Stop Bitching, Start Doing

Episode 10 • 3rd August 2021 • Unf*ck My Business • Unfuck My Business

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000014 Intro

This is Godriguez is from GodriguezArt.com and you're listening to unfuck my business, no bullshit advice for business owners who want to be resilient as fuck. Now let the unfuckery commence.

000034 Chris 'Jinx' Jenkins

Well, welcome back to another episode of unfuck my business. And today we have Angel Lovecchio in the studio with us talking about, I think something that a lot of us run into in the entrepreneurial space, quite a bit, the tendency to get bogged down and in a complainy grumpy, non starting mode. And, and how wildly counterproductive that is. So our theme today as suggested by Angel is Stop Bitching, Start Doing, which I just love. I think it's a, it cuts right to the point. So first of all, Angel, why don't you introduce yourself and tell us.

000110 Angel Lovecchio

My name is Angel Lovecchio.

000112 Chris 'Jinx' Jenkins

Oh damn, I messed it up again.

000115 Angel Lovecchio

You were close. It's okay. That's why I tend to just say Angel Love. It's easier to remember. And I am a curious idealist. I work in a financial institution, corporate environment have been for quite a long time, but in my spare time, I like going down rabbit holes trying to find answers for things that we tend to overcomplicate that I feel like we don't need to make them as complicated as they seem.

000142 Chris 'Jinx' Jenkins

Beautiful. And when I heard, when you first said, stop bitching, start doing, I was like, it just immediately clicked for me. Cause I was like, mm, how much time I'm known as the grumpy old bastard of tech. I certainly spend a bunch of time complaining about things. It's kind of part of the brand. I think. But at some point, there's, especially when business is tougher times are hard. All the rest of that complaining about things becomes a luxury that you really don't have the time or where with all to actually spend.

It's something that becomes super counterproductive. And I know that if you're already under a lot of stress, Complaining as a tactic seems maybe like a natural response to that, but then it sort of becomes this, a self reinforcing thing that just further beats you down mentally. When you say stop bitching, start doing, what's in your mind, what does that process look like? How do you identify I'm bitching and how do you stop it and start doing?

000239 Angel Lovecchio

That's a great question. And so I think there's a difference between bitching to bitch and bitching to identify a problem that you can solve. And so I think intention, the intention behind it makes a big difference. Jinx, when I hear you bitch about stuff, it's usually with the intention of finding solution.

And so I think from every bitching I've heard of you from you, it's validated and it makes sense to do it because you're doing it with the intention of getting to a solution. And I think that's the difference between bitching to bitch and bitching to get somewhere.

000312 Chris 'Jinx' Jenkins

Okay. I feel a little, a little less apprehensive now. So what's your process. If, if, if you're in a place where, okay, this bitching is not productive bitching, it's just, like, you know, for example, every single day when I wake up, I'm like, oh God, I took a personality test recently. And one of the questions literally was, are you happy when you wake up in the morning to be alive?

And I'm like, yeah, hell no, Jesus Christ. No, no. That is certainly not part of my personality... And,being a morning grump and grouch is, I don't know. I don't know how much that becomes a habit at some point. You're just like, no, I'm miserable first thing in the morning. So I expect to be miserable first thing in the morning.

So I am miserable first thing in the morning because that's what I expected to be. Anyways, when you're running into those sort of like endless loops, how do you stop that? How do you break out and change that mind?

000407 Angel Lovecchio

I think it starts with a simple question. The mourning grumpiness. Does it negatively impact your ability to get shit done or is it a phase that you go through naturally every morning?

And it's just part of your process to getting to the point where you get shit done.

000423 Chris 'Jinx' Jenkins

Well, it really depends on what the work environment is like at the time. I think for me, when it's, one of the good things about the COVID pandemic is that, so many of us shifted to working fully remote. And I am certainly more productive during my normal grumpy stage in the morning when I don't have to deal with people. But when I do have early morning meetings or when I had to go to the office and see people first thing in the morning during that grumpy time I think that there's definitely. Some counter productivity that occurs in there. Cause people are like,"Ooh, don't talk to Chris yet." You know?

