In this episode we talk about Chapter 19 in Chris’s upcoming book. Chapter 19 is on Taking Action!
Taking action has tons of benefits for our mental health while not taking action or procrastinating can wreak havoc on our mental state.
The guys share some tips on ways to be more decisive and take action even if we’re not 100% sure what the best path is. Taking some action is better than doing nothing.
Tune in to this episode to see Taking Action Through a Therapist’s Eyes!
Previous Episode: Episode #27 – Decision Making: Trust your gut or use your head?
Mel Robbins 5 Second Rule: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nI2VQ-ZsNr0
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Episode 106 Transcription
Chris Gazdik: [00:00:00] Do you ever feel like you want to take an action? You feel an urge and you get stuck and you struggle to take an action. We’re going to talk tonight about that. With actually Through a Therapist’s Eyes Rediscovering Emotions and Becoming Your Best Self, the book Mr. Graves. So chapter 19 is what we’re going to go over today.
And I think you’ll enjoy it when you feel the urge to take action. Do so. Dwelling on things tends to create anxiety. Do act. Don’t dwell on things too long. So welcome to another edition of Through a Therapist’s Eyes. I am Chris Gazdik, he is Craig graves. I’m a mental health and substance abuse therapist have that book, the aforementioned book available soon.
And, Mr. Graves is an Unbeatable .Mind life coach and has the website, wininyourmind.com, we welcome you to Through a Therapist’s Eyes, the podcast. Seeing the world through the lens of a therapist and a coach being aware it’s not delivery of therapy services in any way. And checking out the website throughatherapistseyes.com.
Get full show transcriptions books we’ve talked about in our programs easily found and purchased on amazon.com. Counseling link to betterhelp.com. Clicking the link for counseling. We’ll hook you up with that. Find us on Spotify. Where are we also, we have Mr. Graves, Spotify, iTunes, YouTube, most platforms you find your,
Craig Graves: [00:01:44] yeah, we’re on just about every podcast platform you can think of
Chris Gazdik: [00:01:48] the human emotional experience.
Let’s figure this thing out together. All right.
Craig Graves: [00:01:54] Let’s do it. You managed to get through the whole thing there without flupping it.
Chris Gazdik: [00:01:57] You love it. Don’t you?
Craig Graves: [00:01:58] I’m proud of you, man.
Chris Gazdik: [00:01:59] Yeah. Thank you. Appreciate that. I don’t know if that’s sarcasm or
Craig Graves: [00:02:02] no.
Chris Gazdik: [00:02:05] So we got a, we got an interesting thing going on. In the nation little current event, I believe this is coming out to what is this?
November? The fifth, 2020. We just went through an election.
Craig Graves: [00:02:19] Yeah. So this probably still be going on.
Chris Gazdik: [00:02:21] I hope not. Maybe so. Probably will
Craig Graves: [00:02:23] be there’s court stuff going on
Chris Gazdik: [00:02:26] Agreed. Yeah. Honestly, man, I have had in my sessions, a lot of angst, a lot of turmoil from people, Greg. And, you know, if the show can provide a little bit of a relaxation to you, a little bit of grounding.
A little bit of calming attitude. You know, we want to do that because you know, we’re going to be, yeah. Okay guys. We, we, we, we very well may be going through a tough time. You know, with all the things we’ve got going on, but in the election, just specifically in and of itself of the current event, you know, there’s a lot of mental health going on in here.
There’s a lot of anxious and nervous people out there. Both sides of the aisle, so to speak, you know, I believe in our system, we’re going to get it worked out. We had hanging chads. Do you remember when he had hanging chad controversies?
Craig Graves: [00:03:08] Yeah. Yeah.
Chris Gazdik: [00:03:10] How long did it take that to get
Craig Graves: [00:03:12] That went on for a while?
A couple of seemed like ended December. And it’s funny because I followed the Babylon bee on, Facebook and it’s a satire site and today they had a thing on there and it’s like, The vote in the count and Florida is finally done Al Gore declared president.
Chris Gazdik: [00:03:33] What’s the date on that
Craig Graves: [00:03:36] currently? That’s why it’s satire.
Chris Gazdik: [00:03:39] You know, I did a, I did some math today. I did some math today and I don’t have it in front of me. I screwed up again tonight. I’ve had a couple of weird errors before the mics came on and that was one of them. I meant to bring my math, but I did some math on this whole, outstanding ballots thing. Check, check this out by my memory.
if you do the math, it takes for 25 people to open and flatten and process one ballot. At about 30 seconds for a million ballots, that’s going to take seven days. Hmm. That I was shocked when I did the math. Reality of it is you have a guy or a girl is sitting there and they got to open it up. They got to flatten it out and they got to set it into a pile and they got to take it over to a platform eventually where it gets spit through.
And that’s not, if there’s a confrontation, you gotta, then I understand have something like, you know, confronted ballots, you have a Republican and Democrat representative. They got to. Go through it, look at it and review it. So that’s not counting any of that. This is just, what was it? 25 people, 1 million ballots at 30 seconds a ballot.
It takes seven days.
Craig Graves: [00:04:53] Yeah. You said a lot there. You did say a lot there. So there’s a couple of observations I have about this and, I’ll try to stay neutral as I can. And it’s funny, cause we hadn’t talked about this until we turned the mics on. So this is all just raw stuff that’s coming out of both of us, it’s what we do, but the election is going to come down to these battleground States.
Right?
Chris Gazdik: [00:05:14] I believe so.
Craig Graves: [00:05:14] It’s funny to me how every other state in the union has done with their count, but these battleground States are still dragging on. So it’s like, what, why can’t those guys be done to this be behind us? So that’s a bizarre thing to me. Another thing to me is. The president has, declare or taken out these lawsuits.
Right. And if you, if you listen to the Republican side of the story, they haven’t been allowed to be a part of the process to count the votes. Like they’re supposed to be by law. That’s the basis of their lawsuit. And, you know, man, I don’t know what’s true anymore. You can’t, you can’t rely on anybody to tell you the truth as far as the media goes.
But I, you know, obviously I have a lean who I want to win, but. It doesn’t matter who wins, but it needs to be fair. You know what I mean? It’s like the votes ought to be counted in a way that everybody can agree on who the winner is. And then the country needs to move forward and be done with it.
Chris Gazdik: [00:06:10] Yeah, absolutely. And I think that’s going to happen. What I’m trying to put a little bit too, is a little bit of a calming voice to where, you know, we’re going to get through this. We’ve had controversy before, you know, we have a peaceful transfer of power. If there’s a transfer or concession is done by one candidate or the other that’s going to happen, I believe that’s going to happen.
So let’s just, you know, relax, let the process play out. In the courts, if that’s where it is or in the ballot boxes, we’ve got Democratic and Republican, you know, battleground States. I mean, one of them is clearly Georgia,
Craig Graves: [00:06:47] North Carolina, Arizona, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Nevada, Michigan,
Chris Gazdik: [00:06:54] actually Alaska as well is not done.
Craig Graves: [00:06:56] Every other state in the union has done except for those. And as of the time of this recording, there’s still, they’re still up in the air and they’re the ones that. And we’re going to be the ones that counted. Right. So it’s just, it’s like really,
Chris Gazdik: [00:07:08] because each state has a different statute sets. I understand like Pennsylvania is the one that
Craig Graves: [00:07:13] you have it.
My point is why isn’t Texas still being counted or again, as it were California,
Chris Gazdik: [00:07:17] I’m going to make an attempt on me. I’m going to make an attempt here. I think that’s because each state has different. Reality is I’ve heard people talking about Pennsylvania still
Just so
Craig Graves: [00:07:26] happens the one that everybody says matters are the ones that are still out there counting this month.
My point.
