Ep #5: Separating Thought from Circumstance

Welcome to The Alpha Male Coach Podcast, the only podcast that teaches men the cognitive mastery and alpha-mindset that it takes to become an influential and irresistible man of

Welcome to The Alpha Male Coach Podcast, the only podcast that teaches men the cognitive mastery and alpha-mindset that it takes to become an influential and irresistible man of confidence. Here’s your host, certified life coach and international man of mystery, Kevin Aillaud.

What’s up, my brothers? Welcome back to The Alpha Male Coach Podcast. It’s me, Kevin Aillaud, the Alpha Male Coach, and I am, once again, super excited to be chatting with you guys about circumstances.

Now, I know that I say that I’m excited all the time, and truthfully, I am. I love coaching. I love teaching. But I do want you guys to know that circumstances are one of my favorite things to teach.

And the reason why is because there is so much benefit you get when you understand what circumstances really are. I mean, circumstances are where I start with my students. When students come to me to join The Alpha Male program or to do one on one coaching, I begin with separating circumstances from thoughts.

And the reason is because so much of life – so much of our lives and what we’re taught – is that it is the outside world, it is the circumstances of our lives, that create our emotions, that drive our actions. And that is erroneous. That is simply not true.

And whether it’s because we’ve learned more about neuroscience or whether it’s because we’ve learned more about cellular biology, or whether it’s just because we now can observe and understand more about the way life works, we know that it has nothing to do with our circumstances and how they relate to our emotions and our actions. There’s a correlation there, but that correlation comes through our minds and how we think.

It’s really our thoughts that create our emotions and drive our actions. So I always start with circumstances; what they are how they affect us, or how we let them affect us, to create our lives, to create the results we have in our life.

Now, the reason that so many of my students get the results from the coaching that they get is because of this. It’s because of the way I explain circumstances to them. So this is a very powerful episode for you guys. In fact, I’d say that my most common testimonial is that working with me over the course of months had provided more help for my students than working with therapists over the course of years.

And the reason why is because most therapists, whether they’re psychotherapists or they’re emotional behavior therapists, they will take circumstances and give them an absolute value. They will say, this is a negative circumstance that shouldn’t have happened to you or it was horrible that this happened to you, and then let’s find the positive from it so that you can move forward.

And what I’m about to explain to you over the course of this episode is that that is not the case and that that is not the best way to create the results in your life. So working with me, when my clients work with me, they get much more results in much shorter of a time, mostly having to do with the way I define circumstances.

So let’s get right into this. And before we talk about circumstances, let’s just review the components of the Model. Remember last week, we talked about the universal truth and we used the Model to align ourselves with the universal truth.

So the universal truth for the way life works is that circumstances will trigger our thoughts. They’ll trigger a judgment in the mind which is a thought or a belief, which will create an emotion. All emotions drive our actions. And all of our actions determine or results. Our results will then be evidence for that original thought.

The circumstance itself, what happened, just kind of sits out there in neutral territory while our mind and our body works through and judges it to create action and results. Now, when we look at the Model, the Model is five components, and it is the components of circumstances, thoughts, feelings, actions, and results. And I’m going to take you guys through each one of those components in a different podcast each week; starting today with circumstances.

So let’s get into this. Circumstances are… What are they? They’re basically three things. And I want you to understand that they’re things that happen outside of our body.

So circumstances include our past. Everything that happened in our past is a circumstance. Circumstances also include the world as it’s happening right now. So anything happening outside of you, anything happening externally of you is a circumstance. That’s like the weather, the traffic, the wars and conflicts around the world. That’s like the government and the presidency and everything that’s going on outside of your body.

Number three – also outside of your body – is other people. Guys, I want you to know this; other people are circumstances. Other people just exist there. They are circumstances, their behavior, what they say, what they do, that is completely neutral. That is a circumstance.

So given that these three things are what make up circumstances, the past, the world, and other people, I want you to know what it is about circumstances that – how we define them. Like, what is it that’s important to know about these three things? What’s important to know about a circumstance?

