Mark Bell's Power Project - Mark Smelly Bell - How To Deal With Stress

Episode Date: July 28, 2020

Taken from the MarkSmellyBell YouTube Channel, Mark Bell teaches you how to deal with Stress. Original video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=329-ONR8aTE Subscribe to the Podcast on on Platforms! ➢ https://lnk.to/PowerProjectPodcast Support the show by visiting our sponsors! ➢Piedmontese Beef: https://www.piedmontese.com/ Use Code "POWERPROJECT" at checkout for 25% off your order plus FREE 2-Day Shipping on orders of $99 ➢Icon Meals: http://iconmeals.com/ Use Code "POWERPROJECT" for 10% off ➢Sling Shot: https://markbellslingshot.com/ Enter Discount code, "POWERPROJECT" at checkout and receive 15% off all Sling Shots Follow Mark Bell's Power Project Podcast ➢ Insta: https://www.instagram.com/markbellspowerproject ➢ https://www.facebook.com/markbellspowerproject ➢ Twitter: https://twitter.com/mbpowerproject ➢ LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/powerproject/ ➢ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/markbellspowerproject ➢TikTok: http://bit.ly/pptiktok FOLLOW Mark Bell ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/marksmellybell ➢ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MarkBellSuperTraining ➢ Twitter: https://twitter.com/marksmellybell ➢ Snapchat: marksmellybell ➢Mark Bell's Daily Workouts, Nutrition and More: https://www.markbell.com/ Follow Nsima Inyang ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nsimainyang/ Podcast Produced by Andrew Zaragoza ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/iamandrewz

Hey everybody, welcome back to Mark Bell's Power Project Podcast, hosted by Mark Bell, co-hosted by Nsima Iyang and myself, Andrew Zaragoza. This episode comes to us by way of the Mark Smelly Bell YouTube channel. Again, I've mentioned this in the past, this is different than the Super Training Gym channel. This is Mark's own personal YouTube channel where he talks a lot about nutrition, motivation, training, all of the above in a very, very Mark Bell fashion. Today's episode mark is going to teach you how to deal with stress if you're picking up what mark's putting down please

reach out to him let him know that you guys heard it on the uh the power project uh podcast feed all his social media uh you know handles are all the same it's at mark smelly bell let him know and i hope you guys enjoy this episode i'm mark bell Just got done with a bunch of 10-minute walks. I've been out here walking all day. Decided to take a seat and to talk to you guys. Woo, legs are stiff. Talk to you guys about stress. There's a lot of strategies involved in how you can handle your day-to-day stress.

Something I've been thinking about a little bit more often recently, I'm really a big fan, I think a lot of people are as well, a big fan of Elon Musk and his kind of free-thinking and very playful thought process that he has. I love how forward-thinking he is. I love that he just puts it out there. He's got this mission to get to Mars. And he even mentioned that he's going to like sell off a lot of his life's possessions so he can really just hone in and focus on Mars and

not think about what car he's driving and what fixtures he has in his home and all these other things. He doesn't want any distractions. He wants to be focused on the main thing. And then he even has shirts and he has a mission where he says, occupy Mars. He doesn't want to just get to Mars. He wants to occupy Mars. And I think that description, I think is helpful in him having a very precise goal. He's not just talking about like just getting there. We haven't even landed anybody there yet. And he's talking about occupying it. So I think that that's really interesting. But I do think that before we get ahead of ourselves, before we go and occupy Mars, we need to occupy our own mind. I think people need to land on their own mind before we think about landing on Mars.

And the reason why I say that is I've mentioned this many times here before and on my podcast and even in some Saturday school sessions that we've been doing everything is always open to interpretation has to do with how you interpret it and so when I think about stress that's always where I like to start we have to also understand that people are going to induce stress people are going to seek out stress and people are going to create a lot of their own stress. And there's definitely different types of stress. There's negative stress, there's some positive stress. We get stressed from working out, but we also produce a lot of hormones and a lot of things go on in the body that end up being quite positive for us. But you

