Taking Action

Let's face it - you can't think yourself into better acting...you have to act yourself into better thinking. We discuss this in detail with plenty of laughter!

Transcript

Welcome to Life,

Lessons,

And Laughter with your host Glenn Ambrose.

Hello,

Welcome to the podcast.

This is Glenn Ambrose and.

.

.

Ben?

Did you forget?

I did.

I wasn't expecting that.

You usually introduce me,

You know,

Just throw it over.

Well,

I pointed.

You did.

It was.

.

.

I froze.

I froze.

That's my job.

I was nervous and I froze.

Oh,

You were so full of it.

That was a dramatic pause.

It was.

Yeah.

Perfect.

There's a difference between a dramatic pause and a freeze.

Anyway,

Let's get to the podcast.

What are we talking about today?

We are talking about something very,

Very interesting.

This is.

.

.

I hope so.

I had to let out a little laugh before I kept going.

I downloaded this.

Not yet,

You haven't.

You will though.

We are going to talk about taking action.

So basically,

How you can't think yourself into better acting.

You have to act yourself into better thinking.

Sounds intriguing,

Doesn't it?

Yeah.

Yeah,

It does.

It's very.

.

.

Explain that to me.

It's profound.

That's what it is.

It's deep.

Deep.

So deep.

Well,

As far as what that is,

Let's act ourselves into better thinking.

So basically,

What we do is we're.

.

.

I jumped right.

.

.

I think we should change the title to laughter and some other stuff today.

Laughter and then occasionally a topic sprinkled in.

Yeah.

This quickly became a comedy podcast.

That's good.

We should be laughing.

This is fun stuff.

Life is supposed to be fun.

So let's get into something really deep and serious about acting instead of thinking.

Oh,

But a lot of times in our lives,

What we do is we get into a habit of thinking about the change we want to make.

So we're in a situation and we're sitting around and doing the I shoulds and I could and I really need to get motivated to do this and.

.

.

Or a lot of times it'll happen with job situations.

So that's a beautiful one because you can just endlessly think about it.

If you're job searching for.

.

.

You want to make a job change,

You can always just.

.

.

You can stay in that mode forever.

You can sit there and think like,

Okay,

Well,

This one,

The commute is a little bit longer and what are the gas prices gonna look like in the next five years?

And this one,

I don't like my boss,

But what if I hate my boss at the next one?

And there's two coworkers I like,

But three I don't really like.

And what if that's reversed in the other play?

It's just endless.

There's endless thinking that we can do.

And it just keeps us stuck.

It's a game that we play navigating our way around staying exactly where we are right now.

Because where we are is usually comfortable.

Right.

It's comfortable.

It's our place.

Even if it's bad,

It's comfortable.

Absolutely.

It's our flavor of bad.

It's like I always liken it to a pile of crap.

Didn't see that coming,

Did you?

But it is.

It's stinky.

It's crappy,

But it's ours.

It's warm.

It's comfortable.

Is it?

It's warm and comfortable?

Yeah.

What are you doing?

You don't sit in a pile of your own crap and find it warm and comfortable?

This is the craziest podcast ever.

It's kind of an abstract idea,

Not literal.

If you take this literally,

You're going to have a problem.

So it's our crap.

Figuratively.

Figuratively.

Yes.

It doesn't hold all the properties of actual feces.

I'm trying to get us out.

I know.

But I keep pulling us back in.

I can't help it.

Well,

That's our show for today.

Fuck.

Thanks for tuning in.

Oh my God.

All right.

Welcome back to the podcast.

We had to take a little break there.

We're just laughing too hard.

It was hilarious.

So I'm going to actually try to stay on track so we can actually get a point across.

I mean,

As far as taking action,

What you want to do is take any type of small good action.

Since I do do personal training,

One of the examples I use is just getting to the gym.

A lot of people will set up this whole scenario.

We take on too much at once and it's just a way to keep ourselves stuck.

So they'll be like,

Okay,

I'm going to go to the gym five days this week and I'm going to start eating better and I'm going to quit smoking and quit drinking and change my entire life.

And then we stop failing at it.

And then that gives us the excuse to quit and we never do it.

So if you're going to take action,

Try to take small steps.

You know,

Just I even heard it broken down into just putting your putting your clothes by the door,

Your gym clothes by the door.

And then opening the door with the intention of going to the gym.

And then going to the gym,

You know,

I mean,

Even if it's baby steps,

If you're just taking some sort of action to get yourself to go to the gym,

Then and you're succeeding at each of those steps,

Eventually you're going to get there.

