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Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to this episode of the Stable Living Podcast. My name is Shane Jacob, and I thank you for taking your time to be here with me today. And I thank you for being here for this 100th, that's right, 100 episodes!
I want to say thank you for all the comments, for all the responses, for all the reviews, for all the listens, for all the downloads, for all the emails that we get in response to this podcast. I appreciate all of it. I appreciate you being here. I do my best, and I hope that you get something out of the episodes that you tune in for. And we got a lot more exciting to come.
As I look back over the first 100 episodes, it's hard to even imagine. It's already been 100. I mean, it's just, it's hard to imagine. But it has. And I looked back over it, and I saw the transformation of our company, from The Horsemanship Journey to Stable Living and now to rebranding as ShaneJacob.com as I get more and more transition into keynote speaking and trainings for companies and organizations. And in the shift that we made, itâs interesting to see in it how weâve evolved.
But our message has always been the same, and that is is that you are 100% as you are. As you are, my friends. And there's nothing you can do about that, except do your best to realize it.
You know, as we look back, we said, my sister, Diana, she's the producer. She does all, everything behind the scenes. She lines up the guests when we have guests. She does all the editing, all the, she does all the promotion, between her and Leah. They to actually work on this, doing the transcript, the cover art, the posting to all the platforms and all the things that happened to be able to have a great podcast.
And they suggested that we do best of for the 100th episode. And so, before I take too much of the time, I'll let that begin. Thank you to Diana and Leah. And thank you all for being here, looking forward to another hundred coming up.
Remember, my friends, your value is non-negotiable.
I think that something is inside of you that wants more, that wants to get up and attack the day, that believes that it's life versus you and that you can be better and do better every day. You know, and the thing of it is, is today is the only day that you and I are going to get. This is the only, matter of fact, chance that this life are going to get. So between now and the end of the day and now the end of this life, let's live it on purpose.
I'm going to do my best to make sure you get some value out of this time. And trust me, we will. You know, I got a phone call just about two weeks ago, and it was a friend of mine, pretty good, pretty good friend of mine. I haven't talked to him for quite a while and he sounded like he was down and out. He sounded like he was down on himself too. He said, he said that he was sitting on the sidewalk, sitting on the curb outside of a Burger King using their free Wi-Fi to make a messenger call because he didn't have a nickel to his name, and he just got out of an alcohol rehab for alcohol. And he was hoping to get a job the next day, and he was going to sell some stuff to get by until he could get a paycheck, and he was wanting a few dollars to get a motel room for the night. So, I, of course, I gave him some money for the motel room, and I just had a little talk with him, and it was kind of disturbing in that, he just sounded so down on himself, you know.
And fast forward two weeks later, day before yesterday, so now it's been two weeks later. Day before yesterday, I got a phone call from another friend of mine who told me, we'll call, whoever called me friend two, saying that who I talked to two weeks ago, we'll call friend one, had passed away the day before. And I don't know the exact conditions, but I would have to say that it had something to do with something to do with the alcohol, something to do with the rehab, and something to do with the way that he felt about himself, really is what it really boiled down to. And, you know, I had sent a message, I sent a little bit of money to him, and I had sent a message. I'm looking it up right now. I had sent, I got off phone with him and I thought about it.
And I sent a message to him through Messenger. And my message to him says, âWhen you figure out you're not defective in any way as a human being you'll be happier. I have faith in you.â So that was my message and I just let it go with that. And he gave me a uh a little heart a little love emoji back uh in response to my message. And then the next thing I heard he had passed away.
And as I'm thinking about all this and the challenge that we have to accept ourselves, forgive ourselves, and like ourselves and have our value be okay regardless of what we've done or what's been done to us. The separation of those two, the clear separation. I was thinking about that. And I came home and I sat down and it took me just a few minutes and I wrote a little thing, okay?
And what it is is it's the beginning. It's not the ending, it's the beginning. But it's a commitment to begin. And it's also a reminder of a way of thinking, okay? And I'm pretty proud of this little thing I wrote, and I'm going to share it with you today. And if you're ready, I want you to do what I'm going to do, which is raise my right hand, and I want you to say it with me, okay?
And so here it goes. I call this the Declaration of Significance. Okay. This is what I call. Okay? And so here it is. If you're listening and not watching, I'm raising my right hand. The Declaration of Significance:
I do solemnly swear, with all that I hold dear, to do my best to embrace the truth, that my behavior has no effect on my value, that my invaluable worth is inherent, and that nothing I have done or not done, and nothing that has been done to me, has or ever will change this certain fact. My value is non-negotiable.
