Speaker 1: Creativity is an addiction, unplugged because we will always say
yes to creativity, totally uncut.
Speaker 2: Because we all make mistakes. So turn it into a tool.
This is arrow unplugged.
Speaker 1: Hey Zaro, And this is defrag asking the questions, questioning
the answers. We haven't hit the trail yet when we
do our transition walk, a transition walk, we all go
through several transitions throughout the day. What did I read
today that in one day, one twenty four hour period,
our mind is questioning seventy thousand times.
Speaker 2: This is the reason why I dfrag in my journal.
Speaker 1: There are so many subjects that I would love to
cover here, one of them being that a quote that
kind of hit me very late last night along the
way you realized it was a long day. We'll dive
into that subject a little bit later on, but I
just wanted to show you how this moves through me
and how you yourself hold the tools that you need
to make it through that long day. Another subject that
came up was does your creative innercore really know what
day it is? And the answer that I came up
with it was I think my outside dreams and ambitions
constantly remind the monster to keep it together. I go
into every day fearing that doing too much won't be
enough for another expectation.
Speaker 2: How often do you do that?
Speaker 1: You pour yourself into something that you're thoroughly enjoying, and
all of a sudden, the expectation that you wanted for
that day, you don't have any energy for it. So
you down another red Bull, you get a power drink,
you take a pill, you do something to get going.
Speaker 2: Another subject was based.
Speaker 1: On when I do my defragging, my vocal defragging, it
feels like that I haven't done it in a long time.
Speaker 2: It's been eight days.
Speaker 1: And the quote that came from me when I was
questioning that, why has it taken me eight days to
make it back to this point? What's really weird is
that we all say that life is moving too quickly,
yet when we're living it, we can't get there fast enough.
Come on, you've said it too right, life is moving
too quickly, yet when we're living it, we can't get
there fast enough. We are not being fair to the
process of time. And of course I want to talk
about this is probably going to be the bigger subject today.
Speaker 2: When we get out on the trail ants are you
familiar with that? Ants?
Speaker 1: Automatic negative thinking syndrome. ANTS. All right, I'll see you
out on the trail in just a little bit, all right.
Hot on the trail, I asked Alexa what the temperature
was out here. She says, HiT's sixty five degrees. Would
you like to know what the forecast is?
Speaker 2: Now?
Speaker 1: Sixty five degrees? And I come out here and I'm
freezing my butt off because it's been raining, so the
forest is pretty chilly. And even though Alexa says it's
sixty five, my body feels like it's like forty seven.
Speaker 2: But man, how about those subjects.
Speaker 1: There's so many different subjects that are moving through us
at all times. Like I was mentioning, seventy thousand thoughts
moved through each and every one of us every single day.
Are you writing down your thoughts? Are you asking questions
and then questioning answers. There's so many different reasons why
we do what it is that we do. And the
thing is is that we've got to find out why
we do what it is that we do so that
we can break the habit. One of my worst habits,
I'm a time freak. I am I'm a clockwatcher. Not
because I'm anxious to get somewhere. It's more like how
much more time do I have before I have to
go to their expectations? And so I utilize every single
tick on that clock to figure out where I am
in my moment of now, which is the reason why
we do this transition walk, because we're consistently transitioning. If
we don't learn from our transitions, then what we're doing
is we're shoving a huge part of our lives, especially
when it comes to making decisions. We pushing it aside.
We're ignoring that self. But seventy thousand questions hit us
every day. I'm constantly asking myself about watching the clock.
It's not a comfortable place to be. But when you
live the life of being here right now, in this
moment of mindfulness, and you're challenged by other people's beliefs
of their time, it's kind of a rough walk. It's
a hard journey to live by, but you remain true
to it because you realize habits don't form in your
moments of now because you're aware of what would shape
just another habit.
Speaker 2: Seventy thousand thoughts.
