Blessings In Disguise

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Blessings in disguise. That's our topic today. Blessings in disguise. A blessing is something wonderful, something good, something beneficial that happens to you.

A blessing happens to you. It's not something you do. Really, I think... in this idea it's kind of a blessing from it comes from God right that blessings don't really come from inside us so it's sometimes has the idea of a little bit of good luck but that these are the basic ideas of a blessing a blessing blessings in disguise in disguise means hidden hidden like right they appear to be something different

So if I'm wearing a disguise, if I have a disguise, it means I'm wearing a mask. I'm hiding my true self. I'm hiding my appearance. I look different than I am.

We are live on YouTube today. A little bit unusual time for the show right now. It's 4 p.m. in Japan. I think it's early morning in Europe at the moment.

So I just want to say welcome, welcome. Let's see, how's Brazil? Brazil is 4 a.m., so probably not a lot of Brazilians today. But over in Europe, you guys, this may be a decent time for you all.

So welcome, welcome. And, oh, the United States. How's the time in the United States right now? Oh, yeah, nighttime in the United States. Oh, late night on the East Coast.

But anyway, we got someone in Miami Beach, so it's like 2 a.m. there, I think. So blessings in disguise. We often use this with people. Like you say, I'm wearing a disguise.

If you wear a disguise, it means maybe you have a mask or maybe you're wearing clothes, but you're hiding your appearance. So you look different than you actually are.

So what is a blessing in disguise? A blessing. So again, a blessing is like something good that happens to you. It's a beneficial event. but in disguise.

It's a beneficial event, it's something good, it's good luck that happens, but it appears to be something different. It appears to be bad luck in the beginning. It appears to be painful. It appears to be terrible.

It appears to be A failure. It appears bad. So a blessing in disguise is something that appears, that seems, that feels bad, like bad luck, like something painful, like something terrible.

But in fact, in reality, at a deeper level, it's actually good luck. It's actually wonderful. It's actually beneficial. Excuse me. All right, I'm going to first, let's see if I can find this online.

I should have found this before, but oh well. Okay, let's see. Now it's a story, farmer. Good luck, bad luck. Okay, I'm going to read you this story. Alright, so first there's a Taoist story connected to this idea of a blessing in disguise.

Okay, so here's a version of the story. There are many different versions. This one comes from Alan Watts. There was a farmer whose horse ran away. Okay, as a farmer, his horse ran away.

Seems like bad luck, right? That evening, the neighbors gathered with him and, you know, they said, oh, what bad luck. Right, so... The first event, the farmer, he has a horse, the horse runs away and the neighbors say, oh, bad luck, you lost your horse.

And the farmer is very wise. He says, maybe, maybe it's bad luck. He just says, maybe. The next day, the horse returned. The horse came back, but it brought six wild horses with it.

So the horse comes back the next day, and the horse brings more horses back, wild horses. And this time the neighbors say, ah, what good luck. Right? Because now he has more horses.

He had one horse, it ran away, and then he brings six more, so now he has seven horses. The neighbors all say, good luck, good luck. You have good luck.

And the farmer's very wise, and the farmer says, maybe. Maybe. Maybe it's good luck. Then the next day, the farmer's son tries to get on one of the wild horses, tries to ride it, right?

But the horse kicks and throws his son onto the ground and his son breaks his leg. So his son gets a broken leg. And again, the neighbors say, oh, what bad luck. Oh, what terrible luck.

Your son broke his leg. And what does the farmer say? We know. The farmer says, maybe. Right? So you kind of get the idea, right? Then the next day, an army officer comes to the village, their village, and he's going to take the

All of the young men to force them to join the army. They must join the army. There's a war, a battle happening. So the army officer comes and they take all the young men.

They say, you must join. However, because the farmer's son, the farmer's son has a broken leg. He can't fight. So the army does not take his son. They don't take his son.

And the neighbors say, right? The neighbors all say, oh, good luck, good luck, good luck. And again, the farmer says, maybe. Right? You get the idea, right?

So it's a nice little Taoist story. Kind of a famous Taoist story. And it has this idea of blessings in disguise. And the opposite, the opposite would be maybe a curse.

The opposite of a blessing is a curse. This is something that is bad that happens to you, right? A curse in disguise. bad luck in disguise and we can see that in this story also that things which appear good in the beginning right it seems what good luck you got these wild horses right but then later actually you realize oh maybe it's bad luck his son breaks his leg

But then we think, oh, what bad luck. His son broke his leg. But then the army comes. It saves him from the army. Saves him from being killed, maybe. So, oh, maybe it's good luck.

And, of course, the message of this story from the Taoist viewpoint is be very careful. Be careful about judging events too soon. Be careful about judging things that happen to you and saying, oh, it's bad and try to resist and fight against it and cry about it.

Or, oh, it's so great and get too excited about it. Because we don't know. We don't know the future. We don't see the whole big picture in our lives. And so...