And there are three things that you need to know about a circumstance. Number one, a circumstance is a fact. There’s no judgment. There’s no subjectiveness. It’s indisputable and it is something that everybody would agree to at all times. So that’s number one; circumstances are facts.

Number two, circumstances are out of our control. We cannot control our circumstances. We cannot change the past. The past happened. It’s there. It exists only in our mind. There’s nothing we can do to go back and change it.

Other people – we would love to believe that we can change other people. Many of us do believe that we can change other people. But we cannot; we have no control over changing someone else. And the world – the world around us as it’s happening, we have no control over.

Now, I want you to understand that that doesn’t mean we can’t create an effect with our thoughts, emotions, and actions to drive a result in the future that we have control over. We have control over the results in our future, but as things are right now in the world, we have no control over them.

In fact, you can almost say that it’s almost like the past because, as things are right now, in the next moment, they slip into the past. So it’s almost as if the things that are happening right now are a part of the past.

So number one, circumstances are facts. Number two, circumstances are out of our control. But number three, and the biggest shift for my students, and for you, my audience, to understand is that circumstances are completely neutral. They are either good not bad. They are neither right nor wrong. They are simply neutral. They’re just data.

And I’m going to go into each one of these and explain them a little bit more, starting with the fact that a circumstance is a fact. So a circumstance being a fact means that everybody would agree to it at all times. It means there’s no subjective language. To say that the earth goes around the sun in 365 days, that is a circumstance.

To say that day follows night and night follows day, that is a circumstance. These things are true for all people at all times. They would all agree to these things. I usually like to use the analogy of the glass of water. We would look at a glass of water and we could say that the circumstance here is that there is a glass on a table; it has water in it.

These are facts. No matter who’s looking at the glass of water, everybody would agree and say yes, this container is made up of a composite we know as glass and inside this container is a liquid that we would all identify as water. This is a fact.

Now, where we start to get into judgments or thoughts is where we start to say the glass is half empty, the glass is half fun, it’s a very beautiful glass, it’s a tall glass, it’s a short glass, it’s an ugly glass, et cetera. You notice the subjective language in there.

Once you start adding that subjective language, we’re outside of what is a circumstance. We’re outside of a fact. We’re not talking about thoughts. we’re not talking about judgments.

So circumstances are facts. I used to say that you could prove circumstances in a court of law, but again, when you’re talking about a court of law, there are a lot of different thoughts happening in there to determine and to judge what the facts are.

So really, a fact is – what I want you guys to know is that it’s always going to be what all people would agree to all the time. That’s what a circumstance is. “She said this. The words that came out of her mouth were this…” if we were to videotape that and watch it back on play, everybody watching it would say, “Yes, that is what she said.”

What you made that mean, what you thought about her words, those are thoughts. How you felt about her words, those are emotions. But what she said was this… right?

Number two, being out of our control means really there’s nothing we can do to change it. So the past – I think you guys get that – and the world around us as well. Human beings is where I get some contention on this. When people start to tell me, “Well I can make somebody do what I want or I could get somebody to do what I want…” using influence or manipulation – guys, this just isn’t true.

It’s not true. You can never create an action out of someone else. You can try to create a thought in them that will drive an emotion that will eventually create an action, but it is not you that is having them do what it is that you want. You are not controlling that person.

That person is still under their own control, under their own cognitive and emotional control. You’re simply putting them in a place where they may or may not believe that they have any other choice. So it is not you that is creating their action. It is themselves based on the correlation of whatever it is that you are doing.

The truth is – and again, this is the truth – we cannot control any other person. We cannot control any other thing outside of us. The only thing that we ever have control over are the other parts of the Model, the other parts of the universal truth which are our thoughts, our feelings, our actions, and our results.

Now, the third piece is the neutral piece. And again, like I said, this is a very powerful concept for you to know. And if you’re not science-based – like if you don’t think in terms of science, if science is a tough one for you – then this may be a little more abstract.

If you are a science person, you’ll be like, “Well duh, Kevin, we know this.” But here’s what I want you to know when it comes to circumstances being neutral. What is going on outside of our body, for the most part, when we observe it, we’re observing only what our minds, what our sensory organs and our minds can handle, right?

