46: What is buffering? Why do you buffer? And How to Stop!

Andrea Liebross |

www.andrealiebross.com |

Episode 46

Speaker1: [00:00:09] You're listening to the Time to Level Up podcast. I'm your host, business life coach Andrea Libros. I help women in business commit to their own growth personally and professionally. Each week, I'll bring you strategies to help you think clearly gain confidence. Make your time productive. Turn every obstacle into an opportunity. And finally overcome the overwhelm so that you can make money and manage life. Let's create a plan so you have a profitable business, successful career. And best of all. Live with unapologetic ambition. Are you ready to drop the drama and figure out the how in order to reach your goals? You're in the right place. It's time to level up. Let's do

Speaker2: [00:00:58] This. Hello. Time to level up, listeners and welcome back to the podcast. Today it's just me, just me and just you. And I wanted to talk today about something called buffering. Ok, so this is a concept. It's kind of a concept that's out there in the coaching world. But I wanted to bring it to you today from, I think, a pretty practical standpoint. And I literally just got off a call with my committed to growth group. And we talked about buffering, and a lot of interesting things came up in that discussion. What's buffering versus what's tolerating? Are they the same thing? Are there good kinds of buffering? Are there bad kinds of buffering? So I think I'm going to dispel it all and kind of filter it down for you today. So here's what buffering is. So when I think about buffering, I think about creating a buffer. Ok, so when you are moving furniture around your house, which is something that we sometimes do at my house, I take these hard on one side, soft on the other sliders you can buy them at, say, Home Depot. If you don't have any, you should go buy some because they are moving furniture really easy. But that little surface, which I put between the floor and the furniture leg. Is really protecting the floor from the furniture leg as I move it around, so buffering is a protectant of two services that are rubbing up against each other. Ok, so two surfaces that rub up against each other.

Speaker2: [00:02:40] If you put a buffer in the middle, you will be protected or they will be protected. That's a buffer. Ok, sometimes with people, I'm sure you've said, Oh, I'm the buffer between these two people that don't get along or on your computer when you're waiting for something to download and it's thinking about it and it's deciding if it's safe, that little rainbow circle rolls around. That's called buffering, too. It's protecting your computer from viruses as it assesses what's being downloaded. So in our lives, what buffers are doing, they are preventing us from experiencing our negative emotions. Buffers are usually things that are problematic in the long run, and they are ways of escaping. There are ways that we don't have to feel the other surface or we don't have to feel negative. Feelings and buffers again are usually what I call net negative net negatives. A lot of times have to do with money. It's kind of what's left over or the after effect, right? But I want you to think about that net negative in the sense of are these buffers creating more problems on the other side after you buffer? So let me give you some examples. In society, there are lots of things that we, as humans use to buffer. One thing is our drugs. We use drugs to buffer. And I'm not talking about Tylenol, OK? Once in a while, I'm talking about people who are using drugs to prevent them from feeling things beyond what medical advisers? Ok.

Speaker2: [00:04:36] So when people use drugs because they don't want to feel things, they usually change your emotions. Ok, so you don't feel it. But the net negative is that you could become addicted. And that is not good. So there is a problem, so you are trying to avoid a feeling. Take the drug and you end up with a problem. Porno gambling, OK, you could say those are buffers, we use those as a way to escape, OK, maybe escape stress. And we do get some concentrated pleasure in the moment. Ok, but the net negative is how it impacts. The rest of your life moving forward, so gambling, you could get yourself in a lot of debt. Porno, if you're in a relationship, you can get yourself into some marital difficulties. And it also affects kind of the way you view money or the way you view sex. Moving forward? Let's talk about another example of buffering. What about food? Ok, food can be a buffer when we are overeating. A lot of times and there's lots of research out there when we overeat, we are attempting to seek pleasure in our brain gets kind of that quick hit that dopamine hit of pleasure. But afterwards, you may not feel so good. Or you may turn into a not so healthy person. Right? So it's kind of like that quick reward for a long term loss. Drinking over drinking.