000501 Angel Lovecchio

Yeah, I feel like they make a lot of coffee mugs that convey that sentimate. I don't think you're the only one. Um, and maybe, maybe the action there is just putting yourself in a position where you don't have to deal with people during that phase of your morning. I mean, there's some things that are ingrained in us that are biological, that we're not going to change.

It's just part of who we are. And I think that that's okay. If it gets to a point where it's hindering your ability to get the shit done that you want to get done, then you can start looking at action. You know, and you asked about what can you do to get out of that mode? And I think it starts with the question, the thing that I'm bitching about is there something I can do about it or not?

If there is just fucking do it, if there's not move on, like it's not that complicated.

000544 Chris 'Jinx' Jenkins

It was one of the things that we've seen it in businesses that are especially stressful and, or struggling. I mean, this is I, I referenced kitchen nightmares quite a bit. It is absolutely one of my favorite series for entrepreneurial business training, because you see so many types of business problems well demonstrated, no matter what kind of business it is, it's the same sort of problems all the time. And you see where when the crew comes in and they start interviewing some of the staff there, everybody has complaints at the ready.

And then when you listen to what's going on, while they're working, you hear this sort of complaining all day, every day as everyone's working, like the entire culture of that workplace has become one sort of never ending complaint. If you're managing a group of people or if you're, you know, in a corporate environment where you're on a team and you're hearing nonstop complaining, and in that environment, what are some ways that from a team perspective, you can try and disrupt that.

000643 Angel Lovecchio

I think it was John Maxwell, maybe that said everything rises and falls on leadership. And so that's, I think that's your starting point. Look at your leadership and the attitude that they have because everyone feeds off that energy. And if your leadership is worried about something going on, sometimes they are transparent about it. Sometimes they're not, which makes it even worse. It's going to feed down into all the people that report up to them and it's going to infect your whole culture. And so I think if you're a business leader, the first thing that you have to do is look in the mirror and pay attention to what you're putting out there for your people.

Are you bitching all the time? Are you constantly complaining about all the things that are wrong? Are you complaining about all the things that you don't like about them?

000722 Chris 'Jinx' Jenkins

I'm never complaining about all the things I don't like about them, or at least certainly not in front of them. That would be really terrible.

Oh, okay. I mean, I agree completely it's I do think that it's, it's on us sometimes as, you know, business leaders to suck it up in ways that it's not on everybody else. I mean, part of the question of, of, you know, how to stop bitching and start doing, has to be with what's the responsibility level of the person who's doing the bitching.

Yeah. If I'm running a store and it's a retail cashier, who's doing the bitching. Well, I mean something with his or her job might be shitty and I need to fix that. Right. So I shouldn't be complaining about them complaining. I should be listening to that complaint and then doing what I can to mitigate that.

But when it comes to ourselves. Right. And I think that that's, that's like the biggest challenge of all this. A lot of the folks who listen to the podcast are small business owners, generally, probably less than 10 total employees on average, I would suggest. And it really becomes critical for us as leaders to really get this down pat, and to be productive, even when we don't feel like being productive.

I think one of the biggest reasons why people start bitching is because. You just don't have the motivation to take on the day, but it doesn't take much motivation to bitch about the day. What kind of, of, you know, rituals or practices, how do you like sort of get yourself through each day when you're finding yourself in a complainer mode?

You know, do you have any sort of, mental practices or routines that, that help you stay focused and productive and not fall back into that when it's starts?

000903 Angel Lovecchio

Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And so I, I am a notebook connoisseur . I have lots of notebooks, notebooks for everything... and most of them don't follow whatever theme I originally planned for them.

And so a lot of it is writing shit down. If I'm in that mode where I feel like a bunch of stuff is going wrong, I just start writing it down, write down all of the things that are wrong. And then I go through those and I just try to figure out what can I actually do about these things? And, going back to what I said earlier, if I can do something about it, then I start working on what the actions are that I can actually take to make whatever it is better. And if I can't do anything about it, then I throw it in the trash because there's no sense in wasting my time on stuff that I don't have any power over. And so I acknowledge it. I acknowledge that. I feel like crap about it. And then I refocus myself on something that I do have control over. And every once in a while, that thing is a list of a bunch of stuff that you don't have any control over. And so in those situations, I take the list, I throw it in the garbage, and then I go focus on something that I enjoy. Maybe it's watching a comedy show.

