Episode Transcript
Gary (00:00.174)
Welcome to quiet the noise where we reveal practical tactics and systematic ways to quiet the noise in our lives, leading to smarter and more fulfilling living. Hey everybody. My name is Gary LeBlanc. Thank you for joining me on another episode of quiet the noise. It's a solo episode. think my last whole episode was on resilience. So today's solo episode is going to be on change.
Now I did an episode with Andrew, believe, and it was on proactively kind of assessing if we need to make a change. And it was called Be Your Superhuman. So it was dealing with transitions. So now I want to speak more to changes that happen to you. Now it's not necessarily that you didn't put things in motion to instigate that change. Oftentimes we do, right? Our unconscious mind creates these conditions.
such that the only outcome is that change that happens to you, ostensibly to you. And then, you know, when we talk about change that happens to us, regardless, if we put things in motion or not, we have this sense of helplessness a lot of times, and it kind of gets us past our point of optimal resilience, you know, you know, we can handle a six and a half.
You know, but we get these eights and these nines as far as gut punches once in a while. And again, they can be a bad thing or they can be a blessing regardless. It's a gut punch. It's a big change. So, you know, it's timely for me cause a lot's been changing in my life. I've had a beautiful little baby girl. we had her five weeks ago. It's her birthday today. Her name's Emma. So that's
crazy blessing. We're hugely, hugely grateful and it's only been very positive, but it's a big change. You know, we have to navigate that change. It's a been a big positive disruption, a disruption nonetheless. So we have to learn. We have to learn to live again. This is a massive one. and it's something that I obviously saw coming, but you can never see that coming. but the good news is it's been a very positive change. and then there's been a lot of career change, you
Gary (02:18.508)
And it's so funny for me personally, it seems like everything culminated into this almost like a singularity. Everything happened at the same time. It was like infinite change. And it's funny. I started thinking back and it's such a cool reflection to try to put the pieces together, right? All those little, little kind of breadcrumbs that your unconscious mind left in those previous six months and
All of that brought you to this moment that you couldn't have timed that way, but just happened exactly at that time. And I'm talking within seven to 10 days, all this change really culminated at the same time, which again, I could have timed that with the birth of my baby, but trust me, it wasn't planned for everything to happen at once. So, you know, I want to dig into
So for me personally, the first feeling I had, and I want to feel myself through this episode. I just want to see if you can connect with kind of how I felt going through this. So the first one was time. I'm quite analytical. You know, I guess I managed my life fairly, fairly time blocked, I guess, for the most part, especially when comes to work. I like to have these big chunks of time. So obviously time is not my own
Now it doesn't really affect, put certain systems in place. It doesn't really affect my work day, but my work bled into my weekends. And that was a, you know, call it, that was a nice to have, but right now it's not something that I can count on nor should I count on, right? The whole point of doing all of this is to live a fulfilling life for me, have a family and enjoy time with my family. Right. So it's a change.
Right? So this time isn't my own and really what's helped me and it's taken some time, but it really did make all the difference. It's a simple reframing. And I saw it again today, but it's, get to do this versus I have to do this. And again, it's so simple, but I get to work out, you know, if I didn't have arms or I was immobile and I couldn't train.
