Episode 2: Sadness

[MUSIC] Hey guys, happy August 10th. Welcome to the Cannibal mentality podcast, episode two, discussing sadness and cheerfulness today. I'd like to say good day to you. I hope this message finds you in good spirits and a place of contentment. Please note that this show is meant for a mature audience. I'd like to again welcome you to the Cannibal mentality podcast and live stream here on Twitch. My name is John and I'm here to share with you some dynamic and thought-provoking concepts that will help you improve your life. This show is going to challenge some societal norms and make you think critically about your behavior and your approach to the way that you live. The Cannibal mentality podcast aims to empower each of us to focus on getting it right, not just being right. So in episode one, we discussed happiness, right? We touched about how happiness is internal and has a lot to do with your perspective and the way that you look at life. Today, we're going to discuss sadness as they are clearly very closely connected. If you felt happiness before, then the no doubt you've also felt sadness as it's the other side of the coin. So, where is sadness? Like happiness, clearly it resides within us. It's a natural and normal part of life, but it's also a feeling that we're meant to struggle against. It's not something that we're meant to be comfortable with or live with on a regular basis. Clearly, we're not meant to be constantly sad. We call that depression. There are many medical studies about the negative effects of depression on the mind and the body. It's very clear. It's unhealthy. It causes heart attacks, it causes other anxiety related issues. Beyond the health part, it's also just not fun to be around. It's not fun to look at. It's not fun to be associated with. When we ourselves become sad, we need to try to project that strength. We need to try to show people what temporary sadness looks like and how to be strong and under whatever issue or change or adversity we're facing. Show them that there is light at the end of the tunnel. Because we all know, right? There's a big difference between being sad, like in the moment when something happened or just being like a sad person or just having just a bad attitude, a sad attitude, a defeated attitude all the time. The temporarily sad person understands that life is going to bring ups and downs. It's going to bring some temporary sadness and they're kind of mentally prepared for it because they understand that's just kind of the way things work. The person who, and this is not everyone, but there are some people who get upset and they stay upset, they get depressed, and they have it kind of come to terms with the way life is. There's some things in life we can change and there's some things we can't gravity, we cannot change. In the fact that there are going to be things that happen to you that make you upset or sad or make you change. Those things are inevitable. It is as inevitable as gravity. When you don't come to terms with that, you're going to be sad a lot and trying to fight that really is futile. It doesn't make any sense because that's just not going to change. It's never changed and it won't start with you. When you are not accountable, if you're an unaccountable person, that sadness just weighs on you, like a monkey on your back. That sadness weighs on you, like a heavy backpack. Literally, we'll sap your strength and your resolve. Whatever strength you have to fight through your issues, whatever resolve you have that you're better than you're bigger than that, those are going to wane. Those are going to go away whenever you allow that sad attitude to take root within you. They get so much heavier and harder to deal with. We all know that person. We all have someone that we know that has this morbid love for sadness, like that likes to feel sorry for themselves constantly, throwing a pity party or a pity party, or something of that nature. We all know that one person that's always sad. This could be like a friend, a family member, or someone like that, but they're like married to their sadness. They generally live alone or they spend a lot of time alone in their room or in their space, just them in their sorrow, and they don't let anyone come between them. This person is always complaining about their predicament, what they're going through, why this is happening to them, and then they always make an excuse. For whatever advice or help is being offered. You know what that looks like, right? They intentionally like magnify the issues. You say, "Oh, well, this is horrible, and I'm in a tough spot because this." Then you talk to them and you say, "Well, what about X, Y, or Z?" These are all three things you can do to help you situation. They will argue with you about why they can't do A, they will argue with you about why they can't do B and why they can't do C. You know, they constantly are in love with their sadness. You know, if you took away the cause of their problems, they'd still be sad. They'd find something to be sad about because of that mentality and the attitude that they've adopted about the way they feel. Right? We see these people all the time when they reject a positive friendship or a positive help, but they only want to be around either no one or they only want to be around people that enable them or say, "Yeah, you're right to feel sorry, you're right to feel this way," and they enable them. You know, and the thought that really comes to mind there is misery loves company. Right? The problem with that, the problem with the attitude thing is when that sad attitude gets a hold of you, it invites cowardice and promotes ignorance into your life. I'm going to say that again because I might have caught you off guard there. Having a sad attitude invites cowardice and promotes ignorance in your life. And what I mean by that, folks, is that when you have this sad attitude, this attitude of things are bad and they can't get better, you know, this cowardice presents itself in the sense that you're not showing any courage when it comes to attacking your problem. You're running from it. You say nothing's going to work. It's just inevitable. Right? You're not showing that courage to find a way to take it on to fight whatever it is that's got you down. Sometimes it's a courage of not being able to look at yourself and be self-critical, you know, and identifying what you did wrong or your mistakes. Right? Because usually if you're sad as hell, like if you're depressed either something really fucked up happened to you or you did something really wrong. And so for those