When you live in your fear, you’re creating problems in the future and you’re actually separating yourself from the present moment, which on some level as beautiful with the fiction of the future. Now, when you live in the present and you authentically live in time, more often than not, you don’t have a problem because you’re still breathing. You’re still LIVING. You’re still in this moment wherein every cell in your body is ALIVE. We’re familiar living with stress and your ability not to focus on this perceived bullshit problem, but actually live in present time is truly where the power is – and sadly, very few of us are willing to do that. It’s time we stop creating problems where there are none!
We get to talk about the issues that matter and how to improve your life. This show is about creating problems when there are no problems. A basic human thing that we use problems and drama to have more energy. It actually motivates us to live, but there’s a detriment to it because we’re often living in our fight or flight. This show is about ways and concepts to move out of your problem-based mind into your productive and creative-base mind. We then head up to Seattle to talk to Esther about how she’s creating problems with her young boyfriend and how old her mind is creating things that don’t need to happen. If you enjoy the show, please feel free to send us a little loving at PayPal.Me/KandellConsulting. Enjoy the show.
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Tuff Love, the show was inspired by an experience I had. There was a fire in the city of Calabasas. Los Angeles is a very big county for those who don’t know. One of the sections is called the San Fernando Valley and that’s where I lived with Morgan and the two kids. We were doing some shopping and there was a billowing smoke in the distance and I noticed it, I was actually in separate cars and Morgan and the kids. I got home first and she’s like, “Do you know about the fire?” I was like, “I saw the smoke but I didn’t know it was a big thing.” Basically, what happened is a car hit a pole. The pole spark of fire and then the fire started to spread and the end result of the fire was that 550 acres were burned. Not only houses, but people were evacuated and it was this big humongous thing. Fires are always scary.
Where Morgan and I live, it was very safe, we were a good five miles from the start. We are west of the start and the fire headed southeast, so we were never in danger. Still there’s that stress. You never know. There’s this ridge where we live and over the ridge there was all this billowing smoke coming up and big and out. It was nerve-wrecking on some level, but my core being is cool, calm and collected. It takes a lot to get me nervous and agitated. It’s how I am. It’s how I’ve been my entire life, but it developed over to a skill. Morgan and the kids come home and the kids are freaking out. Total reaction, fear mode. They are crying like crazy and they’re so scared. I can feel it in their bodies. There’s like a tiger in front of them. There’s l a guy with a gun. There are mud slides coming down from the bedroom into the living room. It’s that level of fear because in their minds they have created this fear that they were going to die because of this fire, that no matter what the fire was going to turn around, head to your direction, hit your house. Morgan and I, we’re going to sit there and watch it happen. They felt they’re in mortal danger and that’s what kids do.
Kids can go into their imagination and create the worst-case scenario. They’re crying and crying and we’re trying to placate them and talk to them. Then that kept saying the same thing basically, “Is there a problem right now?” They’re like, “No.” “Are you in danger? Why are you scared?” “Because a fire is going to get us.” There was that feeling inside of them of wretched fear that no matter what the logical sense of it, that he had created a problem. I’m trying to do my best to co-parent them and learn how to talk to them. I said to them, “You don’t have to create a problem where there is no problem. You do not need to fabricate something that’s not happening.” It took a good hour and a half to get in there where they actually calmed down. They un-shrink their insights. They let the energy flow, they relaxed enough to come back to sanity. I kept saying, “You don’t have to create a problem where there is no problem.”
Every time I learned something co-parents and the kids or talking to a client, I do my best to put it on Facebook. One, because it’s fun to do it. Two, it’s my gift to the world is like when I learn something, hopefully I’ll write something and help someone, it will help inspire them. I posted on Facebook, “Don’t create a problem where there is no problem.” I’ve got a good response. Of course, this is the nucleus of the show.
