Comedy Centered

All right. I think I started my livestream. Hi, everyone. Welcome back to Comedy Centered and happy Sunday. Hope you had a good weekend. My week was weird. I had a lot of. I had really good moments and also some really. I don't know, there was a rough thing. We'll talk about it a little bit, but let's start with some joyful stuff, if we can, some fun stuff. I was doing a little browsing at goodwill, and not to get all, like, witchy or like, whatever, but I was kind of looking for a bell. I know, is that weird?

Like, how do I go my whole life and not have a bell? But I was looking for a bell at goodwill. Oh, hey. Welcome. Hey, what's going on? Welcome L. C. Wallace. Thanks for stopping in. And so one of the things that I was reading this book about, like, you know, like manifesting and the law of attraction, all that kind of stuff. I know, kind of hip dip, right? But this is why every once in a while in life, you should just cruise through the goodwill. And I'm like, I've got $5. If I can find a bell in here for under $5, I'm buying it.

Right? Look at what I found. I don't know if you can see this. My lighting is not great. It is Elvis. It is Elvis and Abel 199. God, I love goodwill. But anyway, welcome. And so this is going to be the new official. The meeting has started. Schoolteacher Bill, I guess it's all of us communicating from beyond with us. But, hey, welcome to comedy Centered. If you've not stopped by the podcast before the live cast or whatever, the Cadre cast or whatever we're doing. My name is Tiffany Norton. I am a stand up comedian.

I'm based out of the twin cities in Minnesota and a recent transplant to western Wisconsin. I live in Hudson, Wisconsin, now. And I started kind of diving into the sobriety, quote, unquote, journey about two years ago due to some personal stuff. And I really just had my two year anniversary earlier this week. It was June 3 of 2022, where I was doing stand up comedy and had a. I'd had panic attacks before in my life, but this is the first time I had one on stage, and my mental health was just crap, and I decided I had to do something about it.

So. But this week, a dear friend of mine, a comic in town, and we got some just devastating news. His wife, very young, passed, only 46, and it was one of those situations where no one was really discussing the details. But that's, you know, fine, fine, fine. And it was a catholic ceremony, and I was raised Catholic, and so we're sitting there and we're doing the up down, up down thing. If you're familiar with Catholicism and the. The. I didn't, like I said, a lot of the people in the group didn't know exactly what was happening.

And the eulogy that was done by my friend, the husband was beautiful. Everybody was in tears and also loving. And then the priest came up and just went kind of rogue and said, yeah, well, it's sad that we're all here, because Julie was an alcoholic and just said it like that. Just threw the label right on her. And the rest of his little talk, his homily, went along the lines of, like. And I heard all the words I've heard my entire life regarding drinking, like, oh, willpower and choices and things like that.

Well, if you've met me before, I think you maybe have already figured this out. I believe very firmly that most of us fall into overuse of some coping mechanism. Alcohol is one of them, one of the popular ones, because we are in the midst of trying to solve a problem. We have some. There is some tension. There is something unresolved. Oftentimes, people like myself, I went undiagnosed until my fifties with attention deficit disorder and post traumatic stress disorder. Didn't know that. And once I started diving into my diagnoses and realizing what was actually kind of going on, I found myself naturally not wanting alcohol as much.

Okay. But that doesn't mean that I can just be willy nilly about alcohol, because that brings me to what I wanted to talk about today was, if you're not familiar with the work of Robert Greene, he's a very interesting guy. And back in 98, he wrote a book, which is now very popular. But I don't know, I think it really, really cut through the lexicon more more recently. But it's called the 48 Laws of power, and it is a historical document and book, right, where he basically goes and analyzes the most powerful people, like, throughout history.

And he basically comes up with some rules. And the rules are pretty cutthroat if you read them, you know? But if you read, if you actually go through the book and kind of understand that power dynamics are something that are happening no matter what, if you get a group of more than two people, someone wants power of the group. This. This is not anything they teach us about in school. This is just one of those inevitabilities that we walk out at 22, 23 years old, and all of a sudden, hello, world.

Oh, power dynamics. Why does that lady in the office all of a sudden not like me, that I don't know and didn't do anything to? And then you say all the wrong things and do all the wrong things. And if you're somebody like me who is neurodivergent, if I feel like I'm missing something, or somebody's facial reactions aren't what I expected, I go into hyper, extra, extra, extra talking and extra, extra being annoying, I think, to other people. But the 48 laws of power have got some really interesting things.

And you might not agree with all of his conclusions and stuff, but it's interesting. But when you're talking in terms of being the throws of an addiction, and it can be gambling, it can be, it can be substances, but it can be gambling, it can be shopping, it can be a lot of things. Things that aren't necessarily visible right to the outside eye. But also too, if you just want to reclaim power in your life. His advice is that you have to cultivate what was described in military terms as a death ground mentality.

