Stop Playing Life On Hard Mode (My 6 Favorite Cheat Codes)

Summary

• I've learned to practice thought diffusion which means detaching from my thoughts, rather than getting caught up in them. This helped me change my eating habits and stick to my goals instead of eating every time I felt the impulse to do so.
• Facing business challenges taught me not to overcompensate by feeding negative thoughts until they snowball into a crisis. I visualize detrimental thoughts as fish that I can harpoon and dismiss from my mind, so I don't act on them.
• Language impacts how we feel about our emotions. Saying "I'm starting to notice that it causes a feeling of anxiety within me" is more empowering than saying "I'm feeling super anxious."
• I believe distinguishing between psychological rigidity and psychological flexibility is crucial. Flexibility allows for experiencing negative emotions while staying goal-oriented, whereas rigidity leads to avoidance and a narrowed life.
• I've embraced a technique from Acceptance Commitment Therapy (ACT) to view my brain as a separate entity, which I sometimes playfully call "Georgia." This creates space from my thoughts and allows me to proceed with my day unaffected.
• Acceptance is a powerful attitude. When I faced an anxiety attack, learning to accept the discomfort instead of fleeing it ultimately helped the anxiety diminish.
• Being in the present moment offers peace. Walking and mindfulness help me observe my surroundings and thoughts without being consumed by them.
• Values are the standards that guide our actions. By admiring qualities in others and acknowledging my current values, I choose a set of core values that direct my decision-making process.
• Committed action involves taking steps in alignment with values and goals, despite fear and discomfort. It means building beneficial habits and replacing counterproductive ones.
• Transformation can be challenging and isn't always linear, but it's about progress, not perfection. Change comes with practicing the actions you learn, and it's important to take those first steps immediately.

Video

How To Take Action

I would suggest practicing thought diffusion by putting yourself in situations where you face your impulses but choose to stick to your goals. For example, if you’re invited for a meal that doesn't fit your goals, go anyway and enjoy the company without eating the foods that don't align with your plans.

A good way of handling negative thoughts in tough business times is to imagine them as fish. When a negative thought appears, visualize catching and removing it from your mind pond. This way, you focus on productive actions instead of getting swallowed by worry.

To manage anxiety, change how you talk about your emotions. Instead of saying "I'm super anxious," say "I notice I’m starting to feel anxious." This small change in language is empowering and helps you keep control.

Remember, flexibility in your thinking is better than being rigid. When you face negative emotions, let yourself feel them but stay focused on your goals. It’s okay to have negative thoughts as long as you don’t let them stop you.

Think of your brain as a separate person, like how I call mine "Georgia". It helps create a space between you and your thoughts and continue your day without being pulled down.

Practice acceptance when discomfort comes. If you feel anxious, accept the feeling rather than running from it. This can actually help the feeling pass more quickly.

Being present is calming. Try walking and being mindful of your surroundings without getting caught up in your thoughts. Notice them, but don't let them take over.

Identify your values by admiring traits in others and recognizing your own strengths. Remember, having a few clear values is better than a long list you can’t remember.

To commit to action, build new habits into your routine. For instance, put vitamins next to your toothbrush or chew gum instead of having a snack. Little changes can lead to big progress.

Remember that transformation isn’t always straightforward. It’s about progress, not perfection. Don't wait for a perfect time to make changes—start now, even if it's with small steps, and build momentum in the right direction.

Quotes by Leila Hormozi

"You're not equal to your thoughts, you can never be a thought, you can never be an emotion; they are outside of you"

– Leila Hormozi

"The best thing you can ask is: Will taking action on this thought make my life better or worse tomorrow?"