can definitely overdo it. You can be over-trained. And when you're over-trained, the other stresses of life really dump on top of you and pile on. Here's a couple of ways that you can work on dealing with stress. Let's say that you saw something stressful. I mean, in today's world with the amount of cameras that are on the streets and the amount of cameras that we see perpetuating and promoting violence and just sometimes even just not necessarily promoting it, but showcasing it, as is the case with the George Floyd situation. Those things can be stressful. And I think maybe years ago, we just didn't see these things as much. The news didn't show these things as much. Maybe a lot of these things were happening, but we just didn't see them as a whole. We didn't see them as much. And therefore, you know, we could we could be ending up with your average ordinary American could end up with PTSD just from watching the news and just from having an Instagram feed, which is crazy, because I think that in most cases, when we think of PTSD, we think of a soldier, or sometimes there's cases of child abuse where

you have PTSD. But now I know it sounds, you know, soft. And I know that people are viewing these things to be differently, but I think the body, the mind, I think these things wear on us. And I think they chip away at us. And I think they should be taken just as seriously. I think these are really serious matters for us to all have witnessed a murder on tv is pretty damn wild i think there is a huge difference between witnessing a murder like what we saw in the george floyd situation versus what you might see in a horror movie or a slasher movie like we're able to tell the difference because we're able to kind of zoom out from that and say okay well that's a film and it's uh art and it was written into the script and it was part of the plan and that's just the way it goes. And this guy is indestructible

and he haunts your dreams and kills you in your dreams. By the way, there's nothing more scary than Freddy Krueger. I don't know who thought of that thing, but man, Freddy Krueger is terrifying. That flannel jacket and those claws and everything. I still can't get over it. I have nightmares even still to this day. It's about freaking Freddy Krueger. Anybody else in the same boat as me? Anyway, how do we deal with stress? Well, one way to deal with it is just to try to avoid it. Like where are the traps? What are the accusers?

You know, if we're being really honest with ourselves, where are we getting stress from? You know, sometimes maybe you say something that's controversial or you say something that's a little offbeat. Even just saying that like amongst friends can sometimes cause stress because now you opened yourself up to some criticism and that can cause some stress. I'm not saying that you don't say anything, but what I am saying is that you want to be,

your words do matter. They do matter. So right now in these times, the posts we make on social media, if you want to have an inflammatory post, you need to understand that that inflammatory post is going to cost you. Maybe it's like smoking a cigarette. Maybe it gives you a little bit of an effect

because you're getting off on the fact that you made an inflammatory post. I know this better than anybody because I make some inflammatory posts here and there or controversial ones, right? I try to keep it as positive as I can. But every once in a while, just like the rest of y'all, I get frustrated and I fall into these traps as well. So if you're going to say something frustrating or you're going to say you're going to show frustration, I should say, via a tweet, via a text, via Instagram, you have to understand that these things are going to bring stress that maybe you otherwise could deal without.

So what would be a way to work on that? One way to work on that is just to stop doing that. Try to be a little bit more positive. What I would like you to ask yourself before you send a tweet or before you ask a question or before you do something, say, how does this help? How does this hurt? Just slow yourself down a little bit is a great way to deal with stress. Is this going to help me? Is this going to hurt me? Is

this beer that I'm having at the end of the day really going to relieve stress? Is it truly going to relieve stress? Or is it going to cause more problems for you than you, than you, is it going to be more than you, you know, you're going to bite off more than you can chew. And that's often what happens is that these things are traps. The cookies, the ice cream, the pizza, the beer, all these things, they can be trapped. Sometimes they can be wonderful. That's the tough part is you have to be honest with yourself of when is this going to be a time to enjoy this? I like to look at it this way. Is this going to really enhance the situation at hand? If I really feel it's going to enhance the situation or if I feel like, hey, this only happens a couple times a year, then I'm probably going to go for it. Or if I'm in a state or a

country or in an area where you can only get this particular calzone or this particular Italian food or this particular Mexican food or whatever it might be, I probably am going to take that opportunity because I'm not going to get it again. And you're going to be out of that area at some point, and you're not going to get the chance, right? Same thing with booze, same thing with all these things. But what I'd like you to also consider is like, you know, why are you kind of falling into these traps in the first place? I was on Twitter the other day and I saw, you know, someone getting into a scrap, getting into a fight in the streets.

