Episode 57: Don’t Slip on the Banana Peel
Kevin Eastman
Kevin Eastman grew up in Oakland, CA. He is a husband, father, grandfather, Air Force vet, fraternity member, and college graduate who enjoys helping people overcome obstacles. His “gift” is being able to UNcomplicate the complicated. he likes to say, “I help people make sense out of chaos.” Life has knocked him down several times, but instead of lying down and accepting the beating, he learned through some wonderful mentors, how to get back up, and continue swinging. His non-fiction writing is aimed at helping people get on (or back on) their path to enjoyment, just as someone helped him.
Social media:
www.kevineeastman.com
www.facebook.com/authorkevineeastman
www.twitter.com/eastke1
www.instagram.com/eastke1
Podcast Transcript
Damaged Parents: [00:00:00] Welcome to the Relatively Damaged Podcast by Damaged Parents where fallen hurt, confused people come to learn. Maybe just, maybe we're all a little bit damaged. Someone once told me it's safe to assume. 50% of the people I meet are struggling and feel wounded in some way. I would venture to say it's closer to 100%.
Every one of us is either currently struggling or has struggled with something that made us feel less than like we aren't good enough. We aren't capable. We are relatively damaged and that's what we're here to talk about. In my ongoing investigation of the damage self, I want to better understand how others view their own challenges. Maybe it's not so much about the damage. Maybe it's about our perception and how we deal with it.
There is a deep commitment to becoming who we are meant to be. How do you do that? How do you find balance after a damaging experience? My hero is the damaged person. The one who faces seemingly insurmountable odds to come out on the other side hole. Those who stare directly into the face of adversity with unyielding persistence to discover their purpose.
These are the people who inspire me to be more fully me. Not in spite of my trials, but because of them. Let's hear from another hero. Today's topic includes sensitive material, which may not be appropriate for children. This podcast is provided for informational purposes only, and is not intended as advice. The opinions expressed here were strictly those of the person who gave them.
Today, we're going to talk with Kevin Eastman. He has many roles in his life. Husband, father, grandfather, air force fed fraternity member college, graduate writer, and more.
We'll talk about how he learned to uncomplicate the complicated and make sense out of chaos let's talk
Welcome Kevin to Relatively Damaged by Damaged Parents. I'm so glad you're here
Kevin Eastman: [00:02:02] Oh, thank you. It's my pleasure.
Damaged Parents: [00:02:04] Now right before we started recording, you started telling me a story. I said, hold on, hold on about fourth grade and being creative. So will you go ahead and tell me the full story now that we're recording.
Kevin Eastman: [00:02:17] Sure. Well, I, we were talking and we were talking about inventing things to make myself interested in the tasks that I had and, one story came to mind was my mom told me, and I remember this as well. In fourth grade, I was, bored with what was going on in the class.
The curriculum was too slow for me. And I had to, I started showing out, because I was bored at Whoa. But they were teaching. I had already learned it. And what happened was the interesting story was my mom knew that wasn't my character and that the teacher and the principal knew that wasn't my character as well.
So the principal call my parents into her office. And she actually said, I have an, a solution to his problem. And I ended up being put into a combined forth, fifth and sixth grade class. So I was learning things two grades ahead of where I was, and that made things interesting for me. And it kept me on task to do what I needed to do.
And I was happy after that, but in that for regular fourth grade class, I was just bored. I was like, okay, I know this stuff. So I'm going to show out.
Damaged Parents: [00:03:24] yeah, yeah. Well, you got to do that sometimes, right? I mean, so it sounds like even with that, You learned at an early age, how to address a challenge in a way with the help of the adults that came in and said, okay, we actually need to challenge you more. So with your struggles in your life, how has that worked out?
And how much has that helped you to have had that experience? So early in life
Kevin Eastman: [00:03:52] Well, I mean, it has, shaped the way I've become as a person throughout my life. You know, once, a lot of people, I've seen, they see the challenge and they go, okay, the challenge is too much. I have a different, perspective on that for me, I like to put things into perspective instead of into perception.
And one of the philosophies that I've adopted is Obstacles and barriers are only as large as you make them in your head. So, if you look at it in, in, in perspective, you will find that a lot of the, a lot of the obstacles that we encounter in life, you actually put there because of your mindset.
And for me, it was like, okay, let's take it, at face value. What is the challenge in front of me? And then I make a plan to it. For me, if it's one of the things I started wrote him up book, you see an obstacle and you have to know this is coming from the military.
