Welcome to Episode #129 of the Fight for a Happy Life podcast, “Laugh in the Face of Death.”
How do you prepare to face the day? Do you have a morning routine to be at your best?
Whether you rely on exercise, meditation, red light therapy, or coffee, once the day starts, most of us feel our power being sucked away… or given away. The insults and threats of daily life are relentless in their attack on our optimism, good will, and best intentions.
But wait! Isn’t that what training in self-defense is all about? To defend our health, safety, and good vibes? Yes! We must become masters in managing our minds and emotions to maximize our power and optimize our chances at success in every realm.
In this episode, I’ll share three simple actions you can take right now (and keep taking all day) to boost your fighting spirit. I’ll also discuss the advantages of facing threats with a smile and why laughing in the face of death is a smart strategy.
Of course, I’ll be interested in what you have to say, too! If you’ve got a trick to optimizing your attitude and defending your heart, let me know!
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Thanks for listening! Keep fighting for a happy life!
Laugh in the Face of Death
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TRANSCRIPT
Today on Fight for a Happy Life, Laugh in the Face of Death.
Howdy, Ando here from Happy Life Martial Arts. Welcome to episode number 129 of Fight for a Happy Life, the show that believes even a little martial arts makes life a whole lot better. Let me ask you something…
How are you feeling? Are you feeling 100%? You probably don’t, and you’re probably at the age where you’ve realized you’ll never feel perfect again.
There is no such thing as 100% anymore. Maybe you woke up with a fever today. Maybe you’ve been getting punched in the mouth a lot lately.
Maybe you wanted to record a podcast and your wife can’t stand the sound of your voice droning on and on, so you’ve come out to the car instead.
Whatever your circumstances, please know we must optimize ourselves to get the most out of what we’ve got.
If you want a happy life, achieve your goals, feel fulfilled, we must try to come at it with everything we’ve got if we’re going to have any chance at all at success.
It’s also true in the realm of self-defense that if you’re being attacked, we can’t focus on what we don’t have. We’ve got to make the most of what we do have to survive. Now optimizing sounds fancy, but really how can you optimize yourself?
Let’s make this very simple. First fix your posture. Whatever you’re doing right now.
Can you sit up a little straighter? Can you stand up a little straighter? Can you make yourself a little more aligned and comfortable?
Two, can you take a big deep breath? Just take it. Everyone knows they should, but when was the last time today you took one?
So take a big breath. Number three, add a little smile to your face, even if it’s half your face. Add a little smile.
Find something you can be grateful for, something that makes you feel good, or, heck, if you have to fake it, just fake it. Make a smile.
Now those three little things, if you just sat up, you took a breath, and you added a smile, I’ll bet you felt some percentage of improvement in your state of being. True?
That little boost, it’s fascinating to me how little it takes to head us in the direction toward success instead of failure. Optimizing is not fancy. It doesn’t have to be. So, give yourself that quick little boost, feel a little bit better, and know that you just increased your chances at success and survival.
It makes me think of an interview I saw once with Tom Brady, the NFL quarterback. And the Patriots, I believe, were getting blown out in the first half of the game. They came up for the second half, however, they rallied and came back to win the game.
So, in the post-game interview, the interviewer asked Tom Brady, what was the conversation like during half time? How did you change the plan? What was said?
And Tom Brady said, nothing changed. There was no new game plan drawn. What they needed to do was execute better.
And I thought that was a fantastic concept, which is why I’m sharing it with you. Sometimes we doubt our systems, we doubt the mode, we doubt the information, when really it’s just, we have to be better.
We have to just do the, execute the plan better. You already know the answers. You already know how to get what you want.
You just have to double down on doing it the best you can. This also calls to mind to me the phrase, Laugh in the Face of Death. I don’t think that means you’re crazy.