I’ve been thinking about this and I’m thinking why do people create problems where there is no problem? Here’s where I come down to, people use problems to motivate themselves. They use problems and issues and challenges and drama to get themselves off their asses, off the fence, and into action. Because very few of us will actually change our lives or do something out of pleasure. Very few give ourselves permission to move, to change our life because it’s something nice, something soft, something gooey. Maybe something romantic, but more often than not, we’re changing our lives because of a problem. The problem itself is the thing that motivates us.
When you can look at how to solve the problem, that's where you come up with a solution. Click To TweetThe challenge of this is if we’re only moved by problem is addicting. If we’re only moved when you know there’s an issue that can’t be fixed, then that’s how we’ve learned to get an action. We start to fabricate problems. We start to actually create problems where there are no problems. We have talked about this on the show before, I think there was a show about stress. There are significant serious physical issues when you raise stress in your body. There’s cortisol, your body’s not healthy. There are a lot of significant health issues that happen when you live in the stress.
When you create a problem with there’s a no problem, you’re actually bringing your body into some fight or flight, some anxiety, some drama to actually get you to move it. Here’s my first tip about avoiding a problem or creating a problem when there is no problem. Look at your motivations. Look at what your reason is for attaching to that thing. I’m a cool, calm, and collected person. I’m always even-keeled even when things arise and things arise a lot, whether it be a relationship, whether it would be a family, being in business, a lot of business stuff and running several businesses. There tends to be a lot of rocky things, cashflow and issues. There’s always that first step where I don’t react instantaneously to the stimuli because even if there’s a problem, it’s my response to the problem is going to keep myself even keeled to handle the problem.
When you actually go to the level of drama or stress, you actually hamper. You handicap your ability to think and respond to the problem. When you can stay in your clarity, when you can stay in your site, if you don’t go down to a level, then you can actually handle the problem. This thing about creating problems, our problems is we do it to move ourselves, but there are other ways to move it. If you learn to actually move yourself from a point of pleasure, if you actually learned to move yourself from a place where you’re going to go in a direction where you want to do something for something that’s not a problem, then you avoid the whole problem circumstance, in that there’s actually like a healthy dynamic around it.
Here’s another thing that I’m thinking. There are three ways to live. The first way to live is you can live in the past. The second way is you can live in the future. The third way is you can live in the present. Here’s the funny thing about living in the past or living in the future. It’s fiction. It’s not real. You’re making it up. It’s your perception. Think about it. When you live in the past or you’re thinking about the past, after it happens, your mind starts to create connotation. We played whispered down the lane or telephone. Do you know that game? We played that at the restaurant the other day when you know you have five or six people and the first person whispers, “The rain is blue in Calabasas,” and the second one is like, “The rain blew in Calabasas,” and the third person is like, “The rain is blowing in Calabasas,” and as you go around the circle, it’s like, “My uncle loves the rain.” It actually transforms as it goes, whispers down the lane.
That’s the same thing how your memory is. That’s how you start to look at the past because when you look at the past, you’re actually living in distance. Your mind is already creating fallacy on top of fallacy. As time goes on, then you’re actually creating true fiction.
The same thing is to do with the future. When you live in the future, you’re actually creating a fiction of what you want your future to be, or more often than not what you are afraid of in the future. How much of us actually live in fear of what’s going to happen? More often than not, we’re afraid of the outcome. “I’m not going to have enough money. That relationship’s going to turn sour. My family is not going to understand me.” All the mind fucks that we have time and time again to live in a place where we don’t actually have a realistic. When you live in your fear, you’re creating problems in the future and you’re actually separating yourself from the present moment, which on some level as beautiful with the fiction of the future. Start to notice when you look and you start living in the future, because in the future tense, more often than not, we’re living in some fantasy or living in some problem. More often than not, it’s living in some problem because we’re actually separated from the present. When you live in the present and you authentically live in present time, more often than not you don’t have a problem because you’re still breathing. You’re still living. You’re still in this moment where you’re alive. All of us may have challenges on a daily basis, but don’t we live a more privileged life than we actually know what to do with? We’re all healthy.