Actually, when I was in the military, you have to get to the goal no matter what the obstacle is in front of you. And if you need to get to the goal, you have to be willing to go over under, around, or even through any obstacle that might be in your way of your goal. And that's the way yeah, I look at it.
Damaged Parents: [00:05:07] So give us an example of a struggle. Where you did just that.
Kevin Eastman: [00:05:12] my life is, the struggle that I have to deal with. I had to learn to get out of my own way, for a long period of time. I was running into obstacle after obstacle, whether it was professional, whether it was in a relationship, whether it was, just a simple pass that I needed to do.
And I kept, and I, had struggled with that. A lot, and I still struggle with it from time to time, but now it's more, it's easier to recognize the issue and make the decision to deal with it rather than running away from it. But, for a long time I would see obstacles and go, why should I even try it?
They adopted it obstacles there. What's the point, I had to go deep inside, do some soul searching and all of those things and thanks to some wonderful mentors that I had. One in particular, he challenged me to think, to challenge me, to, challenge the way I think.
And what he said was one simple thing. He said, why do you insist on shortchanging yourself? And. Amazingly. I had no answer there for that. and he said, I've seen you blame everybody and everything for your misfortune. Have you ever looked in the mirror? And I was dumbfounded because I didn't have an answer to that.
He said, why don't you look in the mirror and find out, tell me what you see. And I started learning that a lot of the obstacles I would have been encountering. I had been putting there myself.
Damaged Parents: [00:06:36] So you were putting some of these obstacles are many of them yourself
Kevin Eastman: [00:06:40] More so I was making them bigger than they really were.
Damaged Parents: [00:06:44] Give us an example of something you did that with.
Kevin Eastman: [00:06:48] For example my failed relationships in the past, you know, they had all ended the same way and I had to think about it for a second and go, okay, wait a minute. Is there something wrong with every woman I'm dating? Or could there be something wrong with me?
And I was thinking, okay, there's something wrong with every woman. In retrospect you think about it, it's like, well, in all of those relationships, none of those women knew each other, so there's not possibly, they couldn't talk to each other. So what was the common denominator? The common denominator. It was me. So I had to look at my role in that it might not have been the determining role in the demise of the relationship, but I had a role nonetheless, and that's when I started looking at things and putting them into perspective and it made it easier for me to deal with.
And then I had to make adjustments to my own behavior to make sure I didn't repeat the behavior.
Damaged Parents: [00:07:45] Hmm. So was it painful to come to that conclusion? And, and once you came to that conclusion, What were your next steps? And maybe did you sit in that pain for a little bit
Kevin Eastman: [00:07:58] Well, you have to, you, it was one of the hardest things I had to do. And the reason it was hard because like many people I wanted to assume I was right. You know, and there was nothing wrong with me that is the, I like to say ego is our protection shield. One of my favorite, quotes that, I've heard in my life is from , Dr. Rick Rigsby. And he says, ego is the anesthesia that deadens the pain of stupidity. So I see that kind of resonates with me. And one of the things that I had to do was I, like I said before, I had to learn to get out of my own way. But I had to go through that pain in order to make adjustments that pain was so difficult. I couldn't bear to keep going with that pain.
I was, that was kind of forced to change my behavior. And once I did that, the light bulb came on and it made it a lot easier to deal with things.
Damaged Parents: [00:08:53] So you said you couldn't bear that pain to go with that pain. So it's like, I think what I hear you saying is it was really difficult to sit in that pain and because it was difficult and uncomfortable to sit in that pain, you made a choice to make new choices the
Kevin Eastman: [00:09:10] Absolutely. And when I talk with groups, I always tell them the same thing. Personal growth cannot be achieved without change. The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. So you, if you want to do things different, you want something different.
You have to do things differently.
Damaged Parents: [00:09:29] Okay. I think that's uncomfortable. So for the listeners who are like, Ooh, I don't want to do that. Right. How do you get through the uncomfortableness of new behavior.
Kevin Eastman: [00:09:40] well I always say put it in perspective, you know, what's more beneficial staying where you are and dealing with the issues that you have because you already know those or trying something different, you know, in my book, I always talk about changing your mindset because that's what it's about.
It's something that you can do very quickly. The problem that most people have is dealing with the consequences for the change.