Chris Gazdik: [00:07:31] Yeah, it it’s. I thought that was interesting math. Seven days is what I come up with. Now maybe they got more than 25 people. I figured 30 seconds is enough time
Craig Graves: [00:07:41] Each precinct is probably counting. I don’t know how it works either, but I’m sure there’s more than 25.
Chris Gazdik: [00:07:47] Shocked me how long it takes.
Craig Graves: [00:07:48] I’m sure it takes a while to open up a ballot.
Chris Gazdik: [00:07:51] C’mon it’s a piece of mail puts million ballots in
Craig Graves: [00:07:55] front. You have to verify that. I’m sure there’s some verification that goes you don’t just open it up and say, Oh, that one’s for Biden. Oh, that one’s for Trump. I’m sure there’s some, there’s some requirements of what makes that the ballot good or something like that.
So it’s probably not just to open it up and check it off. Yeah.
Chris Gazdik: [00:08:14] So, what we’re doing tonight is I kind of thought, you know, I got excited, Craig, because, the book we’ve mentioned a few times, you know, is coming close. It really is coming close. you know, through a therapist’s eyes reunderstanding emotion and becoming your best self it’s.
The back cover, the front cover and the spine is all the complete wrap done and designed and produced, and they’re getting ready to print it. So I should have a 10 people for purposes of providing, you know, like yourself, who did an endorsement, you know, for it. So, you know, shortly after that, I’m going to have my own copies.
It’s going to be kind of exciting and pretty cool. and I thought, you know what, there’s such good material that’s out there. I wanted to do one of them and kind of go down through it and talk about how, you know, how the concept is and how it works. Because I think that, you know, this is sort of a free chapter, 19, that to kind of go through one of the concepts of it.
Craig Graves: [00:09:13] Yeah, I wish you’d go through all the chapters, man.
Chris Gazdik: [00:09:15] We may, we may do, you know, I mean we may meet. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, particularly if I’m tired on show prep one night, I might just pull it out.
Craig Graves: [00:09:24] Great. I think you should read it to everybody.
Chris Gazdik: [00:09:26] That’s not hard.
Craig Graves: [00:09:27] No. Some podcasts. I listened to some podcasts and the author will actually read and his book as the show. You’ll do a chapter here and a chapter there. And, you know, it gives the reader or listener a preview, some people would consume it that way. So people would still buy a copy, you know?
Chris Gazdik: [00:09:44] Absolutely. I have no problem doing that. We’ll, we’ll definitely sprinkle them in, because I, you know, I think they’re coolest things.
I mean, the main idea. The main idea of it is really, as I think you and I have talked about it. I mean, it’s just, I’ve been doing therapy for a long time now. And I started saying a lot of the same things and to try to find creative ways to say the same thing and, you know, and then I kind of realized, you know, what, I need to write this crap down and, keep it organized.
And then I thought, you know what, I need to put it in a book format. And there was the idea born. And so they’re real therapy moments, you know, a real therapy moment, what happened? I’m like, Oh, wow. Something would spew out of me a phrase or a quote or something. I thought, dude, that. That’s a pretty, that’s a little bit of a jam.
And so I chose to, you know, some of them, whatever 30 of them and put them in here and kind of explained to thoughts with it. And you know, this is an example of one. So again, chapter 19 is when you feel the urge to take action, do so. Dwelling on things tends to create anxiety. Do act. Don’t dwell on things.
Take too long. Right. That’s the that’s one of the thoughts that came out of a therapy session. And I did it in an organized pattern of do this and don’t do that to, you know, simplify it, you know, do’s and don’ts thought that was kind of catchy, but, check this out, man. Mr. Graves. I have co-hosted the through a therapist’s eyes podcast with Chris for almost two years now and have learned so much from him during our conversations in interviews. He has deep insights on therapy and mental health.
And now he’s compiled all this knowledge in print. This book will show you the world and life through his eyes through a therapist’s eyes, Mr Craig Graves an Unbeatable Mind coach. And co-host through a therapist’s eyes podcast. That is a book endorsement.
Craig Graves: [00:11:20] It is. That’s a good one too. That’s probably the best book endorsement.
Right. You ever heard?
Chris Gazdik: [00:11:23] Do you remember writing it?
Craig Graves: [00:11:25] I do. Yeah. I remember writing it. I mean, I couldn’t have told you word for word, but I knew I wrote you one though. I wrote it.
Chris Gazdik: [00:11:34] Another endorsement I thought was really cool. And I wanted to highlight and say a public thank you to this gentlemen, amongst all of them, I guess I should probably read them all. A delightful reminder that fear, anxiety and worry will block this kindness, compassion and generosity inside each of us.
Christopher shows us how we can choose to release these positive traits and become the best version of ourselves. Dude, man.
Craig Graves: [00:11:57] Christopher shows us. Wow.
Chris Gazdik: [00:11:59] That is Mr. Dan Miller, New York times bestselling author of 48 Days to the Work that you Love and host of the 48 Days Podcast. Awesome. Right.
Craig Graves: [00:12:07] That was a great,
Chris Gazdik: [00:12:09] yeah, we had them on the show and I’d like to get to know this guy and another guy better, their fellow authors.
I’m an old, what the hell is that? Anyway, dude.
Craig Graves: [00:12:18] Yeah. It’s pretty cool. I’m excited for you dude. I think it’s great. I think that’s really cool.
Chris Gazdik: [00:12:23] Now that one’s really cool. Be careful how the power center of your emotions can derail your life. How you feel in this moment will pass. Author Chris Gazdik shows us how the battle of life is won in the mind.
Authentic, real, compelling tales from an author who is in the trenches with broken souls, Mr. Tom, Dutta. Whom I do hope and believe we’ll have on the show. soon kind of enough. He’s a CEO of Create People Development, number one, international bestselling author, TEDx speaker, and movie and film producer.
So thank you to those and the others that have endorsed it. It’s really been a fun journey and amazing journey. And, we’re coming to it to get it out now.
Craig Graves: [00:13:02] Good. Looking forward to it.
Chris Gazdik: [00:13:04] It is soon
Craig Graves: [00:13:06] My signed copy.
Chris Gazdik: [00:13:07] Yes, sir. Absolutely. You really want me to sign it though? How do you do that?
Craig Graves: [00:13:13] You just take a Sharpie, open the book up and you sign your name. Oh, and that’s it.
Chris Gazdik: [00:13:18] I got to get used to that. All right.
Craig Graves: [00:13:20] Pretty simple.
Chris Gazdik: [00:13:22] So let’s talk about taking action and the bigger concept in a key component of this writing project in my mind, Craig was really kind of about, you know, I’m really motivated in guiding and, sort of, you know, in a humble way, coming alongside with somebody, not just to sit and stay stuck.
It’s a little bit of a myth that people have about the mental health and therapy world that you just kind of wallow in your mess and you talk about your childhood and you kind of just, you know, essentially stay stuck in your mess. And, and that is not a good process. And a good thing to think about.
We were talking about this earlier. I think tonight, you know, a hundred percent of the time, every single time you sit down with me in a therapy session, I like to give a spiel about how. How therapy works, what to expect of me and how we’re going to kind of move in this therapy process. And I always point out, you know, how, you know, how is life like now?
How do you want life to be like, and that’s what we’re really pushing towards. And there are a lot of barriers to that. So you do have to circle around to those things that happen earlier in life. Cause life experiences are a big part of what we’re unwinding so that we can move forward. But it’s an action oriented.
Teaching oriented philosophy that I really have thought a lot about what makes therapy work. Teaching and action oriented process. And I’m actually going to try audience. Craig doesn’t know this yet, but I’m actually going to try to demonstrate that here in a little bit live, you know, with, with you we’ll make something up, but you’ll see what I mean.
Craig Graves: [00:15:01] Okay.