If you own a computer, if you’re spending an hour of your time with me, you have some level of privilege that most people in the world do not. You actually live in a place where you can actually enjoy the aspects of your life. Your mind likes to be in problems because that’s where it’s most comfortable. We’re familiar with living in problems. We’re familiar living with stress and your ability not to focus on this bullshit problem that you’re perceiving, but actually live in present time, is where the power is. Very few of us are willing to do that. Stop creating problems where there are no problems. There’s an NLP or coaching thing. We don’t have problems, we have opportunities. “I have this problem, Rob.” “No, you have an opportunity.” How much does hate when we say I have a problem? No, you have an opportunity. Does it sound annoying and bullshit?
Stop Creating Problems: When something arises as you see as a problem, don’t react right away.
You could actually do that transition in your mind. You can actually look at it where you can take the thing that’s arising and turn it into an opportunity. I’m dealing with something in work right now where there’s a woman, I’m not exactly sure of her mental state, but I would say she’s crazy. People who’ve experienced it with my line of work, they’ve also said she’s crazy. There could be some drugs involved or some mental difficulties. I’m not here to judge, but I think she’s fucking crazy. Anyway, I digress. She did an event at LA Mother and paid us about $4,500. The event was a total mess. She made two payments, $1,000 payment and the $3,800 payment. She’s tried twice to take the money back from LA Mother using something called chargebacks or when you can call your credit card company and say, “This credit card is unauthorized and improper.” The credit card company, it’s their job to say, “We’ll contest it for you.”
She’s trying to steal $4,800 from my business and $4,800 from me. I don’t like that. Even if the money was less, it was $500 or $100. I’d be like, “No, you are not stealing money from me because you’re wrong. You’re out of integrity and I don’t believe in what you’re doing. I’m going to fight you. I’m going to fight you so fucking hard because I don’t like when people steal from me.” This is a problem because the first time the bank actually took $3,800 out of my bank right before rent was due. I’m not in a place in my business where it’s that flowing that I can afford not to have $4,000 to pay rent, but they took this $4,000 out. My first instinct was fucking hunt her down and kill her. I had her address because I had a check, I knew where she lives. I thought like me getting the boys and swat team and going in there and roughing her up. That was my first thought. The second thought was like, “I have her banking and routing number. I can actually charge her.” All these things started to flow in my mind. I went down to the level of her stealing. That was my first instinct, and then I saw this as a problem.
I saw this as a deep-rooted problem and then I thought, “How do I live by my own words. How do I turn this into an opportunity? How do I learn to twist this and actually learned to not play at her level, which is drama and stress but live at the level of clarity and the legality?” I called the bank and I talked for about 30, 40 minutes and moving my way through the bank. “Let me transfer you to person number seventeen.” I got transferred to person number seventeen and finally they’re like, “There’s no problem, fill out this form.” I filled out the form around 11:00 on a Tuesday and then by Tuesday night the money was back, which was very unusual. I didn’t expect it to take that quick. Anyway, the thing I’m trying to say is when you actually start to stop looking at the dramatic charge level, when you can actually look at how to solve the problem, that’s where you actually come up with a solution. Your ability not to live inside the problem and turn it into an opportunity is where you actually have a higher chance of living and more clarity and more free.
This woman then went for the $1,000, the other transactions I’m fighting on that. I’ve got my contract, I’ve got my manager’s affidavits, I’ve got the thing was done off site. I have all this evidence that shows that she’s so full of shit because she’s fucking crazy. My point is instead of going down to her level and fighting her in getting into that drama, I’m using what the tools I have to do this successfully. That is years and years of training. We live in this chaotic society. We live in a society of disapproval. What happens is you often hit these places where like, “I can’t handle this. I can’t handle this sensation this much.” It’s actually your mind shutting down. If you can actually say, “I know I can handle this. I have been here before,” and you can actually turn your mind on and then the possibilities to solve everything you deem as problems evaporates. You actually have your brilliant minds to find the way to do this in a healthy and dynamic nature if you can avoid sitting in this concept of problems and actually go into the point where it’s an opportunity for you to grow, an opportunity for you to learn. How many times do we invite challenges in our lives so we can grow and expand our lives? I think quite a bit. It’s actually in the problems that we learned to expand.