We judge too fast. That's what the farmer's neighbors do, right? His neighbors are always judging too fast. They're not wise. And so they just look at the surface.

They just look at the immediate... Obvious event. And they quickly decide, immediately decide, oh, it's good. Oh, it's bad. They're constantly labeling, right?

These events that happen. It's good. It's bad. It's good. It's bad. Very fast. And the farmer's more wise and he realizes, well, we don't know. As humans, it's very difficult to know if an event is truly bad or bad for us or good, beneficial for us.

that it's very hard to know the long-term effects, the long-term consequences. And so... The wise thing, from the Taoist point of view, the wise thing is to don't judge. To just accept what happens with a calm mind, like the farmer.

He's calm. Something bad happens, seems to be bad, but he accepts it calmly. He doesn't get upset, doesn't get angry, doesn't cry about it, because he knows maybe it might actually be good later. This might have some benefit that I don't see yet.

And the same thing, when some kind of good luck seems to happen, he doesn't get too excited about it, because he realizes, well, I don't know, maybe this might contain some problem for me in the future, so I'm not going to get attached to it, I'm not going to get too excited about it.

So it's a very wise view. This is called equanimity. Equanimity. Equanimity is the idea of remaining calm mentally and emotionally, especially emotionally.

That whatever happens to you in life, you stay calm. You have a failure, something bad happens. You don't get too upset. You keep your balance, your mental balance, your emotional balance.

You stay calm. And something good happens. You have some success. And again... You stay calm. You don't get too upset. You don't cry about it. You keep your emotional, for failures and for successes, you don't get too excited and celebrate too much.

You also keep a kind of more of an emotional calm. Sorry, I got distracted by my baby crying there for a minute. So, blessings in disguise. Blessings in disguise.

I want to examine the positive side because this is usually more of a problem for most of us. Right? You know, when good luck happens, we're happy about it usually, but...

I think it's easier to stay calm in those situations for most people. Not always, but a little easier. But especially nowadays, I think, especially with the media making things worse, especially because now, historically, humans are so weak that it's more common the overreaction to difficulty, the overreaction to bad things that happen. I'll give you a story from my own life.

when I was young. This is a very common, I think many of you won't understand this story. Many of you have some similar experience. Okay, so I'm young.

I'm in my 20s, 20-something. And I had a girlfriend. It was my first girlfriend. I'd been dating her for several years. And she broke up with me. She left me suddenly.

It was a big surprise. I had no idea it was coming. I didn't know it was coming. Probably should have known, but anyway, I didn't know. So how did I react?

I reacted like the farmers. Neighbors, not the farmer. I was not like the farmer. I was like his neighbors. So I freaked out. Ah! You know, it was the big tragedy of my life.

It was a huge, huge, huge tragedy. I was so, so, so, so, so upset. And oh my God, it's terrible. And oh, how could she do this? And oh my God, my life is over.

Where? And then I tried. I tried for, I don't know, a couple of months, I think, to try to get her back. Like, oh, my focus was, you know, how can I get her back?

Oh, and I tried all these crazy stuff. And it's a little embarrassing to think about. We say cringe. I kind of like feel like, oh, I can't believe I was so foolish.

But anyway, I was young and foolish. What can I say? On the other hand, I kind of laugh about it when I think about it. It's kind of comic now. And so this is the first hint we can see that at that time, if you ask me at that time, if we had a video, if you had interviewed me at that time and we could watch the video now, I would be miserable and depressed and upset and I would say, oh, this is the biggest tragedy of my life, the worst thing.

And now, many years later, many, many years later, I look back and it's a comedy. It's a comedy. I laugh about it. I laugh at myself. And how kind of foolish and how over-emotional I was about it and how I was completely wrong about it.

Like the neighbors in the story, the Dawa story. Okay? Because I thought it was a tragedy. It was horrible. But then, actually, fairly quickly, like in just maybe a year, about a year, about a year later, I was much happier than I had been before with her.

I had a new girlfriend, but more importantly... I finally had started to live my life because I realized that it was actually very, very, very, very good, that breakup. Super good. Because the truth is that we were too different.

She wanted one kind of life. She wanted a kind of... settle down and immediately have kids and have a house and have a career. And at that time in my life, I was clueless.

I did not know what to do. My whole life at that point, my whole life until then, I had been in school, either living with my parents and in school. I had no real world experience, none. And I felt it inside me.

I felt this like burning desire to save. see the world and to challenge myself and to have failures and try new things and go into difficult situations or unknown situations. I felt like I need to live in the real world.

All my life, I'm hiding in school. And I felt like I could feel it, like that I needed this. So I wanted to just... I was confused. I didn't know exactly what I wanted, but I knew that I needed to get out there.

And for me, it was travel, travel, travel, and just explore and try things and even try stupid, foolish things. crazy things but just experience something of life stop being so safe and that's what I started to do finally because of the breakup because now I didn't have to worry about her anymore I exactly shortly after that maybe two years after that I went to India for the first time my first trip abroad and from then then I traveled to Korea I lived in Korea and then Thailand and then Nepal and on and on and on right and uh

I had all kinds of experiences and I challenged myself and I had difficult experiences and big problems. But anyway, I started to learn and finally grow up. I finally started to grow up, become an adult, become responsible, become stronger mentally and emotionally, get out in the real world.