Chris Gazdik: [00:15:02] Right. So. What do you think Craig about humans tend to all caps. You see there think too much, right?
Craig Graves: [00:15:12] Yeah.
Chris Gazdik: [00:15:13] You talk a lot about the monkey brain. Yep. You know, we had this concept analysis by paralysis, you know? Yes. What happens with us thinking and doing that too much. Do you think sort of off the cuff. Why do people do that?
How do people do that? It leads us to be in stuck, you know, for sure in a lot of ways. Dwelling on things too long. That’s the don’t have this do, and don’t on this chapter 19. How do we do that? Why do we do that? What happens?
Craig Graves: [00:15:48] Why do we think too much?
Chris Gazdik: [00:15:51] What says you?
Craig Graves: [00:15:52] I think anxiety, fear of failure. I think those are big factors, fear of what others may think.
Those are the first things that bounce into my head. And when you start thinking too much, you start thinking about reasons why it could fail. Again, reasons why, you know, other people might judge you or those kinds of things. And then before, you know, it, you’ve talked yourself out of doing whatever it is that you were going to do.
Chris Gazdik: [00:16:19] I think you’re right. I, we should write those down. Cause a little long, we’re going to talk about how it creates anxiety. I mean, those are definitely some of it, you know, you made me think of shame and that you have about stuff you don’t want people to know you’re thinking about. And then guilt comes in there and certainly insecurities.
I mean, gosh, there’s a lot that’s going on in this idea, you know, of thinking, thinking too much. it’s been a few years back now, but my wife found a quote that I think is really. Pretty, it’s not my quote. It’s pretty powerful if I have it. I think I have it somewhere in my book, actually, that I used it because, cause it really hit me in my head, you know, personally and I have it sitting on my desk still to this day, right.
The quote is “Overthinking ruins you. Ruins the situation. Twists things around. Makes you worry and just makes everything much worse than it actually is.” Right. Let me say that again. I think it’s awesome. Overthinking ruins you. Ruins the situation. Twists things around. Makes you worry and just makes everything much worse than it actually is.
I literally had that sitting on my desk, to act as a good reminder, you know, to stop spinning things around, spinning things around in our heads so that we take an action. And do
Craig Graves: [00:17:31] You talk yourself out of it, right? Yeah. You ever heard of Mel Robbins?
Chris Gazdik: [00:17:37] No,
Craig Graves: [00:17:37] Mel Robbins is a, authur she’s written several books and she has what she calls the five second rule and what’s behind it.
The five second rule is you, have an idea to do something, to take an action. You have five seconds to start doing it before your brain starts figuring out reasons why you shouldn’t. Interesting. And eventually it kills the, it kills the momentum and the idea,
Chris Gazdik: [00:17:59] and you jump in the pool and
Craig Graves: [00:18:00] do it.
Chris Gazdik: [00:18:01] Yeah. Or jump in that pool, get in the car to go to the gym. Two,
Craig Graves: [00:18:05] three, four, five. Well,
Chris Gazdik: [00:18:08] maybe the water’s too.
Craig Graves: [00:18:09] Maybe it’s not deep enough. You know, maybe my bathing suit would fall off, but if you can get it done in that five second window, you’re, you know, you’re more likely to take action,
Chris Gazdik: [00:18:20] no kidding. So I’m sitting there for a first time driver I’m in the car by myself.
Turn the ignition on. What do I do? Do I push the gas one? Two three, four, five.
Craig Graves: [00:18:35] Yep. Go.
Chris Gazdik: [00:18:36] You got to do it in that time.
Craig Graves: [00:18:38] I might get a ticket. I might run over a deer. I might get into an accident
Chris Gazdik: [00:18:41] in a wreck. Yeah. Wow. Five seconds. That’s good.
Craig Graves: [00:18:46] She’s got a Ted talk about that. We should put that in the show notes.
Agreed. Mel Robbin’s Ted talk. It’s really good. I think she’s got a couple Ted talks and she’s awesome speaker.
Chris Gazdik: [00:18:55] Mr. Robinson you want to write that down now? Here’s a pen, he usually gives me a pen. I’m giving him a pen. Yeah, that’s awesome. Oh, you already had one. Dang it. I thought I had one on him. So actually from the book part of the first part of this chapter, 19.
you know, I talk about the whole concept of paralysis by analysis. So this is a quote from the book. Human beings have a super developed part of the brain called our frontal cortex. This is the section to give us that gives us the ability to think critically or problem solve our frontal cortex takes in many factors and extrapolates conclusions.
Given enough time to process them. We can counters. We can. Ponder something for hours or even days. The problem is we can spend too much time on this processing step, which is what people mean when they use the word paralysis. Right. And that, that goes, you go even further on the five second rule.
That is absolutely cool. I mean, I’m thinking we could do that. You know, when you’re thinking about a decision and you need to be thoughtful, you know, probably more than five seconds. Thoughtfulness is important. Well, when you have a thoughtful process that you’ve gone through, it shouldn’t be taken hours.
It shouldn’t be taken days, you know? And when you’re thinking about what do I need to do with a lot of the decisions that we have throughout the course of the day, do it .Just, you know, and you’ll see that theme throughout my book in a different, in a few different ways, in a few different times, you know, take an action, take a step.
You know, what did they say? The, the journey starts with a step.
Craig Graves: [00:20:24] The journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step.
Chris Gazdik: [00:20:27] Thank you. I thought it was something like that. Yeah, right? Yep. Otherwise you just think and you get paralysis and you get stuck and you get kinda, you know. Tore into it. I believe in an action oriented step or processing in therapy.
you know, as a matter of fact, I mean, if I, if I start feeling like, you know, we haven’t done anything, we haven’t made any specific decisions. Or feel like, you know, the person hasn’t really spotted how they want things to be. I’m going to go into a thinking process with them and I’ll make some suggestions.
It’s ultimately their decision. I really want to decide with that person what they want to do.
Craig Graves: [00:21:04] Okay. Let’s talk about action oriented therapy. In just a second. Okay. But let’s go back to the decision making process for just a second. And I think we did a show way, way back about listening to your gut versus your logic and stuff like that.
Chris Gazdik: [00:21:19] Mostly use your head.
Craig Graves: [00:21:20] Yeah. Obviously some decisions require more thought and analysis and five seconds. Yeah. Right. So where do you, where do you see us draw the line there? You know, what is, what is jumping in the pool versus. Selling my home and move into a different town or we’re quitting my job or something like that.
Those are definitely decisions that need some analysis and time. So how do you draw it? How do you draw? I mean, what’s, what’s a quick decision versus a long one.
Chris Gazdik: [00:21:52] That’s a really interesting question. I hadn’t thought about, I did think about our show on trust your gut or use your head. I mean, that was all over me in this, in this show prep, as I was thinking about this.
But, you know, what occurred to me as you ask that is just really pay attention to your emotion, right? Like what are you experiencing when you’re facing this decision? Because if you start, we started identifying anxiety or fear and that starting to grow, and it doesn’t seem to have any, you know, blatant danger, justifiable reason for it to be there.
That’s a time to like, not be thinking and be thoughtful and to be stuck because you will be stuck. You’ll be paralyzed by that. So the differentiation to me is using your skills and ability to sort of scan. What it is that you’re experiencing. How about that?
Craig Graves: [00:22:50] That’s good.
That’s good.
Chris Gazdik: [00:22:52] I know in your unbeatable mind stuff of you kind of talk about that, you know, when you’re breathing and when you’re meditating increase your level of self-awareness, because you’ve got that things that are, that are, that are popping up in your scan of yourself, self-awareness, it’s based on fear or an insecurity or, you know, shame-based feelings and things like that.
That’s probably not real useful.