Here are some concrete steps. The first step is when something arises as you see as a problem, don’t react right away. Actually sit in the uncomfortable sensation of that place. The second is turn your mind. “This is not a problem. This is an opportunity. How do I handle this? How do I change this?” The third is ask for help. Go to the resources you have. Go to the bank, go to your friends. Go to your partners. Go to your business partners. Go to the internet and look things up. You don’t have to fall prey and live at the same level of what’s hitting you. The fourth is go into action. Don’t sit and whine about your relationship. Don’t sit and let it fester. Take immediate action. Do not wait until later to handle it. Be willing to confront because when you have all these things going in your life, you’re not confronting it, it takes up an incredible amount of mental energy. I think that will be the rant. Everybody, shake it off.
My relationship is so good because I have no fear of the future. Click To TweetWith the kids, we keep saying this over and over again. The world is going to teach them that they’re broken and there are problems. It’s on us to keep reminding them every single day, “There’s no problem. You’re safe.” That’s what we’re going to do with the kids. Do that for yourself as well. Give yourself the opportunity to believe that you’re doing it right in this world and things are going to happen exactly the way you want them to happen.
Live Coaching
Our guest on the show is a lady named Esther who is a good friend of my lady, Morgan. She’s going to come on the show. Morgan knows what she’s going to talk about. Hello, Esther.
Welcome to the show. How are you? Where are you?
I’m in Seattle.
I know you’re a little nervous. We love nervous because they tell more truth.
I’m working through it.
How can we make this time most optimal for you? What do you want to talk about?
I was listening to what you were saying about creating problems when there aren’t any. I don’t want to talk about it, but it resonates with me. I think I do that.
Welcome to the human race.
It’s not a subject that you want to start talking on a podcast.
What’s wrong with being human? What’s wrong with being a problem-creating human? What does it mean?
I think that I have this fear of screwing up in public view.
You get a 100% get-out-of-jail free card. There’s absolutely no way you can screw up. Even if there’s total silence, even if you ask the dumbest question ever. No matter what, you totally make a fool of yourself. Let’s make that right so you have a free, “I have total freedom to be my full self.” You’re a total right to human being. You don’t believe me, but that’s fine. Keep going.
Creating problems when there are any, I think that I do it out of fear, fear of success or fear of actually having the results that I want.
Do you have a concrete example we can play with?
I do. I’m in a relationship with someone I care about very deeply. The details on paper seem complicated. He’s 31 years old and I’m 44. Things go well and we’re together and everything is smooth. As soon as there’s a bump in the road, I always blame it on our age and we could never work out. Then I bring up all the things that aren’t there, but I make them become there and then I sabotage us.
Stop Creating Problems: Here’s the funny thing about living in the past or living in the future. It’s fiction. It’s not real. You’re making it up. It’s your perception.
Let’s get straight to the gut. What do you think you’re protecting?
I feel like I test the relationship to say, “It’s not going to work. You’re going to abandon me.” I protect myself from actually having what I want.
You tested, that was true. On some level there’s a little sabotage in there. You’re protecting it from what you want. If you got what you want, what would it be the danger around that?
I don’t know. I think I don’t believe that I could actually have whatever want that the relationship works and that I enjoy it and we grow and we love each other forever. I don’t fully believe that can happen. I always put the brake on it.
Have you ever seen a relationship that is like that where they love each other forever?
No.
That would make sense to me. You have no empirical evidence in your life that relationships last. Therefore, it makes sense of the relationship you’re in is like all others and at some time you’re going to get sick of each other or he’s going to do something or you’re going to do something. Someone’s going to cheat or someone’s going to be less attractive and then it’s going to end, “Fuck it, why should I even do this? It’s going to die in the end, so I might as well create a problem and avoid heartache.” You’re brilliant.
That is exactly what I do.
That’s what most people do.