Damaged Parents: [00:10:06] Yes. Explain
Kevin Eastman: [00:10:07] one of the things I tell my daughters is like decision-making, and it's a very simple philosophy for me. What I tell people is when you're looking to make a decision, you look at all of the possible outcomes and evaluate them. And if you can deal with every one of the, if you can live with every one of the possible outcomes, proceed with your decision.
But if you can not deal with even one of the possible outcomes, make the other decision.
Damaged Parents: [00:10:39] That's
Kevin Eastman: [00:10:40] Okay.
Damaged Parents: [00:10:41] because I think what I hear you saying I mean, without you saying it, let's say the choice is made with one thing that you didn't like, and that one thing just happens to be what happened then. There could be this blame game that happens on the inside that says, where the person who made the choice is thinking, well, I'm sick, bad, and wrong. So what I was thinking was maybe that doesn't leave room for me to beat myself up later, because I would think if I make that decision and that one thing does go wrong, then all of a sudden I've got a free reign to be angry with myself or something like that.
I'm, I'm thinking that's where that's headed, but not certain
Kevin Eastman: [00:11:26] You're kind of on the right track, but what I tell people, you have to be confident in your decision-making, and the way that you're comfortable with it is you explore all of the possible scenarios, and if you can't live with one of the possible scenarios, Then make the opposite decision, because right now you're going to beat yourself up.
If you don't look at all of the scenarios. And that's what I did for a long time, I, when I ran into the obstacle and things went wrong, I had permission to beat myself up and I am much harder on myself than anybody else can be. And I'm sure that's what a lot of people are. We are much harder on ourselves.
There is a saying that I heard. A while back, it says we suffer more in our imagination than we do in reality. So the one of the big things that I talk about in my book is emotional weight and the amount of emotional weight you assigned to a situation will dictate your will, will dictate the magnitude of your reaction to it.
So in a way to look at it is a scenario that I write in my book. If somebody balls up a piece of paper and tosses it in your direction, your natural instinct is to slap it out of the way. It's a piece of paper, but if you take that same scenario or run it a second time, but instead of paper substitute a bowling ball, You're going to have a different reaction to it because of the motion of weight.
And you assigned to stopping the object from hitting you. It's a bowling ball. I'm going to move, but if you look at it in a very practical way, from a scientific standpoint, the same swatting motion you use for the paper ball you can use for the bowling ball, it just takes more force.
Damaged Parents: [00:13:07] Right. Okay. So someone's got to make a choice and it's a tough choice. Right. And it's, even though they think through all the process and they're, pretty certain they're okay with the outcomes that they've thought of. Right. Because I'm thinking there are plenty of outcomes we don't always think about.
But they've decided that they're ready to move ahead with that choice. What do they do if they're still afraid? And I'm thinking that's probably normal. If, they're learning and growing
Kevin Eastman: [00:13:36] Oh, absolutely Fear is a normal response. It's just one of those things. A lot of people. We all get fearful of certain things, but you can't let fear be the reason you stop something. Because one of the things I teach, I've also am a mentor to a lot of young men.
And one of the things that I, I tell them is everything you want to achieve is on the other side of fear. And self-doubt what you need is the motivation and some, and the tools to get you past that. So it's okay to be fearful, but do it anyway. If you want to do it,
just do it scared. Okay.
Damaged Parents: [00:14:13] just do it scared. I liked that one because. I think that in learning and growth and especially the new behaviors, not only are they scary, but also new behaviors are not always expected by the other people in your life. And so there maybe get another layer of fear also, especially when the response is not what you would hope it would be.
Right.
Kevin Eastman: [00:14:38] Of course. And it's funny that you mentioned fear because actually one of the chapters in my book, I actually, titled fear of winning. Which is a complete eye irony because a lot of people go, how can you be afraid of winning? But if you look at things in perspective throughout our society, there are people that will, they, I call them paralyzed by fear.
And what happens is they get so afraid of being successful, that they intentionally engage in activity. They know won't end well for them. And the reason they do that is because they will have something else to blame them as fortune on other than their own activity. And I write my book from very personal experiences, because I went through a lot of that, you know, I didn't do anything destructive of course, but I did do things that I knew wouldn't end well for me, but that was my way of saying, okay, it's the system holding me down.