Now, this Declaration is Significance, if that resonated with you, that will be available soon at our new website. My new website, ShaneJacob.com. You can get your PDF copy there.
This is a good reminder that you can choose. You can declare your own significance, my friends. And it's going to be something that is going to have a tremendous impact on your life. Take my word for it.
We have a special guest, and that is Wylene Wilson. I believe this lady truly sets the bar for courage, determination, and definitely for having fun. Wylene, thank you so much for joining us today.
You mentioned your feelings of worthiness are not feeling worthy, and you mentioned, you know, kind of what that did, and the way that we limit ourselves. So maybe we've been beat to hell maybe we're just a little bit. I don't know where all this stuff comes from maybe it doesn't even matter where it comes from, but we have this these things that truly limited us.
I wonder if you could just go on a little bit about the just the whole idea of these limiting beliefs that we somehow either intentionally or not we accept these as our reality so talk to me talk to us about that.
Yeah, absolutely. And you know what's so funny. I'm so glad you brought that up because limiting beliefs are so crippling. And here's the biggest one. And I'm so glad that this is coming up. I have learned that comparison is the stealer of joy.
Stop comparing yourself. Stop. Do not compare yourself. If anything, become creative of who you are. And don't compare yourself to your neighbor, to your friends, to your family. I know you know this, Shane, but we are our own worst critic. And we would not speak to someone else the way we speak to ourselves.
And so I decided to change that and to say, I'm proud of you, Wylene. You're doing a great job. And every day is a new day. And we can start over at any time.
So that's the message. You can start over at any time. Today's a new day. So what do you choose to do with that day?
What if when we didn't get the result that we wanted, when we did something that we weren't happy with, or when someone did something to us that we weren't happy with, when something just happened to us that was beyond our control. What if when we wanted a different outcome, we didn't focus anywhere except for where the horse does, right here?
What if when everything went wrong and everything went bad and our first and automatic and even a lot of times unconscious if we're not paying attention to it, this unexamined thought leads us to go over there and start blaming somebody else and looking elsewhere, elsewhere, elsewhere. What if at those moments we could train ourselves to have the awareness to immediately look here and say, âWhat can I do? What can I do to change my result, improve my position, get a better outcome?â Or, âWhat could I have done and what can I do next time to have a better outcome?â
What would life be like if that became our automated response, or if that became our conscious response that we purposely thought through and acted on? What it would be like is that we would be constantly moving in the direction of where we wanted to be instead of being bogged down in the powerless wasteland of irresponsibility.
Here's the deal. Adults get to do what they want, okay, what they choose to do. And when we try to control them, the relationship just disintegrates. It doesn't go well, ever.
I'm just telling you that this is, rejection is real, okay? And I know from my own experiences.
So here's the thing. Rejection is so serious that our brains literally experience rejection as physical pain. And there's proof. Let me, uh, uh, this is according to an article published in the proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Physical pain and intense feelings of social rejection, uh, they hurt in the same way. Okay. I'll say that again. Physical pain and intense feelings of social rejection hurt in the same way. So the study demonstrates that the same regions of the brain that become active in responding to painful sensory experiences are activated during intense experiences of social rejection. Okay.
So basically, research with MRI scans compare brain activity in people that experienced rejection with brain activity of people who experienced physical pain. And they found that the same regions of the brain lit up. Okay, and those regions are linked to physical pain the same regions that responded to a social rejection. Okay.
There's other research, this is super interesting, other research found that the pain from rejection is so similar to what we feel from physical pain that taking acetaminophen, that's how you say it, whatever Tylenol is Tylenol or in Tylenol, taking Tylenol, okay, after experiencing rejection actually reduces how much pain people reported to feel. And the brain scans showed that the neural pain signaling was lessened when people took Tylenol from an emotional social rejection.
That's how serious our brain thinks rejection is.
Braxten Nielsen. hey man, thanks for being here today and joining us. Appreciate you.
I'm excited to be on here, Shane, with you guys. I think what you guys have to offer is amazing. And an opportunity to jump on here is always a reward for me. So thank you.
I have to tell you Braxten, the biggest thing though that you talk about and when I think about Braxten Nilsson, I think about a handful of words and those words are you were born to succeed. So I was hoping you'd just tell us about that.
