#39 - Stress Sucks
Given the current state of the world, it makes it hard to use the Internet in a proactive way. In fact, it often builds up even more stress than it de-stresses. The question is: are you effectively dealing with your stress or are you just coping?
In this episode, be enlightened as Sammy and Andrew take us along with their personal experiences on how stress negatively and positively affect the different areas of their lives, giving us a sneak peek into how they handle or disconnect with stress and overcome or reconnect with what's most important in life.
Why we need to talk about stress: dealing with it or just coping
Different sources of stress
Dealing with stress through grounding
The domino effect of stress
Consequences of not dealing with stress
Porn as an escape mechanism to stress
Relationship between stress and sex: Performance Anxiety and Entitlement
Stress is internal, it's all in the mind
Episode Transcript:
Sammy Uyama: Welcome. Welcome, ladies and gentlemen! It's your host, Mr. Sammy Uyama. Herewith my special co-host
Andrew Love: Right? Co-host. It seems like, it seems so unofficial. How about a co-creator?
Sammy Uyama: Co-creator? My, my buddy.
Andrew Love: My friend. Yeah. Andrew Love, in the house. In the house and all the houses. I'm in all the houses these days. So, welcome to the podcast. And we will be talking about something near and dear to everybody's heart. Something that you don't want to be a part of your life but something that is unavoidable. And I'm not talking about Pokemon. Not talking about trans fats. I said trans fats, Sammy. Leave me alone.
Sammy Uyama: Actually. You. I'm still hang-up about the first one. Like I'm, I object to who does not want Pokemon in your life. That is a great thing.
Andrew Love: Me. And anybody over the age of 12, Sammy. What are we going to be talking about, Sammy?
Sammy Uyama: We want to talk about the ugly duckling that nobody wants but actually is it good, it helps us grow a lot. Stress.
Andrew Love: Stress.
Sammy Uyama: You know, we hear about our podcast about sex. Right? All the things that are relevant to that topic. In relationship. Within ourselves individually. And this is a an unspoken of area that highly affects our relationship with sex and our relation with porn. It's a. Yeah. So, it's, it's something we wanted to dive into. Especially not even specific to sex. But just, it's something a lot of people deal with, at really high levels. And to the point where it's so present for people that they, they numb it out or it just becomes background noise. And they don't even realize how stressed they actually are. Which is crazy to imagine having that much stress in your life.
Andrew Love: Well, I can see it though. Honestly, I can really see it. And so, we're gonna, what we're gonna do is we're going to talk very generally at first about stress and about how readily available stress is, in this world today. And then, we want to get into personal stuff because Sammy and I have both been through different phases of our life, which were particularly more stressful than others. And Sammy is also planning on having something like 27 kids. So, he will become best friends, BFFs with stress. So, coping with it. It's not about avoiding stress, per say. It's about dealing with it and meeting it face to face rather than avoiding it. You know, rather than quell, quelling it with alternative measures like drugs. You know, that doesn't make the stress go away. It makes your your ability to experience the stress go away for a time, but the cause is still there. The root cause. So, we want to tackle this issue because if you don't understand your stressors. If you don't understand what, how you, you, in like your mind, how your mind, handle stress. How your body stores stress. If you don't understand these things. You're very liable to end up getting sick mentally, spiritually, physically. All these things wear you down little by little. And every moment that you live with stress, it's chipping away at you. At your very core. Until you have nothing left, right? And so, we want to get into this. So, you don't wind up there. And so, you can wrestle with your demons. Because stress is very much something that you can participate in and you can walk away from. And you can, you can subjugate and you can be subjugated by. So, let's get into it. Um.
Sammy Uyama: Yeah. Yeah. Dealing with versus coping. I think that's a real key thing that you just touched on. It's like, the stress is actually pretty neutral. And whether it impacts us negatively or positively. It's possible for us to be positively impacted by stress. Like, it's a, stimulates you to be better. To grow in some way. I mean, that the net result is can be good. And then otherwise, it affects you negatively. Affects your well-being. It becomes a minus from you, usually. And your mental and physical health in some ways. It's usually the way that stress impacts us negatively, right? And I think, how you deal with it is a differentiator whether you're dealing with it or you're just coping with it. And what most people do is they just cope with it. Which is just like trying to stay above water and make do with it.
Andrew Love: Get the hands down the road.
Sammy Uyama: Yeah. And then, and how people cope with it. It's might have different ways. The point is a really common one. And there are many others as well.