Gary (04:35.747)
Well, I would never be able to do the things that give me peace of mind that make me mentally sane in a lot of ways. So I get to do that, even though I bemoan having to go to the gym sometimes I get to do that. You know, I get to have this podcast, you know, so maybe I don't have time, but I get to do it. You know, what if I didn't have the capability or what if I didn't have an idea and I had nothing to talk about? So all of these things, that's an easy reframing, but I find that's what helps
kind of deal with that aspect of it. It's let's stop complaining about the things we have to do and start being grateful for the things we get to do. So it's massive. And trust me, it makes a difference. Even just saying it makes a difference. Maybe you're going to revert. Obviously you're going to revert to complaining potentially, but it does make a difference in the short run. And when you compound those just like interest, eventually, you know, the initial reaction is going to be a compassionate one, not a judgmental one. And the compassionate reaction is
get to do this. So that's how I've been thinking through this kind of loss of time, loss of time for me to do all the things I used to do. The second is, you know, with everything happening, you know, there's going to be situations that are going to lend themselves to be catastrophized, right? So what I mean is something small happens, but you blow it up, you extrapolate. It's kind of like when we have this little thing happen,
but it's a little thing that could potentially become a big thing if a million different little things happen in exactly that way. But you know, in our world, you know, two to the eighth power of things is going to happen exactly the way we think. And we catastrophize, you know, we envision that worst case scenario. At least that's what I do. Maybe nobody listening, if anybody's listening, maybe nobody listening has this, but I have it. And when I catastrophize,
It's really, you know, what am I going to do to kind of put a spoke, kind of put a, you know, a rod in the spokes. You know, I got a, I got a short circuit of the system. So I stopped thinking that way because it, it really does feed on itself. And, you know, there's a lot of different things you could do just to navigate that moment. You know, oftentimes there's somatic practices, you know, breathing, you know, taking a walk, distracting yourself, whatever it takes.
Gary (07:00.94)
I've just found that during this period of change, I I've often ended up catastrophizing certain things and it's such a bad habit. but that's how I've been feeling. So, you know, with that, you know, and if we look at balance and we look at polarities, as much as I've been catastrophizing, when things were good, I was putting them up on the highest mountain, right? So it's been a very chaotic time, you know, with everything in balance,
You know, for the first time, you know, I kind of said to myself, things are great. Cause I've always psyched myself out. I've never felt deserve it to say things were great. So then, you know, you start repeating that to yourself and you have to label this moment, which again, I don't know why we label this moment, but I'm labeling this moment great. And sure enough, if something bad happens, all of a sudden this is shattered and I catastrophize. So I've been dealing with that quite a bit actually.
You know, it gets back to the Stoics. gets back to Buddhism somewhat and that perspective that we should just go through life, with equanimity, right? Everything that happens to us is just something happening. And I get the pushback and the pushback is often, well, I don't want to live a plain life. I don't want to not have emotion, you know? if I take everything as it comes, then am I not
feeling all the feels in a lifetime. And I think, I think what we get wrong is labeling something doesn't, doesn't make it better. Like labeling something doesn't improve the experience. So just for example, say you break up with someone and you label that experience and you judge that experience. Okay. Well, how does that improve?
just feeling what it feels like to get broken up with without the label. And I think, I think that's what equanimity really gets to. It's not that things aren't happening to you and you're not feeling it. It's that you're not labeling it. You know, that equanimity is in the labeling of things in my opinion. So if I go through life and I'm present in every moment, because often this labeling is a kind of a time.
Gary (09:23.672)
you know, a temporal thing, right? I'm labeling what happened to me as bad, or I'm labeling what's going to happen to me. wow, that was cool. Or I'm labeling what's going to happen to me as good, as great. I think that's where those fluctuations come. So just to review, when we label a situation, because that's what I'm hearing all the time, when we label a situation as amazing or as crappy.
How does that make it better or worse? It implies we're not present because again, we're labeling something that happened in the past or thinking about something in the future. I can't see how we're present when we're doing that because we're judging, we're labeling. Now let's think of actually just taking things as they come. Okay, so something happens to me. Let's say you get broken up with. Again, I use that as an example. Okay, well.
It's going to feel horrible in the moment. Like I can't control that. You know, my limbic brain, you know, I can't control my limbic brain with my, with, with my reasoning centers with my prefrontal cortex. So, you know, I can, I can change the narrative somewhat, but the feeling, the feeling's going to happen. So there's no danger. There's no danger in approaching life with equanimity. We're going to feel all the feels regardless. We're just not going to dwell on what happened.
and obsess over what might happen, which is a net positive. So I think, I think we can stop using this. Well, I want to, I want to feel life. I don't want to be numb. There's no danger of us being numb. know, those roads are paved fairly, fairly solidly that you're going to feel what you're going to feel based on the impressions that were left on you during your life. So if we lose that labeling, then you lose the
So that's one thing that I've been telling myself and I've been really thinking about, and it's helped me navigate that self -talk because it's that narrative, that noise, that's the problem. That's what's, you know, creating that self -fulfilling prophecy, so to speak. So that's another thing that I've been dealing with. So there's that time and that disruption and routine, and then there's the catastrophizing because everything is heightened. You know, there's a lot of change. So you're very sensitive
Gary (11:45.75)
all these little perturbations in my life, you know, are opportunities to catastrophize what's going to potentially happen in the future.