I've been able to start public speaking a little bit and that is my platform. You say that word to succeed man, right? I Shane I already say that it lights it lights me up gives me butterflies because we are as human beings We are put on this earth to succeed. I feel like you could anyone you talk to we all have a story We all have something in common and that is life and the obstacles we go through and I truly believe though that we are children of a loving Heavenly Father. And so we are born here on this earth to succeed.
Yes, we're going to go through hard times, but you can do it. You can do it because of our talents and our abilities surrounding yourself. Like I've said, there's little nuggets that will help us be successful, but you as an individual, for everyone that's listening, you are truly born to succeed. You can do great things. You can. It might not be easy. It's going to be hard, but you can do it you can be successful.
And that's where Born to Succeed comes from is that we are. We're amazing people. We're amazing. People are amazing.
Cowboys are seen as heroic, not just because they take on dangerous jobs and ride broncs and rope wild cattle, but because they stand for something. They stand for principles like honor, loyalty, courage. These things are at the heart of the cowboy way and the cowboy code.
There's an old story that's been around for a couple thousand years and in a book called the Bible, and here's this guy. Well, this lady, and she allegedly was sleeping around, had to committed a sin called adultery. And there's a bunch of guys there ready to pick up some rocks, and they're going to throw rocks at her until she dies. Hard enough and enough of them and enough places that they're going to stone her to death. Okay.
And this guy named Jesus comes by and he says, âOh, hold on a minute, guys. Hold up for a second.â He said something to the effect of, you know, âWhoever hasn't committed any sin, go ahead and chuck that first rock, cast first stone.â And pretty soon they dropped their rocks and they walked away. Okay.
And what I think that he was saying, that Jesus was saying in this moment was, âHey, stop condemning and take a look at yourself.â So the question is, why. Right? And here's some of the reasons.
So the consequences of condemnation, okay, really, like we said earlier, the condemner, if I'm the one that's condemning somebody, if I'm the one that's bad mouth and somebody for what they've done, I get a little bit of a short-term boost. You know, I feel a little bit better. I get a little bit of false sense of self-confidence and boost my self-esteem a little bit. I feel like I'm accepted into a group. So you can see that there's some little gains there.
But we get long-term loss, okay? We feel better for a little while, but we don't make permanent gains on really on how we believe about ourselves. Because we know internally, our mind is that the way to build ourselves up is not by taking somebody else down. Okay. Subconsciously, we know this. We're not getting permanent long-term gains.
The other side of this is the condemned, not the condemner, the condemned, okay, whoever this is. In this case, the horse vet, they deal with the influence, right? What they do is their responsibility, but we influence them by doing this condemnation.
In the case of the horse veterinarian, the guy I know here in Las Vegas, he's been missing now for about 10 days, and he may have committed suicide. So the condemned, you know, is basically has the influence of the condemnation, okay?
So really the bottom line here is on condemning. There's no long-term positive gain, period. End of story.
Most people think that the number of things on their to-do list or the number of the things that they perceive as going wrong in their life are what causes overwhelm, right? I just have so much to do. I'm overwhelmed. Can't you see? I've got all these things to do. I'm overwhelmed. That's what overwhelm is, too many things to do.
When in fact the number of things on your to-do list has nothing, okay, to do with what you're feeling. What your feeling is based on what you're thinking about the things on your to-do list or what you're thinking about the things that you think that are going wrong, okay? It's what you are choosing to think consciously or not about those things that is, those thoughts that are causing you to have this feeling of overwhelm okay not the things on the too list.
I'm very happy to have back, and I think you will be too, a returning guest with Dr. Michelle Maidenberg.
Last episode when you were on, a moment and literally one minute, I was finishing up the call in seconds before we were supposed to come on with, at our horse feed company we use a payroll service and they had made a mistake on a young man's check, where he couldn't cash his check. It's actually a paper check. I know. Maybe we live in the Stone Ages. But, so, I was, I was just flat there's no other way to say I was rude, short, disrespectful, hung up on the lady. And I'm like I demanded that she did something right now, I don't have time to discuss anything other than fix this problem now.
I got off the phone, and then I described to you as this kind of came up this subject, you were kind enough we just talked about it. And I told you what happened, and that, and that I, and I expressed you that you know I was kind of ashamed and I felt bad that, because I didn't want to come out that way. And you had offered that, you know, to, for me to think about what value I could connect, why I was reacting that way. And, and, and, and, I did. And, and it changed a little bit.