Andrew Love: Yeah, exactly. So, so about stress, like I, I know that stress can come in many different forms. There's even, you know, there's the stress that you can put on your body and that comes through physical injury, right? That's when your body is in an unnatural state. It's pushed to the limit by something. Then, there's chemical stress. Which can come in the form of you know, drinking, taking different substances. It's, it stresses the chemicals in your body. There's mental stress. There's emotional stress.
Sammy Uyama: Well, you mean, you mean like chemical ways of dealing with stress? Or like, like the drinking it is a, it's a, it's a form of stress?
Andrew Love: Yeah, it stresses your body. So like, can strain your body. So, there are different forms, right? That's the first thing to know is that a lot of times we just know stress when it's already, you know, there. Attacking us. You know, when we're getting kicked around by it. We're like, "Oh, yeah, that's stress." But we didn't see it slowly walking up to us the entire time, you know. It creeps up on you ever so subtly. And when you are able to see it coming, you can stop it in its tracks. Or you can choose to, to, to go another direction, right? So, it's important to look at starting with, "Hey, I'm experiencing stress. How did that happen?" So, that's always a good starting point. How did I get to this point? What is really causing me the stress? Because for some people, honestly, it's weird, right? It's not even anything that's that deep. It's like, you have bad posture and you've been sitting in front of a computer for too long, right? That causes physical stress. That changes your breathing pattern. All of a sudden you have very shallow breathing. You're not getting enough oxygen in your brain. And then, you're stressed. You're dizzy. You're not, you're cognitively not 100%. So, then it was just a matter of, "Hey, I need to find a better chair. Or I need to stand up when I work. Or I just need to get up every 20 minutes and do some jumping jacks. Get the blood flowing and get back to it." Right? You smile.
Sammy Uyama: I mean, me and Andrew are video, videoing this friend now. And I'm just looking at Andrew holding these two giant pillows up against his face was recording. Because he's in a little echoey room and it's just kind of minimizing sound. So, he takes everything he says seriously, but it's just the funniest thing to look at.
Andrew Love: I'm suffering from my art, Sammy. So yeah, one thing. I mean, the first thing is. Okay, when you have stress, the blanket response is to get rid of the stress without understanding where it came from. What are the origins of this stress?
Sammy Uyama: And I'll. Well, one thing I would add is. As always, this has been Andrew just speaking from our experience with this topic. I can, I can, I hear the voices already like, "Hey, you don't know about, what, what about this situation or that situation like?" And, and, and I know a lot of people they're genetically built with different levels of ability to cope with this. And missing certain, you know, like chilling out chemicals to some level. And so it's like more than just, you know. Anyway, for some people, it's more than just like a matter of breathing or like learning how to or just making a situation better. And, uh.
Andrew Love: I would disagree though, Sammy.
Sammy Uyama: You think. Okay, anyway. What. I'm just. I'm. Sure. And you know, that's, that's fine too. But it's like if you got to like a circumstance that you think doesn't fit into what we're talking about. That's totally fine. And you can just let us know about it. We just don't need anyone vilifying us, because we're, we're speaking on behalf of, you know. Don't get the impression we're trying to speak on behalf of all of humankind, right? We're just trying to come up with something useful for general. Useful for most people who are listening to this. Sure. Sure. Sure. Sure. So, I do want to suggest, though, that like, I was trying to avoid getting, you know, personal too early, because I want to speak generally. But if that's where one, let's go there. Because I am an extremely sensitive person and me, and I just realized that, you know, I knew I was emotionally sensitive when I was a kid, very much so. But I'm actually environmentally, extremely sensitive to my surroundings. To sound. To movement. I see everything. I hear everything. And I have three hyperactive children. Boys. Little boys, right? And so, this has been a great source of stress to me because I can hear all of their, their bubbling energy. And bouncing off the wall, right? And because of my sensitivity, I just have to take extra precautions. And I can see that when I do things like meditate in the morning, then their energy flows through me rather than get stuck in me. Right? So, there is, there are measures that everybody can take. And there is a reason why religions all have different practices. And the spiritual side of things, helps you get into a more natural flowing state, right? And I would like to get into that in a bit. But, I would say that nobody is exempt. Everybody has a different measure of, I guess, sensitivity and stuff like that. But, meditation is a blanket, you know. Not cure. I wouldn't say cure. But, it helps everybody. And the more you do it. It's a practice, the more that you will see, you know, the ability to deal with stress in real-time rather than be flummoxed or overwhelmed by it. Right? It slows things down. It's kind of like the matrix. But, I'd like to get into that at the end. The more of like, you know, practical solutions. But, I do want to also suggest, you know, generally, that things like emotional stress. Look at the conversation. If you feeling really bummed out or even melancholy. If your emotions are all over the place. And it's worth looking at. Honestly, what kind of