And so then I realized that it was not a tragedy. That was one of the best things ever to happen in my life. You know, thank God it was a blessing in disguise.

In disguise, because immediately it felt like the worst thing ever in my life. And yet soon, quite soon later, only a year or two later, I realized it was one of the very best things to happen in my life. This girl breaking up with me and leaving me.

And, you know, since then in my life, I've had several of these kinds of situations where initially in the beginning, oh, it's terrible, when you react like the neighbors in the story. And then later you realize, oh, no, no, like with the story, it changes and you suddenly realize, oh, no, this was a super blessing because this happened. Now something great could happen. It was an amazing opportunity.

And when you're young, especially, you don't have a lot of real world experience. It's hard to be like the farmer. It's hard to keep that equanimity and to stay calm and realize maybe, maybe, maybe this is not so bad. Maybe this is actually something good.

It feels painful. It feels difficult. But maybe this will have an opportunity or create an opportunity for something more amazing. Maybe it's a blessing.

Now, when you get older, if you have these experiences more in your life, it becomes a little easier to have that equanimity, to stay a little calmer. Not always, okay? And there are some events in life. Some events in life, it's hard to find a blessing.

Okay, I understand that too, right? Like if someone you love dies, is there a blessing in there? I don't know, maybe at some highest spiritual level, maybe, but it's hard to find. I can't do it.

It just feels sad. And some things in life are just sad. On the other hand, there are many, many, many, many areas of life that are in fact blessings. I think especially failures are failures in life.

When we fail at something, we want something and we don't get it. Many, many times in life, these are blessings. In the short term, immediately, they feel like curses, but they're blessings. Because we don't get what we want, but then we have the opportunity to get something much, much, much better.

We don't get what we want, but we learn something about ourselves. We grow. We become better people. And this leads to a much better life and greater successes later.

Blessings in disguise. So for all of you who have some kind of bad experience, maybe right now, maybe in the future, I just hope you'll remember this. Kind of keep this story in your mind about the farmer, right? So the next time something bad seems to happen, especially some kind of failure in your life, try not to get so upset.

Okay? Just try, when you start feeling yourself, when you feel yourself getting emotional and feeling bad, just remember the farmer, maybe, maybe. Just keep that word in your mind, right? Repeat it to yourself.

Maybe, maybe, maybe it's not bad luck. Maybe it's not a tragedy. Maybe, in fact, it's a blessing. So much of it is about your mindset and your focus. So instead of focusing on the pain or your fear, instead focus on looking for the blessing.

Try to find the blessing. Where is the blessing? Where is the good in this situation? And not always, but many, many, many, many times, you will indeed find it, at least a little seed, right?

So that breakup and, oh, I'm so sad because this girl left me. You know, but it had the seed of a whole new life for me and a much, much, much, much, much better life, much happier, much more confident, everything better, right?

So eventually I did start to see that, but not the first couple of months. The first couple of months, just miserable. I wish I had started to see that seed immediately, and maybe I wouldn't have been so crazy at the time. But yeah, oh well.

This event helped to teach me this lesson. And so when I read that story about the farmer and the Taoism, I kind of thought about this from my own life. Immediately I thought of this. And I can see other things too.

I can see some problems I had with my first time I tried a business and it failed. And again, it felt terrible and oh no, such so bad. But then again, I learned many things that helped me succeed later and succeed at a better level, at a better business that was more meaningful to me. So again, probably good that the first business failed.

Probably very good that it failed. So... Think about this in your own life. What blessings in disguise have you had already in your life? That's the first step, is think about it in your own life.

And think about already in your life, in the past. Start to look for, try to remember, what things seem bad to you initially, in the beginning, and then later now, now you realize, oh, actually that was something very good. Actually, that helped me. Actually, I'm happier now because that thing happened.

So when you start to realize this has happened in your life already, then when something happens now or in the future, it's easier to have the mindset of the farmer. Keep that equanimity. Maybe. Maybe it's not so bad.

Maybe it's actually good. All right. All right. Let's get in some comments and questions. Sergey, good to see you. And Sarah, I guess Sarah is not a good time for you.

I'm not sure. I can't remember where you are, Sarah. Europe, maybe? Ah, okay, so here's, Marjan says, got another way to say this. Sounds like a Bible quote, but I'm not sure.

Marjan says, great story has the idea of thy sorrow be not too sad, of thy joy be not too glad. Right, sorrow meaning sadness. And joy, happiness, right? So when you have a sad thing in life, don't be too sad about it.

Of course, there will always be some sadness, okay? But don't be too sad. And when you have good things happen in life, of course you're going to be happy, right? You're going to feel good about it.

