Living the Real

The one pyramid that is not a scheme

• Matt Boettger • Episode 21

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In this episode, I take you behind the "coaching curtain" to show you a powerful perspective exercise I walk my clients through to help them get behind the bad habits that keep them from the results they want for their life. Then we reflect on the three lessons to begin getting the results you want.

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Matt Boettger:

Do all your actions lead to results. I ask this question often to the students at the University of Colorado in Boulder, where I work. And generally the answer is no, not all my actions lead to results. The correct answer is that yes. All of your actions, my actions, our actions lead to results. Sometimes they lead to good ones and sometimes they lead to bad ones. And so the question is how would we live a life by which we have way more good results over that of bad results. So we need to ask ourselves the bigger question then is where do our results come from? And as you already probably know, they come from action. They come from our actions, our actions lead to results. So today's episode is all about the three lessons. Towards having the results you want for in your life and how a particular kind of pyramid was. You're gonna have to hang on to. And this is a good one. This is not the pyramid scheme that you hate. This is a legit pyramid that can actually transform your life and give you something to reflect upon. So you can start getting better results in your life. Right now. You want to listen up. So here's to living the most real life possible this week, by having better results starting this week, let's get going. Are you living the most real life possible? I ask myself this question all the time. Most of the time, the answer is I just don't know, but sometimes the answer is definitely not. This is why I have this podcast. Hi, I'm Matt and welcome to the show. Two small things. If you get a chance, please leave a review like on Apple podcasts and also check out my website, live in the real.com where I offer lots of resources on how to live the most real life possible now on with the show.

Matt:

Okay. So we know that all of your actions lead to results. And so we're going to focus on this idea of action, right? My action of eating crap leads to the result of me getting a bigger belly and higher cholesterol. That's obvious, but where do we go from here? Is there something beyond or actions that can help us or do we just simply have to refine our actions to get the results that we want? Why on earth do I choose the actions I choose? Why do I gravitate towards the potato chips? Now a lot of that could be bad habits, but I want to take you through an exercise called this pyramid that I think can really transform your life. I use this and have used it with myself. Which has been a game changer for me is at least one of my elements for trying to get the better results I want for my life. And I've used it with the coaching I've done, and it's been one of the favorite things people have actually walked through in their own life. And then I've walked through with them. So I want to talk and go through this pyramid. If the top of the pyramid is results, right? We have the results of having a good life or a bad life. Having a good relationship, a bad relationship, a good job, a bad job, a good college experience, a bad college experience. All of these results come from our particular actions, but then where do our actions come from? That is the second layer down on the pyramid. If results is at the top, the second one below that is actions. But then what's below that. Now I want to take you through this journey. I want you to walk through and I'll give you an example to help you concretize it in your own life. And then give you a few applications that you can right now this week, start working towards better results in your life, and living the most real life possible. So what's below actions. Actions, below that are our beliefs. It is our beliefs that fuel our actions. What are the beliefs that are forming my actions? And below that, then our beliefs come from what our thoughts, our thought processes, how we think through things. And then below that our thoughts come from our feelings, how we feel. And then below that, the lowest part of the pyramid, is our experiences. Now, this is important. This is the most important thing. If you really want to change your life, if you really want to have better results in your life, however, you see that in the context of your life, then the starting point and the ending point really is experience. If you change the actions, you're just nipping at the leaves. If you change your beliefs, you're still not quite at the depths. Even your thoughts and your feelings, even though that is going really down deep. It is are experiences that shape the way we live our life. The way we believe and see about ourselves. And we believe what is possible with ourselves and work from that. So I'm going to go through this exercise of results coming from action. Our actions coming in from our beliefs, our beliefs coming from our thoughts. Our thoughts coming from our feelings and our feelings coming from our experiences. And walk you through this as an example. So you can see it in real life. So let's take this through maybe a general story of my own life. Now I know that within my own life and my own circles, I really can cause a decent amount of hurt and people's lives. A result. This isn't a fun one that I want to talk about. A decent amount of pain and hurt and people's life from my lack of being honest, especially in the time of conflict, when I feel like I have been harmed or hurt or I'm angry, or I'm just P.O.'d instead of going to that person and trying to find healing and reconciliation, I bottle it up. I don't talk about it. And then the result is I end up becoming removed, disconnected. So, what happens? I have relationships in my life and some have actually been hurt by this or the actions that led to that, that first step away from my results. Obviously I don't tell people when they hurt me, I keep it to myself. And then what happens then I act in a different way. I become passive aggressive. That sucks. And then what happens after the night I start becoming disconnected to the person. I start taking a step back from them. And I've learned this. We're in talk about that in just a second. Those are my actions, but I just can't stop there. Why, why am I acting this way? It comes from a different kind of belief. And the belief that's fueling my actions is,"I believe that I'll get over it. Don't worry. It isn't worth getting into." These are my beliefs. It's not worth it. They'll just get P.O.'d. They're just going to get angry, so I'm not going to bring it up. If it happens again, I'll bring it up. That's my belief. It's the second time. And then whenever it happens a second time, it's the third time. And then, I have a belief that making someone else feel bad, it's just not good. It's not, that's not a loving thing to do. So those are my beliefs that fuel my action. And now what I call between this pyramid, right? Results, action, beliefs. There's this gap. And behind the gap is the next level down in the pyramid, a little bit wider stepping stone. And that is the thoughts. Now, everything above this gap, belief, actions, results lead upward towards your results, your beliefs fuel your actions, your actions fuel your results. And then below this line, this gap in the pyramid goes the other way. So your thoughts gravitate towards your experience. What do I mean by this? So now my thoughts are, I can't believe they did that to me. I feel like I'm always being used They're so insensitive. They don't understand how hard my life is already Man, they have it so easy. Do they think I'm stupid or something?" And what are these attached to? Emotions. My emotions are: anger, sadness, and maybe even shame by the circumstance. And then finally at the base of the pyramid, what's the experience that actually launched all of this. It was someone who maybe criticized me in public, harmed me, or hurt me in some way. And so I responded emotionally. The first thing we experience is emotion from experience from the world. When we experience something, the first thing we feel or think it's emotion. And then from that emotion, we have thoughts. And then from those thoughts begin to build beliefs about what we're going to do, which fuels the action, which leads to the result. This is such a powerful reflection and to be used and reflecting back of like, why am I in the place that I am right now? I don't want to be here. Why do I do the thing I do not want to do over and over and over again. This will require a little bit of reflection. It's about changing your results, your bad habits and your relationships and your work with your own life. How you think about yourself. And going through this pyramid, understanding that your results is just the tip of the iceberg. And that you've got to go and reframe the experiences. Now in light of this pyramid that I'm given to you right now, I want you to use this week as a reflection point, journaling about why you do what you do. And I'm going to do the same thing. I'm going to take this week in the same way to use this pyramid in a specific way, on a couple of big issues I'm having in my life right now to