music am I listening to? What kind of videos am I watching? We are overstimulated by so much information because of the internet. Because of social media, in particular. That it overwhelms our senses. And it messes with our nervous system. Right? If you see somebody get punched online, for whatever reason you watch. MMA or whatever. You, you, you have responses in your own brain that in some way, shape or form, feel the pain of the person getting smacked. Right? So, you watch enough fighting online, well guess what? You're gonna feel to some degree like you just got beat up, right? Like, so, the things that you're, that you're letting come into your senses affect your senses. They affect your nervous system. I really noticed that. Is that when you're overstressed, you start to feel like your nervous system is overloaded. And you just feel like you're tweaking out. Like you're freaking out. You know, I mean, have you ever experienced that Sammy? When you're just so overwhelmed that, that you can't even process information. You know, what I mean? Like say, say, Luna, your daughter's screaming on hours on end, you don't sleep very much. And then, somebody asks you a very complex question. You're like, "Ah, ah." Like doesn't compute you're. Yeah. Absolutely. Probably to some degree, everybody, right? It's like, I mean, even Luna. She experienced that. She just can't handle it. It's like, what do you mean? What do mean I can't have blueberries? Right? It's like.
Andrew Love: Yeah, exactly. And if, and if she lacks sleep as well, right? That's another stress. How is the quality of your sleep? Um, you know, there's, there's a lot of research being done about sleep. And the importance of not only getting enough sleep, but enough good sleep. So, watching anything before, right before bed is actually really not good for the quality of your sleep. And it causes you to be more stressed when you wake up. Also, your morning routines. My God. We've gotten into morning routines. What's the worst habit that you fight against with your morning, Sammy?
Sammy Uyama: Yeah. This is a setup question, right? To make a relatable, make a relatable statement to the audience. When I, when I get on my phone first thing in the morning. And I just go on Facebook and Instagram.
Andrew Love: I was in that habit. We were having a lot of meetings. You and I and our team were having a lot of meetings at 7am. My time, right? And so, I was waking up. Eating some food with my kids. Having some coffee than going into a meeting. I didn't realize how much this was stressing me out. Because I was, I was getting some very terrible sleep. And I didn't see the connection. And what we've been dog lately as a family, as we wake up. And then, the first thing we do is have a little bit of water. And then, go work out together as a family. All three kids, my wife and I. Everybody. We get into our workout clothes. It's so cute. And we do different workouts every morning. And then, we have more water. And then, we have food. So, working out first and then, eating has changed my stress levels drastically. Because I wasn't just eating cereal. And having sugary cereal is the worst. You know, it's having coffee right away is not good for you. Like these little things add up to the day. Write your day is that total some of your habits. So, that's why I was asking. I don't want to trap you. But like, we all have. Some people reach for their phones. Yeah. Other people, their bad habit is just not getting up when they want to. Or whatever, wherever the case may be. Mm hmm. Yeah. The. People and all the studies. You know, people are like, the what are the trends of life in the 21st century? In the 2020s? 2010s? How's the different then? What's changed from like 5060 hundred, 200 years ago? And like, that's a unanimous finding is that people are more stressed now than ever before. Which is really surprising given the things that would normally stress you out. That like put, basically like puts your life at risk. Which was people were at higher risk of it anytime previous to now. Make all the actual dangers are really low, but we're more stressed. And I think one of the reasons for that is this, this natural cycle that we're supposed to go through is interrupted of like, peaks and valleys. Of like, our stimulus is supposed to spike. And then, we're supposed to take a break and step back. Like it's activity and rest cycle. It doesn't exist anymore. It's always like, on, on, on, on, on. And even when we're like rest put. Like taking a break. Or our idea of chilling out is stimulating ourselves even more. Right? And, and, and like everything you even said about like screens before bed and it's like damaging the quality of the sleep that we're getting. And also, sleeping less. Feeling we need to do more. This is like this vicious cycle. That's like everything is affecting everything else. And then, it builds up inside each of us. That's it. That's a huge one. Yeah. Just how unnaturally we are living. That's one thing that I've been looking at so much myself is our pursuit of goals and accumulation of material wealth and all this is, is coming at the sacrifice of living in it. Even a remotely natural state. So, think about that. Sleep. The most natural thing in the world is garbage. For most of us. It's really not good quality sleep. The food we're eating because of the fact that we're always in a rush. Lower. Right? The quality of our connections. Lower. All causing us stress, right? So, just in that. There's physical stress. There's mental stress from sleep and food. There's emotional stress from not being connected to a community. To our family. To our sense of purpose. Spiritual stress because we're not connected to nature. Nature. And God, right? Like
Sammy Uyama: The way you emphasize that word makes me feel like it's important. Are you thinking it's something.