That’s only when it’s in my mind. When I’m in the moment and we’re together, I can let go and I can be in the relationship. My partner lives in New York and I live in Seattle, so we don’t see each other often. I let myself overthink when he’s away. Then I create that problem. When we’re together and we’re in the same place, things go well.
Do you know about the different spheres of the human brain, the cortex, the limbic system?
A little bit.
There’s a book called A General Theory Of Love, which I must have told a thousand of. It’s a great book. It’s very easy to read. It’s done by these four UCSF professors. It explains these non-human terms, different parts of the brain. You’ve moved from different parts of your brain. When you’re in orgasm, you’re basically all limbic. When you’re doing your taxes, you’re all cortex. You actually move in different parts of your brain lights up depending on your activity. I would suspect when you’re with him, your limbic system flares up and is in that flow compared to your cortex. When you’re away from him, your big brain, your cortex is firing in more of a fight or flight looking for problems to protect yourself because this relationship is not going to work anyway, so I might as well destroy it.
How do you stop doing that?
This is the same fucking word I say anyone asked me any question. You make it into a practice. You want to get good at yoga. You go to yoga class. I went to the gym after 10,000 years and I’m sore. It felt good because I’m getting back into my practice of working out. When you fall after practice, you laugh. You don’t beat yourself up. I’m not beating myself up about not going to the gym. I’m celebrating that I did go back to the gym. Anytime your brain starts to go into the self-sabotage, you’re going to have to be like stop, drop and roll. You have to be like stop brain, stop cortex, there is no problem and you can actually reprogram your brain to not fall prey to your overactive imagination.
You could reach out to him. You could make some game out of it. You could make a word, chaotic. You can text them a word, every time you think about breaking up with him, you can say, “Chaotic, need to let go.” You could actually turn this into an intimacy thing and then you could write chaotic and he could write I love you, and you could write chaotic and say, “I love you and I can’t wait to hear back from New York City so I could do nasty things to your body.” It’s your isolation around it that’s challenging. Here’s another tip, I think that you keep going to the age difference means that you have serious doubts on this particular viewpoint. This viewpoint is imaginary and arbitrary.
Which viewpoint?
That it can’t work if you’re thirteen years older than him.
I’m in my mind I think a 31-year old needs to have more sexual experience with that young woman who never had a child who doesn’t have strip. He always says, “That’s in your head. It’s not on my head.”
I think that’s obnoxious of you. You don’t have the right to choose what’s right for him. He has to choose what’s right for him. He has to decide. You’re creating a problem. There’s no problem because you’re making up something because that’s your bullshit. That’s not his bullshit. It sounds like a guy like, “I’m a free human being. I’m picking you because you’re a hot mama.” I’ll tell a story. You know the kids. I’m co-parenting a five-year-old and a seven-year-old. If someone said, “Rob, you’d be in a relationship with two kids.” I’d be like, “Fuck that. No, I don’t want to co-parent a kid. I want to be free, wandering Rob. Bad ass Rob pillaging across the world. I am a wandering samurai,” and now I am living in the valley with two kids and a mostly monogamous relationship. I am happy beyond belief and people see it in me and they’re like, “Rob, you’re happy.” I’m like, “I know.” We’re getting a dog. It’s public. Total suburbia. Two kids, a dog and a house in the valley. I am fucking thrilled with my life. My life is beyond comparing and beyond my expectation. Don’t put words into your fella’s mouth because that is your own bullshit.
I like it. Thank you. It could be applied to everything that you do, because I feel like I play whack a mole with myself. I feel like we’ve got that covered. Why am I sabotaging my career? I do this. I constantly resolve one thing and then create a problem with the next. It’s a pattern.
Be willing to confront because when you have all these things going in your life, it takes up an incredible amount of mental energy. Click To TweetDo you break down your “problems” into small little dispute steps?
In theory, I think I can figure it out but I would love to hear what you mean specifically.
