Driving Change In Your Life By Finding Your Values With Dr. Richard Shuster

 

Dr. Richard Shuster has gone through a lot in his life before he found out what his values were. He was all about the money and the titles until his car accident. It was at that moment before the crash where time stood still for him. He reflected on his life, and that was when a moment of spark came in. Now, he is the CEO of Your Success Insights and the host of The Daily Helping Podcast. Join him and your host Rodney Flowers in this episode, where they discuss how you can pivot in life by finding your core values. And no, you don’t need to have an accident to be where Richard is now. You need only to learn from what he has gone through and find what you’re passionate about and the people who can support you. Listen in to get inspired today.

—

Listen to the podcast here:

Driving Change In Your Life By Finding Your Values With Dr. Richard Shuster

I have Dr. Richard Shuster with me. He is a Clinical Psychologist, TEDx Speaker, CEO of Your Success Insights, renowned media expert, and the host of The Daily Helping Podcast. If you haven’t checked out The Daily Helping Podcast, you’re missing out on your daily helping. I suggest and request that you go over and check that show out because it is absolutely amazing. It is regularly downloaded in over 150 countries. Dr. Richard’s mission is to help people become the best version of themselves and make the world a better place. Without further ado, let’s welcome Dr. Richard Shuster to the show.

Thank you, Rodney. It’s awesome to be here. We’re going to have a lot of fun.

I am absolutely looking forward to it. I want you to talk about your show. I love your show. I have been on your show, and thank you for coming on my show. From the research that I’ve done about you, things that I’ve read and what I know, you’re a pretty amazing person. You have a great story. Here at Game Changer Mentality, that’s what we’re all about. It’s about changing our money mentality towards challenges and obstacles that we may face. You’ve had a significant amount of adversity in your life. From talking with you, you look at life differently now. Your perception is a whole lot different.

I remember you were telling me, “I don’t look at weekends the same anymore. I pretty much enjoy my life on a day-to-day basis. I’m living every single day.” That’s the perspective we all could take. A lot of us live Monday through Friday as a grind and then we’re like, “We’re going to enjoy these two days of the week and we’re going to get back to the grind.” Something has changed your perception of that, and I would love to know about that and know about your story.

I’ve had three points which I call miracle points in my life that have changed things for me. With everything that happens to a person, we have the ability. This is my clinical psychology hat talking before we go into any of the stories. We have a choice in terms of how we respond to that particular event, thing, and that stimuli. The research is clear and it’s not new research. This is research that’s been around for a gazillion years, and then the findings have been supported and replicated umpteenth times. The reality is that those that view life as though they’re in control of their lives are happier, healthier and more successful.

The fancy term that we throw around in the psychology profession is an internal versus an external locus of control. When you have an external locus of control, then you are a person who is maybe watching the news 24 hours a day. This is not a political statement on any particular party, but news media cycles one thing or say like, “You get cut off in traffic. You’re late and that ruins your whole day or I got the classic getting up on the wrong side of the bed,” where it is the expression.

All of those are euphemisms for an external locus of control. You feel as though what happens to you and your life in a day-to-day basis. It’s contingent upon actions and events that you don’t have anything to do a blip. You’re powerless to intercede in those. An internal locus of control, by contrast, is the belief that you choose how to respond to things and you can control them.

When people hear the things that I’ve gone through, and it’s not like I go through these things every day. I’ve had three days in my life that were monumental days, but some people have said to me, “You’re the most unlucky guy in the world. You have all these things happen.” I say, “It’s the opposite. I’m the luckiest person in the world because from these events, my life has radically shifted.”

Stop looking forward to the weekend. Enjoy your life on a day-to-day basis. Click To Tweet

The one that you were referring to was my car accident and that happened a long time ago. I was in my early twenties, incredibly full of myself, destined to be the next Bill Gates, and I would tell people that. Building the Schuster empire because it was my God-given right that I was going to have a yacht and an island named after myself. You can buy those on eBay. I looked that up, but I used to go home and look at those.