– Leila Hormozi

"If you can rewrite your story… it gives you enough space to realize that you can take action despite having [anxious thoughts]"

– Leila Hormozi

"Every time that you avoid something… you're… teaching your brain that you should continue avoiding this thing because it's dangerous"

– Leila Hormozi

"The reality is… you can change your entire life today. The only reason you are not is because you're subscribing to these thoughts and emotions that aren't even real"

– Leila Hormozi

Full Transcript

have you ever woken up and thought to yourself why is my life so hard you look around and you see all these people and you think to yourself how are they so happy and free and joyful God I wish I felt that way and that's why in this video I'm going to give you the six tools that I have used to go from Feeling burdened by my thoughts and feelings to being empowered by them so the first tool is what we call thought diffusion and essentially what that is is it's being able to observe our thoughts and detach from our thoughts rather than get caught up in the content of our thoughts there's a lot of areas of my life that I have identified where I've gotten caught up in thoughts before I would say the first area was when I was losing weight the reason I was overweight was that anytime I had the thought oh I think I should eat oh that looks good I would eat it and what I had to retrain myself was that I could have thoughts all day about wanting to eat food it didn't mean I had to eat food in fact I could eat in accordance with my goals rather than in accordance with my thoughts and when I was overweight I was constantly eating in ACC ordance with my thoughts and not with my goals and it took time to be able to separate those things and realize that it's okay to feel hungry it's okay to have the thought that I want to eat something it's okay to go to a party and be annoyed that I can't eat the same thing that somebody else is eating right because I have different goals than that person and a great way that you could practice this and that I would is that I would literally seek out situations where I was with people when they were eating food that was not in accordance with my goals I remember there was this one restaurant they were going on Tuesdays taco Tuesdays they would order nachos and they would always get this crazy ice cream dessert and what a big part of me wanted to do was say I don't want to go out to eat with them you know because I'm trying to lose weight and I don't want to have the food there cuz what if I eat it and then I realized that's avoidance and so instead I said I'm going to go and have fun with my friends and I'm not going to eat the food as well and that practice on its own was a huge unlock for me because then in similar situations when I was alone when I was with other people when I was at family events when it was Thanksgiving Christmas I could apply the same skill that I learned in that situation the second situation which I felt like in which I've used cognitive diffusion to help me has been in business when I first got into business you know I was only 23 I didn't have much experience at all in the beginning of my business career anytime there was a threat to the business someone threatens a lawsuit somebody tells me that they're unhappy with their job a client expresses dissatisfaction I would then have the thought I must really suck at this and the business must also suck and therefore I'm not even successful the situation would lead to a thought which would lead to another thought and then another thought and then eventually it would lead to I'm terrible at business and I business sucks I heard this term where they talked about overcompensation which is essentially when you have a thought that something could be wrong you have that thought you let it lead to another thought and then another thought and then you start to feed that one thought with more thoughts that are similar to it until it becomes like a full-blown emotional disturbance where you're like freaking out and panicking an exercise that really helped me and it still helps me a lot is I see my thoughts like basically fish in a pond and I'm like What's the fish that's poisoning the pond and that fish is essentially the thought that is causing my adverse Behavior I literally pictur to myself is I've got a harpoon and I see the fish and I'm like bam and I take it I stake it I pull it out of the pond I look at it for what it is I'm like it is an unproductive thought and it's not true and I don't need to do anything about it and there's such a sense of belief in that because what you realize is that you can have a thought it can freak you out it can disturb you and you can do nothing you can just pluck it out of the pond throw it to the side let it die the second thing you can do is language has a very strong correlation with how strongly we feel our emotions for example if I say I'm feeling super anxious I think I'm going to fail how does that feel when you hear it versus I'm having the thought that I might fail and I'm starting to notice that it causes a feeling of anxiety within me which one gives you a sense of control versus which one feels out of control feels chaotic feels anxious you're not equal to your thoughts you can never be a thought you can never be an emotion they are outside of you a lot of people again when they say I feel like I'm going to fail I'm feeling super anxious I'm feeling they're not remembering that there's you and then there's your brain and sometimes your brain might be running wild like I've got days where I've got I'm like hey Georgia call her that sometimes I'm like Georgia's on [ __ ] prow today she's looking for something like she's starting to