But try not to get too excited about it because you never know. Because we do know the opposite, like we see in success. How many stories... How many stories do we hear about famous people like Hollywood actors and musicians who become famous, they get all this money, all this fame, and what happens?

They become very unhappy. So you think, oh, they're famous, everybody loves them, and look at all the money. Such good luck, like the neighbors, right? Good luck.

But in fact, becomes bad luck because they feel super unhappy. They have no privacy. Everyone's bothering them all the time. They have a lot of pressure.

Everybody just wants money from them. They don't trust anybody. They become very unhappy. This thing that seems like it was good, actually, not so good.

Yeah, so here's Pavel with the story. A perfect example. Perfect example. I was rejected from a job interview. This is Pablo Leandro Cabrera. Anyway, I was rejected from a job interview.

Oh, no. Bad, right? Ah, no, not bad. But a week later, I found a better one. See? Blessing in disguise. If Pablo got the first job, maybe he would have accepted, okay, and then he would have missed the better job later.

But instead, because he was rejected from the first one, he had the opportunity to get the better one later. That's a good time. Yeah, that's a very good example. You'll see this happens a lot in business, a lot with money, a lot with our jobs.

We think, oh, it's terrible. I was fired from my job. That's another one from my life. I was kind of fired, kind of fired, kind of quit a job in Thailand teaching English at a university.

And, oh, tragedy, right? No, wrong, because this was a strong motivation for me to become more independent. And it certainly was one of the events that motivated me to start Effortless English.

And I'm much happier doing effortless English, much happier than I was teaching at that school. So again, a blessing, a big blessing. All right. Merry Christmas, everyone.

Yes, I agree. Thank you for saying that. Okay, Syed says, AJ, something weird. I had some problems, but I was getting stressed and destroying myself and my mind.

You came at the perfect time to change my way of thinking. Thanks a lot, my mentor. Well, thank you, Syed. I'm happy to do that. And yes, don't destroy yourself.

We destroy ourselves with our thinking so many times. It's not... It's not really the events that destroy us. As long as you're still alive, then you're still going.

But... Many times it's our reaction, it's our thoughts, it's our emotions that destroy us. Like the example again, we have a girlfriend or a boyfriend or a husband or wife, and they break up with you.

So many people destroy themselves when this happens, where they become depressed, then they become hopeless, and they never get out of it. Some people never really recover from

A breakup like that. Somebody they love, love, love leaves them. And some people never recover. And their whole rest of their life, the whole rest of their life, they are kind of sad, kind of depressed, kind of negative about everything.

It's insane. It's crazy. They're destroying themselves. The person doesn't destroy them. The person who left the breakup, it's not them doing it anymore.

No, they're doing it to themselves, right? Because they don't understand this, that it could in fact be an amazing blessing, but they refuse to look for it. They refuse to accept it. They refuse to see it because there's some pain involved.

But many times blessings come with pain in the beginning or discomfort or a little fear. Beckall says, I'm excited to see your twins. Look on my gab. I just put a picture on gab of me walking with them.

Okay. That's interesting. Sergey says, when I started to learn English, I was in Moscow. I worked there as a minor building of subway station. Well, that's an interesting job.

Cool. Let me just ban somebody really quick. All right, band. Ah, I want someone. Guys, try to stay on topic on the comments. All right, here we go. Yeah, right, Vladimir.

I believe this was Nietzsche who wrote this first, but it sounds like a very Russian saying to me. It fits the Russian stereotype, right? In Russia, we say, what does not kill us makes us stronger. And indeed, if you have a strong mind, this is true.

It doesn't kill you, right? You can learn from it. You can grow from it. You become tougher because you survived something bad, because you survived something difficult.

This is another way that... Something difficult can actually be a blessing. Sometimes, maybe it is just painful, but it makes you stronger. It makes you tougher.

So next time something bad happens, it doesn't bother you so much. And next time you have a challenge in life, something difficult, you overcome it because now you're stronger. Now you're tougher. So there is that.

There is this kind of idea. What does not kill us makes us stronger. Again, I believe it was Nisha who wrote that first, but It sounds very Russian to me.

Maybe it's just my stereotype, the idea I have of Russians. But Russians to me seem a lot tougher and stronger than Americans. Christian says, Christian Hernandez says, thank you for all your advice from the Dominican Republic. Thank you.

I'd like to visit there, actually. Yeah, like Ann says, life is not good all the time. Right, again, from the Taoist point of view, see, this is one of the reasons I like Taoism. The Taoists have a very strong idea that we are a little crazy as humans and that

One crazy thing we do is we're always judging, judging, judging everything that happens in our life. We're always labeling it, right? This is good. This is bad.

This is good. This is bad. And we do this too fast. And many, many, many, many times we're totally wrong. And the Taoists, again, like this story, the Taoists...

teach to stop doing that. If you want to be happier, one good way to be happier is stop judging everything that happens as good or bad. Because you don't know.