You know,

Everybody tries to tries to do too much at once.

Like,

I know a lot of people that 5k is real popular.

So people like running these 5k's and a lot of times people who can't run a 5k are,

You know,

Trying to trying to train for this.

And what they'll do is they'll they'll say,

Okay,

I'm going to run 10 minutes this week and next week I'm going to run 15 minutes.

It's like,

Well,

Why don't you run 10 minutes and then 11 minutes and then 12 minutes and then 13 minutes.

You know,

You can get to 15 minutes in the same time frame,

But it's not that big of a leap.

You know,

So you need to set yourself up for success when you're taking this taking the action.

I think that that was one of the first things that you ever talked to me about was like identifying the next right move and then acting on it and trying to make it right.

Because I'm a bit of a dreamer.

Like I'm a bit of a like a big thinker to the point where like,

You know,

The stuff that you said earlier about thinking about like work and like all the way,

All the different options and stuff.

I'm not so much of that as where I where I'll think like,

You know,

And then we'll do this and then this will happen and then and then we can also do this and there's a ton of great like 100% positive possibilities.

Right.

But you spend so much time doing that that you don't take any action or right.

And it kind of goes back to an earlier podcast when I was talking about looking at the the path in front of you with all the it's like newly fallen snow.

It's there is no path in front of you.

So planning out 10 steps in advance is just a waste of time.

You know,

What can you do right now?

What can you do?

And what you know,

What can you do with success right now?

You know,

You can you can do anything if it's going to the gym,

Then I can I can just make it to the gym today.

You know,

And try to get the mind out of it.

Our mind is one of our biggest enemies.

You know,

I also heard this recently,

It's somebody was talking about getting into a habit of doing something like going to the gym.

And they said it just we need to leave our mind out of it.

Stop thinking about going to going to the gym and just go just go once.

Don't figure out what you're going to do there.

Don't figure out you know,

What the right thing is.

Just get your butt to the gym and go from there.

It's kind of like brushing your teeth.

You know,

When it's time to brush your teeth,

You're not rolling around in bed going,

Oh,

My God,

Should I get up and brush my teeth?

Should I not?

Should I?

I don't know.

I mean,

You know,

It's going to take too long.

And I don't know how much toothpaste I have.

And you don't get into this big inner turmoil about brushing your teeth.

You just get up and you do it without all the thinking,

You know,

That can sabotage it.

It's the same thing when you're taking positive action.

Just do it.

And you know what,

If it feels wrong,

It's probably the right thing to do because you're in the middle of a change.

That's kind of the whole point.

You're trying to change something.

So and what it becomes a habit,

You know,

When you start doing these things that are positive and you start taking this action,

It does become a habit and it becomes easier.

And then when you don't do them,

You now all of a sudden you're like,

Well,

I'm not at the why am I not like,

I feel bad that I haven't done this.

I want to go back and do this.

Like we had a situation where we couldn't reschedule a personal training earlier this week because schedules were crazy.

And so I went from a Thursday to a Thursday with nothing,

You know,

Nothing in between.

And I couldn't get to the gym or do anything outside of that because of some,

Some stuff that was going on.

And you know,

Going into the gym this morning,

I was like,

Oh,

I'm out of rhythm about like,

I don't like that.

I don't like having been away.

Yeah.

But that's and that's important pieces because since you took the action to go into the gym on a regular basis,

Now that that made you feel good.

Whether you're aware of it or not,

It made you feel good.

And therefore when you don't do it,

You're like,

Oh,

Wait,

You know,

Something's wrong.

I'm not that's that's not the way things are supposed to be.

I want to and and that's kind of the whole point about acting.

That's the whole point of this podcast about acting yourself into right thinking because since you took the action,

Now you're thinking followed.

So now you think that you should be going to the gym.

You feel good when you go to the gym.

It's part of you now.

You know,

So now if you sat at home and thought about going to the gym and thought about all the reasons why you should thought about all the reasons why you shouldn't and never actually took the action,

You'd still be sitting where you were before,

You know,

But since you took that action,

Not only did you actually take the action and get the results from taking the action,

But your your thinking followed,

You know,

So that's why taking the action first,

And then the thinking following,

You know,

Just let the thinking catch up on its own.

That's so would you say that?

Like,

It's kind of like the once you identify what the right thing is,

That it's kind of like,

Just do it.

Yeah,

Like,

Yeah,

It's a little Nike commercial,

Man.

Just do it.

It's,

You know,

Yeah,

Yeah,

You have to.