Andrew Love: Just that. I remember hearing this is super new agey stuff about grounding. The importance of. And it's this idea. This revolutionary idea. That you need to get outside and touch something that's alive for at least 20 minutes a day. Meaning sit on grass and how much that decreases inflammation. And, and puts you in a natural state. And my wife and I were lucky enough to be, you know, close enough to a beach that we started going to a beach and I could see my stress levels lower just by sitting on the sand. Not during the day because I'm so white, I'll burn up and that's extra stressful for every part of me. But you know, dusk. When it's nice, the breeze is nice. Like sitting on Earth, like soil, or grass, or sand. The importance of doing things that are natural to us. Like that. So then, the question came up. Okay. And think about this. Whoever's listening. And you too, Sammy. Think about how often your feet touch something that's alive? Because it's either, there, your feet are either in shoes and you're walking on concrete. Or you're in your apartment and that's ceramic tile or some weird, you know, gooey flooring that you have or whatever, right? But, how often do we actually engage, interact with our sense? Which are alive. All of our nerve endings. Everything. With something else that's alive. That's not playing footsies with your spouse, right? But, that's like Mother Nature. Something that seems so inconsequential actually has, has massive, you know effects on your overall state and stress.
Sammy Uyama: Yeah. I can attest to that. I've, I've, I've gone definitely like over a year period without touching anything maitri like you're talking about. You know. Living in. I live in a concrete jungle here in Korea. And I mean, even without. That it's like, I mean, exactly you said. You're either, if you're barefoot. You're inside or in shoes. And, and the past summer I had the opportunity to spend a lot of time in grass. And it just be barefoot rolling around in it, sitting it, sitting in it. And it makes a huge difference. It is feel so good to spend 20, 30 minutes. Just like in the grass. So, it, for personal experience. Right?
Andrew Love: Yeah. It's like the dumbest thing in the world, right? Like there's a whole documentary on this thing called Grounding, right? And, and it's very new agey. And the premise is basically touching things that are alive. And you know, especially, you know, soil. And things that are healthy, makes you healthy. And it's such a novel idea that "Holy crap. Yes, we are so disconnected from nature itself." Let alone. You know, is there any vitality left in the food that you eat, right? So, there's a stress of our food. The quality of our food is going down because of how far it comes, you know. And also just the way that it's raised and all that. But there's, there's a good amount of science put into how much life is left in the food that you're eating. Because a lot of the food that we're eating is already kind of dead. If it ever was alive, like some of these vegetables that we're eating, you know. So just like, that's going to stress your body out because it isn't not getting enough vitamins and nutrients. So, we're not trying to replace your, your local nutritionist, okay? But these are all things to consider when you're looking at your stress. When you're, when you're having a mental breakdown. When you're having an emotional breakdown. There are many factors that lead to that point. You know what I mean? And so, it's really important to look at the whole kaleidoscope of your life rather than just, "Oh. I'm, I'm, I'm sad or I'm angry or whatever because my boss yelled at me." Okay, well, how's your prayer life doing? Also, how your relationships doing? No one area of your life should have so much influence that it destroys all areas of life like a domino effect. That, that, that only happens when we are barely hanging on. You know what I mean? Like when we're, we're just scraping by then it's easy to get crushed in many ways. Because we're being held together by, by just sutures. You know, like we're not eating well enough. We're not sleeping well enough. And so, it's easy for the whole thing to fall apart. Does that make sense?
Sammy Uyama: Absolutely. And I'm wondering. I'd like to go into. So, I think, we've done a good job convincing the skeptics that they have more stress in their life than they want.
Andrew Love: It's also just to look at that because not everybody is equal. And some people are, do have a good, you know, help. They really take care of their physical health. But how's their mental health. How's their spiritual health and all that. So, it's just not to make you feel bad. It's just to help you assess every area of your life to see what might be causing stress because that bleeds into the other areas of your life. So, it's good to kind of take inventory of every aspect of your life.
Sammy Uyama: Right. I. So, the next thing I'd like to talk about is. Why is it worth looking at this? Like, what are the consequences of not dealing with the stress in your life appropriately? And I think like coping is the word, the word that comes up. And then, the effects of that. How about we talked about that a little bit?