I had one small contract with the DOD. I wasn’t building bombs or weapons. It was the information systems. It was software for the medical side of the army. I was going to kill it. I was on my way to this life of glory that I so deserve or believed I did, and then on what was otherwise an ordinary Saturday, I was in a car accident, which I broke my spine and almost died. That was a fascinating experience. You might be reading this and saying, “That’s fascinating?” To look back on it after many years and to say, “Why? How did that change my life?”

In this moment, and then there’s a phenomenon that I understand now that I have the clinical acumen, but there’s a term called tachypsychia. Tachypsychia, for lack of a better term, is Neo in the Matrix when he’s dodging those bullets that are coming at him by Agent Smith in slow motion. What the brain does when it senses that we’re in real danger and we have documented evidence of this from soldiers and things like that is it slows your perception of time.

This accident in which this teenage kid ran through an intersection and slammed into me as I was turning left, and then I’m sent into oncoming traffic, and ultimately, I crashed into a telephone pole, which stopped my momentum. That whole thing, in three seconds, car accidents are quick. For me, it felt like an eternity and it was very surreal. I could see the windshield had shattered. I could see little bits of that glass floating. It was spinning over each other, the sunlight refracting off of it, and I could see my center console crushing into my ribs like it was an empty can of Coke or something. I felt no pain. I said to myself, “I’m about to die.” I wasn’t pleading for my life like, “Dear God, if you let me live, I promise I’m going to be a better person.” It wasn’t any of that. I was 100% dead. I’m never going to fulfill my destiny.

What was interesting is where my thoughts went immediately. The emotions I was immediately feeling were guilt or shame. I thought about my mom and dad, who I knew were out to dinner with friends. They were about to get a call on a Saturday night that their son was dead. I thought about my brother and my sister-in-law, who were also hanging out, and find out that I was dead. I thought about how much focus I had placed on face for the sake of having things. I thought about this car that I had almost paid off that was going to be annihilated and all this stuff that I wasn’t going to take with me when I was dead. It wasn’t like when I survived this and obviously, I did. I’m here.

I wish that I could say that lying in a hospital bed with tubes sticking out at me, I shook my fist at the sky and said, “Damn it. I’m going to be a good person from now on and I’m going to help people.” It wasn’t like that for me. It was this void of existence. I did recover and I got very lucky where that fracture point in my spine was a little bit higher. I would have been a quadriplegic. It missed it.

I did recover and I went back to work. I was miserable. I had always told myself it was the money, the title and the prestige, “I’m a CEO.” None of that did anything for me anymore. The longer I worked and I was untruthful with myself, the more miserable I became until I hit rock bottom. I walked away from that business completely.

Why were you miserable? Explain to us why?

When I had that accident, the part of me that I was being real with myself, I knew that I wasn’t doing what I was supposed to be doing. I knew that I was not happy and fulfilled just building this tech company. I was miserable because I was living out of alignment with who I was supposed to be. It was this process of finding what that was, so I made all of all these excuses.

 

Part of why I didn’t leave that business was fear of the unknown and fear of what people would say about me because it would be acknowledging failure on a massive scale. I told everybody in the world what I was doing, all of my friends and family, and everybody was expecting me to do all these incredible things at that young age. I was saying, “No, it’s not making me happy.”

For me, it was this period of self-discovery and how that shifted was very strange too and very happenstance, if you believe in happenstance. I went to the grocery store after I left the company. I was sitting alone in my place, feeling sorry for myself and blaming the world. It’s the external locus of control. Everything that I talked about at the onset, I was doing all of that. Probably this was the only point in my life where I’ve been severely depressed. I wasn’t suicidal, but I was really down.

I went to the grocery store because Instacart didn’t exist. If Instacart had existed back then, I don’t know what I’d be doing now because what was the moment of spark was when I was at a grocery store. I had all this IT knowledge that I didn’t think I was going to do anything with. I overheard these two ladies freaking out about their teenage daughters on social media in MySpace if you want to be specific. That’s how long ago this was.

I’m not usually one to interrupt people’s conversations, but I did. I didn’t have an agenda. I had the knowledge to say, “By the way, I know stuff about internet security and this and that. If you want to keep your kids safe on the internet, you need to do X, Y and Z.” I freaked them out because now they were horrified about what might happen and what could happen.