Maybe it's having a good conversation with people that I like spending time with. I just refocus to something positive to get myself out of that mode and then I move on.

001017 Chris 'Jinx' Jenkins

There's this concept in practical magic or practical magic itself is the concept that you can do little things that mentally change your space.

And it's not that something crazy supernatural is happening. It's just that you've undertaken a ritual, which just gears your mind around something that you want to occur. And it strikes me that your idea of like writing those complaints down and then throwing them away. Is that kind of a ritual, a practical magic ritual, where you're, you're literally embodying the thing that you're trying to get rid of and then like physically choosing to destroy it. You know, it seems to me like there's, there's some real mental magic at work with that kind of a process. Are you a wake up at 600 AM and meditate kind of person?

001104 Angel Lovecchio

So meditation is an interesting topic. I had never really been a big advocate for mindfulness and meditation. My attention span is way too low. I always assumed that, that was not for me, not, not something that I could ever sit still long enough to do. And then I got my introduction to meditation by being sat down in a room. With 20 other people by our brand new leader who decided we were going to do a 20 minute meditation.

And so if you've never tried meditation, I definitely do not recommend starting with a 20 minute meditation. Although I will say that I got a lot of entertainment from the things that my brain created during that 20 minutes. I think I imagined everybody jumping up on the table, a disco ball, dropping down, everyone dancing.

I came really close multiple times during that 20 minutes to cracking up, but I didn't want to get in trouble because in that situation, you know, new boss, you don't know what's going to happen if you laugh during the meditation. So that was my introduction. And so it was not a good experience. And after that, I, I definitely steered clear of it for a long while after that.

But I will say that within the last couple of years, I've been diving really deep into the science of happiness and wellbeing, and there's a lot of research that's being done around mindfulness and meditation. And so seeing the science side of it kind of peaked my interest to getting back in and I have started to see the value of it.

And I'm not consistent by any means, but taking a few moments to really sit and be in your head and quiet everything that's going on around you can definitely be helpful, especially if it's a meditation that leads you through that leads you through some sort of, some sort of exercise where it's focused on following a thought process to some sort of conclusion.

001258 Chris 'Jinx' Jenkins

I actually, I started doing, the mindfulness, the 10 minute mindfulness meditations that they have on like Amazon prime or Netflix or whatever, know? And, I definitely, I certainly feel more relaxed when I finished those, you know, I'm not terribly consistent with them. I haven't done one in a hot minute now, but I, I think that, when it comes to, if I'm waking up grumpy and I'm going to be in a completely bitchy mode all day, Doing that 10 minute mindful, mindfulness, meditation or whatever.

Like it does short circuit that, I mean, it, it, all of a sudden I come back out of it and I'm thinking of like, you know, the, the trickling river water that I've been hearing for the last 10 minutes and the soothing voice of whoever's guiding the meditation, that whole thing, you know, like I'm like, okay, all right.

You know, and, and sometimes it's like, that will short circuit the grumpiness all by itself, just in that sense. Okay, well, let me do I really feel like bitching right now. It almost feels like I'd be ruined in the mood. You know? So, Robyn and Shea, I would love to, to hear from y'all. I mean the same kinds of things.

I know Robyn, you and I have talked frequently and we enjoy a good fish Fest together when talking about various business things, sometimes it's nice to vent in that way and that's like maybe productive. Yeah. But how do you personally, Robyn, when, when you run into a place where you're just in that complainer mode, how do you break out of it?

Or do you?

001428 Robyn Sayles

I do, I do. And I've, I've observed some interesting things in, in watching you and angel and listening to you and angel kickoff, this conversation that I want to circle back around to in a minute. So yes, I think number one, having at least one person in your life, That provides a safe space to offload right.