help find a solution, to see where in the core of my life am I operating from that needs to be changed, rehabilitated, restored, give a new meaning and purpose. So the three lessons I want to give to you in this, that revolves around this pyramid. Lesson, number one: change your present. When it comes to changing your results, the first thing you need to do it, change your present. Want to change the trajectory of your life? Change your experiences. You're the average of the people you hang out with. If you hang out with people who do not inspire you, who are constantly negative, you're going to become that. You need to change your experiences, your present circumstances, so that you can then move up the pyramid into new kind of emotions and new thoughts, new beliefs, new actions and new results. If you're in an environment which is pulling you down, you're not going to be able to rise to the top and be the best version of yourself. So you need to first and foremost remove those relationships, those unhealthy relationships in your life. Here's a huge caveat. There may be people in your life were very close to you. Deep friends, family members, moms, dads, brothers, sisters, spouses, that you just can't remove from your life. You just can't do that unless it's actually a deep violation. It's a different one. It actually been abused like that. But in a general sense, you just can't uproot them. So how do you deal in that circumstance? I'm thinking about this idea by which they say that for every critical judgment that's given to you, there needs to be six compliments to restore that. So roughly a six to one. So I'm going to take this and then give you this as a task. That if there are some people in your life that are maybe some Debbie Downers, a little bit negative, toxic, right? Then I want you to pursue a six to one relationship to balance that out and find six people for every one relationship that you have to be close to that may not be the most inspiring relationship. To then help you rise above the occasion and start achieving better and richer experiences, which will lead to profound, emotional thoughts. Beliefs actions and change the results of your life. This is really important. Find them now. How do you do this? One thing I really encourage you is go on either Facebook Groups go to meetup.com, which is awesome. You can find all these different groups by which you can insert yourself into that fit a particular desire. Where you want to be in your life and meet with them regularly, whether it's virtual, still in the pandemic or going in person as well. But go to meetup.com, finding a Facebook Group that you can associate with that will inspire you and lift you up. There's another thing called circle. It's just starting to rise to the top a little bit that a lot of entrepreneurs and people are using to help bring the sense of community for inspiration and encouragement. Find these this week. Find someplace to raise you up and change your current experiences. The bottom of the pyramid. Now number two, the second lesson I want to give to you: is that you just can't stop there because the problems that we are a kind of a summation of our past. The experience I just related to you like those steps of how I can be a little bit removed and disconnected and passive aggressive and not bring up my hurts to people. Doesn't come just from those unique circumstances, those unique events. They come from a rich past, that's built a really bad habit. So lesson number two: Not only do you need to change your present and work on that right now, you've got to rewire your past. You have to rewire your past if you want different results. Because you've got to reframe the experiences of your past life, 10 years ago, five years ago, 15 years ago, 20 years ago, whatever it may be to give it healing. We've got to rewire a past experience so they become your advocate rather than your adversary. So I want you to reflect upon your life experiences, what shaped your thoughts through the pyramid? For me, going through that pyramid, what was the experiences that shaped my life, that brought me to his point of these results. Well, I was brought up in a people pleasing home. I was brought up in a place where anger and frustration wasn't really provided or were open to. It was more passive- aggressiveness, shut down,disconnect. These were the things you did when someone made you angry. So ofcourse I'm reacting this way. So then what emotions? I get anger. What thoughts surfaced? People frustrated me and made me angry. How did my beliefs begin to form? Clearly by my family and the people around me that bringing up things that are bad is not good. It's not loving. Just allow it to drift away, let it rub off your shoulder. Of course, that doesn't help because that's not vulnerability. That's just removing yourself from the relationship, or taking a huge chunk of yourself out of the relationship, and only being partially available. All these things didn't help me at all. And these are the experiences of my life that I began to form thoughts and beliefs, which led to my actions. And I'm still struggling deeply to this day to rewire those. And this pyramid has been really helpful to help me see those areas more intimately and touch them again and begin to rewire them and reframe those experience. In my past to realize that was not the right response. These experiences I'm having means that I, the belief I need to have is I need to bring forward in my life, my vulnerability, my hurt, because that is actually the most loving thing I could do, because otherwise you disconnect. And you don't want to disconnect from the people you love. So focusing on the thoughts, especially the gap between the beliefs and the thoughts, cause that's the rich part. You have these beliefs that fuel your action and your result. And just below that, your thoughts between those two is this gap by which we end up distorting the truth or uplifting the truth. And in my past I distorted it. I had these thoughts. I'm angry and beliefs and the beliefs were: saying something is unloving. I'll just get over it. These are not the right beliefs. They are a distortion I need to untwist in my own life. How do I do this? I don't know. It's complicated. I can give you one thing that started to work for me a little bit, and that is creating affirmations that oppose the wounds in my life. I mentioned one of the beliefs that have had a twisted that is not loving to bring these things up. That is a twisting of the truth. That I'm not lovable when I bring up my hurts. So what I do is I find an affirmation that's the opposite. And I say it to myself every day. So what's the opposite of that, that twisting. That is expressing my feelings brings about lasting and loving change for everyone around me. That's the truth. I need to tell myself that every day to give me the encouragement, to lean into vulnerability and get the results that I want for my life, which is connection, not disconnection. But that's not the only thing that I need to do. Because affirmation is great, but it's just the first step that's changing the mindset. But I'm still not gonna really move forward. I might feel better about myself, but I'm not doing