Andrew Love: Yeah. So I mean, to me, it's, it's a matter of flowing. Things flowing well. The water flowing well. And when you have some aspect of your life that is not functioning properly, it affects the flow of water. And eventually, if you don't take care of that, it could dam, dam it up. I don't know if that's a word and it kind of sounds weird when I say it. But it could just stop the flow of water. And then, that creates this starvation in that area. And it becomes emaciated. And becomes weak. And it becomes fragile. And again, that could be your mental well being. Your spiritual year. And then, there's you either look at what that thing is, right? That, that, what is that thing that's stopping the flow? Or you just continue to focus on other stuff. And just like mask the fact that the water is not flowing. So, that's what a lot of drugs do. They just quell the, the pain that you're experiencing rather than deal with the symptoms of the problem. That's a real fundamental difference between like Eastern approach and Western approach. Is one seeks to just alleviate the pain and that's the western approach. And then, the eastern approach is looking at what is the root of the problem. Right? And so, coping is just masking the symptoms. It's "Hey, I feel. I have a headache. I'll take a Tylenol." Right?Instead of looking at "Whoa. Am I, do I have a habit of being dehydrated?" Most of us are dehydrated. Do I have bad posture that can lead to headaches? Am I yelling too much at my kids? Right? Looking at these things that gave you the headache rather than just trying to get rid of the headache, right? And so, porn absolutely is just masking the loneliness within. The lack of connection within. The rage within. The whatever that's inside of you that doesn't feel right. That you're trying to escape. That's what porn is.
Sammy Uyama: Well, played. So, what's the, what's the relationship between stress and sex? So, why is this something that we want to talk about?
Andrew Love: Well, in terms of the negative. You know, that's, we know, that, that's a huge reason why people are going to porn in droves because their life seems out of control. And porn is one area of their life that they can control because it's readily available. They can guarantee that they'll get a certain feeling and that's a pretty high feeling, right? You get a high off of it through watching it and then, through masturbating to it. Your body gets this great feeling, right? And, but it actually ends up stressing your spirit. Your emotions. And eventually, mentally, yourself. Because you're just masking the immediate pain that you're experiencing with escape. But then, you have to go back to your life eventually. Right? So, there's a porn aspect. But why don't you dabble on. Why don't you talk about. What about like a sexual relationship? What is stress due to sex, Sammy? Like, how, was the last time you had wonderful heavenly stress filled sex?
Sammy Uyama: Yeah. It's a. Well, I mean, there's on the relationship. And then, there's like, individually, myself. I can see two different ways. So, performance anxiety. That, that's, I think something a lot of people can relate with. Just like when there's, the, that stress to wants to feel. You need to, your sex needs to be a certain level or it needs to look a certain way. And if you fall short of that, then all the the ways to beat yourself up about that. But that's, the thing more relevant for me is like, when I'm stressed how I relate with sex, and with my wife. Like, great sex, like I deal, like an ideal sex is when you want to be a giver in that relationship. Into, into my wife. And then, but when I'm stressed, I definitely, I can feel it inside of me that like, when it comes to sex I become a taker. You know, and like even, even when, when it's like on the surface level, you'd say very integritas sexually. It's like I'm not looking on the Internet at sexual things. I'm not looking at other places to try to get that sexual stimulation. It's, I'm still focusing it on my wife. But it's very much in, within the spirit of wanting her to give it to me. And being very like entitled about it. And demanding it. And like so, and it makes me manipulative, for sure. Like, being nice to her becomes about in order to like, for it to end up with sex, right? Or like, and if we're going and if she doesn't want to for some reason, then I can get frustrated or annoyed. And all those things only happen because it's coming from a place of like, "Hey, I should get this or I need this. I deserve it. You supposed to give it to me." Nothing to do with like, "Hey, I just really want to make you happy."
Andrew Love: Sure, sure.
Sammy Uyama: So, I mean.