You really don't know. So just accept what happens. Just accept it and then do what happens. you need to do, but stop saying, oh, this is bad, oh, this is good, oh, this is bad, because we overreact, we react badly.

Instead, just like the farmer, maybe, maybe, maybe this is good, maybe this is bad. Good, bad, leave that to God, leave that to the Tao. It's your job to just deal with what happens and

Saying it's good or saying it's bad doesn't help really. And many times it makes things worse. Jose Mourinho is in the chat. Yeah, another nice phrase that means the same idea, has the same meaning from Scott Anderson.

G'day, he says, we shall see. That's another way to say it. We shall see. Shall means will. OK, so we will see. Right. And again, this is another nice phrase.

It's another way you could say it. Like the farmer says, maybe, maybe, maybe. But you can say this kind of also when things happen. We shall see. It means I don't know really if this is good.

Right. I don't know. It feels bad right now, but I don't really know. We will see. We shall see. Right. We'll know more in the future. Right. Like the farmer, right?

He loses his horse. Is it good or bad? We shall see. I don't know. Next day, oh, maybe it was good. But the next day, maybe it was bad. Oh, next day, maybe it was good again.

Next day, maybe it was bad, right? You can see the chain of events in the story. Every day they change. Oh, maybe it's good. Oh, maybe it's bad. Oh, maybe it's good.

Oh, maybe it's bad. And of course the Taoist idea of this is that just stop worrying about it. You don't know. You never know because the next day something else might happen because of that event and now it will seem good.

And the next day something else might happen. Oh, now you think it's bad again. And that as a human with limited understanding, all of us, we can never truly know.

We can never really know what the consequences, the results of any event will be finally, right? You don't know. Something that happens, it might have some result 20 years later in your life that could be good, that could be bad.

How could you ever know or predict that? You don't. You can't. And so stop trying to do that. Stop getting so upset about things. This is the lesson of the story.

So here's a very nice, kind of strong way to think of things from, let's see, Lele Ilya. In my opinion, life is magic, an unrepeatable opportunity. Thanks a lot for your teaching. That's a very, very strong, positive way to think about things.

And then when you can have this attitude that Ilya has, when you can have this attitude about things that seem difficult and uncomfortable and even painful, then you really become quite strong.

It's hard to do. I can't always do it. But it's clearly powerful. Lisa, good to see you. Lisa has joined us. Good to see you, Lisa. Wow, Pavel's done some fasting.

Pavel says, oh, thanks for describing fasting. It motivates me to change my habits from a little round stomach. I now have a six-pack after six months. I'm fasting right now myself.

Um, I gained a little weight the last month. So I'm fasting. Just a little. Two kilos. But, you know, so now what's great is that I know I can lose weight any time I want with really no effort.

Just fast. So if my weight goes up a couple kilos, then I just fast for a week or two. I don't fast the whole... I do 48 hours usually. I do two days...

then eat one time, then two days fasting, eat one time, two days fasting, eat one time. That's kind of my favorite routine for fasting. It works really well for me. So I just do that anytime I need to lose a little weight, I do it.

So my weight never goes up much. Yeah, like here's a nice way. This is kind of a military mindset. It's true. Focus on the bright side in the situation, not the dark side.

This is my Mustafa saying this. Seek solutions and how you can overcome it. Also a good point. Instead of crying about things and focusing on how bad they are, just focus on finding solutions and moving forward.

Just stop crying and move. This is the military way. Right. You can imagine in a battle, a super dangerous situation, people are dying, that if the soldiers just sit and cry and, oh, it's terrible, they're probably going to die.

All of them. Right? They can't do that. They have to deal with the tough situation and continue to move forward. They can't focus on their emotions. It's very dangerous for them to focus on their emotions.

Yeah, like Syed Ramadan says, gratitude and appreciation are the keys to keeping your mind in the right positive track. Just be grateful for what you have and keep moving forward.

Oh, it's morning in France. I'm getting confirmed, yes. Okay, let's see. Let's see if I can pronounce your name. Barlar... Oh, Barlar Krishna. Hi, Jay.

How are you? I'm from Burma, also known as Myanmar. I listen to your YouTube videos. You're a fantastic teacher. You said you use Gab. I don't know how to use it.

Please tell me. Do they have an app? They have an app, but Google banned their app. So you have to get the app from them directly. So just sign up. Use your browser.

If you have a phone, just use the browser on your phone. Gab.com. Sign up. Free account. Then you can download their app directly from them. If you prefer apps.

I don't use an app on my phone. The mobile version on the browser, to me, works just as well. In fact, I like it better than apps. I do that a lot with websites.

I don't know. Some apps are okay, but I usually prefer the normal website, even on a phone. Yeah, this is a great way to say it. Lisa says, I have learned that everything in life makes sense.

If I don't understand it often, I try to accept it. Acceptance takes a lot of practice. Well said, Lisa. It's kind of about trusting, I guess trusting God is the way you would say it, trusting Dharma, trusting the Tao, right?

Instead of thinking that you already understand all of it, I know this is bad, right? Instead, you kind of trust that I don't know. And I'm going to accept it.