And I almost clicked on it. It was something from New York City. I think people were fighting about masks. I almost fell for the bait. I almost checked it out. I almost clicked on it. And I don't know why. You know, I don't know why I was doing that. I thought to my, I paused myself for a second and I asked

myself that question, how does this help? How does this hurt? And I just thought, this is only hurtful. This is only hurtful. These are people fighting in the streets like a bunch of animals. This is not going to help me at all. This is not going to help solve any problems. This is not giving me any further knowledge or information on anything I can do. It serves me no good purpose whatsoever. So I didn't click on it. I kept scrolling, keep scrolling, scrolling, scrolling, keep scrolling, scrolling, scrolling, right? You don't want to fall for these traps. If social media is for anything, it should mainly be for like motivation, inspiration. You have people in your feed, like a Jocko Willink, someone who's going to

fire you up, someone who's going to get you excited. To see a lot of violence, it's okay to be aware of stuff. I mean, that's fantastic. If you want to be aware of stuff and you want to be get involved politically, I think that that's great. But you just also need to keep in mind how much negative stuff are you taking in a day. Let's go over interpretation, okay? So the interpretation is important because those people fighting in the street, that doesn't necessarily have to even be viewed as being negative. That could be viewed as just simple human behavior. That happens. It's happened forever.

It's happened since the beginning of time. Since there's been humans, there's been human fallibility, and there has been fights, there has been wars, there's been all kinds of stuff. So when we recognize that, it's easy to kind of now, okay, take a step back. This has happened throughout our culture many, many times. This happens quite often. People are frustrated, so people are fighting in the streets. One guy thought you shouldn't wear a mask.

Another guy thought you should wear a mask. They had such a degree of conflict that they thought they needed to pound each other in the face over it, right? Which sounds ludicrous, but again, it happens. At some point, there's always going to be a line drawn. And you may have seen police officers hitting people with their batons and stuff as people crossed, literally crossed over a line that the cop, you know, may have told them not to do. And we saw a lot of police officers even just taking things into their own hands and taking things a step too far. And we saw some of the people that were looting and some of the people,

you know, again, taking it too far. But if we're trying to think about these things rationally, we can think, okay, these things happen. They're going to happen again. They've been around forever. And it's hard to figure out a way to make any of these things stop. But we can really gain a lot of ground by learning to interpret. By learning how do you want to interpret these things. So the way that you're going to interpret these things is going to heavily be based on previous bias, previous beliefs, previous things that you just thought to be true. So this is where now you have to kind of investigate yourself. You have to really look within, you have to really look inward and ask yourself from a standpoint of just being factual, you know, is this particular thing negative? And yes, having people fighting in the streets,

I think we can all agree that it's not great, right? It's not great to have people fighting in the streets over masks, over whether to wear a mask or not. Dealing with stress in general and now reallocating a different perception onto each thing that we see and each thing that we do during the course of the day. Now, if I'm to see something that's violent,

I'm choosing not to view it because I'm understanding that my interpretation of it is going to be that it's negative. You guys kind of understand that? Do you know what I mean? Like I'm recognizing that I have previous biases and that when I see particular things, I'm going to view them as being negative. And so that's going to charge something up in me. So now, because I know that, because I have that self-awareness, because I have drone-shotted my way out of the situation,

and I'm looking from up above and observing myself. By the way, when you observe yourself, you have to make sure you don't disturb yourself because the second that you know that you're being observed is the second that you change your behaviors. So we have to observe ourselves, but do so very carefully. And it's not an easy thing to do. But if I'm looking from a drone shot view of me on my phone and I see Mark going into social media looking for negative stuff, I'm watching from that drone right now going, what in the hell are you doing? Remember, hurt people hurt people.

