Recap: Shaun Stockman’s Journey – Overcoming Dependence and Finding Peace of Mind

Hey everybody, welcome to the recap episode of how to be a real one percenter. We just had the great fortune of having Shaun Stockman on our last episode and he just really brought some gold to the table here and into the podcast to share with you. I hope you got as much out of that as I did.  

In these recaps, I just want to take a step farther and just say, hey, I know people will be bringing some real insightful things, what I call the hidden keys to success, and I'd love for you to be able to take that a step farther and actually apply it to your life. So, I'm just going to fill in a little bit from the angle of the work that we did, nothing too personal, but just how can we take that and say, well, how can you put something into play in your life?

And what I got from Shaun the most was just, you know, he started out by saying he had a problem. It was a problem with drinking, and he really was honest about where that came from. And, you know, I’ll also share that within a very short period of time, he was able to get on top of that. And one of the things that the focus was on that was understanding, you know, because he connected it with having a fear, right? A fear of losing everything. And I think anyone that's amassed anything significant can understand about that fear, that there's a fear of losing it. And when times happen, he mentioned the global financial crisis or, you know, various different times where there was a, felt like a threat to what he had built. And we can all appreciate that there's times where we feel that whatever we treasure, we can feel the fear of loss or whatever the fear might be.

And one of the things that we discussed is that whenever we have a behavior that we're overdoing, so it could be over drinking, overeating. It can be drugs. It can be, I mean, there's so many different things. It can even be overworking. We can even be doing things like utilizing anger or worry. These are different things that actually help us to not just, you know, they're painful situations that we use things to try to numb that or make it go away for a period of time.

One of the real key things, if that's something that you or someone you love is experiencing, is that it's not actually the thing that we're doing. So, one of the things that we looked at and that I look at in these situations is, it's not the substance that's the actual problem. It's what's underneath it. And so basically to say it this way, when we're using something like that, and just about everyone if we look carefully, is probably using something, overdoing something. And the reason is, is because there's a pain on the inside that we're trying to cover up. And as long as we have that pain, we're going to keep seeking something to try to numb that pain. So if it's a drinking, you know, the moment that we drink, we feel, hey, don't feel that pain for a few moments. The problem is, is that that's a downward cycle. So once we have the drink, we get the, or the food or whatever it might be, we get that temporary feeling of relief, but then it's followed by, we go downhill and have all the low self-worth and the, you know, the self-talk and the just, you know, the impacts in our life. And it just keeps going in a snowball, bigger and bigger down the hill.

So one of the things we want to look at and a question to ask is, what's the underlying pain? And that takes some courage. It can take looking in the past sometimes, you know, and what pain am I covering up? And that's a really good question to be able to ask to start on the right direction, because as Shaun said, until we identify and really address that pain to deal with it and to have it not be there, then we're going to keep seeking something to fill that up. And it's those behaviors that we tend to then overdo. So that's one of the most important things. It's not the thing that we're doing, it's what's underneath it. And if we want to change the behavior, then we need to find out what's underneath it and start to address it.

In the case of Shaun and I, we have a process where we really investigated, hey, the fear that he was experiencing that was causing the pain didn't turn out to be true in the first place. And there is a process that can go there, that can help us to really see that on a deep level. But whatever you can do, the first step is awareness. And then asking, what can I do about that pain? What can I do to address it so I don't need to cover it up? And I can just be present and live life.

The other thing that was really important that Shaun mentioned was just living a high-priority life. I mean, this is so important, you'll hear me talk about it all the time, that really at the end of the day, we're here to live a life that we love, or at least that's the opportunity. And that's as good as it gets, in my experience, we're here to live a life that we love. But yet, I think if we look carefully, Shaun and I applied this exercise where we looked at all the things that you know in this case he was doing and evaluated them on which ones are the ones you really love the most. Which ones bring you about the things that you most want, which ones are actually the most productive in directly contributing to the outcomes that you want, into the joy for life that you feel when you're doing them.

And it's a real sobering exercise when people do it. Because if we really wrote down everything that we do, we'll find that the majority of it is low priority things that we don't really enjoy doing, that aren't really productive, and we just get our life sucked up. And as Shaun said you know it really does become a cycle where we just end up getting caught up in that and we wake up one day and realize, that's what we've done. So, identifying those high priorities and you know he showed some real courage and just going hey, you know I'm going to do something about that in identifying those.

And the third one was a very important thing, is something that I talk about a lot, is that we are the cause of our lives and that's such a profound and deep concept. That I get a lot of feed, what do you call backlash from that people. Like, well what about so-and-so, surely there to blame, because they got angry at me. And I realize that this is not the easiest concept to understand or to accept. But it's the most powerful one. If you really want to be powerful in your life, is to understand that you're the cause of the way that your life is showing up for you and what I do with that is, if something isn't going the way that I would like it to, I stop, ask that question until I understand how am I causing it? Am I believing something? Am I projecting something? Am I just not clear in myself and then once I understand that, I can address it and I do that before I go and speak to other people. Because otherwise, I just cause rifts and problems and I blame people where that's not necessary, when I understand my own part in it. And I don't take blame, I just take responsibility, there's a big difference.

And I find that when I do that and that's what Shaun talked about, when we do that, like he talked about this matter that he had, that could have gone on and on and on and in the essence he got it, cleared it up, moved on and could spend the rest of you know his precious time doing the things that he loved.

So, there was a lot of gold in there. I know there was even more than that, but those are three things that we spoke about. Hopefully you can take those things and start putting them into practice into your own life and living your true 1% life, which is what this podcast is all about. So thanks for watching and look forward to seeing you with another amazing guest on the next episode.