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New book from NYT bestselling author Lewis Howes is now available!

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Humble The Poet

Compassion over Pity

Don't be a victim in life

Do you spend time thinking of past mistakes? 

Do negative memories burden you? 

Thoughts of incidents you believe to be unfair.

We all go through tough times in life. 

But sometimes we get stuck in feelings of despair and self-pity.  

There is a path out of that dark place. 

There are ways to replace self-pity with compassion and understanding. 

All champions go through challenges. 

The key is to use your experience as a stepping-stone that will lead you on a path to greatness.

For this 5-Minute Friday, I am introducing you to my friend Humble The Poet, who has a fantastic message about self-pity and compassion.

Kanwer Singh, aka Humble The Poet, is a Toronto-bred MC/Spoken word artist, author, and motivational speaker. He stimulates audiences with ideas that challenge conventional wisdom and go against the grain, with dynamic live sets that shake conventions and minds at the same time. 

Learn how to defeat negativity and self-pity with compassion and self-love on Episode 864.

“Remember, you’re a champ and act like it.” – @HumbleThePoet  

Some Questions I Ask:

In this episode, you will learn:

  • How to limit and eliminate your self-pity. (2:14)
  • The importance of giving children discipline and love. (2:55)
  • Knowing how to take responsibility, even when it’s not your fault. (3:50) 
  • How to live your life as a Champion. (4:10)
  • Plus much more…
Connect with
Humble The Poet

Transcript of this Episode

Male Announcer: This is 5-Minute Friday.

 

[background music]

 

Lewis Howes: This is 5-Minute Friday with Humble the Poet. In this special 5-Minute Friday, I’ve got my friend Humble the Poet on to talk about the power of limiting your self-pity and the importance of becoming compassionate with yourself. He’s also got a new book out, “Things No One Else Can Teach Us”, it’s out right now. 

 

And big thank you to our sponsor DesignCrowd. Now DesignCrowd has been my service that I go to for all design, with websites stuff, with book covers, when I’m coming out with a new book, with T-shirts, with logos, with graphics, with social media stuff, any type of design that you need, you can get all your personal design needs at designcrowd.com/greatness. They’ve got hundreds of thousands of designers from all over the world. That will create designs for you, all you have to do is fill out the form of what you’re looking for, whether it’s a logo or a website or t-shirt graphic, or whatever it may be, you submit what you’re looking for, you give the details of what it is that’s inspiring you for this. And then designers will start creating branding for you. You can get feedback on them. And then when you want to pick a winner, you choose one of them and then you just pay that. And right now, you can go to designcrowd.com/greatness for a special $100 VIP offer for our listeners. Again, design is the key to differentiate yourself in your space, in your industry. Check it out right now at designcrowd.com/greatness. That’s D-E-S-I-G-N-C-R-O-W-D.com/greatness. 

 

And this time in this 5-Minute Friday, with Humble the Poet.

 

[background music]

 

Humble The Poet: One of the reasons we connect with Lewis so well, is because he got the authenticity and the value he has to our lives through his conversations with all these dope people, but as well as when he shares his own personal story. The more you get to know Lewis is the more you realize is he’s gone through some stuff. 

 

The thing is going through stuff and challenges in life is the recipe for greatness. But thing that holds us back from discovering that greatness to these challenges are plenty. And one of those things is self-pity. We cannot learn from our challenges if we’re too busy feeling sorry for ourselves and I learned this first hand. I won’t spend a week in bed drowning in self-pity. Sleep was my weapon of choice to deal with the pain, regret, stress and anxiety and the overall weight on my chest. I sometimes still use this as a coping mechanism, but only for an hour or two. When I’m stressed out, and I know that anything else is just going to make things worse. I give myself permission to do this because I noticed the pattern. If I let some time pass things become easier to deal with. 

 

I show myself compassion and allow myself that time. I don’t often tell anybody about my challenges because I feel like I’m going to fall into this trap of looking for pity and validation. I’m not sure whether it’s right all the time to do this, but sometimes the difference between self-pity and self-compassion are way too settle to notice. I’m not telling people that they should become the stone cold stoics who feel nothing. I’m just saying we need to learn to limit our self-pity. The goal isn’t to encourage you to fight your feelings it’s to help you determine whether your feelings are holding on to the steering wheel and are about to crash you into a park full of children. 

 

Too much, we’re always facing an on-going balancing act between giving ourselves a hug and a pat on the back and giving ourselves a kick in the butt. We can learn how to improve how we treat ourselves through our relationship with others. This took me a while to figure out because the moment I vowed no more self-pity, I came out of the gate called an apathetic towards others. Looking back, that was understandable and I slowly warmed back up to people. I needed the time. We all need time. So let’s give ourselves that time. 

 

So in addition to limiting us self-pity, let’s work on feeding our self-compassion. That can mean anything from taking a mid-day off from work to eating three extra Ferrero Rocher’s. To saying no to the next 10 people who asked you for a favour. To walk away from an argument even if we know we’re right, because we can’t afford to spend the energy. It can be hard to feel compassion towards adults. If someone is rude to us on the bus, we take it personally, barely thinking about what got that person to their breaking point. 

 

So showing compassion for ourselves and compassion towards others goes hand in hand. 

Remember that inner child, the one that we all have, the one who knows the world only in reference to themselves and has to learn empathy? Even though they need discipline and teaching, they also need love. I try to see the inner child in everyone including myself. And when I need to muster up compassion in a challenging time, even if it’s a one-time occurrence, it’s easier to let things slide off my back. If it becomes a pattern of behaviour, then just like a child, the response has to be elevated so the behaviour is not validated.  That’s the teacher in me talking. But it works. 

 

I’m showing myself compassion by not allowing myself to be in situations that drain me of my energy, or my attention, or my love, or my time. I recommend you do this too, while being cautious not to throw a mask on your pity. We aren’t victims of life. We are life. We have power over our efforts, which gives us power to adjust our sales depending on which way things are blowing. Self-pity serves as a barrier to those sales and sets us on a one way path downwards. 

Our problems may not be our fault, but they are definitely our responsibility. 

 

So ask yourself, how well does excessive self-pity and seeking pity from others help with that responsibility? The more we exercise our power to turn our days around, the more the tools to help us will find us. Champions have to feel like champions way before they ever raise their hand in that big victory. So remember that you’re a champ, and act like it.

 

[background music]

 

Lewis Howes: Hey guys, if you enjoyed this inspirational clip from a past episode of the show, then you’ll love the free book I’m giving away right now; it’s called The Millionaire Morning. It includes some of my best tips for starting off your day with a millionaire mind-set. Get your free copy at themillionairemorning.com and just pay shipping. 

Again, check it out right now, themillionairemorning.com

[END OF TRANSCRIPT] 

 

 

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