Escaping the Drift - The Weekly Drop: Embracing Life's Unfairness
12:00 Share

This is Larry Flick, owner of The Floor Store. You know that thing that snuck up on you last year called the holidays? Well, they're coming again. But it's okay because our pre-holiday sales are already here from now till November 18th. Everything in the store is 30% off. Not some things, not a few things, 30% off everything. An installation before the holidays is guaranteed on any in-stock product. They're coming, but this time you'll be ready. Go to floorstores.com to find the nearest of our nine showrooms from Santa Rosa to San Jose.

The Floor Store, your Bay Area flooring authority.

A lot of people not happy, man. A lot of people not happy. A lot of people are happy. A lot of people are unhappy. And if you go on your social media and you head down the feed, I seem to see a lot of the same kind of message, which is it's not fair. Life is not fair. How could this have happened? Life's not fair. I'm a victim to everything in my circumstances. It's not fair. Well, that's what I want to talk about this week is how to escape

from that victim mentality of fairness. And I want to let you know, first of all, if you listen to this and you're a person that says it's not fair, don't be offended because it is programmed into you to feel that way. I'm gonna explain why in a minute. But I want to kind of talk about the idea of fair. And in my household, raising my two small kids, well not small kids anymore, now 17 and about to be 15, from the time they were little,

Every time something wasn't fair in an argument over a video game or what movie we were going to watch or a bag of popcorn, my response was always the same, which is this. There's no such thing as fair. Fair is where you buy cotton candy and ride rides. Fair doesn't exist because I wanted to program my kids to not see the world as something that was happening to them, but rather as something that they were happening to.

And the first book, obviously, if you're going to talk about this subject, that you've got to go to is The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck by Mark Manson. Because in that book, it's really just the entire book is emphasizing that life is inherently unfair. And the sooner that you kind of come to grips with that and realize it, the better off you're going to be. Because once you're free of expecting everything to be fair, you're no longer going to be constantly disappointed when it's not. And instead, using that energy to focus on things you can control, instead of lamenting on in your car,

crying about the injustices of the world, that is what leads to real empowerment. Now again, if this is you, if you're somebody that sat in your car and cried into a TikTok video over the election this week, it's not your fault. You are genetically predisposed to this.

The evolution of fairness is a real thing. There's these like, even monkeys, right? There's a study that was done. They call them Kapuchkin monkeys. Sorry, that's kind of a tongue twister after I just got off stage for two hours. But Kapuchkin monkeys. And they did a study where they put two of them out there and had them do a simple task. And then they would give each one of them a little slice of cucumber. Well, after they got used to getting the cucumber, then what they started doing was giving each one of them a grape.

Now, it didn't take but one or two grapes before the other one lost its monkey mind and started freaking out and screaming because it was like, hey, in its little monkey way, that ain't fair. I'm doing the same thing. So through evolution, this has been programmed into you. And the book Behave by Robert Sapolsky is talking about the sense of fairness through evolution developed through

in small tribes as a way to be equitable with resources. For example, we're a small tribe in New Guinea. There's only so much grain. I get some grain, you get some grain. We all get enough grain to survive and it becomes this equitable sharing. And that's fine in a small tribe island type environment. But in modern society, it just doesn't work that way. And expecting things to always be fair and equitable is just not normal.

You're just setting yourself up for complete and total success. Now, a good way to overcome this, if this is something that you may struggle with, is reframing those things, reframing that injustice. You know, I just did a podcast that just, yeah, it's going to get launched up next Tuesday with Barbara Majewski. She is constantly on the Today Show. She's been on Fox and Friends. She's a television personality. And in that interview, we talked about

her purpose and her big why, which was her brother was born with a neurological issue that is going to require him to have care for the rest of his life. And she did not look at that situation. A lot of people look at that, you know, as well as me, you know, she's the oldest, she's going to, you know, she takes this responsibility, but she uses that not as what has the world done to me, but she says, that's my motivation to go serve.

You know, I can protect not just my brother, but all of the other people that had this that are like my brother in the world. You know, my buddy John Driscoll Hopkins of the Zac Brown Band came down with ALS, which is terrible. And a lot of people would have just gone into his shell and given up, but that's not who my dude is. He's still on tour with the band. He started Hop on a Cure, which is a fund looking for a cure for ALS, trying to not just help himself, but help everybody struggling with that disease.

He looked at it and said, I'm going to take this and take this unjust situation and transform it as my opportunity to grow and help others. And in A Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl, they talk about finding purpose in suffering and reframing it into strength. And sometimes some of the things that are your biggest adversary are the things that are bothering you the most, are the things that you perceived as these injustices in the world can become that fuel to drive you to something greater.

You know, you've got to take it. It's got to become a personal responsibility to see unfair situations as a chance for personal. This episode is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Do you ever think about switching insurance companies to see if you could save some cash? Progressive makes it easy. Just drop in some details about yourself and see if you're eligible to save money when you bundle your home and auto policies. The process only takes minutes and it could mean hundreds more in your pocket.