So what are you scanning for? What are you scrolling for? Are you looking to be hurt? Are you looking to find stress intentionally? I mean, honestly, why in the fuck are you doing it, right? You need to ask yourself that, like, what is, what is this about? And it doesn't mean you're broken. It doesn't mean you're a busted up person. I don't want you to throw yourself on the ground and beat the hell out of yourself over this. But I do, I do want you to think about it. Why are you searching

for these things? I think it's somewhat human nature to search for the negative. It's something that's ingrained in our head because we're trying to survive. We notice that a hungry bear is like a negative thing when there's no other food around for the bear. We know that we're the food, right? And so we recognize that to be negative. We recognize threats and things of that nature. But nowadays, we don't have a lot of the same things that we used to have. But now we're outwardly and openly and purposely, purposely, we're intentionally seeking harm and seeking damage. And somebody might say, how do I get my teenage daughter? How do I get her to better deal with, you know, the interactions of social media? And how do I get her to deal with all the stresses of all this stuff out there? Well, the number one way would be to explain to her that with the way that she's currently, if she has a

problem with it, if they have a problem with it, if you have a problem with it at the moment, you're unable to interpret it from a healthy spot at the moment. So you have no choice other than to restrict the amount of time that you're on there. You may have to delete social media for a little while. Or you have to do an appraisal. A re-evaluation of everything that you once thought. Which is really, really difficult. Imagine trying to do that as a kid. But you have to realize that all these things that we end up thinking about.

They give us more stress. Having anxiety. You know, seeing a post from friends that are hanging out. Maybe you reached out to a friend. These are things that I'm all hearing because I have a teenage daughter myself. You see friends hanging out with each other and you think that you were purposely left out of the conversation to go hang out with them. And now you're seeing it via social media and it's hitting you in the feels. It's hard to figure out how to deal with those things, but don't make assumptions.

Anxiety is fear over something that hasn't happened. So you don't know how that happened. You don't want to speculate. If you speculate, you're going to feel worse because then you're going to think, well, they didn't want me to come because I'm not as pretty as them or I'm not as cool as them

or I'm not as fun as them. It's going to make you really feel super duper left out. There are some immediate ways that you can assist yourself with dealing with stress. Meditation is very powerful. If you've never tried meditation before, you may want to try to set an alarm or set something for two or three minutes, then get the phone away from you and have it alert you after you did it for two, three minutes. Two or three minutes, it's going to seem like a lifetime. If you have never meditated before, it's going to seem really,

really long. But try to sit in peace and try to sit in quiet. Most of the problems in life come from our inability to sit still, our inability just to kind of hang out. I'll give you an example. When I was playing high school football, we played up against a team that ran the wing T. The wing T is just, it's all derived around deception. You don't know where the damn ball is, right? And so I kept trying to chase after where I thought the ball was. And my coach said, damn it, Bell. He's like, we went over the game plan. He's like, what are you supposed to do?

I said, not move, coach. And he's like, that's right. He's like, don't move. I didn't move. I ended up with like 18 tackles that day because I just, all the deception, all the deceiving, all the things that were going on, all the things that I could have interpreted as the ball going in a different direction. I just, I, I, I honestly and truly stood still. All he wanted me to do is stand my ground because I was a little bit bigger and heavier than some of the other kids. And so I would just get low and not let people move me from my spot and I just

ended up with a ton of tackles because they kept coming right to me so I think a lot of times when we're able to slow down and we're able to get some stillness going on we're able to think better because that's what separates us out from everything else on this planet it's not our physical ability I mean think about the physical capabilities of animals versus the physical capabilities of humans. It's just not even close. They outmatch us in every single thing that you can possibly think of. And there's tons of stuff they can do that we can't even figure out how to do. But the things that they can't figure out how to do, that we know how to do, is only because of our mind.

That's what makes you human in the first place. And so sometimes for us, that mind is so advanced and does such crazy things, we still don't have an understanding of the mind, by the way. We have very little understanding of consciousness. Very little. It's crazy. We know a lot about the brain, and we know a lot about the chemicals that are produced in the body. We know a lot about muscle, and we know a lot about the brain. And we know a lot about the chemicals that are produced in the body. We know a lot about muscle. And we know a bunch about this and a bunch about that. But we don't know shit when it comes to the mind.