And what that means is the idea behind it was that if you had 100 fighters and you fighting 300 fighters, right, the hundred fighters are going to lose unless they adopt a death metal or death metal. Death metal, yeah, I like that too. A death metal ground, a death ground mentality. Basically, you will fight, you will use every resource, you will try absolutely everything. If you are in the mindset that my life depends on this happening. And he talks about how, you know, we can get lazy when we can get complacent, and it's true.

And as humans, I think, like, we need something, right? To drive for, we need goals, we need stuff to keep us from, you know, getting stuck in the relaxation mode of everything. And like, let's say you've gotten through, I think we've all maybe had the experience of getting through like a tough course in like high school or like finals or a big project at work, and then afterwards you're like, oh my God, don't anybody ask me to do anything for the rest of the week. I'm not talking to anybody. And because the pressure has been released, you go, you know, the pressure goes away and you want to make sure that you keep necessity in your life that you.

Of course we need to rest, right? Of course we need to decompress and things like that. But if we're not actively thinking to ourselves in terms of, like, if there's a business you're trying to start, I'm trying to start a business. If there's a business you're trying to start. You have to adopt a death ground mentality. You're not starting the business tomorrow, you're starting it today. There's no time to wait. There isn't extra time. Your back is up against the wall. It's you against 300. Are you going to use every resource?

Are you going to do everything to keep yourself safe from addictions? Are you going to keep necessity in your life? And one of the things he also talks about quite a bit, which is so true, maybe the reason why you're avoiding that and you can't quite find that deathground mentality in your life, and you can't find that sense of urgency in your life is because the things that you're really doing with your time, you're not passionate about. And, you know, he gives a good example, though, of as a young man, he had studied French in school, and then he went to France for a visit and he was gonna do some extra studies after college, right?

And he knew French, kinda, and he'd studied French. But it wasn't until he got there and realized, like, if I don't figure this out, I'm not gonna be able to communicate with people. I'm not gonna be able to figure out where I'm going. I'm not gonna be able to get any of the things done that I want to get done. So once he adopted the mentality of the necessity of it, he said, I, you know, it didn't take me long at all, but I had to force myself to really want to change it, right? So bringing a full circle and in the context of the opening statement about my friend wife that had passed, what, what really upset me the most about that situation and, you know, the priest going rogue and having his opinions, that's, you know, I understand a lot of people like to banter about labels, but what I.

What I did not appreciate, which I, what I didn't think was cool, especially when the woman is not in the room to, you know, biographize herself, I don't think biographies, the word was just throwing that label on her. It is my worst nightmare that someone would, like, take away all of the wonderful things, all of the good stuff I did, and minimize it with something as callous as just a throwaway label. You know, everybody's so much more than that. You are not defined by your worst moments. That's not the whole of who you are.

And if you're somebody who is struggling, I get it. And sometimes it's just minute to minute. Second to second of not engaging in that thing that you know is going to bring you instant relief like that. But try to remember death ground mentality, because if you're talking about alcohol use disorder, it is death ground mentality. I mean, it was liver failure. That's what it was, plain and simple. And your liver can regenerate, your kidneys cannot. You know, there's no safe level of alcohol. There's no amount of alcohol your body's supposed to have every day, even though there's all those studies that will come out and say, oh, you're supposed to have a glass of wine for your heart.

Well, the one glass of wine for the heart actually increases over time, your odds of getting other cancers. So maybe just cut back on salt for your heart stuff and skip the wine. And if you're here because you're in the sober, curious community and you're just kind of feeling out what it might make, you know, what you might want to do to try and to change, I do want to get a group going in the Cadre sphere for July, a dry July challenge. If anybody wants to join me, obviously I will. I kind of have to, but I will be the captain.

And if we can get some people, I think it could be really fun. We could have some fun with it in the. In the meetups and also, of course, in the posts. So anybody can reach out. You can find me Tiffany Norton on Cadre, of course. com, if you ever want to chit chat or something like that. But dry July challenge, if people are inclined, I'll just say this in conclusion, there's always a reason to not change today. The one reason to change today is if you believe it could be better tomorrow. So one of the other things, too, that Robert Greene goes into as well is that one of his rules, actually, rule 18 of the 48 laws of power is isolation is dangerous.

Do not build fortresses to protect yourself. Isolation is dangerous. And it is. You're not alone. That's what Cadre is here for. So also to remember, we also have a ton of resources. If you're looking for a mental health practitioner or somebody, somebody to talk to or you just want to gain some insight, it's a great spot. Thank you so much for joining in on comedy centered. I will see you next Sunday. This is Tiffany Norton and death ground mentality. I will see you next week.