mess and even that alone just labeling my brain as a different entity helps me get enough space to be like oh my gosh silly Georgia I don't need to do anything about her today I can just live my life doing what I was already doing you might have a thought that if I don't do X Y and Z I'm going to fail and my business will suffer and I'll lose everything and then I'll not have money and then my husband will leave me and then I'll end up on my parents couch but then my parents won't love me either and then I'm going to be homeless and then you could say wow that is quite the elaborate story you have told there thank you for sharing with me I'm going to go ahead and make a sandwich now and you can just go on with your day if you're able to talk about these things with a sense of humor I promise you your ability to separate yourself from your thoughts and emotions is going to be tenfold because you will realize how [ __ ] ridiculous they sound and you'll be like I can't believe that I'm letting that thought control everything I am doing it's ridiculous the best thing you can ask is will taking action on this thought make my life better or worse tomorrow and if the answer is better great take action on it but a lot of the times what you're going to find is that the answer is worse it's not going to make my life better because I'm going to keep avoiding the thing I've been avoiding and I'm not going to make progress I'm not going to get closer towards my goals I took some time years ago to study different kinds of therapy and I came across act which is acceptance commitment therapy and I believe the originator of it or the founder of it his name was Steven Hayes and he had a bunch of books and principles around what that kind of therapy was and where it stemmed from and I remember reading the first book I read from him and feeling like it resonated so much for me because the first thing that talked about was this dictator from within right and this dictator from within is this voice in our head that is telling us to do things and also signaling to us that negative thoughts and feelings are bad and that we must defeat them one piece that was mentioned in the very beginning of one of his books was understand the difference between rigidity and flexibility and specifically psychological rigidity versus psychological flexibility so what psychological rigidity is is it's essentially a cycle of avoidance it's a cycle of behaviors thoughts and patterns that allow you to avoid the things that are causing negative emotions But ultimately keep you stuck in this very rigid narrow life so for example if somebody is very scared of public speaking and they are psychologically rigid then they will avoid speaking they will rationalize why they avoid speaking and they will do all the things in their power to make sure they never encounter a situation in which they will speak which ultimately shrinks their life because think about all the things that speaking could do for them it could Elevate their career it could give them more confidence it could put them out there it could you know uh build their brand there's lots of things it could do for them but they narrow their life and they become so rigid that it actually shrinks their life rather than expanding it now on the other side we have psychological flexibility flexibility doesn't mean the absence of negative emotion what it means is your ability to feel and experience thoughts and emotions and stay in contact with the present moment and not act on those negative thoughts and emotions but rather observe them and act in accordance with your values and goals instead one thing that people don't realize is that the act of avoidance itself actually perpetuates fear and even enhances it and so every time that you avoid something what you actually are teaching your brain through your behavior is that it is danger dangerous and so the first time that you avoid it it might feel like ooh I was a little nervous about it I avoided it it went away the second time you actually might notice that you feel more nervous and then the third time you have a straight up phobia of this thing and why is that people wonder why has my fear gotten greater over time it's because the more time that you avoid it the more that you have been conditioned to avoid it to remain safe and that you've taught your brain that you should continue avoiding this thing because it's dangerous now the cool part about this is is that it only takes one time of doing that thing to break this cycle but getting yourself to do it is what the hardest part is and that's what leads us into the six pivots and the six pivots are essentially the six tools that can help you go from being psychologically rigid to psychologically flexible the second tool is called self as context what it means is not being overly attached to an identity that you create for yourself because what a lot of us do is we prevent ourselves from moving forward past being overweight past past having bad relationships past having failed businesses because we're constantly referencing the past which guess what is normal that's what humans are supposed to do because if it worked to avoid this thing in the past or this thing was a threat in the past then your brain is trying to protect you by saying hey don't do that again hey remember it didn't work last time hey remember but what it also does is it makes you think that every time you do this thing going forward the past will repeat itself and then what it does for most people is it prevents them from ever trying anything new ever trying to make progress and ever trying to achieve their goals you are not the stories that your thoughts tell you you are if you can make that separation