It's it's the overthinking and the second guessing and all that stuff.

That's that's why you know,

And if you take baby steps,

There's really not a heck of a lot of risk.

You know,

Like,

I mean,

If you keep your mind out of it,

And you go,

Okay,

I'm just gonna go to the gym,

And I'm going to do something.

Okay,

So you go to the gym.

And once you get there,

You do something.

And you didn't,

You didn't deem what you were going to do.

Yeah,

You didn't figure that out yet.

So you can't really screw it up.

You know,

That way,

Then you can't judge yourself for doing it wrong.

You know,

So do you think that the big plans that we make are setting up impossible scenarios for us so that we fail so that we go back to our comfortable?

Yes,

For the for the most part,

That's exactly what it is.

You know,

It's one,

It's it's just it's probably not going to happen that way.

You know,

It's just,

Like I said,

We have no path in front of us.

So so laying out the way things are going to go,

Step 10 steps ahead,

It's probably not going to go,

Especially in a society where we have such busy lives.

You know,

Like one thing I have my clients do is like,

If you're going to start going to the gym,

Set two numbers.

One is the number that is like a goal that you'd like to go to the gym.

And the other number is what you're going to make yourself mandatory,

No matter what you're going to hit at least that.

So some people it's like,

Well,

I'm going to go to the gym definitely three times a week,

I'm going to shoot for five.

But I have to make it three,

You know,

And then it seems to work for people because you know,

That it gives them a mandatory starting point.

So they're held accountable to what action they're going to take.

But it gives them the opportunity to overshoot it a little bit,

You know,

And without judging themselves.

That's,

That's the biggest part is that that judging ourselves is just getting back to the thinking,

Oh,

I didn't do it right.

Oh,

I didn't think you know,

Getting back into your head.

Once you get back into your head,

Then you're back into thinking mode,

And you're getting away from action mode,

You know,

And that's,

That's where we fall again.

Okay,

Well,

It's time for our question portion of the show.

So can you tell the lovely folks at home where they can send questions?

I can.

You guys can send questions to what I'm tired from not laughing earlier.

I'm like wiped out.

It crushed me.

Oh,

I felt so good.

So the send questions into my Facebook page,

Life enhancement services,

Or my personal Facebook page,

Glen Ambrose,

Glen with two ends.

It's very important.

Are there a lot of Glenn's with one end?

Yeah,

I think there's more with one end than there is with two ends.

That's not I mean,

I guess that's not important right now.

But no,

But it's but it's very interesting to me.

It's what we should have made the podcast.

Yeah,

The Glenn story.

No,

Just glad with two ends.

Glen with two ends.

Yeah,

Instead of one.

Glen with one end is okay to just want to put that out there.

I don't want to discriminate.

Anyway,

And also life dash enhancement dash services.

Com my web website,

You can reach me there as well.

So what's that question,

Ben?

I've always heard the term fake it till you make it.

Oh,

Good one.

Is this a good philosophy to live by?

Well,

Like most things,

It's kind of how you perceive it.

Fake it till you make it can work.

But it's important to have a have a healthy understanding of what your what you're faking.

Like you can't lie to yourself.

And then fake it.

You know,

Like if you say,

I'm trying to think of a good example of faking something till you make it.

Can you think of one?

Yeah,

I tell students all the time,

High school students when I'm directing them,

A lot of them have a lot of talent that they don't use well because they're not confident.

And if you're not confident,

You can't act,

You can't sing,

You can't be on stage,

You can't perform without confidence.

Right.

And it's hard to get them to actually be confident.

So a lot of times I do tell them to,

You know,

Fake it till you make it in a certain way.

Pretend like you have confidence.

Just go out and try it.

Right.

And,

You know,

In that way,

They kind of end up doing it anyway.

Yeah,

That and that's a good example of a good time where that can work.

And the reason that it works is because it's a healthy and believable way for them to think of themselves.

You know,

Whether they might not be completely confident and secure with themselves at the moment,

But they can comprehend that they might be able to be confident with themselves in the future.

It's a possibility for them to grow towards.

And that's why they can fake it until they make it.

If you just lie to yourself about something and fake it,

You know,

If if if somebody really truly just was so down on themselves,

And they just knew that there was no way they could ever get up on stage,

Fake it till you make it wouldn't work,

Because they didn't they wouldn't believe it's even possible.

Right.

You know,

So that's where you got to be careful of,

You know,

So it's you have to you have to make sure that you believe that it's possible.

What you're what you're trying to achieve.