Craig Graves: [00:23:16] Correct? Correct. Yeah. And I believe that you can learn a lot by doing, A deeper dive within what did, what did the, what did Trish say last week about the emotions being,
Chris Gazdik: [00:23:27] we are synced in here
Craig Graves: [00:23:29] being a,
Chris Gazdik: [00:23:29] sit there. Points of information.
Craig Graves: [00:23:31] Yeah.
Chris Gazdik: [00:23:31] Yeah. Emotion point of information.
Do you want that information? Do you need to disregard that information? You just need to sit with it and let it stew and yeah. We’ll work through. Yeah, I thought, yeah, I’m going to use that all the time.
Craig Graves: [00:23:42] That is a good one. And, you know, I got an answer myself to that question that I would, that I would share with the listener.
If you have a big decision. I think one of the things that you can do and a couple of things I’ll tap into things that Dan Miller has said, we mentioned him earlier. If he’s facing a big decision, then he’ll set a timeframe on it. So like he and his wife, if they’re going to move to a different town or whatever, you’ll say, okay, we’re going to give this two weeks.
To come up with a decision. At the end of the two weeks, they make a decision. Okay. So then you’re not completely stifled by analysis paralysis. You have a deadline that you got to hit and then going back to the analysis paralysis thing,
Chris Gazdik: [00:24:25] can I just jump in? You can do that. Totally. Is coach stuff.
Awesome.
Craig Graves: [00:24:30] Yeah. I mean, but right. You know, cause if you, if you don’t set some kind of timeframe, we could just go on forever and nothing ever happens. And that’s what we’re talking about. Right. Not taking action. Right. So. On the other side of that five second rule, you know, you might take, you might say two weeks, three weeks, even, even a month, but you have a deadline of when the decision is going to be made.
And then going back to the analysis paralysis thing, a lot of people, you know, if they’re going to do something or start a business or, or write a book, even, you know, they want it to be A one perfect. Before they, before they release it. And another thing I’ve heard, I’ve heard Dan say this too. And I agree is, you know, be 80% there and then, and get started and refine as you go.
And that way you’re not. Okay. Well, I think it’s good, but I can do this. Well now I’ve got that done, but I can do this. And that’s another way to get into this analysis paralysis thing where you actually never end up doing something. Does that make sense?
Chris Gazdik: [00:25:28] It does. And I’m really glad you’re bringing that in.
In your worldview because that really capsulates pretty well. What this chapter, what is it? 19 of this writing project I’ve done is trying to really push, you know, this idea that, you know, what did you say? 80%? What?
Craig Graves: [00:25:51] 80% there
Chris Gazdik: [00:25:52] get 80% there on making a decision and then do, yeah. Right. Because that’s pretty good.
That’s that’s a pretty good, solid percentage to know. I think I want to do something, so do part of it. Right. And you’re right. Just using this book as a notion. I mean, I was pretty sure I wanted to write a book a long time and I wasn’t ready to really pursue the project until kind of fairly recently, but I took the step of writing it down and had no idea and knew that I wasn’t going to do this literally for years.
You know, but I started to just, I got a notebook and I just wrote it down. I wasn’t even, probably 30% there.
Craig Graves: [00:26:30] So what did, what did you write?
Chris Gazdik: [00:26:32] The quotes.
Craig Graves: [00:26:32] Okay.
Chris Gazdik: [00:26:33] The quotes. I mean, I’ve got, I’ve got a list of them man. I mean, if I could write fast. Interesting. I’ve got a list of quotes. Probably 300. Yeah. Concepts.
Craig Graves: [00:26:42] So we’ve all heard the ready aim fire. Yup. It’s more like a ready fire aim.
Chris Gazdik: [00:26:50] Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That’s an interesting switch. I like that. Yeah. You know,
Craig Graves: [00:26:55] Pushing it up a little bit there.
Chris Gazdik: [00:26:56] Yeah. No, I mean, it really captured the essence Craig of, you know, chapter 19 when you feel the urge to take action.
Do so. Got it. Dwelling on things tends to create anxiety, you know, and. People. Yeah. Let’s, let’s get into the next part, right? Like who knows, how dwelling thing on things creates anxiety. Let’s let’s, let’s go. Before we get there, I followed the chapter of the book and, and said, you know, the action oriented process.
Right? So part of what I like to do. During an active phase of therapy with folks is really to identify, like I said befowhat do you want in life to be like, and more importantly, find an action, you know, to move in that direction. So let’s try that. Okay. Live right now.
Craig Graves: [00:27:43] That’s pretty cool because that’s, to me, that’s coaching, you know, where are you now?
Where do you want to be? What’s holding you back from getting there and let’s figure out a plan to get you there and overcome whatever’s holding you back.
Chris Gazdik: [00:27:58] Absolutely.
Craig Graves: [00:27:59] So I thought therapy was more about just laying on the couch and pouring out your heart. And then that was it. You’re saying there’s action that is taken in therapy sessions
Chris Gazdik: [00:28:07] way, way, way.
Craig Graves: [00:28:09] Okay, good. Yeah, let’s give it a shot.
Chris Gazdik: [00:28:11] And you know, what’s funny. I don’t know if I did this later on in the show prep or not, but you know, I did kind of a little Google search of some sort. And, you know, what I found on that was because I’ve said before, I mean, I’ll pop a Google search when I’m doing, you know, things just to kind of refresh my brain or continue my thought process on a topic.
I think what did I type? I type something like, you know, take action in life. Or what prevents taking action or something like that. You, what came up was a crap ton of very scholarly. Research articles, PDF files of people documenting and research the effects in largely a lot of different psychotherapy, therapy modalities, and the supporting views in different modalities in these PDF research articles about what taking action is and why you do it and how you do it in that particular modality, I was like, wow, I couldn’t read it.
So I thought, you know, we’re going to dumb it down a little bit tonight and talk about it in some basic ways, because yeah, you know, arguably in a lot of, you know, you got reality therapy out there, you’ve got, even psychodynamic theory, which is kind of old school digging into your childhood Freudian stuff.
Totally. But, you know, in cognitive behavioral therapy, which is a staple for a lot of people now, you know, in substance abuse, motivational interviewing. Therapy models. Those are all theory models, dude. There’s action. You get to a point where you figure out what action is going to be there. There’s a lot of research about action and what it does, how important it is, you know, even in, even in, I was thinking about this, thinking about these concepts of chapter 19, right?
We talked about voting as an action. Remember that article I found it was like, kind of talking about like what. You know, what benefit does that give you emotionally with your mental health? Action’s important. It’s just totally important and consequential to how we feel when you don’t take action. Can we say you don’t feel good?
Generally speaking,
Craig Graves: [00:30:23] I’d say that I’d agree with
Chris Gazdik: [00:30:24] that. I don’t know if we can go totally that far.
Craig Graves: [00:30:27] I feel really good. When you have taken action, you really done some stuff at the end of the day.
Chris Gazdik: [00:30:31] How many times you say, man, I just, I just went to the gym and I feel good just about having gone.
Craig Graves: [00:30:37] Yeah, definitely.
Chris Gazdik: [00:30:39] I just walked for 10 minutes down the neighborhood and 10 minutes back. Like I feel good that I made that decision. It’s important and the exercise does good and going to church does good and going to the gym or whatever, you know, getting to grocery store trip done because I just went and did it today that all has functional effect, but I’m kind of saying this Google search.
I did have a lot of intellectually based, crazy stuff that people are talking to.
Craig Graves: [00:31:07] This makes us feel, you know, I think, well, Dan Miller, again, he said, you know, success is moving toward worthy goals. So I think it makes us feel more successful to take action. We’ve we’ve done something we’ve succeeded.
Chris Gazdik: [00:31:21] So let’s try to demonstrate this.