The mind is an unexplored place. And that's why I think we need to explore it more. That's why I'm saying, before we go landing on Mars, let's land in our heads first. I think that's a great place to start. But a way that I've mitigated stress and something that's been really helpful for me has been my reinterpretation, my reevaluation of things that are said to me and things that I see. So imagine somebody trying to hurt your feelings or somebody trying to stress you out or somebody trying to swerve you off of your game for the day,

but they don't even know who you are at all. Like you never even met them before. Now let's back it up a little bit and let's say that it is somebody, you know, let's say it's somebody, you know, really well. Let's say it's a, it's like a friend of a friend that you've known for years. Well, that person is, that person's intentionally trying to hurt you. The other person who doesn't know you, they could just be effing around. I mean, you really don't know what they're doing. You don't know what their intention is, especially because you don't really know them. But because you don't really know them,

who cares what they're saying, right? Can you agree with that? Like, it doesn't make sense to care about what someone's gonna say that's outside your circle since they don't really know you. They may say you look fat, but they also might not understand that you lost 80 pounds or lost 100 pounds.

Your interpretation of that and your way to respond to that could be, oh my God, you think I look fat now, you should have saw me two years ago. Rather than being depressed and upset about the fact that they said you look fat. If it's somebody that you do know, that's when you just got to question on why you know them. That's when you got to kind of reevaluate and ask yourself, you know, who is this person in my and ask yourself, you know, who is this person in my life? Why, you know, why do I even bother with this person? You don't have to let it hurt you though. I would say that you just need to maybe reevaluate who that person is in

your life and understand that hurt people hurt people. That person's trying to take you out for a particular reason. Maybe they're jealous that you even make YouTube videos. Maybe they're jealous that you're on Instagram. Maybe they're jealous that you took a picture with your shirt off and they just, they got a problem with it for some reason. We see that a lot. We see that a lot with people. Somebody would be like, oh man, so-and-so, all he ever does is post pictures with his shirt off.

Well, there's multiple reasons for it. Maybe the person ended up getting an ego over their physique, there's multiple reasons for it. Maybe the person ended up getting an ego over their physique and they feel really good about it. Maybe they're narcissistic in a way, but whomever it is that's taking them down, whoever's trying to take them down or take them out, that person has a problem with it. And you've got to kind of question like, what is, why do they have a problem with it? What's the issue? Why do you have a problem with what's on my feed? Just get the hell off it if you don't want to be on here, right? And so when I think about stress,

one of the reasons why it's so damn stressful, or one of the reasons why it can be so stressful, is that there's a lot to think about when you think about stress. Human interaction is going to be something that we're not always going to have definitions for. We're not always going to be able to understand. Something that was really helpful to me years ago was when my wife told me with my oldest brother, Mike, she said, you're trying to apply rational thought to somebody who's irrational.

And that just like, that just hit me like a ton of bricks. I was like, oh my God, she's right. Now, my brother was bipolar, so not to make an excuse for him, but with him being bipolar and having the kind of mood swings and the different things that he had, it was at least explainable on why he would be irrational.

It made sense. He had a mental illness, right? But even without the mental illness, when somebody's speaking irrationally, when somebody's saying, when somebody's voicing, not an opinion, but when they're voicing their feelings,

that in and of itself has some irrationality to it. And it's something to think about. If somebody says, I think you're a real piece of shit, that's just, that's not really an opinion. That's more,

that's more of them sharing like a frustration with you, right? It's more of them. That's not very descriptive towards, uh, even what they would be frustrated at. When I think about stress, some of my, some of my key ingredients to, to help myself ward off stress is not to ever allow it to happen in the first place. You can deflect it. You can, um, you can, you know, uh, you can use like a mirror for it and you can beam it right back at the other person. And the way that you can kind of, uh, the way that you can make it like, uh, reflect back on the other person in a bad way is to ignore it. Like that's the, that's the, the most powerful thing is when someone is dumping something negative on you and someone's trying to, it's trying to lure, lure you into their stress. A way to reflect it back onto them is just by not

saying anything, especially through text messaging. You get, you get inflammatory texts. Don't respond to them. Let them sit there for days, let them sit there for weeks until the person goes back and they go to text you again and then they see how irrational what they said was. And then you can have a discussion in person with them the next time you see them. For me, the reinterpretation has been massive. I mean, that alone has really solved everything for me

because I've been able to practice it. I've been able to work on it. In addition to that, you know, meditation is helpful. I don't specifically sit down and like hum and do that kind of thing, but I will meditate here and there when I can or when I think I need it. But I kind of end up with some good self-observation and some meditation, even just through walking. Sometimes I have these headphones on, but there's nothing actually playing. And sometimes I'll just walk for a little while. Sometimes I'll take them off so I can hear my own feet hitting the ground. Sometimes if I'm running, I take the headphones off because I want to hear myself breathe and I want to hear my feet making contact with the ground. It's just a way to be in the present moment, right?

