Stop Whining (And Start Winning)

People complain a lot when things get hard because it’s the easiest thing to do. But whining your heart out won’t get you anywhere. In this episode, Ryan Weeden talks about his own experiences dealing with his emotions when things go out of hand. He recounts his history of self-abuse and the turning point when he decided to approach things on a more positive note. Listen in as Ryan shares his mindset hack on how you can start winning life and start showing up as your best self.

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Listen to the podcast here:

Stop Whining (And Start Winning)

I am excited to be here. I had a few minutes to try to crank out a quick episode where as content creators, we are always trying to find more content and more time to create more content, even when we might not have the energy for it, might not even know what we are going to talk about or even have a very rough idea of what we're talking about. That's what we have in this episode. We have got a rough idea of what I'm going to be talking about. It's going to be short and sweet, but we are going to be talking about a mindset hack here. This is something to help you be in a positive mood more often.

I know this works because I have been using this mindset hack on myself and it has made such an impact on my overall mood and behavior. It helped to spark more love between my wife and I. That has been, in full honesty, fleeting. It's been a tough 2021. Not that we don't love each other, but it's been a very stressful year. I know I'm not the only one that's felt that, but with kids, COVID pandemic, having to close one business and another business suffering, it's taking a toll. When you cannot go out and find other outlets aside from those that you do with your immediate family and those around you, it's been a struggle.

I have realized that a lot of it was because of the mood that I was carrying around with me and I do my best to stay positive. When I jump on lives, look to the world and put my best self out there, I feel like sometimes I'm a phony because sometimes I'll turn the camera off and then I will start complaining again. This is so not me. It's not usually like this. I'm not usually this way, but I noticed that it took a toll after the second California shutdown. The first one, I was fine. I was motivated, working out and doing great, but then the second time we had to shut down in California, it affected me deeply and emotionally.

There were a lot of other things going on as well with the relationship with my parents and it's an estrangement. It's been one of those years. I know I am not the only one. We are very blessed that we haven't gotten sick and our kids are healthy. We are able to put food on the table and enjoy our lives given the current circumstances of the world. We have had our challenges. One of those challenges has been arguments together. I have been doing a lot of searching in my own soul to find out, “Is it me? Is it her? What is the stem of the problem? How are we not communicating accurately?” As much as I would love to be able to blame somebody else, I had to blame myself.

One issue that I have always had in my life is learned behavior and habit that I got from my father. My father is a great man. I took so much from him. He passed away when I was thirteen. He had an incredibly amazing side to him. He was very hardworking, motivating, and had a lot of courage, but one of his downsides was that he got very frustrated with himself and would have a negative outlook when things weren't going his way, going the right way or what he thought was the right way.

He would take it out on himself with self-abuse. He would also take it out on us. It wasn't a physical punishment when we did something wrong. I mean, physical punishment back then was normal in the sense that you would get spanked and spanking was where it stopped. It wasn't with like a belt or anything crazy. I don't have a traumatic childhood because of that. Spanking was one of those things that if we did something that we should have done in public, and then we would get our pants dropped, put over the knee and have our bare ass smacked in front of the world to see. That sucked, but you never did it again.

That was in the ‘80s. That was a lot more accepted back then. In the ‘90s and anything past then, you are going to get a call to child protective services or there's that chance. You don't want to be spanking your kids anymore. You have to find other ways to let them know that what they did wasn't appropriate without the physicality of coming up with something that's going to scar them emotionally and embarrass them in ways that you would never want to be embarrassed yourself.

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I want to jump here and ask you something. It’s a favor. You know how I always tell people it’s okay to ask for help. Here I am practicing what I preach. I need your help. I don’t make any money from this show. Even though that could change in the future, don’t worry. That’s not my goal for this. My goal is to reach millions of people worldwide and ultimately change lives. In order to do that, I need your help in reaching the world.

Do me a favor. Please share this show with your most inspiring friend. You know the one that I’m talking about. We all have one. If you don’t, that’s cool too. I will be yours. I will be your valentine. Take a screenshot, tag them, tag me, help me spread the word of positivity so we can help change people’s lives together. While you are thinking about it, please share this episode and click that little five-star button on ApplePodcast, Spotify or wherever you listen to a podcast. Even leave a comment if you can. I read them all and I would love to shout you out. You are awesome and I appreciate you more than you know because, without your support, I wouldn’t be able to keep doing what I do. Let’s get back to the show.

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One of those traits that I got from my father was I like to spank myself. No, I'm kidding. The trait that I got from my father was I get frustrated. If something is not going well, I see red. I get heated. I lose a sense of myself. I don't lash out physically to hurt anybody. I have done it to myself, though. I have hurt myself before after my father passed away in high school. It was a very lonely time for me. I would wander the halls of my high school by myself, looking for somebody to stop me and say, “Are you okay?” because I was lonely, depressed and so full of feeling that I wanted to feel alive.

It's not about fixing problems. It's about learning who you are and learning what to do differently so that you can show up as your best self.  