My struggle with understanding this was I'm not I wasn't I'm not used to that and so I said to myself, you know, and I heard you talk you say a lot of times we reject it because we think we're accepting that we're just supposed to accept whatever we do. I felt that trying to connect thisto a value was like I was making an excuse for just something that I shouldn't be. Like somewhere I should suffer inside of me for what I had caused this other person. So talk to me about that.
Yeah, so, um, that is such a good point. You know, and I think it could be get confusing, right? Because you're, what you're saying to me, what I'm hearing from you is that you are not you were shameful of your behavior. Right? And in your mind, because you exhibited this negative behavior, which you were shameful of, that you didn't deserve to feel okay about it, that you needed to suffer in it.
Now, you know why your mind is doing that? I'll tell you, this is exactly the point I'm making. Your mind is wired to protect you at all costs from danger and discomfort. Your mind was wired in that moment to protect you from danger. Now, when I say âdanger,â okay, we're using quotes. The danger is, if I forgive myself and if I'm okay with this, I will do this again. Â So I need to punish myself enough so that I don't exhibit this behavior because I do not want to be this unattentive, mean, cruel person that I was to this human, because that is not how I want to see myself. Does that make sense?
I think so, yeah. So I'm saying somewhere that there's a thought rolling around back there, kind of subconsciously, saying, âIf you let this be okay, that's going to be the way you are.â
Well, that is an indication of who you are.
In the future.
No, no, no, now, too. Both. It's an indication of who you are. It's an indication of who you will be. And on top of that, you're going to repeat the behavior because you're not punishing yourself enough. Okay. Does that make sense?
Yeah.
Yeah. And you don't want to see yourself as a mean-spirited person. That's, that is like, you know, what does that like to walk around thinking of yourself as a mean-spirited person today in the present or thinking about that you could be that way in the future? But guess why you're having that thought? Because that is so remote from how you want to be. That's the whole point.
Like your, your disturbance about it is a good thing. Like, would you want to be okay with it? No, you want to be disturbed because that, the disturbance is what's going to help you not repeat the behavior. Going inside of yourself and connecting to who was that person that reacted that way, what value did it kick up for me and rub up against that caused me to behave in that way, right? That's going to allow you to understand yourself better so that when you have that reaction, and I say when because it's going to happen, that you will be more mindful of your behavior. And you in fact will not repeat that behavior it's the opposite.
True humility, okay, it's not about minimize-oh, it's like, âOh I'm so lowly. I have no value. Your way better. I'm, Iâm going to yield, and Iâm going to just like bring myself down, not talk about, I'm unimportant,â Okay? A lot of times we have that definition or something to that effect about humility.
Humility is not about minimizing ourselves. It is about being honest with our strengths and our weaknesses. It's being open is what it is. It's having the strength to be open and say, âHey, here I am, and this is me, and I'm okay with it. And I have some weaknesses, and? I mean, and I have some strengths.â
The truth is, is that we are conditioned, okay, throughout our lives to be emotionally irresponsible. Okay? What I mean by that is to not be responsible for how we feel. Okay, âHey, you hurt my feelings. That was mean. That was disrespectful. And you upset me when you did. You made me cry. Okay. You made me feel bad.â
And that just seems normal and natural, right? So it's left to somebody else to make us feel better. And when they make us feel bad, it's their fault. And if they don't, we're reliant on other people for how we feel. That's emotionally irresponsible. And it seems to be acceptable in the way that most of us roll and live our lives unless we learn how to do it differently. And I'm suggesting that we learn how to do it differently because of what's at stake and what is available to experience in this world if you intentionally start creating thoughts on purpose.
I'm here to tell you, style damn matters. Okay? How you present to yourself is the most important and how you present to the world is also important because it's reflected back to you.
I would ask you to consider adopting the belief that your value is non-negotiable, and that regardless of what you do or don't do or what is done to you. Nothing can change that fact that you are 100% invaluable, no matter what you do.
Fully accepting ourselves and unconditionally loving ourselves is not a good idea. It is our duty to mankind for without a commitment to pursue this ideal, we cannot develop the capacity to fully love the people that we care about or make the contribution to the world that we were destined to make. Disregarding this endeavor, not only limits ourselves, we limit our full sphere of influence.