It's this holding me down. It's that holding me down. And I shifted the blame from myself until I had that mentor to said, okay, look in the mirror and tell me what you, see. And a lot of those things, weren't this thing, it wasn't the system, it wasn't this or that. That was holding me back. It was what was between my ears
Damaged Parents: [00:15:57] so, how do you shift what's in between your ears?
Kevin Eastman: [00:16:01] So how I describe it is you have to become sick of the current situation and I put it very vividly. You have to become so sick of it that the mere thought of continuing on that course of action makes you want to throw up.
And I use that. I use that scenario too, to prove the point. If you are not that sick of it, you are not willing to do what you need to do in order to make the change.
Damaged Parents: [00:16:27] Okay, let's say you're certain that someone in your life needs to make a change. How does that work?
Kevin Eastman: [00:16:35] Well, the only thing that you can do is worry about things you have control over. A lot of people are hesitant to make changes and it's normal. I know how that feels because I was hesitant to make changes as well. You can only make the suggestion, as the old saying goes, you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make them drink it.
There are some people that, that get comfortable, in their comfort zone. They have a sense of familiarity. With their, they're the things that are inside their comfort zone. So they stay there. But one of the things that I talk about in my book is if everybody stayed within the boundaries of their comfort zone, we would be no place.
There had to be somebody that made a decision to go. Maybe this can work and let me step outside and see.
Damaged Parents: [00:17:21] But they have to be the one who decides is what I'm hearing from you. So regardless, you're the outside person. You can suggest it, but you don't get to decide it.
Kevin Eastman: [00:17:32] Exactly.
Damaged Parents: [00:17:33] They have to get to that point where they're sick. So you, you might be sick, but they might not be sick. And you got to wait sometimes for them to get to that point, it
Kevin Eastman: [00:17:43] exactly one of the things. I mean, I think about motivational quotes all the time and I saw one that said a person is not going to change when they hit your rock bottom. If you're not going to change until they hit their rock bottom.
Damaged Parents: [00:17:57] Yeah. And you can't make them right.
Kevin Eastman: [00:17:59] Exactly.
Damaged Parents: [00:18:01] So hard.
So you're a new grandfather. I was reading
Kevin Eastman: [00:18:06] Yes.
Damaged Parents: [00:18:07] I've got to ask if that has also been a struggle or being a new grandfather, I'm thinking there's a shift in, in your growth level where you're at. I'm not sure. I'm not sure what I'm trying to get at, but I, feel like something changes when you're no longer a parent, but you're a grandparent.
Kevin Eastman: [00:18:29] Well, it's been a struggle one. My grandson, I haven't been able to see him due to travel restrictions and all those things. Just pictures and video phones. Thank goodness for that. But it has been a, an adjustment It hasn't truly hit me yet because I haven't had the chance to hold him yet.
All I can do is see him, but, , it's interesting to see how things are progressing with my daughter, uh, seeing her transfer from daughter to mom, you know, so it's like, Oh, this is going to be an interesting trip.
Damaged Parents: [00:19:02] Yeah. So the role that role, the boat, two roles are changing. And you said it's a little bit of a struggle. I'm thinking between your ears, like you were telling me earlier, most of our struggles are in, in between our ears. So what were some of those thoughts that, that you've had to overcome?
Kevin Eastman: [00:19:22] well, it hasn't been too bad. It's like I said, it really hasn't hit me yet because I haven't had a lot of interaction with him yet, but my daughter does call me from time to time and she goes, well, they have, what about this? You know, it's like, well, hold on. How I dealt with it. It was different than how your mom dealt with it.
And why did you call her and see if that works? You know? So, she's learning from both of us, and, I didn't know it was going to be this hard. It's like, well, the Parenthood in it, babies don't come with instruction manuals.
Damaged Parents: [00:19:55] They don't not at all, but I heard you say something really interesting and it sounded like what you would tell your daughter is here's how I dealt with it. And mom dealt with it differently. So call her too and see what she did. It sounds like you already have, what's set up as.
Just in the family dynamic that there's not one right. Answer to how to solve a problem.
Kevin Eastman: [00:20:21] Sure. I mean, you have to figure out which one works best for you. And that goes back to all of the decision-makings. If you look at all of the possible outcomes, if you can live with all of them, by all means, proceed with your decision.
Damaged Parents: [00:20:36] Yeah, which can also be hard in parenting too, right. Because there's no right answer.