One of my favorite examples of that was Alice in Wonderland.

So in Alice in Wonderland,

Right at the end,

She's fighting the Jabberwocky.

And she's going over the six impossible things before breakfast,

You know,

I forgot what they were.

Animals can talk and,

And she's reciting them as she's fighting the Jabberwocky,

Because she has to,

She has to get her mind expanded enough to believe that it's possible that she can slay the Jabberwocky,

You know,

And that's,

That's a very important,

It's kind of like a mind game,

I guess that we need to play and just make sure we get ourselves to the point where we believe what we're doing is possible.

You know,

A lot of times just expanding your mind like that example works.

And another way that works is,

Is speaking with somebody else to get a different perspective.

You know,

If I'm going to go into a business venture,

And I go,

Well,

I this business venture isn't going to work.

I can't just go ahead and fake it.

Anyway,

I need to find somebody to talk this through.

And if I'm hung up on a negative of it,

I can be well,

I don't think it's going to work because of this,

This,

This and this,

I need somebody to help me shift my perspective and get the perspective that well,

Yeah,

There might be some,

You know,

Some possibilities of hitting some roadblocks.

But there's just as good a possibility that this could work out because of this,

This could work out because of that.

And if I can wrap my brain around the possibility of something working out,

Well,

Then I can then I can start to fake it till I make it because I believe that there's a possibility.

If I don't do that,

Then what I'm doing is just lying to myself.

And that's when it doesn't work.

So I think the fake it till you make it is is an interesting thing.

Yeah.

Like you said,

It doesn't work in every scenario.

It has to be something that you can see yourself.

You can envision yourself doing eventually.

Right.

You have to kind of believe in it or,

You know,

And it's it's fairly easy to use that technique.

It's pretty easy to shift people's perspectives.

Yeah.

To just say just to get some feedback from somebody else and get enough.

We just need enough evidence that we go.

Yeah,

Right.

Well,

Maybe it can work out,

You know.

And that's a great way to build like confidence when you don't have it in something.

But so in some ways it is the take action before thinking mentality.

But and well,

All right,

The way that I just said that sounded bad,

It's not take action before thinking.

It's that you have to act yourself into better thinking,

Which means that you you think that you're going to take this action.

Then you must take the action.

Right.

You find out what the first step is never going to help.

Right.

For first,

You identify the first step you need to take.

Then you take that first step,

You know,

And then identify the next step and then take that next step.

But trying to figure out the whole picture ahead of time and trying to,

You know,

Trying to figure out what's going to go wrong or even what's going to go right is basically a waste of time because we can't see that far into the future.

You know,

And it's just a trick to keep us stuck.

It's like a dog chasing its tail.

You know,

Like if you look down the road and say,

Okay,

Well,

This might go wrong.

Well,

Yeah,

It might.

But when it does,

You're going to be standing at a different position than you are right now.

And there might be ways to get around that.

You know,

But if you use that to keep yourself stuck,

You can be like,

Well,

This might go wrong.

Well,

Yeah,

Well,

Then maybe I shouldn't do it.

Well,

Then it could go right.

Well,

Yeah,

Then maybe I should do it.

But then and you never get anywhere,

You know,

So you just need to take that first step,

That first little piece of action.

And,

You know,

It's not only taking those steps that get you to where you're going.

It also empowers you.

When you take a first step,

And it feels good,

You get an endorphin rush,

You get a little payoff from that.

So that gives you the motivation to take the second step,

Then you get a little self empowerment off of that you take the third step and the fourth step and the fifth step,

Then by the time you're at the fifth or sixth step,

You've got this wave of,

Of motivation going,

You know,

You're just going and you're more apt to push through a roadblock than you would be when you're standing at ground zero,

You know,

Before you've ever taken any action.

So it's,

You know,

That's the that's the other reason why you don't get caught in the thinking because if you keep taking positive steps,

You build up momentum and when you finally do get to a potential roadblock up ahead,

You've got all that potential pushing behind you and a lot of times it'll push you right through.

So you're a different person down the road,

More capable,

More positive and more motivated than you are right back here.

So what would stop you at ground zero?

Quite possibly won't stop you when you get to step five.

It also is a great way to like,

Be able to,

You know,

If you're to one,

Stay in,

Stay in the now and two,

To be able to look back on those things as more motivation because you did all of those things right,

Which means you can do the next thing right.

I think another thing that you said,

One of the first times we ever talked was you probably can't build a wall,

But you can land brick.

Right.

Yeah.

It's piece by piece.