Visit progressive.com after this episode to see if you could save. Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and Affiliates. Potential savings will vary. Not available in all states. Chase Freedom Unlimited rewards all that you are with cash back on every purchase. We've built a life together collecting vintage items that connect us to the black community and our vibrant heritage. This is Kiana Stewart. And I'm Jana Handy. We're partners in life and in business. With Freedom Unlimited, adding antiques to our collection is

even more rewarding. How do you cash back? Learn more at chase.com slash freedom to be. Restrictions and limitations apply. Offers subject to change. Cards are issued by JPMorgan Chase Bank and a member FDIC. Development rather than as obstacles. And, you know, what are the simplest things I ever heard to start you on a path of overcoming this stuff? One of the easiest things I ever heard.

was my buddy Kent Clothier said this. Talking about choosing responsibility over looking for injustice and fairness. Or so shifting from complaining and unfairness to taking responsibility for your own life. And the easiest way to do that is this. Here's a real simple technique that you can use to start this out, which is you can simply stop saying, I can't. Stop saying, I can't. Eliminate that from your vocabulary and change I can't to I choose not to. Because that becomes empowering.

you know when people are like oh i just can't lose weight no no you choose not to lose weight oh i i can't get all my work done no no you choose not to get it done and when you start reframing it in that where the the onus and responsibility of your personal success falls solely on your shoulders

Well, that becomes empowering. That's something you can do. And if you want a book on that, dude, Extreme Ownership by Jocko Wilnick is all about that. It's probably the Bible about personal responsibility and taking extreme ownership of your own shit. You know, you've got to take it. You got to be responsible for your own actions. You got to stop pointing the finger and start pulling the thun.

You know, if you look at the core values of a bunch of my companies, I talked about it today with the group I was speaking to earlier. And the core value, one of the most important ones to me is we look internally for solutions to our problems, which means stuff's going to happen in life and business and everywhere else. But rather than looking first for the reason externally as to why it happened to you, look for what you could have done, if anything, to avoid it.

Did I get in a wreck? Yes. Was I speeding? No. I mean, you got to look for things that put the onus back on you because that's empowering. Because if you're walking around all day, you know, waiting for something bad to happen to you or being upset because of something happened to you, there's no controls there. Like what a miserable way to walk through the planet. And you're looking, if you're blaming others, that's, you know, just looking for life's unfairness that just weakens your position in life. It sets you up to be weak and be a victim.

And I know I talk about it on these weekly drops. I talk about a lot of books. And the last one I'm going to talk about for this one topic is probably my favorite book, not for this topic. It is my favorite book, period. It is the one that I say to people all the time when they ask me, what one book do I have to read? This is the book I always say, this book. And the book is The Obstacles Away by Ryan Holiday. It's kind of a modern take on classic stoicism, which makes stoicism, you know, if you've ever read like Marcus Aurelius' Meditations, a little bit of a tough read, but it's

Ryan's adaptation of Seneca and Marcus Aurelius and these other great philosophers and how they thought in the text that they wrote into a modern palatable tome, if you will, was one of the most powerful books I've ever written. And in this you have to understand, it talks extensively on seeing opportunities and challenges as just that. It's an opportunity to grow. It's an opportunity to get better.

And, you know, Hermosi said something a couple weeks ago in a post, and I've talked about this before on the podcast, but I still can't get it out of my head because it was one of the coolest things I've ever heard anybody say, which is this. He said, anytime I have a problem in my life, anytime I have an issue in my life, anytime I have anything come up that is a major concern, I look at it like this. My life is a story, and I am the hero of that story, and I want...

That problem is like the dragon in that story. And I want it to be the biggest dragon possible because I'm the hero of my story. And the bigger the problem, the bigger the dragon, the bigger the challenge, the better the story. He looks at every problem as a story he will one day tell. And I think that is such a great philosophy. And it goes right along with what Ryan preaches in The Obstacle is the Way. When you see an obstacle, don't shy away from it. Don't blame others. Don't do that. Dive into it.

Use it for fire, use it for fuel. Don't use it for tears and clicks. You know, once you move beyond the victimhood of looking for things to be fair and equitable and everything is supposed to be a certain way and take control for your actions in every situation, it will grant you a freedom that is greater than anything else. So if you're somebody that was upset about the election, if you're somebody that's excited about the election because you think they're coming to save you, they're not.

There'll be some good policy, I guess. We're hoping for the success of the administration. But at the end of the day, to be honest with you, I didn't care who won because I know I'm going to do for me. And if everybody had that philosophy, there'd be a lot less people crying in cars on TikTok. We'll see you next week.

What's up, everybody? Thanks for joining us for another episode of Escaping the Drift. Hope you got a bunch out of it, or at least as much as I did out of it. Anyway, if you want to learn more about the show, you can always go over to escapingthedrift.com. You can join our mailing list. But do me a favor, if you wouldn't mind, throw up that five-star review, give us a share, do something, man. We're here for you. Hopefully, you'll be here for us. But anyway, in the meantime, we will see you at the next episode.

Chase Freedom Unlimited rewards all that you are with cash back on every purchase. We built a life together collecting vintage items that connect us to the Black community and our vibrant heritage. This is Kiana Stewart. And I'm Shanna Handy. We're partners in life and in business. With Freedom Unlimited, adding antiques to our collection is

even more rewarding. How do you cash back? Learn more at chase.com slash freedom to be. Restrictions and limitations apply. Offers subject to change. Cards are issued by JPMorgan Chase Bank and a member FDIC.