Kevin Eastman: [00:20:42] Oh, sure. And, and I dealt with that because I'm the eldest child. So I like to refer to myself as the experimental child. My parents didn't have any experience. When it came to parenting with, me. So I got all of the experimentation going on. Me and my brother got away with a lot of things that I would not a day I would have never gotten away with.
Damaged Parents: [00:21:02] Isn't that true. If the oldest, right. Now as a parent, did you see yourself do the same thing with the oldest child?
Kevin Eastman: [00:21:10] To a certain extent. Yes. I want to say, I like to think I didn't, but I'm sure I did, you know, and it's, you'll probably have a different answer than I give you now, but I thought I was doing the best I could and my parents thought they did the best they could. it's just one of those things that happens, you know, it repeats every generation.
I thought one of the questions that you asked me on the, pre-interview was actually pretty interesting. When you said, how long did it take you to find your balance after your struggle?
It's interesting you would ask that question because it's, hard to put a, an exact timeline, but you know what I can tell you that the turning point for me was when I finally got fed up with running into obstacles and looking away from them instead of trying to negotiate them. And like I said, it, it took some mentors.
One in particular when I was in the air force he forced me to challenge the way I think, and what he did was in a sense was by asking me, had I ever looked in the mirror, he actually handed me my path to rock bottom, and once I hit that pain wall, it was like, okay, Enough is enough, something has to change.
And since the circumstances are not going to change, I have no alternative, but to change my reaction to them. And it's like a saying that I heard, uh, when the student is ready, the teacher will appear and he put his hand out and I kind of go, Hey, okay. And then when he told me he just looked in the mirror, That was when the, all of the light bulbs went off.
And I started talking with him more and he said, okay, now that you've identified, where the problem is, what are you going to do about it? And then that got the creative juices flowing and was like, Oh, okay. What am I going to do about it? I can do this. And it went back to that.
Decision-making okay if I do this, this is going to happen. And can I live with that? Yeah. Okay. Let's go.
Damaged Parents: [00:23:07] And then I mean, we did talk a little bit about fear. Were you scared in those moments?
Kevin Eastman: [00:23:13] Oh, absolutely because you, what happened was I was, I was in my comfort zone. I knew how everything would work inside of the boundaries of that comfort zone, but it was like, okay, What am I doing? Sitting here? Am I accomplishing what I want to accomplish inside of here? Or will it take me stepping outside of the comfort zone?
And one of the things I tell people is the journey outside of your comfort zone can be any frightening experience until you realize the journey is only one step,
Damaged Parents: [00:23:46] So it's only one step. What does that mean? Explain that.
Kevin Eastman: [00:23:51] You're doing everything that you need to do inside of your comfort zone. And you're happy, you know, how everything is going to occur in there. You've done it so many times that it becomes routine, you know, what to expect inside of a comfort zone, but something different happens when you take just that one step outside of what you're doing.
Damaged Parents: [00:24:11] Ah okay. So it only, it doesn't have to be something huge. It just has to be something outside of the comfort zone.
Kevin Eastman: [00:24:19] Exactly And it's just that one thing, do something, do one thing different. One of the ways I put it in perspective in my book is I say, okay, if you don't like where you're going, if you don't like the direction you're going, here's what you do. Stop. Make a slight turn and start walking again. Now, what are you doing?
You're going in a completely different direction than you were.
Damaged Parents: [00:24:43] Yeah. Now, one of the things we had talked about earlier, and just now , when we were talking about finding your balance after a struggle is you had talked about negotiating the struggle instead of turning away or negotiating the obstacle instead of turning away from it. So could you explain what you mean?
Kevin Eastman: [00:25:03] Well, you, a lot of people want to I won't say a lot, I'll say many people how's that that's a better word because people would have different definitions of word a lot, but uh, many people, uh, they will look at an obstacle a rather than. Go for there. The goal, which is on the other side of that obstacle, they will just look at the obstacle.
I go, nevermind. Well, if you always do that, you'll never achieve anything. So there are going to be obstacles. Obstacles are part of life name, pop up here and there, you just have to be one of those people that are willing to make that balance. Okay. Is that obstacle really stopping me? Or is it the combination of the obstacle and mindset stopping me from going towards that goal?
Because the way I look at it is. Circumstances are inanimate. They cannot change. They are what they are. I look at it, in a very simple way. If you're walking down the street and the straight line and you step on a banana peel, what's going to happen. You're going to slip and possibly fall.