If death comes, the threat comes. It doesn’t mean you’re happy to see it. I would like to avoid threats whenever possible. However, if you have this choice of facing death, of facing a threat, tense and fearful, and then trying to react from that state of being, or laughing, relaxing, letting go of the stress and the fear, and then being able to face the threat in that state of mind, I think your chances are much better at surviving, don’t you? That’s the idea here.
I think for self-defense, for succeeding at your goals, and for laughing in the grim reaper’s face, we need to just make this a habit, that we optimize ourselves, that we don’t allow ourselves to curl up, tense up, and give up.
The good news is, none of this is very difficult. Our quick little boost at the top here, that’s free, and it’s easy to do, and you can do it anywhere without even drawing in any attention to yourself. Just sit up, take a breath, and smile.
Yet, how often do you do that? How often do you actually polish yourself up a little bit? I don’t think it’s that common.
I think we get caught up in the day’s activities, we get caught up in the dramas, and we just get pulled down that river, and then we’re treading water for most of the day. Doesn’t start off that way. I think we wake up in a very different state.
I think we wake up full. I think we wake up with an opportunity to plug into a routine. Maybe you have, you take a shower, maybe you exercise, maybe you meditate, maybe you pray, maybe you have a cup of coffee, maybe you have a few minutes to yourself, and you tune up, you say, okay, this is me, I’m in my full state right now.
And then life begins. And piece by piece, you get pulled apart. Just as I think it’s crazy at how little things can make you better suited for success, the flip side is true too.
Daily Power Drain
It’s absolutely nuts how quickly you can give your power away or see it taken away. So quickly, you can go from feeling great to feeling lousy. You can go from feeling confident to feeling helpless. You can go from feeling very clever and capable to feeling like you’re an idiot.
I don’t think it takes much to slip down that slope. So we have to be on guard.
We wake up. We create a routine. We feel full. We feel powerful. We feel ready to face the world. Here it comes. Life pains. Just life. Family pains. Friend pains. Stranger pains. Pains from yourself. All of these stimuli now are going to start coming at you.
And each one is like a little punch. Each one landing. Some you can slip. Some hit deep. Some graze you. But you’re in this fight to maintain your optimal state for as long as you can.
What else takes away from your power? Competing. Comparing yourself to other people. That can rob you of your joy and rob you of your feeling of worth. Legacy pains. That’s a whole chapter.
Things that you’ve been holding on to your whole life. Something your family did to you when you were a kid. Something a friend said to you when you were in high school. Something a teacher did to you that wasn’t fair. There are so many things.
Some things that you failed at in the past. Things that you did in the past that you can’t forgive yourself for. All of these things are sitting there in your head, in your bones, in your muscles. But these aren’t the only beliefs that can be holding you back.
In addition to feeling that maybe you’re not that attractive, maybe you’re not that athletic, maybe you’re not that smart, maybe you’ve got the belief that you’re just not that good at mathematics, maybe you believe you don’t have a head for money.
You have all of these beliefs that could be just sitting there chipping away at your capability to do something good for yourself. You may have just an operating system belief that life is supposed to be fair and yet you keep finding that it’s not.
You may have a belief that justice should prevail and that it will prevail and yet you’re flabbergasted when you see bad guys winning and good guys losing every day.
You might have a belief that your pain and your suffering is a personal experience that no one else is going through and therefore you have a belief that you’re alone, that you’re isolated, that there is no one to help you.
All of these beliefs are crippling to your future. How can you succeed? How can you survive if you’re burdening yourself with all of these negative beliefs?
Stop Wallowing
The worst of all, perhaps, I think, the worst possible human tendency, and maybe it’s just me, is giving up even the desire to feel optimal. When you actually allow yourself to wallow, you don’t mind it.
At some point, you’re tired, you’re grumpy, or you’re angry, you’re upset, and you kind of like it. You just want to feed on it. You just want to sit with it for a while, and you give yourself permission to just be grumpy and angry.
And you know you could probably change that state. You know you could go for a walk. You know you could watch something funny on TV. You know you could make yourself a cup of tea. You know you could sing. You know there are things you could do to feel better.
