Problems Aren’t Everything

Watch the episode here:

• Learn how to recognize when you’re addicted to your problems.
• Discover the powerful shift from venting to asking for help.
• Rick shares how to break the habit of constant complaining.
• Find out how focusing on joy can transform your mindset.
• Get practical advice on managing emotions and staying positive.

It’s shaking. Hey, I’m Rick Jordan. Today, we’re going all in. Yeah, I’m sure you’ve had this, right? You’ve had those phone calls, and you know that every single time this person calls or texts you, it’s a little baiting, right? They’re not really asking you how you’re doing to get how you’re doing, right? They’re only asking just to start the conversation so they can tell you how they’re doing, and it’s always bad. It’s always negative, right? They always want to dump their problems on everything. Those individuals, when it’s repetitive like that, become very needy and leachy. Yeah. So, I know you know what I’m talking about. Everybody has experienced that in their life where there’s this one person or people, and when you see their phone ring or the text message pop up, you’re like, “Oh man. Do I respond to this?” If you have read receipts on, you’re like, “Oh no, no, I’m not opening it. Nope, not happening.”

Now, I’ve had these people too. I still have some of these people, right? And eventually, if you know it’s going to be that way, you just ignore them, and they’ll drop off. That’s one method I’ve used before. But another method is responding while almost completely avoiding that specific topic. Or, acting as a mirror, so hopefully they can see exactly what they’re doing, but saying, “I’m here for you, but this is not something I have time for right now.” It’s okay to do that. It’s okay to protect your own energy when you have these people in your life.

Now, today I’m going to talk to you who might have those issues, okay? You might have those problems, or you think so, and you may have some very legitimate things in your life right now—things that are real and bad that you have to work through. That’s life, right? We all have bad days. We all have things that happen to us, and we all also need support from other people during those times. So, I’m flipping this back around to say that, of course, it’s understandable. At the beginning, I was talking about people who do that just for attention or because they need certain things from you. They just need that validation, social contact, or whatever it is. It’s an interesting scenario, right?

But now I’m talking about when you have these bad days. It must be human nature or something to want to dump on people because I’ve felt like this before myself. When you have problems in your life, legitimate things, you’ll have this natural tendency to just dump on people. I’ve had this before. It’s like venting. I’m not a psychologist, but it’s almost like when something bad happens, you tell one person. Then, even though you say, “I’m only telling you,” you tell another person and keep repeating the story. You keep repeating the story of this bad thing or your problem. At the beginning, it could be a grieving process as you work through negative emotions because something bad happened. That’s okay. Then, you move into the phase where you tell people your problems to ask for help: “How do I fix this? Is there anything you see that I’m not seeing to get this out of my life?”

And then there’s a threshold. I’m saying this with a little bit of inflection because there’s a freaking threshold where you cross into being the person I was talking about earlier—the one who calls or says, “How are you?” just to dump. They’re not actually contacting you because they want to contact you. They’re contacting you for themselves. So, there’s a threshold, and on one side, it’s cool because you’re processing and grieving. Then you move into the phase where, after allowing yourself to feel the emotions, you ask for help. People, you have to allow yourself to feel the emotions. You can’t bury them because they will stay there and fester, then pop up in ways you can’t imagine. You start to lash out because you’ve suppressed those emotions.

So, feel those emotions when something happens. It’s okay to be angry, frustrated, sad, or even pissed at yourself when you realize you did something. Then, you can move into asking for help with a fresh perspective to resolve it. But don’t cross the threshold where you’re calling people for you, not for them.

Here’s some advice: Talking about your problems can become an addiction, and that’s when your life can spiral downward. When you start telling one person after the next the same story, same story, same story, there’s a threshold you cross where it becomes your greatest addiction. When you catch yourself doing this, as I have, you realize you didn’t need to talk about that thing—you did it for attention. That’s stupid. So, back up a little. Either ask for help or do this: start telling people about the joys in your life. Tell them about the good things because no matter how bad things are, there’s always something good, even if it’s buried under a pile of bad. There’s still something good. If you think the walls are crashing down, you can’t pay your rent, you lost your job, your car broke down, or whatever it is, maybe you have a son or daughter in your life. That’s good. Maybe you still have a wife or husband in your life. That’s good. Maybe you have a good friend, church, or even memories. There’s always something good. So, break the habit and talk about your joys, not your problems. I love you. I know you needed to hear this today. I’ll GO ALL IN.