To offload. Sometimes we really do just need to bitch and get it off our chest. And I know I've done that. I've actually requested like, Hey, I need to offload this before we go into the next thing so that I don't bring it with. Right. And that in and of itself is a form of stop bitching start doing right.

If I have a non-judgemental open participant to receive all of this verbal diarrhea and some people can internally process and some people cannot, right. I am the type of person that I have to talk it out. I literally have to get it out somehow, physically. With words with writing angel talked about writing earlier.

Sometimes that's helpful for me if I don't have another outlet, but my preferred outlet is to talk it out. If I don't, it's going to sit and fester and bubble, and I'm going to be distracted because this is going to be sort of gnawing away at the back of my brain. And now I'm not helpful for myself or anybody else.

So having somebody to offload said-bitching when you recognize that it really is just bitching. And let me just complain for a second and then I can move on with the rest of my day. I do want to acknowledge though, and this is where I want to come back around to some observations with the beginning of this conversation.

Sometimes our bitching comes from "should" and societal expectations and self-imposed bullshit expectations that we carry around. So each of you, at some point have been like, well, I'm not very consistent at this. Well, I'm not very consistent at that. Right. And if anyone else listening, hears that and it's like, oh yeah, me too.

I've never been able to do that consistently. I've never been able to that fuck consistently when it comes to this kind of stuff and fuck ritual. If it doesn't work for you. I've gone through a coaching process over the last six months where one of the things I've learned about myself is I'm not built for routine and ritual.

And so me just trying to force routine and ritual into my life has actually been a source of stress, not something that will alleviate the stress as it's intended to do. And the minute I fucking let go of that, guess what I was able to bring in some new habits cause I stopped trying to turn them into routine and to a ritual and I let go of the shirts and the expectations of, well, I should be able to make this work.

Right. And so earlier when Angel was talking about it should always start with a question. One of those questions might need to be, why do I think that I need to do that? If there's something I'm like, oh, I really should get out of bed. Cause I need to do this stop. I always think of Willy Wonka. Oop, stop reverse that, you know, like in my brain is Willy Wonka going, "Stop. Hold on. Reverse the tape. Let's examine what you just said."

"I need to do this." Do you really need to do it? Or do you think you're supposed to do it. Are you feeling obligated to perform for someone or something in your life? Or is this an action that's going to contribute to a larger goal that you're working towards?

So one of the questions I always ask now is, "Where is this coming from?" Is this something I really need to do or have I just convinced myself that I need to do it? Or has someone else convinced me that I'm supposed to do it? And therefore I'm feeling false pressure. So that's a, that's a great question to start with.

And it always reminds me of an exercise. I learned. Angel and I share a corporate training background. Woo. And one of the things I picked up in my corporate training days, which that audience wasn't always receptive to it, but it really stuck with me. And I use it with my coaching clients now as well.

Which is an exercise known as Need to. Choose to. If we have those thoughts of like, if we use Chris's example of I wake up in the morning and I'm immediately like, oh, I have to get out of bed. I have to drink some coffee. I have to get on this conference call. I have to do a check-in with my developers. I have to see where we're at on this project.

You go through your whole day, have to have to have to. Now the interesting part is when you restart that list, only this time you say, I choose to. I choose to get out of bed. I choose to have a cup of coffee. I choose to participate in these conference calls. I choose to check in with my developers. I choose to get an update on those projects, right?

Everything is a choice. We're choosing to do these things because we want to be good at our jobs because we want to work well with our team because we want to make money. You make a life for ourselves. And the goal is to get to the point where you can start those sentences with get to, I get to get up in the morning.

I get to have a cup of coffee. I get to sit through these conference calls. I get to check in with my developers, right? It's a luxury that not everybody gets to have. So using the need to choose, to get to framework, to sort of reframe all of those. Sort of niggling, bitching, thoughts and false expectations.

And Shea said, Phantom demands. I love that. Shea. What are some ways that you sort of process and work through these moments?

002037 Shea Jeffers

They can come up quite quickly in your, in your life. Like you start your day and then all of a sudden you, one little thing cascades the rest of the day. So the first and foremost thing is, is awareness, being aware of when you are in that mode, when you find yourself out.