And every single time you step on that banana peel, you are going to slip. And fall, and that happens every single time until you do something different. What I've learned is a lot of people, they, instead of changing their behavior to adjust the circumstances, they expect the circumstances to adjust to their behavior.
Damaged Parents: [00:26:31] okay. Give us an example of what that might look like.
Kevin Eastman: [00:26:34] And the same thing with the, the banana peel. It, the banana peel is not going to do anything different since the beginning, since they were created you step on a banana peel, it's going to slip, you're going to slip. That's just a natural thing. So you have to do something in your, you have to change something you do when you're walking along, you.
Step over to banana peel. You walk around it, you do whatever you need. I need to do to avoid stepping directly on it. But what we try to do as people is we go, okay. If I step on this banana peel with the ball of my foot, I won't slip. Or if I hit it on my heel, I won't slip. No, just avoid the banana peel completely.
You know, we don't want to change our behavior. We want the circumstance to change. And when we realize that circumstances can't be changed, it makes it easier to adjust our behavior because you have no alternative, but to change what you do
Damaged Parents: [00:27:31] Yeah,
Kevin Eastman: [00:27:31] cause the banana peel is not going to change what it does.
Damaged Parents: [00:27:34] Yeah. And I like how you explained how if I just step on it with the ball of my foot, or if I just step on it with my heel, I expect that it's going to change and I'm not going to slip and fall and or potentially fall. The fact of the matter is a banana peel is slippery and chances are you're going to slip and or fall, or you're going to at the very least probably lose your balance. Okay. So
gosh, what I'm trying to think of the banana peels in my life.
Kevin Eastman: [00:28:06] if you look at it, have you ever seen anybody step on a banana peel and not slip? You know, it's one of those things. You have to go back to perspective and perception. You have to change something because the perspective is going to be there. Your perception is one of those variables that you can change, just how you see it, you know, but is the Madonna, is the banana peel really going to, does it going to sound silly, but it was a banana peel going to say, okay, if he steps on me, I'm not going to make him slip today.
No, that's what a banana peel does. So you have no alternative, if you don't want to take the chance on slipping and possibly falling, you are going to have to avoid the banana peel. That means you have to do something differently to avoid that banana peel with your walking.
Damaged Parents: [00:28:52] And the banana peel could represent a job, a person. It sounds like it could represent anything
Kevin Eastman: [00:28:59] Yes.
Damaged Parents: [00:29:00] Learning to trust what the banana peel does. And the nature of the banana peel is important.
Kevin Eastman: [00:29:08] Exactly that's one of the possible scenarios, you know, is it worth you slipping and falling every single time, rather than, and continuing on your current course of action or stopping? Noticing the banana peel. No that you're going to slip and fall. If you step on it and you make that slight adjustment to walk around it
step over it.
Damaged Parents: [00:29:30] And it's still going to be scary to make that slight adjustment or step over it because we don't know what that's like yet
Kevin Eastman: [00:29:38] Yes. But what happens once we step over the banana peel, we can keep walking. It's really, to me, it's, that simple.
Damaged Parents: [00:29:46] that you have the knowledge, then maybe someone else doesn't yet have in that. It seems to me like you have. This firm belief and knowledge that no matter what that challenge, what the banana peel represents is the challenge that by walking around it or stepping over it, you're going to get to keep walking.
How did you get to that point of knowing that without a doubt, because to me, you're telling me it to me. Matter of fact. Yes.
Kevin Eastman: [00:30:15] Well, it goes back to me growing up. My dad, he kids me to this day. He tells me that and my mom confirms it. She says, you always been a logical thinking person and your logic is your biggest asset, but it can be your biggest detriment as well, because a lot of people don't want to see things logically.
They want to see things, how they want to see them, and it goes back to perception. So I have always been one of those people that looks at things logically, I believe there is a logical explanation for everything we do. Everything we, we encountered, there is an explanation for it. The difficulty comes with accepting the logic that goes along with the situation.
A lot of people don't want to accept the logic, you know, and one of the things that, one of the most important lessons that my dad taught me growing up and I, wrote it in the book. It, my parents taught me. It's impossible to argue with facts without looking stupid. So, you know, if you look at it in a practical standpoint, if somebody they asks the question, on a clear sunny day, what color is the sky?