They run their PTA. They invited me to come to speak at the school. Again, I wasn’t doing anything, so I said, “Yes.” I went and talked to a whole bunch of parents about internet safety. That was the first little spark because I wasn’t up there trying to sell stuff. All I was trying to do was help people and it felt good. I felt good for the first time in a long time and then there was a guy in the audience who happened to be in that City Cybercrime Unit of the Police Department and said I was a good speaker that I could say things as a civilian that law enforcement couldn’t say. Now, I’m on the road speaking with these guys, going to schools, and that led to me mentoring, which led to me liking mentoring and having the courage.

I was intimidated by even the thought of graduate school. I don’t think I could do it, but I decided to give it a shot and then got a Master’s in Social Work and work with Hurricane Katrina families. That was a powerful and moving experience and then decided to keep going. I nailed a Master’s. What else can I do? I got my Doctorate. That moment was that moment of the grocery store. It’s when I realized that what I need and everybody’s needs are different, but I knew that fulfillment for me came from helping other people.

The clues were always there. When I got rid of all of the nonsense and the social expectations that other people put on me, the focus on money, and all these other things. All of this changed and that was what put me ultimately on the path that I’m on now. The car accident started it and then everything unfolded from there.

There are some things I want to highlight in your story for the audience that you brought up early in the interview, the power to choose. There are a couple of narratives around this story. One is depression and defeat, and then the other is possibility. It’s that time of discovery that trips us up some time because we don’t always see the possibility. We’re not even looking for it. A lot of times, we don’t see it because we’re so blinded by everything that’s wrong. Everything that’s potentially or seemingly stopping us from being and doing what it is that we want to do that we don’t even look for the opportunities. I preach this a lot.

I played football, and a lot of times, we practice. The coach will put cones and things out on the field, and you had to navigate those cones. You can’t run outside those cones. You’ve got to navigate it to get to a certain destination. You’ve got to run your route or stay in this lane if you’re running back like I was until you reached a secondary, which is further beyond where you are now.

Sometimes, the challenges and obstacles are like those cones to me. They are guideposts. You hit them sometimes and it hurts. It seems like it’s not what you want to do. It’s uncomfortable, but there’s possibility in that. It’s the possibility to advance and you’re able to see that. Help us understand, for those that are reading, that may be in that space where they’re not seeing those possibilities for themselves. How do we open the mindset, heart, awareness, and consciousness to discover what’s available when we’re going through situations like that?

Those that are in control of their lives are happier, healthier, and more successful. Click To Tweet

This is one of my favorite things to talk about, so I love that you asked me that question because there’s a couple of things to consider. Number one is that for you to know what drives you is you need to know what your values are. If you’re reading this and you’re like, “I don’t know.” As soon as you’re done reading this, go sit down, get your butt in a quiet place, get a pen and paper, and start writing down those values and things that are so important to you. Once you have clearly defined your values and you know what makes you tick then it is much easier to do the next piece of this, which is discover those possibilities.

The other thing that I would recommend you do, and this is something I like to do on stage with a whole bunch of people, but it works well with yourself in that same quiet space. There’s a therapy technique known as the Miracle Question. For the Wikipedia lovers reading this, it comes from solutions-focused therapy. Essentially, it’s the idea that you ask this one question and I would always ask it with my patients that can wave a pencil like it’s a magic wand and I say, “If this is a magic wand and I wave this, imagine yourself being as happy as you could possibly be. How does that feel? What does that look like? Get specific, what are you doing? What are the things that fill you with joy?”

When you’re envisioning this with your eyes closed and you can get specific because the more specific we get with our brain and our visualizations, the better that is. Here are some important guidelines for this. Number one, as soon as you hear this little voice in your head and you will as soon as you start doing this, a friend or a relative telling you, “That’s stupid and that would never work,” or thinking to yourself, “I don’t have the money or time to do this.”

You need to discard all of those and set them aside. I’m not saying they’re not real or obstacles, but that’s all they are. It’s those cones that Rodney talked about in the field. We don’t pretend they don’t exist, but for the purpose of this exercise, they don’t matter because all you need to do is, “What are those things that bring me true passion in life?” When you know that and you’ve gone through that exercise, now it’s simply a matter of building that into your life.