Speaker 1: Let's put some focus on ants automatic negative thinking syndrome. Now,
we've talked about this so many different times on d
FRAG about how my wife and I are very guilty
of writing the story before it happens, meaning we will
take a situation that we know is going to be
a celebration because we're entertainers. When we hit that stage,
our goal is to entertain, but we write out the
possibilities of what if something goes wrong. You have to
have a backup to the backup to the backup to
the backup. Being somebody who suffers from ANTS automatic negative
thinking syndrome, we will put into play everything that is
negative so that when it's happening and it's not negative
and it's very positive, I think that we've become addictive.
It's a habit to go, wow, it wasn't that bad
after all, and you get addicted to that. So that's
a habit that I need to work on. But in
doing some studies on ANTS, here's the thing. Our ancestors,
grandparents and the grandparents of our grandparents and the grandparents
of their grandparents, they always always put themselves in a
situation where they questioned what could be the outcome.
Speaker 2: They used it as a protection device.
Speaker 1: They were able to sit down and say, Okay, well
we got to put this crop in the ground, but
that sky looks a little gray. What do we do
if we put the seeds in the ground and we
get more rain than expected? How do we handle this?
But that is so one hundred percent ingrained into each
and every one of us to be those people to
ask the questions and then question the answers and kind
of get addicted to the fact that who it really
wasn't that bad. So on this edition of d FRAG,
my question to you is because I want this to
be about you, I don't want it to be about me.
My question to you is when do you slip into
ants automatic negative thinking syndrome? What are the triggers that
put you into that moment? Is it a major event?
Is it just going to work? Because you know when
you get there, you're always going to have that feeling
that someone doesn't like you.
Speaker 2: Today.
Speaker 1: I don't like that feeling, but I'll tell you what
I do. Hold on to them, and then I try
to think, well, I'm gonna let them start the conversation today.
And the reason why is because because if I start
the conversation all the time, then they must not like
me so and they feel like they have to act
or they have to react because I started the conversation
being completely aware of what triggers your aunts. Taking the notes,
grab a phone. They have little notebooks for your smartphone.
Just jot it down and say WHOA. I was doing
okay until this one particular thought, one of the seventy
thousand got inside of me, and I couldn't let it go. Man,
I got to make sure that I don't walk on
that trail ever again because it triggered me. And now
I can't shake this stuff free. I don't know if
you can hear it on this transition walk. It's raining.
Oh my god, can you hear the rain at all?
Is it hitting the microphone? You see how I'm triggering
myself because I'm going to sit here and think about
what happens if I get stopping wet. I've got to
go to my essential job today. My hair was dry
before I came out here, but I know I'm getting
wet right now. But the importance of this transition walk
had to outweigh the doubter, the shamer, the guilt trip maker.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, ants.
Speaker 1: Automatic negative thinking syndrome. It's in every one of us.
But the goal is to find your piece. How do
you find your piece? Do you pick up a red bull,
a monster, drink a prime? Do you grab the alcohol?
Speaker 2: What do you do?
Speaker 1: I happened to pick up a writing instrument and I write,
is it beautiful?
Speaker 2: Never? Never? It's just thoughts. I shared him with you
at the beginning, when we were still in the house.
Speaker 1: They're just thoughts. But those thoughts they could be seeds.
Do we plant them in the ground?
Speaker 2: Now? Where were we going to grow from here?
Speaker 1: If the day really feels like it's taken a long
time to get through this long day, then how are
we going to process this system so there can be
a rooting system of a more positive outcome of the
way that we think. You may not know this about me,
but during the lockdown, I needed to be with people.
I crave people because I'm in the people business, radio,
movie promotions, we have a DJ service, We're always with people.
But during the lockdown, yeah, we were lockdown. I was
craving that connection. So I took on a job at
a grocery store being a radio person. I had never
in my entire life ever had a real job where
I was consistently with community. I was taking what was
triggering me as a negative during the lockdown, and I
was trying to locate a positive, knowing that being with people,
having that connection was going to serve as a greater tool.
And it has. It truly has. And so when I
get into that answer mode and I'm at the essential job,
what I do is I go somewhere where I could
build a conversation, not about me. What I want to
do is go up to a guest and I want
to find out about them, not that I'm being snoopy.
I just want to know, how's your day? Hey man,
you told me last time that there was something wrong
with your cat. How's your cat? Even when we have
thieves inside the store, those that are shoplifting, one of
the first things that they train us to do is
to go get in a conversation with the person that
we assume is going to walk out of the store
with something. Go get a conversation, Go be with him.