You just don’t want to anymore. I think that is the most dangerous human tendency of all. Our ability to be able to keep moving and thinking positively and finding hope in our next step is paramount to a happy life.
Every moment we spend wallowing is a moment lost. It’s an opportunity opportunity lost. Anyway, you woke up in a full state.
You put yourself in a great state. Now you’re getting punched. You’re getting pieces of you pulled away.
Some of this power you’re giving away. Maybe by two or three in the afternoon, your neck is tighter. Your breathing is shallower. You’re less optimistic. You’re starting to go down the hill of negativity. And by the time you do get to the end of the day, perhaps it’s a relief.
You slide into a couch, you slide into bed, and you’re just happy that it’s over. Tomorrow maybe fight again, but today you’re writing off as a loss.
By the end of the day, you might have a routine as well to try to regain some of what you’ve lost. Maybe now that shower, maybe now some exercise, maybe now the prayers or meditation, maybe now a stiff drink.
We all have different routines, but there’s usually some type of self-medicating that’s going to come in here to try to restore what has been lost. It’s a big job, okay? All of this is a big job to try to stay optimal in a world that is not ideal.
It’s a big job. How do you do it? The way we started. Small adjustments, little things done continuously.
If the threats are coming in non-stop, then our restoration has to be non-stop.
We can’t let it get ahead of us and start tipping the scales so much so that you can’t get it back. All these little things don’t matter anymore. We have to be vigilant. We can’t let the bad stuff accrue.
This is about prevention. The earlier in a fight that you fight back, usually the easier it is to get out of it. As soon as a hand is coming for your throat, that’s the easiest time to knock that hand away.
By the time hands are on your throat and you’re pinned to the ground, it’s more difficult. You have to do more to get out of that situation. Prevention is everything.
During the day, little things that you can do, in addition to sitting up, taking a breath and smiling, come in the form of either external tools or internal tools. External tools, an energy drink, taking supplements.
Maybe you do a cold plunge or a sauna, maybe red light therapy. There’s so many trendy cool things you can do nowadays. Go stare at the sun.
All of that stuff is great, but they’re all not always available. You’re not always able to access all of them, and the results that you’re going to get from any of them are temporary, of course.
So I tend not to rely on external tools to make me happy or to restore my sanity. I do rely more on internal tools because they’re within me. The posture, the breathing, the smiling and focusing.
Being very clear in my head about what I want out of the next moment, out of the next day, the next week, the next month, the next year.
Trying to keep my focus on where I want to go, not on all the things that I don’t want and all the places I don’t want to go. Your brain can only handle so much input at any given time.
So if you’re not feeding it what you want, it’s going to fill itself with things you don’t want. You have to manage your own mind. That is huge.
Also, in the School of Internal Tools, yeah– mantras, war cries, some little saying that you can repeat to yourself to keep you focused on your goals. What do you need to stay in the zone, to be in your beast mode? What do you need? What would you like to hear?
I’ve changed mine so many times over the years depending on what’s going on. But one that’s been very powerful as of late is, I’m still here.
I’m still here.
If you’re still here, then you’re still alive. You’re still functioning. You still have a chance. You can still take action. You can still change things.
So I think that’s a really good one. Particularly when I’m on the ground underneath someone much bigger and they’re pinned down on top of me. I’m pinned down and they’re digging in for a choke or whatever they’re doing.
It’s so easy to not want to be there. It’s so easy to let your mind disappear, to close and just pray it all goes away. But if you can say, yeah, I’m still here. Yeah, I feel you up there trying to get that choke, but I’m still here. I’m gonna make that hard for you. Yeah, I feel you up there trying to crush me. I can’t breathe, but I’m still here.
I find that one to be very, very inspiring. You’re not dead yet. It’s coming, but you’re not dead yet. And while you’re still here, you can still fight.