Let’s have fun with it. See how the, see how this works out. So what I want you to do, Craig is
Craig Graves: [00:31:27] Do I need to lay on the couch.
Chris Gazdik: [00:31:29] Yeah, absolutely. I’m actually ask that a few times. Not many, but like literally over, yeah, over, probably over probably 20 years of therapy in some form or other, maybe three, five times.
Should I lay down on the couch?
I’m like, I don’t know. I’m kind of feeling like a nap too. You want,
Craig Graves: [00:31:50] you want to snuggle?
Chris Gazdik: [00:31:51] I never said that. So in real time here, create a therapy problem. Like what, what would be a presenting problem that you might have, like for therapy, if you, you know, make something up?
Obviously this is, this is all totally hypothetical of all the things that people might go to a therapy experience for just kind of kick around and think what, you know, what would people present for?
Craig Graves: [00:32:16] so even it makes something up,
Chris Gazdik: [00:32:17] totally make something up.
Craig Graves: [00:32:19] jeez.
Chris Gazdik: [00:32:21] It could be something with their kid could be something, you know, with their marriage.
It could be something with anxiety. Depression could be some work-related thing. Like what kind of something might there be hypothetical?
Craig Graves: [00:32:31] All right. Well, I’ll go with it. All right. So we ready? What,
Chris Gazdik: [00:32:37] what’s the presenting problem?
Craig Graves: [00:32:38] Yeah, so I’m, I’m I’ve I think I’ve got a gaming addiction.
Chris Gazdik: [00:32:42] Okay.
Craig Graves: [00:32:43] Yeah.
Chris Gazdik: [00:32:44] And that’s a presenting problem.
Yeah.
Craig Graves: [00:32:45] And that’s the problem.
Chris Gazdik: [00:32:46] Parents are getting onto me or my wife’s getting on to me or something like that. And it’s possibly, I’m wondering if I have a gaming addiction. You know, I want to figure this out with you.
Craig Graves: [00:32:56] Yeah, let’s go with that.
Chris Gazdik: [00:32:58] I know you don’t play video games.
Craig Graves: [00:33:00] I never play me when I was a kid.
Chris Gazdik: [00:33:02] This is all hypothetical Craig it’s okay. Okay. So the next part then is what do you want life to be like? So you’ve got this gaming addiction and whatnot, you know, what, what, what type of, what type of vision do you see for, you know, for things in the future? What, where does this affect your life? The most or something, or, you know, what do you want life to be like?
Craig Graves: [00:33:22] Well, you know, Chris, you know, I’m, you know, I’m single, right. And, you know, I work mostly out of my house. I have my kids, a couple of my kids every other week, but dude, lately, dude, I just can’t stop playing this video game. You know, I’m staying up late. I’m having trouble getting my kids off to school in the morning.
Cause I haven’t had any sleep. you know, the weeks that I don’t have them, that’s not a problem. But then I can’t, I can’t move my coaching business forward because, All the time playing this game, you know, I’d like to have a relationship at some point, but I can’t meet women because, you know,
Chris Gazdik: [00:33:55] onfortnight
Craig Graves: [00:33:56] 24/7.
So I need to, I need to, re-establish my, relationship with my family. I need to be able to function and work during the day so I can be successful there. And, You know, I need to get back into my, to my workout routine. I’m starting to slip there, so I just need to get all those things back.
Chris Gazdik: [00:34:16] Perfect.
You know, it’s, awesome. We want, we want work routines. We want relationship time with family and we want, you know, coaching business execution, you know, we want life to be back to where it was before Fortnite took over. And I can tell, by the way you have learned a little bit about addiction, you are nailing symptomology.
Like what it takes you is that’s really, really cool. Seriously, man. So what I’m going to quickly do, I mean, I’m going to do a lot of things in it, therapy session, but I’m going to be, you know, talking to them about their tendencies and what those relationships are like, what timeframe this began to, you know, take on.
I really want to get a good picture, you know, when did this start to take over by timeframe. I mean, a week ago, a month ago, five years ago, you know, I really want to get a picture of what life is like now. And then I’m going to take this mystery person, Mr. Craig Graves in his video addiction. And we’re going to go, Mr.
John Jones. How about that? John Jones? Everybody’s a Jones. He just balked at me. He’s like, look, Oh my God. Now I’m going to take this guy, Mr. Craig Graves with his video gaming addiction, and try to figure out how we can move to how you just described. You kind of want life to be like, I’m going, gonna figure out an action point.
I’m probably going to figure out which area is most important to you so that we find motivational things in that as a matter of fact, go ahead and choose one. What’s what’s an area that’s most important. Yeah.
Craig Graves: [00:35:44] Well, for right now it’s the children, right? The children will present with them, make sure they’re doing their homework and getting a good breakfast before school.
Not being late for school. I need to really focus on them when I’m, when I got.
Chris Gazdik: [00:35:56] Okay. So, so during those weeks that you have the kids, we’re going to begin to think about, you know, challenges to yourself, action points that you could take. I’m going to come up with many, actually some of it’s just the behavioral part of cognitive behavioral therapy.
What are the behaviors we want to look at? When do you turn the night? You know, the fortnight off? What time of day? What time do you turn it on? That’s an action point. I’m going to set up a, an idea of, you know, do, do you protect dinnertime, you know, from, you know, seven to nine 30 is dinner time and cleanup dinner time, maybe we have an action point about that where we, have a protection of that in your, in your daily schedule.
When the kids are here, I might kind of be talking to you and kind of find, you know, thought processes that you go on. You know, where you have to confront yourself and take an action to confront the thoughts that limit you in the kid’s time. That’s an action. When you confront your thoughts.
Craig Graves: [00:36:57] So do you like have people write these things down?
Chris Gazdik: [00:36:59] We might write them down
Craig Graves: [00:37:00] or something like that.
Chris Gazdik: [00:37:01] We might write them down. We might actually have somebody that we connect with. That’s a friend that you can think of accountability, partner it. One action point, you know, as I’m working with, you might be to simply reveal to three people in your life that this has become like your private life reveal this to three people that makes it real to get outside of yourself, because we know that with addiction, that’s an action point.
Hmm, what did I just rattle off? Like, like five or six?
Craig Graves: [00:37:29] Yeah, right. Yeah.
Chris Gazdik: [00:37:31] You know, it was funny. I’ve thought about this. I’m going to do this live and cold out. I’m not going to come up with anything. I’m not going to be stoned. I’m not going to be like, you know, shut up. You see what I mean though? I mean, that’s, that’s a powerful part of what we’re trying to do.
And what I mean by action. This is therapy is not like sit down and just talk about it. So
Craig Graves: [00:37:51] when, when you, when you create this action plan, is it something that you asked the client to sign on to? Do you think you can do this, or do you think you could do that? Or are you just saying, Hey, look, here’s what we’re going to do.
Chris Gazdik: [00:38:01] No, I don’t say it. No, I’m not. I’m not telling anybody what, what they do and whatnot at at best. Some of what that is, is in my mind. And I’m going to be talking to them and getting an idea of really what they want. You know, of course, if they want like, well, I just want to be able to, you know, play for 16 hours a day, instead of the 15, I don’t know why I can’t have life like that.
My wife is upset with me, but you know, I’m going to be like, all right, we’re different confrontation skills come into therapy there. That might give a suggestion is the, as far as I’ll go, I’m not going to say, this is what you got to do. Here’s the prescribed plan. I’m not setting it up, but 12 step program where you follow step one, then step two and then step three.
Now that actually probably is a little bit more like coaching. It’s a whole lot more sort of figuring out like, what steps do you want to take? This has got to be your idea. This has got to be what your vision is.
Craig Graves: [00:38:54] So you tell them that. Yeah. Okay. That’s kind of what I would do too, from a coaching standpoint.