You know, most of the time you're going to get the color blue, but if somebody screams the color green, you're going to be what you know, and the louder they say it. And the more they say green, the more silly they sound. You know, so I kind of put things in perspective that way
Damaged Parents: [00:31:41] So what happens though, when the emotions come along, right? Let's assume that banana peels a relationship or something like that. And you keep going back to it because man, you just love this banana peel so much. And you, even though you keep slipping and falling and logic says walk away. And yet that's very hard and very scary.
I would think too.
Kevin Eastman: [00:32:05] Absolutely. I, I talk about emotions in my book as well, because I learned, I, one of the things that I had to do was learn to put my emotions in balance with everything else because emotions are amplifiers. That's what they do. They make things larger than they, they really are. And, it's hard to do that because a lot of people want to be emotional.
They allow their emotions to be the driving factor in their decision making. And a lot of times, if you think about it, a lot of times we make an emotional decision and then we have to go back and go, Oh, that wasn't right. My bad, I did that wrong, you know, so you have to put things into perspective.
The emotions are going to be there and there's no way that you can just completely turn them off, but you have to be able to keep them in control because you can make an emotional decision that may be the wrong thing. You may be reacting to what you think instead of what, you know,
Damaged Parents: [00:33:04] Okay, so react. So even if you react to the emotion, what I caught. Part of what I caught in, what you just said was you're going to make a bad decision. I also heard you say, Oh my bad. It sounds like there's an apology in there somewhere when you make that emotional decision
before you can go back to logic.
Kevin Eastman: [00:33:25] Yeah. You almost have to, you have to go, okay. That was the wrong decision and it's going to happen. We all make bad decisions, you know, but I try to keep emotions away from my decision making as much as possible. That way I can make an informed decision based on factual.
Evidence, if you will, , for lack of a better term instead of an emotional one, because they're going to be there. You're going a lot of times. Think about how many times I many scenarios, how many lives have been ruined? How many situations have been taken the wrong way because of, I thought I failed.
I believe I assumed.
Well, only to find out, like you thought believed, assumed and felt the wrong thing because of how you perceived it.
Damaged Parents: [00:34:13] Right. So the emotion took over because the emotion was so strong. The interpretation of what was happening may not have been what. It actually was.
Kevin Eastman: [00:34:25] Exactly and that back, that goes back to what I said earlier about emotional weight, how much emotional weight and you assigned to a situation that's going to dictate how you, react to it.
Damaged Parents: [00:34:36] Okay. , well, I mean, social media is so big nowadays, right? So let's say there's an emotion. You put something out there, right? And people don't like it, but you were so certain in that moment that it was the right way to go. So you made that emotional decision and I'm using social media because I think everyone can relate on some level or they've at least seen someone who puts something out there to only to be, I don't know, belittled, bullied, whatever, because it was a different view.
So. Let's say that person realizes that they were wrong. What would you do? Would you say, well, it might be nice to, to make a formal apology or a bite, or do you just let it go and move on?
Kevin Eastman: [00:35:18] Well, I mean, personally, when I see things like that, I usually take it offline. I will contact the person privately, cause I know what it's like to the public. You publicly ridiculed for what you say, you know? And, it's like, okay, did you, do you see what's going on? Is that the right thing to do?
You know, was that the right thing? And, and a lot of people, you know, they still hide behind that, that wonderful ego that we have and there are people that will sit there, even though they have evidence that they did the wrong thing and we'll still stick to what they're doing, for whatever reason.
It's hard to get that person to, change the way they're thinking, because it's been so ingrained in them for so long. But again, that goes back to what I was saying about my book In The Comfort Zone. If you're you're comfortable there, that's where you're going to stay, you know, but if everybody stayed there, we would be no place.
Damaged Parents: [00:36:13] Right so, maybe in some ways maybe that person has to be there to ruffle the feathers so that new ideas can come out.
in. But in other ways, maybe it might not have been the right thing. I think that's really interesting because I think it is more complex then.
I don't, I'm not certain, there is an answer. What are your thoughts? I'd like that there's a definitive answer for one specific type of action all the time. I think maybe it can be different.
Kevin Eastman: [00:36:42] Well, the key is flexibility. You have to be willing to, be challenged. If you go to my website, you'll see direct quote and it says it's from me. I made it up, know it says. Welcome challenges to your thinking be willing to alter it. If you find that it's flawed and you can't help, but to evolve as a person, you have to welcome those challenges.