Not everybody should be an entrepreneur, and that’s a different argument for a different day. Not everybody wants to run a business or manage the stress of that. Let’s say you’ve got a job that you like and you’re a person who gets joy from doing stuff with animals. If that’s you, then go build into your calendar a couple of times a month volunteering at your local humane society. If it’s different and you don’t like your job and you have something that brings you passion, the challenge and the trick is to find ways to generate income from that. Even more so, if what it is that you do can help other people and you can generate income from that. For me, that’s the Holy Trinity. That is truly the best of the best.

It’s not a question of being able to find that out for yourself because if that’s an exercise that you’re struggling with then I would suggest you to keep doing it because it will get more comfortable each time you do it. I would also suggest you find somebody amazing like a Rodney Flowers to have in your life who you can talk to about this stuff and they’re not going to tell you it’s stupid.

I cannot tell you how many people who were my friends when I said I was going to do X, Y and Z, told me, “That’s impossible. You’re never going to do that. You’ll never become famous. You’re going to be able to change this and change that.” I don’t talk to those people anymore. I wasn’t a jerk about firing them from my life. I did it gently, but if you read a blog like this and variably, you’re going to know somebody bring up the Jim Rohn quote, “You’re the average of the five people we hang around the most.”

I’m going to explain neurobiologically why that is so. We have these things scattered throughout our brains called Mirror Neurons. I’m going to use a sports analogy, Rodney, just for you. Imagine and think about going to watch your favorite football team in a stadium. If your team scores the winning touchdown, as the game is running out, you’re down by six, somebody throws a Hail Mary, your team catches it, the odds of that happening are ridiculously, and you win. You’re going to see people who have no idea who each other is, slap at each other on the butt, hugging each other, high-fiving strangers, and going wild.

Take those two exact people and put them on a subway under any other set of circumstances and they might not interact at all. The reason why contextually everybody is butt-slapping and high-fiving after their team wins a football game is because mirror neurons are scanning our environment for sameness. Our brain and our body likes consistency, much like a thermostat. The thermostat wants to keep your temperature basically where it is in your house. It’s homeostasis.

 

A lot of reasons why people fail at making radical change is not because they don’t have this idea. Maybe they want to lose weight. They know they need to lose weight and it’s dangerous for their health. Why don’t they lose weight? It’s because everybody they hang out with is going to load up on beer and wings 3 or 4 days a week and eating fast food. Those mirror neurons are the little sentient beings scanning our environment trying to hook us up with things that are the same. When you want to make those radical shifts, you may need to make a radical shift in the voices that you allow into your sphere because it’s impactful.

All these years later, when I have a ridiculously sounding idea like one of my goals is to help nonprofits in the United States within the next two years to generate $10 million through some cause of marketing stuff I’m doing. When I say a statement like that to my peer group of friends and colleagues, they say, “That is awesome. How could we help you get there?” As opposed to, “That sounds insane.”

That is probably the most important thing that I could say to a person who wants to make some shift, large or small. Make sure your support system is as such that they’re going to cheer you on, not blindly or jumping out of a plane without a parachute, giving you thumbs up. It’s the people who will be real with you when you need to hear things to shift but who will support you on your mission.

Talk to us about how you came to that level of consciousness because I completely agree with you. I know it’s easier said than done. A lot of people that are reading this have heard those stories before. Check your environment. Make sure you hang around the right people. Check your values, which was brilliant, because not only do we need to make sure we have the right values, but we need to reevaluate our values, especially where we’re in a pivot or a moment in our lives where there’s a shift. It causes us to reevaluate, so talk to us about that.

I think values are not fully static. Values can change as we get older and learn from experiences. For the most part, they generally don’t change a ton. What changes a lot are goals and why things are important. For example, in one of the shifts I’ve had above all else, my number one currency is not money. It’s time. Having gone through in 2020 some pretty significant health scares, that was a shift. Something in experience for me made me go back to my list of priorities and things to say, “What do I value?” I value time with the people that I love and not that I didn’t before, but now, it’s truly at the forefront of everything that I’m doing every single day. I’m mindful of that every single day.