And usually that happens when I find myself consuming too much versus creating. Um, when I am, I'm taking in too much, too much input from other individuals or just the content that I'm looking at it. And it cause that to-do list that I choose to list can get deferred and build up. And then your time gets lost and you start to get frustrated.

You're like, well, I'm on a time. And he's like realized I didn't choose to make the time for X, Y, Z. So now I'm in this situation. So I tried to be very, very conscious of. What is triggering that moment, and then stepping away and stepping back from it, like I said, and taking a moment to breathe and say, okay, I'm looping.

I am falling into, into complaining. Let's actually do something that it doesn't necessarily have to be the task. It just has to be a task that I choose to do. And that tends to break this up. Um, so I know we had a little joke about, you know, the, make your bed, make your bed, way of doing things versus like the meditation and whatnot.

But sometimes it is just as simple as straightening your desk, you know, doing a little, organizing, cleaning, clearing a little clutter, do a squat, do a pushup, do something that you choose to do, and that tends to help reset your decision matrix.

002221 Robyn Sayles

I love that activity breeds activity. And so even if the action you take, even the activity you do is not towards the thing that you're like, I need to do this.

I'm supposed to be doing this. Right. So like you said, make the bed clear your desk. I've become obsessed with plants. So for me, it's like, oh, let me go check on that plant. Let me water those plants. And you know, now that I'm, I'm watering this plant and I noticed there's a leaf, that's yellow on this plant.

So let me do some pruning, you know, and let me check this and let me check that. And all of a sudden it's been 10, 15 minutes and I'm up and moving, working on all these plants. And then my body's like, oh, okay, now we're ready. Now this activity has inspired us to do other activities. Now we're ready to move on to whatever it is you told yourself you were supposed to be doing anyway.

So activity breeds activity. In my retail sales days, I would make sure that there was associates up at the front of the store. Move things have a conversation, put two people together. Oh, look at this. Oh, look at that. Right. Because if you're walking by the store and you see activity going on, your brain goes, oh, what's, what's that all about?

Let me go in and check it out. Right. And it would actually draw more people into the store because activity breeds activity. So taking any small little action, it's like priming the pump, which is a really old school example. But, but that's really what it does.

002349 Angel Lovecchio

Actually, I kind of wanted to go back to something that you, you said earlier the same way that activity breeds activity, negativity also breeds negativity. And so, um, it, it brought up this thought in my mind of the concept of catastrophizing and I heard something recently about different types of catastrophizing. Maybe we go down the vortex where we one thought leads to another thought. And the next thing, you know, being late to work means that I'm going to end up sleeping on my parents' couch forever.

Or, you know, we start going through and finding like all the possible bad, worst case scenarios. And so one thing that I wanted to come back around to as a way to get our minds out of that process. And so the same way that we look at all of the possible negative things, maybe we start with writing those down and then write down all of the possible best case scenarios.

Like dreamworld, maybe me being late for work means that I'll stop at the gas station at just the right time and get the lottery ticket. That'll mind me a million dollars. That'll help me buy a plane and fly across the world and go become the queen of some other place that nobody knows of. I don't know, but finding the best case scenario and that best case scenario actually puts some positivity into it.

And kind of balances out those panicky negative feelings and gets us to a place where we are a little bit more ready to move into that action spot.

002519 Chris 'Jinx' Jenkins

I also wanted to touch on, on something that Robyn had said in the mix and, and bring that back around as well, that the expectation of consistency. Is maybe not a universal expectation that should be there.

Right. We talk a lot about, um, neurodivergence, in the space and, and w you know, in a future episode, we're actually going to be talking at length about some of the mental health issues that face entrepreneurs. There is more of a tendency to be complaining when there's an expectation of you, that you just know, you can't really meet in any meaningful way.

The consistency is, is just not going to be there. I am not a consistent person. The reason that I don't have a daily workout routine and all the rest of that is I'm just every day is a new adventure in my brain. And I'm not sure where I'm going to be today. And I'm probably not going to wake up and want to do 20 pushups and pump a bunch of iron, you know?