Speaker2: [00:06:29] Sometimes we do that because we don't want to feel the stress of being in a conversation. Ok. Or the stress of connecting. If we're in a social situation or at the end of the day, if you're just pouring yourself a glass of wine, you want to not feel anxious. So you drink. All right. Let's think about money spending money like spending spree, right? Sometimes we say, Oh, I got this new thing, I just I just had to have some retail therapy. Hey, but the net negative of that could be spending money and clutter in your house. Social media that can be a buffer. We use that to escape boredom or feel more connected, escape what you want to be doing or should be doing instead. You just decide it's a great time to scroll. All right. But what if you were looking for that connection? What if you called a friend or went to lunch? Ok. Phones, they can easily become a buffer. Right, we can be buffering at dinner with our phones when we don't want to talk to our parents. We don't want to feel the pressure that might come out of that conversation if you are a 17 year old. But things that might inherently seem good can also be buffers like work, work can be a buffer. I can get pleasure from working when I don't want to be hanging around my family or kids or things are rough at home. I can go escape and go, say, I need to go, do some work, and then it feels really good.

Speaker2: [00:08:10] I feel productive. I feel useful. But the negative there is, maybe I am not connecting with my family. I'm not creating the relationships I want to have. My home life is suffering. I'm avoiding that stress, replacing it with work, which seems so noble. But the net negative of that is that I wonder where. All the time went with my kids are how they're getting old so fast. Ok. Tv or Netflix. I'm all for watching a good show. I'm really into Ted Lasso right now. Ok. But if I binged on Ted Lasso for hours and hours, am I doing that as an escape of feeling some certain way? Maybe it's boredom. And another form of buffering could be video games. This is not a form that really is prevalent in my house, but I know it's prevalent in a lot of houses, and this is a good example of when we tend to have a very high tolerance for our own buffers. But when we see these buffers in others, we have very low tolerance or we judge. So for example, if you have a spouse who spends lots of time playing video games, do you sometimes think that that is not a good use of their time? And so you have no tolerance for their buffering with video games? Think about phones. Ok. When we're on our phone, we have high tolerance for that buffer, but when we see someone else on their phone not participating in the conversation, we have very low tolerance.

Speaker2: [00:09:58] We start to judge, so start to pay attention to what other people's buffers might be. And are you judging them? Your brain might go to the place of this is super important for me to be doing this buffer for me to be scrolling social media or checking emails. But in reality, it is not very important. Ok, it's not important. To be buffering like that. So what are you going to do about this? What are you going to do about it? So here are a couple of things you can do about it things you can do about this buffering problem. If. The buffer, the TV, the work, the eating is something you do want to engage in because inherently there's nothing wrong with any of those than what you can do is you can plan in advance. You can plan when are you going to watch TV and how much? If you're doing that, then you're using your higher brain, you're using the wise part of your brain, the smart part, the frontal lobe. And that's OK. Work, you can decide when you want to work, where you want to work, how much you want to work. Again, you're using your your higher brain there. Ok. So I encourage you to kind of look at things and plan in advance. Twenty four hours in advance.

Speaker2: [00:11:30] Social media OK. I honestly don't go on social media every day. I plan to do it a couple of times a week for about 20 minutes at a time. I plan it in advance. Because the second thing that you can do to get over it, you can expect that you're going to have these urges or cravings for the buffer. And then the third thing you need to be willing to have the urge and not respond to it because that urge is eventually going to go away. And when when you recognize the urge and not respond to it, this is what's going to make your confidence skyrocket, OK, because this has to do with the relationship you have with yourself when you give in to the urge, it creates a negative relationship with yourself. Ok, but if I allow the urge, it allows me to create some trust in myself. If I give in to the urge, it makes me not able. To feel all the feelings my brain wants me to feel or is bringing up rather not not addressing all the feelings that my brain is bringing to the surface. I buffer and then I create more problems down the road. Ok, and here's the thing that's kind of interesting. And the coach, Jody Moore, taught me this that the emotion you're trying to escape or avoid. You're probably going to feel it anyway. Ok, so with anything that you're trying to pursue any dream or goal, OK, let's say the goal is to lose 10 pounds and you just ate a really healthy dinner and then after dinner you say, Oh, I'm going to treat myself, I'm just going to have this little dove chocolate.