There’s so much data in the world that we’re not picking up the truth. We are only picking up a very small percent of a fraction of the truth. You see, our sensory organs – our eyes, our ears, our nose, our tongue, the way we smell things, taste things, touch things, hear things, see things – we’re only getting what our bodies can handle.

What’s actually out there in terms of molecules and cells and energy as it’s colliding and moving and changing from one form to another is so much more vast than what we’re able to pick up. So when we see something, when we see color, when we see shadow, when we see distance, we see what our eyes and our brains can handle.

What’s actually there is so much more; or so much less actually, since most of what is around us is void. Most of what’s in a molecule, most of it’s just empty space. But because of the way our bodies are, because of the way our organic machine works, we are given a certain range of sights.

Our eyes pick up a certain range of color; the color spectrum, what we see in a rainbow. Because of the way our eyes are shaped in terms of rods and cones, we can see in the light, when light is shining. But at night time, it’s more difficult for us to see. Now, do things disappear? No. things are still there. We just don’t see them because of the way our eyes are.

Other animals, nocturnal animals, can see in the dark because of the way their eyes are and the way their brains work. Same thing with our hearing. We only hear at a certain range, a certain decibel range. We’re able to hear tones at a certain decibel range that’s low, like how quiet things get, or how loud things get.

Eventually, things get to be such a high pitch that we can’t hear it anymore, but other animals can. Hence the invention of the dog whistle. If you guys have ever blown a dog whistle, you can’t hear it – it drives dogs crazy – because our bodies are only picking up a certain range of data.

Now, the reason why I explain this to you in this way is because when we see things, when we hear things, we tend to judge them, especially when it comes to other people. Somebody says something and maybe you judge that to be something negative about yourself, so then you get angry or defensive or sad and you make it mean something in your mind that creates that emotion, and then you act based on that emotion.

Now, your thought for the beta male, the thought, the predominant thinking out there is that it is what was said that was mean or cruel. But the truth is, it’s not what is said, because what is said is just molecules. It’s just atoms bouncing around created by someone’s vocal chords vibrating in the air having all of these atoms and molecules colliding to meet your eardrum, which then vibrates again and creates a code and a judgment in the brain; completely neutral.

There’s nothing positive or negative about sound waves. They just exist. They’re just there. And the same is true about people and their behavior. I want you guys to know that human beings are just a bag of cells. Guys, we’re just cellular. We’re just organic beings. When we die, our cells die. They go back to the earth and it becomes a cycle of life. Our cells divide, and they’re actually dying all the time; dying and being reborn, dying and being reborn, separating and creating new cells.

When we observer people’s behavior, we make it mean something in our mind. One person will make it mean something good. Another person will make it mean something bad. So how can someone’s behavior be either good or bad? It simply is, and then it’s up to our judgment to decide how we interpret it.

Now, what this means for you is that you can think anything you want about the world. You can think anything you want about other people, their behavior, what they say. You can think anything you want about your past.

I want you to know, you guys out there that are listening, most of the students that I have come to me because they want help with anxiety around relationships, anxiety around women, anxiety around dating or sex or money, anxiety around creating a business or being an entrepreneur. And most of this anxiety is a resistance to the emotions of shame; something that happened in the past – emotions of boredom, emotions of fear, fear of rejection, fear of humiliation.

Again, this predominant thought that something is wrong with me or that I’m damaged, which came from the past – and it’s so important for you guys to know that your past is completely neutral, that your past just exists back there. Like I said, it’s like somebody recording your life on a video camera. If no one is there to watch it, it’s just happening. It just is. It’s just the process of life; the way your journey was meant to happen.

Once someone starts to watch that video, then they may so, “Oh, what a horrible thing that happened…” or, “Oh that shouldn’t have happened to you…” or, “Oh, what a bad thing.” But the truth is, it’s just there. Those were just events that occurred.

And you can think about those events any way you want. Now, we’re going to get into thoughts next week, but what I want you to know is, you don’t have to assume that things are bad and then make something good about them. They’re actually just neutral. You can rewrite your story any way you want to.