And so if we're at a place where we accept that, We are not going to have consistency every day. And we work to build a business environment where it's not actually expected of us every day, then that in itself stops the bitching because you're not finding yourself in a situation where you're crunched and you're not feeling natural and you're not feeling competent or capable.

And that's, that's one of the first places when people start to complain, you know, when, when they don't feel they can do well with the things that are expected of them. I, I thought that that was like a really standout point that should be brought back to the table.

002648 Robyn Sayles

That's a hill i'll die on for sure. And I think for the, for the sake of offering a tangible breakdown of that in application I'm I will walk through a personal example.

So, you know, like many people I've picked up some things during quarantine, some health issues that weren't there before. Or maybe they were, and now I have time to pay attention to them. So I wanted to incorporate some herbs into my daily diet, but because I'm not built for routine. And because I like a slow roll to my morning and some other factors, I was really having a hard time with it.

I also have to take medication. They tell you you're supposed to take it in the morning and you're supposed to take it an hour before you consume anything else that was difficult in and of itself. And now I'm trying to get this other thing worked in, but I can't take this while I take that. And just felt like this impossible thing.

And then I started questioning. So if we go back to Angel's earlier thing, I want to make these things a part of my life. It's not working right now. So let's examine all of the levers that I have to maneuver here. And let's start asking some questions about why this isn't working and let's look at some ways that I can make it work.

So the big factor was the medication that I was taking in the morning. So I went down a research rabbit hole and found out that most doctors recommend you take that particular medication in the morning, just because like someone said, that's what you were supposed to do a million years ago. And now every doctor is just like, yeah, you're just supposed to take it in the morning.

Why? And the minute I started asking why nobody had any answers, so I had to go do my own research. And now there's new studies that show that. A higher efficacy with that medication, if you take it at night, right? Because there's much less chance that I'm going to be consuming any other foods or liquids within that hour when it's, you know, absorbing into my body.

Asking the questions doing the research allowed me to flip when I take the medication, which made room for the things that I was trying to incorporate into my morning. Right. And two simple things that fell into one of the few routines that I already have. Right. I didn't have to create something new. I just, I swapped this for that.

And it's had huge impact. On my health and my mental wellbeing, because now it's one less thing for me to worry about. And now the medication that was the problem in the morning is working even better because I asked the question and I did the research and I was able to move it to the evening. I still don't always take those herbs every morning, but I have room to, if I choose to take them that day.

And I don't beat myself up about it if I miss a day or two here or there, the goal is to take them when I can, because the more I take them, the better I'm going to feel. The goal is not to beat myself up because you fucking missed it. Now you're going to feel like shit today. That's a self fulfilling prophecy, right?

So asking questions, thinking about what I really wanted, where the space was, figuring out what I can move and what I couldn't move. And what I already had in place to put it into that was a huge game changer for me. And so there's a perfect example of you don't have to reinvent the wheel. You don't have to create all new habits and processes. It could just be asking some questions to realize that you already had this space. If you just look at it different. I hope that makes sense. That was big for me.

003027 Angel Lovecchio

It makes complete sense. Just to rabbit hole a little bit further down that train, you know, putting these expectations on ourselves based off of things that we think we know.

I mean, we do that for. Everything. We put these expectations, not just on ourselves, but how we think, how we think others are supposed to act. And we spend a lot of time bitching about how everything should be. This is how this is how people should be operating in this business. This is how people should be responding to the things that I'm putting out there.

But there, you know, we get frustrated that people aren't doing what we think they should do too. When at the end of the day, we don't have any control over what other people do. We don't have control over how the market operates, which is another rabbit hole we could go down too. All we have control over is our own attitudes, expectations, and the actions that we choose to take. So if we stop imposing expectations and just start accepting certain things that we can't control and then taking action on the things that we can, I think that those are the things that lead to being happier, being more positive and being more successful in jail.

003133 Chris 'Jinx' Jenkins

It's interesting to me that what started off sounding like a real simple topic, right?

Stop bitching, start doing. We're really exploring all the different ways in which, you know, the reason why you're bitching is probably the bigger thing to focus. It's not about, oh God, you're just in a bad mood and you're complaining, but it's,look at all the things that are causing that bad mood.