of us who have made mistakes and we've done something wrong, it takes a high level of courage to look in the mirror and say that was really jacked up. That's not who you are. This doesn't define me. And I forgive myself and I can move forward. It takes a lot of courage to do that. You know, and likewise, the ignorance, the ignorance presents itself in the fact that a lot of times we're not happy and we don't want to get to the rid of it. We don't want to deal with it. We'd rather not even know, right? Ignorance is bliss. Maybe sometimes we don't want to go into the room and deal with it because we don't want to come to terms with what we know is going on in there. This bad attitude, this sad attitude will invite this cowardice. They will invite this ignorance into your life. And it's hard to get it out once it's there. Right? That ignorance is displayed when you're not happy and you're not going to look and find a way to change it. You don't care. You know, this is only going to make you angry. You keep that attitude. It makes you angry, right? It makes you bitter. It makes you even mean to the people around. You mean to your children, mean to the neighbors, whatever. You know, what you know, what it looks like? You got that old person who's been by them stuff a long time because they're angry and they're bitter. And they don't want anyone around. And now they're yelling at people walking on their lawn or parking in front of their house on the street or whatever would have you. We've all experienced these angry, bitter people who have allowed this bad attitude to fester within them. And now it's it's projecting everywhere. And we have to fight against that ourselves. And we need to help our friends and family that get into that horrible cycle by allowing them to understand that this is what they're going through and it's okay, but we need to have the courage to work our way out of it. The best way you can help someone like that is by having a cheerful attitude yourself, right? By being an example to someone else of even though you've had a hard time and no doubt your friends and family know you, your story, and have seen you go through some things, having a positive and cheerful attitude, majority of the time is going to show them, like I said earlier that these problems that they have are temporary and that there is light at the end of the tunnel. So even when life is horrible and we have a very good reason to be temporarily sad, right? Does that sad attitude help? Even if you have a valid reason and it's just temporary, does that give you, does that attitude give you the tools you need to work through it? Does that attitude give you the mindset that's required to make positive change? Probably not, probably not, right? Does anything really improve until we don a positive and proactive outlook? Not really, not really. So at the end of the day, it all comes back to this accountable mentality. It all comes back to the idea that we have to hold ourselves accountable, right? Just like we talked about with happiness, you're not going to be happy if you're not holding yourself accountable. Things don't add up, right? You can't scapegoat. You can't make excuses and you can't bullshit yourself with reasons that all revolve around external issues. Instead of addressing what's here, what's in your mind, what's in your heart, what you're thinking, you're attitude, right? First we have to identify our attitude and make sure that we're prepared for life. Again, bullshit happens to all of this. It's not always fair. Good people and bad people alike have bullshit happen to them. We know for a fact as long as we're living on this beautiful plan and as long as we're waking up and taking breath every day, we're going to also be waking up and taking shit every day. Some kind of shit from somewhere. We know this. Now even knowing that, it doesn't make sense. We're not going to just be happy every time something bad happens, right? Even though we may be mentally prepared for it, but you can kind of choose how you look at the situation and how you respond to it. You can, with the right mentality, keep your sadness or frustration minimized to the initial reaction phase, right? Because we know it's not human nature just to deal with that shit and be immune to it. You know, it's human nature to be affected. So we're going to be effective, excuse me, affected, but it's also in our nature to show some fucking courage, right, and stand up and rise to the challenge of life. It isn't our nature to do that. It's in our nature to rise up to adversity and show some fucking bravery and some strength when tough times befall us, right? What's the saying? I've heard it's not about whether or not you got knocked down. It's about whether or not you get up. Shit, we all get knocked down. That's the part they don't tell you. Everyone gets fucking knocked down all the time and you've got to keep getting up all the time. That's just the way, that's the game. That's the game that we're playing. So once you understand that, it's a little easier to deal with these things in a long-term mental state, right? Short-term, you're going to be pissed, you're going to be, I mean, your initial reaction is what it is, but knowing the nature of life and the nature of what we're dealing with makes it a lot easier to cope with and be, you know, find a happy place to cope with it, right? So let me finish with this, let you get back to your day. We give you a couple of notes about cheerfulness and I'm going to finish with my normal speed. So here we go. Remember this, a cheerful attitude is the difference between living a heavy life or a light one. A cheerful face is always welcome. A cheerful spirit eases the burdens of many, right? You're not doing the world any favors by running around with a sad attitude and bitter demeanor. Even if life has been truly shitty to you and you deserve the right to be angry and bitter and mean, you're not doing the world any favors, behave, and like that. You see, life is hard, life is crazy, life is a whirlwind. So until next time, I want you all to try to put yourself out there. I want you all to try to be actively mindful about what it is you're thinking and how you're reacting to the world around you. I want you all to think about whether or not your attitude is helping you achieve your happiness. Show yourself some courage, do something, read something, try something different today instead of staying in your comfort zone. The best things in life are not free. You just can't buy them. Anything worth having requires hard work and trust me. You're worth it. [Music]