Yeah. Yeah, I want to be, I want to be healthier. I need a work out plan. Well, how many days a week can you exercise? We know. What can you do now? Where are you now? what kind of exercise do you envision yourself doing? You know, is it CrossFit? Is it running? Is it swimming and then kind of work from there?
So they’re really buying into what we’re doing. I’m not just saying, Hey, I want you to swim three miles and run 10 miles and lift 200 pounds. You know,
Chris Gazdik: [00:39:24] you’ll lose people that way. Right. They cannot process. Data that way and they can’t buy into their process that way. Yeah, absolutely. There’s a lot of similarity there.
Craig Graves: [00:39:35] Interesting.
Chris Gazdik: [00:39:37] How do we get to where you want to be?
Craig Graves: [00:39:40] Oh, you’re doing sounds very similar to a coaching. Kind of relationship and maybe a whole different show I would ask you is what’s the difference when to somebody, to therapist versus a coach,
Chris Gazdik: [00:39:52] I’ve thought a lot about that since we’ve talked about it off the mix a lot.
And honestly, Craig, I think one of the things is, you know, diagnostics is kind of the, is the big area, the science of diagnostics in real mental health conditions that whole, you know, tale of two tapes that talk about getting into this biological component in medication options, which I don’t prescribe, but I work with them and.
You know, and, dealing with the, you know, the biological process of mental health conditions.
Craig Graves: [00:40:21] I think there’s obviously some clear black and white kind of things, but there’s some gray areas
Chris Gazdik: [00:40:26] that was very much, I think, so,
Craig Graves: [00:40:27] you know, some schizophrenia or having hallucinations or thinking about hurting somebody, I need it therapist, obviously, but if I’m trying to, I don’t know.
Whatever,
Chris Gazdik: [00:40:39] get to a process that you can coach me through to get to where I want life to be.
Craig Graves: [00:40:43] Exactly. Yeah, exactly.
Chris Gazdik: [00:40:45] Yeah. Yeah. And there’s some overlap. We’ve we’ve talked about that. So again, chapter 19, when you feel the urge to take action, do so dwelling on things tends to create anxiety. Do part of this is act. Don’t. Part of this is dwell on things too long. How can dwelling on things, create anxiety? You were actually saying a lot earlier. About that he might have stole some of the book’s thunder,
Craig Graves: [00:41:09] maybe so, you know, I think when you start dwelling on things, you start thinking about what could happen, what could go wrong?
What are the negatives? You know,
Chris Gazdik: [00:41:18] so let’s dig into this after we take a quick break, shall we? Sure. So our new sponsorship helper, what is it through helper? Betterhelp.com. Jeez. How about that? Betterhelp.com. Craig, we’ve talked about it. We’re going to start talking about it a little bit during these breaks.
Something that I absolutely believe in nowadays. I did not believe in it quite so much before, to be honest with you, telephone talk therapy. It rocks. You know, I’ve had some of my best sessions through this pandemic on the phone with people. Honestly, I remember one particular teenager I was talking with, dude, we were on the phone for.
55-56 minutes. And I hung up the phone. I thought, man, that kid has never opened up with me like he did during that session. And I knew him for a while.
Craig Graves: [00:42:05] Interesting.
Chris Gazdik: [00:42:06] It was shocking. It was shocking. So we have a sponsorship with betterhelp.com. And what you do is you go to throughatherapistseyes.com.
The partnership part is we do get a referral of a stipend for going through our website. So you need to go to throughatherapistseyes.com, you click the counseling tab. And what that does is it links you up with a survey where they kind of take into account your presenting problem. Kind of preferences that you have, or the type of therapist that you want, and they have therapists all over the country that there’ll be able to match you up with specifically and specially for your preferences and your purpose, whether it be substance abuse, whether it be anxiety, whether it be marriage, whether it be depression and they will have set you up with a therapist and execute a full-blown counseling experience, pretty cool. Therapists out there helping you. That I’ve got the first one I came up with.
when I was writing this book, dwelling on things, creating anxiety, perfectionism. Okay. So quote from the book, “life is complicated. We need the ability to think and figure things out. This is one of the attributes that makes us different from other species on this great Earth. I find though, some people are afraid to take action.
We get hung up on getting it right, called perfectionism, or making the correct decision. It’s going to be a good thing because we don’t want to be the type of person that easily flies off the handle. So to speak. We call that impulsiveness. The trouble is we can’t always quote unquote, get it exactly right.’
Okay. So that’s, an example of what you get, but
Craig Graves: [00:43:42] that kind of goes back to what we were saying earlier. Get it 80%, right. And then, and then go for it, you know, ready, fire aim.
Chris Gazdik: [00:43:51] I agree.
Craig Graves: [00:43:51] That absolutely hits that.
Chris Gazdik: [00:43:53] Yeah. I agree.
Craig Graves: [00:43:54] Now I looked up a quote while we were talking about that actually, and as from Theodore Roosevelt.
Chris Gazdik: [00:44:00] Well, that should be good.
Craig Graves: [00:44:01] Yeah. Let me get it pulled up here,
Chris Gazdik: [00:44:04] Mr. Roosevelt.
Craig Graves: [00:44:09] But a old Teddy said “In any moment of decision, the best thing you can do is the right thing. The worst thing you can do is nothing.” Oh, pretty good. Huh?
Chris Gazdik: [00:44:20] Say that again. That’s also, I love little mottoes.
Craig Graves: [00:44:23] Yeah. This says “In any moment of decision. The best thing you can do is the right thing. The worst thing you can do, is nothing.”
Chris Gazdik: [00:44:30] Right. We’re not trying to be perfect. We’re that would be the best case scenario is we made a perfect quick decision, but absolutely a deadly nightmare is when you just don’t do anything, right. Because you’re dwelling on it. Thinking about it. You’re swirling around your monkey brain. You love to talk about and you just get paralyzed bad,
Craig Graves: [00:44:55] The longer we sit and think, I mean, the more we start worrying about the negative consequences that could result as a fit. You know, is it as a result of us taking action?
Chris Gazdik: [00:45:04] Absolutely. You know, I think there’s another thing here that I wrote about another book quote, unintended consequences. So it does scare people when they start thinking about, well, if I do this, then that will happen or this will happen.
Or the other might happen in it. You know, we do run into unintended consequences. Another quote from the book. Shoot, people are afraid of intended consequences. We tend to become highly worried or anxious about the effect we may have. When we take action, we may take action. We may encounter unintended consequences. Often when we are thinking about an action to take, we are even anxious about what we intend as a consequence.
In either case. The panic, we feel we are not careful can lead to no action at all, or great levels of anxiety. You know, it’s funny unquote from the book, you know, it’s funny, Craig. We really are oftentimes on link sync. I did not ask him to find that quote that he just did from Teddy Roosevelt. And I wish I would have had it when I was writing this book.
Cause that is perfectly in sync with where we’re at, which that’s uncanny to me. Would you not agree? Oh yeah.
Craig Graves: [00:46:08] A hundred percent.
Chris Gazdik: [00:46:10] That’s totally cool. Absolutely. So perfectionism, unintended consequences. And then, again, you mentioned it to here, you know, the third thing that came to me in this book when I was writing is afraid to make mistakes.
Okay. So another quote from the book, moving down in this chapter quote, when we apply. This to those weighty, your circumstances, such as relationships with your in-laws parenting choices are complicated financial decisions. It’s easy to see. We can feel trapped and ponder our choices. For years. Many of us arrive at the conclusion.
It is better to do nothing or say nothing than to make a decision or statement that will cause conflict because we cannot be certain the thought process or decision is right or plan for all of the potential outcomes of our actions. Doing and saying nothing seems to make sense. Then we became stuck. So do act don’t dwell on things too long.