By the way, about this smiling business, I should go back to that for a second. We talked about wallowing, wallowing in your sorrow as well. Yeah, it’s all well and good to say, put a little smile on your face. Or I would even extend that to put a little smile in your heart. Put a little smile in your belly. You can put a little smile, that sensation of a smile, anywhere you need it.
Particularly if you have a pain in your body. Put a little smile there. If you know, you know.
But what if you really don’t have any reason to smile? You’re just having a terrible day or you’re in a horrible circumstance. I’m going to tell you that you should fake it.
You should absolutely fake it. The longer you wallow, as we already said, the more opportunity is going by. And I would suggest to you that those periods of time when you don’t want to be optimal and you like wallowing, you’re kind of being a spoiled brat. Me too.
When you’re wallowing, please remember that that’s a luxury, that you have the time and the space to wallow. You want to just wrap yourself up in a robe and pout in the corner. That’s because you’re able to do that.
You apparently are, you have a lifestyle that allows you to do that. In an emergency situation, you wouldn’t have that luxury. If a shark is eating you, you can’t say, oh, well that bite really hurts.
I want to just sit with that for a second. Well, too late, you’re being thrashed and eaten. So, please recognize that when you give in to the wallowing, you should minimize that, because it really is an abuse.
It’s a horrible way to treat a gift. You have the gift of time and space where you could do anything you want, and you’re choosing to do nothing but feel sorry for yourself or wallow. What a luxury, what a waste of a luxury. The luxury is the time and the space. You should use that for something better.
Yeah, I’m judging. Yeah, I’m judging myself. And if you see a bit of you and me in that, then you know what I’m saying. So just recognize that if you’re blessed with the time to wallow, that’s the very reason you shouldn’t.
Laugh Before You Feel Happy
Okay, let me wrap up this episode with a quote. In preparing for this episode, a long-time listener, a long-time friend of the show, Ingrid. Hi, Ingrid. She sent me a quote that is just wonderful and worth sharing.
Here’s the quote. This is from 1688, from a philosopher, a writer named– pardon the accent– Jean De la Bruyere. He wrote something called The Characters. And in that work, he wrote,
One should laugh before being happy for fear of dying without having laughed.
That’s everything I’m trying to say here today, folks. Laugh in the face of death. Laugh before you have a reason. Smile, even if you have to fake it. Because, the reward is, you change how you feel. You change how you move, you change how you think, you give yourself the most power you could possibly have. What’s the alternative?
Frowning, being neutral, being detached. I don’t think those states of being will get you as far, in any context. So, smile for no reason.
Laugh before being happy. These are ways that you can optimize yourself for full performance. If you’re tense, you’re going to act tense. You’re going to make decisions from a tense place. If you’re fearful, you’re going to be acting fearfully. You’re going to be making decisions from a place of fear.
That is not going to help you in life, and it’s not going to help you in a fight. But if you follow Jean De la Bruyere’s advice, then I believe we’re optimal. The trick is not to wait for death, to laugh. Make it part of your routine, to laugh because that’s who you are. Smile because that’s who you are. That’s the fight, fight for a happy life.
I’m not saying any of this is easy. I’m not saying there aren’t times when wallowing feels natural. But we have to fight that because smiling is natural too. Laughing at life is natural too. So don’t limit yourself to just the negative naturalisms. Go to the positive naturalisms.
Give yourself a smile, give yourself a laugh. If you can stay optimal before life comes, while life is coming at you, and after life came at you, I think that is perfect. I think that is as perfect as we can be. And whatever we get out of that, certainly not a guarantee of winning, certainly not a guarantee of succeeding or even surviving. But it’s our best chance, and that feels pretty good. That makes me smile all on its own.
So sit up, take a breath, add a little smile, and then focus on what you want. If you do all that, I think you’ve got a good chance of getting it.
Alright, it’s really hot in this car, and I’ve said what I wanted to say.
So thank you from the bottom of my heart for dropping by, and I’ll see you next time. Until then, smiles up, my friend. Let that smile be your shield and your sword.
Keep fighting for a happy life.