And acceptance is a great word. This is a word you will find in a lot of Taoist and Buddhist teachings, for example. The idea of accepting reality. Accepting reality.

Accepting things that happen. Whether you like it or not. It's the truth. So you have to accept the truth. A lot of the problems we're having now with the craziness online and the craziness in politics is that we have these groups of left-wing crazies who cannot accept reality.

They can't accept reality. They can't accept that a woman is a woman and a man is a man. They want it to be different, but it doesn't matter what you want.

You have to accept what's true. And when you don't accept what's true, when you try to lie to yourself and pretend, then you create hell. You create hell for yourself. You make yourself very, very unhappy.

And if you do it in a big way in society, then you create a hellish society. So accepting reality, accepting truth is a very important first step and not fighting against it.

Yeah, like Vladimir says, our life is a war. Sometimes the worst enemy is you. Right. We have this saying in English. You say, I am my own worst enemy.

Or we are our own worst enemy. And there's a lot of truth in that. That when you really look at your life, you may have other people who are not nice to you.

And other people who go against you or compete with you. But you also, typically, most of us find that a lot of the problems we have in life, the unhappiness we have in life, we really created ourselves from our bad reactions, from our foolishness, from our wrong ideas, from our weaknesses, etc. Right?

Right? We are our own worst enemy, that it's ourselves doing it. And so instead of crying about everybody else and blaming everybody, we have to work on ourselves, become more strong, more virtuous, more good.

And when we do this, we find, ah, we become happier. Our lives become better, right? That's why it's important to focus on yourself, because yes, we do create a lot of our own happiness, right?

Yeah, so here's the opposite side of it again, where something seems good and then maybe it's not good. Marjan again says, my own example, I got a great job. Was ecstatic. Super happy.

Yeah. All right. Must be good luck, right? Maybe not. He says, I tried so hard to get results at the job, I got burned out, right? Exhausted. I got very sick.

It was a curse in disguise, for sure. There you go, right? It's the other side. And this is why in the Taoist story, there's also the idea. Try not to get overexcited about things that seem good.

You'll see this in sports. A lot of very good coaches in sport, like professional level, the highest level, I can think of one, for example, in American football, a guy named Bill Belichick. He's definitely, in American football, he's the top coach in America.

And he has been for many, many, many years. Everybody knows he's the best. Not even close. He's super best. And one of his number one coaching principles, coaching ideas, is that...

Players should never get too emotional, right? A lot of coaches, they try to make them emotional. Come on! Yeah! Right? And if they win, they go crazy.

Yeah! And they celebrate. They go crazy. They're super excited every time they win. And when they lose, they get angry and upset. Well, this guy, Bill Belichick, this great coach, he teaches his players the opposite.

Don't get emotional. If they win... He will not let them get excited. In fact, he does things. He's kind of famous for this. If they win, he sees, oh, they're too excited.

He criticizes them. He will show them a video of the game and he finds all of their mistakes. He shows them, oh, actually, you were not so good. You won the game, but look at all these mistakes.

You guys are being lazy. You need to work harder. Why is he doing that? To be negative? No. He's doing that so they keep their equanimity. They keep calm emotionally.

He does not want them to become too excited about every game they win. Why? Because he knows next week they have another game. He doesn't want them to use all their emotional energy being excited.

It's just one game. Don't be too excited. We have another one next week. We have another one and another one. So he won't let them get too excited. And also, if they lose a game, same thing.

He won't let them. He does not let his players cry about it or get too angry or too upset. They just learn from their mistakes. He's like, okay, the game's over.

We lost. We made mistakes. We need to improve. And they move forward. We have a new game next week. Again, don't get too emotional about it. They just keep that equanimity.

And his team, the Patriots, have been definitely the top team for, 15 or 20 years now. It's a pretty long time. It's amazing, actually, how good they are.

A very long time they have been the top team. Not every single year, but over that time, a very long time, by far, they're the best. And he is certainly the best coach. And this is one of the central ideas of his coaching is this idea of equanimity.

The players need to keep calm emotionally. Just keep doing their job every week. Don't get too excited about victories. Don't get too upset about failures and losses.

And, you know, he's not the only coach. You'll find this also in soccer and other sports. You'll find... some of the really best coaches, the top coaches will have a similar philosophy where they don't want their players to get too emotional.

You know, some emotion, of course, they need motivation and to be, you know, energized for the games, of course, but the idea is not to get too upset about success or failure. This is the idea. Just do their best.

And Keep some equanimity. You're going to find this again and again at the highest levels. Like Mourinho. Yeah, I believe Mourinho has a similar idea in soccer, in coaching soccer teams.

And again, at a very, very high level, he's obviously one of the best. One of the best managers. Again, like I said, you'll find this among a lot of the top guys, the top coaching levels, the very highest level. It's kind of the guys that are not as good.

They tend to be more emotional and win, win, win. And if they don't win, they get angry. And these are the coaches that are constantly yelling at the players if they're losing. And if they win, they get too excited.