So a lot of these examples that I’ve given to you in terms of what other people say – if a woman says something to you that you think is cruel or rejecting, you don’t have to feel rejected because that is about her. That is a neutral circumstance that you can think any way about.

If there’s something in your past that is preventing you from being the best version of yourself, from showing up in a way that you are confident and you are loving, then again, what happened in your past is completely neutral, and you can start to think about it any way you want. But that really is the first step.

That really is the beginning of unleashing your alpha male, because – and I want to leave you guys with this – because being an alpha male is, at its source, in the foundation, recognizing that it is not your circumstances that create your emotions. It is not your past.

It is not other people’s behavior; what they say, what they do. It is not the world around you that is deciding for you how to feel, how to act, and certainly not what has determined the results that you have in your life. That is the mindset of the beta male.

And again, this is the predominant mindset in the world today. So it’s not like there’s something wrong with you for thinking this way even. This is what you have been taught. This is what most people believe.

To become that alpha, to let out that alpha male and to really create and determine everything in your life the way you want it, to have the life that you dream and to get out that feeling inside of you of greatness, to unleash it upon the world, the very first step is to separate, in your life, the difference between circumstances and thoughts, is to begin to know the difference between what is a fact and what is a belief.

And guys, I’m here to tell you – and I will continue to tell you this. you come to The Alpha Male program or you do one on one coaching with me, you are going to hear this over and over again – that your past is a circumstance. Your past is completely neutral; just a series of events.

The only judgment that you put on it is the way you choose to think about it. Other people – other people are simply facts. They’re just there. They’re just a bag of cells acting and behaving in a way that is caused by their thinking. It has nothing to do with you and it is neither good or bad.

I know people are going to say, “Well what about Murder? Isn’t murder bad?” Murder is not bad. Murder is just an act. It’s just something that happens. we have, as a society, we as a government, we as a religion, we have decided that murder is wrong, but the act in and of itself is just taking a group of cells and stopping them from reproducing.

We murder all the time. We murder bugs when we kill them. When we murder mosquitoes, we slap them off of our body. We hit a road-kill – we’re driving down the street and we hit a cat or a deer, we don’t call that murder, but it’s exactly the same thing. The only difference is in our minds, we have attributed more value to the human being, and therefore we call that murder and we’ve attributed consequence to that.

As a group, as a society, as a people, we say, “Okay, this is bad. We’re going to have consequences for it.” But that is still a thought. It’s still an idea. It’s still a belief that as a species, we’re propagating. And I can either go further on to tell you that there are people in the world that would disagree with that thought, because we know this. We have murderers that exist.

They’re in prisons and they’re in other countries and they’re all around the world. Murder exists. Murderers, people who kill people, exist. So the idea is that these are all neutral things. These are all factual things. These are all things that happen and they are outside of our control.

It all comes down to how we think about it that will ultimately determine our beliefs, that will ultimately determine our results and our beliefs, our emotions, and our actions. How does this apply to you?

You’re not a murderer, so how does this apply to you? This applies to you, my brother, because you can now take a look at what is actually happening outside of your life. You can take a look at what is going on in the world with other people, with other events, and in your past, and you can start to separate what is a fact, what actually happened in terms of objective factual events, and what you make those events mean. What are your thoughts about those events? What are your beliefs about those events?

When you do that, when you start to separate your thoughts from your facts, this is the first step in shifting your cognition, in moving from a beta mindset of blame and confusion and inaction to the alpha mindset of responsibility and empowerment and massive action. And that, my brothers, is why I love circumstances; why I love teaching and coaching on circumstances.

Okay, so when you are looking for these – when you are looking for separating the thoughts and the circumstances in your life, just remember, circumstances are facts, out of your control, and completely neutral. They include your past, other people, other people’s behaviors, other people’s words, and the world around you; what is happening in your life and what is happening outside of your life in the world.

Guys, that’s what I’ve got for you on circumstances. Check out next week’s episode. We are going to continue with the Model and the universal truth for the way life works and we’re going to talk about thoughts. Until then, unleash your alpha.

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