given an opportunity to go at it a different way. Practice telling yourself whatever it is that you would, you want to hear or you want the situation to reflect, write that down, look at it and then, when that situation arises again the nagging parent or the thing that didn't go your way you're going to tell yourself X, y, Z. And you've got to practice that every single time to then, where your body, your mind, believes it. It's this instinct, it's this habit that you have formed, that when this thing happens, I will then think dot, dot, dot. That's how you can build a reframe, that's how you can incorporate a reframe into your mind that is going to really optimize your way of being, not rob you of your joy. And these are things that you can constantly work on.
Speaker 1:
I mentioned these are my two. There are others that I use, there are others that I'm building now, there are some that I know I want to build, and rather I'm going to build for the future, just because life has changed over the years. Life has changed in the last year itself. So practice reframing. Look at your life and where do you have the greatest opportunities to reframe a situation or a relationship, with a certain thing that is said, a certain thing that you do, a certain situation that you may consistently find yourself in and practice, practice, practice. I am excited for you. We're already five months into the year. Happy May, and keep crushing it and win today. Thanks for tuning in.