And it's up and down and up and down emotionally. And this makes the players tired and exhausted over time. Yeah, like a special one here says. Right, until they reach the end of the season.

to get to the goal and celebrate. Right. Exactly. So, okay, maybe they finally win the championship. You get the really, really, really big goal. It's an obvious good thing.

Yay! They celebrate and they have a great time. But all during the rest of the season, they don't go crazy celebrating every single game. Or sometimes you'll see in some sports they'll go super crazy.

They score some points, right? Like in American football, they get a touchdown. And, of course, they celebrate a little. Yay! Right? A short little celebration is okay.

But some of them will go, yeah! And they jump around and they dance and they go crazy just because they scored one time. And they're just using all that emotional energy.

And many times they lose the game. because the other team stays calm and you know it's like it's just one score it's just one game next week there's another one and then another one it's you have to keep a longer view it's a good lesson from sports actually

to keep that longer view. Don't get too worried about one game, one event. So it's just like in your life if you are, let's say you start a business and oh, one year you lose some money or one year your profit goes down and you're not doing well. Well, don't get too worried about it.

As long as you survive, As long as you survive, you know, who knows? You got another year. Next year, another year. Next year, another year. Next year, another year.

As long as you're alive, you've got another month. You've got another year. So don't get too crazy about just one because everything can change next week.

so he says i look good you look good you want to look wonderful today i like your outfit thank you winter is here i'm wearing a scarf today Okay, now Lisa points out it's not always easy.

And it's true. It's often a challenge for me not to judge immediately, says Lisa. What has happened? If I do not immediately decide whether it's good or not for me, acceptance and gratitude are easier.

Right. It's not easy. I'm not saying it's easy. I know. We all fight with this. It's hard. Because some things feel very, very difficult immediately. It's very hard to stay calm when you fail.

Let's say when that girl broke up with me. Oh, it was really hard to stay calm. Of course, I didn't at that time. Or you have a business failure. You lose some money.

But there's another one in investing. You'll find the same advice in investing. So let's say guys who invest, like stock market type. They're investing in businesses and the stock market.

you'll find again, you'll see the top guys will say again and again, no emotion, right? The very best investors, no emotion, right? So they lose money, no emotion. They don't care.

Well, they care. They don't want to lose money, but they don't get emotionally upset about it because they know it's impossible to invest money. and always be correct, always win, always make money. They know they're going to lose money sometimes.

All investors lose money sometimes. And so if they get emotional about it, this causes them to make bad decisions. So then the next investment is more likely to lose money also.

And when they get emotional, they end up losing far more money. And again, you'll find these top-level investors, I mean like billionaires, right? They're very high-level investors. They also, they don't get emotional about winning, about making money.

They make, you know, $100 million. They don't jump around and celebrate and go crazy. They just stay calm. They just stay calm. They accept, you know, they accept the gain.

They accept the profit. They accept the success, but they try to stay calm. Why? Because they know tomorrow everything can change again. The stock market can crash.

Tomorrow they might lose money on an investment. They know it's going to go up and down, and so you're going to see this advice. If you read books about investing, like stock market investing or real estate investing or anything, Robert Kiyosaki and Warren Buffett and Ray Dalio, all these guys at the top, Tony Robbins even,

You're going to see the same advice again and again. No emotion. No emotion. They want to be, ideally, of course they're human, it's hard to do, it's not easy, but ideally, the best guys, they want to just be completely rational and calm and take all the emotion out of the decisions.

So it's just rational decisions, mathematical decisions. We're human, so can we always do that? Of course not. But you try to do it as much as you can.

And one of the reasons is you make better decisions. You see more clearly. Emotionally. kind of makes you blind a little bit, right? When you get emotional, you don't see everything clearly, and so you make bad decisions.

So this is, again, like in a relationship, and someone breaks up with you, and then you go crazy, and you're so upset. Well, then what? You're missing maybe a new person who might be better, but you don't see them. You don't even realize that they are probably better for you because, oh, you're too focused on being upset and sad and emotional.

Or you make other bad decisions in your life. So we'll see this again and again in many parts of life. This idea of try to stay calm emotionally. And as Lisa said, it's not always easy.

Many times in life, the right thing, the best thing is not easy. But we just do our best. We try and do our best. Like Slavika says, welcome Slavika, good to see you now.

Success requires persistence and proper use of mental and physical energy. That's well said. That's how life is stress free. Yeah, that's right. We need to use our mental and our physical and our emotional energy well and keep going, keep going, keep going.

And one of the problems of getting too emotional, too upset is that it sucks out your energy. sucks out your emotional energy, sucks out your mental energy, it makes you blind, you don't see everything clearly, you make bad decisions, and then you want to quit. All of these things happen when we become too emotional about things.

Yasamin, welcome. Nice to see you. Nice comment. She says, I'm very happy to know you. You're your best teacher and coach. I've been learning English almost 20 years, but I couldn't learn.