anything better. This is where I refer back to going to episode number nine of living the real right. I gave you that maintenance free checklist. So check it out. It's a free checklist, a maintenance checklist. Why is it so important in this particular moment? Because for me, I worked by systems and that may feel really weird to you, but when I'm in a deep rut, I need to find a step-by-step really small, incremental way to get out of that rut. Anything too big I'm paralyzed immediately. And so I have to create a system for myself that's going to work for myself to get out of this rut this bad result that fuels and gives teeth to my affirmation. Go back, listen to episode nine. It is so worthwhile. I'm not going to regurgitate it here because it has everything you need there about how to develop a system, to work yourself out of a rut step-by-step with a free checklist to help you get there so that when you feel that affirmation, when you realize that this is not who you're called to be, then you've actually got the steps that are actually perfect for you. That's small enough to slowly ouch your way into changing the way you live your life. We never drift that way. We're not going to actually get there by affirmations. Affirmations are an incredible first building block, but you need the system in place that works for you, that gets you out of it. Again, go back to episode nine, download the checklist. You're not going to regret. That was lesson number two. So we talked about the present. We talked about rewiring the past. Now the final one. Lesson number three: create new, powerful experiences for yourself. Change the ones that you have right now, rewire the ones in your past, and I really encourage you to begin to intentionally create powerful experiences that lead to more profound results. The ones that you want. The best thing I can recommend for this is read the Power of Moments by Chip and Dan Heath. This was an incredible book for me. It's all about how moments happen. How do we remember certain things and not others? Because certain things that we remember created a moment by which it made this indelible seal in our mind and our heart in her soul. And he called these three types of moments, peaks, pits, and transitions. Peaks being when our milestones are commemorated, these celebratory events. Pits, when we fill the pits in our life becomes a moment, or the pit itself becomes a moment, a bad moment. And then transitions when we struggle through transitions. And oftentimes it is the transitions that need to be marked as a transition to make them memorable. This is why there's a ritual in life. I remember being in Boy Scouts and having these milestones in our life and our member, the milestones. I remember the crazy weird rituals of Boy Scouts. They were awesome and they were fun. And I realized, man, how important it is. If you have a family to have rituals as milestones in the children's life but help them to remember the profound momentsin their life. The more mundane it is, the less we're going to remember. And when we struggle in these transitions, we need to create defining moments that divide the old and the new me, or you. When we're struggling to transition to something we got to do something that says, this is the old me, and this is the new me. That's why ritual stems comes in to say, this is a demarcation by which everything previously is not part of me anymore. Everything on the other side, this transition, this ritual, this, whatever it is is the new me. When you're struggling with transition strive to create a moment by which you divide in a concrete moment in time, the old and new you. These are important. Create these moments. Read the book, I'll put it in the show notes, get it for yourself in audible, or read it yourself, the book physically or on Kindle. They talk about the four criteria to create a moment. The four criteria to create a moment for yourself, for anyone is elevation. Anything that is elevated beyond the norm, right? How do we create this? We can boost sensory appeal, raise the stakes in something, break the script, do something that elevates the normal humdrum of life to create a moment. Number two: Bring insight into the moment. This moment, by what you trip over the truth, there's, you're stretched and insight there's newness that comes into the picture that makes it an indelible seal of Oh, I remember when I had this moment and I realized this. Insight, Third criteria, pride. Man, I can do this. I feel good about myself. Right? I can remember when I went to my first mission trip in New York city, way back when, and just serving the people in the streets and I can't forget a particular moment where I was talking to a homeless person who just got out of prison and just the connection. Man, and recognizing that person before me, that was incredible, which relates to the last, which is connection. Create a shared meaning, deepen ties to someone, make moments matter. Having this an unexplicable connection with someone. And the more criteria you have in a moment, the greater the chance that you create a true powerful experience that transforms your life and never leaves you. One criteria is okay. All four, it's a powerful moment. So I encourage you with the three lessons today. First, work through the pyramid in your own experiences in your own life to see where your results are coming from in a descriptive way. Those things that you wish you didn't do. Come on, go deeper. Find where it's coming from and change that. How? By changing your present. Look around you. Take inventory. Is your house cluttered by which it is just distracting. Does it make you hopeful? All these things are important to cultivate your present, so that it inspires you to something great. Rewire your past. This is the time by which you look at where you're working from and rewire it, and change it by offering affirmations to heal you, and create a system to overcome the bad results in your life. And finally bring new moments into your life. New experiences, powerful experience that transform your life So give it a chance this week. Work through this. Find one thing in your life, one thing in your life, you're like, yeah, I just am not settled with this. I just don't like the way I end up living my life this way, and work through these exercises Find the right people, get in a meetup group, rewire your past, at least start by journaling about it. Discover your past so that it doesn't haunt you in your present and keep you from a powerful future. And right now, create a moment this week. Do something fun. Get out of your routine, elevate your week. Bring some new insight with a good book. Get some pride. Step out and do something courageous and connect. Connect with your spouse, your friend in a way that's powerful and beautiful. I hope you have a great week. And I'll see you next episode. Take care and bye-bye. Thank you for listening to this episode of living the real. If you want to check out more information, go to living the real.com and sign up for my newsletter. If you want to support this podcast, you do that at patrion.com/ltr as well as one-time payments at Venmo and PayPal in the show notes. See you all next episode. Take care. Bye-bye