and realize that you don't have to Define yourself to any of these thoughts and emotions or stories then it gives you enough space to realize that you can take action despite having them for example I have uh a friend who constantly says I'm just super anxious she's constantly telling herself this story and so then what happens is that in a situation where anxiety is provoked she acts like somebody who was an anxious person would act but if you can rewrite your story which I asked her to do I said in this situation do you think that there's a possibility that you could feel anxious on the inside that you could have anxious thoughts but you could act like somebody who is not anxious at all and she was like I think I could and I was like great so today what I'm challenging you to do act like somebody who's not anxious most of the time what happens is that we see other people and how they their lives and we assume that they don't have the same thoughts and emotions that we have but the reality is is that many people just have the skill of having those thoughts and emotions and acting despite them and so you see what's happening on the outside but what you don't see is how many things they've learn to manage on the inside and you can do the same and once I realized I could do the same it was very freeing for me because I realized oh my gosh I can have all these very uncomfortable thoughts and emotions and I can still be the person I want to be I can still achieve my goals I can still live in accordance with my values even if it's uncomfortable because on the other side of that is freedom another situation where I know that I was really stuck in this was when I was trying to lose weight I kept believing the thoughts that I can't stop eating I can't stop drinking I can't stop myself from overeating I can't go on a diet I can't stick with a diet and it wasn't until I told myself [ __ ] this I'm sick of this [ __ ] I'm no longer telling myself this story as of today I have a new identity that identity is whatever the [ __ ] I need to be to achieve my goals I will do that and I will be that person and I don't care how uncomfortable it feels the reality is is that is available to anybody you watching this on YouTube right now you can change your entire life today the only reason you are not is because you're subscribing to these thoughts and emotions that aren't even real and the last tool that I will give you that goes along with achieving self as context is being able to hold space for your thoughts and emotions you know I actually had a friend that I was on the phone with this morning and she said Lea I am so sad I'm going through this breakup I feel heartbroken and we were talking about what she needed to do to make her life better and essentially like the pivot she needed to make to act in accordance with the values that she had and I said I hear you it is okay to be sad it's okay to feel frustrated it's okay to feel negative and awful I was like but you know what you can feel awful and still do what you know you need to do to make your life better and and she called me and she was like you're so right I can feel awful and do it anyways and I gave her this visualization which is whenever I'm feeling anxious I'm feeling awful I'm feeling frustrated I just imagine having a purse and carrying those emotions and those thoughts in my purse and I'm not trying to get rid of it I'm not trying to throw the purse out the window but I carry it with me all day and I say you know what I'm going to hold a little space for you guys it's not going to be up in here I'm not going to act upon it but you got you'all can hang out in my purse you can come with me we're we go to the grocery store we're going to go to dinner we're going to go to work we're going to do everything we're going to do to achieve our goals and you can hang out and here and I know it sounds ridiculous but being able to understand that we don't have to get rid of a thought or emotion to live in accordance with our values we can hold space for them we can have them we can experience them and we can live anyways the third tool is acceptance what acceptance is is really learning to have a new relationship with your thoughts and emotions I remember that there was a time in my life it was about 4 and 1/2 years ago and I had a lot of stuff going on and I was feeling very anxious and I went to bed and was tossing and I was turning and then suddenly felt like my tongue swelling up and I couldn't breathe and my hands got swollen and then I had a full-blown anxiety attack it really [ __ ] with me because I rejected it I did not want to one except that I had an anxiety attack because I'm like I run a business I can't have an anxiety attack I spent probably the next six weeks just trying to avoid any situation that reminded me I didn't even want to work out because I was so afraid for my heart rate to elevate like it did at that point when I had the anxiety attack and it wasn't until I started studying this kind of therapy when I heard the acceptance and what really did it for me was understanding that the feelings I'm having are awful the worst thing that happens I continue to feel this way the best thing that could happen is that I learned to feel okay feeling this way instead of trying to leave the situation I told myself I was safe and I could stay in the situation if we accept our emotions and accept our thoughts and say I'm willing to feel the pain the irony of it is that it tends to dissipate so a great analogy for acceptance is getting stuck in quicksand which the irony of it is that somebody gets stuck and there's one leg in and what they do is they try to use their other limbs to get themselves out but what they find is they