I was taught a long time ago that a closed mind. What, what was it? An open mind always gives itself room to grow, but a closed mind will stay stuck where it is. And if you close your mind off and say, I know everything, you're never going to grow because you don't know everything.
There's no possible way that, you know, everything.
Damaged Parents: [00:37:28] Not even sometimes. And in situations, I mean, I find personally that. I could experience this. You and I are having this conversation right now, and maybe I experienced this conversation a bit differently than you experienced this conversation. You're going to walk away with different wisdom than I might walk away with.
Right. And the idea, the idea, I think is that, I mean, hopefully there's a consensus of that we won that. We walked away with some similar information, but our experience is different.
Kevin Eastman: [00:38:01] sure. Yeah. I mean it, because people are different, you're going to see things differently because we have a different perception. How many times have you had a single event? That has been described five different ways by five different people, even though they saw the exact same event, you know, that's just the way things go, But the overall, the overall facts that each one of those five people, the basic facts are just there. They're just different interpretations of those facts.
Damaged Parents: [00:38:30] Right. Right. and I can't expect, I mean, I could, but I don't think it's going to be helpful that you will have the same experience as I will, as I have.
Kevin Eastman: [00:38:43] And, and you're going to have different experiences than I would, you know, a lot of people, unfortunately, in our society, they have embraced the philosophy that if you don't believe what I believe, then you have to be wrong because I can't be.
Damaged Parents: [00:38:59] Yeah. So, what do you think about that? And do you have any ideas or recommendation on how to overcome that?
Kevin Eastman: [00:39:05] Well, I mean, it has to start from within, the way that I tell people when I talk with groups is I try to get them to develop a, an what I call an inside out mentality. It's like when you have a confrontation, when you have a situation that you don't understand, check you out first.
Because you may be the one that's causing the issue, but we naturally, we look for other things to be the cause of our misfortune because it makes us easier. It makes it easier for us to deal with as long as that's the problem, the problem cannot and will never be.
Damaged Parents: [00:39:42] So it's really important to take a look inside me first,
before I say, this is the other, this is your problem. You did this.
Kevin Eastman: [00:39:51] because we, because it goes back to what I was saying at the very beginning, when I was running into obstacles, I had to stop and go, wait a minute. Are all of these obstacles really in my way, or am I just putting them there? And the majority of the time it was me making the obstacle larger than it was, like making a mountain out of a molehill.
And who was making me do that? My head was doing that. Nobody else did it. I was doing it.
Damaged Parents: [00:40:17] Yeah. Okay. Three things you want the listeners to know, or three tips or tools you want them to walk away with that you don't even have to have, have already mentioned them, or you could have already mentioned them, just three important things.
Kevin Eastman: [00:40:31] To me I think putting things into perspective is one of the top things to help a person along, make it, make sure that you are reacting to what you, what, you know, instead of what you think, because what you know will never, ever be wrong. But what you think always has the possibility of being wrong.
So just keep that in mind. you have to embrace fear. Unfortunately we are all going to be scared from time to time, but it's the person that, like I said earlier, do it scared, you know? It's like , you're going to be afraid, but remember everything you want to accomplish is.
Just on the other side of fear and self-doubt, so once you be able to, once you're able to embrace those things and say, okay, this is what is in between me and my goal is the goal worth going through that fear. You have to make that decision. A third thing is actually celebrate your accomplishments?
You know, a lot of people once they get to a goal, they don't take time new to congratulate themselves. It's not that you're bragging, you know, all of those things because you, you accomplish a lot, you know, I look back on. What I've accomplished in my life. And am I made a career out of telling about how to making people out of showing people up, and not to their face, but in my somewhere inside of his head. When I heard people say, Oh, you don't want to do that.
You don't want to do this. You shouldn't do that. My response in my head is okay, watch this. And once I accomplished it, I had that victory in my head. They never knew it, but it's like, okay, don't tell me what I can and cannot do. I tell me what I can and cannot do.
Damaged Parents: [00:42:15] right. Thank you so much, Kevin. We're so glad you are here today.
Kevin Eastman: [00:42:19] Thank you very much for having me. It was a pleasure.
Damaged Parents: [00:42:22] Thank you for listening to this week's episode of Relatively Damaged by Damaged Parents. We really enjoy talking to Kevin about how to Uncomplicate the complicated we especially liked when he talked about his banana peel analogy. To unite with other damaged people connect with us on facebook look for damaged parents We'll be here next week still relatively damaged see ya then.