Look at the things that are becoming an energy sock. Look at the things where you're conflicting in, in being the natural, you know, the natural you, the you, that you would be if you were a farmer or something completely not connected to the grid. And, and you were just living sort of a self-sustaining life without the expectations of outside social pressures.

Well, we start looking at all these things and it's likethere's an underlying thing here. And our only coping mechanism that we can think of in this moment is to complain about it and let that sap our energy and suck it away when realistically, treat that complaint for what it is and see if there's a real solution to that problem.

And like do that in a, in a thoughtful and meaningful way. I've, I've heard so many suggestions now changing when you take your medicine, um, establishing that consistency isn't necessarily going to be possible with all the different things that, that factor into that.

Sometimes though, you are in a position where you don't have any control over those things, period. And you're just not going to be able to be working... in corporate America was absolutely like that for me for a while. And so when you are in a place where you are trapped and you have no ability to change the specifics of the current position that you're in, that's causing the complaining.

What do you recommend from a mental switch in that front, assuming that you don't have the ability to just quickly find another position or something along that line, if you truly are stuck in a position, what do you recommend from a mind reset to stop that?

003335 Angel Lovecchio

I think it's, so it sounds like you're saying, what do you do when you're in a position where you don't have control over the things that are weighing you down?

003343 Chris 'Jinx' Jenkins

Yes, exactly.

003345 Angel Lovecchio

I don't know that many would agree, but I feel like no matter what the situation is, you always have some semblance of control, usually way more than you think you do. I see it all the time. So corporate environment example, you have two teammates sitting next to each other, doing the exact same job with the exact same responsibilities, the exact same situations that they're coming across and you have one who's totally happy, loves their job doing great. And the one right next to them, everything is awful. The world is ending. My job is crap. The only difference is in their perspective. It's not the job that's different. And we see the same thing. You can see teammate a have one perspective when they first start, everybody's excited when they first start a job.

And then a year later, everything is crap. The job didn't change their perception of the job changed. And so I think the first step is recognizing that it's not the situation that I'm in. It's my perspective to the situation that I'm in. And so asking what's changed internally in me. There's a big part of it that just comes back to psychology and how our minds work.

Our minds are built to get used to stuff. And they also, we don't realize that our minds are built to get used to stuff or the way that our mind works. We change our perception of things over time, without even realizing that we're doing it. And so it's the same reason why a couple meets and they fall madly in love and everything is wonderful.

And then five years later, for some reason they hate each. They they're still the same people that that person that you fell in love with is still that same person that you fell in love with. It's just your perception of them has changed because over time our brains are just built to get used to stuff.

And so we have to be really intentional about appreciating good things in life and really taking the time to push ourselves to recognize those good things. Like refresh on those. And so gratitude, I think is, is a good way to like, just having some gratitude practices or having ways to remind yourself of those things that are good in your life or those things that are good about your situation or remind yourself of the reason why you started, I think is a big one, especially looking at entrepreneurs and people who are running their own businesses.

And they've gotten used to that, that I'm a business owner thing. And so they don't recognize that excitement of being in control and doing your own thing anymore because they've gotten used to it. And so now their brain is switched to focus on all the things that they don't like about it. And so just coming back to, why did I start doing this in the first place?

Why was this important to me? What did I love about this when it started and just kind of doing that reset, but that's something that you have to do intentionally and it's, it's gotta be personal and internal to you unless you get a really great coach who can help you with that.

003622 Chris 'Jinx' Jenkins

Hmm. I think he came right down to the meat there. Robyn, I see you unmuted.

003629 Robyn Sayles

I grabbed one of my favorite books, one of my favorite quotes, because when it comes to feeling like you're in a job where you have no control, this quote hit me at a moment in my life where I was exactly there. I was miserable mentally and physically, I hated my job. I hated all the people that I worked with.

Right. And then I get to. Page, whatever it is of this book. And here's the quote being in a crap job, isn't your fault staying in one is, and like the author of this book may as well have kicked me in the gut because I, all of a sudden I was like, oh, it's my fault. Like, I'm choosing to stay here. I can leave.