only get pulled in deeper and the actual way to get out of quick sand is to almost lay flat and swim out and so often what we find is that accepting the discomfort and doing the thing that feels scary is often the way out of the situation the fourth tool in terms of building psychological flexibility is presence what we find is that most of the times we're not actually in the present we are reenacting the past or anticipating the future and both of those tend to cause stress anxiety Sadness the present tends to be pretty peaceful it's my brain telling me stories about what the present means that tends to be what causes upsetness what I like to do actually um is you know I I think meditation is great I think that's a great tool um I have actually found that going on walks and when I go on walks I do two things which is one I observe all of my surroundings and I'm pointing out things in my surroundings to my myself and then the second thing I'm doing is I'm allowing myself to notice the thoughts that come up while I am doing them because the reality is is that if I'm trying to be present what you'll probably notice is that you're also thinking about other things things that are preoccupying you thoughts that might be disturbing you Etc but that practice alone what it does is it puts me in a state of observation which ultimately actually allows me to be present rather than experiencing the thoughts from the past or the future because I start to notice them rather than be engulfed by them or get caught up in them there's similar practices a lot of people I I would say try whatever works for you I know meditation is a form of this being able to observe the sensations in your body the thoughts in your mind the feelings that go throughout you now the thing about practices that help you become present is they're very useful at the same time there's like a lot of people especially nowadays I think they tend to become avoidance practices which is we do do these things in hopes that if I meditate enough if I walk enough if I work out enough if I read enough if I cold plunge enough if I sauna enough I won't have these thoughts and feelings and emotions I have fallen prey to this where I used to have a very rigid routine similar to how athletes have like a night before the game ritual that often they stick to and they're like super Sous about and they got to wear the right socks and everything when I was putting so much pressure on myself I've seen this with a lot of people in business I felt like every day was game day and so it was like every day I had to follow very rigid routine to make sure that I was set up to feel my absolute best the next day because I had so much going on there were so many stakes and what I realized over time was that I didn't have a routine a routine had me the routine that used to alleviate stress in my life actually started to cause stress because I would look at my day and think how do I fit all this in and what what if I can't get to my workout and what if I can't get to the medit what if I don't read my x amount of my book and and then I would have more stress around the routine than not and so one thing that I do for myself is every couple of months I actually change up what I do I don't want to get stuck in doing the same things every day at the same times with the same people because what you see is that your brain makes up stories that that's the only way that you're going to be safe productive well if you're somebody who tends to fall prey to the routine then challenge yourself every few weeks to change something about it and what you'll find is that it is a lot more enjoyable to have a routine when you allow yourself some flexibility the fifth tool is values our values are the filters in which we run decisions through and say is this decision aligned with my values more often than not our brains will try to trick us into staying the same and so it's really great to have values that pull you towards that enticing future so that you have something to Anchor towards in the moments where you're not sure what to do what most people make the mistake of when they're trying to change is they think about what they don't want but they don't create what they do want values is the first step in creating what do I want my life to look like and who do I want to be not who don't I now how I've gone through and figured out what are the values I want to live by two things one is I think of the people who I admire most in life these can be people who are Dead Alive I can know them I cannot know them but I think about those people and I write those names down who are the people I admire most and then I ask myself why do I admire them most and then when I ask myself why I admire them most what I can do is I can extrapolate out the values that they live their life according to for example one person Alex really admires is Warren Buffett why do I think that Alex admires Warren Buffett I think that he admires Warren Buffett because Warren Buffett is patient and I think that he strives to be patient like Warren Buffett and then the second piece is ask yourself what are values that I hold today that I would like to continue holding that I like about myself because though we have things we want to change about ourselves we also have things that we do like about ourselves and if you really think about it there's probably things you're doing today that have worked for you in many ways I think it's really hard if you've got like 10 values to live by my rule of thumb has always been I'm going to get as many out as I can and I'm going to try and consolidate it to three I can remember three values and I can think about it on a daily basis and I can use those values to make decisions