Something happened in your life that caused you to do that. That’s a point I want to make because I don’t think we have to go through the pain. I don’t think you have to have a traumatic accident or something major happened in your life to practice taking a look.

I tell people, “I don’t want any of this stuff that’s ever happened to me to happen to you.” I am grateful and fortunate enough to have a platform where I can share my story where people could hear it and go, “That makes a lot of sense.” To your earlier question, “How do we get there?” There are a few things. We mentioned being granular about our goals, appreciative on our values, and all of that. We mentioned that people are important. It’s important what you fill your head with and what you allow into your world.

You’ve heard the thing that every leader is a reader or whatever it is. I consume a voraciously ridiculous amount of content in the space of personal development. I read those things and I wouldn’t give this advice to you. I’ve met these people and they said, “I’ve read 79,000 books this month in personal development.” I read one, but what I did with the one was I sat there. I marked it up and I took notes. I said, “How does this apply to me as a husband and father?” I get crazy with the content and start thinking about that. The other thing that I don’t do because of social media and the technological world we’re in, I am very cognizant about what’s in my feeds. Not only who’s in my feeds but what’s in my feeds.

When we go back to that internal and external locus of control thing, I’m very zero news media at all in any of my feeds. Ron Burgundy made a joke about this in the second Ron Burgundy movie, but it’s true. Back in the day, years ago, when there was breaking news, it was really breaking news. Now, everything is breaking news like chickens on sale. It doesn’t matter what it is.

What happens is when we allow our focus to be impacted by things in our environment designed to cause us fear, make us tune in to the next commercial break, and watch the next thing, we get in this paralyzed place again. This is not political, but what this pandemic has done to us as a society is many people are overwhelmed with fear and anxiety. I don’t want to get COVID any more than the next person. I’m not dismissing it as a thing or anything like that, but I also don’t eat to sit there hours at a time clicking on what states have been more vaccinated and what is Fauci saying. None of that needs to be digested on a regular basis.

If you want to know what drives you, you need to know what your values are. Click To Tweet

The analogy I use is hurricanes. I used to live in Miami when I did my Doctoral training for internship and my residency. Here’s what would happen. It could be the summer months. There would be that red cone and they would show it on a map. You’d sit there and you’d go, “If it tracks this way, I have to do something.” What does that mean? It means I have to buy bottled water and some non-perishable foods or I have to evacuate. It’s one of those two things.

At that point, you have a choice. You can sit and watch the weather channel 24 hours a day, where nothing happens because hurricanes move like 10 miles an hour for the most part, but that’s not something that you need to spend your time on every day and yet there are people that will. There are people who check the cone. If the cones are shifting, they go nuts.

It’s the same thing with this pandemic and with other things. I tell all this to you, readers, to know that you need to put a limit. I’m not saying go through life ignorant. I’m not saying if there’s vital information that affects you, your safety or the well-being of your loved ones, don’t learn it or not learn it. I’m saying, “Don’t emphasize that as a focus 24 hours a day.” By the same token, for those people that are in your social media feeds, who are constantly posting negative things, whatever it is, or people who are in fear of whatever that external stressor is, and they’re reposting that, that’s almost as bad, so unfriend or unfollow. You can keep that noise to a minimum.

It’s impossible to totally get rid of all of that noise unless you’re in the woods by yourself and you don’t talk to people, but minimize the impact of that. Personal development is something that I talk about on my show. My show’s mission is to help you become the best version of yourself. There’s not going to be a point in time where you, me, or anybody else who is in this space is going to be sending somebody in the audience a certificate saying, “Congratulations, Rodney. Today, you are the best version of you.” That doesn’t happen. It’s an aspirational quest that we hope to be better than we were the day before.

It’s important to think about things along those lines as well because if you have had a mindset for years, and many people who are trying to change things about themselves, overcome significant challenges, these are challenges and obstacles that have been there for an extraordinarily long period of time. If you change one little thing and focus on one little thing, and then another thing, then the big thing is achievable, whatever it is. A marathon is putting that first step.