Like we forget sometimes that we have choice and we have autonomy. Like, if you don't like the people you're working with, if you don't like what you're doing, if you don't like, you know, what is contributing to you can leave. You may not be able to leave tomorrow, but you can take an action today to set yourself up, to be able to get the fuck out of there as soon as humanly possible.

And just making that decision will have a huge impact on your mindset. The minute I realized like, oh shit, I don't have to stay here. And I started doing research and I started taking action towards the kind of job I did want to have and the kind of environment I did want to work in. I was much happier at the bullshit job to the point where they were surprised when I was like, fuck you all and I'll leave it.

I mean, I didn't say it like that. I would never say it like that, but inside I was like, fuck off. I'm getting the hell outta here. "Really? Oh Robyn, why are you going?" " Because you're insane. And what you do is insane and I've been miserable and ill for the last year and a half."

003821 Angel Lovecchio

I love that you said that I used to manage a team of dedicated outbound sales agents.

003827 Robyn Sayles

Woof, that's a rough job.

003830 Angel Lovecchio

I understood their pain. I did it for two years before I got into a leadership role. And it is hard. It is one of the hardest jobs I think anybody could do. But again, your perspective makes all the difference in the world. And so I had teammates that would be like, Hey, can I go home?

Can I go home? And at first, before I learned better, I would say, "no, we need you." And I list all the reasons why we need everybody to be there. And then I realized that that's not true. You absolutely can leave anytime you want to. You know, in fact, I heard taco bell is hiring for somebody to clean the bathrooms right now. You are more than welcome to leave at any time. And that just that perspective change in myself... Again, everything rises and falls on leadership. The perspective change that I had and that shift and realizing that I don't need to convince anybody to stay here. There are people who want to do this job. There are people who don't and it's definitely, definitely not a job that everybody can do. And if it's not for you, it's okay to go somewhere else. Like, I'll help you. What do you want to do? And that's what I started doing is having conversations with my team about what do you want to do? And let's take the steps to get you there. If you don't want to be here, that's fine. I don't want to hold you here. Let's figure out where you do want to go and get you there.

003942 Chris 'Jinx' Jenkins

So I think that we've like, we've got a good set of guidances here. So far as our wrap up for this particular episode, one of the first things obviously is, you know, evaluate what is it that you're bitching about. And figure out where that problem is. Is it something that's just a mental mindset thing? Is it something that's actually an external factor? That's controllable? Is it just, I woke up on the wrong side of the bed today and that should be an expectation because I don't always wake up on the right side of it.

And then second, you know, are there things that we can do to break us past that, that the concept of activity generating activity, that if we can take one, move in the direction of solving whatever that is and taking some form of action that gets us down the path, whether it's just checking your emails for the morning or watering your plants or, you know, whatever the next thing that you do in, in your, step for the day.

And then the third being, you know, obviously if there is some major problem that is an external factor, then start looking at how to change that external factor, you know, by whatever means necessary. But at the same time, putting ourselves in the mindset of, okay, I'm about to take action in a new direction.

So I'm not going to focus on the negative here. I'm already aware of it clearly because I've been bitching about it for some amount of time. Now, what am I going to do to take control of the situation and empower myself to start moving towards it's making a change and, you know, putting those three things together.

I think that, we, we absolutely like, that's a good blueprint for stopping being stuck in that complainer cycle where we don't accomplish anything. And we basically just wallow in self-pity. I want to thank my guest Angel Lovevcchio. I can't believe I screwed that up again. Jesus Christ. Thank you for joining us.

And for suggesting the topic, I thought it was really strong and a purse Robyn and Shea, always a pleasure having a, your input. If you're out there and you found yourself in that complaint or cycle, think about those things. And we'd love to hear more from you in the community after you listen to the episode, what things that you do to help break out of that complaint or mindset and actually start being productive.

So from, all of us here at unfuck, my business, we'll see you next Tuesday.

004156 Outtro

What the fuck are you waiting for? Take what you learned in this episode and do something with it. You'll find all the links and resources we talked about in our show notes for this setup. And go to unfuck my business.com to subscribe to the show.

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