Full Transcript
Hi Everyone, welcome to the You’re Daily Cup of Joe Podcast, with your host Joe Bautista. In this podcast, my goal is to give you quick lessons that you can reflect on in your journal so you can grow yourself physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually and have a better career, better relationships, and better personal finances while you enjoy your morning cup of coffee.
I’m also the author of the book “More You Know, More You Grow: How to Get Better Every Day”. In this book, I wrote down over 30 tips to help you grow in those four cornerstones. I’m also the founder of Grow With Joe, where I combine self-development coaching and financial planning for Latino Professionals.
In today’s episode, we are going to talk about not making a mountain out of molehills. I used to be really bad at thinking the future was going to be worse than it actually was. I would be like, oh this going to go wrong, or this isn’t going to work out, and they probably won’t be interested.
I think this thinking helped me work harder on myself so that I sharpen my skills but reflecting back on it, it’s not a healthy way to live. I was listening to a podcast of the Tim Ferriss Show and his guest was Triple H of wrestling fame, and he told a story of how he got to see Floyd Mayweather before a fight. And Triple H was so shocked at how calm Mayweather was.
Triple H asked Mayweather if he was nervous before his big fight, and Mayweather said no, he did all that he could do over the last couple of months and he was prepared for whatever outcome happens in the ring. So he was going to continue to sit on the couch and relax.
He didn’t make a mountain out of a molehill and Mayweather is still undefeated in the ring. Mayweather had the right approach. He worked super hard and did all that he could do, and was just taking events in as they happened instead of imagining a worse outcome.
I have found that most things that I thought were going to be bad, have been okay or even good. I remember telling multiple bosses that I wanted to quit and it took some courage to say that I was going to leave, but they all were all good. I was a good employee during my time there and they realized that I wasn’t happy.
One of the key things about stoicism is having the right perception. Don’t add more information than is necessary for the situation. This typically means, don’t let our emotions cloud our judgments. It’s okay to have feelings about the situation, but don’t allow them to make the situation worse. We have to look at the situation as objectively as possible.
When we do this, then we can see opportunities and escape routes. It’s having a growth mindset versus a fixed mindset where what you see is what you get. And even if we were wrong about molehill and it’s actually a mountain, then we can still conquer than a mountain with the right mindset and skills. Don’t make the 10,000 ft mountain a 100,000 ft mountain.
A lot of people have gone through hardship that most people will never go through. A book that most people should read is Victor Frankel’s book “Man’s Search For Meaning,” who was a holocaust survivor who found meaning in those camps. He didn’t make a mountain of a molehill, even though that molehill was actually a mountain.
This can be really difficult, and this is why it’s important to do activities like journaling so you look at a situation as objectively as possible. For myself, I journal every day, and this podcast helps a lot with not making mountains out of molehills. Now I feel I can handle everything because I have the right mindset and I don’t make situations worse than they actually are. I still fail from time to time, but I just try again and don’t let the failure worse than it actually is. Do this, and you can be unstoppable as well.
And that’s it for today’s episode, to summarize it, don’t make mountains out of molehills. It’s just making the situation worse and life is hard enough, so why make it harder with a poor mindset. We want to be like Floyd Merriweather before a fight, cooler than the other side of the pillow. So having the right perception about a situation is going to be key and not allow our judgment to be clouded by what-if scenarios. The future hasn’t happened yet and it has an infinite amount of possibilities and the one future that we might have in our head about a bleak future, probably won’t happen. It could, but even if that happened, we’ve been working ourselves so that we can recover from it.
If you would like to get the journal questions for today’s episode, you can sign-up for my monthly journaling subscription newsletter, where you get daily journal questions Monday through Friday, and as a bonus, you will also get my time management course and my personal development cheat sheet. You can get all this for $13/mo, which is less than the cost of an audible subscription and it’s less work to gain more wisdom. You can get this offer at growwithjoe.me/journal
Thanks for listening today! To get a free copy of my Audiobook “More You Know, More You Grow: How to get better every day” just go to my website growwithjoe.me/book and you can download it right there.
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Thanks for joining me today and remember if you go with Joe, you can grow with Joe, cause Joe knows Dough.