You know,

It's if you're expecting just to just to have a wall in in five seconds,

Then it's not going to happen.

But you can every time,

Every time you do something,

It's very important to recognize what you do right.

And to give yourself credit because too often we take a positive step and we just don't give ourselves credit for it.

You know,

We have to take that thing that we did right and use that as a brick building the wall of faith.

So you put that brick in place.

You're like,

Okay,

I was,

I was capable of doing this.

I did that.

And then you put then the next thing you do right,

That's another brick.

And the next thing you do right,

That's another brick.

So you're building your self-esteem.

You're building your faith that you can handle and do things more.

And you know,

Then all of a sudden when,

When that big obstacle comes up and you really need to lean on that wall,

You can because you've built it one brick at a time,

You know,

That's great.

So every step forward is just another brick in the wall.

Just another brick in a wall.

Absolutely.

A little Pink Floyd action.

I wonder where I got that inspiration from.

Yeah,

It might be that poster to my left,

July 4th,

1988.

I don't want to know what I was doing on that day.

I bet it was something crazy.

It probably was.

It was probably fun too.

I was,

I was about 10 months old.

Oh my God.

I was a couple of years out of high school.

But any who.

So yeah,

The,

You know,

Taking that action,

Building up the,

The motivation to move forward.

And it's so when you do at,

You are more capable with every positive step that you take.

You know,

We're constantly changing.

We're constantly evolving.

And if you're out there taking action,

You are literally becoming more capable and better at taking bigger action as you do it.

You know,

Nobody,

Nobody became president of the United States overnight.

You know,

They,

They,

They took courses in college.

They ran for smaller offices.

They,

You know,

It takes a while to build up to any great accomplishment.

And that's what we need to do.

We can't look at the end result and expect just to be there.

We need to take all the little steps along the way.

And when you're at step five,

You're capable of taking step six.

When you're at step zero,

You're not take capable of taking step six.

And you're not supposed to be because you're not that person yet.

You didn't grow the way you needed to grow by stake taking steps one,

Two,

Three,

Four,

And five.

You know,

So you're a different person standing there.

I feel like that is an increasingly difficult philosophy and idea to wrap your head around in this age of instant gratification.

Yeah,

It kind of is.

It's just,

But it does go back to something that you just said.

It's about staying in the present moment.

It's in the now.

The fact is,

Is nothing ever happens in any other time than the present moment.

You know,

Nothing's going to happen in the future.

When it happens,

It's going to be the now.

So that's all we have control over is what's going on right at this particular moment with the capabilities we have right now.

So in the future,

It's just hypothetical.

We have,

You know,

It's a guess because we're not even the person we're going to be then.

So how the heck do we know that we're going to fail?

You know,

So all you can do is take step one and then take step two.

And a lot of times after we take a couple steps,

Different options become available.

And step three that we guessed we would have taken isn't there anymore.

And there's a better option,

You know,

So that,

You know,

Getting caught up in the thinking is just,

It's a waste of time.

Honestly.

I mean,

If you want to lay out a broad goal ahead and even lay out a little bit of a map,

You can do it,

But just don't get stuck to it.

You know,

You got to remain flexible and understand that you're going to be growing by what you're,

What you're going through.

So that is our laugh filled.

Well the laugh filled first half.

Oh my God.

That was,

That was so awesome.

I haven't laughed that hard in a little while.

I mean,

It felt good.

Me too.

Thank you.

Good.

Thank you,

Ben.

So that's,

That's going to do it for our podcast.

Thanks for listening and we will be back soon.

This podcast is presented by New Shore productions,

Executive producers,

Glenn Ambrose,

Benjamin Barber and David DeAngelis.

Reviews

This was really helpful guys.. laughter and all. lol thank you 🙏🏾

You've referenced this podcast many times, I finally found it! Brilliantly funny start and some excellent points following! Thanks Glenn and Ben 💜 x

Yeah all I need to do is to take Step 1. Sorry I find the laughs at the beginning a bit distracting.

Akways good to hear from Glenn and Ben. Thank you 💖

Good reminders ❤

I think. The boys may have been high during this but their wisdom is clear and true.

Very helpful thank you

As one apprehensive in making decisions I found this very helpful. Thank you 🙏🏻❤️

Always great! Too funny... Made me laugh ❤️👍🏻

Powerful podcast with excellent message. I will bookmark this podcast to listen to again, not only for the powerful message and words of wisdom but for the laugh out loud hilarious first segment of the podcast. Thank you!

Timely one for me! Thank you GlenN 😉😜 namaste 🙏