When our mind starts to drift into the future and when our mind starts to drift into the past is where we end up in a lot of trouble. When we start having all these assumptions about all these cool things that are going on in the universe without us is when we really end up in a tough spot. Lastly, I'll finish with this. Having a neuroscientist on the podcast, just yesterday actually, he shared with us a couple of things that I thought were really cool. One was this style of training with your eyes, but basically in short, it just meant that walking, you know, walking in nature can be very therapeutic. And from a physiological standpoint, it can help de-stress you. Human beings are

absolutely amazing at deflecting all the different things that we have in a given day. There's no limit to how much stuff we can do in a day. It's completely unbelievable. The amount of thoughts that we can have in a day, the amount of ideas that we can have in one day, it's absolutely amazing. Just the amount of thought that we can have in one given day is really astonishing. So walking can be something that can help kind of deflate some of the stress. The other one, oh, the other one was breathing. The other one, oh, the other one was breathing. So just simply breathing is huge. And a sigh that we do, like a sigh that we naturally do, we're like, that actually works.

That actually is fairly beneficial. So when you feel stressed, you feel overworked, you can work on your breathing. There's a lot of great people that talk about, you know, how to breathe. There's a lot of different methods out there for it. But my suggestion would just be, just try to try some box breathing. You can do four seconds in, four seconds out, four seconds in, four seconds out. Do that five or six times. You can also just try some deep breathing. You just breathe five, six times, get a nice deep breath. And the last one that was shared with us on the podcast the other day was to take a breath in, hold it for about a two or three count, breathe in again, and then let all your air out. Try that three to five times. All these things are things that have been shown in studies to help kind of de-stress yourself.

But my whole thing is you don't have to really de-stress yourself when the stress that you have all the time is really managed. It's really flat lined. You know, so for me personally, I never get too high up here and I never get too low down here. My line of emotions and feelings, it's like, it's never, you know, I have an invention that I've been working on for two years. And I finally have it at the office now. And I've been messing with that for the last couple of days. But as excited as I am, I don't allow myself to go too crazy in one direction. And that doesn't mean, I think sometimes when I say stuff like that,

I think it might give the wrong idea. It might make you think I'm trying to like bottle everything up. No, I'm really, really excited on the inside. I like to see things fully realized. So I'm like, okay, well, that's cool. But it's a prototype. And so I want it to go all the way through to the finish. And I'm somebody that maybe something that I think has been helpful to me,

and this might work for you guys as well, is I don't have any problem with celebrating that small victory and being super pumped about that. But I'm not going to let it have me be too one way or the other. And because I celebrated early, I mean, I celebrated even the fact that I had the idea in the first place. Now I'm celebrating the fact that I got a prototype. I'm going to celebrate again when it comes in again.

And so the celebrations aren't these big blowouts. And I think because I don't do that, then I don't these big blowouts and and i think because i don't do that then i don't slide down the other side and end up with tons of disappointment i try not to have a lot of expectations for things so when this thing came it wasn't like oh man like a b and c could be way better you know because i was expecting this it was more like hey i'm glad to be alive i'm happy to be alive. I'm happy to be here and I'm pumped that we made another product and this thing's pretty damn good, but imagine how much better it can be if we do A, B, and C. So I like to look at things from that

perspective and go in from there. But even with that, I try not to be too hyped. I try not to allow myself to get too low. I think you guys might find that to be helpful for you. These are some strategies that I have to de-stress, de-stressify yourself. As I mentioned in the beginning, Elon Musk is talking about Occupy Mars. Mark Bell is talking about Occupy Your Mind. Strength is never a weakness. Weakness is never a strength. Catch y'all later.