Andrew Love: That's a huge point. Because it, it highlights stress in terms of when you are in an unnatural and stress state, then you are separate from all the things that you want. You see the divide. You, you're not connected to the flow of life, right? And so, it's the abundance versus scarcity mindset. Scarcity says, "There's not enough. I'm not enough. You're not enough." You start to compare that person with other people. You start have to worry like all these weird negative emotions start popping up. Selfish emotions start popping up because you're divided from the thing. Whereas, the abundant mindset. There's more than enough of everything good in this universe says that we are actually one. And your feelings are my feelings. And it's not separate, right? So, you wouldn't dare do anything that would mess with that wonderful feeling of togetherness, right? Whereas, when you're separate, you can justify all sorts of stuff because you don't feel what they're feeling. Because you just see all the negatives. You know what I mean? So, when you're disconnected and stressed, you focus on all the things that are divide you. And that, that, that are outside of you. Versus when you're in a natural state. You just have gratitude. And you just happy and you want that person to be happy. For anybody out there who's ever had like a really deep connected prayer. All you. It's like this overwhelming feeling of joy and sadness and all these emotions together. That just the total sum is gratitude. Like just, "Thank you. I wish everybody could feel this. I wish we could all live like this." That's, that's, that's what love making can be and should be. And stress is more just like, yeah, manipulating outcomes for your benefit. Right? Yeah. And that's the thing about stress too. Is the more you focus on the, on your stress itself. And reasons why you might be stressed. The more that you're just feeding it. And it's, it's really does gain momentum. And to break that spell, you really have to start feeling about, well, what's the opposite? Right? So, and start feeling that. Like that's the practice of the type of meditation that I've been doing. Which is to feel the emotion of whatever you want. So, say you're physically unwell. That you feel the emotion of what it would it feel like to feel wonderful now. And that actually stimulates all sorts of things within your, within your mind and neuro chemically. But also, like, it stimulates all this stuff in your nervous system to, to repair itself. Because when you're mentally and physically stressed, your, your whole immune system goes down. It goes into fight or flight. And then, you get sicker. That's the crazy part. The more you focus on your sickness, the sicker you get. And the more everything starts to spiral out of control. Whereas, when you start to remind yourself mentally, emotionally of the things that you actually want and the goodness and the gratitude. All the things to be grateful for. It starts to actually become the remedy to the stress that you experienced. Right? So, like it takes you from that separation to a sense of togetherness and oneness. It's very much possible. It's a mental trick. I was lying up the other night. You know, I woke up randomly at, like two something in the morning. And my mind was racing, I started to have all these weird thoughts about my kids being hurt and all this stupid stuff. And then, I just caught my, its creating all this anxiety in me. It was just perpetuating. And I just stopped. And I was like, "You know, what, how about something else?" And I pictured myself being really small, riding on top of a mouse. And then, it just gave like fun. Like, "Oh my god. Why am I so serious having all these stupid anxieties that are based on imagination? Am I, my imaginations are creating anxiety. And why don't I just flip it around?" And I started just laughing at, you know, picturing myself riding a mouse. So dumb, but it actually helped me fall right back asleep. Because I just realized that I was feeding this chasm of death. Rather than, you know, just, I'm guiding my thoughts towards life and prosperity and joy and all this stuff, right? So, so much of stress is like we're feeding this weird, imaginary narrative that we believe to be true. Either because our past was like something or because we think we know what the future is going to be like. But, all we're doing is creating that future because we're feeding all this anxiety and all this stuff where it makes enjoying anything almost impossible. You know, what I mean? Like I was, I'm living in a very exotic place, but I've been sick here. And I realized it doesn't matter. Anything like externally doesn't matter. When you're sick, you could be in a nicest Palace in the world on your deathbed. And guess how much you're like, "Hey, do you see my palace?" They don't give a crap like, "Hey, can you heal me? Can you help me?"
Sammy Uyama: I don't know under what circumstances anyone would would be like, "Hey, did you see my Palace?"
Andrew Love: Have you seen Instagram, lately? That's all Instagram is like, "Hey, have you seen my car? Have you seen my butt? Have you seen my shoes?" People just showning off. But when you're unwell, nothing. None of that matters. So really, it's like that stress is all internal. And there's so many different reasons for it. Again, it could be like Uncle David, right? He's, he's going through a lot of physical stuff. He had, you know, knee surgery, eye problems. All this stuff. If you focus on, why me? All this stuff. Well, guess what? It's gonna get worse. Right? Because maybe physically you might not get worse but you're not, you're not in a mental state to really heal your body. Your body's immune system can heal a broken arm, right? Like, when you put your arm in a cast, they're not fixing your arm. They're just immobilizing it. So, it can fix itself because that's what a healthy body does. Is it fixes itself. But in order for you to fix yourself, you need to rest. You need to be in a state of rest and repair. And so, you cannot do that when you're stressed out. You can't.