Treat it like a community, not one necessarily designed by you.
But you're not in control of the community. You're not
in control of society. So one of your triggers might
be I don't want to talk to anybody. I mean,
what happens is something bad happens. No, something good is
going to happen, because you're going to get locked in
on a conversation. So as we defragg today, we've been
talking about the big thing, which is ants. But what
triggers you to go into automatic negative thinking syndrome? There's
always going to be something that leads you in that direction.
For instance, would you be happy out here in the
rain with me right now if you could see this
beautiful lake and the water droplets just splashing looking like
a billion fish out there from jumping up in the
air for mosquitos. You might not like that because you
might be like a cat and you just don't like
to get wet. But what are your triggers identifying with
your heart? Where you go when something that you don't
agree with is putting you in a place of negative thoughts,
it is a syndrome.
Speaker 2: It is a sickness.
Speaker 1: There are people that think they're going insane because all
they do is think about negative things.
Speaker 2: We can change that. You change it by getting to
know who you are as a person.
Speaker 1: Don't go ask a family member or a friend, a neighbor.
Hey man how am I doing it? Because you know what,
that's one of the rules of Julia Cameron's the artists WHOA.
I never ask anybody close to you, well, what do
you think? Because they're going to say something, you're not
going to agree with it, and it's going to bring
injury to the relationship. I think it's time that you
get to know you by asking the questions and question
and the answers. I'm not a professional, but I'll tell
you what I do have. So I started the DFRAG
Journal in November of twenty seventeen. It's twenty twenty three.
I've been doing that for six years. But the daily
writing I've been doing since July of nineteen ninety four.
I'm coming up on thirty years. And if you don't
think writing down thoughts, writing down those questions seventy thousand
questions in one day, if you don't think getting them
out of you isn't a good tool, I gotta take
you on. You're being a trigger right now. And maybe
I'm being a trigger to you because now you're saying
what I didn't come here to be preach too. I'm
trying not to preach. All I'm saying is is that
we all suffer from ants.
Speaker 2: You know what it is.
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna say it again, okay, but I want
you to do some research and I want you to
see that how we think and why we are consistently
bumping into negativity is because we worry about everything.
Speaker 2: Do we fit in? Am I hungry? Or am I not?
Speaker 1: Why do I feel this way? Do I trust Google?
I mean, if I go to Google, will it tell
me what my sickness is? Who do I trust? Why
won't the pharmacy do this? You see what I mean?
We're always asking questions and the scariest thing about it,
everything I've researched, it's completely one hundred percent normal.
Speaker 2: And maybe that that.
Speaker 1: Is the trigger of ants, automatic negative thinking syndrome. That
could be the negative. We're just being normal. We don't
want to be normal. We want to be a Marvel superhero.
We want to win trophies, we want to win the lottery,
we want a victory. We don't want to be just normal.
In fact, when I was going to doctor Dave, one
of the things that he told me, he says, you
got to get used to just doing normal things.
Speaker 2: And I go, dude, I like challenging myself.
Speaker 1: I'm that guy that's going to stand on the edge
of the cliff and just jump, and he goes, yeah,
that's an addiction to excitement. I get it. But what's
happening is is that you think you think you're not
the professional dude. You think that you're depressed when everything
that we've ever talked about and gone through has been
one hundred percent normal normal. Is that what's triggering your answer?
Ask yourself the questions, question the answers. That's defragging. Now
do you have to save it?
Speaker 2: I do.
Speaker 1: I save it because I go back to it and
learn from it. But I get it in the beginning
stages of your growing period, if you feel more comfortable
and more secure of writing things out and then throwing
it away, I'm okay with that. I have no judgment
against you at all because you got it out of
your system. But think of it as a walking stone,
and you've got this gigantic wall of water in front
of you, and you've got to get to the other side,
and you know that if you step on the worst stone,
you're going to fall in. So I save them to
use them as future tools. I go back, I read them,
not to live in my past because it's my present
I'm working on.
Speaker 2: I'm MARYN and that's d frag