I wanted to feel something besides this pain of loss. Some kids and like myself, I wanted to hurt myself to feel like a man, do something to give me a sense of control. I would go, find brick walls and punch them until my hands bled. You could say that was a form of self-mutilation. I don't want to go that far because I don't feel like it was that big of a problem to where I needed to potentially go and see a therapist, although I probably should have.

It could have probably led to that if I didn't find my way out of that hole, but I would go, wander the halls and constantly have bloody knuckles because I wanted people to see them and see the pain on the outside that I was feeling on the inside. That never happened. Nobody ever took notice of that or if they did take notice of it, they didn't say anything to me. I never got the attention that I wanted. I didn't know that I wanted the attention. When you are that much younger, you don't know what you want. You are just doing it because it feels like the right thing to do, even if it's completely the wrong thing to do. Looking back on that, I could feel the pain and I can start to make sense of it now as I'm older.

I have this side of me that gets very down, depressed, and angry. Unfortunately, that causes me to be very selfish. I only see myself, what's not right for me and why my life's not better. I was feeling a lot of that come up again in 2022 to the point where it was starting to affect my marriage and my relationship with my awesome, beautiful, talented wife, who is someone that puts herself last.

I tended to this time to put myself first. I have got kids and they are first to me. My wife is first to me, but I lost sight of that. I know that this kind of thing can happen to the best of us, which is why it's important for us to check in on ourselves periodically. It got to be such a problem that I decided to start seeing a therapist. I'm very open about this because I am all about self-exploration.

I am all about using a therapist as a tool to get to know myself better. I'm not looking at it like I failed or I’m a bad person. I'm looking at this as almost like a coach, somebody who will help unlock a new level of me. That way, we were looking at it in a positive light and I can see it as not like I got to sit down, listen to a therapist, tell them my problems and maybe they can fix them because it's not about fixing problems. It's about learning who you are and learning what to do differently so that you can show up as your best self.

I have had a few sessions so far and it's been very eye-opening. I have learned a lot. That's the journey that I'm on now. We are getting started with that, but so far, so good. What I want to tell you about something that has completely changed the game for me and the simple hack and internal dialogue switch have changed the way I see the world. It has changed my mood overall and my relationship is immediately better with my entire family, especially with my wife and my kids. My kids always steal my heart and my time, and I love it. I can't wait to spend every second with them, maybe except when they are absolutely having a fit and crying, but otherwise, as much time. I love spending time with them.

This hack was something that I have heard about how you can say things to yourself in a certain way, how maybe instead of saying something in a negative way, you say it in a positive way. That's what this is all about. My wife brought this up to me because she started getting back to working out. After the doctor cleared her, she got cleared after having our second child. She started working out again and started to find some inspiration to work out. We all need that extra kick in the butt sometimes.

She saw this post that one of her friends had posted and shared it with me. It made sense to me. The hack was something that I was listening to a podcast and it wasn't supposed to be a hack. It was something that I heard in Brendon Burchard's podcast, The Brendon Show, which is a great personal development and personal growth podcast. I was listening to that and I heard him talking with one of his guests.

He basically said that, “You'll rarely ever find me complaining. It's something I don't do. I don't complain. I'm usually always in a good mood. I put 2 and 2 together.” I'm thinking, “If you are complaining, you are complaining is usually putting somebody in a bad mood. What if I stopped complaining? What if I absolutely just never complained about anything. I didn't complain about the dog pooping in the living room three times a day?” That is a real problem. He's like seven. It's not going to change it. Stop complaining about that.

Stop complaining. There is so much in your life that is working, and that is something to be grateful for.

Stop complaining about not getting enough sleep because my kids wake up in the middle of the night. Stop complaining about taking out the trash in the morning because I forgot to take them out the night before. Just stop complaining or if I do complain, notice consciously that I am complaining, stop it there and say, “That's a complaint. Stop complaining, take it, catch that complaint, release it and turn it into something positive. Stop the cycle there because you complain once, then you complain a little bit more and then you get stuck in this cycle of complaints and the cycle of negativity.”

I decided, “I'm going to stop complaining.” Three weeks later, I haven't complained more than maybe 1 or 2 times because I have been consciously not complaining. I stopped complaining. If I did notice myself complaining, I say to myself, “Wah wah wah.”  That's our sound. Amanda, my assistant, I even told her that, “If you ever catch me complaining at all, just say, ‘Wah wah wah.’” How many times has she said that? She hasn't said it once because I have not complained at all because I'm conscious of it.

I implore you. Stop complaining and explaining. No excuses for why things aren't going your way. Make it a conscious effort. Try it for one full day and see what that does to your mood. Don't complain about anything or about the taste of your coffee if it's not the right kind of coffee. Don't complain about the traffic or a client showing up late. Own what is happening except what is happening and move on to something positive.

Think about what you do have that is working because there is so much in your life that is working. There is so much in my life that is working. That is something to be grateful for. That's what I need to hold onto. Stop complaining. If you catch yourself complaining, say, “That's a complaint. I got that complaint. I caught that complaint.” Catch it with your hand. Grab it with like a fist, throw it out into the world and say, “Goodbye, complaint. I'm not complaining about you anymore.” Try that. Let me know how it goes. You are amazing. I love you.