Sammy Uyama: I think, everything. Coming from you, everything you said is golden, I think. Because the substance behind it. Just, you said earlier, you were always very sensitive as a child. And prone. And you're someone that is actually prone to anxiety, right? That has that leniency to, towards, or the bias towards being stressed. And so, like you found these ways to. It's not like, it's not a theoretical thing. It's just like what you needed to do in order to function, right?
Andrew Love: Yeah. Absolutely.
Sammy Uyama: I could, I could say, I could say a lot of great stuff. But I have that, as connects to us I was saying earlier about like just you know people come from different places. I think me and my wife, we both come more from the, "Oh. Whatever happens, happens." And not. We don't worry as excessively as I know many other people do. And so, it just me personally. I just, I, I, whatever genetic reasons or whatever. Just how I was experienced ahead. Then, I don't stress as much, as much as other people. So, I don't have a lot to say, right? With, with. So, I, everything you saying is really great. Just for helping people know how to effectively cope with. Not, not coping. Yeah, to handle. Whatever comes, happens in their life.
Andrew Love: Yeah. Well that. You, you might though. So, let me ask you and you can leave this out if you don't want to answer it. But so, before this, before we start recording. We were talking about the situation of when it's difficult to conceive a baby, right? And I know that you, you experienced that to some degree for some time, right? And I know that the stress of not being able to conceive makes it even more difficult to conceive because you're kind of focused just on the outcome rather than the process. And it, sex becomes like, homework, right? It becomes like extracurricular activity rather than, you know, this joyful experience. So, how did stress factor into that, that part of your life? And into, because we're talking about sex and stress. So, how did, how did that? You know.
Sammy Uyama: Yeah. Yeah. I got you. So, let me. I guess, the first step to clarify what I meant is that, like, there are things that stress me out. And, but what I meant was just, I think, if two people experienced the same stimulation or the same stress. The same stressor. As their level of response would be different. So, so that's kind of what I was speaking towards. And like, I think between the two of us, if we experienced something at the same time, it stress, it potentially stresses you out more than it would me. That's, that's when. But like. And yeah. And one thing that does stress me a lot. Stress me out a lot is environment. Like my environment is really important to me. Like if it's really messy and completely disorganized. Then, then it makes me really tense, right? So like, our house has to be well kept. And the cups need to go in the cup place, right? In the bowls and you go in the bowl place. And, and it needs to be, it needs to be like easy to handle. Right? And I guess, and the difference for me is also. And yeah, like my wife and I. We spent like, we were having a hard time having a for her to get pregnant. Right? Which, and then, I think when everyone. It wasn't as easy as we thought it would be. And then, when, when couples go through that. And like, naturally, some of the thoughts is like, "Oh, you know, is there some deeper problem? And like, you know, what if we're not able to conceive?" And um, those fears come. And we did have those concerns. But I think, another reason that or another thing that differentiates me and my wife is that like, we have some really a good habit of taking action on the things that we can. Right? And I think, that's like a really healthy process for dealing with difficult things. It's like, in, because the thing, more than the distressor. It's like when we're in our heads about everything we tell him, everything that goes on in between our ears is probably, probably what picks out the most, right? And so, when able to actually do something, then it kind of takes your mind off of that. And so, that helped us a lot. And so, it was more even that. It was more. There was the fear that was really real. But it wasn't necessarily like a hugely stressful part of our life. It's like, whenever we talked about it, I got a little tight in my chest. Like, you know, oh, you know, is the worst my worst fears going to come true, right? But, we were really, it wasn't stressful in the way that it was like affecting my ability or any other areas in my life. Or like I wasn't able to focus on work. Or like I wasn't able to function properly. You know, when I was going about my other parts of my life is fine. It was you know, there's a reminder of that, that possible. That they're concerned about the possibility of fear. That, that possibility. And we have two kids now, by the way. I guess.