A lot of people get overwhelmed and intimidated by the achievement of a major goal or making change because of how big the goals are, but break them down into simple, manageable things. What happens to your brain is when your brain affirms, “I did task A. I decided I was going to read a chapter of a personal development book.” You do that. Great, you did a little thing. It took ten minutes. That’s awesome. You’re going to walk for 5 or 10 minutes, whatever it is. You set your goals super small and achievable, and then you start being able to tell yourself, “I can do the next thing, the next thing, and the next thing.” Those are the things all up together. These things we’ve been talking about are the things that are the secret sauce for making radical shifts.

Someone told me early in my personal development quest that the best way to eat an elephant is one bite at a time. What you’re describing is consciousness. I’m reverting back to the conversation about COVID and how people are responding to that in some way is indicative of your consciousness. For me, personally, thinking about COVID, I don’t have that feeling that I’m going to get COVID.

My consciousness is based on what I’ve read and what I know. I have a consciousness of, “My immune system is strong enough. I’m not going to get it and if I do, I’m going to be okay.” If you’re reading this and I’m gone and didn’t make it because of COVID, I fought. I’m not going to sit here and defeat myself before the battle even began.

My consciousness says, “Whatever comes up, it’s a fight.” A lot of it is consciousness and mental. The way you respond to those things and those feelings you have about it, whether it’s fear or strength, is indicative to what has been going into you. If you feel like, “I’m going to get it. I’m going to die.” Where’s that coming from? Did someone else die? It doesn’t mean you’re going to die. Everyone is not dying. There are a lot of people that have died but some people have beaten it. Some people have strong enough immune systems to get it in and get past it.

 

You and I know, we are in this self-development space. Your consciousness has levels to it. There are frequencies. You operate on these different frequencies and you get to a place where your mindset isn’t of fear and defeat. It is of overcoming and winning. The challenges that show up for me are opportunities for growth, whether it’s COVID or anything.

I was listening to an ex-Navy SEAL and he was talking like, “In order to become a Navy SEAL, you have to be a warrior.” You have to go through BUD/S training. If you go through BUD/S training, it’s similarly getting your butts kicked. They’re breaking it down. It was like, “Why do they do that?” He was like, “The reason why they’re pushing you that hard is they’re trying to find the folks that are willing to go the distance. They’re trying to find and expose the weakness in those people.” Not so that they can say, “I told you, you are weak. You’re not strong and good enough.”

It’s more so to identify areas for improvement, “You can be a warrior. You can do it, but this right here, you’ve got to get this. You’ve got to overcome this part right here. Once you learn it, you know that that becomes the purpose of the day. Every day until we overcome that.” Again, that’s a consciousness. You’ve got to have that type of mentality. Once you get that, you look at challenges and obstacles that show up a lot differently. Is it for everyone? Maybe not, but it works.

When adversity hits and then the first thought that you have is, “How can I turn this into an opportunity and/or how can I learn from it?” It’s a mindset. It’s 100% of an approach. I remember way back when I first read Think and Grow Rich, I was interested to learn that the average millionaire had seven failed businesses before that first successful one. It’s true. It’s about being able to have resiliency and the bounce-back ability to get up and take onus. If you failed, take ownership of that, “What did I do?” You don’t do it again. The only way we fail is when we stop trying because every setback is an opportunity to learn and do better the next time.

Even when you’re faced with things like trauma, COVID, pandemic and accidents, you could still take the same approach a little bit different than, “I’m trying to be an entrepreneur. I keep going through these challenges. I keep falling, so I got to have the resilience to keep going and the tenacity to get back up every single time I’d been hit.” Even if you’re not on the course of entrepreneurship and you’re just navigating life, I still feel that there’s value in fighting and continuing your journey, discover, and be the best version of yourself. The way you get the juice out of orange is you squeeze it.

Sometimes, we won’t become the best version of ourselves unless something happens. COVID isn’t indicative of that. There are a lot of things that we’re doing now prior to COVID, but we did. COVID squeezed us into doing some of those things. If you’re not the type of person that holds yourself accountable, even when things are going good and you’re constantly looking for ways to expand and get better, life has a way of doing it for you by default. You don’t have to ask. When it does, you have to be the type of person that would say, “It’s time to grow.” To me, that’s game time, but if we’re practicing all along, when it’s game time, we’re ready to perform. We don’t have to be like we can’t play this game.