Speaker2: [00:13:27] Ok. And you take the chocolate out of the freezer is where that's where I keep my little dove chocolates. And you have one or you have. So after I've had one or two of the chocolate and I ate the healthy dinner, I am disappointed in myself. I'm disappointed. Like, why did I have the chocolate? Because I hadn't planned on that. So think about this. Would you rather be disappointed and feel that urge you with feelings associated with that urge? And get the benefits of not giving in to the urge. Or would you want to feel the negative emotion after eating it and not getting any long term benefits? So you're kind of disappointed in yourself either way. If you're disappointed and don't give in to the urge, you're getting the benefit of experiencing that disappointment. But the benefit also of not getting the calories associated with the chocolate. If you eat the chocolate and give in to the urge, you're still disappointed, but there is no benefit. Ok, so what are you going to get better at? Eating chocolate are feeling disappointment or discouragement. And the last thing I want to bring to your attention is when you stop buffering, what really is left is real life. Now, this may seem kind of extreme, like real life is on the other side of suffering, but it's kind of the truth.

Speaker2: [00:15:08] Ok, the way you get to real life, the way you get to live your life, the way you want to do it is kind of extreme. It's hard and uncomfortable. But you're going to create a life that is so much better than the one you have if you stop the buffering. Ok, so I'm going to leave you with some questions. Here's your homework. I want you to answer some of these questions for yourself. What do you need to do in your life to make it better than anything you're doing to escape it? What needs to change? What do you need to stop tolerating? Where do you need to stop people pleasing? Where aren't you telling the truth to yourself and to others? Where are you going with the grain? And trying to be normal and get society's approval when really you should be rocking your own life out, you should be putting yourself out there. So that people see all the value you're bringing, people will love you, people will learn from you and you're going to help change their lives. I feel like right now my buffering is at a minimum and I am putting so much value out into the world and I hope I am helping to change lives, including yours. So again, what are you tolerating in your life that's causing you to buffer? When you clean that up, your life is going to be so good, and that doesn't mean 100 percent of the time, it's so good because again, life is 50 50, OK.

Speaker2: [00:16:52] But it will be so good in that you have the ability, the knowledge and the skill to be able to handle life as it is. So a client today told me that she likes to take naps at two o'clock before her kids come home, kind of her way of buffering and not finishing off what's on her to do list because she usually leaves the hard things till last. So I challenged her, I said, well, what if you planned on taking a nap every day? What would happen? Would that nap be as desirable as it sounds or as it is in the moment? Or do you think if you plan to take the nap and you took it, could you actually get everything done knowing ahead of time that you were taking the nap? So the better that you get at this, the better that you get at recognizing your buffering. Resisting the urge to fall into the buffer, the bigger your life gets. So stop buffering in order to tolerate your life and go create the life you want. Upgrade, give yourself the upgrade, buffering is putting you back in economy. It's putting you back with the regular folk. It's putting you back as my husband likes to stay in steerage, you're ready to upgrade.

Speaker2: [00:18:18] And addressing the buffering is on the path to the upgrade, OK, my friends, remember there's always time and it is the time for you to level up. I would love to chat with you and help you feel free to share this episode with anyone you think might benefit from it. And I always love when people rate and review, because that brings the podcast into the awareness of more people. That could be one way where you could add to the value bank of life. So if you're on iTunes, click on the little three little dots and leave me a rating, which is just some stars over review. I would love it. See you next week! Have a great week! Thanks for listening to the Time to Level Up podcast with me. Your host, Andrea Libros. If you know someone who could benefit from listening to this episode, I encourage you to take a screenshot and share it with them. Ok, now what about you? You've listen to the podcast, and if you now know that you're ready to upgrade your life, upgrade your business, upgrade you then stop being only a listener and start being a liver living that upgraded life. Head over to my website and schedule a call right there on that call. We'll start changing the way you think and act so that you can have the freedom to achieve the impossible in life and business and have the resources to do it. You deserve an upgrade. Let's do it.