When I met you on the Internet, I said to myself, yes, I can. Excellent. And you can. Welcome. Thank you for the very nice comment. Good to see you, Ibrahim Ali.

Nice to see you joining us. Thank you. Marjan is a Patriots fan. That's nice. Marjan says, yeah, I'm a Patriots fan. Belichick is the best coach ever.

I think it's obvious. He's the best coach ever in American football. Who could even be close to him? There are a few others that were quite good, but no one has that level of success.

And it's amazing, actually. It's pretty amazing. Maybe in college football, he has a friend named Nick Saban, who's at a pretty high level in college football, unfortunately.

But anyway, Belichick is, I'd say overall, he's the best. If you follow American football, Belichick's the best. He's the best. Even if you hate him, even if you hate the Patriots, you have to respect him.

They're the best. He's the best. I don't know about, what about soccer and European soccer? Who do you think, who's the best manager ever? I know less about that.

I know Mourinho's really good. I know Alex Ferguson was really good. What is it, Klopp in Liverpool is really good. But I don't follow it enough, so I'm not really sure.

Who would you think is the best manager currently? Here's Obra. I think it's Obra. I don't know how to pronounce that second letter in the acrylic alphabet.

I'll have to check it out. Anyway, Obra says, I think people must be calmer in bad or good situations. If you accept all situations in your life more calmly, then you can do the right design. It's very important.

Yep, that is indeed you. That was a good summary of the message of that story, the farmer story, the Taoist farmer story. That is... exactly the message of that story.

It's a classic Taoist story. You'll see that story many times in books about Taoism to explain this idea of equanimity, emotional equanimity. Guardiola. I was trying to remember his name.

Saeed says, Guardiola. Yes, Pep. He's one of the best, for sure. It would be interesting to kind of examine these coaches and some of their teachings because one of the great things about sports is that it's a tough...

It's a tough environment, and they can't succeed just by wishful thinking and hoping. They have to be good, especially to succeed many years. Maybe one season, one time, there's some good luck that happens or something. But year after year after year, then you know that something they're doing must be quite good.

And so it is interesting. I always find it interesting to examine both the athletes and the coaches also that succeed at a high level again and again and again. So people like Bill Belichick in American football and Nick Saban in college football, Guardiola, Mourinho, Klopp, etc. in European soccer.

You get the idea, right? You're going to find these, I guess, Phil Jackson maybe in the NBA, who used to coach the Lakers and the Bulls. Part of this, part of their success is they get the best players, but it's not the only part because the other top teams also have really, really, really good players.

So there's something more than just having good players. Jurgen Klopp, that's right, Jurgen Klopp. I like him. He's kind of an interesting guy. Okay, I think we are almost done with today's topic.

A little bit different time today. So what is, let's see, what are we, is it Tuesday today? Anyway, we'll keep going as long as my babies let me. I will continue doing shows.

And sometimes I'll miss a day and that'll just happen. All right, guys, so anyway, the overall message of today, blessing in disguise, is to try to keep that emotional equanimity during hard, difficult times especially. Also during successes, But especially during the hard times, the challenges, the painful events.

And I think especially for young people, it's kind of an important message for young people. Because when you're very young, you're a teenager in your 20s, then especially your first big failures can seem really terrible.

They can seem like, oh, your life is over. If you're dating and your first girlfriend or boyfriend leaves you or something, breaks up with you, it can feel like it's the end of the world.

Or you get your first failure, your first F in a class in school. Or you get, I don't know, you get fired for the first time from a job. These kind of things. Or maybe you start a business and your first business fails.

And some people can become... especially younger people, super upset and depressed, and it seems like the end of the world, and it's the biggest tragedy ever, but it's not.

Okay? So remember this story. And even for us older folks, We have to remember this too. As Lisa said, it's never easy. It's never easy to do, but it's important to do, to at least have some equanimity.

It's not 100% or zero. You can have 30% equanimity. You can have 80%. So just being a little more, a little more calm. Yes, you might still be upset, but maybe a little less upset.

upset and maybe you recover a little faster and maybe you find a few more positive things a few more blessings in disguise than you used to okay so that's kind of the the key idea it's just to do your best and try to improve a little bit a little bit you know like i'll leave with slavika's comment

All religions teach people how to be calm and accept reality in peace. That's a good phrase. I like that. Accept reality in peace. Accept reality in peace.

Great phrase. And the bad things that happen to us and the good ones. Well said. All right, guys. Hey, maybe, you know, I know some of you like this topic of sports.

That could be a fun, casual show we could do. We just talk about sports, our favorite players, our favorite coaches. And that would just be fun. And Scott Anderson was mentioning Australian rules football, which I know nothing about.

So anyway, we could share kind of some of that. That would be fun. Just not so deep, but kind of fun. Maybe we'll do that soon. All right, guys. Lots of love to you.

As always, join my VIP program at EffortlessEnglishClub.com. EffortlessEnglishClub.com. See you next time.