It’s very true, and the science supports it.

Dr. Richard, how can people connect with you if they wanted to learn more about you?

The mothership is DrRichardShuster.com. That’s where you can learn about all of the things I’m doing, including the podcast. The show itself is at TheDailyHelping.com or on Apple Podcast, Spotify, and everywhere that podcasts are, but those are the two best places to find me.

I want to thank you for coming on the show, Dr. Richard. I want to thank you for being you and everything that you’re putting out in the world. You are causing a major positive impact and you are an example of how we play the game, which is why I wanted to get you on the show and have this conversation with you. We all have that opportunity. If you’re in the game, things are going well. There’s going to come a time like what happened to me. You get popped and then you have a choice to come out or you stay in.

If you're making a career shift, make sure your support system will continue to cheer you on. Click To Tweet

We all get popped. It’s just to what degree are we able to say, “Pop me again. I dare you. I’m not going to stay down.” I appreciate your kind words. I love your show and what you’re doing. If you’re reading this, you should be very proud of yourself because this is a part of your journey to make a significant change, have that game-changer mentality, and improve your life. Good on all of you too, and I hope to see you over on my show as well. This was great, Rodney. I loved it and would love to do it again.

Before we go, we’d love for you to leave us with your thoughts. It’s the last thing of the show. What would you recommend if we’re in that space where the one thing to help us continuously bounce back from challenges dominate our obstacles and win in the game of life?

I’m going to leave you with an exercise. It goes along the lines of that internal versus external locus control that we lead with. When you have something happen to you, that is a challenge. I would like you to write it down on a piece of paper. Write down what the challenge is and then you’re going to make a couple of columns. You’re going to write all of the bad things you think about this and what they could be. Here’s the cool part.

On the other side, you’re going to challenge each one of those things. This is something we do in Cognitive Behavior Therapy. It’s called a Thought Record, where somebody believes something that is probably not true but is a negative thought or negative feeling. By challenging those things, you’re going to identify, not as bad as you thought it was, that there are ways around it and it’s a bump in the road. Everything you’re going to encounter, you have the ability, strength, and wherewithal to overcome and get past it.

Thank you, Dr. Richard. It was a wonderful show. I appreciate you stopping by.

I loved it.

—

There you have it, another successful episode of the show. What Dr. Richard has shared with us is so profound. A lot of times, we come to these foregone conclusions that, “I can’t get over it. This is too bad. It’s too much. I’m overwhelmed.” We defeat ourselves, and more importantly, we forget who we are and the power that we have to overcome. That power lies in your mind and consciousness. Sometimes, we have to revert back to that. Many of you may be thinking that’s a little corny exercise. That’s not going to help me overcome my problem. It will not, but doing so will help you remember the strength that you have inside. It will help you change your perspective so that you can overcome your challenge. Until next time, peace and love.

Important Links:

• Dr. Richard Shuster
• Your Success Insights
• The Daily Helping Podcast
• Show – Rodney Flowers on The Daily Helping Podcast
• Think and Grow Rich
• Apple Podcast – The Daily Helping Podcast
• Spotify – The Daily Helping Podcast
• http://RodneyFlowers.com/get-up-book/
• http://RodneyFlowers.com/essential-assertions-book/
• https://RodneyFlowers.us9.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=01f76a038256f77a6fbc93590&id=307d726734

About Dr. Richard Shuster

Dr. Richard Shuster (pronounced SHOE-STIR) is a clinical psychologist, TEDx speaker, and CEO of Your Success Insights, which helps individuals, corporations, and athletes achieve balance and peak performance. He is also the host of The Daily Helping with Dr. Richard Shuster: Food for the Brain, Knowledge from the experts, Tools to Win at Life which is regularly downloaded in over 150 countries. Dr. Shuster’s clinical expertise and podcast have been featured in such publications as The Huffington Post, NBCNews.com, Men’s Health, Cosmopolitan, and others. He is also the president of Every Kid Rocks, Inc., a 501c3 which helps schools provide therapy services to children.