more than three becomes like okay I need a checklist for this and so I think that it makes it easy to act upon them when they're concise and there's not too many of them the sixth tool is committed action so this is taking action in accordance with our values rather than away from fear we want to make it as easy as possible for us to take actions in accordance with our goals life is already going to be hard business is going to be hard losing weight is going to be hard it's going to be all hard enough we want to try and make it as easy as possible so there's a few ways you can do that first one is building new habits that take you towards your goals into existing routines for example when I was a personal trainer something I used to do is that if somebody was supposed to take vitamins every day I would say well what's something you do every morning they would say I brush my teeth okay amazing what we're going to do is just going to put your vitamins right next to your toothbrush every time you brush your teeth I want you to take your vitamins what happens is that they link The Taking of vitamins with the brushing of the teeth and then very quickly they will start taking their vitamins every day just like they brush their teeth the same goes for switching behaviors for example if you find yourself uh every day around let's say mid morning 10:00 you find yourself snacking on something what I would suggest you do and this is another one I used when it was people losing weight is I would say cool I want you to put a pack of gum right next to the snack I want you to put it in front of the snack and every time you go to take the snack instead I want you to take a piece of gum and chew it and just chew it for 5 minutes and then tell me if you want the snack what happens after that what people find is that most of the time they're they're not actually hungry when they're going for that snack and so then eventually what happens is they swap the eating a snack with the chewing gum Behavior right and then the chewing gum Behavior leads them to losing weight which is in accordance with their goals and the third thing that I do in terms of taking committed action is I I call it just play it out I want you to play out that everything today doesn't go according to plan that you don't do everything perfectly you don't take every action as well as you wanted to maybe you don't do one maybe you fall back into old behaviors and I want you to play out how that feels and how the day turns out most people they let the bump in the road become the pothole they get stuck in they go to change and then because maybe one day they didn't stick to something they said they were going to do they say [ __ ] it they throw in the towel and they allow themselves to get stuck there and they remain in that cycle what I want you to remember is that change is not linear it's a process and it takes time the only thing that's going to stop you is if you expect it to be perfect and you expect yourself to be perfect and perfectly adhere to change which is not feasible at all it's going to look like this but over a long enough time Horizon you will change and now what you want to make sure is that you don't fall into old habits and beat yourself up when you don't do things perfectly now what happens when people don't take committed action is most of the time it is a very intense feeling of stuckness feeling stuck in losing weight or achieving a goal with your body feeling stuck in a relationship feeling stuck in a job feeling stuck in a business feeling stuck in a decision it's because more often than not they have conflicting feedback there's a lot of stuff going really poorly there's a lot of stuff going well but they have no plan of action or directives having thoughts having plans having knowledge is one thing but having a plan to apply the knowledge actually doing something with the education you receive that is the definition of learning and so until you have actually taken the committed action you have not taught your brain the lesson so I want you to remember this as you're watching this video because I didn't understand this because I used to be the kind of person I would read all these [ __ ] books I would listen all this [ __ ] and then I'd be like oh amazing I'm never going to do it and what I realized is that I am robbing myself of the lesson and if you want to actually learn and teach your brain what you are watching here on this YouTube video then you will go out and you will take the committed action and then it becomes a learning you just need to take the first one to two small steps and you will start to feel a sense of confidence and a sense of momentum because right now most likely if you're watching this video you have a sense of momentum in the wrong direction and so the best thing that you can do for yourself is create a plan that is doable and it is not perfect so you've been sitting here and you've been watching this video and I can imagine the thoughts that are probably popping up right now which are like this is a great video I'm going to like act on it tomorrow if you're going to do it eventually you might as well do it now and if you're going to do it in imp perfect conditions eventually you might as well start off in imperfect conditions and make it easier when conditions are perfect but I want you to understand is that right now your brain is probably freaking out telling you all the reasons why I am stupid and wrong you shouldn't listen to this video maybe they're right but maybe they're not one way makes your life better one way makes it worse and so ask yourself does making a committed action plan today make my life better or worse tomorrow if the answer is better then go do it now