We must make it okay. Within ourselves and for others to make mistakes and incurred natural consequences. Unquote, from the book again, I did not ask you to find that quote, but that is awesomely associated to this writing project in this chapter 19.
Craig Graves: [00:47:24] Well, I’ll look for decisiveness quotes in that that one down came up.
Chris Gazdik: [00:47:28] Yeah, pretty cool. So lastly, let’s go to the end of this chapter where I want to talk about courageously taking action. Okay. From the book quote, when we’ve spent a little time being thoughtful and feel an urge to take action than I am recommending, we simply follow that urge and do it speak the opinions you have out loud, or even if they are quote unquote controversial, the expression quote, say what you feel.
Means being open and honest, we can say what we feel when it comes to budgets or boundaries with in-laws, or how does a discipline the kids when they come home with a sword they bought online. Yes. This actually happens unquote from the book. That’s something I dealt with. Kid bought a sword.
Craig Graves: [00:48:17] Your kid, did you bought
Chris Gazdik: [00:48:19] a sword
Craig Graves: [00:48:20] really? Like a real sword.
Chris Gazdik: [00:48:22] Real freaky and sword, man, dude, it was a, it was on the wish.com.
Craig Graves: [00:48:27] Oh yeah. Yeah. It’s
Chris Gazdik: [00:48:29] like, what did he got there, buddy?
Craig Graves: [00:48:31] That’s awesome.
Chris Gazdik: [00:48:32] No, it wasn’t fun. Anyway, back to the book quote here. We can always change direction if we need to or make a correction. If it’s warranted, I have in bold print in the book, taking action has much more potential for reaping a result that is desired.
However, just welling on things often leave life circumstances to chance that we’ll likely feel anxious about. Quote from the book, right? Yeah. Let’s dive in. Extra material from chapter 19. And really think about, we talked about this actually a little bit with the voting stuff in the election. What are they, what are the effects taking action?
Craig Graves: [00:49:15] Well, that kind of segways into where I was thinking.
Chris Gazdik: [00:49:18] Perfect.
Craig Graves: [00:49:19] I’m going to ask you if, you know, if you take action and in uncomfortable situations, what do you think about. Those actions becoming easier in the future.
Chris Gazdik: [00:49:32] The same actions or different,
Craig Graves: [00:49:34] the same actions. And I think that, you know, once you’re courageous in one area that can transfer over to another, let’s say I’m in a board meeting at work.
Chris Gazdik: [00:49:41] No, no, no, no. Let’s not go to a board meeting. Let’s go back to, the hypothetical, fictional, Craig Graves in the video addiction. Okay. Right. So can we go there? Sure. Let’s button that up that way. Go ahead with what you were thinking let’s go to, you know,
Craig Graves: [00:50:00] well I think the board, yeah, the boardroom example would be a better one in this case.
So if I’m, I think it’s the more realistic situation for anybody, not just a gaming addict or if I’m in, in any kind of a meeting, or any kind of, group discussion, you know, and we’re discussing a topic, religion, politics, business. Whatever, and I’ve got a point to make and I’m thinking, Oh man, if I say that they’re going to think I’m stupid or, you know, I’m a moron or they’re gonna, you know, that I’m going to be, you know, they’re gonna, they’re gonna think I’m dumb, whatever.
I’m like, I’m not gonna say anything
Chris Gazdik: [00:50:39] A lot of people feel that way they do. Absolutely they do.
Craig Graves: [00:50:42] But if I speak up and say, well, you don’t want to think this about that issue. You know, the next time I’m in a group, is it easier for me to speak up? And if I do it as they get easier the third time and the next time, and the next time to where I develop a comfort level.
We’re taking that particular action, whatever it is.
Chris Gazdik: [00:51:00] Yeah. I think you’re on to, of course, yes. And you know, you’ll see that, Craig, I think you correct me if I’m wrong in your coaching experiences with people, do you start out on the biggest task? Do you start out on the most difficult journey for somebody to change in their life?
No. No, not at all. You develop confidence and you comfort, you know, Ms. Janice Booth talked about that in the book where right. And the podcast, the podcast. Yeah.
Craig Graves: [00:51:29] Yeah. She went 13 times to that slot Canyon before she finally got through that.
Chris Gazdik: [00:51:35] Right. And she talked about how, you know, you start off.
You know, you don’t start off jumping out of a plane, you jump off of a box. Yeah. And then, and then the third step. Yeah. And then maybe you go to, you know, a ladder and then you go to a top of a building and then you go to a tall building, maybe. You know, before you get to the plane.
Craig Graves: [00:51:56] So yeah, so obviously I knew the answer to that question, but I wanted to listen to go back to that.
And once you take that, once you take that courageous action, it gets easier and easier and easier until it becomes more comfortable. And you’re able to do that in different settings. And it is transferable just like, you know, with Ms. Booth going into that thing 13 times before she finally got it. After you do something like that.
Probably speaking up in a crowd it’s probably easy. Right?
Chris Gazdik: [00:52:22] Right. Absolutely. Absolutely easy. You know? And when you’re battling the demons inside you, I will tell you going back to the addiction. I think it applies there. You know, when you’re trying to deal with, you know, sobriety from, the game or alcohol or pills or pot or whatever.
Craig Graves: [00:52:42] Yeah. Just admit in that, reaching out. It’s a courageous action.
Chris Gazdik: [00:52:46] That’s absolutely. Yeah. And you know, after that first day you’re kind of like, Oh my God, I went 24 hours without playing.
Craig Graves: [00:52:53] Yeah.
Chris Gazdik: [00:52:54] That’s a big deal for somebody that has played every day of their life in gaming addictions for three and a half years.
Right. And all we’re talking about is going one 24 hours. No, you know what? One 16 hour set of time during your waking hours not play, it’s a huge step. It’s a huge accomplishment. And it does just build. It does just build so absolutely. I think it’s, I think it’s awesome. what are the effects of taking an action?
Any action. Oh, this is where I did the Google search I was mentioning earlier there. I was kind of like, okay, well I listed probably four or five of these things just in a brainstorming. And I was like, what did I write down here? What I, what I did? yeah, I think I might’ve Google search.
What are the effects of taking an action? That’s when I got all those scholarly and crazy PDF research articles. Let’s dumb it down. What happens? Mr. Graves? You know, when we actually, like, we just said, take an action to develop confidence. That’s on my list. That’s not on my list, but it should be right.
Yeah. first of all, you know, something’s going to happen. Isn’t something like Teddy Roosevelt just said better than nothing. And if you combine that with a little bit of thoughtfulness, Probably the slant is very much going to be a positive event
Craig Graves: [00:54:18] happens. Yes.
Chris Gazdik: [00:54:20] I think that can be a strong, a strong reality.
What do you think about less regret development and less resentment development? Is that an antidote is taking an action in antidote for regret and resentment?
Craig Graves: [00:54:34] Yeah, absolutely man. You know, and it absolutely is. It’s you’re going to have less regrets. If you take action on things that you truly want to do. Or need to do.
Right. So I’ve got some, I’ve got a friend, from my childhood and when my parents went through a divorce, his parents became like second parents to me. And so when I had gone through my divorce, I kind of lost touch with that family. And I’m recently reestablished I recently called and talked to and everything’s good.
Cool. But, you know, if I had not made that call and something had to happen, you know, it was crazy times we’re living in, you know, it was COVID and everything else, then that would have been a huge regret for me. If I had not made that phone call,
Chris Gazdik: [00:55:18] this is an awesome example.
Craig Graves: [00:55:20] Yeah, absolutely.
Chris Gazdik: [00:55:21] This is real right.