You’re looking at any challenge. Do you look at any possibility in your life and some of them are daunting? I said to a client yesterday, “I want $5 million dollars in the bank by the time I’m 50.” That’s my goal. I don’t have that at the moment. I’m not even close. You look at $5 million, that is a big mountain to climb, but then because I have a structured engineer’s mind, I start to break it up into discrete little portions of how to get to that step. Four years to get to that goal is a lot, but if I can break it up into a hundred steps, then I can work on the first step or the second step. Problems often seem unfixable when we look at things as big mountains rather than small discrete steps.
If you look at your career, break it down into small little steps. I watched Morgan doing this step by step. She’s finding her feet into building her nutrition business. LA Mother, my events space, is step by step building it, every aspect. If you can break it down because your brain wants to win, it wants to succeed, it feels good when it succeeds. If you look at the whole $5 million, I’m not succeeding, but if I look at the one little step and moving towards that then I am succeeding in my brain can celebrate that.
Thank you. I like that. It’s very helpful.
Let’s go back to this fella. Is he happy in the relationship?
I think so. Every once in a while, he gets into this space where he’s like, “I don’t know what I want, I’m not sure what I want.” I know that a caveat to that is like, “I don’t want to lose you.” He gets a little bit lost. He’s very focused on his career, which I totally support him in. He sometimes feels like he can’t distract himself when he’s with me. He’s 100% with me when he’s focusing on his career, he’s 100% focused on his career and he doesn’t like interrupting either one. I tried to pull back and give him a lot of space to be able to figure it out and that seems to work, but every once in a while he pops up with, “I don’t know what I want.”
How does that make you feel? Does your abandonment muscle get triggered?
Surprisingly whenever he has that posture, I get very confident. I feel very secure that I know things are going to be okay and that he’ll figure it out and I’ll figure it out. When he’s feeling weak I get stronger and when he’s very strong, sometimes I’ll be a little weak.
That’s a good combination. That’s a good partnership. My two thoughts. One is you guys are growing this experience, which is what relationships are about. How do I grow and expand and learn? I’m using this relationship to make myself more powerful. Kudos on that, the second thing is how about you start to apply your techniques when he’s weak to yourself, when you start to feel weak. Does that make sense?
I can handle the downturn when it’s not coming from inside of me. I have to apply for that inside of myself.
The same techniques he used when he starts to freak out a little bit which is probably like, “Don’t worry baby. I’m here. I’ll hold you.” Probably the mother and it comes out like that maternal instinct comes out to hold him or the feminine. Do the same thing with yourself when you start to freak out and play hard. A lot of us are afraid to play hard because we’re afraid of getting hurt. We won’t ride our bike fast because we might fall off and skin a knee. We don’t fully go into a relationship with our heart open and available because our heart might be broken. That’s not how to live for me. For me, living is you play hard and have faith that the right thing will happen down the line. I wouldn’t bet that $5 million that Morgan and I are going to make it for the rest of our lives, but it is a good bet.
The bottom line is I don’t care. If things happen in the future where it’s not a good match, where energy stopped working out, then fine. I know she’s going to go off and be a better person. I’m going to go off and be a better person. Both of us are going to be better and the kids going to be better. All the people we touch on me better and so that’s why my relationship is so good is because I have no fear of the future and whatever happens is right. When we live in fear, when we live in problems, we’re not fully living.
I feel calm. Thank you. It wasn’t so hard to be on public media.
I know. Morgan’s going to change that. She’s going to find a way to get my name international so we’ll be $5 million dollars richer from Tuff Love alone. How about that baby? Thank you for being on the call.
Thank you for having me.
That’s it. For more shows and podcasts and recordings, please visit us at TuffLove.live. As always, if you feel the little inclination to send me a little love you can hit me at PayPal.me/KandellConsulting and send me a little loving. Go forth, spread the word. Be nice to each other, get some nookie. Take care.
Thanks for listening to Tuff Love. A group coaching call with me, Rob Kandell. I’m here to speak the truth and say what I see. Hopefully you can take some lessons and bring them into your life. This is a donation-based call, so if you’re so inclined, please send us a little something, something to Paypal@KandellConsulting.com. I love you. Enjoy.
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