Andrew Love: Definitely. But I know, you know, stress can induce more stress. Like it can be get more stress. You can give birth to more stress. And at what point, do you cut off the lineage of stress? And yeah. It's not to say that taking, you know. Some people on prescription pills and that's, that's sometimes necessary, but it's not the solution. Right? And that's, I think the limitation of Western way of thinking is that sometimes you really need to take some pretty heavy drugs to stop the bleeding, right? But it's not, it's not dealing with the root cause. And also sometimes like, I remember hearing from this one guy's. Like, you know, when I get into a car accident, I don't want acupuncture. I want, you know, a surgeon, right? So, Western medicine definitely has the ability to the response time and the effectiveness of stopping the bleeding per se. You know, as a metaphor of like stopping the pain immediately is, is pretty good. But, we're talking about living a life of, you know, total bliss. Together with our spouse. And that really requires us to have full control over our minds, our hearts and our spirits and our bodies. And in this ever challenging world where things are less and less natural, and people are freaking out right with the pandemic. People are stressed about money. They're stressed about, you know, their health, their physical health, they're stressed about politics. There's so many reasons to stress out. But you have to understand that you're plugging into that. And to not let your computer give you more stress. If it is, then stop looking at your computer or stop going to those websites and go to blissful websites. You have no contract with Facebook. You have no contract with Facebook, right? It's not like Verizon, right? Where they're gonna charge you an early termination fee. Facebook is free and you can leave at any time. Any of these websites. It's totally optional. As much as somehow we think that it's, it's mandatory, it's not. And so, if it's not benefiting you, it's, there's a migration of people leaving Netflix now because of their egregious sexualization of children. I don't know if this is just going to be a fad. But there's also a lot of people leaving Facebook, you know. Millions of people. And it's just because they're realizing that it's a net negative in terms of their mental, physical, emotional health. So, look at. Our challenged to you is to really look at your life as a whole, okay? And if you're experiencing even physical stress, it doesn't mean that it's a physical reason that you're experiencing that stress. It could be a physical manifestation of emotional stress or mental stress. So, it's worth looking at your whole life and say, "What areas of my life are flowin?. In which areas of my life are not flowing well? And how do I get into a more natural state in those areas?" And play the long game. Don't try to fix it in one night or whatever. I've been meditating for solid. Every single day for the past. It's like, almost three years now. It saved my life. But I'm still, I still feel like a beginner. And I want to keep on investing in this for the rest of my life until I get really, really, really good at it. So, it takes some time, right? To master these things, right? But it's worth the investment. Because now, you know, meditation has the same effect as medication for me. I can really, it's like popping a pill. I just, if I can unplug myself. So, so yeah. I just. Please play the long game. And understand that stress shouldn't definitely not be a part of your sexual experience. Because like I said, stress gives birth to stress. So, stress, sex, will end in more stress, right? So, it's, it's not. Like, fake sex is used as an escape. True sex, heavenly sexuality, is a means to connect to God, to yourself, and to a real tangible person that you're committed to loving forever. That's when all, you know, the stars are aligned for heaven and earth to just hug each other. It's the greatest.
Sammy Uyama: Shatter and explode.
Andrew Love: Yeah. And again, right? Sammy and I are not coming from a place of perfection. But I can definitely say that, um, you know, recently, I had some of that earth shattering sex with my wife. And it, and we were just looking at each other during. And then, after we were just like thankful for the grace of God that, that we're able to focus our energy on that. Because we've had the other sex, too, on it. And it leaves us feeling pretty, pretty, pretty crappy about ourselves, right? Like when you have sex with somebody and it's doesn't fulfill you. Physically, maybe it was fine. But if it's not fulfilling spiritually, it's, it feels almost even worse than had you not had sex at all right? But, when you really do connect. When you're really fully present with somebody else. It's like, you just are so grateful for life, itself. It's wonderful.
Sammy Uyama: That's awesome. I think, my wife and I, we have, we've had Earth shaking sex. But 10 seconds shorter on earth shattering. It's neither.
Andrew Love: Work on your breathing. You got to work on a breathing thing. Yeah. So, we hope this was helpful. Um, you know, stress is, is, it's going to be an ever present force in our lives, indefinitely. I don't see us moving to a more natural state collectively for quite some time. So, stress management is going to be fundamental to enjoying life. And it's going to be more of a skill set than anything in the future. Just like it is now. But it's going to be more so. It's going to be something that we have to really learn. How to disconnect from stress and how to reconnect to the flow, the flowing state of natural, natural state. And so, it's really important to put in the work. Otherwise, you know, it's not going to come naturally, you know. Like it did before. The world is, is not going backwards. It's going forwards at a very rapid rate. So, we hope that that it helped. And if you have any questions or comments, or if you'd like to talk about your own stress, please let us know. And you know, we can even interview you. If you've had, if you've overcome some great stressors and you'd like to share with us like how and best practices, we'd love to hear and share with other people. And as always, we appreciate you listening. And if you ever want to donate a million dollars or more, please contact Sammy. Anything less than a million, please contact me. We are a nonprofit organization. So, we run off of. We have a high budget for coffee and sarcasm. Our sarcasm budget is almost out. So, we're looking for donation.
Sammy Uyama: Yeah. Appreciate the shout out, Andrew. It's always a privilege. Thank you for listening. We'll see you next time.