Craig Graves: [00:55:22] It’s real. Yeah. Yeah, definitely real. My father, my father had Alzheimer’s disease. And, he had gotten to a point where he didn’t speak or, know who was in the room or when they were in the room. So I had stopped visiting him as frequently as I had, I used to go every Sunday, religiously. So I went to see my father and the next week he passed away.
And if I had not gone to see him, then that would be, I would regret that for the rest of my life. Yeah. So taking that action obviously eliminated that what would have been a huge regret? Yeah. So those are a couple of examples of how taking that action can result in regret not being an issue.
Chris Gazdik: [00:56:07] I mean, honestly, if you just, if you take an action, can’t you, can’t you say to yourself?
Well, at least I tried something.
Craig Graves: [00:56:13] Oh, absolutely. Yeah. Yeah.
Chris Gazdik: [00:56:14] I did something. It may not have been the best something, but it was something and it wasn’t nothing.
Craig Graves: [00:56:20] Yes. Yeah. Even if, when I had made this call, it had gone bad, then, at least I would have tried. Right. It went great. And everything’s fun.
And I’m happy that everything is fine, but even if it had gone bad, then, you know, at least I would have taken the action. Does that make sense?
Chris Gazdik: [00:56:41] Absolutely. Absolutely. Change. Number four here is, you know, what are the effects of taking an action? We don’t need a scholarly PDF research article to explain and identify the fact that change is going to happen.
Isn’t that probable to be the case that’s going to be an action. It’s going to be different. Something is going to be different. So change and again, with thoughtfulness, isn’t it more likely to be some sort of positive change? Yes. Things do not change when you do nothing. Right. Can we say that? Yeah.
Things cannot change when you don’t do nothing.
Craig Graves: [00:57:13] Yeah. You’re right,
Chris Gazdik: [00:57:14] right.
Craig Graves: [00:57:15] For better or worse
Chris Gazdik: [00:57:16] for better or worse. Another one that occurs to me, number five, getting close, you know, getting to choose rather a direction of some sort, you know, when you. We talked, we spent a lot of time earlier in my idea, notion of action in therapy, moving to how you want life to be like, well, you move closer to that.
You, know, you, you get to choose a direction in what you, what you’re moving to. And if you don’t, you don’t take an action and you’re just stuck in your sort of making life, experiencing life by default. It just happens to you.
Craig Graves: [00:57:49] Yes. And
Chris Gazdik: [00:57:51] I don’t know about you, but I certainly like to choose what direction I’m going into.
Craig Graves: [00:57:54] Exactly.
Chris Gazdik: [00:57:56] Particularly when I’m being thoughtful about it, F tends to be less passive and let other people and, and let other people rather than make, I’m sorry, if you take an action, you tend to be less passive and you tend not to let other people make decisions for you. Right. You know, people we’re in the government time now we just had an election and, people get frustrated.
They don’t want the government to tell them what to do. Well, Take an action. And if you don’t make something happen or do something vote or, you know, even just say an opinion. Be respectful, but cite an opinion, have a conversation. You may influence somebody who influences somebody else with a good point or a good thought, and that absolutely limits other people choosing that for you or making that decision for you, the government ain’t going to do it.
Listen, you know, who has your best interests best at heart or you,
Craig Graves: [00:58:52] right?
Chris Gazdik: [00:58:52] Yes. Do you want to leave other people to make the decisions for you?
Craig Graves: [00:58:56] No, no way.
Chris Gazdik: [00:58:57] Take an action.
Craig Graves: [00:58:58] No way. Yeah. Extreme ownership, man.
Chris Gazdik: [00:59:03] Lastly, not lastly. Second to lastly, make an improvement of some kind happen rather than create only hope of improvement with thought.
And I thought this was really cool. Matter of fact, I probably need to write it down in a future book, quote, that’s the way these book quotes, by the way happened. I’m just thinking about something I’m processing somebody, something with somebody. Listent to this man again, what are the effects of taking an action?
Okay. Number six, make an improvement of some kind happen rather than create only a hope of improvement with thought.
If you’re just thinking about things, you’re creating hope that’s great. I got no problem with that. That’s also, we do a lot of cognitive part of cognitive behavioral therapy, but if you’re just being thoughtful, you’re creating hope. That’s wonderful. But if you’re actually going to make an improvement happen, it obviously takes action.
So we don’t want to just create hope. We want to create hope and change and movement. And that’s taking an action. A kind of creates the essence of chapter 19 in what you started out in combination with when we started lastly, possibly confronting a fear, thus a likely chance to defeat a fear. If you take an action, you confront something.
Craig Graves: [01:00:19] You do you do. And, the longer you wait, the more the anxiety is going to build along with the anxiety hangs in there, like this phone call I had to make, I didn’t know what was going to happen. If the person was going to be angry with me, you know, if they were going to accept my call and that, that anxiety went on until I made the
Chris Gazdik: [01:00:34] call.
Oh, it’ll build you’re right.
Craig Graves: [01:00:36] So it just keeps to do that.Oh my God, I got to do that, got to do that. I got to do that. So not only does it eliminate regret, but it also eliminates the anxiety that goes along with the. What ifs?
Chris Gazdik: [01:00:49] I know it sounds like speaking out of both sides of my mouth. We do be patient. We do need to kind of choose good timing.
You know, those things are really important. Some people are impulsive, but the foot in their mouth, they’re not thinking before they speak, we really need to have a balance. And I think at the end of the show is good to point some of that out. But boy, I mean, the reality of it is if you procrastinate stuff and just put things off one day leads, then the next leads to the next leads to the next, where you’re never going to write that book, man, that you want to write.
You’re never going to write that book, sir, that you have a great idea about. You’re never going to launch that company. You’re not going to get into the gym. You’re not going to lose a few pounds. You’re not going to engage your kids with homework. You’re not, it’s just stuff is not going to happen. If you don’t get to it.
And procrastinating is, an enemy to this. It’s absolutely an enemy. So what do you think about our list? Brainstorm? Did. I think you actually said some other things earlier.
Craig Graves: [01:01:47] Yeah. I can’t remember what play it back.
Chris Gazdik: [01:01:48] I need to have you on my show, note, prep section, man, we need to tie you down and spend the time together doing that.
What do you think about,
Craig Graves: [01:01:55] well, that’s a figure that out. We normally don’t do that first for a reason
Chris Gazdik: [01:01:58] is true. That’s true. That’s true. So, thank you for your time. I mean, it is, you know, I hope this doesn’t come off as, you know, a book promotion, selling books and all that kind of stuff. I mean, you know, that’s important part of.
Writing the book and, you know, being an author and stuff, but I, I really much more importantly, I think that these concepts are really going to be helpful to people, Craig.
Craig Graves: [01:02:19] Yeah, sure. There, you wouldn’t read written, write the book
Chris Gazdik: [01:02:21] because they were already helpful in therapy with other people. It’s like real life therapy moments and you know, and I’m excited about the project.
I really am excited about the project. it’s funny. I think Mr. Neil pointed out earlier, I was saying it wrong and show these, these producers changed the name to the title and whatever man. So I got confused. I think I was saying rediscovering. So it’s a Through a Therapist’s Eyes Reunderstanding Emotions and Becoming Your Best Self is the best title.
And they helped create that.
Craig Graves: [01:02:51] Awesome. Looking forward to it.
Chris Gazdik: [01:02:52] Chapter 19, when you feel the urge to take action, do so, dwelling on things tends to create anxiety, do act don’t dwell on things too long. We might do this again with some other book excerpts. I think we’re, planning, a movement next time to, dealing with trauma and, a courageous person.
well, he’s made a commitment, so I’m going to be able to say he was in the military. Believe it was the Iraq war engagement. And he’s going to be talking very courageously about his experiences and coming home from that, sir. Sound a sound like a plan. He’s shaking his head. Yes. All right, man. See you guys next week.