So lastly, when I look at more of a reflection of, okay, if I look back at these past six weeks, what have I done skillfully and what haven't I done skillfully? You know, I have this thing, it's called the unskillful journal. And a friend of mine, I think it was Walter, he, he said I should, I should name it the skillful journey. Even though I'm doing unskillful things, you know, it's about being more skillful.
And these unskillful behaviors are anger and ego and, jealousy, you know, all of those things that kind of drag us down, they're very judgmental states. And we were talking about that. And when we look at the unskillful or the skillful journal, you know, it helps us reflect on things we want to do differently. So using this method and reflecting on the past six weeks, I looked at what I didn't
skillfully and how I could be more skillful. So catastrophizing, that's one example. So what happened, you know, what triggered it? what was the opportunity cost of me catastrophizing? So without getting into the, happened, the opportunity cost was anxiety. There was a lost day and it was obsessing for nothing over a situation. Now, again, it's not a situation that was pleasant or unpleasant.
But it was the time I lost thinking about it. Okay. So that was the opportunity cost. So what did I learn? I learned that, you know, the obsession over things, and this is obvious, isn't going to change the outcome. So what am I going to do differently? Well, I'm going to try to let go, try to give it space. And obviously that's an easy solution to say hard thing to do. So I thought about all these and I started reflecting on them and it all got to this letting go. And I know this is such an obvious thing for people.
Gary (13:53.538)
But we don't, well, I don't think about it in the moment, right? In the moment, the last thing I'm doing is using my reasoning centers to remind me to let go. And it's not yet ingrained in my unconscious for me to automatically default to this. So.
in order for it to be something more ingrained and unconscious. It's something that we have to work at all the time. And that means reminding ourselves all the time. It could be a morning mantra. It could be whatever. But for me, for me, I want my reasoning and my feeling centers to bathe in letting go as much as possible. and I think that was, that was the moral, the story of the whole thing, which again, it gets back
so much obvious wisdom from the past. But I think the beauty and the wisdom really landed on me more because I've gone through it so many times that doing the same thing over and over has never worked yet. Letting go, creating that space prevents us from acting unskillfully for a certain amount of time. So if you just take it like that, so just look at it like that. Okay. I'm not going to be reasonable in the next four hours.
I'm not going to be again, thinking with my more advanced reasoning centers, my prefrontal cortex really engaging. I'm not going to be engaging those for the next few hours. I'm going to be bathing and feeling an emotion. If I give myself space to let go and essentially not engage during those hours, then for me, it avoids a lot of unskillful behavior. So that's something I can, you know, I can trust in. I can believe
And if I look at, you know, me dealing with time loss in my life, if I look at me catastrophizing things, the one thing that has come out of everything is, know what? I got to start short circuiting my behavior when I'm not thinking clearly. I have to short circuit that so I can make more reasonable decisions based on the person that I've become. And I want to be more often. So I thought that would be just, I don't know, a couple of little tidbits.
Gary (16:09.398)
I didn't want this to be a long episode, but I just wanted to touch on a few important things that I find could be helpful for a lot of people. Change is not easy. Unfortunately, things can change in a heartbeat in this day and age and change is happening more and more often. know, switching costs are a lot lower than they used to be in a lot of ways for a lot of things. So there's obviously going to be a lot more opportunity for change and
We're going to have to get better at navigating it. So if you have any questions, if you want to share some things, let me know. I'm always a super pumped to hear from people really being a lot of joy to my life. And if you want to share this with a friend, if you think they would benefit from it, I never asked for this, but it'd be great to subscribe. I don't know. It would be nice to have a little bit of a community for us to share and kind of build on these concepts to see if they're actually valid or
You know, I would love to stress test this with a lot more people than an N of one, which is me. So if, if you're so inclined, please share it and, looking forward to next time on quiet the noise. Take care.
